I can think of a lot of processor intensive tasks that take longer than 24 hours to complete, and I *really* do not want to see any instability while they are in the middle of running. Are my expectations out of line here?
Maybe. If you're not designing nuclear weapons(*) or doing CGI for a major motion picture, I'm not sure why your processor is working overtime for more than 24 hours. And if you are doing those things, I don't know why you'd use a notebook.
(* If you are doing this, please don't gripe that you can't take your machine to the Los Alamos Starbucks.)
The gentleman who gave me the tour indicated they have something like 72 weeks (1 year plus 2 weeks) of purchase data on LIVE disk arrays, plus huge archives of the same data on tape. If you buy anything and use your credit, debit, or whatever card they can figure out your sales history obscenely quickly. Be afriad. Be very afraid.
Did he happen to mention anything about an attack on Zion?
Actually, you can understand Walmart better if you think of their business as being compensated for storing consumer goods until people come to get them. Walmart outstrips its competitors largely by being clever about carrying as few goods in inventory as possible. (Think about it this way: assuming that you could service all your customer requests for inventory, would you rather have $2 million in inventory sitting on shelves or $1 million in inventory and $1 million in the bank?) If you can do that, then you only have to beat your competitors a little bit on price to create sales volume, and the money will roll in.
Distribution IT is at the red-hot core of Walmart's business because what makes money for Walmart is using that IT to be super-clever about minimizing inventory on hand. The day you hear that Walmart is outsourcing its distribution IT, sell.
I second the recommendation of the Crime Classification Manual, which was written by the guy at the FBI who is known for "profiling" serial killers. Suffice it to say that "profiling" criminals does not involve pseudo-ESP insights into the minds of the deranged, but instead involves the application of some common sense insights derived from large aggregations of data -- which is actually more interesting.
By way of example, there are about 5 reasons someone commits arson: vandalism, thrill-seeking/perversion, revenge, concealing a crime, or profit (e.g., insurance fraud). If the target is a school, the reason for the arson is almost certainly vandalism, and the wrongdoer is almost certainly a teenaged male. If the target is a warehouse in an industrial area, the reason for the arson is almost certainly either revenge or profit, in which case you are looking at the insured or (less likely) one of his enemies. Etc., etc. It's an interesting book.
What if for every individual voting, after they complete their session, their choices were sent to a local print server, that just printed out a bunch of scantron cards, with the voter id, and the list of their choices. It would make it much easier to re-digitize the votes later, should the system crash.
Absolutely. Or just have the machine print out a marked paper ballot with a bar code, and count the vote only when the voter deposits that ballot into the reader. That guarantees all ballots will be marked accurately and be readabe. If a printer runs out of paper, no problem.
Unplug the local carrier's service where it comes into the building. Plug the Vonage line into any wall jack. That should "light up" the rest of the jacks.
Re:Series2 Tivo
on
VoIP Questioned
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· Score: 3, Informative
I haven't run Ethernet to the corner of the living room where my TiVo sits, but it updates just fine using my Vonage line as if it were POTS.
If life can exist there, it's more than likely that similar life could exist on Venus with its very extreme environment and bountiful liquid (unlike dry Mars).
I agree that there are some forms of bacteria that could survive on Venus. A more basic question is whether life could originate under such conditions, and I've never seen anyone address that question. I would be interested to know if anyone else has.
If it can apply for grants, complain about its dissertation advisor, and begrudgingly TA a section of the freshman course -- only then is it an artificial scientist.
I am somewhat surprised that no one mentioned Moneyball, Michael Lewis' book about how stats geeks are reinventing baseball.
Long story short: baseball thinking is dominated by longstanding rules of thumb, like the need to have a "clutch hitter" -- i.e., someone who can bat in runners on base when your team is down. Stats nerds who started looking seriously at baseball in the 1970s realized that a lot of these rules of thumb are flawed: among other things, it turns out that there is no such thing as a clutch hitter. The Oakland A's were the first team to use this information to build a contending team with a low-dollar payroll, and this book tells that story. Very interesting even if you aren't a hardcore baseball fan.
Agreed. It was an entertaining read but the plot twist is visible from space.
(Here's a hint for budding authors: when writing a murder mystery, try using multiple suspects to add suspense. Your audience might not be shocked to learn that the murderer is the only nontrivial character besides the detective.)
Ditto on that. The book is about an author who goes to the World Series of Poker to play and then report on the experience, with the idea that he would just report after he got knocked out. Turned out he got to the final table. Pretty comeplling stuff.
Both books are based on Baigent and Leigh's Holy Blood, Holy Grail, a work of purported nonfiction which will blow your mind for a couple of hours until you realize it's all batsh*t insane. I recommend it over either novel on the theory that it's best to drink directly from the tinfoil hat spring.
Agreed, although note that an issue with this is that the printers break down, so you might have a vote with no matching receipt. I'm sure there's a way of dealing with that issue (ask the voter to confirm that the receipt printed before recording the vote?) but the point is that we have to think this through all the way.
How is it possible that the Ulrichs or Mich Book & Supply will buy a once-used, otherwise mint condition textbook for, say, $8 and sell it for $50 and not make money?
1. Risk that book will be replaced by new edition before sold. 2. Risk that more copies of book will be bought by company than sold to students for reasons other than #1 (e.g., students start preferring new copies of book, teachers start favoring different book). 3. Cost of moving book from store where purchased from student to store where sold to student. 4. Capital costs (you're $8 out of pocket until sale). 5. Overhead (maintaining list of books to be bought and sold, setting prices, allocating employees to book buyback).
About a decade ago, I used to work for one of the three textbook stores in Ann Arbor. The open secret at the store was that very little money is made in bookselling; textbooks are essentially loss leaders for "Michigan" sweatshirts and other apparel sold by the same stores. I would be very surprised if one could profitably operate a used textbook business that sold for significantly lower prices: two of the three campus stores are owned by a chain that has enormous efficiencies of scale, and if they are not making much money on used books, I don't know who could.
Slashdot Mirror
"I'm the cutting-edge software product you can't live without, Dave."
Maybe. If you're not designing nuclear weapons(*) or doing CGI for a major motion picture, I'm not sure why your processor is working overtime for more than 24 hours. And if you are doing those things, I don't know why you'd use a notebook.
(* If you are doing this, please don't gripe that you can't take your machine to the Los Alamos Starbucks.)
For this very reason, TiVo has developed a proprietary technology that will keep 50-year-old gay men from seizing control of your unit.
(Hey, why is everyone giggling?)
The gentleman who gave me the tour indicated they have something like 72 weeks (1 year plus 2 weeks) of purchase data on LIVE disk arrays, plus huge archives of the same data on tape. If you buy anything and use your credit, debit, or whatever card they can figure out your sales history obscenely quickly. Be afriad. Be very afraid.
Did he happen to mention anything about an attack on Zion?
Actually, you can understand Walmart better if you think of their business as being compensated for storing consumer goods until people come to get them. Walmart outstrips its competitors largely by being clever about carrying as few goods in inventory as possible. (Think about it this way: assuming that you could service all your customer requests for inventory, would you rather have $2 million in inventory sitting on shelves or $1 million in inventory and $1 million in the bank?) If you can do that, then you only have to beat your competitors a little bit on price to create sales volume, and the money will roll in.
Distribution IT is at the red-hot core of Walmart's business because what makes money for Walmart is using that IT to be super-clever about minimizing inventory on hand. The day you hear that Walmart is outsourcing its distribution IT, sell.
The answer to your proposed question #2 ("Is $50 too much to pay for filling up your gas tank?") is no, incidentally.
I second the recommendation of the Crime Classification Manual, which was written by the guy at the FBI who is known for "profiling" serial killers. Suffice it to say that "profiling" criminals does not involve pseudo-ESP insights into the minds of the deranged, but instead involves the application of some common sense insights derived from large aggregations of data -- which is actually more interesting.
By way of example, there are about 5 reasons someone commits arson: vandalism, thrill-seeking/perversion, revenge, concealing a crime, or profit (e.g., insurance fraud). If the target is a school, the reason for the arson is almost certainly vandalism, and the wrongdoer is almost certainly a teenaged male. If the target is a warehouse in an industrial area, the reason for the arson is almost certainly either revenge or profit, in which case you are looking at the insured or (less likely) one of his enemies. Etc., etc. It's an interesting book.
What if for every individual voting, after they complete their session, their choices were sent to a local print server, that just printed out a bunch of scantron cards, with the voter id, and the list of their choices. It would make it much easier to re-digitize the votes later, should the system crash.
Absolutely. Or just have the machine print out a marked paper ballot with a bar code, and count the vote only when the voter deposits that ballot into the reader. That guarantees all ballots will be marked accurately and be readabe. If a printer runs out of paper, no problem.
... and you thought "Blue Screen Of Death" was just a metaphor ...
Then don't you just get a bunch of telemarketer calls asking for Mr. "I.P. Freely" or whatever?
Unplug the local carrier's service where it comes into the building. Plug the Vonage line into any wall jack. That should "light up" the rest of the jacks.
I haven't run Ethernet to the corner of the living room where my TiVo sits, but it updates just fine using my Vonage line as if it were POTS.
Here, BOFH = b*stard operating from home.
*No one* spells English as badly as we Americans do.
The problem with dehydrated Chinese space food packets is that .021 Earth revolutions later, you're hungry again.
I agree that there are some forms of bacteria that could survive on Venus. A more basic question is whether life could originate under such conditions, and I've never seen anyone address that question. I would be interested to know if anyone else has.
If it can apply for grants, complain about its dissertation advisor, and begrudgingly TA a section of the freshman course -- only then is it an artificial scientist.
That's easy for you to say, sitting there all high and mighty with your unprobed rectum. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to freshen up my ice pack.
Long story short: baseball thinking is dominated by longstanding rules of thumb, like the need to have a "clutch hitter" -- i.e., someone who can bat in runners on base when your team is down. Stats nerds who started looking seriously at baseball in the 1970s realized that a lot of these rules of thumb are flawed: among other things, it turns out that there is no such thing as a clutch hitter. The Oakland A's were the first team to use this information to build a contending team with a low-dollar payroll, and this book tells that story. Very interesting even if you aren't a hardcore baseball fan.
(Here's a hint for budding authors: when writing a murder mystery, try using multiple suspects to add suspense. Your audience might not be shocked to learn that the murderer is the only nontrivial character besides the detective.)
Ditto on that. The book is about an author who goes to the World Series of Poker to play and then report on the experience, with the idea that he would just report after he got knocked out. Turned out he got to the final table. Pretty comeplling stuff.
Both books are based on Baigent and Leigh's Holy Blood, Holy Grail, a work of purported nonfiction which will blow your mind for a couple of hours until you realize it's all batsh*t insane. I recommend it over either novel on the theory that it's best to drink directly from the tinfoil hat spring.
Agreed, although note that an issue with this is that the printers break down, so you might have a vote with no matching receipt. I'm sure there's a way of dealing with that issue (ask the voter to confirm that the receipt printed before recording the vote?) but the point is that we have to think this through all the way.
1. Risk that book will be replaced by new edition before sold.
2. Risk that more copies of book will be bought by company than sold to students for reasons other than #1 (e.g., students start preferring new copies of book, teachers start favoring different book).
3. Cost of moving book from store where purchased from student to store where sold to student.
4. Capital costs (you're $8 out of pocket until sale).
5. Overhead (maintaining list of books to be bought and sold, setting prices, allocating employees to book buyback).
About a decade ago, I used to work for one of the three textbook stores in Ann Arbor. The open secret at the store was that very little money is made in bookselling; textbooks are essentially loss leaders for "Michigan" sweatshirts and other apparel sold by the same stores. I would be very surprised if one could profitably operate a used textbook business that sold for significantly lower prices: two of the three campus stores are owned by a chain that has enormous efficiencies of scale, and if they are not making much money on used books, I don't know who could.