Is this doable in a relatively dense urban setting like Boston?
Right now the options are Verizon DSL, Comcast cable, and maybe RCN cable if you happen to be in the right building on the right block. DSL is pretty terrible and I suspect that's because so much of the phone wiring is absolutely terrible. The building I'm currently in isn't even wired for a land line. I have Comcast cable but it is to the point where the line goes completely dead every ten minutes or so for about ten seconds which will disconnect me from any sustained connection (online game, VNC connection to work, etc). Even with the "discount" for getting Cable TV I'm still paying about 55 dollars for internet access a month.
Could you explain how the city owned ISP came to be? Would it be too expensive to establish the infrastructure for a city like Boston?
1. The root kit makes your computer vulnerable to attack/infection/whatever you want to call it.
2. All someone has to do is write something that changes the position of decimal places on infected systems.
3. Deaths
This world is run by managers sitting on the shoulders of engineers and scientists. When it hits the fan the managers come out smiling but engineers and scientists are often not so lucky.
PC to PC networking over firewire works fine in XP. I used it to do some massive data transfers very quickly when I first got a new laptop several years back.
"I've never had to find a fucking driver or figure out which card I was trying to use."
Under a few different windows OS: neither have I.
I don't know what voodoo you are referencing. Could you please give examples? Thank You.
Err, yes PowerBooks switch networks automatically just like the Thinkpad does. You still have to enter the network keys and any other required information to set things up. After that the prefered network gets used. I've configured wireless networking on both of the systems in question. There really isn't anything magical or special about either. Thus I have to label your statement as pointless Mac Fanboy Babble.
I've had an Acer Travelmate 230 with a 15in screen, 512MB of memory, a 1.3MHz Pentium M, wireless, and a DVD burner that I got about three or four years ago for about $1100 after rebates. I used it all the time in the computer lab I worked in and my friend ended up buying a slightly newer model in the same line. He is a computer engineer getting his masters now and uses it all work day and then brings it home and uses for all his other computing as well. Another friend of ours just got a new Acer which is beautiful and he too uses it both for work and as his main computer. Out of the three of us none have had any problems what so ever. Does this mean anything? Not really, we're only three out of thousands if not millions of Acer customers. The build quality has definitely not been an issue and my friend has dropped his several times with no damage.
I don't know what custom power software you're talking about. I would suggest uninstalling it and just using the power management software that came with Windows or whatever OS you have on there. To my knowledge none of our computers (mine purchased several years ago, my friend's purchased a few months ago) came with any power management software other than the windows power management. In fact, the lack of piles of pointless crapware was one of the huge postives I found with my laptop. I know someone who recently bought a Toshiba and it barely run out of the box due to all the pre installed "helper programs."
All just anecdotal commentary. However, Acer has continued to receive pretty good performance reviews from what I've read at Tomshardware.com.
You've hinted at an issue that is very significant and rather scary in the United States.
There are large groups of people in the US who despise the very science and scientists that make their quality of life as good as it is.
Everything from postnatal care to cable TV is the product of science and directly improves the life of almost every single citizen of the United States. Yet there is a definite atmosphere of anti science and anti engineering while at the same time all our pollution and energy problems are supposed to be solved by some scientific breakthroughs in the future.
This anti science attitude is not just completely a product of the right wing either. Plenty of moderates or even "left wingers" see science as something boring which inevitably goes on outside of their field of vision without need of any public support.
I guess we're moving towards a society that expects massive innovation but shuns the very concept of scientific research and development.
You're forgetting the cost of mental and medical treatment after they get back from whatever war is being fought this week.
I'm not trying to troll. The treatment of veterens costs a lot and lasts the life of the patient. It is certainly important that we support our veterans who have made such sacrifices but it sure would be nice if we didn't need to produce quite so many of them.
Also, I think providing options besides wars in the streets or wars in the desert would serve everyone better.
This is a very different deal than the iTunes/ABC deal. First this has nothing to do with a new distribution method. Its making use of On Demand systems already in place. Its just a way of squeezing people for more money if they don't know how to program a VCR. The iTunes/ABC deal offers people access to content given an internet connection while these deals require you have cable and On Demand already. The Comcast/CBS shows will even still have commercials.
I'd like to pay for the show I want and nothing else. If the shows could all be commercial free that'd be even better. I don't watch much TV though so maybe it would be more expensive for some people. I feel like the iTunes/ABC deal was a step towards pay-per-content but these deals aren't really doing anything new.
Don't forget that Comcast is leaving the commercials in. This would almost make sense if they took the commercials out but if they're leaving them in it should be free since I'm already paying to watch it anyway with my bloated cable bill.
"Regular" wind turbines spin faster than the speed of the wind so it isn't that hard to wrap your head around. They're getting effects to help. The pressure exerted by the wind on an object in its path and the lift effect (used by planes) where a fluid moving at a given velocity exerts less pressure than a fluid at a lower velocity.
I believe it is also possible for those "ice-boats" that are propelled by wind power to go faster than the wind too.
In this case its only a very small bit faster than wind speed. The article states 1% faster.
I use computers about 40-60% of my waking life. I fix the computers of my friends and family, ran a triple boot (two flavors of Linux, one of windows) for a while in college, managed a computer lab of Sun Solaris systems and Dell systems running Linux, and work daily on a Win2000 computer which I use to connect to a Unix server. I've done graphic design and video editing on Mac systems for four years (it was a while ago though) and use them occasionally when I'm setting things up or fixing stuff for people.
I still haven't found a real reason to stop using Windows. As some people have mentioned Linux on the desktop was the ultimate time sinkhole. At the time getting sound to work took ages (even using popular desktop distros) and if I changed hardware it meant quite a bit more time getting it working. I finally let the linux installs slip into oblivion and my current windows install (same one that was running with the two linux distros) has been rocking since Windows 98SE. I haven't had to do a single clean install. I started with a Dell but I finally built a system and simply swapped in the old hard drive and repaired Windows to get it working with the completely new system. I've never had a significant issue with Windows. I've run email/web/ftp servers, done graphic/web design, played games, etc and it does everything I need of it. At work I only use the Unix system because of a 30-40 year old system, which nobody wants to pay to update (trust me it needs to be updated whether it stays on *nix or not).
All I'm saying is Windows at home has been completely satisfactory for my personal use. I have no desire to switch to a Mac and certainly not to Linux. Understandably Windows is not a great OS for many situations. Many posts here seem to think Windows as a personal desktop computer is a royal headache. I've never really experienced this. It's worked for quite some time for me despite being stretched in many different directions.
The more individual turbines the more moving parts you have. The blades aren't what wear out. True larger blades cost a lot but the long term costs come from maintaining the machinery in the turbine. So fewer larger turbines is a more cost effective way of gathering wind power.
As far as stacking, you're already really high up. I know the turbines they are proposing to put in Vineyard Sound are 120m tall or so. I think that's just the tower too. The blades up higher. So the tower would have to be twice that and much stronger since you'd be applying force even further from the base. Maybe they do this with smaller turbines but I'm pretty sure costs get out of hand quickly.
If you take a minute to actually research the Cape Wind situation it's a little more complex than rich political connections. I grew up a member of the working class on the Cape and one of my old bosses (small landscaping company) even took me out fishing where they want to put the wind turbines.
A very smart (read: self serving) group of businessmen are looking to exploit the public resource (Vineyard Sound) for their own gain while raising the cost of electricity on the south shore of MA. There is already a power glut in the area. There is a nuclear plant in Plymouth and a natural gas plant on the Cape Cod Canal. Power is already being exported from the area even during peak summer usage. Under MA energy law utility companies would still be required to buy power from wind turbines because it is a clean energy source. The price of that power would not be competitive and would drive up the cost for utility companies since they'd have to buy this expensive power they can't use in the area.
Some people have the perception that everyone on the cape is rich and can pay a bit more for "cleaner" power. That's far from the truth. The people who would be paying the most would be the people who live on the Cape year round. These are the teachers, the shop owners, the trades people, etc. These are normal, hardworking people, who are already paying a lot for power, property tax, etc. The cost IS an issue for these people.
I think most sane people would like to see more clean power. There are all kinds of arguments that putting wind turbines in might cause quite a bit of environmental damage, all that aside it just does not make economic sense. This is ignoring the immense costs that will spring up from maintaining massive moving parts in an extremely harsh and corrosive environment. Oh yeah and it won't be possible for it to fail since utility companies will have to buy power no matter how expensive it ends up being.
I was hired out of school (from the Northeast) and worked near Cincinnati for nine months. After that I insisted on moving back to the Northeast for a number of reasons.
My impression of the Cincinnati area was that there were piles of tech jobs (especially engineering). That's why I was able to get a good job out there when nobody in the Boston area was hiring college levels. I know the company I work for has more positions than they can find workers for in their Cincinnati location. They prefer hiring people out there rather than here.
For the record the pay scales are identical between Cincinnati and Boston so I basically took a big pay cut to come back here. I'm very happy to be back in the Boston area.
However, I realize that's just my experience with Ohio. It seemed like tech industries were booming in the Cinci area due to the low cost of living and several colleges in the area.
Yes but was it done by MIT before?
I live in Boston and I get sick of hearing about the latest thing that MIT is doing. For some reason people assume that if MIT is doing it then nobody else must have done it or is doing it. MIT is an excellent institution that is doing ground breaking work. These little fun projects are often used to characterize MIT as a world class institution though when really they're just repeating experiments by others (see a previous reply).
Slashdot Mirror
Is this doable in a relatively dense urban setting like Boston?
Right now the options are Verizon DSL, Comcast cable, and maybe RCN cable if you happen to be in the right building on the right block. DSL is pretty terrible and I suspect that's because so much of the phone wiring is absolutely terrible. The building I'm currently in isn't even wired for a land line. I have Comcast cable but it is to the point where the line goes completely dead every ten minutes or so for about ten seconds which will disconnect me from any sustained connection (online game, VNC connection to work, etc). Even with the "discount" for getting Cable TV I'm still paying about 55 dollars for internet access a month.
Could you explain how the city owned ISP came to be? Would it be too expensive to establish the infrastructure for a city like Boston?
The inventor of the wheelbarrow was just being lazy.
1. The root kit makes your computer vulnerable to attack/infection/whatever you want to call it.
2. All someone has to do is write something that changes the position of decimal places on infected systems.
3. Deaths
This world is run by managers sitting on the shoulders of engineers and scientists. When it hits the fan the managers come out smiling but engineers and scientists are often not so lucky.
No, but as time goes to infinity the solution goes to yes. Linux is still a massive time sink.
PC to PC networking over firewire works fine in XP. I used it to do some massive data transfers very quickly when I first got a new laptop several years back.
Sadly, yours is the first comment I've read that seems congruent with reality.
I wish I had mod points because you have nicely summed up the reality of the situation.
Why make a system that works when a broken system makes those in power wealthier?
Exactly! Their gorilla logic enables them to make up any value for "cost" that you want.
It might surprise some them to learn that people take things that are free that they otherwise might not pay for.
"I've never had to find a fucking driver or figure out which card I was trying to use." Under a few different windows OS: neither have I. I don't know what voodoo you are referencing. Could you please give examples? Thank You.
Err, yes PowerBooks switch networks automatically just like the Thinkpad does. You still have to enter the network keys and any other required information to set things up. After that the prefered network gets used. I've configured wireless networking on both of the systems in question. There really isn't anything magical or special about either. Thus I have to label your statement as pointless Mac Fanboy Babble.
Good to know. Maybe they source different product lines (although your's is a Travelmate but from a different "generation" or whatever) differently.
I've had an Acer Travelmate 230 with a 15in screen, 512MB of memory, a 1.3MHz Pentium M, wireless, and a DVD burner that I got about three or four years ago for about $1100 after rebates. I used it all the time in the computer lab I worked in and my friend ended up buying a slightly newer model in the same line. He is a computer engineer getting his masters now and uses it all work day and then brings it home and uses for all his other computing as well. Another friend of ours just got a new Acer which is beautiful and he too uses it both for work and as his main computer. Out of the three of us none have had any problems what so ever. Does this mean anything? Not really, we're only three out of thousands if not millions of Acer customers. The build quality has definitely not been an issue and my friend has dropped his several times with no damage.
I don't know what custom power software you're talking about. I would suggest uninstalling it and just using the power management software that came with Windows or whatever OS you have on there. To my knowledge none of our computers (mine purchased several years ago, my friend's purchased a few months ago) came with any power management software other than the windows power management. In fact, the lack of piles of pointless crapware was one of the huge postives I found with my laptop. I know someone who recently bought a Toshiba and it barely run out of the box due to all the pre installed "helper programs."
All just anecdotal commentary. However, Acer has continued to receive pretty good performance reviews from what I've read at Tomshardware.com.
You've hinted at an issue that is very significant and rather scary in the United States.
There are large groups of people in the US who despise the very science and scientists that make their quality of life as good as it is.
Everything from postnatal care to cable TV is the product of science and directly improves the life of almost every single citizen of the United States. Yet there is a definite atmosphere of anti science and anti engineering while at the same time all our pollution and energy problems are supposed to be solved by some scientific breakthroughs in the future.
This anti science attitude is not just completely a product of the right wing either. Plenty of moderates or even "left wingers" see science as something boring which inevitably goes on outside of their field of vision without need of any public support.
I guess we're moving towards a society that expects massive innovation but shuns the very concept of scientific research and development.
You're forgetting the cost of mental and medical treatment after they get back from whatever war is being fought this week.
I'm not trying to troll. The treatment of veterens costs a lot and lasts the life of the patient. It is certainly important that we support our veterans who have made such sacrifices but it sure would be nice if we didn't need to produce quite so many of them.
Also, I think providing options besides wars in the streets or wars in the desert would serve everyone better.
Err...eBay owns part (25%) of craigslist.
h tml
http://www.craigslist.org/about/press/ebay.stake.
Translation:
Implying she's been unfaithful. As in, hanging out with other guys "around the block." Seemed obvious to me.
This is a very different deal than the iTunes/ABC deal. First this has nothing to do with a new distribution method. Its making use of On Demand systems already in place. Its just a way of squeezing people for more money if they don't know how to program a VCR. The iTunes/ABC deal offers people access to content given an internet connection while these deals require you have cable and On Demand already. The Comcast/CBS shows will even still have commercials.
I'd like to pay for the show I want and nothing else. If the shows could all be commercial free that'd be even better. I don't watch much TV though so maybe it would be more expensive for some people. I feel like the iTunes/ABC deal was a step towards pay-per-content but these deals aren't really doing anything new.
Don't forget that Comcast is leaving the commercials in. This would almost make sense if they took the commercials out but if they're leaving them in it should be free since I'm already paying to watch it anyway with my bloated cable bill.
"Regular" wind turbines spin faster than the speed of the wind so it isn't that hard to wrap your head around. They're getting effects to help. The pressure exerted by the wind on an object in its path and the lift effect (used by planes) where a fluid moving at a given velocity exerts less pressure than a fluid at a lower velocity. I believe it is also possible for those "ice-boats" that are propelled by wind power to go faster than the wind too. In this case its only a very small bit faster than wind speed. The article states 1% faster.
I promise I'm not trying to start a fight.
I use computers about 40-60% of my waking life. I fix the computers of my friends and family, ran a triple boot (two flavors of Linux, one of windows) for a while in college, managed a computer lab of Sun Solaris systems and Dell systems running Linux, and work daily on a Win2000 computer which I use to connect to a Unix server. I've done graphic design and video editing on Mac systems for four years (it was a while ago though) and use them occasionally when I'm setting things up or fixing stuff for people.
I still haven't found a real reason to stop using Windows. As some people have mentioned Linux on the desktop was the ultimate time sinkhole. At the time getting sound to work took ages (even using popular desktop distros) and if I changed hardware it meant quite a bit more time getting it working. I finally let the linux installs slip into oblivion and my current windows install (same one that was running with the two linux distros) has been rocking since Windows 98SE. I haven't had to do a single clean install. I started with a Dell but I finally built a system and simply swapped in the old hard drive and repaired Windows to get it working with the completely new system. I've never had a significant issue with Windows. I've run email/web/ftp servers, done graphic/web design, played games, etc and it does everything I need of it. At work I only use the Unix system because of a 30-40 year old system, which nobody wants to pay to update (trust me it needs to be updated whether it stays on *nix or not).
All I'm saying is Windows at home has been completely satisfactory for my personal use. I have no desire to switch to a Mac and certainly not to Linux. Understandably Windows is not a great OS for many situations. Many posts here seem to think Windows as a personal desktop computer is a royal headache. I've never really experienced this. It's worked for quite some time for me despite being stretched in many different directions.
The more individual turbines the more moving parts you have. The blades aren't what wear out. True larger blades cost a lot but the long term costs come from maintaining the machinery in the turbine. So fewer larger turbines is a more cost effective way of gathering wind power.
As far as stacking, you're already really high up. I know the turbines they are proposing to put in Vineyard Sound are 120m tall or so. I think that's just the tower too. The blades up higher. So the tower would have to be twice that and much stronger since you'd be applying force even further from the base. Maybe they do this with smaller turbines but I'm pretty sure costs get out of hand quickly.
If you take a minute to actually research the Cape Wind situation it's a little more complex than rich political connections. I grew up a member of the working class on the Cape and one of my old bosses (small landscaping company) even took me out fishing where they want to put the wind turbines.
A very smart (read: self serving) group of businessmen are looking to exploit the public resource (Vineyard Sound) for their own gain while raising the cost of electricity on the south shore of MA. There is already a power glut in the area. There is a nuclear plant in Plymouth and a natural gas plant on the Cape Cod Canal. Power is already being exported from the area even during peak summer usage. Under MA energy law utility companies would still be required to buy power from wind turbines because it is a clean energy source. The price of that power would not be competitive and would drive up the cost for utility companies since they'd have to buy this expensive power they can't use in the area.
Some people have the perception that everyone on the cape is rich and can pay a bit more for "cleaner" power. That's far from the truth. The people who would be paying the most would be the people who live on the Cape year round. These are the teachers, the shop owners, the trades people, etc. These are normal, hardworking people, who are already paying a lot for power, property tax, etc. The cost IS an issue for these people.
I think most sane people would like to see more clean power. There are all kinds of arguments that putting wind turbines in might cause quite a bit of environmental damage, all that aside it just does not make economic sense. This is ignoring the immense costs that will spring up from maintaining massive moving parts in an extremely harsh and corrosive environment. Oh yeah and it won't be possible for it to fail since utility companies will have to buy power no matter how expensive it ends up being.
What area of Ohio are you living in?
I was hired out of school (from the Northeast) and worked near Cincinnati for nine months. After that I insisted on moving back to the Northeast for a number of reasons.
My impression of the Cincinnati area was that there were piles of tech jobs (especially engineering). That's why I was able to get a good job out there when nobody in the Boston area was hiring college levels. I know the company I work for has more positions than they can find workers for in their Cincinnati location. They prefer hiring people out there rather than here.
For the record the pay scales are identical between Cincinnati and Boston so I basically took a big pay cut to come back here. I'm very happy to be back in the Boston area.
However, I realize that's just my experience with Ohio. It seemed like tech industries were booming in the Cinci area due to the low cost of living and several colleges in the area.
Yes but was it done by MIT before? I live in Boston and I get sick of hearing about the latest thing that MIT is doing. For some reason people assume that if MIT is doing it then nobody else must have done it or is doing it. MIT is an excellent institution that is doing ground breaking work. These little fun projects are often used to characterize MIT as a world class institution though when really they're just repeating experiments by others (see a previous reply).
EU != "Rest of the world"
You know what the biggest weakness of the EU is? The hubris of its people.