Re:Don't complain about TVA
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DIY HVAC
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· Score: 1
No but look at the cost of building one of those dams, that were basically gifted to the areas that get the power. Those of us lucky enough to live in a hydro plant powered area pay for the variable costs of the power, they didn't have to pay off the cost of the dam.
What about a water/pipe heating system, I know of a bunch of systems in Montana, used for pre water heating, why couldn't more be used in a home heating system. The other technology that seems like a killer idea are geothermal heat pumps, they have another name, but that's the trade name. It's basically a reversable AC that uses the earth as its condensing/expansion coil (depending on if you want heating or cooling. They use electricity, but work very well.
Re:Easier way to lower the electricity bill
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DIY HVAC
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· Score: 1
I saw an article a few months back in the WSJ about many a company that saved a collective fortune with dummy terminals. Our building went the opposite route, the HVAC system simply breaks whenever anyone tries to adjust the temp.
Re:Check out this week's "This Old House"
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DIY HVAC
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· Score: 2, Informative
That's why the houses there are such bright light colors, so you can tell easily if there is something nasty on your roof.
Re:What about water conservation??
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DIY HVAC
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· Score: 1
The big globetrotting cruise ship was supposed to have grey water recycling to reduce desalinization requirements. I've been waiting for a tiny flow toilet for liquid waste and a more reasonable flow for the solid waste jobs. Too often the newer 1.5 gallons per flust toilets require multiple flushes, although they are getting better in that regard.
On a hideously wasteful note, I visited my grandmother this weekend, and she has an ancient showerhead that kicks out well more than the newer showerheads, the shower was a luxury I had forgotton about over the past few years of low flow showers.
Re:What about water conservation??
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DIY HVAC
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· Score: 1
His point was in a normal toilet the tank water is potable, if a bit disconcerting, a grey water tank isn't. Althouth the grey water tank lets you poop you dehydrate.
I found the movie Faramir to be a noble character, he let the ring go, knowing that it would be his doom, he rode out to what was likely to be certain death. Those are not the actions of a sniveling weakling. I'd hold off on final judgement till the extended RoTK comes out.
I've thought that LA confidential was the one that got screwed, by Titanic, at least Forrest Gump was good, and then they had to make up for it with Russell Crowe in Gladiator.
This looks like a decent hardware version of what you wanted, they say it takes a bit of time to warm up, but you can't beat the price. Oh and hardware o-scopes rule, but cost a ton. There are lots of other o-scopes for sale on ebay. It's one of the few tech areas that seems to have some regular bargains, that and old workstations from anyone other than SGI, who has more sex appeal than apple.
They way I think it would work would be compensatory damages (physical damages, loss of work, pain suffering and the rest of the payments designed to cover your actual losses (tangible and intangible)) would have 50% added to them for the contingency fee (after the lawyer gets their third of the total you are whole). The punitive damages go strait to the government in the form of fines, which the lawyers don't get 1/3. You could pull their cut of compensatory out of the punative damages. I don't think that most of us have a problem with making someone whole or punishing wrong doers enough to make it sting it is the whole concept of they lawyers and victims going after the windfall of punative damages that becomes the issue.
I still don't have any good ideas for how to reform the class action system.
I think a simple solution of punative damages go to the government would solve a ton of problems. Punative damages should be large enough to punish companies that act in a reckless manner, but since they are intended to punish the company, not restititue a harm (compensatory damanges) they should not go to the victim or their lawyers, who should be made whole by compensitory damages (which could include legal fees). Rather they should go the current place that fines go, the government. It's not perfect, but it would help to moderate some of the more backward incentives that exist under the current system.
I agree, and never really understood why that one got blocked. The DoJ seems like they are pretty caprcious in their enforcement of anti-competitive mergers. I think the broadcast lobby was a bit down on that merger, having Murdoc planning to scoop up Hughes on the cheap didn't help things any. You have any thoughts on the government's attitude towards Disney Comcast? I'm beginning to wonder if that one just goes away after Eisner gets canned.
Interesting I hadn't heard that one, but had seen reports that thought it filled a hole in their products. I liked it better because BEA was so much cheaper. Please shoot me an email if you hear anything juicy.
Have you ever seen the stock pic they have of him in the WSJ? They use an odd method for pictures there, it's like a very low resolotion dot matrix print. He looks particularly satanic there, most of the time by the time I get the paper someone has already added a bit more point to the beard, and a spiked tail.
It was pretty much expected that this merger wouldn't close most of the investment community took the offer with a pretty big grain of salt, it was taken as a competitive tactic. Oracle was offering to scare people away from Peoplesoft, the idea was that customers would think, "we'll finish the solution, and about that time the merger will close and we'll have to start all over, let's save a step and use oracle, or better yet go with SAP."
So there shouldn't be a whole lot of movement, but you have the dynamic backwards. In general it's good for stockholders to get bought out, and bad for the acquiring company. Peoplesoft's management has been fighting this tooth and nail because they are all fired if it closes. Which is generally true for mergers, they occur when someone believes they can more effectivly manage the assets of another company.
They nixed it for the rural areas that don't have a cable company. Not that the combined entity would have done some good in cities, where it could have offered more HD channels (both offer a ton of repeating channels).
In the ERP market, what exactly has Oracle done? SAP dominates that market. The whole thing is a result of PeopleSoft feeding documents to the DoJ to quash the merger. How come the DoJ didn't have a problem with #2 buying the then #3 ERP company about six months ago? It's mostly a pissing match between Larry and Craig, looks like Craig won this round. Oracle should set its sights on BEA and pick off Peoplesoft in a few years.
I think oficially it's due 2005, but the smart money is on 2006. I believe those are calendar year estimates, but MS has been in the 2004 fiscal year since June.
What I meant was that productivity increases can increase GDP without changing the number of people employed. Case in point the past two years, in which employment has declined but GDP has increased.
However, historically adding technology only really boosted productivity in a few selected industries. Over the last decade the big improvments in productivity have come in tech, retail, and finance. I've heard that Wal~Mart accounts for several percent of national productivity increases. I think it's easy to point to a big server that manages most of the information tracking in trading, to show how 10 people can do many times the work (measured in shares traded) that 10 people did in the 1970s in stock market trading (a few manage the server, which takes the orders rather than having people do all of that work). I added my speculation (in agreement with you) that an important part of productivity gains are longer hours by the same employees (who are measured as officially working the same hours).
It seems like the enginnering heigharchy is Chem/Electrical->CS/ Mechanical->Civil->Economics/Finance. I sort of took this route, I spent the first two years of college in EE, squeeked though linear and dif eq, even. Only to transfer into a double major econ finance in the last three years. And you know I love what I do, having a solid math background really helps in finance, and the bits of EE make reading technical papers a breeze. That being said, he might be able to hack the math and just doesn't like coding. I never really got a real buzz out of coding, I can do it and practice occasionally, but it doesn't turn my crank and I would probably not enjoy a coding job.
Draft PBR is quite good, it is a bit sweet though. You are right it is different from the usual brews I drink. For the double bonus last time I got a pint it was around $1.50, and it wasn't even happy hour.
Technically an economist would define Microsoft as having market power. In their case it's pretty obvious since their products sell for something above marginal cost. Every successful software company has market power since we all know what the marginal cost of a software product is.
Rambus was a different way of organizing memory. In some ways it was better in others worse. I liked the analogy of using a train (RAMBUS) or a fleet of trucks (SDRAM) to deliver data. The train works great when you have to move a ton of stuff from one place to another, the trucks work better when you have to move lots of little loads from many places. Video editing is an area where RDRAM shines, multitasking is a disadvantage. Now there were many things that served to help RDRAM in its disadvantages, the P4 was developed to work very well with RDRAM it loved the bandwidth and made up for the latency with clock cycles. Dual channel was a big part of the enhancement, too. Have you ever been stuck on a machine with only a single stick of RDRAM or a P3? DDR was much faster. Once you got over about 128 MB of RDRAM you ended up waiting a long time for the addressing scheme to access different portions of RAM. When you pulled from each area sequentially, it was wonderful. I'm typing this from an early P4 that used RDRAM and it works quite well, but I wish the company had waited for socket 478.
Price performance was an easy win for an Athlon with DDR in those days. I'd love to find the powersupply and finally put together a dual xeon with a whole boatload of RDRAM and some fast drives.
You're exactly right, I think most of the productivity gains have come from areas that were easy to mechinize (like finance and accounting which have been going to computers for decades) or where workers just work longer hours.
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No but look at the cost of building one of those dams, that were basically gifted to the areas that get the power. Those of us lucky enough to live in a hydro plant powered area pay for the variable costs of the power, they didn't have to pay off the cost of the dam.
What about a water/pipe heating system, I know of a bunch of systems in Montana, used for pre water heating, why couldn't more be used in a home heating system. The other technology that seems like a killer idea are geothermal heat pumps, they have another name, but that's the trade name. It's basically a reversable AC that uses the earth as its condensing/expansion coil (depending on if you want heating or cooling. They use electricity, but work very well.
I saw an article a few months back in the WSJ about many a company that saved a collective fortune with dummy terminals. Our building went the opposite route, the HVAC system simply breaks whenever anyone tries to adjust the temp.
That's why the houses there are such bright light colors, so you can tell easily if there is something nasty on your roof.
The big globetrotting cruise ship was supposed to have grey water recycling to reduce desalinization requirements. I've been waiting for a tiny flow toilet for liquid waste and a more reasonable flow for the solid waste jobs. Too often the newer 1.5 gallons per flust toilets require multiple flushes, although they are getting better in that regard.
On a hideously wasteful note, I visited my grandmother this weekend, and she has an ancient showerhead that kicks out well more than the newer showerheads, the shower was a luxury I had forgotton about over the past few years of low flow showers.
His point was in a normal toilet the tank water is potable, if a bit disconcerting, a grey water tank isn't. Althouth the grey water tank lets you poop you dehydrate.
I found the movie Faramir to be a noble character, he let the ring go, knowing that it would be his doom, he rode out to what was likely to be certain death. Those are not the actions of a sniveling weakling. I'd hold off on final judgement till the extended RoTK comes out.
I've thought that LA confidential was the one that got screwed, by Titanic, at least Forrest Gump was good, and then they had to make up for it with Russell Crowe in Gladiator.
This looks like a decent hardware version of what you wanted, they say it takes a bit of time to warm up, but you can't beat the price. Oh and hardware o-scopes rule, but cost a ton. There are lots of other o-scopes for sale on ebay. It's one of the few tech areas that seems to have some regular bargains, that and old workstations from anyone other than SGI, who has more sex appeal than apple.
They way I think it would work would be compensatory damages (physical damages, loss of work, pain suffering and the rest of the payments designed to cover your actual losses (tangible and intangible)) would have 50% added to them for the contingency fee (after the lawyer gets their third of the total you are whole). The punitive damages go strait to the government in the form of fines, which the lawyers don't get 1/3. You could pull their cut of compensatory out of the punative damages. I don't think that most of us have a problem with making someone whole or punishing wrong doers enough to make it sting it is the whole concept of they lawyers and victims going after the windfall of punative damages that becomes the issue.
I still don't have any good ideas for how to reform the class action system.
I think a simple solution of punative damages go to the government would solve a ton of problems. Punative damages should be large enough to punish companies that act in a reckless manner, but since they are intended to punish the company, not restititue a harm (compensatory damanges) they should not go to the victim or their lawyers, who should be made whole by compensitory damages (which could include legal fees). Rather they should go the current place that fines go, the government. It's not perfect, but it would help to moderate some of the more backward incentives that exist under the current system.
I agree, and never really understood why that one got blocked. The DoJ seems like they are pretty caprcious in their enforcement of anti-competitive mergers. I think the broadcast lobby was a bit down on that merger, having Murdoc planning to scoop up Hughes on the cheap didn't help things any. You have any thoughts on the government's attitude towards Disney Comcast? I'm beginning to wonder if that one just goes away after Eisner gets canned.
Interesting I hadn't heard that one, but had seen reports that thought it filled a hole in their products. I liked it better because BEA was so much cheaper. Please shoot me an email if you hear anything juicy.
Your analogy isn't true until he get's mauled by a tiger.
Have you ever seen the stock pic they have of him in the WSJ? They use an odd method for pictures there, it's like a very low resolotion dot matrix print. He looks particularly satanic there, most of the time by the time I get the paper someone has already added a bit more point to the beard, and a spiked tail.
It was pretty much expected that this merger wouldn't close most of the investment community took the offer with a pretty big grain of salt, it was taken as a competitive tactic. Oracle was offering to scare people away from Peoplesoft, the idea was that customers would think, "we'll finish the solution, and about that time the merger will close and we'll have to start all over, let's save a step and use oracle, or better yet go with SAP."
So there shouldn't be a whole lot of movement, but you have the dynamic backwards. In general it's good for stockholders to get bought out, and bad for the acquiring company. Peoplesoft's management has been fighting this tooth and nail because they are all fired if it closes. Which is generally true for mergers, they occur when someone believes they can more effectivly manage the assets of another company.
They nixed it for the rural areas that don't have a cable company. Not that the combined entity would have done some good in cities, where it could have offered more HD channels (both offer a ton of repeating channels).
In the ERP market, what exactly has Oracle done? SAP dominates that market. The whole thing is a result of PeopleSoft feeding documents to the DoJ to quash the merger. How come the DoJ didn't have a problem with #2 buying the then #3 ERP company about six months ago? It's mostly a pissing match between Larry and Craig, looks like Craig won this round. Oracle should set its sights on BEA and pick off Peoplesoft in a few years.
I think oficially it's due 2005, but the smart money is on 2006. I believe those are calendar year estimates, but MS has been in the 2004 fiscal year since June.
What I meant was that productivity increases can increase GDP without changing the number of people employed. Case in point the past two years, in which employment has declined but GDP has increased.
However, historically adding technology only really boosted productivity in a few selected industries. Over the last decade the big improvments in productivity have come in tech, retail, and finance. I've heard that Wal~Mart accounts for several percent of national productivity increases. I think it's easy to point to a big server that manages most of the information tracking in trading, to show how 10 people can do many times the work (measured in shares traded) that 10 people did in the 1970s in stock market trading (a few manage the server, which takes the orders rather than having people do all of that work). I added my speculation (in agreement with you) that an important part of productivity gains are longer hours by the same employees (who are measured as officially working the same hours).
It seems like the enginnering heigharchy is Chem/Electrical->CS/ Mechanical->Civil->Economics/Finance. I sort of took this route, I spent the first two years of college in EE, squeeked though linear and dif eq, even. Only to transfer into a double major econ finance in the last three years. And you know I love what I do, having a solid math background really helps in finance, and the bits of EE make reading technical papers a breeze. That being said, he might be able to hack the math and just doesn't like coding. I never really got a real buzz out of coding, I can do it and practice occasionally, but it doesn't turn my crank and I would probably not enjoy a coding job.
Draft PBR is quite good, it is a bit sweet though. You are right it is different from the usual brews I drink. For the double bonus last time I got a pint it was around $1.50, and it wasn't even happy hour.
Technically an economist would define Microsoft as having market power. In their case it's pretty obvious since their products sell for something above marginal cost. Every successful software company has market power since we all know what the marginal cost of a software product is.
Rambus was a different way of organizing memory. In some ways it was better in others worse. I liked the analogy of using a train (RAMBUS) or a fleet of trucks (SDRAM) to deliver data. The train works great when you have to move a ton of stuff from one place to another, the trucks work better when you have to move lots of little loads from many places. Video editing is an area where RDRAM shines, multitasking is a disadvantage. Now there were many things that served to help RDRAM in its disadvantages, the P4 was developed to work very well with RDRAM it loved the bandwidth and made up for the latency with clock cycles. Dual channel was a big part of the enhancement, too. Have you ever been stuck on a machine with only a single stick of RDRAM or a P3? DDR was much faster. Once you got over about 128 MB of RDRAM you ended up waiting a long time for the addressing scheme to access different portions of RAM. When you pulled from each area sequentially, it was wonderful. I'm typing this from an early P4 that used RDRAM and it works quite well, but I wish the company had waited for socket 478.
Price performance was an easy win for an Athlon with DDR in those days. I'd love to find the powersupply and finally put together a dual xeon with a whole boatload of RDRAM and some fast drives.
You're exactly right, I think most of the productivity gains have come from areas that were easy to mechinize (like finance and accounting which have been going to computers for decades) or where workers just work longer hours.