One that's in use pretty much all day long, one that is in intermittent use most days and is also the multimedia machine (and being insecure is not allowed online), and one that does misc. tasks while the others are busy (or not speaking to the printer, as happens occasionally).
Also, considering the temperature changes in here at night (down to 55F indoors), turning them on and off would create a lot of thermal stress, and the radically shortened lifespan and consequent need to regularly replace major components would probably more than offset the impact of what little power they use (none of them is a real power-hog; in fact they barely show on the bill). It does get cold enough where the media machine is that if it's powered off for long, it won't boot until it's warmed up for 15 minutes first. That's damned rough on the HD, both on the bearings and the risk of condensation damage (and it can cause data corruption too).
Only one monitor on all-day, tho, and in summer I let it sleep when not in use. Can't do that in winter cuz it gets cold enough that it doesn't work right, or won't come back on at all.
I guess I could keep my house warmer instead, but that costs about 4x as much electricity as letting the PCs run (and thereby provide some of my heat at no extra charge).
Clone:) Tyan S1830S motherboard (P3-550) of 1998 vintage, 3 W.D. hard drives (the oldest, IIRC is now 8 years old), LiteOn DVD drives, random swapmeet RAM (I think it's Panasonic, same age as motherboard), Matrox G200 video card (ditto), Teac floppy (15 years old). Just had to replace the 15YO PSU last month, original got fried (thru 2 layers of surge protection) by a major power surge. It has run 24/7 its entire life.
I also have its twin brother, my XP media machine that is never rebooted (uptime record 14 months, lately disrupted by last month's storm) and has been running 24/7 since early 2002.
The clone sitting next to it is a year older (and its oldest HD, another W.D., is now 11 years old running 24/7), ACorp/Supermicro mainboard, otherwise all clone parts. Needs new RAM stick (gone flaky), otherwise still all good.
Conversely I have a large pile (about 3 pickup loads worth) of dead namebrand machines of all ages, from donations to our user group. From which I deduced that of OEMs, HPs are the least likely to die, Gateway middling, Dell and Micron the worst.
BTW most of my household electronics are Panasonic, and some are over 25 years old.
True enough. But not everyone needs latest-and-greatest, or even fairly-recent; for some of us, durable is more meaningful.
Frex, I'm typing this on a PC whose major innards are now 11 years old. It has outlived several newer machines, all of which annoyed me by failing, while this one keeps on truckin'. Durable is GOOD.
Actually I thought of that, but remember in the bloodstream things are being tumbled in all directions all the time, because it's not a turbulence-free system. Whether this is an advantage or disadvantage, I agree should probably be looked at -- just because something evolved a certain way doesn't mean it's the best system, only that it was good enough for reproductive survival. It may be that forcibly orienting everything a certain way aids antibodies -- or it may make no difference at all -- or may even be a disadvantage, if they turn out to orient differently from the pathogens they're supposed to match up with, thus RELY on randomization to do their jobs. I have no idea if this essentially mechanical concept has been researched, or even considered.
And yes, I think even spin-gravity would be better than none, if only because of what we know about calcium metabolism (requires the stress of gravity to keep bones strong, which also means to maintain normal heart function as it relies on blood calcium levels being Just So).
If the problem was "being without our missiles for the time it takes them to reboot" why not just do a rolling reboot, a few or even one at a time?? If you need all your missiles at once, you're already in more trouble than you can get out of anyway.
1) low gravity enhances microbe growth. -- Eh, probably not enough in itself, since the microbial balance would probably still be roughly the same.
2) if the environment is made too sterile, it actually encourages pathogens, which are normally kept largely in check by other microbes. This is actually the root of the problem with hospitals and resistant infections today, to the point that some are considering returning to a less-sterile general environment. -- Easily solved; just don't sterilize the equipment in the first place. In short, maintain the diversified natural microbial population, to discourage overgrowth of pathogens.
The conclusion is claptrap, designed to support the notion that "animals should never be owned by humans".
Most of the ingredients in pet food are waste products from manufacturing food for humans. Or do you really want to eat intestines and tripe and brewers' rice (the junk left over after rice has been made into beer)?? Or would you rather they went into the landfills?
This way you get to sell equipment to BOTH sides, preventing your enemies from buying from other sources (make yours cheaper, they'll buy it) AND giving your allies an edge they can count on.
What if someone made the -rm mistake and it deleted a hospital's patient records? That could easily cost several hundred lives.
What if some programmer made a flipped flag error and shunted a highspeed passenger train onto an occupied track? That could easily cost several hundred lives.
What if someone misprogrammed a drug formulation? That could easily cost several thousand lives.
Inattention in the cockpit... well, a plane on autopilot WILL continue to pretty much fly itself and is very unlikely to just crash. It's probably one of the lower risk "someone messed up and now people die" scenarios. Not that it's a good thing by any means, but it's far from the worst possible case.
I agree with you entirely -- but I think such policies are a natural result of the 'zero tolerance' craze, itself a byproduct of our increasingly nannied culture. It is now assumed that no one is mature enough to make judgment calls, so we get childlike everything-must-be-black-or-white decision making instead.
Yep... I've begun to wonder how much fantasy money is floating around the economy, which didn't actually buy anything tangible, but rather was used to buy our eyeballs to sell to advertisers. What with all our manufacturing having gone overseas, what else do we have to market, besides... uh, marketing??
"So, if your sentence was too long they really did nothing above and beyond what they did for most all sentences, but if it was too short they caught it and corrected it to some degree."
Wouldn't that be a run-on sentence??
And it explains hanging offenses, too -- the penalty is due to dangling participles.
There might be a solution to that, too; how about this scheme:
Offer the newly released movie as a free download. When you register to download it, you are offered movie tickets at a substantial discount (perhaps half-price) at the theatre of your choice -- pay online, pick up tickets at the window when you go to the theatre. Maybe even be able to use your tickets anywhere the impulse takes you -- log in on the kiosk at the theatre and it prints your tickets on the spot. No time limits. Maybe offer the option to add multiple discounted tickets at the kiosk, so you don't need to plan ahead.
Have DVDs available for sale at the theatre, at very reasonable prices, so people can buy movies they liked while the mood is still on them. I'd guess this would more than double DVD sales -- strike while the iron is hot is an excellent marketing strategy!
Back to that free download you registered to get -- one of the perks is a discount coupon for buying the DVD, anywhere you want. Same for T-shirts, movie-tie-in books, posters, whatever.
The whole idea here is that if people are going to download "free samples" *anyway* (and I think by now it's evident that trying to stop that is futile), they might as well get them from YOU, and in the process be tempted into buying YOUR other stuff (movie tickets, DVDs, etc.) either on the spot or later. That way you get peripheral sales instead of NO sales, and you get positive branding in the eyes of the customers.
A: offer me the same content priced to appeal to my laziness.
This is why I have a whole shelf full of DVDs -- purchased when they hit a price point that made it easier, cheaper in terms of nuisance cost, and more time-effective to buy a known value than to download an uncertain value.
If you offer to sell me the same service as a download, it had better be priced low enough to account for the fact that I'll have an extra nuisance cost (the bother of making my own DVD from it) and a whole lot more time spent on it. And you'd better make your service faster, broader in content, and more reliable than the free alternatives.
To expand on what a previous poster said, give the content value as a *service* that saves me time and effort, rather than trying to "protect" it as an ephemermal *property* which costs nothing to reproduce (ie. download).
The Chrysler's steering just goes dead unless you put it in neutral, then you can steer it fairly easily. But if the engine died while it was in gear it would totally lock up (as we discovered when the fuel pump croaked). Anyway, the front end fell apart so it's retired now; it was literally wobbling down the road! 1993 minivan with 320,000 miles on it; I guess it did all right, for a Chrysler. At that point a Ford truck would just be getting broken in.;)
That Chrysler did teach me to HATE front-wheel drive. Couldn't give me one of the damned things!
My '78 Ford pickup's brakes not only work with the engine off (you really can't tell the difference), they also work (albeit not as well) when there's hardly any fluid in the system -- you can *always* pump them back up to a point where they work at least temporarily, so they're just about failproof (provided you do know enough to pump 'em and not just push harder). Someone designed 'em RIGHT.
Probably because it is a very slow-responding vehicle, having so much more mass than a car. Also, traction is not usually an issue when you're flying.;)
And what about situations like turning on ice, where you want to be slowing down *while* applying slight acceleration, so as to maintain traction. I don't see how that sort of complex control is possible with a joystick.
It does sound more like a glorified enclosed scooter than a car. Which is probably a good and useful vehicle if most of the vehicles around you are of roughly the same weight class, but suicidal if most of them are standard cars.
As to the controls... do you really want to be on the road with a bunch of people who are relearning how to control their car?? I don't. As you say, one of the big advantages of the standard basic auto design is that in a pinch, anyone can drive any car. You don't have to be certified anew for different makes and models!
Likely how a given vehicle behaves depends on lots of design factors.
In my old Ford pickup, turn off the engine and I have no *power* steering (it can still be muscled, tho it's very stiff), but the brakes work just as good as when it's running.
In my neighbour's middle-aged and now deceased Chrysler van (front wheel drive), turn off the engine and you still have brakes (tho they're sluggish and lack real stopping power), but NO steering whatsoever -- can't turn the wheel at all!! YIIIY!!!
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One that's in use pretty much all day long, one that is in intermittent use most days and is also the multimedia machine (and being insecure is not allowed online), and one that does misc. tasks while the others are busy (or not speaking to the printer, as happens occasionally).
Also, considering the temperature changes in here at night (down to 55F indoors), turning them on and off would create a lot of thermal stress, and the radically shortened lifespan and consequent need to regularly replace major components would probably more than offset the impact of what little power they use (none of them is a real power-hog; in fact they barely show on the bill). It does get cold enough where the media machine is that if it's powered off for long, it won't boot until it's warmed up for 15 minutes first. That's damned rough on the HD, both on the bearings and the risk of condensation damage (and it can cause data corruption too).
Only one monitor on all-day, tho, and in summer I let it sleep when not in use. Can't do that in winter cuz it gets cold enough that it doesn't work right, or won't come back on at all.
I guess I could keep my house warmer instead, but that costs about 4x as much electricity as letting the PCs run (and thereby provide some of my heat at no extra charge).
LOL! Yeah, that's for sure :D
Probably more reliable too!!
Clone :) Tyan S1830S motherboard (P3-550) of 1998 vintage, 3 W.D. hard drives (the oldest, IIRC is now 8 years old), LiteOn DVD drives, random swapmeet RAM (I think it's Panasonic, same age as motherboard), Matrox G200 video card (ditto), Teac floppy (15 years old). Just had to replace the 15YO PSU last month, original got fried (thru 2 layers of surge protection) by a major power surge. It has run 24/7 its entire life.
I also have its twin brother, my XP media machine that is never rebooted (uptime record 14 months, lately disrupted by last month's storm) and has been running 24/7 since early 2002.
The clone sitting next to it is a year older (and its oldest HD, another W.D., is now 11 years old running 24/7), ACorp/Supermicro mainboard, otherwise all clone parts. Needs new RAM stick (gone flaky), otherwise still all good.
Conversely I have a large pile (about 3 pickup loads worth) of dead namebrand machines of all ages, from donations to our user group. From which I deduced that of OEMs, HPs are the least likely to die, Gateway middling, Dell and Micron the worst.
BTW most of my household electronics are Panasonic, and some are over 25 years old.
True enough. But not everyone needs latest-and-greatest, or even fairly-recent; for some of us, durable is more meaningful.
Frex, I'm typing this on a PC whose major innards are now 11 years old. It has outlived several newer machines, all of which annoyed me by failing, while this one keeps on truckin'. Durable is GOOD.
Maybe you'd seen "Crack in the World"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_in_the_world
This was preceded by the Mohole project, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohole
Of course, they are both wrong. Nope, when they drill too far, what'll happen? All the air will get out, and the world will go flat.
Also solves the drought in East Africa ;)
Or someone like myself, who wants to buy exactly ONE laptop that will last forever, and which I do not wish to have to protect like a newborn infant.
Actually I thought of that, but remember in the bloodstream things are being tumbled in all directions all the time, because it's not a turbulence-free system. Whether this is an advantage or disadvantage, I agree should probably be looked at -- just because something evolved a certain way doesn't mean it's the best system, only that it was good enough for reproductive survival. It may be that forcibly orienting everything a certain way aids antibodies -- or it may make no difference at all -- or may even be a disadvantage, if they turn out to orient differently from the pathogens they're supposed to match up with, thus RELY on randomization to do their jobs. I have no idea if this essentially mechanical concept has been researched, or even considered.
And yes, I think even spin-gravity would be better than none, if only because of what we know about calcium metabolism (requires the stress of gravity to keep bones strong, which also means to maintain normal heart function as it relies on blood calcium levels being Just So).
If the problem was "being without our missiles for the time it takes them to reboot" why not just do a rolling reboot, a few or even one at a time?? If you need all your missiles at once, you're already in more trouble than you can get out of anyway.
Actually, yes...
There are two basic possibilities here:
1) low gravity enhances microbe growth. -- Eh, probably not enough in itself, since the microbial balance would probably still be roughly the same.
2) if the environment is made too sterile, it actually encourages pathogens, which are normally kept largely in check by other microbes. This is actually the root of the problem with hospitals and resistant infections today, to the point that some are considering returning to a less-sterile general environment. -- Easily solved; just don't sterilize the equipment in the first place. In short, maintain the diversified natural microbial population, to discourage overgrowth of pathogens.
The conclusion is claptrap, designed to support the notion that "animals should never be owned by humans".
Most of the ingredients in pet food are waste products from manufacturing food for humans. Or do you really want to eat intestines and tripe and brewers' rice (the junk left over after rice has been made into beer)?? Or would you rather they went into the landfills?
This way you get to sell equipment to BOTH sides, preventing your enemies from buying from other sources (make yours cheaper, they'll buy it) AND giving your allies an edge they can count on.
Makes perfect sense to me...
Oh yeah - PROFIT!
What if someone made the -rm mistake and it deleted a hospital's patient records? That could easily cost several hundred lives.
What if some programmer made a flipped flag error and shunted a highspeed passenger train onto an occupied track? That could easily cost several hundred lives.
What if someone misprogrammed a drug formulation? That could easily cost several thousand lives.
Inattention in the cockpit ... well, a plane on autopilot WILL continue to pretty much fly itself and is very unlikely to just crash. It's probably one of the lower risk "someone messed up and now people die" scenarios. Not that it's a good thing by any means, but it's far from the worst possible case.
I agree with you entirely -- but I think such policies are a natural result of the 'zero tolerance' craze, itself a byproduct of our increasingly nannied culture. It is now assumed that no one is mature enough to make judgment calls, so we get childlike everything-must-be-black-or-white decision making instead.
Yep... I've begun to wonder how much fantasy money is floating around the economy, which didn't actually buy anything tangible, but rather was used to buy our eyeballs to sell to advertisers. What with all our manufacturing having gone overseas, what else do we have to market, besides... uh, marketing??
"So, if your sentence was too long they really did nothing above and beyond what they did for most all sentences, but if it was too short they caught it and corrected it to some degree."
Wouldn't that be a run-on sentence??
And it explains hanging offenses, too -- the penalty is due to dangling participles.
Or to put it more simply "This worked yesterday, so it'll work today too". Clearly a survival mechanism.
There might be a solution to that, too; how about this scheme:
Offer the newly released movie as a free download. When you register to download it, you are offered movie tickets at a substantial discount (perhaps half-price) at the theatre of your choice -- pay online, pick up tickets at the window when you go to the theatre. Maybe even be able to use your tickets anywhere the impulse takes you -- log in on the kiosk at the theatre and it prints your tickets on the spot. No time limits. Maybe offer the option to add multiple discounted tickets at the kiosk, so you don't need to plan ahead.
Have DVDs available for sale at the theatre, at very reasonable prices, so people can buy movies they liked while the mood is still on them. I'd guess this would more than double DVD sales -- strike while the iron is hot is an excellent marketing strategy!
Back to that free download you registered to get -- one of the perks is a discount coupon for buying the DVD, anywhere you want. Same for T-shirts, movie-tie-in books, posters, whatever.
The whole idea here is that if people are going to download "free samples" *anyway* (and I think by now it's evident that trying to stop that is futile), they might as well get them from YOU, and in the process be tempted into buying YOUR other stuff (movie tickets, DVDs, etc.) either on the spot or later. That way you get peripheral sales instead of NO sales, and you get positive branding in the eyes of the customers.
A: offer me the same content priced to appeal to my laziness.
This is why I have a whole shelf full of DVDs -- purchased when they hit a price point that made it easier, cheaper in terms of nuisance cost, and more time-effective to buy a known value than to download an uncertain value.
If you offer to sell me the same service as a download, it had better be priced low enough to account for the fact that I'll have an extra nuisance cost (the bother of making my own DVD from it) and a whole lot more time spent on it. And you'd better make your service faster, broader in content, and more reliable than the free alternatives.
To expand on what a previous poster said, give the content value as a *service* that saves me time and effort, rather than trying to "protect" it as an ephemermal *property* which costs nothing to reproduce (ie. download).
Then you're flying too low ;)
The Chrysler's steering just goes dead unless you put it in neutral, then you can steer it fairly easily. But if the engine died while it was in gear it would totally lock up (as we discovered when the fuel pump croaked). Anyway, the front end fell apart so it's retired now; it was literally wobbling down the road! 1993 minivan with 320,000 miles on it; I guess it did all right, for a Chrysler. At that point a Ford truck would just be getting broken in. ;)
That Chrysler did teach me to HATE front-wheel drive. Couldn't give me one of the damned things!
My '78 Ford pickup's brakes not only work with the engine off (you really can't tell the difference), they also work (albeit not as well) when there's hardly any fluid in the system -- you can *always* pump them back up to a point where they work at least temporarily, so they're just about failproof (provided you do know enough to pump 'em and not just push harder). Someone designed 'em RIGHT.
Probably because it is a very slow-responding vehicle, having so much more mass than a car. Also, traction is not usually an issue when you're flying. ;)
And what about situations like turning on ice, where you want to be slowing down *while* applying slight acceleration, so as to maintain traction. I don't see how that sort of complex control is possible with a joystick.
It does sound more like a glorified enclosed scooter than a car. Which is probably a good and useful vehicle if most of the vehicles around you are of roughly the same weight class, but suicidal if most of them are standard cars.
As to the controls... do you really want to be on the road with a bunch of people who are relearning how to control their car?? I don't. As you say, one of the big advantages of the standard basic auto design is that in a pinch, anyone can drive any car. You don't have to be certified anew for different makes and models!
Likely how a given vehicle behaves depends on lots of design factors.
In my old Ford pickup, turn off the engine and I have no *power* steering (it can still be muscled, tho it's very stiff), but the brakes work just as good as when it's running.
In my neighbour's middle-aged and now deceased Chrysler van (front wheel drive), turn off the engine and you still have brakes (tho they're sluggish and lack real stopping power), but NO steering whatsoever -- can't turn the wheel at all!! YIIIY!!!