"You have been chosen as the victim in a deadlock. Your child process has been killed and will need to be resubmitted."
The nurse we had recently hired to provide domain knowledge had essentially no computer experience, and was quite mortified at some of the terminology in the error message.
I once heard someone say that a union is the result of miscommunication between management and staff.
That said, while Unions may have the power to improve the lives of those weak individuals on the extremes who are taken advantage of, they will inevitably evolve into life sucking micro-managed financial bullies where you will not be allowed to be productive because the task you know how to do (install program X on your workstation), that must be completed before you can start yours (use X to do something) has to be done by the union protected overpaid old guy who doesn't care about when it gets done because the company cannot fire him.
Unions are like the RIAA, they look good on paper (protect the helpless artist / employee who doesn't have the work ethic and brains to stand up for themselves) - but once they get you locked in, they reveal just how truly powerful and evil they really are.
(Mentioning the RIAA is karma whoring, but I think the anology fits - at least from the similar sensation of fury over the abuse of power I feel when I read either term.)
Thank you, captain obvious. Now consider you have a battery (fossil fuel) at point A powering a load (a house, for example) at point B. What happens when you add another battery in parallel (say a solar panel on the roof of said house) also at point B. What happens to the current between points A and B? Hint: it does not increase...
This is a common misconception about how the grid works. People think the generators are batteries waiting to be used, and all we have to do is turn a light on.
Wrong.
The grid is a complex machine that anticipates when you are going to turn the light on, and attempts to start a generator at the same time so that they can produce the electricity you need, when you need it. For example, here is Ontario's guess about how much power they will need today.
The problem is the generators can take a while to start. Take for example a steam powered turbine. The operator assumes (from past history) that by 3pm 10MW will be required by the grid and so in anticipation of that, he starts burning more fuel at 2:30 to heat more water.
However, at 3pm when he is burning enough fuel to produce 10MW, the wind in the area changes direction, and those wonderfully green wind generators now put out an extra 3MW. The total power being generated is 13MW, however, the demand is only for 10MW. For sake of the argument, it will take 1/2hr (in my example) for the turbine to slow down to 7MW (due to built up energy in the boiler - nuclear is even slower to react). There is an excess of 3MW on the grid that MUST be consumed or bad things will happen. By the way, this is why Manitoba Hydro can offer such great rates to the locals. They purchase cheep excess power from the states all night, then sell expensive power during the day. (Thank you, btw. As a result its cheaper for me to heat my house in -30C with electricity then natural gas.)
Here's where the thin wire problem starts to come into effect. Next door, they have hydro power, which can very quickly be dialed down and they would be glad to purchase the 3MW of excess power we have (since its excess, the market price will be low). The line connecting us can handle 5MW. However, there is currently (sorry) 4MW already flowing from us to them. Adding the 3MW puts us over the 5MW limit and again bad things happen.
The only option left is for the wind mills to feather their blades and reduce production. The steam turbine keeps burning the fossil fuels. All because we could not export our excess.
I have a Ford Focus. My anti-theft device? I have a Ford Focus.
I used to think that about my 1996 3 hamster powered Geo Metro, but now I'm not so sure.... ($7,300!?!? - why can't I sell stuff to people like that....)
Related: had a customer a few years back who brought their brand new Acer PC in - convinced it had a virus. Even had the name and diagnostic page from Symantec. Seems the 'virus' would shut the machine down during a virus scan.
Turns out the folks at Acer forgot to plug in the CPU fan. Box ran fine until the A/V full system scan started, then the CPU temp rose until the CPU high limit setting in the BIOS pulled the plug to save itself.
Don't remember if it was Intel or AMD, but it was definitely overkill for them. MS Works spreadsheet, Norton AV and a couple of flash based game sights was all it ever did.
(This is offtopic, and I'm ok with that. I know I'm feeding a troll, but this does iritate me)
Here's what I do, because I'm cheap and don't mind helping the environment.
I ride my bike to Tim's. Lock it up outside. Walk inside. Give them my travel mug and order my double-double. I watch them pour the sugar, cream and coffee directly into my mug and hand it back to me. No paper cup. And I save my nickel (and gas money).
If you stop and think about what you are complaining about for a few minutes, you would realize you are not coming across as very bright.
Drive throughs are primarily for lazy people who don't care about money (have you seen the cost of gas lately) nor the environment. They also are for people who think they are in a hurry (more often they would actualy get faster service if they walked inside). For drive throughs to succeed, effeciency trumps all. Hence, they prepare your order before you get to the window - how can they do that without your mug? They waste a paper cup. Try ordering it black next time - no guarantees, but they might just pour direct from the pot to your mug...
Dang! Should have RTA - now that my imagination is working, I can see it perfectly. I will now proceed to invest SQRT(net income - expenses) in a new mutual fund for interstellar trade.
A repressed financial theory is uncovered that can make me rich! and as I skim the article, I see that Figure II is BLANK!!!! What is missing!?! and how will I ever save for retirement on Alpha Centauri?????
A common ice-breaker game we play with youth is to form a circle and then reach across and hold hands. But with each of your hands, you must hold the hand from 2 different people. (Looking down from the top it looks like a team huddle / cheer) Now without letting go, unravel yourself into 1 or more circles that may or may not be interlocked.
I have also witnessed a friend untangle a large / long single wire that was quite a "rat's nest", not be starting from one end, but by starting in the middle and simply expanding the 'loops'.
My point is - it's amazing how well this actually works (when the group cooperates) and it makes me wonder if anyone has attempted any formal theorems on whether or not it is possible to untangle a collection of strings.
Cute. How lazy I've become, and yet still enjoy being geekish. Years ago I would have manually decoded a few characters to verify the plausibility of the cipher and then written a quick little C++ program to dump out the text. Now with Google and the net, it is taking me longer to write this reply then it did to find a Hex-to-ASCII converter and verify the code.
MC-10. My first PC. Borrowed a book from a friend with a bunch of BASIC games and quickly learned how to modify the games to be more entertaining. Wrote my own crude etch-a-sketch program from scratch. Wow, the memories...
1983? I was 10...
My 11 year old son is whipping me silly. Play video games? nah, he'd rather modify the subsurfaces controlling the wire frames of his latest character he has created in blender. (or something like that - I honestly have very little idea of what he's doing, but it looks cool!)
I recently wanted a backup on switch with a status indicator for a 12v application. A simple solution I thought was an illuminated switch. Turns out that in the in 'Off' position, the switch shorts the Acc line to Ground - meaning, if power is already being applied to the device from the alternate source, you've at best just turned it off or worse started a fire due to the current overload.
Looks like they cheated and used a dual-position-single-throw switch and added an internal light across the Acc/Ground connectors. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
Returned the switch, bought a non illuminated switch and wired a seperate status light - didn't look as good in my opinion.
Sheesh. All this whining about Blender's bad UI is making me sick.
My 10 year old picked up Blender a month or two ago and has cried, fussed, whined and sometimes driven me absolutely nuts with 'I can't figure this out!'.
"The cost to the consumer could be as low as $2 per watt"
Sweet! That's awesome, although I'll believe it when I see it.
about half the current cost of solar panels.
What!?! Where does one currently get 100 Watt panels for less then $800? Unless you are buying a few thousand watts worth (at which point I'd call it an industrial purchase and not a consumer purchase), the best price per watt I've seen is $8-9/W.
While an exact mailing date might not be had, you would have either the metered postage with a date stamped on the package from the postoffice (since an individual would go to the post office in person to send a registered letter), the cancellation stamp with date from the post office sending the package and / or the signature receipt with a date stating you received the package. Any one of those dates would have been suffecient in our thinking.
Registered mail was a way of tracking and guaranteeing delivery of a piece of mail before couriers became common place.
Today I would send the information to myself via FedEx or some related courier that could provide pick up / delivery confirmations.
The point was to have a sealed package containing your initial concepts with a date stamp on it from a reputable source for a reasonable price.
Years ago my dad gave me some wise advise. If I ever thought I had a really good idea that was worth patenting, I should write it down and make 2 copies of it.
One to keep / submit to the patent office and the other to be sealed in an envelope and mailed via Registered Mail to myself so that I would have very strong proof of the date of my idea.
That way, if ever contested I could show via the postage mark that my idea came first.
Not being an engineer, maybe someone with more (or less:-) qualifications can answer this:
How relevant is a slow steady application of stress on the structure?
That does not seem to represent the real life bouncing that turbulance applies to a wing. With the right amount of fuel in the wings, weight in the plane and a string of conveniently lined up 'pockets of air' (wind sheer, thermals, etc.) I could easily imagine a wing getting loaded very quickly to extreme amounts of pressure.
What kind of testing is done to determine / limit oscillations leading to both premature metal fatigue and positive feedback loops?
While on the topic of coffee, what about fair trade varieties?
I met someone who has their own coffee shop complete with in house roasting / grinding facilities and his complaint was that fair trade lacked both the taste and basic quality (had too many stones and twigs in it to risk running thru his grinder).
Camping with my coffee adicted brother-in-law a few years back made me appreciate good coffee.
His method was simple:
1) Fill old coffee can with lake water 2) Set in camp fire until the water was at a rolling boil 3) Throw in a handfull of ground coffee 4) Wait a few minutes and serve.
Strain the grounds with your teeth.
At 5am, in the middle of the bush, after a lousy nights sleep - it actually isn't that bad....
I like lights and lots of them on office equipment or anything else used when one is generally awake.
However, on residential light fixtures they can be annoying. We have dimmer switches in our house that have seperate fader / on/off switch. At the base of the fader is an LED that (when the switch is Off) indicates the approximate brightness of the light when the switch is turned on. The dimmer in my son's bedroom drove him crazy, so a screwdriver, wire cutters and 10 minutes later the LED was mechanically seperated from the board and the dimmer returned to the wall socket.
I have yet to stop and look at the LED on any of the other dimmers in the house to determine if the light will be bright or dim when I turn it on.
a) wheels, roof, motor
b) highway speed capable
c) 4 seats and small storage
d) low TCO
So, I drive a 1996 Geo Metro which based on the new tests is
listed at 40MPG (which based on my records, I'm actually getting year round - over 45 in summer, about 35 in winter).
Compare this to the 2007 Honda Civic Hybrid which is rated at an
astounding 42MPG and I'm really hoping to get many many more miles out of my Metro before I'm force to down grade to a newer car....
I am reading the comments, and most are very quick to rip apart the principle for acting improperly. However, I am sitting here trying to think, if I was the principal - what would I do? In short how does one reasonably ensure the safety of the school?
At the extreme is arresting all childer, their parents, friends, etc. and shutting down the school until every room in the school and home of the 'accused' are thoroughly searched to ensure there is no threat.
At the other, we ignore it as a typical stupid teenager prank and when the bomb goes off we deal with a lot of fallout.
What is reasonable? A principal is not a bomb expert. Hopefully the police are better trained in this field. Once she had the number and approximate time confirmed, I don't think she was wrong in calling the police and detaining the boy.
What should the cops have done? Can't they hold him for 24 hours without charges? Take him to the cop shop, get a search warrent for his house, search the school and when nothing turns up, apologize and let him go? Maybe even this is too extreme. I'm not sure.
I agree that what happened was over kill. But I am trying to figure out what would be the proper thing to do.
(Too many people aren't reading to the end of the article before guessing why Diebold might have lost.)
At the end of the article is this bit:
Galvin said his office surveyed disabled groups and municipal election officials during the evaluation process after letting those groups test the competing machines. He said there was a consensus in favor of the AutoMARK.
Galvin cited as an important factor in favor of AutoMARK its machine's use of one kind of paper ballot for disabled voters and others. He said that gave extra privacy to disabled voters.
"If you happened to have only one disabled voter in a precinct, that person's ballot is easily identifiable," he said.
Does Diebold's system use different (read: identifiable) methods depending on the person's disability? That would certainly be a vote against them....
Slashdot Mirror
"You have been chosen as the victim in a deadlock. Your child process has been killed and will need to be resubmitted."
The nurse we had recently hired to provide domain knowledge had essentially no computer experience, and was quite mortified at some of the terminology in the error message.
I once heard someone say that a union is the result of miscommunication between management and staff.
That said, while Unions may have the power to improve the lives of those weak individuals on the extremes who are taken advantage of, they will inevitably evolve into life sucking micro-managed financial bullies where you will not be allowed to be productive because the task you know how to do (install program X on your workstation), that must be completed before you can start yours (use X to do something) has to be done by the union protected overpaid old guy who doesn't care about when it gets done because the company cannot fire him.
Unions are like the RIAA, they look good on paper (protect the helpless artist / employee who doesn't have the work ethic and brains to stand up for themselves) - but once they get you locked in, they reveal just how truly powerful and evil they really are.
(Mentioning the RIAA is karma whoring, but I think the anology fits - at least from the similar sensation of fury over the abuse of power I feel when I read either term.)
Thank you, captain obvious. Now consider you have a battery (fossil fuel) at point A powering a load (a house, for example) at point B. What happens when you add another battery in parallel (say a solar panel on the roof of said house) also at point B. What happens to the current between points A and B? Hint: it does not increase...
This is a common misconception about how the grid works. People think the generators are batteries waiting to be used, and all we have to do is turn a light on.
Wrong.
The grid is a complex machine that anticipates when you are going to turn the light on, and attempts to start a generator at the same time so that they can produce the electricity you need, when you need it. For example, here is Ontario's guess about how much power they will need today.
The problem is the generators can take a while to start. Take for example a steam powered turbine. The operator assumes (from past history) that by 3pm 10MW will be required by the grid and so in anticipation of that, he starts burning more fuel at 2:30 to heat more water.
However, at 3pm when he is burning enough fuel to produce 10MW, the wind in the area changes direction, and those wonderfully green wind generators now put out an extra 3MW. The total power being generated is 13MW, however, the demand is only for 10MW. For sake of the argument, it will take 1/2hr (in my example) for the turbine to slow down to 7MW (due to built up energy in the boiler - nuclear is even slower to react). There is an excess of 3MW on the grid that MUST be consumed or bad things will happen. By the way, this is why Manitoba Hydro can offer such great rates to the locals. They purchase cheep excess power from the states all night, then sell expensive power during the day. (Thank you, btw. As a result its cheaper for me to heat my house in -30C with electricity then natural gas.)
Here's where the thin wire problem starts to come into effect. Next door, they have hydro power, which can very quickly be dialed down and they would be glad to purchase the 3MW of excess power we have (since its excess, the market price will be low). The line connecting us can handle 5MW. However, there is currently (sorry) 4MW already flowing from us to them. Adding the 3MW puts us over the 5MW limit and again bad things happen.
The only option left is for the wind mills to feather their blades and reduce production. The steam turbine keeps burning the fossil fuels. All because we could not export our excess.
I used to think that about my 1996 3 hamster powered Geo Metro, but now I'm not so sure.... ($7,300!?!? - why can't I sell stuff to people like that....)
Related: had a customer a few years back who brought their brand new Acer PC in - convinced it had a virus. Even had the name and diagnostic page from Symantec. Seems the 'virus' would shut the machine down during a virus scan.
Turns out the folks at Acer forgot to plug in the CPU fan. Box ran fine until the A/V full system scan started, then the CPU temp rose until the CPU high limit setting in the BIOS pulled the plug to save itself.
Don't remember if it was Intel or AMD, but it was definitely overkill for them. MS Works spreadsheet, Norton AV and a couple of flash based game sights was all it ever did.
(This is offtopic, and I'm ok with that. I know I'm feeding a troll, but this does iritate me)
Here's what I do, because I'm cheap and don't mind helping the environment.
I ride my bike to Tim's. Lock it up outside. Walk inside. Give them my travel mug and order my double-double. I watch them pour the sugar, cream and coffee directly into my mug and hand it back to me. No paper cup. And I save my nickel (and gas money).
If you stop and think about what you are complaining about for a few minutes, you would realize you are not coming across as very bright.
Drive throughs are primarily for lazy people who don't care about money (have you seen the cost of gas lately) nor the environment. They also are for people who think they are in a hurry (more often they would actualy get faster service if they walked inside). For drive throughs to succeed, effeciency trumps all. Hence, they prepare your order before you get to the window - how can they do that without your mug? They waste a paper cup. Try ordering it black next time - no guarantees, but they might just pour direct from the pot to your mug...
Dang! Should have RTA - now that my imagination is working, I can see it perfectly. I will now proceed to invest SQRT(net income - expenses) in a new mutual fund for interstellar trade.
A repressed financial theory is uncovered that can make me rich! and as I skim the article, I see that Figure II is BLANK!!!! What is missing!?! and how will I ever save for retirement on Alpha Centauri?????
Inquiring minds want to know!
It will still print dots.
I would use a Daisy wheel printer.
A common ice-breaker game we play with youth is to form a circle and then reach across and hold hands. But with each of your hands, you must hold the hand from 2 different people. (Looking down from the top it looks like a team huddle / cheer) Now without letting go, unravel yourself into 1 or more circles that may or may not be interlocked.
I have also witnessed a friend untangle a large / long single wire that was quite a "rat's nest", not be starting from one end, but by starting in the middle and simply expanding the 'loops'.
My point is - it's amazing how well this actually works (when the group cooperates) and it makes me wonder if anyone has attempted any formal theorems on whether or not it is possible to untangle a collection of strings.
(The cosmology jokes should abound...)
BJTP???? Are you still doing this?? Man, I remeber you doing this close to 5 years ago!!
Cute. How lazy I've become, and yet still enjoy being geekish. Years ago I would have manually decoded a few characters to verify the plausibility of the cipher and then written a quick little C++ program to dump out the text. Now with Google and the net, it is taking me longer to write this reply then it did to find a Hex-to-ASCII converter and verify the code.
MC-10. My first PC. Borrowed a book from a friend with a bunch of BASIC games and quickly learned how to modify the games to be more entertaining. Wrote my own crude etch-a-sketch program from scratch. Wow, the memories...
1983? I was 10...
My 11 year old son is whipping me silly. Play video games? nah, he'd rather modify the subsurfaces controlling the wire frames of his latest character he has created in blender. (or something like that - I honestly have very little idea of what he's doing, but it looks cool!)
I recently wanted a backup on switch with a status indicator for a 12v application. A simple solution I thought was an illuminated switch. Turns out that in the in 'Off' position, the switch shorts the Acc line to Ground - meaning, if power is already being applied to the device from the alternate source, you've at best just turned it off or worse started a fire due to the current overload.
Looks like they cheated and used a dual-position-single-throw switch and added an internal light across the Acc/Ground connectors. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
Returned the switch, bought a non illuminated switch and wired a seperate status light - didn't look as good in my opinion.
Sheesh. All this whining about Blender's bad UI is making me sick.
My 10 year old picked up Blender a month or two ago and has cried, fussed, whined and sometimes driven me absolutely nuts with 'I can't figure this out!'.
Guess what, the stubborn little guy didn't quit.
First particle animation movie (it's 13MB - still need to work on compression).
Oh, and he's not the only kid struggling with the useless UI. Check out these guys at
Peerless Productions.
It's their tutorials that really got my son over a lot his hurdles. (Thanks Colin if you're reading this).
"The cost to the consumer could be as low as $2 per watt"
Sweet! That's awesome, although I'll believe it when I see it.
about half the current cost of solar panels.
What!?! Where does one currently get 100 Watt panels for less then $800? Unless you are buying a few thousand watts worth (at which point I'd call it an industrial purchase and not a consumer purchase), the best price per watt I've seen is $8-9/W.
While an exact mailing date might not be had, you would have either the metered postage with a date stamped on the package from the postoffice (since an individual would go to the post office in person to send a registered letter), the cancellation stamp with date from the post office sending the package and / or the signature receipt with a date stating you received the package. Any one of those dates would have been suffecient in our thinking.
Registered mail was a way of tracking and guaranteeing delivery of a piece of mail before couriers became common place.
Today I would send the information to myself via FedEx or some related courier that could provide pick up / delivery confirmations.
The point was to have a sealed package containing your initial concepts with a date stamp on it from a reputable source for a reasonable price.
One to keep / submit to the patent office and the other to be sealed in an envelope and mailed via Registered Mail to myself so that I would have very strong proof of the date of my idea.
That way, if ever contested I could show via the postage mark that my idea came first.
Not being an engineer, maybe someone with more (or less :-) qualifications can answer this:
How relevant is a slow steady application of stress on the structure?
That does not seem to represent the real life bouncing that turbulance applies to a wing. With the right amount of fuel in the wings, weight in the plane and a string of conveniently lined up 'pockets of air' (wind sheer, thermals, etc.) I could easily imagine a wing getting loaded very quickly to extreme amounts of pressure.
What kind of testing is done to determine / limit oscillations leading to both premature metal fatigue and positive feedback loops?
While on the topic of coffee, what about fair trade varieties?
I met someone who has their own coffee shop complete with in house roasting / grinding facilities and his complaint was that fair trade lacked both the taste and basic quality (had too many stones and twigs in it to risk running thru his grinder).
Any suggestions for at home?
Camping with my coffee adicted brother-in-law a few years back made me appreciate good coffee.
His method was simple:
1) Fill old coffee can with lake water
2) Set in camp fire until the water was at a rolling boil
3) Throw in a handfull of ground coffee
4) Wait a few minutes and serve.
Strain the grounds with your teeth.
At 5am, in the middle of the bush, after a lousy nights sleep - it actually isn't that bad....
I like lights and lots of them on office equipment or anything else used when one is generally awake.
However, on residential light fixtures they can be annoying. We have dimmer switches in our house that have seperate fader / on/off switch. At the base of the fader is an LED that (when the switch is Off) indicates the approximate brightness of the light when the switch is turned on. The dimmer in my son's bedroom drove him crazy, so a screwdriver, wire cutters and 10 minutes later the LED was mechanically seperated from the board and the dimmer returned to the wall socket.
I have yet to stop and look at the LED on any of the other dimmers in the house to determine if the light will be bright or dim when I turn it on.
a) wheels, roof, motor
b) highway speed capable
c) 4 seats and small storage
d) low TCO
So, I drive a 1996 Geo Metro which based on the new tests is listed at 40MPG (which based on my records, I'm actually getting year round - over 45 in summer, about 35 in winter).
Compare this to the 2007 Honda Civic Hybrid which is rated at an astounding 42MPG and I'm really hoping to get many many more miles out of my Metro before I'm force to down grade to a newer car....
I am reading the comments, and most are very quick to rip apart the principle for acting improperly. However, I am sitting here trying to think, if I was the principal - what would I do? In short how does one reasonably ensure the safety of the school?
At the extreme is arresting all childer, their parents, friends, etc. and shutting down the school until every room in the school and home of the 'accused' are thoroughly searched to ensure there is no threat.
At the other, we ignore it as a typical stupid teenager prank and when the bomb goes off we deal with a lot of fallout.
What is reasonable? A principal is not a bomb expert. Hopefully the police are better trained in this field. Once she had the number and approximate time confirmed, I don't think she was wrong in calling the police and detaining the boy.
What should the cops have done? Can't they hold him for 24 hours without charges? Take him to the cop shop, get a search warrent for his house, search the school and when nothing turns up, apologize and let him go? Maybe even this is too extreme. I'm not sure.
I agree that what happened was over kill. But I am trying to figure out what would be the proper thing to do.
At the end of the article is this bit:
Galvin said his office surveyed disabled groups and municipal election officials during the evaluation process after letting those groups test the competing machines. He said there was a consensus in favor of the AutoMARK.
Galvin cited as an important factor in favor of AutoMARK its machine's use of one kind of paper ballot for disabled voters and others. He said that gave extra privacy to disabled voters.
"If you happened to have only one disabled voter in a precinct, that person's ballot is easily identifiable," he said.
Does Diebold's system use different (read: identifiable) methods depending on the person's disability? That would certainly be a vote against them....