I had a similar thing happen in college. I think this was in the spring of 1992, IIRC.
After returning to college from a break, I discovered that I had left my chequebook home (some 450-500km away) and that I needed to pay my tuition bill at the end of the week.
For the next three days, I went to the ATM each day and withdrew $300 (which was the daily limit). At the end of the week, I went into the Bursar's office, and paid my tuition bill (one of the four installments of $890) entirely in $20 bills.
My BJC-4400 uses the same system. It was purchased used at a swap meet for about $15. Works hunky dorie, and without those expensive H-P ink cartridges. I had been using an H-P printer, which works fine too. Just that the ink is so gosh darn expensive.
Exactly.
I bought the BJ-200ex brand new in 1994. It died only in the last year or so from being dropped:-(
The BJC-4200 was given to me to use if I could repair, by someone who thought it didn't work, because she'd replaced the ink tanks and it didn't print (nozzles were plugged). She replaced it with an HP. *sigh* I replaced the whole cartridge and it works beautifully. When it ran out, I replaced it with a black cartridge.
The BJC-420 (still haven't looked at it to see if that is the actual model number) was purchased at a yard sale for $5.00 from someone who was replacing it with a laser printer. It worked right as soon as I connected it.
For the most part, the print quality is excellent. It doesn't get that gloss you get on a laser printer, but it still looks quite nice. For the little bit of printing I actually do, these little beasts are perfect.
Between 1994 and now, I have owned a BJ-200ex, a BJC-4200 and a BJC-420(IIRC?)
The BJC-4200 and BJC-420 are colour printers. The 420, outfitted with a colour cartridge is dog slow, but it is a cheap printer. In B&W, it takes the same print cartridge as the BJ-200ex. The colour cartridges don't last that well, but the black and white ones seem to last pretty well.
The BJC-4200 is the nuts. It takes a three-piece cartridge, consisting of a nozzle pack, a black tank, and a colour tank. You can replace the whole cartridge if the nozzles are clogged, or you can replace just the black or colour tanks if it is just out of one kind of ink. This means you need not be shy about using it to print text.
The BJC-4200 also accepts a black-only cartridge. When you use this cartridge, it prints two lines at a time, rather than just one, and it lasts and lasts and lasts. I finally had to replace a cartridge two months ago, after two years of moderate service.
Also, the cartridges aren't that expensive. Refill kits are available, but they aren't that much cheaper than the cartridges themselves. The printers cost a little more than Lexmark or HP, but the payback is there.
Not affiliated with Canon; I'm just a very happy customer, and I will probably buy a Canon printer again.
Shouldn't that be 1200 kb/s? 150 KB/s * 8 = 1200 kb/s, right? Or is the 150 KB/s figure I'm using incorrect (I could have sworn that was the 1x CD speed)?
Permit me to be even more pedantic:-)
150kB is approximately the right speed, but is tweaked for ISO FS overhead. Audio CD's have no file system, and can thus store 746MB of PCM audio per 74 minute CD or 807MB of PCM audio per 80 minute CD.
The actual rate is 44100Hz * 16 bits * 2 channels = 1 411 200 bits/second.
You have also neglected the fact that a diesel engine can, with no modification, be run on biodiesel, which is refined vegetable oil.
With mild modification, you can run a diesel engine on raw vegetable oil.
You can't conclude, purely on energy input grounds, that either will be the case, or that a redistribution of temperature variations will take place. If you take into account other factors it does indeed seem likely that some places will become cooler and others warmer, but those other factors must be evaluated properly.
Just to build on to what you just said, let me point out that there exist various current in the air and in the water that redistribute solar heat in various patterns. Some of these have been covered on Slashdot before.
These currents are driven by the very energy they redistribute. Further, their continuation sometimes has a chemistry element (e.g. the level of salinity in sea water). As changes take place, some of these currents may shift, some will surely cease, and probably a few new ones will kick up.
The bottom line is that the system is too complex to get a full and clear picture of it. The only way to deal with it is to stay on your toes and react when you see something coming your way, in the hopes that you can get out of the way before the shit hits the fan.
But if you remember on 9/11, there were a whole bunch of cell phone calls that got through just fine. You don't hear of cell phone calls working on airplanes that often because as current law has it, they aren't allowed. But when people broke the rules in an emergency, they worked just fine.
While this is, in fact, true, I am not so sure it would work just fine if everybody was doing it.
The problem I see is that if one or two phone calls are made, from one or two planes, the ground interference from those phones (which would plug up the airwaves for hundreds of miles on the particular transmit frequency the phone was using at the second) is negligible. If several people on many planes were doing it, cellular service will go to hell.
And, please, don't anybody start with the spectrum-scarcity-is-a-myth mantra. If you actually read the papers behind the mantra, you will find that this problem will not be remedied because radios of sufficient intelligence to accomplish that are not in circulation, and will not be for quite some time.
Nonsense. I've seen utility wind turbines. I've stopped to take pictures of them. I find them quite beautiful, and even somewhat hypnotic.
There is a very nice-looking wind farm in Madison County, NY, that can be seen for about ten miles in either direction along U.S. route 20. If you have a chance to be passing through that area, you should see for yourself how beautiful they really are.
Consumers mostly rejected S-VHS because most of them "couldn't see any difference" from regular VHS.
I believe pretty firmly that this had a great deal to do with a lack of televisions that could display an above-NTSC-compsite quality picture. Taking it a step farther, I think there were (and still are) altogether too many TV's that couldn't even display NTSC-composite to full advantage, and NTSC-composite's pretty bad to begin with!
By comparison, today, people have TV's with S-Video connectors at least (side note, S-Video gets its name from SVHS, because you needed an S-video or equivalent monitor (Some Commodore computer monitors worked well) to be able to take advantage of SVHS's improved picture) and many now have component (a/k/a YUV or YPbPr) connectors, even if they are not high-definition TV's. To boot, high-definition TV's have been available for less than $1000 for at least two years (mine cost $700 two years ago). We now have good TV's, we now can appreciate something good to show on them.
Consumers mostly rejected Laserdisc because they couldn't record on it, despite the superior picture quality.
I disagree. I think Laserdisc got rejected for the same reason Beta did--you had to use multiple media units (tape, side of disc) to record a feature film, which meant your film got rudely interrupted and replaced by a video slate telling you turn the disc over or put in the next tape. That DVD has been as widely accepted as it is, even before DVD burners and now DVD recorders were available and reasonably priced, disproves this point of yours.
I have a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from SUNY (State University of New York) at Brockport, and an Associate's degree in Computer Science from SUNY Alfred. This arrangement has served me well enough.
SUNY Alfred is known for engineering, but it is still a state school, and a two-year school at that. Worse, it had a reputation as a party school at the time I atended it (I think it was like #3 or #4 on MTV's list).
As an aside, I believe I learned more for it being a party school. Basically the party environment had two side-effects. First, the professors were willing to put a greater investment into the students that actually gave a shit. Second, the serious students didn't end up suffering from burnout from trying to keep up with their peers, because we were usually the ones in the lead.
SUNY Brockport is a full University, but is better know for its sports (for reasons I haven't been able to figure out.... we always lost).
Despite that, I am doing fine. Since my graduation in 1994, I have worked for a factory automation company, a software developer, a systems integrator and a utility. I have enjoyed all four jobs. Maybe I could have done better with a degree from RPI, MIT or RIT, but I'd still be paying my student loans, too.
Additionally, the 120Hz (not 60Hz) or 100Hz (not 50Hz) flicker is also gone, thanks to solid-state ballasts which re-generate the AC at significantly higher frequencies, typically in the 10-20kHz range.
But what bothers me is the *waste of power*, whether I pay for it or not.
Then you should be using CF's, not incandescent. Say you were using a 100W incandescent bulb. Since the bulb is a resistive load, 100W = 100VA. An equivalent CF will use 24-26W, and, unless it is a high power factor model, it will use about 50VA. That is still way less than 100W.
Even if you use low power factor models, the utility will still absorb the reactive power in your neighbourhood. If you really want to focus your attention on bad power factors, you might do better to examine your computer and any motorized appliances you own, because they tend to have very bad power factors.
Of course, if you're offgrid and running it all from a 24VDC supply, it's not an issue.
Actually, it becomes a bigger issue, and power factor correction becomes critical. Inverters are rated in VA rather than Watts. While a 3600VA inverter can, in fact, deliver 3600W, it can only do so if the power factor of that load is 1.
I can't put up with the flickering, and even the most powerful ones put out such a pathetic amount of light.
When did you last try them? 1980?!? I've seen noticeable improvements just in the last year, and I've been using them with satisfactory results for over ten years. There is not flicker, and light output is high. Not only that, but the newest one I put in (replaced one that got smashed a week ago) actually comes up to full intensity immediately.
Not to mention the really ugly, sickly greenish colour temperature that makes everything look like The Matrix.
The colour temperature is slightly different from incandescent, sure. It isn't that far off, though. The sickly green colour is a thing that was left behind in the mid-90's, even in the cheapest of cheap.
There is actually a convenience store chain locally (Stewart's) that uses a very low-tech customer loyalty card. It has no identifying marks on it except for the store where you can use it. Buy a carton of milk or a large beverage, they put a rubber stamp mark on it. Fill it up, and you get a discount. No BS, no tracking, just a simple reward for loyalty.
They also get their milk from local dairies in and around the Saratoga area, so you're also supporting the local economy to buy from them.
If any of you have been PAYING ATTENTION to your computers, you will find that ALL of them have an FCC logo on them indicating that they have passed certifications. Every computer must pass under part 15 regs, and if it connects to a phone line, it must also pass under part 68 regs. Thus has it always been.
It's been 70 years and we haven't found Amelia Earhart. It's been 30 years and we haven't found Jimmy Hoffa. It's been 30 years and we haven't found D.B. Cooper. Etc.
True, but how hard have we been looking for Earhart, Hoffa and Cooper, really? None of the three of them approach the level of national priority.
Of course, as we all know, "low energy" compact fluorescents are a waste of time *anyway*, because their power factor is so awful that twice as much energy again must be dissipated at the substation to compensate...
1. Even if you count VA instead of watts, a compact fluorescent bulb still draws half the VA of an incandescent bulb.
2. If that's not good enough for you, high power factor compact fluorescent bulbs are available.
3. You probably pay for Watts, not VA. Your electric meter will not charge you for reactive power.
4. If 3 is not the case in your case, you can install a power factor corrector. An active one would be preferable, but a passive one should get you some improvement.
5. There should be power factor correction at the substation, assuming that there isn't some somewhere along the line. I can point out several locations in my neighbourhood where there are power factor correctors on the poles.
The first is transportation fuel. . . Nuclear energy will not help here.
Nuclear-generated electricity can be used to crack water molecules to produce hydrogen, and it can also be used to charge batteries on an electric vehicle.
Of course, this is true of electricity from any source.
Yep. Maybe even set up a pseudo-"RAID5" with 3 RAID5 servers.:) Costs _WAY_ less than tape, and is far more reliable. (I hate tape, can you tell?)
It is okay to hate tape. The bit where you and I disagree, though, is that redundancy is not backup, and vice-versa. Redundancy helps if you have a hardware failure, but will not help you if your file system gets corrupted (still possible with RAID) and will not help you if you hit enter after an 'rm' command and then go "Oh shit!"
That in mind, you might want to bolster a RAID array of any generation with either a manual mirror to a different device/array/computer or, even better, periodically do an incremental backup to a tape image (i.e. a TAR or CPIO file) on a different device/array/computer. That way, you are not just protected from boneheaded hardware design, but also from boneheaded software design and boneheaded users:-)
On another note, I once installed a server for a bank that was paranoid about data loss. The server had 13 9GB drives. Ten were arranged into two groups of 5, configured as RAID5, and then mirrored between the two groups.
Another logical volume on that same machine was implemented across the remaining three drives. Each drive was divided into two 4.5GB partitions. Drive 0 partition 0 was mirrored on drive 1 partition 1, drive 1 partition 0 was mirrored on drive 2 partition 1, and drive 2 partition 0 was mirrored on drive 0 partition 1. Then guess what? Yep, you guessed it! The three mirrored pair were put together as RAID5 to make a 9GB logical volume. That was the root volume.
Gas Turbines are some of the most efficient fuel -> energy converters known to man.
False!
I work in the energy sector. Gas turbines are, for the most part, only turned on when there is either (a) a sudden increase in demand or (b) nothing else available. Believe it or not, a steam-powered plant will generally do the job on as much as 50% less fuel than a gas turbine, but may take several hours to get up to speed.
Slashdot Mirror
I had a similar thing happen in college. I think this was in the spring of 1992, IIRC.
After returning to college from a break, I discovered that I had left my chequebook home (some 450-500km away) and that I needed to pay my tuition bill at the end of the week.
For the next three days, I went to the ATM each day and withdrew $300 (which was the daily limit). At the end of the week, I went into the Bursar's office, and paid my tuition bill (one of the four installments of $890) entirely in $20 bills.
Got a good laugh from the clerk, though!
My BJC-4400 uses the same system. It was purchased used at a swap meet for about $15. Works hunky dorie, and without those expensive H-P ink cartridges. I had been using an H-P printer, which works fine too. Just that the ink is so gosh darn expensive.
Exactly.
I bought the BJ-200ex brand new in 1994. It died only in the last year or so from being dropped :-(
The BJC-4200 was given to me to use if I could repair, by someone who thought it didn't work, because she'd replaced the ink tanks and it didn't print (nozzles were plugged). She replaced it with an HP. *sigh* I replaced the whole cartridge and it works beautifully. When it ran out, I replaced it with a black cartridge.
The BJC-420 (still haven't looked at it to see if that is the actual model number) was purchased at a yard sale for $5.00 from someone who was replacing it with a laser printer. It worked right as soon as I connected it.
For the most part, the print quality is excellent. It doesn't get that gloss you get on a laser printer, but it still looks quite nice. For the little bit of printing I actually do, these little beasts are perfect.
I am very happy with my Canon printers.
Between 1994 and now, I have owned a BJ-200ex, a BJC-4200 and a BJC-420(IIRC?)
The BJC-4200 and BJC-420 are colour printers. The 420, outfitted with a colour cartridge is dog slow, but it is a cheap printer. In B&W, it takes the same print cartridge as the BJ-200ex. The colour cartridges don't last that well, but the black and white ones seem to last pretty well.
The BJC-4200 is the nuts. It takes a three-piece cartridge, consisting of a nozzle pack, a black tank, and a colour tank. You can replace the whole cartridge if the nozzles are clogged, or you can replace just the black or colour tanks if it is just out of one kind of ink. This means you need not be shy about using it to print text.
The BJC-4200 also accepts a black-only cartridge. When you use this cartridge, it prints two lines at a time, rather than just one, and it lasts and lasts and lasts. I finally had to replace a cartridge two months ago, after two years of moderate service.
Also, the cartridges aren't that expensive. Refill kits are available, but they aren't that much cheaper than the cartridges themselves. The printers cost a little more than Lexmark or HP, but the payback is there.
Not affiliated with Canon; I'm just a very happy customer, and I will probably buy a Canon printer again.
Shouldn't that be 1200 kb/s? 150 KB/s * 8 = 1200 kb/s, right? Or is the 150 KB/s figure I'm using incorrect (I could have sworn that was the 1x CD speed)?
Permit me to be even more pedantic :-)
150kB is approximately the right speed, but is tweaked for ISO FS overhead. Audio CD's have no file system, and can thus store 746MB of PCM audio per 74 minute CD or 807MB of PCM audio per 80 minute CD.
The actual rate is 44100Hz * 16 bits * 2 channels = 1 411 200 bits/second.
Fryboy will do fine, thanks :-)
You have also neglected the fact that a diesel engine can, with no modification, be run on biodiesel, which is refined vegetable oil. With mild modification, you can run a diesel engine on raw vegetable oil.
I wonder what kind of responce Sun will have to that.
It will be a punchline, of course!
You can't conclude, purely on energy input grounds, that either will be the case, or that a redistribution of temperature variations will take place. If you take into account other factors it does indeed seem likely that some places will become cooler and others warmer, but those other factors must be evaluated properly.
Just to build on to what you just said, let me point out that there exist various current in the air and in the water that redistribute solar heat in various patterns. Some of these have been covered on Slashdot before.
These currents are driven by the very energy they redistribute. Further, their continuation sometimes has a chemistry element (e.g. the level of salinity in sea water). As changes take place, some of these currents may shift, some will surely cease, and probably a few new ones will kick up.
The bottom line is that the system is too complex to get a full and clear picture of it. The only way to deal with it is to stay on your toes and react when you see something coming your way, in the hopes that you can get out of the way before the shit hits the fan.
But if you remember on 9/11, there were a whole bunch of cell phone calls that got through just fine. You don't hear of cell phone calls working on airplanes that often because as current law has it, they aren't allowed. But when people broke the rules in an emergency, they worked just fine.
While this is, in fact, true, I am not so sure it would work just fine if everybody was doing it.
The problem I see is that if one or two phone calls are made, from one or two planes, the ground interference from those phones (which would plug up the airwaves for hundreds of miles on the particular transmit frequency the phone was using at the second) is negligible. If several people on many planes were doing it, cellular service will go to hell.
And, please, don't anybody start with the spectrum-scarcity-is-a-myth mantra. If you actually read the papers behind the mantra, you will find that this problem will not be remedied because radios of sufficient intelligence to accomplish that are not in circulation, and will not be for quite some time.
But it's unsightly
Nonsense. I've seen utility wind turbines. I've stopped to take pictures of them. I find them quite beautiful, and even somewhat hypnotic.
There is a very nice-looking wind farm in Madison County, NY, that can be seen for about ten miles in either direction along U.S. route 20. If you have a chance to be passing through that area, you should see for yourself how beautiful they really are.
Consumers mostly rejected S-VHS because most of them "couldn't see any difference" from regular VHS.
I believe pretty firmly that this had a great deal to do with a lack of televisions that could display an above-NTSC-compsite quality picture. Taking it a step farther, I think there were (and still are) altogether too many TV's that couldn't even display NTSC-composite to full advantage, and NTSC-composite's pretty bad to begin with!
By comparison, today, people have TV's with S-Video connectors at least (side note, S-Video gets its name from SVHS, because you needed an S-video or equivalent monitor (Some Commodore computer monitors worked well) to be able to take advantage of SVHS's improved picture) and many now have component (a/k/a YUV or YPbPr) connectors, even if they are not high-definition TV's. To boot, high-definition TV's have been available for less than $1000 for at least two years (mine cost $700 two years ago). We now have good TV's, we now can appreciate something good to show on them.
Consumers mostly rejected Laserdisc because they couldn't record on it, despite the superior picture quality.
I disagree. I think Laserdisc got rejected for the same reason Beta did--you had to use multiple media units (tape, side of disc) to record a feature film, which meant your film got rudely interrupted and replaced by a video slate telling you turn the disc over or put in the next tape. That DVD has been as widely accepted as it is, even before DVD burners and now DVD recorders were available and reasonably priced, disproves this point of yours.
RIT's advantage is that they REQUIRE you to do 50 weeks of co-ops before they give you a degree.
That is definitely an advantage, yes. It also misses the point of the question.
That, and when you go on the campus tour you can end everything the the guide says with "... and then you get a job."
Yes. That is a good point, and probably also true of MIT and RPI.
Not sure why you posted as an AC....
I have a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from SUNY (State University of New York) at Brockport, and an Associate's degree in Computer Science from SUNY Alfred. This arrangement has served me well enough.
SUNY Alfred is known for engineering, but it is still a state school, and a two-year school at that. Worse, it had a reputation as a party school at the time I atended it (I think it was like #3 or #4 on MTV's list).
As an aside, I believe I learned more for it being a party school. Basically the party environment had two side-effects. First, the professors were willing to put a greater investment into the students that actually gave a shit. Second, the serious students didn't end up suffering from burnout from trying to keep up with their peers, because we were usually the ones in the lead.
SUNY Brockport is a full University, but is better know for its sports (for reasons I haven't been able to figure out.... we always lost).
Despite that, I am doing fine. Since my graduation in 1994, I have worked for a factory automation company, a software developer, a systems integrator and a utility. I have enjoyed all four jobs. Maybe I could have done better with a degree from RPI, MIT or RIT, but I'd still be paying my student loans, too.
Additionally, the 120Hz (not 60Hz) or 100Hz (not 50Hz) flicker is also gone, thanks to solid-state ballasts which re-generate the AC at significantly higher frequencies, typically in the 10-20kHz range.
But what bothers me is the *waste of power*, whether I pay for it or not.
Then you should be using CF's, not incandescent. Say you were using a 100W incandescent bulb. Since the bulb is a resistive load, 100W = 100VA. An equivalent CF will use 24-26W, and, unless it is a high power factor model, it will use about 50VA. That is still way less than 100W.
Even if you use low power factor models, the utility will still absorb the reactive power in your neighbourhood. If you really want to focus your attention on bad power factors, you might do better to examine your computer and any motorized appliances you own, because they tend to have very bad power factors.
Of course, if you're offgrid and running it all from a 24VDC supply, it's not an issue.
Actually, it becomes a bigger issue, and power factor correction becomes critical. Inverters are rated in VA rather than Watts. While a 3600VA inverter can, in fact, deliver 3600W, it can only do so if the power factor of that load is 1.
I can't put up with the flickering, and even the most powerful ones put out such a pathetic amount of light.
When did you last try them? 1980?!? I've seen noticeable improvements just in the last year, and I've been using them with satisfactory results for over ten years. There is not flicker, and light output is high. Not only that, but the newest one I put in (replaced one that got smashed a week ago) actually comes up to full intensity immediately.
Not to mention the really ugly, sickly greenish colour temperature that makes everything look like The Matrix.
The colour temperature is slightly different from incandescent, sure. It isn't that far off, though. The sickly green colour is a thing that was left behind in the mid-90's, even in the cheapest of cheap.
I think you are just afraid.
Fine. Then I'm going to patent "N'est pas", "No es", "Non est", "Ne estas" and "Ist nicht".
There is actually a convenience store chain locally (Stewart's) that uses a very low-tech customer loyalty card. It has no identifying marks on it except for the store where you can use it. Buy a carton of milk or a large beverage, they put a rubber stamp mark on it. Fill it up, and you get a discount. No BS, no tracking, just a simple reward for loyalty.
They also get their milk from local dairies in and around the Saratoga area, so you're also supporting the local economy to buy from them.
If any of you have been PAYING ATTENTION to your computers, you will find that ALL of them have an FCC logo on them indicating that they have passed certifications. Every computer must pass under part 15 regs, and if it connects to a phone line, it must also pass under part 68 regs. Thus has it always been.
It's been 70 years and we haven't found Amelia Earhart. It's been 30 years and we haven't found Jimmy Hoffa. It's been 30 years and we haven't found D.B. Cooper. Etc.
True, but how hard have we been looking for Earhart, Hoffa and Cooper, really? None of the three of them approach the level of national priority.
It works if you pronounce LED like "lead" as in the metal.
Of course, as we all know, "low energy" compact fluorescents are a waste of time *anyway*, because their power factor is so awful that twice as much energy again must be dissipated at the substation to compensate...
1. Even if you count VA instead of watts, a compact fluorescent bulb still draws half the VA of an incandescent bulb.
2. If that's not good enough for you, high power factor compact fluorescent bulbs are available.
3. You probably pay for Watts, not VA. Your electric meter will not charge you for reactive power.
4. If 3 is not the case in your case, you can install a power factor corrector. An active one would be preferable, but a passive one should get you some improvement.
5. There should be power factor correction at the substation, assuming that there isn't some somewhere along the line. I can point out several locations in my neighbourhood where there are power factor correctors on the poles.
The first is transportation fuel. . . Nuclear energy will not help here.
Nuclear-generated electricity can be used to crack water molecules to produce hydrogen, and it can also be used to charge batteries on an electric vehicle.
Of course, this is true of electricity from any source.
(to the tune of the Badger song)
Emacs Emacs Emacs Emacs .... (Back to start)
Emacs Emacs Emacs Emacs
Emacs Emacs Emacs Emacs
VI VI!
Emacs Emacs Emacs Emacs
Emacs Emacs Emacs Emacs
Emacs Emacs Emacs Emacs
VI VI!
Oh! Pico! Oh, it's small!
It's a
Yep. Maybe even set up a pseudo-"RAID5" with 3 RAID5 servers. :) Costs _WAY_ less than tape, and is far more reliable. (I hate tape, can you tell?)
It is okay to hate tape. The bit where you and I disagree, though, is that redundancy is not backup, and vice-versa. Redundancy helps if you have a hardware failure, but will not help you if your file system gets corrupted (still possible with RAID) and will not help you if you hit enter after an 'rm' command and then go "Oh shit!"
That in mind, you might want to bolster a RAID array of any generation with either a manual mirror to a different device/array/computer or, even better, periodically do an incremental backup to a tape image (i.e. a TAR or CPIO file) on a different device/array/computer. That way, you are not just protected from boneheaded hardware design, but also from boneheaded software design and boneheaded users :-)
On another note, I once installed a server for a bank that was paranoid about data loss. The server had 13 9GB drives. Ten were arranged into two groups of 5, configured as RAID5, and then mirrored between the two groups.
Another logical volume on that same machine was implemented across the remaining three drives. Each drive was divided into two 4.5GB partitions. Drive 0 partition 0 was mirrored on drive 1 partition 1, drive 1 partition 0 was mirrored on drive 2 partition 1, and drive 2 partition 0 was mirrored on drive 0 partition 1. Then guess what? Yep, you guessed it! The three mirrored pair were put together as RAID5 to make a 9GB logical volume. That was the root volume.
Gas Turbines are some of the most efficient fuel -> energy converters known to man.
False!
I work in the energy sector. Gas turbines are, for the most part, only turned on when there is either (a) a sudden increase in demand or (b) nothing else available. Believe it or not, a steam-powered plant will generally do the job on as much as 50% less fuel than a gas turbine, but may take several hours to get up to speed.