The AP-1000 isn't a new technology reactor. That's the whole point. It's a conventional pressurized-water reactor. It's built mostly from existing Westinghouse components which Westinghouse had type-approved by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, so that multiple identical units could be built without going through a full design review for each one. So far, nobody has ordered one. Until now.
Actually, it is a new design - passive safety systems,fewer components - that has little in common with earlier 2 and 4 loop W plants
The idea was to certify a design, and as long as you built a certified plant you could get a license to operate in a one step, vice the old two step, process. This is intended to reduce the uncertainty and hence cost.
It also states that this is a Pressurized Water Reactor, so it's probably more about generating by-products (esp. tritium) than it is about generating energy.
I work at a pressurized water reactor so I'm really getting a kick out of these replies....
No, seriously, I'm not an expert on the radionuclide table, but that's hardly why one would choose a pressurized water reactor over a boiling water reactor. (Those are the two big established types. The United States has dozens of both varieties in commercial operation.)
One big reason to pick a pressurized water reactor is that you limit your contamination to the primary reactor coolant loop and it's support systems. The steam plant- the electricity generating side- stays completely radiation free.
BWRs have a number of advantages:
advantage that uncovering fuel rods does not automatically lead to clad failure (in fact a portion is not covered by water during power operation as it turns water into steam); even a fully uncovered core could be steam cooled to prevent meltdown.
Refueling is also easier since the rods go in the bottom so there are no CRDMs to pull to pop the vessel head.
Chicago and NYC, maybe (about 700 miles)? Or maybe NYC to Atlanta? The east coast of USA has a decent population density, a fast railway system makes a lot sense there.
But at the NYC - CHI or ATL distances flying becomes hours faster; so unless rail is significantly cheaper (which it is not on the DC-NYC-BOS corridor) it will be hard to compete with air.
1) Don't forget: the vast majority of college professors are unabashed liberals, if not outright socialists.
There are plenty of conservative professors, they just don't fit into the Jesus and Shotgun ethic that drives the GOP today. When you decide to take an anti-intellectual approach to politics you're going to, surprise, lose the intellectuals.
Really? There are plenty of conservative professor?
According to this article http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/08/politics 9.2% of college professors are conservative vs, 44.1% of college professors are liberals. I have seen this in several other articles.
Can you provide any reference to support your claim?
How about from your reference:
The results of the study find a professoriate that may be less liberal than is widely assumed, even if conservatives are correctly assumed to be in a distinct minority. The authors present evidence that there are more faculty members who identify as moderates than as liberals. The authors of the study also found evidence of a significant decline by age group in faculty radicalism, with younger faculty members less likely than their older counterparts to identify as radical or activist. And while the study found that faculty members generally hold what are thought to be liberal positions on social issues, professors are divided on affirmative action in college admissions.
It would seem that professors, while possibly more liberal than the general population, have views that cut across teh spectrum and may be liberal in some areas and conservative in others.
That is not unusual in even the general population. The "Southern Democrat" for example, socially liberal but economically conservative.
Why do you think that's automatically a 'pork barrel' scheme?
Rail systems are absolutely superb in European countries (very often it's FASTER to take a train then fly by plane).
USA could use something like this.
The problem, as has been pointed out, is population density. Germany, for example, has a good rail system. However, it is somewhat larger than Georgia with a much larger population and more major cities. To build teh equivalent in Georgia would result in high speed rail connecting Atlanta with what - Savannah? Columbus? Vidella? Not likely to be much demand for that sort of connection.
Charlotte SC makes some sense.
Of course, then you get into right of way issues if you build new rail or the freight first traffic control on existing lines if you upgrade.
So what? I'm pretty sure any online merchant system can handle a thousand numbers.
That's not the problem - it's that a sale may be taxed differently even within a state. For example, one county may have a "Local Option sales tax" that adds to the state tax - so if you live within that county you would need to pay it. However, unless the seller knows what county you are in there's no way to know what tax to actually collect. ZIP codes alone won't do it. Add city sales tax and it gets even more complex.
Then there's the issue of what is taxable. As the article pointed out two similar things - versions of Milky Way Bars - may be treated differently. What about tax Holidays - vendors should not collect taxes on those days but then again what is and isn't taxed varies greatly.
States could enforce use taxes but won't - the political fallout would be enormous and no state politician wants to start that fight. Instead they go after an easier target - internet retailers.
I wonder if this is an attempt by the ISPs to end around net neutrality. They set these caps low, users won't pay. But certain third parties who make revenue sharing deals with the ISPs (think Hulu, YouTube, etc.) are exempted from the caps. Since users won't pay higher for uncapped data, it will drive users to the "free" services, creating more revenue for the ISP.
And this is bad because? ISPs exist to make money. This is a way to make more money and they would be stupid not to explore the option.
Now, I understand the desire for unlimited bandwidth and want it as cheap as possible; but at some point the ISPs have to decide on how to make the most form existing infrastructure and how to pay for upgrades as demand increases. This is also a way to slow demand growth to allow for a more economical build out.
Network Neutrality : Two question for the great debate. In California there was an outrage when it was disclosed that electricity companies had deliberately idled plants while supplies were tight and then waited for prices to skyrocket on the spot market. If the current Internet network infrastructure provided by the backbone providers and Internet service providers can currently support much higher speeds and data quantities to current customers, then is the act of packet filtering and setting arbitrary low speed and data caps also effectively providing an "idled" service? Is a tiered Internet service, where content providers would be effectively competing on a similar market to the electricity "spot market", a market based entirely on Artificial Scarcity?
Unfortunately for CA the plant owners did exactly what was to be expected given the rules established by the state.
CA's legislature thought they had setup that met their political goals - keep prices low to voters but in reality screwed up their entire pricing structure. Let's see - price caps (and rate reductions) to end users no matter what the supply cost was; mandated supply even if the cost was more to the utility than what they are getting paid; and a pricing model that encouraged getting the highest cost plants online as much as possible. Despite some warnings that this would happen the legislature touted the bill as a great thing - and when things went south they ran as fast as they could from accepting any of the blame for screwing things up.
They sold me unlimited service and they have reneged on their part of the deal. They altered the contract. That should be illegal, but they did it.
Chances are your contract allows them to change the terms provided they notify you; at which point you can accept the change or cancel the contract. Nothing illegal or unreasonable since both sides have the option of continuing or ending the contract.
I completely believe there is fine print. Regardless, they sold it as "unlimited". Yes, 6M is a peak throughput, but there was no restrictions on WHEN nor HOW LONG I use that 6M peak throughput.
You get unlimited capacity but a peak throughput - which means that they can slow you down as needed without impacting your unlimited capacity. I bet your TOS don't guaranty 6M throughput 24/7 but rather a maximum achievable value. At any rate, you still have unlimited (i.e.e no cap) usage even at non-peak speeds.
It would be interesting to periodically test your connection speeds - if you rarely exceed a lower peak speed then you could lower your connection costs by dropping to a lower tier.
I'm actually ok with caps as long as they're sane. 5GB per month is not sane. 1 Steam game can put you over that quite easily. Caps simply will not be viable in a future where everything moves over the connection; esp when it's the same ISP moving IPTV.
That's why you need tiered cap pricing if you go to that - for some people 5GB is quite enough, others would use it in a day. Tiered pricing allows people to decide for themselves what capacity they need and not pay for more or underwite other high use customers.
Metered would be ok with me as well. It would be interesting to see what happened if metered billing became the norm. I wonder if AdBlock would become a norm, and if there would be a movement back to more thin looking websites to save the bandwidth for the actual data rather than the look n feel.
The problem is that metered use would seriously impact a lot of companies business model s people respond to tiered pricing. VOD, for example, would probably get less uptake as people compare that cost to renting or watching a movie on pay per view.
My guess is that restrictive caps and metered usage would set off a battle between ISPs and the rest of the infrastructure - to the point I'd expect to see major content providers arguing that internet access should be a government regulated / provided utility because of its impact on the economy. Many content owners are waking up to the idea they can cut distribution costs significantly by internet based delivery; thereby making more money by cutting out the middle man and essentially passing the cost of the tangible media to the buyer eliminating all the reproduction, storage and distribution costs; as well as be freed from battles over format (Blu-ray vs HD and whatever comes next.) Given their political clout I'm sure they will start crying if ISPs significantly cut into the viability of such markets.
That's not the issue in this story. It's under German law, that the supplier and retailer can't agree on what the retail price will be.
Didn't Germany have a law that allowed manufacturers to dictate a retail price that set the minimum a store could charge? The idea was this protected the local shops from the big bad chains by eliminating any price differential.
Demonstrating it "in the lab" as you describe isn't half as impressive as demonstrating it "in the wild", IMO. Your option would definitely be the best way to do it for a business demo, yes. For a grad student project? I think their way is fine, and possibly even more appropriate.
No, "in the lab" is definitely the way to do this since you have a controlled environment where you can pretty much ensure that you will not accidentally cause problems for someone else.
"In the wild", OTOH, you really have no way to gauge the impact of your actions and whether they will have unexpected consequences; that is a bad way to design and run an experiment.
In addition, you have no control over what happens in the wild where you do in the lab. If something odd or interesting occurred - was it due to your procedures or someone else's actions. Again, poor design.
A better approach would have been to do this in the lab, find out what works and why as well as what doesn't and why, and then publish your results.
Finally, here is a side note - if the data is out there now on Wiki's with CC licenses; is their data now licensed under a CC license? I assume they used garbage data for their encrypted data packets; but if not then what?
They are everything Amazon is not, privately owned, good to their employees, socially responsible even when it doesn't show up in the press. They even have some brick and mortar locations (Portland OR, and Chicago).
While I am a big Powell's fan and visit whenever I am in either city; the Chicago and Portland stores are not owned by the same people. They were started by the same family, however.
Seriously, would you? The developer admits to infecting people's computers and accounts in order to advertise his services, and doesn't think he did anything wrong. How can anyone trust his services then?
For starters he should be forced to take down StalkDaily. I'm sure Tweeter lawyers are looking into this right now. And for once, I agree with such a move./not a tweeter user
Not only that, but by admitting to what he did he makes criminal prosecution easier. Not a very smart thing to do; plus now he will be forever linked to his act for any future employer to see.
TMI wasn't caused by a computer failure but the accident was made vastly worse by an error of computer design. Specifically, TMI-2 had a terrible user interface.
See, See. UI is important!!!!
I'm a nuclear engineer and I think the use of the term UI for the control room is somewhat 'simplistic'. I personally think a major issue was over design in a certain area (redundant alarms), and lack of safety systems that would prevent the core from melting even with a LOCA in place. It was two hours after the shutdown when the fuel melting began at TMI-2. This was a scenario where the operators couldn't understand what was happening. Now from an operator's perspective (who sits in the operator room) you're not looking at a "UI" in the traditional CS sense.
The events leading up to the disaster started on the secondary side (non-core) leading to a LOCA (Loss of Coolant Accident). For those unfamiliar with the term "secondary side". The secondary side of a Nuclear Power Plant is similar to that of any power generating plant, meaning the secondary side does not contain the reactor core.
Actually, the TMI event was the result of a number of things:
Poor UI - the pressurizer valve that had no real position indication but was driven off of teh valve operator position; hence a closed indication did not mean the valve was closed but that the motor operator had gone to the close position. The valve in fact was still open
Operator training - they did not realize the temperature indications downstream of the stuck open valve were at the temperature for high pressure steam that had dropped to atmospheric and hence cooled. They (incorrectly) thought it indicated the valve was closed because otherwise the temperatures should be near reactor temperature.
Operator actions - they overrode safety systems because they thought the coolant injection would exceed brittle fracture limits (due to their assumption the valve was closed and thus risked overpressurization as the pressurizer went solid). Had they kept hands off the safety systems would have prevented the meltdown and core damage. Their training lead them to take the erroneous actions.
Lack of information sharing within the nuclear operators - Davis Besse had a similar event that as properly handled; but the TMI operators were unaware of it.
The safety systems were adequate to the task. As for the amount of alarms - there are a lot but operators learn to focus on the critical ones and take actions based on their training and interpretation of indications; which was lacking in the TMI event. The operators were setup by their training in this case, IMHO.
It has been extremely well established that if your copyrighted (sign, building, whatever) is viewable from a public place, then an image taken from that public place does not infringe. Period.
True; but you can be limited in how you use the photograph. For example, you then use it to advertise a product you need permission to use the copyrighted sign. Just because you have an image that is non-infringing doesn't mean you have the right to use copyrighted material in the photo in any way you see fit.
I'm talking specifically about SMS, which was the topic of the parent post. The service is essentially identical between providers. Yes, there is a difference in coverage area, so I would be fine with the price being Verizon > ATT > T-Mobile/Sprint > MetroPCS (or whatever) That is not what we see, though. More importantly, everyone recently DOUBLED their per-SMS fee. There is no cost of service justification for the price increase, and no "supplier differentiation" that suddenly applied to all of them. It is clearly the act of an oligopoly.
Considering plans from ATT and VZW, for example, differ significantly in cost (59 vs 69 for example) for the same minutes and unlimited texting your argument is wrong. And Boost offers unlimited calls/web/text for a lot less than comparable VZW/ATT plans as well; so there is proce competition.
As for differentiation; carriers do that on a number of things such as phone selection and perceived service quality. Text messaging is merely one part of heir service offering.
What counts is what people are willing to pay, not what it costs to provide or produce it.
Only if you are dealing with a monopoly or an oligopoly. (Which is the case here). In a free market, competition between providers would force them to lower the price to "cost of providing plus a reasonable profit."
You are assuming that it is an undifferentiated or commodity market an that all sellers are price takers. That is not the case here; the competitors differentiate in an attempt to maintain prices. Given that there are a number of choices that are cheaper than the big 3, and prices have dropped considerably for cell phone plans, I contend that there is enough competition to consider this a free market.
A fair profit is whatever the market will bear; especially for a non-essential product such as a cell phone.
The only explanation I can see for all the carriers charging the same price to consumers for a service that literally costs them nothing to provide...
is collusion.
Simple. price transparency and low switching costs (out of contract) means that unless you sufficiently differentiate your product you will charge what the lowest product in the market costs and prices will converge. That does not mean you colluded on pricing; just that when one competitor sets a price the others follow or lose customers. As a note, not all pricing is uniform across US cell phone carriers. As long as no competitor is really stupid everyone makes money. The airlines do this as well except they have some real stupid competitors so pricing often is ruinous to all.
Supply of text-messaging bandwidth across several providers is several orders of magnitude higher than demand. If you compare usage of the service to capacity, it doesn't seem all that popular. Usage is a drop in the ocean.
By your argument, cell phones aren't popular because a lot of bandwidth goes unused; nor is internet access because there is also a lot of unused bandwidth and dark fiber available. However, when you look at percentages of people using certain services I'd say cell phones; internet access and messaging are all popular services.
The only possible explanation for the price of text messaging in the US is collusion. It would simply be too profitable to lure customers from a competing carrier by giving away what you essentially get for free to otherwise explain why none of the major providers have reasonable SMS rates. They understand that it would lead to a price war and eliminate SMS as a profit center, so they collude not to do it.
It's amazing that people think simply because something has a low cost to produce it should be cheap. Cell phone companies charge because people will pay for a service; and they will charge what the market will bear to get the most profit from what they sell.
Just because they chose not to start a price war doesn't mean they collude. They can independently decide not to lower prices and that's quite legal; they realize that to stop charging for text messages would just mean lower revenue for everyone in the end and probably no change in their overall customer numbers. As a result, engaging in a price war is counter productive; instead they differentiate by phone offerings and service claims. At any rate, good business decisions do not require collusion; simply common sense and reasonable competitors.
It's a popular service that people will pay for; so it's priced accordingly. What counts is what people are willing to pay, not what it costs to provide or produce it.
People in extremely prestigious programs may spend all of their time preening and winning awards and only needs students to supply them with narcissistic supply: if you can't stand kissing A, stay away from the most lauded people at the most prestigious programs.
Having worked with some of those people I'd say your over-generalizing. Chicago types, in particular, seem to thrive on discussion and really care less about who you are over what you know.
Shutting down red hat wouldn't work. The developers would just start a "Blue Hat" company and start building a distribution called "sombrero".
We'll that's teh rub, isn't it? What is to stop RH's staff from leaving after a buyout and starting a new company based on OSS? Does RH have enough proprietary add-ons to differentiate themselves?
Where is the value? The software or the development / support staff?
If you aren't a full time stock investor with plenty of inside
information, you should not be buying stocks. Those with little experience
just lost 40% of their money!
Yea, we're in a down market. But over time a broad index fund has provide greater returns than most common alternatives. Of course, if you think you can beat the market with your system then, yes, you should not be in the market.
Slashdot Mirror
The AP-1000 isn't a new technology reactor. That's the whole point. It's a conventional pressurized-water reactor. It's built mostly from existing Westinghouse components which Westinghouse had type-approved by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, so that multiple identical units could be built without going through a full design review for each one. So far, nobody has ordered one. Until now.
Actually, it is a new design - passive safety systems,fewer components - that has little in common with earlier 2 and 4 loop W plants
The idea was to certify a design, and as long as you built a certified plant you could get a license to operate in a one step, vice the old two step, process. This is intended to reduce the uncertainty and hence cost.
I work at a pressurized water reactor so I'm really getting a kick out of these replies....
No, seriously, I'm not an expert on the radionuclide table, but that's hardly why one would choose a pressurized water reactor over a boiling water reactor. (Those are the two big established types. The United States has dozens of both varieties in commercial operation.)
One big reason to pick a pressurized water reactor is that you limit your contamination to the primary reactor coolant loop and it's support systems. The steam plant- the electricity generating side- stays completely radiation free.
BWRs have a number of advantages:
advantage that uncovering fuel rods does not automatically lead to clad failure (in fact a portion is not covered by water during power operation as it turns water into steam); even a fully uncovered core could be steam cooled to prevent meltdown.
Refueling is also easier since the rods go in the bottom so there are no CRDMs to pull to pop the vessel head.
No Boron.
Those are few that come to mind.
Chicago and NYC, maybe (about 700 miles)? Or maybe NYC to Atlanta? The east coast of USA has a decent population density, a fast railway system makes a lot sense there.
But at the NYC - CHI or ATL distances flying becomes hours faster; so unless rail is significantly cheaper (which it is not on the DC-NYC-BOS corridor) it will be hard to compete with air.
1) Don't forget: the vast majority of college professors are unabashed liberals, if not outright socialists. There are plenty of conservative professors, they just don't fit into the Jesus and Shotgun ethic that drives the GOP today. When you decide to take an anti-intellectual approach to politics you're going to, surprise, lose the intellectuals.
Really? There are plenty of conservative professor? According to this article http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/08/politics 9.2% of college professors are conservative vs, 44.1% of college professors are liberals. I have seen this in several other articles. Can you provide any reference to support your claim?
How about from your reference:
The results of the study find a professoriate that may be less liberal than is widely assumed, even if conservatives are correctly assumed to be in a distinct minority. The authors present evidence that there are more faculty members who identify as moderates than as liberals. The authors of the study also found evidence of a significant decline by age group in faculty radicalism, with younger faculty members less likely than their older counterparts to identify as radical or activist. And while the study found that faculty members generally hold what are thought to be liberal positions on social issues, professors are divided on affirmative action in college admissions.
It would seem that professors, while possibly more liberal than the general population, have views that cut across teh spectrum and may be liberal in some areas and conservative in others.
That is not unusual in even the general population. The "Southern Democrat" for example, socially liberal but economically conservative.
Why do you think that's automatically a 'pork barrel' scheme?
Rail systems are absolutely superb in European countries (very often it's FASTER to take a train then fly by plane).
USA could use something like this.
The problem, as has been pointed out, is population density. Germany, for example, has a good rail system. However, it is somewhat larger than Georgia with a much larger population and more major cities. To build teh equivalent in Georgia would result in high speed rail connecting Atlanta with what - Savannah? Columbus? Vidella? Not likely to be much demand for that sort of connection. Charlotte SC makes some sense. Of course, then you get into right of way issues if you build new rail or the freight first traffic control on existing lines if you upgrade.
Wouldn't this whole thing be interfering with the interstate commerce protections that are part of the foundations of our law?
Except that regulating interstate commerce is specifically mentioned in the Constitution as a power given to Congress.
So what? I'm pretty sure any online merchant system can handle a thousand numbers.
That's not the problem - it's that a sale may be taxed differently even within a state. For example, one county may have a "Local Option sales tax" that adds to the state tax - so if you live within that county you would need to pay it. However, unless the seller knows what county you are in there's no way to know what tax to actually collect. ZIP codes alone won't do it. Add city sales tax and it gets even more complex.
Then there's the issue of what is taxable. As the article pointed out two similar things - versions of Milky Way Bars - may be treated differently. What about tax Holidays - vendors should not collect taxes on those days but then again what is and isn't taxed varies greatly.
States could enforce use taxes but won't - the political fallout would be enormous and no state politician wants to start that fight. Instead they go after an easier target - internet retailers.
I wonder if this is an attempt by the ISPs to end around net neutrality. They set these caps low, users won't pay. But certain third parties who make revenue sharing deals with the ISPs (think Hulu, YouTube, etc.) are exempted from the caps. Since users won't pay higher for uncapped data, it will drive users to the "free" services, creating more revenue for the ISP.
And this is bad because? ISPs exist to make money. This is a way to make more money and they would be stupid not to explore the option.
Now, I understand the desire for unlimited bandwidth and want it as cheap as possible; but at some point the ISPs have to decide on how to make the most form existing infrastructure and how to pay for upgrades as demand increases. This is also a way to slow demand growth to allow for a more economical build out.
Monday, July 17, 2006
Unfortunately for CA the plant owners did exactly what was to be expected given the rules established by the state.
CA's legislature thought they had setup that met their political goals - keep prices low to voters but in reality screwed up their entire pricing structure. Let's see - price caps (and rate reductions) to end users no matter what the supply cost was; mandated supply even if the cost was more to the utility than what they are getting paid; and a pricing model that encouraged getting the highest cost plants online as much as possible. Despite some warnings that this would happen the legislature touted the bill as a great thing - and when things went south they ran as fast as they could from accepting any of the blame for screwing things up.
They sold me unlimited service and they have reneged on their part of the deal. They altered the contract. That should be illegal, but they did it.
Chances are your contract allows them to change the terms provided they notify you; at which point you can accept the change or cancel the contract. Nothing illegal or unreasonable since both sides have the option of continuing or ending the contract.
I completely believe there is fine print. Regardless, they sold it as "unlimited". Yes, 6M is a peak throughput, but there was no restrictions on WHEN nor HOW LONG I use that 6M peak throughput.
You get unlimited capacity but a peak throughput - which means that they can slow you down as needed without impacting your unlimited capacity. I bet your TOS don't guaranty 6M throughput 24/7 but rather a maximum achievable value. At any rate, you still have unlimited (i.e.e no cap) usage even at non-peak speeds.
It would be interesting to periodically test your connection speeds - if you rarely exceed a lower peak speed then you could lower your connection costs by dropping to a lower tier.
I'm actually ok with caps as long as they're sane. 5GB per month is not sane. 1 Steam game can put you over that quite easily. Caps simply will not be viable in a future where everything moves over the connection; esp when it's the same ISP moving IPTV.
That's why you need tiered cap pricing if you go to that - for some people 5GB is quite enough, others would use it in a day. Tiered pricing allows people to decide for themselves what capacity they need and not pay for more or underwite other high use customers.
Metered would be ok with me as well. It would be interesting to see what happened if metered billing became the norm. I wonder if AdBlock would become a norm, and if there would be a movement back to more thin looking websites to save the bandwidth for the actual data rather than the look n feel.
The problem is that metered use would seriously impact a lot of companies business model s people respond to tiered pricing. VOD, for example, would probably get less uptake as people compare that cost to renting or watching a movie on pay per view.
My guess is that restrictive caps and metered usage would set off a battle between ISPs and the rest of the infrastructure - to the point I'd expect to see major content providers arguing that internet access should be a government regulated / provided utility because of its impact on the economy. Many content owners are waking up to the idea they can cut distribution costs significantly by internet based delivery; thereby making more money by cutting out the middle man and essentially passing the cost of the tangible media to the buyer eliminating all the reproduction, storage and distribution costs; as well as be freed from battles over format (Blu-ray vs HD and whatever comes next.) Given their political clout I'm sure they will start crying if ISPs significantly cut into the viability of such markets.
That's not the issue in this story. It's under German law, that the supplier and retailer can't agree on what the retail price will be.
Didn't Germany have a law that allowed manufacturers to dictate a retail price that set the minimum a store could charge? The idea was this protected the local shops from the big bad chains by eliminating any price differential.
Has that gone away?
Demonstrating it "in the lab" as you describe isn't half as impressive as demonstrating it "in the wild", IMO. Your option would definitely be the best way to do it for a business demo, yes. For a grad student project? I think their way is fine, and possibly even more appropriate.
No, "in the lab" is definitely the way to do this since you have a controlled environment where you can pretty much ensure that you will not accidentally cause problems for someone else.
"In the wild", OTOH, you really have no way to gauge the impact of your actions and whether they will have unexpected consequences; that is a bad way to design and run an experiment.
In addition, you have no control over what happens in the wild where you do in the lab. If something odd or interesting occurred - was it due to your procedures or someone else's actions. Again, poor design.
A better approach would have been to do this in the lab, find out what works and why as well as what doesn't and why, and then publish your results.
Finally, here is a side note - if the data is out there now on Wiki's with CC licenses; is their data now licensed under a CC license? I assume they used garbage data for their encrypted data packets; but if not then what?
They are everything Amazon is not, privately owned, good to their employees, socially responsible even when it doesn't show up in the press. They even have some brick and mortar locations (Portland OR, and Chicago).
While I am a big Powell's fan and visit whenever I am in either city; the Chicago and Portland stores are not owned by the same people. They were started by the same family, however.
Seriously, would you? The developer admits to infecting people's computers and accounts in order to advertise his services, and doesn't think he did anything wrong. How can anyone trust his services then?
For starters he should be forced to take down StalkDaily. I'm sure Tweeter lawyers are looking into this right now. And for once, I agree with such a move. /not a tweeter user
Not only that, but by admitting to what he did he makes criminal prosecution easier. Not a very smart thing to do; plus now he will be forever linked to his act for any future employer to see.
See, See. UI is important!!!!
I'm a nuclear engineer and I think the use of the term UI for the control room is somewhat 'simplistic'. I personally think a major issue was over design in a certain area (redundant alarms), and lack of safety systems that would prevent the core from melting even with a LOCA in place. It was two hours after the shutdown when the fuel melting began at TMI-2. This was a scenario where the operators couldn't understand what was happening. Now from an operator's perspective (who sits in the operator room) you're not looking at a "UI" in the traditional CS sense. The events leading up to the disaster started on the secondary side (non-core) leading to a LOCA (Loss of Coolant Accident). For those unfamiliar with the term "secondary side". The secondary side of a Nuclear Power Plant is similar to that of any power generating plant, meaning the secondary side does not contain the reactor core.
Actually, the TMI event was the result of a number of things:
Poor UI - the pressurizer valve that had no real position indication but was driven off of teh valve operator position; hence a closed indication did not mean the valve was closed but that the motor operator had gone to the close position. The valve in fact was still open
Operator training - they did not realize the temperature indications downstream of the stuck open valve were at the temperature for high pressure steam that had dropped to atmospheric and hence cooled. They (incorrectly) thought it indicated the valve was closed because otherwise the temperatures should be near reactor temperature.
Operator actions - they overrode safety systems because they thought the coolant injection would exceed brittle fracture limits (due to their assumption the valve was closed and thus risked overpressurization as the pressurizer went solid). Had they kept hands off the safety systems would have prevented the meltdown and core damage. Their training lead them to take the erroneous actions.
Lack of information sharing within the nuclear operators - Davis Besse had a similar event that as properly handled; but the TMI operators were unaware of it.
The safety systems were adequate to the task. As for the amount of alarms - there are a lot but operators learn to focus on the critical ones and take actions based on their training and interpretation of indications; which was lacking in the TMI event. The operators were setup by their training in this case, IMHO.
It has been extremely well established that if your copyrighted (sign, building, whatever) is viewable from a public place, then an image taken from that public place does not infringe. Period.
True; but you can be limited in how you use the photograph. For example, you then use it to advertise a product you need permission to use the copyrighted sign. Just because you have an image that is non-infringing doesn't mean you have the right to use copyrighted material in the photo in any way you see fit.
I'm talking specifically about SMS, which was the topic of the parent post. The service is essentially identical between providers. Yes, there is a difference in coverage area, so I would be fine with the price being Verizon > ATT > T-Mobile/Sprint > MetroPCS (or whatever) That is not what we see, though. More importantly, everyone recently DOUBLED their per-SMS fee. There is no cost of service justification for the price increase, and no "supplier differentiation" that suddenly applied to all of them. It is clearly the act of an oligopoly.
Considering plans from ATT and VZW, for example, differ significantly in cost (59 vs 69 for example) for the same minutes and unlimited texting your argument is wrong. And Boost offers unlimited calls/web/text for a lot less than comparable VZW/ATT plans as well; so there is proce competition.
As for differentiation; carriers do that on a number of things such as phone selection and perceived service quality. Text messaging is merely one part of heir service offering.
Only if you are dealing with a monopoly or an oligopoly. (Which is the case here). In a free market, competition between providers would force them to lower the price to "cost of providing plus a reasonable profit."
You are assuming that it is an undifferentiated or commodity market an that all sellers are price takers. That is not the case here; the competitors differentiate in an attempt to maintain prices. Given that there are a number of choices that are cheaper than the big 3, and prices have dropped considerably for cell phone plans, I contend that there is enough competition to consider this a free market.
A fair profit is whatever the market will bear; especially for a non-essential product such as a cell phone.
The only explanation I can see for all the carriers charging the same price to consumers for a service that literally costs them nothing to provide...
is collusion.
Simple. price transparency and low switching costs (out of contract) means that unless you sufficiently differentiate your product you will charge what the lowest product in the market costs and prices will converge. That does not mean you colluded on pricing; just that when one competitor sets a price the others follow or lose customers. As a note, not all pricing is uniform across US cell phone carriers. As long as no competitor is really stupid everyone makes money. The airlines do this as well except they have some real stupid competitors so pricing often is ruinous to all.
It's really simple economics and game theory.
Define "popular".
Supply of text-messaging bandwidth across several providers is several orders of magnitude higher than demand. If you compare usage of the service to capacity, it doesn't seem all that popular. Usage is a drop in the ocean.
By your argument, cell phones aren't popular because a lot of bandwidth goes unused; nor is internet access because there is also a lot of unused bandwidth and dark fiber available. However, when you look at percentages of people using certain services I'd say cell phones; internet access and messaging are all popular services.
The only possible explanation for the price of text messaging in the US is collusion. It would simply be too profitable to lure customers from a competing carrier by giving away what you essentially get for free to otherwise explain why none of the major providers have reasonable SMS rates. They understand that it would lead to a price war and eliminate SMS as a profit center, so they collude not to do it.
It's amazing that people think simply because something has a low cost to produce it should be cheap. Cell phone companies charge because people will pay for a service; and they will charge what the market will bear to get the most profit from what they sell.
Just because they chose not to start a price war doesn't mean they collude. They can independently decide not to lower prices and that's quite legal; they realize that to stop charging for text messages would just mean lower revenue for everyone in the end and probably no change in their overall customer numbers. As a result, engaging in a price war is counter productive; instead they differentiate by phone offerings and service claims. At any rate, good business decisions do not require collusion; simply common sense and reasonable competitors.
Let's assume for the moment that you're right.
Explain the cost of SMS.
It's a popular service that people will pay for; so it's priced accordingly. What counts is what people are willing to pay, not what it costs to provide or produce it.
People in extremely prestigious programs may spend all of their time preening and winning awards and only needs students to supply them with narcissistic supply: if you can't stand kissing A, stay away from the most lauded people at the most prestigious programs.
Having worked with some of those people I'd say your over-generalizing. Chicago types, in particular, seem to thrive on discussion and really care less about who you are over what you know.
Shutting down red hat wouldn't work. The developers would just start a "Blue Hat" company and start building a distribution called "sombrero".
We'll that's teh rub, isn't it? What is to stop RH's staff from leaving after a buyout and starting a new company based on OSS? Does RH have enough proprietary add-ons to differentiate themselves?
Where is the value? The software or the development / support staff?
If you aren't a full time stock investor with plenty of inside information, you should not be buying stocks. Those with little experience just lost 40% of their money!
Yea, we're in a down market. But over time a broad index fund has provide greater returns than most common alternatives. Of course, if you think you can beat the market with your system then, yes, you should not be in the market.