The average user won't be using the 1/10 the space, nevermind 1GB. A full terabyte of storage on IDE drives is now $500. If they can advertise on even 1000 accounts, with 10 email/week on each account the advertising alone on those 500,000 messages will be worth that $500, at least at their current adwords pricing structure. Being able to send a personalized ad based on message text is seriously huge. Their fast cluster technology can easily handle the hundreds and soon thousands of messages sent per day.
Good engineering design requires at least 5% tolerance for voltage differences. That's 11 volts at 220, and 209 should be well within the range of all line powered equipment. You simply can't design a product and expect the voltage to be within 5% regulated value.
Most equipment will run just fine with only 10-20% regulation. The problem with dropping the voltage is that the lower limit is much closer. A 10% device can handle voltages between 198 and 242, but if the utility lowers the voltage to 209, then when it's low by 10% it's at 188v, outside the range of a device capable of operating within 10% of its spec.
The reality is that most electronic devices use transformers and switching regulators to convert line voltage to a much lower voltage. As long as the device isn't consuming its maximum rated current (which will usually be 95% of the time) then it should be fine. The 5% of the time the device is actually using the regulator to its maximum capacity the regulator may fail to provide the voltage level. This erratic behavior will be about the worst you can expect. In most cases you won't even notice this.
The last major effect such a decrease may cause would be to large industrial motors. They are also often specified with a voltage range at which they can provide their rated HP. Lower voltage means a lower output. Those that are specified tightly, or have dodgy starting controls/capacitors may fail to start, but that's an indication of improper sizing/usage and not something that should be blamed on the power company. Of course, at a lower voltage they simply will not perform at the level they do with full voltage, but that is the stated goal for the gov't - to reduce power.
The negative effect for the gov't, though, is the result that people who want or need the same amount of power will simply be pulling more current (amps), stressing out the grid and transformers even more. This will affect transformers and lines that are already operating at their limit, or are about to fail anyway. It's unlikely, though entirely possible, for this action to cost them more than they are saving in the long run.
The cable companies have no need for cheap customers. They deny that they have a basic cable service, and instead get new subscribers to sign on to their 'digital' services (which only provide poorly compressed standard tv). These services, at their basic minimum cost $60/mo and include one digital decoder. Want to watch on multiple tvs? Rent another decoder. They are trying to get the revenue stream of the satellite operators.
The digital boxes bring the opportunity to provide real video on demand, but they aren't using them to their fullest, and why should they as long as they have all those high paying customers?
New service will often advertise $30/mo for a short period hoping you'll get hooked and won't notice or mind the normal charges later.
OO programming can be procedural, and follow a normal flow chart. All OO does is make it easy to create data structures with built in rules/procedures on how to perform various operations on them (such as addition on strings). It's just as simple flowcharting an OO program as any other procedural language.
Event triggered programs can be a little different, but each event is simply a string of operations - a procedure which is easy to flow chart. You simply have lots of little flowcharts instead of one large one.
OO does have data structures which are handy to document in a visual way. These would not be flowcharts, but they may include flowcharts to properly document the methods/functions/operations effective on the data. The documentation of the data itself would not be flow chartable - this is where UML is handy.
Since a program is a sequence of instructions with loops and conditional operators, whether it's procedural or event triggerred, it's fairly strightforward to flow chart it. The mere definition of a program also defines a flow chart. It's going to be awhile before we get reasonable processors which perform work without following a logical sequence of steps - mainly because it's hard for us humans to understand how something can be done in a way that we can't easily visualize or do ourselves. The real machine intelligence won't happen because machines will be smarter at doing the things we do, it's because they will do things we can't do.
The primary failure in this articles is not the findings, but they deliberately sidestepped the fact that they didn't use pure water - it was pre-contaminated with DHMO, "DHMO is a constituent of many known toxic substances, diseases and disease-causing agents, environmental hazards and can even be lethal to humans in quantities as small as a thimbleful."
It's obviously a plot to blame the toxic effects of this little known but widely used oxidizer on buckballs instead of DHMO.
You state "the prices of the goods and services that I want are inflated to cover for all the neat and trendy gadgets, discount cards, targeted coupons, and useless bells and whistles that draw everyone elses attention."
Could you show me hard data that demonstrates your point? I can see how you might reason this is the case based on a few store prices in your area, but the issue is significantly more complex than "Store y sells the product at the same price as store x is offering it in their club card promotion" and therefore store x is overpricing the product.
It is telling that instead of demonstrating more proof and data you downplay my intelligence. Do you honesty believe you have the full picture? Are you claiming to not only understand multiple, complex interacting systems, but also to have the data that supports you conclusions about the sytsems involved in this issue? If so, then please share.
Please. Retailers can hardly be considered ignorant. If they were they'd be out of business.
opportunistic
You say that as if it's a bad thing. If someone gives you the opportunity to make more money than you are making now then you have an opportunity. You are opportunistic if you choose to act on it.
strongarm government Guido-boy
The government has enacted laws and rights for both corporations (non-person entities) and individuals. If you don't like them you can choose to do nothing, move from the country, or contact your representatives and see if you can enact change. Of course, these representatives also represent others in your area so you must also convince The People that these laws need to change. It's easier to sit back and complain than move or enact change.
what gives you the right to charge me more than the other guy over there?
I thought I explained that. I'll simplify this for you. If I own a thing, I can choose to keep it, sell it, throw it away, etc. If I choose to sell it I can require the purchaser to pay any price I want. The only power the purchaser has over me is to buy or not buy the thing.
End of story. There are no ifs, and or buts. The agreement to sell something is between the seller and the purchaser and NO ONE ELSE - especially not other customers. Just because I sold my car to someone down the street for $50 does not, by any stretch of the imagination, require me to sell a similar car for a similar price to anyone else who desires to purchase one from me.
It is foolish to think that a free market means anything other than An economic market in which supply and demand are not regulated or are regulated with only minor restrictions. While our market is not completely free, it is telling that you feel that retailers should be forced to sell a thing for a specific cost regardless of customer. Further, by saying that the data these customers sell to the retailer isn't worth the discount they receive is to deny the barter system and buy further into cash capitalism, and further from a real free market.
I think the crux of the matter is that you feel you should never have to divulge your personal information to anyone at any time if you choose not to. You further feel that it is of such worth that it is not, cannot, and will not be up for sale or barter under any conditions. You say that since it is so valuable it is incumbant on the companies to stop accepting it in place of cash.
The point at which you fail in your argument is this: You are willing to deny others the ability to sell their personal information.
WHY CAN'T I HAVE MY DISCOUNT WITHOUT YOU KNOWING WHO I AM?
Your discount? I'm sorry, is this a legal right you have? They are required to sell you an object at a discounted price? Who died and made you priveleged?
As long as they own the goods they are selling, they have a right to ask any price they want. They have a right to gather personal information if you voluntarily give it up. They have a right to provide discounts for customers who do.
The real bottom line is the bottom line. If they don't attract repeat customers they go out of business. If they don't provide value for premium items and services (whether the value is percieved or real depends on the recipient) then they go out of business.
If they can track the buying habits of a mere 15% of their customers, they can significantly reduce their loss. This loss can be to overstock/understock, timing patterns, etc. They can increase in store targetted advertising, sell shelf space to manufacturers at a higher premium, etc.
If you don't want it, don't take it. But don't automatically assume that you are more deserving than those who trade their personal information for a slight discount.
0-15, I should have said. Get 26 of them for a full WEP key. In case you're wondering why a 128 bit key requires only 104 bits, here's a tidbit found through a quick search:
To form the encryption key, 3 bytes (24 bits) are used from the 802.11b header for initialisation, with the remainder supplied by the user. So:
64 bit key - user gives 40 bits = 10 hex digits or 5 characters
128 bit key - user gives 104 bits = 26 hex digits or 13 characters
256 bit key - user gives 232 bits = 58 hex digits or 29 characters source
Aren't you the one hiding in the white van outside my house?
I don't remember where I got them now. It's not hard to convert numbers from the website of the subject of this article into hex. Just ask for a bunch of numbers 0-16, then convert each number to its hex equivilant:
I got a hexidecimal random file a few years ago and randomly selected a passage of characters for my 128 bit wep key. Much stronger than "DonotHACKME" as a passphrase. Still as weak as WEP, but since it's a low data rate network, and a fairly secure key then it's going to take weeks for someone to collect enough info to crack it. Then all they have is access to the internet and an XP computer with no ports open.
But in general this type of resource is only good for small one off uses, research, and testing. They are providing it to see how good their distribution is, find problems with this type of setup before rolling out a for-pay service where you can have your own remote RNG. It would be good for laptop users who need an RNG that's more powerful than the dinky ones you can carry with you.
You can get a dell axim with more memory (and a faster processor, but it doesn't matter how fast it is if the software is inherently slow) and throw linux on it for $200. Pay another hundred or so and you've got wireless built in.
What, exactly, is the upside to this new portable, and is it worth the premium? It seems to me that the extra money is for a supported linux handheld, but is there really going to be much support beyond reflashing the handheld and re-syncing with the computer? If not, is there some other reason to look at this?
It seems to me to only be a problem when I have a lot of data open at once, and leave it alone long enough for windows to swap it out to the drive.
For instance, I have a tab link that, when clicked, loads 63 comics pages at once. It significantly reduces my time spent reading comics (waiting for them to load, actually) but it's a TON of memory.
If I let my laptop hibernate and bring it back up it takes nearly 30-60 seconds to render the tab that was on top when I hibernated. After I read the first few and close a few tabs it speeds back up to its normal speed. I suspect it's more an issue with mozilla using a huge amount of memory (possibly for holding rendered versions of web pages) that is swapped out.
Using it interactively, even after having it open for several days, it's about as fast for me as when I first started it.
handle the voltages of this setup WITHOUT the use of a battery bank?"
What about the voltages makes it necessary to use a battery bank? Don't want one? Don't use one. Simple.
"I realize that the photovoltaic array will have to be of sufficient size to offer more power than will be consumed by peak load, causing excess power, that will need to be dealt with. Also, there will need to be some monitor so that if the available energy doesn't meet the minimum threshold, then the appliance is shut off (or the juice to the circuit is cut), and vice versa.
Excess power that needs to be dealt with? If you do not consume energy from a solar cell it does not 'build up' or 'force itself on your family pet'. You will need a voltage converter/regulator AND THAT'S ALL. This is not simple nor clever, it's obvious. The energy coming out of your solar cells is not compatible with the energy your air conditioner requires. The voltage will rise and fall, and depending on the load the current will also rise and fall.
A converter/regulator will take all that in stride and give you your 220 or 110VAC that the air conditioner requires. If the solar cells are capable of producing more than you need then the converter will simply not consume it. This is basic electricity.
If you don't believe me, try this simple experiment: Buy a solar cell from radio shack that's rated for, say, 5 watts. Hook a 1/4 watt resister across it that consumes only 1/4 watt at the cell's peak voltage. Place panel in sun. The panel is capable of generating 5 watts, but you are only consuming 1/4 watt. Notice how it doesn't explode? Resistor burning up? No? Good. When a solar cell has more energy to offer it raises its voltage. However there is a peak voltage which the cell cannot raise past. That voltage will not become greater and greater just because you aren't eating the energy.
The converter/regulator will change that energy, regardless of the voltage, into whatever format it's designed to output. In this case it needs to be 110 or 220 VAC.
I would recommend you set aside one small solar cell to determing how much light there is. Use it to switch a relay, for instance, that connects the air conditioner to the converter/regulator. If you buy a fancy converter/regulator then it may have features to detect energy output and turn the air conditioner on itself.
Lastly, be aware that in most cases buying a solar cell system is going to cost more than buying the energy from the power company. You can expect the cells to last for a good 5 years, then a poor 15 years, and in that time it's very unlikely that you would have spent more than a few thousand on electricity for the air conditioner. In this particular case it's a bad choice because the cells age whether you use them or not, and if you choose not to bank the energy then you are simply throwing away what is already shaping up to be a poor investment. At least get a converter/regulator that feeds power back to the electric company - use them as your battery bank.
-Adam
I can imagine the next spam mail I get...
on
Reanimated Lobsters?
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Subject "En1arge y0ur manh0od - then free2e it so it's redy when u are!"
Actually, the cache not only caches outgoing data, but incoming data. If the OS sends 15 commands, the HD is could fulfill them in whatever order it likes. the HD therefore can choose the fastest pieces of data first (based on wherever the head and platters are).
If the OS requires requests to be fulfilled in order then the HD can cache data and return it in order.
There are a ton more optimizations here that can only be accomplished with a large cache. The OS may not take advantage of them, and instead treat the drive as a dumb appendage, but a good OS will take advantage of the strengths of newer hard drives.
As of now, you can have your own TB of storage for the low price of $616 (pricewatch: 7x160GB drives @ $88 each). As a bonus, it'll actually add up to a real tebibyte - 1 x 1024^4.
Last time (two months ago) the price was around $660. When this drive shows up we should easily find drives for under 50 cents a GB.
Rather than re-tooling all their custom ICs to handle serial ATA, tha vast majority of new SATA hard drives are simply placing SATA to PATA converter chips on board. These chips account for the additional power consumption.
The reason you are having these troubles is not only is your boss uninformed, but, apparently, so are you. Let me give you some information which will help you understand the problems you are having.
Lead acid batteries, as a general rule, only provide 50% of their capacity before destroying themselves trying to meet your needs. UPS's are emergency power sourcesONLY. If you are using them to power stuff through power outages lasting more than a minute or two more than once or twice a year, then you are not using them correctly. If you use them until you drain the battery past 50% then the batteries are going to DIE horrible creeping death.
Furthermore, if you overburden a UPS and it doesn't shut down because you're pulling too much amperage you may end up boiling the battery, which does not only reduce its life significantly, but "Vents With Flame" (to put it mildly).
In your situation, UPSs can ONLY be used to keep the power on long enough to power off the servers/workstations (ie, less than a minute, maybe two) or until an external generator kicks in.
Again let me reiterate.
UPSs are NOT "Powers out. Hope it comes on before the UPS runs out."
UPSs are instead "OH @#$%! THE POWER'S GONE! [SHUT EVERYTHING DOWN | START THE GENERATOR]!!!"
Therefore if your boss does not understand the necessity of a generator, then you must convince him to purchase UPSs that are rated to last at least twice as long as you could possibly leave the computers on after the power goes out. Ideally you'll also get UPSs which are rated at twice the current you might be pulling so you don't heat up the battery while you are shutting down (a power hungry operation for most servers: shutting down)
Lastly, concerning waste. Most battery centers accept and recycle old lead acid batteries for free. Check out batteriesplus.com for locations near you of a company I use and trust. Buy your replacements from them and they'll gladly recycle your old ones. Even if you don't purchase from them they generally accept them anyway.
Do a cost/performance analysis on a generator. Tell them that batteries last twice as long (or longer) if you use them properly and get a generator. Show them that it's probably cheaper to get appropiately sized UPS unit(s) and a generator than it is to buy a bunch of small UPSs and no generator. Also demonstrate how it will benefit your customers, and how this should be sold to them.
So. Accept this wisdom, and go forth and spread the word. Good luck.
Will access to this new level of specific information change how we deal with companies, governments and private insitutions?"
Yeah. It means I'll be able to use someone else's credit card for more of my transactions, since finding credit cards, SSNs and other...uh...'deep web' stuff will be so much more accessable.
Slashdot Mirror
The average user won't be using the 1/10 the space, nevermind 1GB. A full terabyte of storage on IDE drives is now $500. If they can advertise on even 1000 accounts, with 10 email/week on each account the advertising alone on those 500,000 messages will be worth that $500, at least at their current adwords pricing structure. Being able to send a personalized ad based on message text is seriously huge. Their fast cluster technology can easily handle the hundreds and soon thousands of messages sent per day.
-Adam
Good engineering design requires at least 5% tolerance for voltage differences. That's 11 volts at 220, and 209 should be well within the range of all line powered equipment. You simply can't design a product and expect the voltage to be within 5% regulated value.
Most equipment will run just fine with only 10-20% regulation. The problem with dropping the voltage is that the lower limit is much closer. A 10% device can handle voltages between 198 and 242, but if the utility lowers the voltage to 209, then when it's low by 10% it's at 188v, outside the range of a device capable of operating within 10% of its spec.
The reality is that most electronic devices use transformers and switching regulators to convert line voltage to a much lower voltage. As long as the device isn't consuming its maximum rated current (which will usually be 95% of the time) then it should be fine. The 5% of the time the device is actually using the regulator to its maximum capacity the regulator may fail to provide the voltage level. This erratic behavior will be about the worst you can expect. In most cases you won't even notice this.
The last major effect such a decrease may cause would be to large industrial motors. They are also often specified with a voltage range at which they can provide their rated HP. Lower voltage means a lower output. Those that are specified tightly, or have dodgy starting controls/capacitors may fail to start, but that's an indication of improper sizing/usage and not something that should be blamed on the power company. Of course, at a lower voltage they simply will not perform at the level they do with full voltage, but that is the stated goal for the gov't - to reduce power.
The negative effect for the gov't, though, is the result that people who want or need the same amount of power will simply be pulling more current (amps), stressing out the grid and transformers even more. This will affect transformers and lines that are already operating at their limit, or are about to fail anyway. It's unlikely, though entirely possible, for this action to cost them more than they are saving in the long run.
-Adam
Apparently, simoniker and securitas don't know rule #11 on Slashdot:
Don't feed the trolls.
-Adam
The fam doesn't need to know everytime I get a drunk and disorderly.
I agree. They should only call about 1 out of 20 arrests, a few times a month, at the most.
-Adam
The cable companies have no need for cheap customers. They deny that they have a basic cable service, and instead get new subscribers to sign on to their 'digital' services (which only provide poorly compressed standard tv). These services, at their basic minimum cost $60/mo and include one digital decoder. Want to watch on multiple tvs? Rent another decoder. They are trying to get the revenue stream of the satellite operators.
The digital boxes bring the opportunity to provide real video on demand, but they aren't using them to their fullest, and why should they as long as they have all those high paying customers?
New service will often advertise $30/mo for a short period hoping you'll get hooked and won't notice or mind the normal charges later.
-Adam
OO programming can be procedural, and follow a normal flow chart. All OO does is make it easy to create data structures with built in rules/procedures on how to perform various operations on them (such as addition on strings). It's just as simple flowcharting an OO program as any other procedural language.
Event triggered programs can be a little different, but each event is simply a string of operations - a procedure which is easy to flow chart. You simply have lots of little flowcharts instead of one large one.
OO does have data structures which are handy to document in a visual way. These would not be flowcharts, but they may include flowcharts to properly document the methods/functions/operations effective on the data. The documentation of the data itself would not be flow chartable - this is where UML is handy.
Since a program is a sequence of instructions with loops and conditional operators, whether it's procedural or event triggerred, it's fairly strightforward to flow chart it. The mere definition of a program also defines a flow chart. It's going to be awhile before we get reasonable processors which perform work without following a logical sequence of steps - mainly because it's hard for us humans to understand how something can be done in a way that we can't easily visualize or do ourselves. The real machine intelligence won't happen because machines will be smarter at doing the things we do, it's because they will do things we can't do.
-Adam
The primary failure in this articles is not the findings, but they deliberately sidestepped the fact that they didn't use pure water - it was pre-contaminated with DHMO, "DHMO is a constituent of many known toxic substances, diseases and disease-causing agents, environmental hazards and can even be lethal to humans in quantities as small as a thimbleful."
It's obviously a plot to blame the toxic effects of this little known but widely used oxidizer on buckballs instead of DHMO.
-Adam
"Hey Carol, why is my browser named 'Fired' and defaults to loser.com?"
-Adam
You state "the prices of the goods and services that I want are inflated to cover for all the neat and trendy gadgets, discount cards, targeted coupons, and useless bells and whistles that draw everyone elses attention."
Could you show me hard data that demonstrates your point? I can see how you might reason this is the case based on a few store prices in your area, but the issue is significantly more complex than "Store y sells the product at the same price as store x is offering it in their club card promotion" and therefore store x is overpricing the product.
It is telling that instead of demonstrating more proof and data you downplay my intelligence. Do you honesty believe you have the full picture? Are you claiming to not only understand multiple, complex interacting systems, but also to have the data that supports you conclusions about the sytsems involved in this issue? If so, then please share.
-Adam
ignorant
Please. Retailers can hardly be considered ignorant. If they were they'd be out of business.
opportunistic
You say that as if it's a bad thing. If someone gives you the opportunity to make more money than you are making now then you have an opportunity. You are opportunistic if you choose to act on it.
strongarm government Guido-boy
The government has enacted laws and rights for both corporations (non-person entities) and individuals. If you don't like them you can choose to do nothing, move from the country, or contact your representatives and see if you can enact change. Of course, these representatives also represent others in your area so you must also convince The People that these laws need to change. It's easier to sit back and complain than move or enact change.
what gives you the right to charge me more than the other guy over there?
I thought I explained that. I'll simplify this for you. If I own a thing, I can choose to keep it, sell it, throw it away, etc. If I choose to sell it I can require the purchaser to pay any price I want. The only power the purchaser has over me is to buy or not buy the thing.
End of story. There are no ifs, and or buts. The agreement to sell something is between the seller and the purchaser and NO ONE ELSE - especially not other customers. Just because I sold my car to someone down the street for $50 does not, by any stretch of the imagination, require me to sell a similar car for a similar price to anyone else who desires to purchase one from me.
It is foolish to think that a free market means anything other than An economic market in which supply and demand are not regulated or are regulated with only minor restrictions. While our market is not completely free, it is telling that you feel that retailers should be forced to sell a thing for a specific cost regardless of customer. Further, by saying that the data these customers sell to the retailer isn't worth the discount they receive is to deny the barter system and buy further into cash capitalism, and further from a real free market.
I think the crux of the matter is that you feel you should never have to divulge your personal information to anyone at any time if you choose not to. You further feel that it is of such worth that it is not, cannot, and will not be up for sale or barter under any conditions. You say that since it is so valuable it is incumbant on the companies to stop accepting it in place of cash.
The point at which you fail in your argument is this: You are willing to deny others the ability to sell their personal information.
-Adam
WHY CAN'T I HAVE MY DISCOUNT WITHOUT YOU KNOWING WHO I AM?
Your discount? I'm sorry, is this a legal right you have? They are required to sell you an object at a discounted price? Who died and made you priveleged?
As long as they own the goods they are selling, they have a right to ask any price they want. They have a right to gather personal information if you voluntarily give it up. They have a right to provide discounts for customers who do.
The real bottom line is the bottom line. If they don't attract repeat customers they go out of business. If they don't provide value for premium items and services (whether the value is percieved or real depends on the recipient) then they go out of business.
If they can track the buying habits of a mere 15% of their customers, they can significantly reduce their loss. This loss can be to overstock/understock, timing patterns, etc. They can increase in store targetted advertising, sell shelf space to manufacturers at a higher premium, etc.
If you don't want it, don't take it. But don't automatically assume that you are more deserving than those who trade their personal information for a slight discount.
-Adam
0-15, I should have said. Get 26 of them for a full WEP key. In case you're wondering why a 128 bit key requires only 104 bits, here's a tidbit found through a quick search:
To form the encryption key, 3 bytes (24 bits) are used from the 802.11b header for initialisation, with the remainder supplied by the user. So:
64 bit key - user gives 40 bits = 10 hex digits or 5 characters
128 bit key - user gives 104 bits = 26 hex digits or 13 characters
256 bit key - user gives 232 bits = 58 hex digits or 29 characters
source
-Adam
Aren't you the one hiding in the white van outside my house?
I don't remember where I got them now. It's not hard to convert numbers from the website of the subject of this article into hex. Just ask for a bunch of numbers 0-16, then convert each number to its hex equivilant:
15 2 15 14 13 3 14 10
F2FED3EA
-Adam
I got a hexidecimal random file a few years ago and randomly selected a passage of characters for my 128 bit wep key. Much stronger than "DonotHACKME" as a passphrase. Still as weak as WEP, but since it's a low data rate network, and a fairly secure key then it's going to take weeks for someone to collect enough info to crack it. Then all they have is access to the internet and an XP computer with no ports open.
But in general this type of resource is only good for small one off uses, research, and testing. They are providing it to see how good their distribution is, find problems with this type of setup before rolling out a for-pay service where you can have your own remote RNG. It would be good for laptop users who need an RNG that's more powerful than the dinky ones you can carry with you.
-Adam
You can get a dell axim with more memory (and a faster processor, but it doesn't matter how fast it is if the software is inherently slow) and throw linux on it for $200. Pay another hundred or so and you've got wireless built in.
What, exactly, is the upside to this new portable, and is it worth the premium? It seems to me that the extra money is for a supported linux handheld, but is there really going to be much support beyond reflashing the handheld and re-syncing with the computer? If not, is there some other reason to look at this?
-Adam
It seems to me to only be a problem when I have a lot of data open at once, and leave it alone long enough for windows to swap it out to the drive.
For instance, I have a tab link that, when clicked, loads 63 comics pages at once. It significantly reduces my time spent reading comics (waiting for them to load, actually) but it's a TON of memory.
If I let my laptop hibernate and bring it back up it takes nearly 30-60 seconds to render the tab that was on top when I hibernated. After I read the first few and close a few tabs it speeds back up to its normal speed. I suspect it's more an issue with mozilla using a huge amount of memory (possibly for holding rendered versions of web pages) that is swapped out.
Using it interactively, even after having it open for several days, it's about as fast for me as when I first started it.
-Adam
Boy do I need to get out of Baghdad...
Just head north until you see the big "USA 5720 MILES -->"
Enjoy the scenery!
-Adam
...I will answer your questions.
handle the voltages of this setup WITHOUT the use of a battery bank?" What about the voltages makes it necessary to use a battery bank? Don't want one? Don't use one. Simple.
"I realize that the photovoltaic array will have to be of sufficient size to offer more power than will be consumed by peak load, causing excess power, that will need to be dealt with. Also, there will need to be some monitor so that if the available energy doesn't meet the minimum threshold, then the appliance is shut off (or the juice to the circuit is cut), and vice versa.
Excess power that needs to be dealt with? If you do not consume energy from a solar cell it does not 'build up' or 'force itself on your family pet'. You will need a voltage converter/regulator AND THAT'S ALL. This is not simple nor clever, it's obvious. The energy coming out of your solar cells is not compatible with the energy your air conditioner requires. The voltage will rise and fall, and depending on the load the current will also rise and fall.
A converter/regulator will take all that in stride and give you your 220 or 110VAC that the air conditioner requires. If the solar cells are capable of producing more than you need then the converter will simply not consume it. This is basic electricity.
If you don't believe me, try this simple experiment: Buy a solar cell from radio shack that's rated for, say, 5 watts. Hook a 1/4 watt resister across it that consumes only 1/4 watt at the cell's peak voltage. Place panel in sun. The panel is capable of generating 5 watts, but you are only consuming 1/4 watt. Notice how it doesn't explode? Resistor burning up? No? Good. When a solar cell has more energy to offer it raises its voltage. However there is a peak voltage which the cell cannot raise past. That voltage will not become greater and greater just because you aren't eating the energy.
The converter/regulator will change that energy, regardless of the voltage, into whatever format it's designed to output. In this case it needs to be 110 or 220 VAC.
I would recommend you set aside one small solar cell to determing how much light there is. Use it to switch a relay, for instance, that connects the air conditioner to the converter/regulator. If you buy a fancy converter/regulator then it may have features to detect energy output and turn the air conditioner on itself.
Lastly, be aware that in most cases buying a solar cell system is going to cost more than buying the energy from the power company. You can expect the cells to last for a good 5 years, then a poor 15 years, and in that time it's very unlikely that you would have spent more than a few thousand on electricity for the air conditioner. In this particular case it's a bad choice because the cells age whether you use them or not, and if you choose not to bank the energy then you are simply throwing away what is already shaping up to be a poor investment. At least get a converter/regulator that feeds power back to the electric company - use them as your battery bank.
-Adam
Subject "En1arge y0ur manh0od - then free2e it so it's redy when u are!"
-Adam
Actually, the cache not only caches outgoing data, but incoming data. If the OS sends 15 commands, the HD is could fulfill them in whatever order it likes. the HD therefore can choose the fastest pieces of data first (based on wherever the head and platters are).
If the OS requires requests to be fulfilled in order then the HD can cache data and return it in order.
There are a ton more optimizations here that can only be accomplished with a large cache. The OS may not take advantage of them, and instead treat the drive as a dumb appendage, but a good OS will take advantage of the strengths of newer hard drives.
-Adam
As of now, you can have your own TB of storage for the low price of $616 (pricewatch: 7x160GB drives @ $88 each). As a bonus, it'll actually add up to a real tebibyte - 1 x 1024^4.
Last time (two months ago) the price was around $660. When this drive shows up we should easily find drives for under 50 cents a GB.
-Adam
Rather than re-tooling all their custom ICs to handle serial ATA, tha vast majority of new SATA hard drives are simply placing SATA to PATA converter chips on board. These chips account for the additional power consumption.
-Adam
The reason you are having these troubles is not only is your boss uninformed, but, apparently, so are you. Let me give you some information which will help you understand the problems you are having.
Lead acid batteries, as a general rule, only provide 50% of their capacity before destroying themselves trying to meet your needs. UPS's are emergency power sources ONLY. If you are using them to power stuff through power outages lasting more than a minute or two more than once or twice a year, then you are not using them correctly. If you use them until you drain the battery past 50% then the batteries are going to DIE horrible creeping death.
Furthermore, if you overburden a UPS and it doesn't shut down because you're pulling too much amperage you may end up boiling the battery, which does not only reduce its life significantly, but "Vents With Flame" (to put it mildly).
In your situation, UPSs can ONLY be used to keep the power on long enough to power off the servers/workstations (ie, less than a minute, maybe two) or until an external generator kicks in.
Again let me reiterate.
UPSs are NOT "Powers out. Hope it comes on before the UPS runs out."
UPSs are instead "OH @#$%! THE POWER'S GONE! [SHUT EVERYTHING DOWN | START THE GENERATOR]!!!"
Therefore if your boss does not understand the necessity of a generator, then you must convince him to purchase UPSs that are rated to last at least twice as long as you could possibly leave the computers on after the power goes out. Ideally you'll also get UPSs which are rated at twice the current you might be pulling so you don't heat up the battery while you are shutting down (a power hungry operation for most servers: shutting down)
Lastly, concerning waste. Most battery centers accept and recycle old lead acid batteries for free. Check out batteriesplus.com for locations near you of a company I use and trust. Buy your replacements from them and they'll gladly recycle your old ones. Even if you don't purchase from them they generally accept them anyway.
Do a cost/performance analysis on a generator. Tell them that batteries last twice as long (or longer) if you use them properly and get a generator. Show them that it's probably cheaper to get appropiately sized UPS unit(s) and a generator than it is to buy a bunch of small UPSs and no generator. Also demonstrate how it will benefit your customers, and how this should be sold to them.
So. Accept this wisdom, and go forth and spread the word. Good luck.
-Adam
Will access to this new level of specific information change how we deal with companies, governments and private insitutions?"
Yeah. It means I'll be able to use someone else's credit card for more of my transactions, since finding credit cards, SSNs and other...uh...'deep web' stuff will be so much more accessable.
-Adam
"history set him in his proper place"
History? I know a bunch of people who're willing to set him in his proper place right now!
-Adam