Many states have some sort of incentive. Unfortunately, most of them disallow you doing it yourself.
We had worked it out to be affordable, between state and federal incentives a good grid tied solar install could free. I had intended to set up a business to sell and install grid tied solar systems, where we would "finance" the cost until the incentives were paid. That way, everyone would win. People would get solar systems on their homes. They would help save the environment. It wouldn't cost the end user anything. We would make a little bit for doing the install, and everyone would be happy.
Unfortunately, the harsh reality didn't match the ideal scenario. We could do the install. We would have to find bank financing for the initial overhead of financing the installed equipment, which was very likely to happen. The government was the end of it though. To get the government incentives, you had to be an officially sanctioned solar install contractor. There weren't just a practical set of rules, there were huge hoops to jump through to be an officially sanctioned contractor. It eliminated any startup small business from getting into this new industry.
Almost, if not all, of the incentives go out the window if you do it yourself, or have anyone but a specialist installer do it for you. For a lot of the folks who would read a site like this, we're screwed.
Let me give you some first hand experience about the gray market transition.
Find a company name that is legitimately associated with the company you are working with, yet doesn't scream "GAMBLING". Use that name for any out-of-industry contacts you have. For example, if you work for offshore_gambling.com, but your company does have web_host_and_dev.com, associate yourself with that. Use the email. Put that on your resume. When you step away from the industry, never reference the gray market industry.
Most future employers don't even bother contact old employers. For the exceptions, it is very useful to ensure that there is (and will be) provisions where someone can verify your employment.
I just lost out on probably the best job possibility that I've ever been presented with. As part of that job, it required a very in depth background check (yes, the most in depth background check possible). I didn't get the job because two employers were unavailable to verify my employment history.
One was a perfectly legitimate mainstream company, who failed to verify anything. The investigator failed to find the business (strike 1).
The second was an gray market (adult) company. Unfortunately, due to the company shutting down operations, none of the old offices were available to verify my employment, and my best guess for a verifier failed. ("sorry, never heard of that company").
Mainstream or gray market doesn't matter. It's a matter of the verifiability of your employment, should the need arise later.
Unfortunately for me, I had told anyone that worked under me that I could be contacted directly to verify their employment. They were given honest reviews, simply avoiding the gray market part of the answers. Since I was the person now being verified, there was no one left to give the honest yet politically correct sanitized review.
So, it doesn't matter if you're working in a mainstream industry, or a gray market industry, you can always get bitten by a failure to verify in your future.
Freezing point of H2 is 14K
Freezing point of O2 is 54K
At 2.7K , you'd just have hydrogen and oxygen dust in a pile. Kinda like baking a cake by throwing the dry ingredents together. Sure, you have the parts, but they don't make a cake.
Ok, car analogy. You guys couldn't bake a cake to save your life.:) You can have a pile of parts sufficient to make a car, but until they're assembled, you don't really have a car.
Then again, I hope I'm never standing in the room at 2.7K to prove or disprove it. That'd be a mighty slow room.:)
The flaw is in the methodology, not in the the number of users.
For example, if there's an error in the filesystem driver with corrupt blocks, the fix is just in the drivers behavior, not in the number of blocks that it fixes.
Obviously, one of those fixes is in how you kill your users. While firearms work very efficiently, bullets are expensive. Go for rapid blunt force trauma. Training is mandatory. Too much force, and you get blood splatter. Too little force, and they're just annoyed. ("hey, stop hitting me").
Obviously he isn't familiar with the concepts of conservation and advanced planning.
I guess more importantly, when everything collapses around him, he'd at least have another $700 in savings because he didn't blow it on the "cooler" toys.
But hey, what Mac Fanboy could ever be made redundant, and let go without any significant warning?
I was going to say something like that. When most people get into computers, they buy (or are given) a PC. Some people switch to Mac. Those who switch to Mac can likely have two or more, unless they give away their old computer. I'm amazed how otherwise perfectly normal people hold onto old hardware. No, not techno-packrats, but regular people. There could be something on that old hard drive that they need, even though they haven't turned that computer on in 10 years.:)
I still consider the whole thing silly. I'm sure Microsoft counts me quite a few times over as being a Windows user, because I bought hardware that had Windows installed on it from the OEM, but I wiped it out and put Linux on it without ever booting to Windows.:) I guess in theory, Microsoft could claim almost 100% market saturation, because every household where the people buy OEM machines would have a Windows license in it.:)
It's still obviously a cost consideration. If you pay $300 for a Windows PC, or save up $1,000 for a Mac over the next 4 months, you're still spending over 3x as much for the Mac.
While the wonders of the old economy still persist in people's minds (more money will always come in, so we can just save for a while and buy anything we'd like), that isn't quite as persistent now. (money will come in, until it doesn't, and then we only have what we saved).
If Apple wants a larger market share, they will have to make their pricing competitive. It's still not competitive enough, so they will continue to make a larger profit per unit with a smaller number of units.
It's all in the game you want to play. Do you want 4 customers making you 1 million dollars profit, or 4 million customers making you 1 dollar profit? The choice isn't quite as clear as you'd think. If you have the 1 million dollar customers, if one goes away, that hurts a lot. If you have the 1 dollar profit customers, a whole bunch can jump ship, and more will come in because your prices (and profit margin) is smaller.
But hey, if you want to save up your pennies and buy a Mac, more power to you. It'll be a nice fixture in the back of your car, when you get fired in the next round of downsizing next week, and you find yourself homeless.
To use your tollbooth analogy, if there's a free on-ramp and a free off-ramp, why not use them?
There's a particular stretch of highway that I drive, where I can get on at two different places. Both places are free (no toll on the on-ramp). Both have a in-highway toll. #1 is $1.75. #2 is $1.50. I take #2.
Towards where I get off the highway, there are several choices. #3 is free. #4 is $0.25. #5 is free after a $1.00 in-highway toll.
I *could* get on at #1 and off at #5, which would cost me $2.75.
I *choose* to get on at #2 and off at #3, which only costs me $1.50.
The difference in distance is negligible.
Just because there is a more expensive route, we are under no obligation to take that route.
Since he had access to acquire the information for free, he did no wrong there. They also provided him the ability to upload the same information. The fees that they were charging were presumably for the hard-copy versions. So, he didn't make the hard-copy versions. He uploaded them. Big deal.
You know, that last line makes me think of the swine flu nonsense going around now. Hurry up and push out a possible cure, and worry about what will happen later. Raise the allowable mercury levels, so we can get it out, and hopefully there won't be too many toxic side effects. It will be a great epitaph for humanity. "In their fear of one disease, they wiped themselves out with another toxin"
That was a far from an all inclusive list. It was only using the/8's as examples anyways. I'm frequently amazed at how many/24's aren't being used for whatever reason.
Really, within a/24 that a customer may have requested and gotten, they may only be using half or more, and they are only required to say that they will be using 80% within x days to request more. If more of this allocated but unused address space was utilized, things would change drastically. While it's good in theory, how do you request the last 18 IP's off a/24 without really screwing with their netmask? No provider does. It's not worth fixing.
I think what we miss a lot of is that allocation does not equal utilization. We'll run for an awful long time at 100% allocation, until it actually becomes 100% utilization.
Well, the "proof" ranges from 2005 to 2010 as the outside date. There were plenty of others that I have read in the past that dated it all the way from the late 1990's through early 2000's, but I unfortunately couldn't find them in a quick search, and haven't bothered to keep them as proof of anything, other than my own little mental note that predictions are frequently inaccurate.
I'm not going to argue against IPv6, other than the fact that I don't believe it will ever be fully implemented. I've tried on and off over the years to get an IPv6 address that could be appropriately routed for normal use, and it simply doesn't happen. Oddly enough, I've tried with both big and small lines, and pesky things like making web sites work with it. No IPv6 gateway wanted to take on multiple Gb/s of traffic when I worked with a large site. The providers couldn't provide IPv6 natively. Now that I don't even have the pull of a multimillion dollar contract (for the bandwidth, not my paycheck), I've been having a bastard of a time doing it with my own relatively small sites. I did get a routed IPv6 IP from a gateway, but it wasn't static, and the gateway was slow for the few things that did do IPv6. It's far from being prime time, and will remain there long after the again tragic death of IPv4, which I'm sure will loom right through to Dec 21, 2012.:)
1.0.0.0/8 is still reserved
2.0.0.0/8 is still RIPE testing
5.0.0.0/8 is still reserved
14.0.0.0/8 is still reserved
I just bounced through the/8's to 20.0.0.0
A while back, I worked for a company who had millions of people hitting their main web site every day. I had the luxury of parsing the logs when I felt like it. That was more of an exercise in insanity, as a week was very easily 1,120,000,000 log lines. (8 million per day with 20 requests each as very very conservative numbers). Needless to say, it wasn't handled with a cat | cut | uniq
For my own entertainment, I used that as a decent sampling of what IP blocks were actually allocated. The odds were in my favor that if IP's in a/8 were being used, one would hit.:) There were huge glaring holes where those IP's had been allocated to somewhere, but weren't actually being used for anything.
We were pretty conservative with our IP utilization, but I've known plenty of places that aren't. For example, I've known places that had so many IP's on a single machine, you'd get a headache trying to comprehend it. For example, over a dozen/24 hosted on a half dozen machines, for the simple idea that search engines didn't like seeing web sites on the same IP. This was insanity, since virtually hosted domains had been in popular use for over a decade. Silly me, I always felt a little guilty having two IP's on the same box that could use up 100Mb/s on an average day.:)
You know, that "sky is falling" prediction has been coming and going for years now. It's always just a couple years away. Things get reallocated, and then it's "oh a couple years away". Someone always "discovers" IPv6, because they were just taught about it and suddenly it's the most important thing to them since storing rations for Y2K.
Sept 1998 In many ways, the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 marks the period of the Internet's adolescence. Within the user community, there's angst over... IPv4's 4.2 billion addresses will run out in about 10 years-by 2010 at the latest.
July 1999 - Wired The Internet on Thursday began moving from its old addressing system to a radically new one, though no one is likely to notice.
After four years of testing, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority on Thursday rolled out Version 6 of the Internet Protocol (IPv6), the next-generation numeric addressing system for the global network.
Under present conditions, Internet protocol (IP) addresses will run out by 2005, according to report by European Commission. Old IP version four (IPv4) cannot provide each person around the world with one address, especially since greater proportion of addresses have been assigned to North America.
The IPv4 Address Report lists two possible dates for when the number of IPv4 dates will run out: April 17, 2010 or December 2, 2010, depending on the source.
What roads do you drive on? I look at every vehicle on the road as a potential hazard. Just this week, I could have been in a dozen accidents from other drivers not following the rules (like obvious ones like you don't drive through a red light, or stay in your lane). Not that I'm an accident magnet, I'm just driving in a particularly stupid part of town this week. It has a higher accident rate than most places I go.
I don't know about you, but I could build a single use liquid fueled rocket engine, but building in a system to track a laser on a target at tens of thousands of feet away is a bit beyond me.
Well, that, and the typical laser pointer will diverge to so little visibility that it will effectively disappear at that range. The more effective method, at least for me, would be triangulation. Two points of a known distance apart, measure elevation and relative angle, and then provide the resulting 3d coordinates via a radio signal to the rocket. It wouldn't actually track the target, but travel to a known coordinate and detonate on impact.
But hey, the gov't doesn't want me working for the, so I'm not building any cool toys like that. Well, I guess until they start deploying stuff to shoot at me, then all bets are off. I think we can maintain a good agreement there, since I'm not a very interesting target.:)
I've gone around on a similar subject with some folks. Ya, the plastic skin (assuming it is) would be mostly invisible, but there are always pesky bits like the motors, fuel tanks, etc, etc. But, they're considering it for war against a country with no military other than our own. Radar visibility isn't a big deal. They don't even have to worry about other aircraft. It's biggest threat is... well... someone building their own solid/liquid fueled rockets (like an Estes model rocket on steroids). If you look around a bit, 40k feet isn't impossible for a model rocket, it just makes aiming rather difficult unless your target is a giant slow flying marshmallow.:)
It's just a matter of what you're trying to power with it.:)
I'm converting a city bus to be an RV, and have been looking at what's available in a lot of different ways. For electrical stuff, I could go with any standard, since I'm starting with a blank slate. It provides 12VDC and 24VDC. Ideally, I would want to go with 24VDC for everything, but it's not exactly easy to find COTS equipment like that. In other words, if the refrigerator or TV fails, you can't just run down to a local store and pick up a 24VDC or 240VAC 50Hz replacement.:) Of course, this is all dependent on where you are.
For my RV, I'm basing it on 12VDC and converting to 120VAC 60Hz as needed.
The most practical application that I wanted to find info for was a friend in Alaska. They're in geothermal active areas, so a subterranean loop would provide for a very warm side, always warmer than the cool side of the ambient air. A lot of people up there live off-grid, and have to truck, boat, or fly diesel fuel in to keep their generators going. That's a cumbersome task in mid winter.
For us folks farther south, I liked the idea of using the sun and ground water (or soil) for the temperature differential.
It seems that they aren't providing 120VAC 60Hz, according to their own contact page. But hey, if they can provide the engine half, it should be possible to mate it to the generator side.
You know, a hybrid car with a sterling engine wouldn't really be that bad of an idea.
I had thought up a few practical(ish) applications for Sterling engines, but couldn't find anywhere to buy a working one of any substantial size. Sure, I've found instructions on making one with a couple soda cans, but nothing that would make a few HP and spin a generator head.
How well would a hybrid parked in the sun do, if you could produce say 11hp to spin a 6Kw generator head all day? Heck, temperature differentials should make it generate power most of the day and night too.:) I'm sure 6Kw would do a lot towards recharging or maintaining a battery bank.
But, back on topic, that car looked kinda scary.:) And like any innovation, they won't be accepted by the people if their design is dramatically different from what they're used to. There's a good reason that the first cars resembled a horse and buggy (sans horse). People were used to the shape, so they liked it. That car looks more like an airstream trailer.:)
Well, you may not be able to beat it. Starbucks, like any other employer, have a finite set of positions for a much larger yet finite pool of potential employees.
These days, for any job, there are thousands of people who would love to have it.
Myself, I've applied at every tech job in 100 miles, along with Best Buy, CompUSA (yes, it's still in my area), and small mom & pop shops. I'm not that picky right now, but I do draw my line at a 3 month contract for $9/hr in a distant major metro area. Sorry, $9/hr isn't going to cover cost of living, and I have $0 for moving expenses. I don't know why the head hunters are bothering, other than the fact that THEY are just as desperate as we are.
Wanna bet? It may not be legal, but he'll be collecting a paycheck, and other legitimate employees won't.
For example, it could be clearly stated "You will only work 20 hours per week, for $10k/yr, or approx $9.61/hr". Unstated in contract but with a wink and a nod, is that he will work from home as necessary to accomplish the job at 100 hours per week. As long as he's happy, and neither side disclose anything, no one will be the wiser, until the 18 year old kid wants more.
Technically, the fed requires a minimum of $455/wk, or $23,660k/yr, which is the magic number that the employer can then demand 100 hrs/wk, which drops the actual pay rate down to [drum roll] $4.55/hr.
I'm there. I have the resume, and history to prove I know my job. It's been about 2 years of downhill slide, where things went from bad to worse to... well... I have all kinds of time to write on here now. I do odd jobs, look for real IT employment, and surf the web.
Nope, it's not about who you know, or what skills you have. It's not even about who drops dead any more. Back in the day, if someone died (or retired, whatever), that position would be filled by someone else. Now, if a position becomes empty, it's simply declared unneeded, and never filled. You'd be amazed how many IT guys I had to knock off to find that their positions weren't being filled by anyone.:)
(For the feds reading, I'm just kidding about that last part. Now please review my file again.)
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Many states have some sort of incentive. Unfortunately, most of them disallow you doing it yourself.
We had worked it out to be affordable, between state and federal incentives a good grid tied solar install could free. I had intended to set up a business to sell and install grid tied solar systems, where we would "finance" the cost until the incentives were paid. That way, everyone would win. People would get solar systems on their homes. They would help save the environment. It wouldn't cost the end user anything. We would make a little bit for doing the install, and everyone would be happy.
Unfortunately, the harsh reality didn't match the ideal scenario. We could do the install. We would have to find bank financing for the initial overhead of financing the installed equipment, which was very likely to happen. The government was the end of it though. To get the government incentives, you had to be an officially sanctioned solar install contractor. There weren't just a practical set of rules, there were huge hoops to jump through to be an officially sanctioned contractor. It eliminated any startup small business from getting into this new industry.
Almost, if not all, of the incentives go out the window if you do it yourself, or have anyone but a specialist installer do it for you. For a lot of the folks who would read a site like this, we're screwed.
Let me give you some first hand experience about the gray market transition.
Find a company name that is legitimately associated with the company you are working with, yet doesn't scream "GAMBLING". Use that name for any out-of-industry contacts you have. For example, if you work for offshore_gambling.com, but your company does have web_host_and_dev.com, associate yourself with that. Use the email. Put that on your resume. When you step away from the industry, never reference the gray market industry.
Most future employers don't even bother contact old employers. For the exceptions, it is very useful to ensure that there is (and will be) provisions where someone can verify your employment.
I just lost out on probably the best job possibility that I've ever been presented with. As part of that job, it required a very in depth background check (yes, the most in depth background check possible). I didn't get the job because two employers were unavailable to verify my employment history.
One was a perfectly legitimate mainstream company, who failed to verify anything. The investigator failed to find the business (strike 1).
The second was an gray market (adult) company. Unfortunately, due to the company shutting down operations, none of the old offices were available to verify my employment, and my best guess for a verifier failed. ("sorry, never heard of that company").
Mainstream or gray market doesn't matter. It's a matter of the verifiability of your employment, should the need arise later.
Unfortunately for me, I had told anyone that worked under me that I could be contacted directly to verify their employment. They were given honest reviews, simply avoiding the gray market part of the answers. Since I was the person now being verified, there was no one left to give the honest yet politically correct sanitized review.
So, it doesn't matter if you're working in a mainstream industry, or a gray market industry, you can always get bitten by a failure to verify in your future.
You're a bit short on the heat there.
Freezing point of H2 is 14K
Freezing point of O2 is 54K
At 2.7K , you'd just have hydrogen and oxygen dust in a pile. Kinda like baking a cake by throwing the dry ingredents together. Sure, you have the parts, but they don't make a cake.
Ok, car analogy. You guys couldn't bake a cake to save your life. :) You can have a pile of parts sufficient to make a car, but until they're assembled, you don't really have a car.
Then again, I hope I'm never standing in the room at 2.7K to prove or disprove it. That'd be a mighty slow room. :)
The flaw is in the methodology, not in the the number of users.
For example, if there's an error in the filesystem driver with corrupt blocks, the fix is just in the drivers behavior, not in the number of blocks that it fixes.
Obviously, one of those fixes is in how you kill your users. While firearms work very efficiently, bullets are expensive. Go for rapid blunt force trauma. Training is mandatory. Too much force, and you get blood splatter. Too little force, and they're just annoyed. ("hey, stop hitting me").
They should.
Obviously he isn't familiar with the concepts of conservation and advanced planning.
I guess more importantly, when everything collapses around him, he'd at least have another $700 in savings because he didn't blow it on the "cooler" toys.
But hey, what Mac Fanboy could ever be made redundant, and let go without any significant warning?
I was going to say something like that. When most people get into computers, they buy (or are given) a PC. Some people switch to Mac. Those who switch to Mac can likely have two or more, unless they give away their old computer. I'm amazed how otherwise perfectly normal people hold onto old hardware. No, not techno-packrats, but regular people. There could be something on that old hard drive that they need, even though they haven't turned that computer on in 10 years. :)
I still consider the whole thing silly. I'm sure Microsoft counts me quite a few times over as being a Windows user, because I bought hardware that had Windows installed on it from the OEM, but I wiped it out and put Linux on it without ever booting to Windows. :) I guess in theory, Microsoft could claim almost 100% market saturation, because every household where the people buy OEM machines would have a Windows license in it. :)
It's still obviously a cost consideration. If you pay $300 for a Windows PC, or save up $1,000 for a Mac over the next 4 months, you're still spending over 3x as much for the Mac.
While the wonders of the old economy still persist in people's minds (more money will always come in, so we can just save for a while and buy anything we'd like), that isn't quite as persistent now. (money will come in, until it doesn't, and then we only have what we saved).
If Apple wants a larger market share, they will have to make their pricing competitive. It's still not competitive enough, so they will continue to make a larger profit per unit with a smaller number of units.
It's all in the game you want to play. Do you want 4 customers making you 1 million dollars profit, or 4 million customers making you 1 dollar profit? The choice isn't quite as clear as you'd think. If you have the 1 million dollar customers, if one goes away, that hurts a lot. If you have the 1 dollar profit customers, a whole bunch can jump ship, and more will come in because your prices (and profit margin) is smaller.
But hey, if you want to save up your pennies and buy a Mac, more power to you. It'll be a nice fixture in the back of your car, when you get fired in the next round of downsizing next week, and you find yourself homeless.
To use your tollbooth analogy, if there's a free on-ramp and a free off-ramp, why not use them?
There's a particular stretch of highway that I drive, where I can get on at two different places. Both places are free (no toll on the on-ramp). Both have a in-highway toll. #1 is $1.75. #2 is $1.50. I take #2.
Towards where I get off the highway, there are several choices. #3 is free. #4 is $0.25. #5 is free after a $1.00 in-highway toll.
I *could* get on at #1 and off at #5, which would cost me $2.75.
I *choose* to get on at #2 and off at #3, which only costs me $1.50.
The difference in distance is negligible.
Just because there is a more expensive route, we are under no obligation to take that route.
Since he had access to acquire the information for free, he did no wrong there. They also provided him the ability to upload the same information. The fees that they were charging were presumably for the hard-copy versions. So, he didn't make the hard-copy versions. He uploaded them. Big deal.
You know, that last line makes me think of the swine flu nonsense going around now. Hurry up and push out a possible cure, and worry about what will happen later. Raise the allowable mercury levels, so we can get it out, and hopefully there won't be too many toxic side effects. It will be a great epitaph for humanity. "In their fear of one disease, they wiped themselves out with another toxin"
But when your upstream provider has 2 /8's allocated, that leaves plenty of unutilized /24's to be handed off to their clients.
That was a far from an all inclusive list. It was only using the /8's as examples anyways. I'm frequently amazed at how many /24's aren't being used for whatever reason.
Really, within a /24 that a customer may have requested and gotten, they may only be using half or more, and they are only required to say that they will be using 80% within x days to request more. If more of this allocated but unused address space was utilized, things would change drastically. While it's good in theory, how do you request the last 18 IP's off a /24 without really screwing with their netmask? No provider does. It's not worth fixing.
I think what we miss a lot of is that allocation does not equal utilization. We'll run for an awful long time at 100% allocation, until it actually becomes 100% utilization.
Well, the "proof" ranges from 2005 to 2010 as the outside date. There were plenty of others that I have read in the past that dated it all the way from the late 1990's through early 2000's, but I unfortunately couldn't find them in a quick search, and haven't bothered to keep them as proof of anything, other than my own little mental note that predictions are frequently inaccurate.
I'm not going to argue against IPv6, other than the fact that I don't believe it will ever be fully implemented. I've tried on and off over the years to get an IPv6 address that could be appropriately routed for normal use, and it simply doesn't happen. Oddly enough, I've tried with both big and small lines, and pesky things like making web sites work with it. No IPv6 gateway wanted to take on multiple Gb/s of traffic when I worked with a large site. The providers couldn't provide IPv6 natively. Now that I don't even have the pull of a multimillion dollar contract (for the bandwidth, not my paycheck), I've been having a bastard of a time doing it with my own relatively small sites. I did get a routed IPv6 IP from a gateway, but it wasn't static, and the gateway was slow for the few things that did do IPv6. It's far from being prime time, and will remain there long after the again tragic death of IPv4, which I'm sure will loom right through to Dec 21, 2012. :)
I'm still not all that convinced.
The allocations are still seriously screwy.
1.0.0.0/8 is still reserved
2.0.0.0/8 is still RIPE testing
5.0.0.0/8 is still reserved
14.0.0.0/8 is still reserved
I just bounced through the /8's to 20.0.0.0
A while back, I worked for a company who had millions of people hitting their main web site every day. I had the luxury of parsing the logs when I felt like it. That was more of an exercise in insanity, as a week was very easily 1,120,000,000 log lines. (8 million per day with 20 requests each as very very conservative numbers). Needless to say, it wasn't handled with a cat | cut | uniq
For my own entertainment, I used that as a decent sampling of what IP blocks were actually allocated. The odds were in my favor that if IP's in a /8 were being used, one would hit. :) There were huge glaring holes where those IP's had been allocated to somewhere, but weren't actually being used for anything.
We were pretty conservative with our IP utilization, but I've known plenty of places that aren't. For example, I've known places that had so many IP's on a single machine, you'd get a headache trying to comprehend it. For example, over a dozen /24 hosted on a half dozen machines, for the simple idea that search engines didn't like seeing web sites on the same IP. This was insanity, since virtually hosted domains had been in popular use for over a decade. Silly me, I always felt a little guilty having two IP's on the same box that could use up 100Mb/s on an average day. :)
You know, that "sky is falling" prediction has been coming and going for years now. It's always just a couple years away. Things get reallocated, and then it's "oh a couple years away". Someone always "discovers" IPv6, because they were just taught about it and suddenly it's the most important thing to them since storing rations for Y2K.
Sept 1998 ... IPv4's 4.2 billion addresses will run out in about 10 years-by 2010 at the latest.
In many ways, the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 marks the period of the Internet's adolescence. Within the user community, there's angst over
July 1999 - Wired
The Internet on Thursday began moving from its old addressing system to a radically new one, though no one is likely to notice.
After four years of testing, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority on Thursday rolled out Version 6 of the Internet Protocol (IPv6), the next-generation numeric addressing system for the global network.
March 2002, screen digest
Under present conditions, Internet protocol (IP) addresses will run out by 2005, according to report by European Commission. Old IP version four (IPv4) cannot provide each person around the world with one address, especially since greater proportion of addresses have been assigned to North America.
May 2007, internetnews.com
The IPv4 Address Report lists two possible dates for when the number of IPv4 dates will run out: April 17, 2010 or December 2, 2010, depending on the source.
What roads do you drive on? I look at every vehicle on the road as a potential hazard. Just this week, I could have been in a dozen accidents from other drivers not following the rules (like obvious ones like you don't drive through a red light, or stay in your lane). Not that I'm an accident magnet, I'm just driving in a particularly stupid part of town this week. It has a higher accident rate than most places I go.
I don't know about you, but I could build a single use liquid fueled rocket engine, but building in a system to track a laser on a target at tens of thousands of feet away is a bit beyond me.
Well, that, and the typical laser pointer will diverge to so little visibility that it will effectively disappear at that range. The more effective method, at least for me, would be triangulation. Two points of a known distance apart, measure elevation and relative angle, and then provide the resulting 3d coordinates via a radio signal to the rocket. It wouldn't actually track the target, but travel to a known coordinate and detonate on impact.
But hey, the gov't doesn't want me working for the, so I'm not building any cool toys like that. Well, I guess until they start deploying stuff to shoot at me, then all bets are off. I think we can maintain a good agreement there, since I'm not a very interesting target. :)
I've gone around on a similar subject with some folks. Ya, the plastic skin (assuming it is) would be mostly invisible, but there are always pesky bits like the motors, fuel tanks, etc, etc. But, they're considering it for war against a country with no military other than our own. Radar visibility isn't a big deal. They don't even have to worry about other aircraft. It's biggest threat is ... well ... someone building their own solid/liquid fueled rockets (like an Estes model rocket on steroids). If you look around a bit, 40k feet isn't impossible for a model rocket, it just makes aiming rather difficult unless your target is a giant slow flying marshmallow. :)
I'm thinking more of bright yellow with a big smiley face on it.
Then again, the flying Stay Puft Marshmallow Man look really works for them. Well, it worked for Gozer. :)
That was a much better sound track for the flying marshmallow. :)
It's just a matter of what you're trying to power with it. :)
I'm converting a city bus to be an RV, and have been looking at what's available in a lot of different ways. For electrical stuff, I could go with any standard, since I'm starting with a blank slate. It provides 12VDC and 24VDC. Ideally, I would want to go with 24VDC for everything, but it's not exactly easy to find COTS equipment like that. In other words, if the refrigerator or TV fails, you can't just run down to a local store and pick up a 24VDC or 240VAC 50Hz replacement. :) Of course, this is all dependent on where you are.
For my RV, I'm basing it on 12VDC and converting to 120VAC 60Hz as needed.
Thanks for the link.
The most practical application that I wanted to find info for was a friend in Alaska. They're in geothermal active areas, so a subterranean loop would provide for a very warm side, always warmer than the cool side of the ambient air. A lot of people up there live off-grid, and have to truck, boat, or fly diesel fuel in to keep their generators going. That's a cumbersome task in mid winter.
For us folks farther south, I liked the idea of using the sun and ground water (or soil) for the temperature differential.
It seems that they aren't providing 120VAC 60Hz, according to their own contact page. But hey, if they can provide the engine half, it should be possible to mate it to the generator side.
You know, a hybrid car with a sterling engine wouldn't really be that bad of an idea.
I had thought up a few practical(ish) applications for Sterling engines, but couldn't find anywhere to buy a working one of any substantial size. Sure, I've found instructions on making one with a couple soda cans, but nothing that would make a few HP and spin a generator head.
How well would a hybrid parked in the sun do, if you could produce say 11hp to spin a 6Kw generator head all day? Heck, temperature differentials should make it generate power most of the day and night too. :) I'm sure 6Kw would do a lot towards recharging or maintaining a battery bank.
But, back on topic, that car looked kinda scary. :) And like any innovation, they won't be accepted by the people if their design is dramatically different from what they're used to. There's a good reason that the first cars resembled a horse and buggy (sans horse). People were used to the shape, so they liked it. That car looks more like an airstream trailer. :)
Well, you may not be able to beat it. Starbucks, like any other employer, have a finite set of positions for a much larger yet finite pool of potential employees.
These days, for any job, there are thousands of people who would love to have it.
Myself, I've applied at every tech job in 100 miles, along with Best Buy, CompUSA (yes, it's still in my area), and small mom & pop shops. I'm not that picky right now, but I do draw my line at a 3 month contract for $9/hr in a distant major metro area. Sorry, $9/hr isn't going to cover cost of living, and I have $0 for moving expenses. I don't know why the head hunters are bothering, other than the fact that THEY are just as desperate as we are.
Wanna bet? It may not be legal, but he'll be collecting a paycheck, and other legitimate employees won't.
For example, it could be clearly stated "You will only work 20 hours per week, for $10k/yr, or approx $9.61/hr". Unstated in contract but with a wink and a nod, is that he will work from home as necessary to accomplish the job at 100 hours per week. As long as he's happy, and neither side disclose anything, no one will be the wiser, until the 18 year old kid wants more.
Technically, the fed requires a minimum of $455/wk, or $23,660k/yr, which is the magic number that the employer can then demand 100 hrs/wk, which drops the actual pay rate down to [drum roll] $4.55/hr.
I'm there. I have the resume, and history to prove I know my job. It's been about 2 years of downhill slide, where things went from bad to worse to ... well ... I have all kinds of time to write on here now. I do odd jobs, look for real IT employment, and surf the web.
Nope, it's not about who you know, or what skills you have. It's not even about who drops dead any more. Back in the day, if someone died (or retired, whatever), that position would be filled by someone else. Now, if a position becomes empty, it's simply declared unneeded, and never filled. You'd be amazed how many IT guys I had to knock off to find that their positions weren't being filled by anyone. :)
(For the feds reading, I'm just kidding about that last part. Now please review my file again.)