Operators of multiple steam boilers have been dealing with this problem for a century. The number of boilers fired up is adjusted with demand, with the need for some demand prediction because it takes time to get steam up. This was done manually for decades; now it's often automated.
Which, alas, won't stop someone from patenting it with respect to servers. Even if it's already been done with computers too.
Incidentally, I've seen descriptions of currently available HVAC control systems for office buildings which takes into account the season, the direction the building faces, the thermal mass of the building, demand, etc, and even learns some of these parameters while running, rather than forcing the installer to calculate them. But every office building I've worked in has had crappy systems which amount to running the compressors on a timer and using individually controlled dampers to provide even cooling (poorly). It seems that we have the technology, but not the will (or the capital) to use them.
If the load on your boxes is below a threshold, remove one of them from the load balance list, wait for connections to end, or migrate the processes off to another machine, and switch it off. When the load is above a certain threshold, you power on an additional node, configure it for whichever service and add it to the load balancer.
Sure, that's not too difficult to do. But it does add complexity. And it does mean your system can't respond to increased load as quickly, as you have to wait for your additional boxes to boot up. If the increased load is predictable, you can anticipate, but that adds more complexity. It doesn't save you on capital costs as you still have to size your power and A/C systems for peak load. Powering the boxes on and off may shorten their lives or reduce their reliability. The question isn't whether it can be done; it's whether it's worth it.
The crap about being a danger to public health and safety is boilerplate to justify the forfeiture provisions. It's not like anyone actually believes it.
The problem isn't a few powerful evil elites. Who do you think chooses who gets on the ballot? The typical general public, in the party primaries. It is reasonably easy for pretty much anyone to get on the primary ballot if they really want to - as Stephen Colbert demonstrated as a gag.
Stephen Cobert isn't "anyone". And it hardly matters if you can get on the ballot if you have no chance of going further (ask Ron Paul). You don't think there's a few elites deciding things? Explain the meteoric rise of John McCain without them. Granted, that's the Republican party which is more comfortable with such things, but the Democrats have their smoke-filled rooms as well. After Giuliani, the previous candidate anointed by the Republican elite, stepped on his crank, they switched to McCain, and virtually overnight, he was the front runner. That's the reality.
Not necessarily. Once upon a time people thought the depended on the oil from whales. Or they relied on horses for transport, and firewood for heat. Needed horseback messengers to send a letter.
And what changed all that? Good old petroleum, that's what. The Next Great Energy Source isn't here, and until it is, fossil fuels are the name of the game.
Because once you throw away all the hype and noise, what you've got for practical additional power generation is
1) Fossil fuels 2) Nuclear 3) There is no 3.
Hydro is great, but there isn't a huge amount of untapped hydro left. Same with geothermal and other localized sources. Biofuels? You're seeing the results of very small amounts of biofuel production now, in food prices. I'd say the choice was food or fuel, but it's worse than that -- even if all food crop production was converted to fuel production, there wouldn't be enough fuel. Wind, solar? Total potential is orders of magnitude too small with present and forseeable technology.
Nuclear, of course, is politically unfeasible in the US. That leaves coal.
BTW, doesn't matter whether coal is "dirty" or "clean" -- either way it produces CO2.
The US is ensuring that the economic output of Iraq benefits primarily the US. Iraq was economically, politically and even socially better off under Saddam than it is now, unless you measure welfare in a method that doesn't include death rates, disease proliferation, violent political instability and economic trauma.
Hmm. North Korea has political stability. So did Russia under Stalin. Perhaps political stability isn't such a wonderful thing, at least not if the stable situation is a boot stomping on a human face, forever.
Lets look at US intervention in Nicaragua, Panama, Vietnam, Chile, Haiti, and El-Salvador. Now ask yourself what is the most likely outcome for Iraq and Afghanistan.
If the US hadn't intervened in Panama, they'd still be part of Colombia. I'm pretty sure they're better off now. US intervention failed in Vietnam, so the result of not intervening there would be the same, except without the US part of the Vietnam war. Not sure which particular intervention you're referring to with the others; perhaps you preferred Chile under Pinochet?
I think the reason why so many open source projects have odd comments or funny comments is that its being made by people who aren't being paid and don't have a manager breathing down their necks so they'll use whatever they'd like at the time.
Some of my closed source code has comments like "evil hack", or " made me do this". Probably a few reference Satan. And I'm pretty sure I've ended comments about fixes for nasty race conditions with "I blame George Bush". I have an informal policy of not including any actual curse words or derogatory references to customers or the CEO, but that's about it.
but I can tell you that as a rescue worker, if I was trying to find someone and the cell phone company didn't release records in time, I am sure someone would sue for the PTSD that would come from finding a child's corpse in the woods that probably would have lived if the phone company got its head out of its ass.
If you're a rescue worker, finding dead bodies is part and parcel of the job. If it was going to give you PTSD you should have gone into a different career.
And a phone company not releasing private information about one of its customers without a damned good reason (like a warrant; the unsworn testimony of J. Random Cop doesn't really cut it) is not "having its head up its ass". It's protecting its customer's privacy.
If you do not want to be tracked, take the battery out of your cell phone, drive a car made before 1990 (or about then), obey all traffic laws, use only cash, be polite, but not memorable. (They said something like the last part to Matt Damon in Ocean 11.)
No need for the pre-1990 car; the proposed OBD-III (with remote monitoring) still hasn't been implemented, so the only way you are going to be tracked from your car is the license plate. Obeying all traffic laws will get you interest from law enforcement, so that's not such a great idea either.
I disagree. The DMCA takedown and "Safe Harbor" process is the one thing about the DMCA that's good. You have to fully understand it, though.
The way it works is that if a service provider immediately complies with the takedown request, they are granted "Safe Harbor" status, meaning they cannot be held accountable for the infringement. The party that put the content up, however, can respond with a counter-notice, and the service provider can then put the material back up but does not lose Safe Harbor status.
Until the objecting party counters with a letter saying "I'm gonna sue". Then the provider has to take it down again or lose his safe harbor. That takedown is permanent until a judge says otherwise. And the case (if it is even initiated -- nothing in the DMCA actually requires the suit to go forward even if the objecting party says they will sue) could take years. It amounts to an automatic preliminary injunction outside the judicial process.
Further, the safe harbor -- without a takedown provision -- existed prior to the DMCA, in case law.
E) They figure they can convince the university administrators to implement draconian network-control policies just to prevent being buried under a flurry of infringement notices.
Not a bad strategy considering university administrators feel about students about the same way the RIAA feels about customers; that is, they see them as a source of cash and anything they do other than fork over money is an unwanted imposition. Any excuse to place restrictions on them is in general a good one anyway. And university administrators are generally impressed by the appearance of Authority, which the RIAA has.
The Earth's gravity is not nearly strong enough to keep molecular hydrogen trapped. You might get a few water molecules formed that way, but most of any free hydrogen escaped as is.
How about a rather common reaction like CH4 + 2 O2 = CO2 + 2 H2O? The primordial earth supposedly had plentiful methane.
This could be done now, with current appliances. There are already two 110v lines coming into an average North American house. Set one line to be high priority/high cost, the other becomes a cheap, low priority line that gets switched off by the power company during peak hours. New houses could be wired so that the owner always has a choice of plugging an appliance into the cheap or expensive outlet.
No, there are not two 110v lines coming into a house. There are three lines from the same transformer -- each end and a center tap. Running such a system completely unbalanced is a bad idea, and the highest-draw items are connected across the ends anyway.
One of the biggest and EASIEST ways to change carbon footprints and reduce global warming contributions is to modify HOW we use electricity... period.
Ahh, good old shiver-in-the-dark or swelter-in-the-heat ascetic environmentalism. Screw that.
If you could tell some of your devices to shut down for x minutes if they receive a certain signal, no big deal. Your freezer will not defrost for a long time.
Depends on where you hit it in the cycle. Give it that signal when it's just about to start the compressor, and it's going to heat up outside its set limits. So the power company will be spoiling my food in order to save energy. Given the energy it takes to make that food, I'm not so sure that's a win. It's certainly a loss for me.
Water heaters don't need to be on ALL the time.
They do if you want to use hot water at any given time. I don't want the power company deciding when I can shower without freezing my ass off.
A/C can go dormant on a signal but again start up to keep the temperature below a set level.
If the power company cuts off my A/C, my house is going to get hotter than I want it -- significantly hotter. And then when it comes back on, it's going to have to work long and hard to bring the temperature down again, which it probably won't be able to until the middle of the night. I don't pay my electric bills in order to swelter in the heat.
All these things would allow each person to contribute to lowered electricity requirements and thus less greenhouse gases.
And all at a significant cost in comfort. Reducing electricity use is not the only criterion for evaluating a proposal.
I don't think Google could fight this particular battle even if they wanted to. I'm not entirely sure about this point, but I think DMCA is an all or nothing deal - you either don't monitor any content, or you monitor all of it, so if they don't obey this DMCA notice, they're liable for all the other copyrighted material they host/link to.
Actually, no. The DMCA does not create any liability. Whatever protection from liability existed before the DMCA still exists. See 17 USC 512(l) This protection was actually quite substantial; the main reason the copyright interests supported the DMCA is because in exchange for something they didn't actually have (liability for online hosting providers and search engines), they got something they wanted (takedowns outside the judicial process).
Further, failure to act on one DMCA notice should not expose the provider to liability with respect to other unrelated claims of infringement; it would take some twisted legal maneuvering to get that one across (or perhaps a judge with the same motivations as the district judge in the Verizon case). The only way they could lose DMCA safe harbor for everything is if they didn't designate an agent to receive the notices.
So yes, a service provider could receive, e.g., a notice from the James Bond people for "PussyGalore.jpg", check and see that it's a picture of your cats, and tell the James Bond people to stuff it, and still be protected by the DMCA safe harbor for "Octopussy.mpg" which turned out to be the actual movie.
Basically, the American restrictions on Cuba are total bullshit, and the rest of the world knows it. however, due to longstanding imperialist policies (like the Monroe doctrine) Cuba falls under the geographic hegemony of the USA. This was challenged by the CCCP from 1959 - 1991. When the Russians collapsed, Cuba had some "special times", like super special shitty times, that the draconian and retarded embargo by the USA only enhanced.
There are no American restrictions on Cubans. The American restrictions are on Americans (with a few even more bullshit extensions attempting to extend the embargo to non-American companies who deal with Americans; even Canada won't put up with that shit) . And calling an embargo "imperialist" is pretty rich... what would you call it if the US had normal relations with Cuba and there was a Starbucks and a McDonalds on every corner in Havana? Oh, right... you'd call it "cultural imperialism" or something similar.
America certainly has no morales anyway, their treatment of Cuba over the past 50 years has been disgusting!! War on terror, what the fuck are they doing in Cuba......Scumbags!! Wake up and stop listening to your bullshit controlled media.
The US government has treated dictators in quite a variety of ways. Supported some, toppled others, etc. All of these treatments have been labeled disgusting and wrong, usually by the same people. Cuba, since the '60s, has simply been embargoed (and it's hard to see how refusal to trade is "disgusting"). And so, without US influence, Cuba has become a shining beacon for all the world's people, a glorious example of how to run things without the influence of the nasty US government and its evil corporate masters. It has become a paradise for its people, with health care and jobs for all, and people from all over the world (except the US) are knocking at Cuba's door wanting to immigrate.
No? Actually except for the last bit, that is often the impression the bullshit controlled media gives of Cuba. But of course it IS bullshit.
Our inability to cross state-lines without proper documentation.
Coming soon. We had a taste of it with "All vehicles entering NYC subject to search" signs displayed on the NJ Turnpike. By 2018 we'll need a "Real ID" to cross many state borders.
Our inability to leave our country to go abroad.
They're working on it with things like the no-fly list. Most citizens will be permitted to leave. Others will be mysteriously and unappealably denied for reasons unknown.
The fact that not a single newspaper exists that is not wholly government controlled.
There are certainly a number of issues upon which the press has a suspicious unanimity.
Well, national security can be important, believe it or not. If somebody posted the floor plan and guard rotations for a large water processing plant, would you really want a law that said nobody could tell them to take down the information?
Yes. The floor plan likely is no secret anyway, and if the guard rotations were sensitive they'll have to be changed anyway. Taking down the information helps nothing.
We sacrifice all the time to get what we want or need out of life.
We go to college, sacrificing our youth so that when the time comes we can afford/support to maintain a wife and child (family).
So where's the reward for all this sacrifice? You sacrifice your youth for education. You sacrifice your middle age for remuneration. At retirement, if you did well, you're too old to enjoy it, and if you didn't you're trying to decide which generic dry pet food tastes best. And the cycle repeats in the next generation. So why bother?
You can still be detained by the police without being arrested.
Ask them if you are free to leave. If they say "yes", leave. If they say "no", then for the purposes of questioning (and the exclusionary rule) you may as well be under arrest. In either case, don't answer any questions.
Before letting a subcontract, the prime contractor must ensure that the subcontractor is not banned from working under government contracts. This is done by accessing a government provided database, via the web.
The one IBM (you know, multi-billion dollar company with zillions in government contracts) got put on a month or so ago, because of a contract dispute with the EPA?
If the data destroyed is in some way controlling a life function (envision a hospital or the data that holds something like a patient's allergies) and the result is the loss of a human life, is it still an acceptable loss?
In the same sense that the death of a hostage is an acceptable loss when capturing or killing the hostage-takers, yes.
This isn't a small step at all. The small steps have already been taken. This is (if I may switch analogies) that last "lick" of the tootsie roll pop. ("Crunch")
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Which, alas, won't stop someone from patenting it with respect to servers. Even if it's already been done with computers too.
Incidentally, I've seen descriptions of currently available HVAC control systems for office buildings which takes into account the season, the direction the building faces, the thermal mass of the building, demand, etc, and even learns some of these parameters while running, rather than forcing the installer to calculate them. But every office building I've worked in has had crappy systems which amount to running the compressors on a timer and using individually controlled dampers to provide even cooling (poorly). It seems that we have the technology, but not the will (or the capital) to use them.
Sure, that's not too difficult to do. But it does add complexity. And it does mean your system can't respond to increased load as quickly, as you have to wait for your additional boxes to boot up. If the increased load is predictable, you can anticipate, but that adds more complexity. It doesn't save you on capital costs as you still have to size your power and A/C systems for peak load. Powering the boxes on and off may shorten their lives or reduce their reliability. The question isn't whether it can be done; it's whether it's worth it.
The crap about being a danger to public health and safety is boilerplate to justify the forfeiture provisions. It's not like anyone actually believes it.
Stephen Cobert isn't "anyone". And it hardly matters if you can get on the ballot if you have no chance of going further (ask Ron Paul). You don't think there's a few elites deciding things? Explain the meteoric rise of John McCain without them. Granted, that's the Republican party which is more comfortable with such things, but the Democrats have their smoke-filled rooms as well. After Giuliani, the previous candidate anointed by the Republican elite, stepped on his crank, they switched to McCain, and virtually overnight, he was the front runner. That's the reality.
Because once you throw away all the hype and noise, what you've got for practical additional power generation is
1) Fossil fuels
2) Nuclear
3) There is no 3.
Hydro is great, but there isn't a huge amount of untapped hydro left. Same with geothermal and other localized sources. Biofuels? You're seeing the results of very small amounts of biofuel production now, in food prices. I'd say the choice was food or fuel, but it's worse than that -- even if all food crop production was converted to fuel production, there wouldn't be enough fuel. Wind, solar? Total potential is orders of magnitude too small with present and forseeable technology.
Nuclear, of course, is politically unfeasible in the US. That leaves coal.
BTW, doesn't matter whether coal is "dirty" or "clean" -- either way it produces CO2.
Some of my closed source code has comments like "evil hack", or " made me do this". Probably a few reference Satan. And I'm pretty sure I've ended comments about fixes for nasty race conditions with "I blame George Bush". I have an informal policy of not including any actual curse words or derogatory references to customers or the CEO, but that's about it.
If you're a rescue worker, finding dead bodies is part and parcel of the job. If it was going to give you PTSD you should have gone into a different career.
And a phone company not releasing private information about one of its customers without a damned good reason (like a warrant; the unsworn testimony of J. Random Cop doesn't really cut it) is not "having its head up its ass". It's protecting its customer's privacy.
No need for the pre-1990 car; the proposed OBD-III (with remote monitoring) still hasn't been implemented, so the only way you are going to be tracked from your car is the license plate. Obeying all traffic laws will get you interest from law enforcement, so that's not such a great idea either.
Until the objecting party counters with a letter saying "I'm gonna sue". Then the provider has to take it down again or lose his safe harbor. That takedown is permanent until a judge says otherwise. And the case (if it is even initiated -- nothing in the DMCA actually requires the suit to go forward even if the objecting party says they will sue) could take years. It amounts to an automatic preliminary injunction outside the judicial process.
Further, the safe harbor -- without a takedown provision -- existed prior to the DMCA, in case law.
E) They figure they can convince the university administrators to implement draconian network-control policies just to prevent being buried under a flurry of infringement notices.
Not a bad strategy considering university administrators feel about students about the same way the RIAA feels about customers; that is, they see them as a source of cash and anything they do other than fork over money is an unwanted imposition. Any excuse to place restrictions on them is in general a good one anyway. And university administrators are generally impressed by the appearance of Authority, which the RIAA has.
Ahh, good old shiver-in-the-dark or swelter-in-the-heat ascetic environmentalism. Screw that.
Depends on where you hit it in the cycle. Give it that signal when it's just about to start the compressor, and it's going to heat up outside its set limits. So the power company will be spoiling my food in order to save energy. Given the energy it takes to make that food, I'm not so sure that's a win. It's certainly a loss for me.
They do if you want to use hot water at any given time. I don't want the power company deciding when I can shower without freezing my ass off.
If the power company cuts off my A/C, my house is going to get hotter than I want it -- significantly hotter. And then when it comes back on, it's going to have to work long and hard to bring the temperature down again, which it probably won't be able to until the middle of the night. I don't pay my electric bills in order to swelter in the heat.
And all at a significant cost in comfort. Reducing electricity use is not the only criterion for evaluating a proposal.
Actually, no. The DMCA does not create any liability. Whatever protection from liability existed before the DMCA still exists. See 17 USC 512(l) This protection was actually quite substantial; the main reason the copyright interests supported the DMCA is because in exchange for something they didn't actually have (liability for online hosting providers and search engines), they got something they wanted (takedowns outside the judicial process).
Further, failure to act on one DMCA notice should not expose the provider to liability with respect to other unrelated claims of infringement; it would take some twisted legal maneuvering to get that one across (or perhaps a judge with the same motivations as the district judge in the Verizon case). The only way they could lose DMCA safe harbor for everything is if they didn't designate an agent to receive the notices.
So yes, a service provider could receive, e.g., a notice from the James Bond people for "PussyGalore.jpg", check and see that it's a picture of your cats, and tell the James Bond people to stuff it, and still be protected by the DMCA safe harbor for "Octopussy.mpg" which turned out to be the actual movie.
There are no American restrictions on Cubans. The American restrictions are on Americans (with a few even more bullshit extensions attempting to extend the embargo to non-American companies who deal with Americans; even Canada won't put up with that shit) . And calling an embargo "imperialist" is pretty rich... what would you call it if the US had normal relations with Cuba and there was a Starbucks and a McDonalds on every corner in Havana? Oh, right... you'd call it "cultural imperialism" or something similar.
The US government has treated dictators in quite a variety of ways. Supported some, toppled others, etc. All of these treatments have been labeled disgusting and wrong, usually by the same people. Cuba, since the '60s, has simply been embargoed (and it's hard to see how refusal to trade is "disgusting"). And so, without US influence, Cuba has become a shining beacon for all the world's people, a glorious example of how to run things without the influence of the nasty US government and its evil corporate masters. It has become a paradise for its people, with health care and jobs for all, and people from all over the world (except the US) are knocking at Cuba's door wanting to immigrate.
No? Actually except for the last bit, that is often the impression the bullshit controlled media gives of Cuba. But of course it IS bullshit.
Coming soon. We had a taste of it with "All vehicles entering NYC subject to search" signs displayed on the NJ Turnpike. By 2018 we'll need a "Real ID" to cross many state borders.
They're working on it with things like the no-fly list. Most citizens will be permitted to leave. Others will be mysteriously and unappealably denied for reasons unknown.
There are certainly a number of issues upon which the press has a suspicious unanimity.
Yes. The floor plan likely is no secret anyway, and if the guard rotations were sensitive they'll have to be changed anyway. Taking down the information helps nothing.
So where's the reward for all this sacrifice? You sacrifice your youth for education. You sacrifice your middle age for remuneration. At retirement, if you did well, you're too old to enjoy it, and if you didn't you're trying to decide which generic dry pet food tastes best. And the cycle repeats in the next generation. So why bother?
The one IBM (you know, multi-billion dollar company with zillions in government contracts) got put on a month or so ago, because of a contract dispute with the EPA?
Yeah, that's not ripe for abuse at all.
This isn't a small step at all. The small steps have already been taken. This is (if I may switch analogies) that last "lick" of the tootsie roll pop. ("Crunch")