Don't underestimate the market power of geeks playing games
FWIW, some of us non game playing geeks are also *really* looking forward to the Rift primarily for watching movies on our HTPC... $300-400 (a head) is not expensive to movie geeks wanting the best experience... Hell, I'm praying the rift is finally released before I give in and buy another projector to replace my 7 year old one. I'm not sure if the rift will beable to do what I want it to, but I'm hopeful. And at the cost of 1 lamp (I replace them each year with my viewership on projectorss) it would be a friggin steal.
I'm sorry, but since the advent of marketing (the new wheel, now travel up to 1000x faster than walking!) the speeds we actually get *very* rarely ever approach the advertised "up to" speeds. Even the summation says this: "And, as you well know from decades of network-technology advertising, dear reader, a “raw” data rate (often incorrectly called “theoretical”) is the maximum number of bits that can pass over a network. That includes all the network overhead as well as actual data carried in packets and frames. The net throughput is often 30 to 60 percent lower.'" So...... why bother mentioning it, let alone headlining it?
Is it just to attract us grumpy old trolls? The advertised wireless network speeds are very much like gas mileage, wildly inaccurate in the real world.
While tea does contain tanin so does coffee. A more common reason as to why you can do this is either you're drinking a fruit/mint tea that has little to no caffeine, or more likely, your body is conditioned for coffee so that when you smell coffee and taste it your brain behaves as though it's just waking up even if there's not a lot of caffine in the cup. An example of this was a study (in england around 2011 if my memory serves) that had people drink regular coffee and decaf and then tested focus and reaction time. The people drinking decaf who were told they were drinking caffeine actually did better than the caffeinated people on (I think just on) reaction time.
The brain is an annoyingly inconvenient trickster sometimes.
If you live in an area serviced by them, the people that bought CCW have a great service. I'm on a reseller (Vivaciti) of theirs and have no problems despite a monthly usage of 400-500GB. (am getting 10-12Mb from amsterdam on a 14Mb sync). As my line sometimes goes to crap a LLU was the best solution for me (no speed profile, you get whatever you connect at, not the speed you connected at 2-3 days ago.
fcking expensive to me, but I'm able to grab US tv in 720p fairly quickly so I'm happy until I wander back to the states:)
Bloody hell! (really wish we could edit these later for times when proofreading misses a word/line, but then people could change their minds, and that's just not allowed;-) )
No, in the current incarnation VOIP won't work with air travel, well, not like a traditional phone call, it'll be more like walkie talkies, say "over" when you're finished speaking and it's the net person's call.
should read:
No, in the current incarnation VOIP won't work with air travel, well, not like a traditional phone call, it'll be more like walkie talkies, say "over" when you're finished speaking and it's the other person's turn to talk.
Right, apparently not awake enough or too hungover for/. posting. I now return you to your regularly scheduled flame war.
Sure, I decide to not post AC, and forget to remove the AC disclaimer, sheesh. Christmas day hangovers are annoying. Off to go find some hair of ye olde dog.
Happy Christmas all, commence your arguing back and forth about how this is hurting our rights. Most of the time I'm with you, but a non monopolistic private company censoring your net access isn't a problem. Now if Verizon, Time Warner, Comcast, or any company that serves your HOME does this. I have issues. But any service that serves the public has a right to filter, if you don't like it, don't use it and see if the free market sorts itself out (hint: it really won't in this case)
No, in the current incarnation VOIP won't work with air travel, well, not like a traditional phone call, it'll be more like walkie talkies, say "over" when you're finished speaking and it's the net person's call.
It's much like trying to use Satelite internet access to make voip calls, you can do it (some people do, hell, some people even do it well), but it requires some serious packet shaping as a home user, as VOIP won't be allowed on airlines (it's not in the accepted use list on any airline that currently gives net access) it should remain as such, and cellphones should also remain banned, I'm sorry but in this whole advancing society thing / free speech we've completely missed the right to peace and quiet, having idiots yelling into voip/cellphones on the airplane (you see you have to raise your voice because there's so much other noise in the cabin from the whole defying the rules of gravity) you would either need to have specially designed software/hardware ala bose, or well, have a conversation that can be heard from rows away. Anyways, porn... Sadly, surfing porn is in fact a big deal. Much like watching hard core porn in your truck while you drive (or your passenger doing so, whomever was doing it in California that got ticketed), that's not ok. Sorry folks, there's no ifs and or butts. We're fucking lucky we're getting a decent pg-13 movie @ the airline, and you think there's any remote chance they'll let you watch porn? As the saying goes, think of the children! Even if you believe the parents are the only ones that have the responsibility to insure the kids watch what they want them to allowing pornography on a video screen in a non age restricted part of any public (or quasi public) environment is just, well, sorry, that's rude people. Much like walking around with your cock/tits hanging out. Go ahead, bring a playboy on an airplane (which for the record IS NOT PORN. It's nudity, there's a difference, at least for now. And playboy has some amazing articles, the girls are entirely fake, but the thoughts in the articles are not.) try to read it, see what happens. Most US airlines will say, read something else if it's obvious, hell, some will even classify High Times as offensive. If you watch porn on your laptop, um, yeah, see how that goes, if I can clearly see the screen and think others can I'll help educate you on the whole good manners thing as this is a communal world, not just your private Idaho. (And it should be noted I have more porn than most small countries, I'm not offended by porn, except maybe 2 girls 1 cup, but that's not porn in my opinion, that's... well, yuckie;-) ) If you're going to watch porn get a window seat and use one of those laptop privacy filters, so no one else can see it (an aisle seat with privacy filter depending on placement of the laptop means anyone walking up the asile can see you), at this point carry on with your teasing of yourself as you can't... finish... your experience. Sounds like junior high to me;-)
The future MIGHT be different, but for now, no you can't do VOIP, no you can't watch porn (it's like being at work, do you watch porn in your office?), use common sense people, even if you're newspaper reporters. If this was digg, I'd bury this story as it's pointless.
And just a small personal note, while you all are doing whatever you're doing with the network, I'll be playing with wireshark, so perhaps you should also not check your bank balance nor send email on a non secured connection;-)
A.C as I'm not entirely sure of the legality of my last sentience.
Well, yes, but MN also has not only regular "weather" (snow, clouds, rain), but often extreme weather (SNOW, hair, uber cold temps, very hot temps) which is hard on most materials (like, say, bridges or solar panels). Solar won't be coming to the north east, midwest, or much of the US in any large fashion anytime soon, it's just not feasable even at $1/w considering generation issues (clouds, inches of snow covering pannels etc). It will however come to CA, AZ, and NV (or at least the segments of those states that don't really have "weather".) So I'm fairly comfortable with my cost estimates especially given that the population of CA (36.5M) is somewhat higher than the population of either MN (5.2M) or AZ (6.2M), and California currently does have power delivery issues at times which will encourage early adopters to adopt solar power early. Basically, it's my contention that SoCal is where solar will really take off in terms of #'s of installs, in part due to the high cost of electricity, and in part due to liberal guilt.
Wow, thanks for all the great replies folks. As far as the comparison to "traditional" generation technologies, that's not really valid from a home owner stand point as coal/gas electricity generation is not exactly feasible, community rules and all that. You're buying power from your local company or generating it via solar/wind/generator. However, let me run the numbers using the 5hrs mentioned by someone who actually has solar panels (and lives in an area that solar would be useful) note this doesn't factor any "green" benefits, just raw $...
Say you use 1500KWh per month (my highest and most recent bill in the UK is for this so it works for me, flipping a/c unit...) Also, southern California Edison's website has a sample bill (which isn't totally up to date price wise accurate however they have the same usage so 1500 it is...
Their sample bill shows a bill for $300.09 for said energy usage (delivery, tax, production, etc) so you're paying ~20cents a KWh. In the UK after shopping around (a lot) I'm paying ~0.09 pence per Khw (17cents us at today's exchange rate, yay, something is in fact cheaper here than in the states!).
Assuming I can store all the energy not immediately used (or I sell the energy back to the grid at the same rate at which I pay for it/my meter runs backwards) and using the 5hr number from the AZ responser's numbers (admittedly biased as AZ gets more sun than most places in the states, but likewise, AZ, CA, and NV are the places that will likely buy solar first so let's say it's a wash) in order to produce 1500KWh per 30 day month you'd want to produce 50KWh per day. This means you'd need to spend $10,000 on solar panels at the $1/W point (10kw worth of panels) figure another what, 4k, for the storage/delivery/installation @ your house? So $14,000 down. Assuming no tax breaks and a CA electric bill as mentioned above you'd break even in ~4 yrs. (~3 yrs if the 1k/w includes everything else you need. Unlikely for quite some time) for the remainder of your 6 warrantied years you're "making" $300.09/month for a total "profit" of $21,606.48 (again using today's numbers as an example, assuming the usual 10yr warranty, and that warranty work doesn't cause mass downtime big assumptions I grant you.)
Have to say given inflation, future cost of money, these figures being correct. Once we can go out and buy these panels for $1/w solar is in fact usable and affordable for the "average" power hungry user in the sunshine belt that won't move for 4-10years. Sure it's not as immediately cheap as coal (again, that comparison never makes sense to me, you can't buy coal, you can't buy/install equipment to generate power from coal), however it's generated @ the premises not by an outside company that might have power outages and will likely raise their rates in the future.
When companies report that their solar solution costs $X a watt, is this figure a steady watt/hour figure (e.g 1000W = 1kw/h) during which time the sun is shining on the pannels, or watts generated per hour of direct sunlight, 8 hrs of direct sunlight, every odd Tuesday, what? I always assumed it's a steady watt/hour figure but in this case $1000 would give you 1KWH while they were running, which gives you (assuming you have a battery storage solution) a production of 180KW/H a month (assuming 6hrs of "good" sunlight a day for 30 days.) If this is the case then sign me up, I'll break even in less than a year with my current evil power hungry mode of life. But the question is.... is this the case?
Now back to cooking that turducken (damn electric ovens)
Supposedly sony's new reader (version B as it were) is ~40% faster at screen refreshes than the first gen (slow refresh rates!) so I would assume this e-ink is about that fast (unless I'm mistaken it's the same technology, just a different seller.)
And e-ink currently requires full screen rewites due to the screen being a singular entity, in the current incarnation the screen is a page in that it can only be drawn on once, then it has to be wiped (new page) before the next drawing.
My concerns with this unit are that in order to transfer your personal documents (that client file, your research, copy of HP7 you downloaded...) you have to either email the book (10 cents), or email the document (non encrypted/compressed?)to amazon to be converted by their machines into the kindle's format, which can then be transfered via usb. Hopefully I did in fact misinterpret the amazon page. Either way, I can't even consider getting it for a few years, so it's all academic for me:)
Damn, forgot to add, it should also be noted that the maps study found a much higher level of CBDs released via vaporizing as opposed to burning. Win win for cancer patients apparently. And I expect the reason that some people can't stand vaporizing, they're looking for more of a THC kick, and not so much of a CBD kick. Now, I believe my volcano is calling my name.
Interesting idea with the ball bearings. But it should be noted that an unfiltered joint is better at delivering a higher proportion of THC to tar when compared to water pipes. Apparently the water traps a higher % of thc than tar according to that one MAPS study that compared various smoking apparatuses So a pipe without water would be the best method (if you don't like vaporizers) as not only do you get less tar, but you don't get a continuous burn and there's no wasted product. I've used just crushed ice before, and found it quite nice, might be worth picking up something small and plastic to test the BB idea though. Even if it didn't condense the tar, you would still get the same chilling effect on the smoke.
It's just really hard to estimate doseage. As it all depends on the quality of the herb, the effects the user wants, etc. Personally I'm a fan of chronic olive oil (VICS has a good recipe). Basically, experiment with what you have and see what works for you. Some people swear by using "vapour poo" for making olive oil/butter. Others grow their own and chop up the male plants for making butter/oil.
Generally speaking, don't just sprinkle herb on your food unless you have a high tolerance for food that tastes strongly of pot (yuck). Making olive oil (or corn oil, whatever oil you want really) is the easiest method for most people to have some good thc laced treats, and it makes some damn good enchiladas/pasta:) Butter is a bit harder to make (majorly labour intensive) but you can end up with a killer batch of brownies that last a long time due to the potency (the freezer is your friend). One note, eating cannabis is very different from smoking it, you can easily eat too much, and sadly, you can't un-eat it. So start slow, and give it an hr or two before trying another piece of cake/whatever. Note: I'm not advocating you break the law of wherever you live, I'm just giving suggestions so if you do ingest cannabis you'll do so with your eyes open, and maybe won't run into oncoming traffic.
If you're really experimental there are ways to infuse thc into alchohal for use at clubs and places where using "breath drops" would be acceptable. But that is even more of a headache than making butter. Search for "cannabis tincture" if you're so inclined. If you live in SoCal and are a MMJ patient you can buy cannabis oil, cannabis tincture, and other assorted ready made foods from your local MMJ dispensary. YMMV.
I have to side with Latty. It's really not far off, if you're not in London/Manchester it's a potluck to get fast service I'm currently living in the 10th largest city in England (as of 2004 estimates) in a newly built (2002ish) building, pretty much on top of two different university campuses, within easy walking distance to the town centre, and what are my options? Adsl. Nothing else (outside of dialup). There is some cable in the city, but not much. It's not even an option, for my building, and they don't know when it will be an option. So, I get Max dsl, which in theory gives me up to 448k up / 8Meg down (my max is 6Mb down when my line is clean during the day). But only when the local BT network isn't overcrowded (after about 9pm weeknight and most of the time on weekends), at which rate I'm lucky to get 800Kb - 1Mb down. Tack on the fact that pretty much every ADSL provider in the UK limits the amount of data you can transfer (some rather dramatically), and I've ended up going with an Entanet reseller for a VAT included bill of 67 pounds a month (~$137). Why? Because for some reason the English people let BT off the hook on supplying FTTP. I'm sorry, but for a country that has such a population density, it's extremely sad how little broadband there really is for the average English person. In theory around 2011 or so if we're still in the UK, we might be able to get next level of DSL, but I'm not holding my breath. Good for you that you have 20meg down, if you have 20meg down and no usage limits, than really good for you. However, most of us are currently being screwed.
An electronic Pearl Harbor? I know all asians look alike to caucasians, but it's China we should worry about, not Japan. It's more of an electic Boxer Rebellion.
Sorry, couldn't resist. It's nice to know the CIA is apparently paying attention. A random question to anyone: how much traffic enters/leaves the US a second? Just how big of a MOAF (mother of all firewalls) would the government need to prevent increased latency(not that this would be a government concern of course)?
Erm, also the above advice assumes you aren't going to be posting video until the release comes out. It can be a bit rude to ask your users to use beta software;-)
Really it depends on your goals. h.264 could (in theory at least) produce smaller files for the same quality video, so the server would send less data. Always a plus if you're paying for your pipe. But as other posters have pointed out, how long will it take for most people to upgrade flash versions? My guess, if youtube starts using only the latest version of flash, and "suggests" that the users do so too, well, then the users will do so.
So, in a nutshell, I'd say use h.264 and ask whatever users you have that aren't youtube addicts to upgrade nicely. You might save some money (and heck, if they have pay for play connections, the users will too;-) )
(Note that this advice assumes you're not serving up HD content.)
Easy, talk to your credit card company and dispute the charge (I paid $199 for 1 year of service, and the company went belly up after a month.) American express cards tend to be the best for this (6months since charge is where it starts to be a problem), but any CC should easily refund you the money w/n a couple months if you were just charged last month. Personally, in the vain hopes that sunrocket is in fact moving me to something else, I'm waiting to see what happens before I dispute the charge/mentall take the loss. The phone line works, and as I'm now living in England... Well, I'd like to keep an american phone line, and signing up for a new company isn't the easiest thing to do.
Yup, only downside would be the single point of failure for say, all of the company's servers. One job/one box has its benefits. Optimizing power and hardware utilization is not one of these benefits. (Of course if you do decide to utilize virtualization, odds are you're smart enough that if your business requires 24/7 uptime, you have a hot swap server serving as a primary backup which would be easy for you to roll out...) Power consumption is not on the radar for most companies now (excluding the huge server farms, they've noticed that power does cost money. So as of yet there's no push in corporate America. If the US goes through an (electricity) Energy crisis then things would change, but unless electricity in the States starts costing significantly more, I don't see virtualization taking off for power reasons...
Looked through the article and I see no mention of Apple.
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Under the agreement, Linspire will license Microsoft code related to Voice over Internet Protocol, Windows Media files and TrueType fonts. With the addition of the Microsoft code to Linspire's operating system, users will be able to voice-chat with Windows Live Messenger buddies, watch Windows Media video and audio files on open-source media players, and view and create documents using familiar typefaces.
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Now, unless I'm mistaken Apple developed the truetype standard in the early 90s or late 80s (Looks like Wikipedia agrees with me.) In which case, how on earth can Mickey-Soft grant anyone rights to use them? Obviously I'm missing something...
As far as the rest: nifty. Does it include HD WMV? And can the users check over the code for "bugs" (sorry, I don't trust microsoft that much when any linux build is concerned)
Uh... "Organized religions don't pretend to be able to demonstrate the paranormal, and so there's nothing concrete or repeatable for anyone like Randi to disprove."
You're not catholic are you? Exorcisms, Transubstantiation (bread into flesh, wine into blood), resurection, heaven, hell, the rapture (wait, that's evangelicals), saints (need a miracle to be a saint remember, and what's the definition of a miracle?)
Course if you're a Mormon, how about the magic underwear? Or john smith's magic hat?
Quakers (and southern baptists, and a few others) still speak in tongues when the "holy spirit" takes them over. They've even been known to... well... quake with feeling for the lord.
The devil? God? Creationism? The great flood? The concept of sin? Passover? Easter? Reincarnation? Any of these things ringing a bell?
However, you are at least partially right, over the centuries cults (erm, religions) have gotten very good at claiming things that are hard to disprove. However you might want to check out Richard Dawkins' new book "The God Delusion". You're also right, people tend to be easily fooled into believing nonsense, look at how many devout christians of various faiths there are in the US. Hell, the president believes the the jury is still out on evolution. For that matter a CBS survey back in 04 found that 45% of the people who voted for Bush and 24% of the votes for Kerry wanted creationism taught in schools instead of evolution. That's a crap load of people that think evolution is BS. (There's also 3 republican presidental candidates (for now) that state they do NOT believe in evolution.
Um, I'm really hoping the 3-4 items for 3-4 seconds quote did NOT come from John Sweller as that's quite wrong. The magic number in cognitive psychology (even in NSW) is 7±2, which is 5-9 not 3-4. Else without chunking no one could dial a new 7 digit phone number without writing it down. Also, as mentioned (briefly) in the article: rehersal helps people store more items, and sad to say, going through a power point presentation (and you know, lecturing) is rehersal. This is ESPECIALLY true if the same text is on the screen and presented orally. Different information from these two sources would be much worse here though, and then the divided attention becomes a problem.
I'm sure (ok, I hope) his theory has merit, but that write up is incorrect in regards to the assumptions about cognitive theory.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't underestimate the market power of geeks playing games
FWIW, some of us non game playing geeks are also *really* looking forward to the Rift primarily for watching movies on our HTPC... $300-400 (a head) is not expensive to movie geeks wanting the best experience... Hell, I'm praying the rift is finally released before I give in and buy another projector to replace my 7 year old one. I'm not sure if the rift will beable to do what I want it to, but I'm hopeful. And at the cost of 1 lamp (I replace them each year with my viewership on projectorss) it would be a friggin steal.
I'm sorry, but since the advent of marketing (the new wheel, now travel up to 1000x faster than walking!) the speeds we actually get *very* rarely ever approach the advertised "up to" speeds. Even the summation says this: "And, as you well know from decades of network-technology advertising, dear reader, a “raw” data rate (often incorrectly called “theoretical”) is the maximum number of bits that can pass over a network. That includes all the network overhead as well as actual data carried in packets and frames. The net throughput is often 30 to 60 percent lower.'" So...... why bother mentioning it, let alone headlining it? Is it just to attract us grumpy old trolls? The advertised wireless network speeds are very much like gas mileage, wildly inaccurate in the real world.
While tea does contain tanin so does coffee. A more common reason as to why you can do this is either you're drinking a fruit /mint tea that has little to no caffeine, or more likely, your body is conditioned for coffee so that when you smell coffee and taste it your brain behaves as though it's just waking up even if there's not a lot of caffine in the cup. An example of this was a study (in england around 2011 if my memory serves) that had people drink regular coffee and decaf and then tested focus and reaction time. The people drinking decaf who were told they were drinking caffeine actually did better than the caffeinated people on (I think just on) reaction time.
The brain is an annoyingly inconvenient trickster sometimes.
if only I had mod points, thanks for the good LOL before bed.
If you live in an area serviced by them, the people that bought CCW have a great service. I'm on a reseller (Vivaciti) of theirs and have no problems despite a monthly usage of 400-500GB. (am getting 10-12Mb from amsterdam on a 14Mb sync). As my line sometimes goes to crap a LLU was the best solution for me (no speed profile, you get whatever you connect at, not the speed you connected at 2-3 days ago. fcking expensive to me, but I'm able to grab US tv in 720p fairly quickly so I'm happy until I wander back to the states :)
Bloody hell! (really wish we could edit these later for times when proofreading misses a word/line, but then people could change their minds, and that's just not allowed ;-) )
/. posting. I now return you to your regularly scheduled flame war.
No, in the current incarnation VOIP won't work with air travel, well, not like a traditional phone call, it'll be more like walkie talkies, say "over" when you're finished speaking and it's the net person's call.
should read:
No, in the current incarnation VOIP won't work with air travel, well, not like a traditional phone call, it'll be more like walkie talkies, say "over" when you're finished speaking and it's the other person's turn to talk.
Right, apparently not awake enough or too hungover for
Sure, I decide to not post AC, and forget to remove the AC disclaimer, sheesh. Christmas day hangovers are annoying. Off to go find some hair of ye olde dog.
Happy Christmas all, commence your arguing back and forth about how this is hurting our rights. Most of the time I'm with you, but a non monopolistic private company censoring your net access isn't a problem. Now if Verizon, Time Warner, Comcast, or any company that serves your HOME does this. I have issues. But any service that serves the public has a right to filter, if you don't like it, don't use it and see if the free market sorts itself out (hint: it really won't in this case)
To answer the latency issue.
;-) ) If you're going to watch porn get a window seat and use one of those laptop privacy filters, so no one else can see it (an aisle seat with privacy filter depending on placement of the laptop means anyone walking up the asile can see you), at this point carry on with your teasing of yourself as you can't... finish... your experience. Sounds like junior high to me ;-)
;-)
No, in the current incarnation VOIP won't work with air travel, well, not like a traditional phone call, it'll be more like walkie talkies, say "over" when you're finished speaking and it's the net person's call.
It's much like trying to use Satelite internet access to make voip calls, you can do it (some people do, hell, some people even do it well), but it requires some serious packet shaping as a home user, as VOIP won't be allowed on airlines (it's not in the accepted use list on any airline that currently gives net access) it should remain as such, and cellphones should also remain banned, I'm sorry but in this whole advancing society thing / free speech we've completely missed the right to peace and quiet, having idiots yelling into voip/cellphones on the airplane (you see you have to raise your voice because there's so much other noise in the cabin from the whole defying the rules of gravity) you would either need to have specially designed software/hardware ala bose, or well, have a conversation that can be heard from rows away. Anyways, porn... Sadly, surfing porn is in fact a big deal. Much like watching hard core porn in your truck while you drive (or your passenger doing so, whomever was doing it in California that got ticketed), that's not ok. Sorry folks, there's no ifs and or butts. We're fucking lucky we're getting a decent pg-13 movie @ the airline, and you think there's any remote chance they'll let you watch porn? As the saying goes, think of the children! Even if you believe the parents are the only ones that have the responsibility to insure the kids watch what they want them to allowing pornography on a video screen in a non age restricted part of any public (or quasi public) environment is just, well, sorry, that's rude people. Much like walking around with your cock/tits hanging out. Go ahead, bring a playboy on an airplane (which for the record IS NOT PORN. It's nudity, there's a difference, at least for now. And playboy has some amazing articles, the girls are entirely fake, but the thoughts in the articles are not.) try to read it, see what happens. Most US airlines will say, read something else if it's obvious, hell, some will even classify High Times as offensive. If you watch porn on your laptop, um, yeah, see how that goes, if I can clearly see the screen and think others can I'll help educate you on the whole good manners thing as this is a communal world, not just your private Idaho. (And it should be noted I have more porn than most small countries, I'm not offended by porn, except maybe 2 girls 1 cup, but that's not porn in my opinion, that's... well, yuckie
The future MIGHT be different, but for now, no you can't do VOIP, no you can't watch porn (it's like being at work, do you watch porn in your office?), use common sense people, even if you're newspaper reporters. If this was digg, I'd bury this story as it's pointless.
And just a small personal note, while you all are doing whatever you're doing with the network, I'll be playing with wireshark, so perhaps you should also not check your bank balance nor send email on a non secured connection
A.C as I'm not entirely sure of the legality of my last sentience.
Well, yes, but MN also has not only regular "weather" (snow, clouds, rain), but often extreme weather (SNOW, hair, uber cold temps, very hot temps) which is hard on most materials (like, say, bridges or solar panels). Solar won't be coming to the north east, midwest, or much of the US in any large fashion anytime soon, it's just not feasable even at $1/w considering generation issues (clouds, inches of snow covering pannels etc). It will however come to CA, AZ, and NV (or at least the segments of those states that don't really have "weather".) So I'm fairly comfortable with my cost estimates especially given that the population of CA (36.5M) is somewhat higher than the population of either MN (5.2M) or AZ (6.2M), and California currently does have power delivery issues at times which will encourage early adopters to adopt solar power early. Basically, it's my contention that SoCal is where solar will really take off in terms of #'s of installs, in part due to the high cost of electricity, and in part due to liberal guilt.
Wow, thanks for all the great replies folks. As far as the comparison to "traditional" generation technologies, that's not really valid from a home owner stand point as coal/gas electricity generation is not exactly feasible, community rules and all that. You're buying power from your local company or generating it via solar/wind/generator. However, let me run the numbers using the 5hrs mentioned by someone who actually has solar panels (and lives in an area that solar would be useful) note this doesn't factor any "green" benefits, just raw $...
Say you use 1500KWh per month (my highest and most recent bill in the UK is for this so it works for me, flipping a/c unit...) Also, southern California Edison's website has a sample bill (which isn't totally up to date price wise accurate however they have the same usage so 1500 it is...
Their sample bill shows a bill for $300.09 for said energy usage (delivery, tax, production, etc) so you're paying ~20cents a KWh. In the UK after shopping around (a lot) I'm paying ~0.09 pence per Khw (17cents us at today's exchange rate, yay, something is in fact cheaper here than in the states!).
Assuming I can store all the energy not immediately used (or I sell the energy back to the grid at the same rate at which I pay for it/my meter runs backwards) and using the 5hr number from the AZ responser's numbers (admittedly biased as AZ gets more sun than most places in the states, but likewise, AZ, CA, and NV are the places that will likely buy solar first so let's say it's a wash) in order to produce 1500KWh per 30 day month you'd want to produce 50KWh per day. This means you'd need to spend $10,000 on solar panels at the $1/W point (10kw worth of panels) figure another what, 4k, for the storage/delivery/installation @ your house? So $14,000 down. Assuming no tax breaks and a CA electric bill as mentioned above you'd break even in ~4 yrs. (~3 yrs if the 1k/w includes everything else you need. Unlikely for quite some time) for the remainder of your 6 warrantied years you're "making" $300.09/month for a total "profit" of $21,606.48 (again using today's numbers as an example, assuming the usual 10yr warranty, and that warranty work doesn't cause mass downtime big assumptions I grant you.)
Have to say given inflation, future cost of money, these figures being correct. Once we can go out and buy these panels for $1/w solar is in fact usable and affordable for the "average" power hungry user in the sunshine belt that won't move for 4-10years. Sure it's not as immediately cheap as coal (again, that comparison never makes sense to me, you can't buy coal, you can't buy/install equipment to generate power from coal), however it's generated @ the premises not by an outside company that might have power outages and will likely raise their rates in the future.
Wonder when $1/w will reach the home market...
Have to ask, the gurus or would be gurus:
When companies report that their solar solution costs $X a watt, is this figure a steady watt/hour figure (e.g 1000W = 1kw/h) during which time the sun is shining on the pannels, or watts generated per hour of direct sunlight, 8 hrs of direct sunlight, every odd Tuesday, what? I always assumed it's a steady watt/hour figure but in this case $1000 would give you 1KWH while they were running, which gives you (assuming you have a battery storage solution) a production of 180KW/H a month (assuming 6hrs of "good" sunlight a day for 30 days.) If this is the case then sign me up, I'll break even in less than a year with my current evil power hungry mode of life. But the question is.... is this the case?
Now back to cooking that turducken (damn electric ovens)
Supposedly sony's new reader (version B as it were) is ~40% faster at screen refreshes than the first gen (slow refresh rates!) so I would assume this e-ink is about that fast (unless I'm mistaken it's the same technology, just a different seller.)
:)
And e-ink currently requires full screen rewites due to the screen being a singular entity, in the current incarnation the screen is a page in that it can only be drawn on once, then it has to be wiped (new page) before the next drawing.
My concerns with this unit are that in order to transfer your personal documents (that client file, your research, copy of HP7 you downloaded...) you have to either email the book (10 cents), or email the document (non encrypted/compressed?)to amazon to be converted by their machines into the kindle's format, which can then be transfered via usb. Hopefully I did in fact misinterpret the amazon page. Either way, I can't even consider getting it for a few years, so it's all academic for me
Damn, forgot to add, it should also be noted that the maps study found a much higher level of CBDs released via vaporizing as opposed to burning. Win win for cancer patients apparently. And I expect the reason that some people can't stand vaporizing, they're looking for more of a THC kick, and not so much of a CBD kick. Now, I believe my volcano is calling my name.
Interesting idea with the ball bearings. But it should be noted that an unfiltered joint is better at delivering a higher proportion of THC to tar when compared to water pipes. Apparently the water traps a higher % of thc than tar according to that one MAPS study that compared various smoking apparatuses So a pipe without water would be the best method (if you don't like vaporizers) as not only do you get less tar, but you don't get a continuous burn and there's no wasted product. I've used just crushed ice before, and found it quite nice, might be worth picking up something small and plastic to test the BB idea though. Even if it didn't condense the tar, you would still get the same chilling effect on the smoke.
It's just really hard to estimate doseage. As it all depends on the quality of the herb, the effects the user wants, etc. Personally I'm a fan of chronic olive oil (VICS has a good recipe). Basically, experiment with what you have and see what works for you. Some people swear by using "vapour poo" for making olive oil/butter. Others grow their own and chop up the male plants for making butter/oil.
:) Butter is a bit harder to make (majorly labour intensive) but you can end up with a killer batch of brownies that last a long time due to the potency (the freezer is your friend). One note, eating cannabis is very different from smoking it, you can easily eat too much, and sadly, you can't un-eat it. So start slow, and give it an hr or two before trying another piece of cake/whatever. Note: I'm not advocating you break the law of wherever you live, I'm just giving suggestions so if you do ingest cannabis you'll do so with your eyes open, and maybe won't run into oncoming traffic.
Generally speaking, don't just sprinkle herb on your food unless you have a high tolerance for food that tastes strongly of pot (yuck). Making olive oil (or corn oil, whatever oil you want really) is the easiest method for most people to have some good thc laced treats, and it makes some damn good enchiladas/pasta
If you're really experimental there are ways to infuse thc into alchohal for use at clubs and places where using "breath drops" would be acceptable. But that is even more of a headache than making butter. Search for "cannabis tincture" if you're so inclined. If you live in SoCal and are a MMJ patient you can buy cannabis oil, cannabis tincture, and other assorted ready made foods from your local MMJ dispensary. YMMV.
"which isn't remotely true." Define remotely?
I have to side with Latty. It's really not far off, if you're not in London/Manchester it's a potluck to get fast service I'm currently living in the 10th largest city in England (as of 2004 estimates) in a newly built (2002ish) building, pretty much on top of two different university campuses, within easy walking distance to the town centre, and what are my options? Adsl. Nothing else (outside of dialup). There is some cable in the city, but not much. It's not even an option, for my building, and they don't know when it will be an option. So, I get Max dsl, which in theory gives me up to 448k up / 8Meg down (my max is 6Mb down when my line is clean during the day). But only when the local BT network isn't overcrowded (after about 9pm weeknight and most of the time on weekends), at which rate I'm lucky to get 800Kb - 1Mb down. Tack on the fact that pretty much every ADSL provider in the UK limits the amount of data you can transfer (some rather dramatically), and I've ended up going with an Entanet reseller for a VAT included bill of 67 pounds a month (~$137). Why? Because for some reason the English people let BT off the hook on supplying FTTP. I'm sorry, but for a country that has such a population density, it's extremely sad how little broadband there really is for the average English person. In theory around 2011 or so if we're still in the UK, we might be able to get next level of DSL, but I'm not holding my breath. Good for you that you have 20meg down, if you have 20meg down and no usage limits, than really good for you. However, most of us are currently being screwed.
An electronic Pearl Harbor? I know all asians look alike to caucasians, but it's China we should worry about, not Japan. It's more of an electic Boxer Rebellion.
Sorry, couldn't resist. It's nice to know the CIA is apparently paying attention. A random question to anyone: how much traffic enters/leaves the US a second? Just how big of a MOAF (mother of all firewalls) would the government need to prevent increased latency(not that this would be a government concern of course)?
Erm, also the above advice assumes you aren't going to be posting video until the release comes out. It can be a bit rude to ask your users to use beta software ;-)
Really it depends on your goals. h.264 could (in theory at least) produce smaller files for the same quality video, so the server would send less data. Always a plus if you're paying for your pipe. But as other posters have pointed out, how long will it take for most people to upgrade flash versions? My guess, if youtube starts using only the latest version of flash, and "suggests" that the users do so too, well, then the users will do so.
;-) )
So, in a nutshell, I'd say use h.264 and ask whatever users you have that aren't youtube addicts to upgrade nicely. You might save some money (and heck, if they have pay for play connections, the users will too
(Note that this advice assumes you're not serving up HD content.)
Easy, talk to your credit card company and dispute the charge (I paid $199 for 1 year of service, and the company went belly up after a month.) American express cards tend to be the best for this (6months since charge is where it starts to be a problem), but any CC should easily refund you the money w/n a couple months if you were just charged last month. Personally, in the vain hopes that sunrocket is in fact moving me to something else, I'm waiting to see what happens before I dispute the charge/mentall take the loss. The phone line works, and as I'm now living in England... Well, I'd like to keep an american phone line, and signing up for a new company isn't the easiest thing to do.
Yup, only downside would be the single point of failure for say, all of the company's servers. One job/one box has its benefits. Optimizing power and hardware utilization is not one of these benefits. (Of course if you do decide to utilize virtualization, odds are you're smart enough that if your business requires 24/7 uptime, you have a hot swap server serving as a primary backup which would be easy for you to roll out...) Power consumption is not on the radar for most companies now (excluding the huge server farms, they've noticed that power does cost money. So as of yet there's no push in corporate America. If the US goes through an (electricity) Energy crisis then things would change, but unless electricity in the States starts costing significantly more, I don't see virtualization taking off for power reasons...
Looked through the article and I see no mention of Apple.
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Under the agreement, Linspire will license Microsoft code related to Voice over Internet Protocol, Windows Media files and TrueType fonts. With the addition of the Microsoft code to Linspire's operating system, users will be able to voice-chat with Windows Live Messenger buddies, watch Windows Media video and audio files on open-source media players, and view and create documents using familiar typefaces.
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Now, unless I'm mistaken Apple developed the truetype standard in the early 90s or late 80s (Looks like Wikipedia agrees with me.) In which case, how on earth can Mickey-Soft grant anyone rights to use them? Obviously I'm missing something...
As far as the rest: nifty. Does it include HD WMV? And can the users check over the code for "bugs" (sorry, I don't trust microsoft that much when any linux build is concerned)
Uh... "Organized religions don't pretend to be able to demonstrate the paranormal, and so there's nothing concrete or repeatable for anyone like Randi to disprove."
You're not catholic are you? Exorcisms, Transubstantiation (bread into flesh, wine into blood), resurection, heaven, hell, the rapture (wait, that's evangelicals), saints (need a miracle to be a saint remember, and what's the definition of a miracle?)
Course if you're a Mormon, how about the magic underwear? Or john smith's magic hat?
Quakers (and southern baptists, and a few others) still speak in tongues when the "holy spirit" takes them over. They've even been known to... well... quake with feeling for the lord.
The devil? God? Creationism? The great flood? The concept of sin? Passover? Easter? Reincarnation? Any of these things ringing a bell?
However, you are at least partially right, over the centuries cults (erm, religions) have gotten very good at claiming things that are hard to disprove. However you might want to check out Richard Dawkins' new book "The God Delusion". You're also right, people tend to be easily fooled into believing nonsense, look at how many devout christians of various faiths there are in the US. Hell, the president believes the the jury is still out on evolution. For that matter a CBS survey back in 04 found that 45% of the people who voted for Bush and 24% of the votes for Kerry wanted creationism taught in schools instead of evolution. That's a crap load of people that think evolution is BS. (There's also 3 republican presidental candidates (for now) that state they do NOT believe in evolution.
Pretty sure they mean, it just needs boatloads of RAM. In the classic interface (the graphics card) can be average....
Um, I'm really hoping the 3-4 items for 3-4 seconds quote did NOT come from John Sweller as that's quite wrong. The magic number in cognitive psychology (even in NSW) is 7±2, which is 5-9 not 3-4. Else without chunking no one could dial a new 7 digit phone number without writing it down. Also, as mentioned (briefly) in the article: rehersal helps people store more items, and sad to say, going through a power point presentation (and you know, lecturing) is rehersal. This is ESPECIALLY true if the same text is on the screen and presented orally. Different information from these two sources would be much worse here though, and then the divided attention becomes a problem.
I'm sure (ok, I hope) his theory has merit, but that write up is incorrect in regards to the assumptions about cognitive theory.