Turned out to be a semi-bad plan. We live in Houston Texas. Know what? When you drive from Houston to San Diego and you reach the halfway point you're still in Texas.
Yeah, Texas is a big state. Of course, Alaska is BIG! Alaskans like to talk about splitting Alaska in two, and making Texas the 3rd biggest state.:)
OK so providing less wealthy (for no fault of their own) citizens is a crime?
No... A crime is something illegal, and any half-way intelligent gov't is going to make legal whatever it wants to do before (or at least as) it does it.
I would rather be 'forced' to pay taxes to maintain a balanced society rather than be ripped off by some corporation.
Why do you put 'forced' in quotes? Because the gov't does force you to pay taxes. They can even enforce that with the use of deadly force if you put up a fight.
Whatever you give to a corporation is still your choice. And because of just laws, it is still illegal for a corporation to force you to be ripped off, unlike the gov't.
Governments have killed far more of their citizens than corporations have killed their customers.
Now, let's talk about the difference between an unemployed American and an unemployed West European: they get Longterm unemployment benefits, often for years. Maybe even for life! And of course in most W Euro countries, healthcare is paid for by taxes, so if you have no money, or very little, you still get healthcare, just like everyone else.
That's stupid.
(And it isn't "just like everyone else". If you want the best care, you must be able to pay to go to a private hospital, perhaps in another country. Always was. Always will be.)
So, which is better for the citizen, to live in a country where you know that you are going to be taken care of even if you can never find a job, or be in America, where you know that not having a job could mean death?
That's hyperbole.
But to answer the question, america is better, but not near as good as it could be if we did more "teach a man to fish" instead of "give a man a fish." There would be far more jobs if government was not such a large parasite on the U.S. people and on the world as a whole.
What is better for a child, parents and/or society that caters to every whim and protects against all dangers and threats (real or imagined)? Or a child that is given challenges and disappointment commensurate with his current developmental progress? (hint: the latest medical thoughts on asthma give a good clue-by-four.)
A safety net is one thing. It is not and should never be a down comforter on a feather bed. Reality is tough, and trying to hide or ignore that fact is stupidity defined (also known as socialism).
Big Media is liberal on minor, token issues: affirmative action, abortion, gay rights.
No kidding.
"Problem with Social Security."... only two possible solutions ever listed: raise the age of retirement, and reduce benefits.
And you somehow think those are conservative or right positions??? Those are right out of the liberal left playbook (threaten to reduce benefits, which generates public feedback and thus justification to raise or create taxes).
The right position is to privatise SocSec or otherwise eliminate that ridiculous government intrustion and control.
you never hear anything about that on tv because that is a LEFTist solution, and leftists are hardly ever seen on tv.
Uhh, since when did we start talking leftists? As per your opening statement, we were talking liberal! Or perhaps you don't consider a democrat to be a true liberal?
As for your leftists/liberals in the media, the issue isn't who is on what program, but rather who is in control of the editorial process and content. Fox being slightly left but at least they appear to try and balance that with their talking heads and guests. The others are so far left of Fox that I cannot even see them.
Remember, Rush isn't far right. He is right, (and being so large, he rather blocks my view of Fox as well as anything further left) but his TV show didn't do so well either. Michael Savage? Oh yeah, his TV career did really well.
So, where is your actual reasoning, evidence etc.?
do you want to run down all the rightwingers on broadcast tv?
Not "run down" but yes, I think seeing who you consider "rightwingers" would be great fun.
Anyone think of any other lefists regularly on broadcast TV?
Try google on:
"dan rather" leftist OR liberal
Maybe when you realize you are so far left you cannot even see center because the major media is blocking your view, you will be able to present a more rational message.
I'm libertarian toward others and my views of government, but at least I'm honest enough with myself to realize I lead my life far to the right of Rush.
We have metered water in N'Awlins. And we don't have water shortages (we get our water from the Mississippi river, which flows through town) - usually the reverse.
Sure. But have you ever toured your water treatment plant? I really don't think you would prefer them to just pipe the mississippi to your kitchen sink.
(and the thought of drinking out of the mississippi in New Orleans... shudder... even treated!) sdb
So while it can be argued that perhaps the Internet should be set up like a utility such as the phone infrastructure where the governement set it up and regulated it, comparing it to water is a little extreme.
I don't think so. His argument was that it should be provided, "like water". That is also your argument.
But if you want to pick nits...
The government did not set up the phone infrastructure at least in most of the USA. They just granted a monopoly (same with cable tv, and with some water and electricity).
And a lot of people have to provide for their own water. E.g. my well ($1500 plus electricity to run the pump amortized over six years...) or like my aunt and uncle who figured the city would be providing water in a year or so, and ended up hauling water and/or getting it delivered for almost 10 years.
There is really only two questions for government services -- is it a public good? Is the government the right/best way to provide for that public good?
I'd say yes to the first. But I'm pretty skeptical on the second.
And I say that, even though I have no dsl, no cable. It isn't "the last mile," it is the last 600 feet! So 1 mile 802.11b to a friend...
In a primitive society, im sure that things only come in amounts of one, two, or many. Think about it.... don't deal with other quantities, so that don't have words for them...
I thought about it. I thought about fingers and toes. As far as I know, people are generally born with five fingers on each hand. That's not one, or two, and obviously both hands is a different "many" than one hand.
What kind of people doesn't learn how many fingers are on one hand? It seems they would at least know that, and perhaps even know how many fingers are on both hands.
Is it possible the researchers asked the wrong question(s)?
The typical data loss situation is a power loss in the middle of a write. ReiserFS might be atomic in operation, but it still can't dodge hardware failure at that level.
Nonesense. See "journalling" and "redundancy". If a FS never updates the only copy, you will not lose data to a power failure. In a filesystem, this means it must write data to empty space, then log the update it is about to make to metadata, then make the metadata update to a redundent copy of the metadata, then log the update complete and repeat for additional copies of the metadata.
The only time you "can't dodge hardware failure" is if the drive permanently fails, if RAM or software fails and corrupts the data, etc. Thus far I've never experienced a permanent power failure.
If ReiserFS does lose data because of a power failure at _any_ time, it is either a defect or a deliberate optimization to performance at the expense of reliability.
Why, OH WHY, can't nerds come up with names for their projects that don't sound like overt attempts to make the straights grimace?
Names matter....
Which is why geeks don't do marketing. They don't do GUI's either. Not much into making music. They don't identify with the common herd, so there it is: they torpedo their own projects...
And the response from a long-time geek: That's your problem. The second phrase varies depending on my mood. Today it is "who cares."
If the dumbasses out there can't take a joke, fuck 'em.
I wouldn't use those words, but you got the sentiment correct.
I'm not saying that projector bulb prices aren't inflated, but they are certainly a LONG way from your floor lamp analogy.
Really? OK, maybe his analogy ($20 for a 500w floor lamp bulb) which makes the projector bulb only 10x to 20x as expensive. But if he really pays anywhere near $20 for a simple 500w halogen bulb, he is getting taken.
In reality, I buy 500w halogen bulbs for less than $1/ea, and they put out visually the same color of light as the $5-$10 GE bulbs and seem to last about the same hours (usually physical shock takes them out before the wear out). So you are telling me that something justifies 200x to 400x the price, which seems to be the typical range for the mid-grade LCD and DLP projectors? Or do you think 20x to 40x is justified, and the other 10x is just an "inflated" price?
Given the science of light color in a halogen bulb, I find it nearly impossible to imagine any justification for a 200x to 400x price delta even if 10x or 100x of it was inflation. A halogen light isn't rocket science, is it? It wasn't when I was taking my stage lighting classes 20+ years ago...
The bulb envelope must be quartz to withstand the heat, and the color of that quartz filters the color of light from the filament. The temperature of the filament determines the color it produces, and that temperature is primarily determined by the available current at the applied voltage. The halogen in the envelope helps the evaporating tungsten from the filament deposit back onto the filament instead of onto the envelope, but it isn't 100% effective so the envelope gradually darkens, and the filament develops a thin spot, and that leads to the death of the bulb.
I wonder how much it would add to the cost of the projector to use a little sensor to detect the color of the light, and a bit of active control to adjust the current thru the filament to change the temperature?
Of course it couldn't compensate 100% for flaws in a cheap bulb or the effects of bulb wear, but surely with $200 to $400 to play with, it could do a lot.
I'm not sure I'm convinced, I think the primary reason water makes a much better coolant than air is that it has a much higher conductivity. Air is a great insulator.
Air is only a great insulator if you can stop it from moving. Air conducts heat primarily by moving because the molecular density is so low that the molecules cannot transfer energy from one to another very well. But air moves very readily and does conduct heat. This is why a vacuum thermos bottle works so well -- the vacuum is a much better insulator than air. Stopping air movement is the primary method used in most insulating materials. Vacuum would be even better, than those insulating materials, but cost:benefit ratios favor entrapped air.
Water also conducts heat by moving. If you stop water from moving it conducts heat better than air. This effect is at least partially because of higher molecular density, air is closer to a vacuum than water. This density is also the reason why water has a higher heat capacity than air which in turn is higher than vacuum.
In fact, any fluid or gas conducts heat primarily thru moving, and how well it conducts at any given speed of movement is determined primarily by the heat capacity of the fluid or gas.
Only when you start talking about solids is heat conductance an issue, and there it is because the molecules themselves do not move and carry the heat around. They can only vibrate and bump their neighbors in the lattice causing them to vibrate. This vibration is energy is heat.
There are a lot of comments here to the effect that the important secs are the specific heat capacity, or the specific heat capacity and conductivity.
It's mostly just conductivity that matters.
Not true when talking about water or any other kind of liquid or gas cooling. Conductivity is important when the "heat sink" is not moving.
When moving coolant past the heat source, capacity is more important than conductivity. That is because you want the moving coolant to pick up as much heat as possible as quickly as possible so the heat can be moved away.
Heat capacity is why water is better than air at cooling CPU's, engines, etc. Because of water's higher heat capacity, it can move the same amount of heat away with a smaller volume of coolant exposed to the heat source. So with small water filled passages the heat is collected, and then a large area (radiator) is used to transfer that heat to air. (That "large" radiator is needed because air has a lower heat capacity than water.)
I was proud about getting over a terabyte, Right now I sit at 1.5 across two machines, 940 on one. I intend to expand, but foundation work on the house comes first
Maybe if you used 3.5" drives instead of the surplus "washing machine" units you wouldn't need so much "foundation work".:)
the technique for high reliability applications is not redundancy, but error correction;
Error correction REQUIRES redunancy!
It doesn't require duplication, but error correction does require some redundancy so that the error bits can be regenerated. That is why SDRAM modules with error correction have more bits (eg 72 as opposed to 64).
Example: Text document. If one bit gets corrupted, you can look at the document and do the error correction because you can tell by the context around the one character that is messed up. Now compress that document by zip or rar or 7zip or bzip2 or whatever to get better than 2:1 reduction in size. That removes the redundancy (by definition that is what lossless compression does). Now if one bit gets corrupted, good luck in trying to recover your document.
The power system is designed that there should be enough suppliers in a region to handle any load the customers can drum up.
That just begs the question... What is "a region"?
The power grid was obviously designed such that power can be transported from hydro in British Columbia to customers in California. Does that mean those are in the same region?
Or is region an economic area, eg a metro area or such that generally the newspaper and television coverage is widely accepted as applicable to the "region"?
But my newspaper has two or three "regional" editions, one for the city, one for the western part of the county, etc. with 5%-10% different editorial content and advertising inserts. Does that make seperate regions?
I live in an area where home prices are 10% to 20% higher than a similar home a few miles away in any direction. Does that a seperate region make?
Of course, my house is in an area zoned for one dwelling per five acres, but my back property line borders an area with one dwelling per two acres, and less than a mile away the zoning is one dwelling per acre average but at least 66% of the acreage must be community open space. Looking at the homes you can tell we live in very different regions.
But then look at the house across the street from me, that just sold for 3x what the house just down the street sold for in the same month. One could say that each property was a very seperate region.
I think micro- power generation has a lot going for it, especially re. renewables. But when the region gets too small, the only commercial production feasible is a natural gas or diesel powered generator. Would we force the large commercial user to put in such a generator because they are in a region without enough capacity?
Yet the macro- region power generation is what we have now, and we see obvious problems with that as well.
If the problem were easily solved in a one paragraph (or one sentence) plan, it wouldn't be a problem.
The only differentiation infrastructure would be financial, where the metering of power generation, usage, and billing creates the illusion of being able to choose your power company.
I think that financial infrastructure would be great if it allowed bidding for electricity from a specific source.
In other words, I could specify that I am willing to pay up to $x for power from solar PV or wind plant, $0 for power from a nuclear plant, and $y (where y is less than x) for power from any other source. Then for the available solar/wind, it gets divided amongst the highest bidders. If at any time I am not willing to pay enough for whatever source, out go my lights (eg, if I did not not bid high enough to win an auction for anything else and those supplies were exhausted, but nuclear is left, and I said I would pay $0 to buy nuclear, my lights go out).
That would let the environmentalists of all flavors put their money where their mouth is.
Here in the Pacific Northwest USA, they want to tear out the hydro dams. I'd expect them all to bid $0 for hydro power (which supplies about 45-50% on average for my utility), bid high on solar and wind (which currently supply a tiny percentage), and bid low or nothing on coal and nuclear (which together supply about 45-50% of my utility). They'd be sitting in the dark until they bid high enough to spur investment in those renewable sources they claim to want.
(what would I bid? I'd check the box that says "cheapest source available" and use the money I save to add more PV panels to my own array until I didn't need to buy any electricity.)
One of the best ways to make a profit is to sell a product which many people want. If such a product is of a low quality, people will be less likely to buy in future, thus it is within a companies best interest to create high quality products.
That is starting to sound like enlightened self-interest. As true as your statement is, it is currently unrealized given the constraints imposed by the short-term focus on "profit now." (Microsoft is far from alone in this, and IMHO they are not even a particularly egregious example.)
If guns stopped people imposing their will, how come Europe got overrun by the Germans? They even had ARMIES to fight the Nazis, not just the odd accountant with a shotgun. If guns were that good, there would be no war.
Bzzt.
Europe didn't have much in the way of armies, and most of europe that was overrun had very few guns in civilian hands. Remember, the previous war was "the war to end all wars" and most of the european armies and weapons had been destroyed during the intervening years to get them away and keep them away from civilians (all in the same false hope of safety you espouse today).
Then the German's came, and the parts of europe that did not get overrun, begged and pleaded for and then accepted and used guns donated by Americans, to keep the german forces at bay (and then destroyed those guns as well, the freakin' idiots).
RLE isn't going to do you much good with a "real" image -- a photo, or anti-aliased rendering, or something along those lines -- but that's a failing of RLE itself
RLE works just fine for those types of images if you apply it to each color plane individually. (Taken alone, each plane is "gray".)
So reread your Thoreau people. No, REALLY read it, and simplify.
I hated Thoreau. Walden? How could he possibly have destroyed such a wonderful setting with writing like that? Thoreau and I have quite a bit in common. But the big difference is I'm not going to spend years of my life and yours preaching about it. I'd like to live out away like that and get the tax man off my back, but to spout off about those choices the way Thoreau did made me realize he is nothing but a B.S.'er of the highest order. Or perhaps it wasn't him but those who attempt to exploit his writings. Don't know, doesn't really matter.
There is only one thing you need to learn from Thoreau, and that is the need for introspection. But you should also learn to shut up about it. The entire point of introspection is "self". It is not for anyone else, it is for yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
Turned out to be a semi-bad plan. We live in Houston Texas. Know what? When you drive from Houston to San Diego and you reach the halfway point you're still in Texas.
:)
Yeah, Texas is a big state. Of course, Alaska is BIG! Alaskans like to talk about splitting Alaska in two, and making Texas the 3rd biggest state.
sdb
OK so providing less wealthy (for no fault of their own) citizens is a crime?
No... A crime is something illegal, and any half-way intelligent gov't is going to make legal whatever it wants to do before (or at least as) it does it.
I would rather be 'forced' to pay taxes to maintain a balanced society rather than be ripped off by some corporation.
Why do you put 'forced' in quotes? Because the gov't does force you to pay taxes. They can even enforce that with the use of deadly force if you put up a fight.
Whatever you give to a corporation is still your choice. And because of just laws, it is still illegal for a corporation to force you to be ripped off, unlike the gov't.
Governments have killed far more of their citizens than corporations have killed their customers.
sdb
Now, let's talk about the difference between an unemployed American and an unemployed West European: they get Longterm unemployment benefits, often for years. Maybe even for life! And of course in most W Euro countries, healthcare is paid for by taxes, so if you have no money, or very little, you still get healthcare, just like everyone else.
That's stupid.
(And it isn't "just like everyone else". If you want the best care, you must be able to pay to go to a private hospital, perhaps in another country. Always was. Always will be.)
So, which is better for the citizen, to live in a country where you know that you are going to be taken care of even if you can never find a job, or be in America, where you know that not having a job could mean death?
That's hyperbole.
But to answer the question, america is better, but not near as good as it could be if we did more "teach a man to fish" instead of "give a man a fish." There would be far more jobs if government was not such a large parasite on the U.S. people and on the world as a whole.
What is better for a child, parents and/or society that caters to every whim and protects against all dangers and threats (real or imagined)? Or a child that is given challenges and disappointment commensurate with his current developmental progress? (hint: the latest medical thoughts on asthma give a good clue-by-four.)
A safety net is one thing. It is not and should never be a down comforter on a feather bed. Reality is tough, and trying to hide or ignore that fact is stupidity defined (also known as socialism).
sdb
NONE of those media giants are liberal.
... only two possible solutions ever listed: raise the age of retirement, and reduce benefits.
They are all liberal.
Big Media is liberal on minor, token issues: affirmative action, abortion, gay rights.
No kidding.
"Problem with Social Security."
And you somehow think those are conservative or right positions??? Those are right out of the liberal left playbook (threaten to reduce benefits, which generates public feedback and thus justification to raise or create taxes).
The right position is to privatise SocSec or otherwise eliminate that ridiculous government intrustion and control.
you never hear anything about that on tv because that is a LEFTist solution, and leftists are hardly ever seen on tv.
Uhh, since when did we start talking leftists? As per your opening statement, we were talking liberal! Or perhaps you don't consider a democrat to be a true liberal?
As for your leftists/liberals in the media, the issue isn't who is on what program, but rather who is in control of the editorial process and content. Fox being slightly left but at least they appear to try and balance that with their talking heads and guests. The others are so far left of Fox that I cannot even see them.
Remember, Rush isn't far right. He is right, (and being so large, he rather blocks my view of Fox as well as anything further left) but his TV show didn't do so well either. Michael Savage? Oh yeah, his TV career did really well.
So, where is your actual reasoning, evidence etc.?
do you want to run down all the rightwingers on broadcast tv?
Not "run down" but yes, I think seeing who you consider "rightwingers" would be great fun.
Anyone think of any other lefists regularly on broadcast TV?
Try google on:
"dan rather" leftist OR liberal
Maybe when you realize you are so far left you cannot even see center because the major media is blocking your view, you will be able to present a more rational message.
I'm libertarian toward others and my views of government, but at least I'm honest enough with myself to realize I lead my life far to the right of Rush.
sdb
Water can only cool to the ambient temperature of the room, and not below as some people seem to think
That is true, iff you are running a closed loop water system with a typical radiator as the water to air heat exchanger.
Water will cool below ambient if you do an evaporative cooling system. See "cooling tower".
sdb
We have metered water in N'Awlins. And we don't have water shortages (we get our water from the Mississippi river, which flows through town) - usually the reverse.
... even treated!)
Sure. But have you ever toured your water treatment plant? I really don't think you would prefer them to just pipe the mississippi to your kitchen sink.
(and the thought of drinking out of the mississippi in New Orleans... shudder
sdb
So while it can be argued that perhaps the Internet should be set up like a utility such as the phone infrastructure where the governement set it up and regulated it, comparing it to water is a little extreme.
I don't think so. His argument was that it should be provided, "like water". That is also your argument.
But if you want to pick nits...
The government did not set up the phone infrastructure at least in most of the USA. They just granted a monopoly (same with cable tv, and with some water and electricity).
And a lot of people have to provide for their own water. E.g. my well ($1500 plus electricity to run the pump amortized over six years...) or like my aunt and uncle who figured the city would be providing water in a year or so, and ended up hauling water and/or getting it delivered for almost 10 years.
There is really only two questions for government services -- is it a public good? Is the government the right/best way to provide for that public good?
I'd say yes to the first. But I'm pretty skeptical on the second.
And I say that, even though I have no dsl, no cable. It isn't "the last mile," it is the last 600 feet! So 1 mile 802.11b to a friend...
sdb
In a primitive society, im sure that things only come in amounts of one, two, or many. Think about it. ... don't deal with other quantities, so that don't have words for them...
I thought about it. I thought about fingers and toes. As far as I know, people are generally born with five fingers on each hand. That's not one, or two, and obviously both hands is a different "many" than one hand.
What kind of people doesn't learn how many fingers are on one hand? It seems they would at least know that, and perhaps even know how many fingers are on both hands.
Is it possible the researchers asked the wrong question(s)?
sdb
My mother in law in ND has a cable modem!
Yeah, looks right nice with the rest of the bric-a-brac, no?
sdb
Since a pint's a pound the world around...
:)
Think about it... how could that be? It can't. Another saying is "a pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter", which is equally as correct.
A U.K. pint is 20 U.K. fluid ounces or 19.2 U.S. fluid ounces or 34.7 cubic inches or 568ml.
A U.S. fluid pint is 16.7 U.K. fluid ounces or 16 U.S. fluid ounces or 28.9 cubic inches or 473ml. (A U.S. "dry" pint is 551ml.)
And if you really want history, the first standardized pint of my scottish ancestors was over 100 cubic inches. Now that's a pint!
sdb
The typical data loss situation is a power loss in the middle of a write. ReiserFS might be atomic in operation, but it still can't dodge hardware failure at that level.
Nonesense. See "journalling" and "redundancy". If a FS never updates the only copy, you will not lose data to a power failure. In a filesystem, this means it must write data to empty space, then log the update it is about to make to metadata, then make the metadata update to a redundent copy of the metadata, then log the update complete and repeat for additional copies of the metadata.
The only time you "can't dodge hardware failure" is if the drive permanently fails, if RAM or software fails and corrupts the data, etc. Thus far I've never experienced a permanent power failure.
If ReiserFS does lose data because of a power failure at _any_ time, it is either a defect or a deliberate optimization to performance at the expense of reliability.
sdb
maybe the lists should combine... Currently /. is not the only one.
Geeks With Guns
Why, OH WHY, can't nerds come up with names for their projects that don't sound like overt attempts to make the straights grimace?
...
Names matter.
Which is why geeks don't do marketing. They don't do GUI's either. Not much into making music. They don't identify with the common herd, so there it is: they torpedo their own projects...
And the response from a long-time geek: That's your problem. The second phrase varies depending on my mood. Today it is "who cares."
If the dumbasses out there can't take a joke, fuck 'em.
I wouldn't use those words, but you got the sentiment correct.
sdb
I'm not saying that projector bulb prices aren't inflated, but they are certainly a LONG way from your floor lamp analogy.
Really? OK, maybe his analogy ($20 for a 500w floor lamp bulb) which makes the projector bulb only 10x to 20x as expensive. But if he really pays anywhere near $20 for a simple 500w halogen bulb, he is getting taken.
In reality, I buy 500w halogen bulbs for less than $1/ea, and they put out visually the same color of light as the $5-$10 GE bulbs and seem to last about the same hours (usually physical shock takes them out before the wear out). So you are telling me that something justifies 200x to 400x the price, which seems to be the typical range for the mid-grade LCD and DLP projectors? Or do you think 20x to 40x is justified, and the other 10x is just an "inflated" price?
Given the science of light color in a halogen bulb, I find it nearly impossible to imagine any justification for a 200x to 400x price delta even if 10x or 100x of it was inflation. A halogen light isn't rocket science, is it? It wasn't when I was taking my stage lighting classes 20+ years ago...
The bulb envelope must be quartz to withstand the heat, and the color of that quartz filters the color of light from the filament. The temperature of the filament determines the color it produces, and that temperature is primarily determined by the available current at the applied voltage. The halogen in the envelope helps the evaporating tungsten from the filament deposit back onto the filament instead of onto the envelope, but it isn't 100% effective so the envelope gradually darkens, and the filament develops a thin spot, and that leads to the death of the bulb.
I wonder how much it would add to the cost of the projector to use a little sensor to detect the color of the light, and a bit of active control to adjust the current thru the filament to change the temperature?
Of course it couldn't compensate 100% for flaws in a cheap bulb or the effects of bulb wear, but surely with $200 to $400 to play with, it could do a lot.
sdb
I'm not sure I'm convinced, I think the primary reason water makes a much better coolant than air is that it has a much higher conductivity. Air is a great insulator.
Air is only a great insulator if you can stop it from moving. Air conducts heat primarily by moving because the molecular density is so low that the molecules cannot transfer energy from one to another very well. But air moves very readily and does conduct heat. This is why a vacuum thermos bottle works so well -- the vacuum is a much better insulator than air. Stopping air movement is the primary method used in most insulating materials. Vacuum would be even better, than those insulating materials, but cost:benefit ratios favor entrapped air.
Water also conducts heat by moving. If you stop water from moving it conducts heat better than air. This effect is at least partially because of higher molecular density, air is closer to a vacuum than water. This density is also the reason why water has a higher heat capacity than air which in turn is higher than vacuum.
In fact, any fluid or gas conducts heat primarily thru moving, and how well it conducts at any given speed of movement is determined primarily by the heat capacity of the fluid or gas.
Only when you start talking about solids is heat conductance an issue, and there it is because the molecules themselves do not move and carry the heat around. They can only vibrate and bump their neighbors in the lattice causing them to vibrate. This vibration is energy is heat.
sdb
There are a lot of comments here to the effect that the important secs are the specific heat capacity, or the specific heat capacity and conductivity.
It's mostly just conductivity that matters.
Not true when talking about water or any other kind of liquid or gas cooling. Conductivity is important when the "heat sink" is not moving.
When moving coolant past the heat source, capacity is more important than conductivity. That is because you want the moving coolant to pick up as much heat as possible as quickly as possible so the heat can be moved away.
Heat capacity is why water is better than air at cooling CPU's, engines, etc. Because of water's higher heat capacity, it can move the same amount of heat away with a smaller volume of coolant exposed to the heat source. So with small water filled passages the heat is collected, and then a large area (radiator) is used to transfer that heat to air. (That "large" radiator is needed because air has a lower heat capacity than water.)
sdb
I was proud about getting over a terabyte, Right now I sit at 1.5 across two machines, 940 on one. I intend to expand, but foundation work on the house comes first
:)
Maybe if you used 3.5" drives instead of the surplus "washing machine" units you wouldn't need so much "foundation work".
sdb
the technique for high reliability applications is not redundancy, but error correction;
Error correction REQUIRES redunancy!
It doesn't require duplication, but error correction does require some redundancy so that the error bits can be regenerated. That is why SDRAM modules with error correction have more bits (eg 72 as opposed to 64).
Example: Text document. If one bit gets corrupted, you can look at the document and do the error correction because you can tell by the context around the one character that is messed up. Now compress that document by zip or rar or 7zip or bzip2 or whatever to get better than 2:1 reduction in size. That removes the redundancy (by definition that is what lossless compression does). Now if one bit gets corrupted, good luck in trying to recover your document.
sdb
The power system is designed that there should be enough suppliers in a region to handle any load the customers can drum up.
That just begs the question... What is "a region"?
The power grid was obviously designed such that power can be transported from hydro in British Columbia to customers in California. Does that mean those are in the same region?
Or is region an economic area, eg a metro area or such that generally the newspaper and television coverage is widely accepted as applicable to the "region"?
But my newspaper has two or three "regional" editions, one for the city, one for the western part of the county, etc. with 5%-10% different editorial content and advertising inserts. Does that make seperate regions?
I live in an area where home prices are 10% to 20% higher than a similar home a few miles away in any direction. Does that a seperate region make?
Of course, my house is in an area zoned for one dwelling per five acres, but my back property line borders an area with one dwelling per two acres, and less than a mile away the zoning is one dwelling per acre average but at least 66% of the acreage must be community open space. Looking at the homes you can tell we live in very different regions.
But then look at the house across the street from me, that just sold for 3x what the house just down the street sold for in the same month. One could say that each property was a very seperate region.
I think micro- power generation has a lot going for it, especially re. renewables. But when the region gets too small, the only commercial production feasible is a natural gas or diesel powered generator. Would we force the large commercial user to put in such a generator because they are in a region without enough capacity?
Yet the macro- region power generation is what we have now, and we see obvious problems with that as well.
If the problem were easily solved in a one paragraph (or one sentence) plan, it wouldn't be a problem.
sdb
The only differentiation infrastructure would be financial, where the metering of power generation, usage, and billing creates the illusion of being able to choose your power company.
I think that financial infrastructure would be great if it allowed bidding for electricity from a specific source.
In other words, I could specify that I am willing to pay up to $x for power from solar PV or wind plant, $0 for power from a nuclear plant, and $y (where y is less than x) for power from any other source. Then for the available solar/wind, it gets divided amongst the highest bidders. If at any time I am not willing to pay enough for whatever source, out go my lights (eg, if I did not not bid high enough to win an auction for anything else and those supplies were exhausted, but nuclear is left, and I said I would pay $0 to buy nuclear, my lights go out).
That would let the environmentalists of all flavors put their money where their mouth is.
Here in the Pacific Northwest USA, they want to tear out the hydro dams. I'd expect them all to bid $0 for hydro power (which supplies about 45-50% on average for my utility), bid high on solar and wind (which currently supply a tiny percentage), and bid low or nothing on coal and nuclear (which together supply about 45-50% of my utility). They'd be sitting in the dark until they bid high enough to spur investment in those renewable sources they claim to want.
(what would I bid? I'd check the box that says "cheapest source available" and use the money I save to add more PV panels to my own array until I didn't need to buy any electricity.)
sdb
One of the best ways to make a profit is to sell a product which many people want. If such a product is of a low quality, people will be less likely to buy in future, thus it is within a companies best interest to create high quality products.
That is starting to sound like enlightened self-interest. As true as your statement is, it is currently unrealized given the constraints imposed by the short-term focus on "profit now." (Microsoft is far from alone in this, and IMHO they are not even a particularly egregious example.)
sdb
If guns stopped people imposing their will, how come Europe got overrun by the Germans? They even had ARMIES to fight the Nazis, not just the odd accountant with a shotgun. If guns were that good, there would be no war.
Bzzt.
Europe didn't have much in the way of armies, and most of europe that was overrun had very few guns in civilian hands. Remember, the previous war was "the war to end all wars" and most of the european armies and weapons had been destroyed during the intervening years to get them away and keep them away from civilians (all in the same false hope of safety you espouse today).
Then the German's came, and the parts of europe that did not get overrun, begged and pleaded for and then accepted and used guns donated by Americans, to keep the german forces at bay (and then destroyed those guns as well, the freakin' idiots).
And of course, the history of gun control matches the history of totalitarianism and genocide.
sdb
Just out of curiosity, what's a legitimate reason to have $10,000 in cash in your house?
It belongs to me.
There are many more, but you only asked for one.
sdb
RLE isn't going to do you much good with a "real" image -- a photo, or anti-aliased rendering, or something along those lines -- but that's a failing of RLE itself
RLE works just fine for those types of images if you apply it to each color plane individually. (Taken alone, each plane is "gray".)
sdb
So reread your Thoreau people. No, REALLY read it, and simplify.
I hated Thoreau. Walden? How could he possibly have destroyed such a wonderful setting with writing like that? Thoreau and I have quite a bit in common. But the big difference is I'm not going to spend years of my life and yours preaching about it. I'd like to live out away like that and get the tax man off my back, but to spout off about those choices the way Thoreau did made me realize he is nothing but a B.S.'er of the highest order. Or perhaps it wasn't him but those who attempt to exploit his writings. Don't know, doesn't really matter.
There is only one thing you need to learn from Thoreau, and that is the need for introspection. But you should also learn to shut up about it. The entire point of introspection is "self". It is not for anyone else, it is for yourself.
sdb