If Microsoft got what it demands, that ARM devices that runs Win 8 be permanently locked, then the only option that I have, as a consumer, is to NOT BUY THAT DEVICE
Considering the hordes of people who happily buy locked-down/restrictive Apple devices, I am quite concerned that software freedom could be eradicated by consumers, who don't consider the ramifications of their purchases - in other words, how they vote with their wallet.
An ounce of gold will buy you approximately the same goods it did 100 years ago, or even 2000 years ago in the roman empire. If not exactly set-in-stone static, it certainly looks that way.
Good point. Ideally, we should probably have one in each hemisphere, and one on the equator, to be able to observe all objects and/or events fairly well.
Though by splitting it up, they're going to have to know the distance between the sites very precisely, to synchronize the images. (as in; way better than GPS accuracy).
If the axis shifts a little, hopefully it will just be a (software) reconfiguration matter. if one of the arrays is close enough to an earthquake, the base of every dish in that array might have to be realigned - the axii of the dish support bases need to be parallel.
And all it would take to implode that market, is for someone to develop a refrigerator/oven-sized device that turns nuclear power into electricity.
How about an alpha- or betavoltaic battery, coupled with the knowledge that any specific isotope of a radioactive element will have a much shorter halflfe when exposed to a certain sound or EM frequency. Specifically, the frequency used for NMR imaging, or a sub-octave thereof.
"Jostle" an already unstable atomic core with its resonant frequency, and it is very likely to decay when the frequency abruptly disappears. Attack-decay, attack-decay, attack-decay.
Naturally, a fairly abundant radioactive element having only one isotope, or nearly so, would be a good candidate for such a battery.
1970's: We're going to collapse because of piracy by people making cassettes of their LP's!
1980's: We're going to collapse because of the threat of portable music players and people making cassettes of their CD's and LP's!
1990's: We're going to collapse because of the threat of people ripping CDs to MP3 players and computers!
2000's: We're going to collapse because of the threat of people sharing media online!
You forgot; "Late 1980's: We're going to collapse because people are making copies of VHS cassettes with their VCRs". and "Late 1990's: We're going to collapse because people are making copies of CDs with their CD-burners". and probably similar ones for DVD-burners and Blu-Ray-burners.
You need glasses. The summary says $82 billion, and if you actually follow the link, it says $81.6 billion.
Makes me think of what I found out recently; I added together the wealth of the 100 richest people in the world. Collectively, they own around 2.2% of all money in the world. I wonder how many percent the 1000 richest people in the world collectively own..
A thought; should there be a limit to how much you can own? - I mean, just those 100 people (around 0.00000143 % of us all) have managed to hoard a sizeable chunk of all money in existence, and now, there's barely enough left for the rest of us, and some countries are bankrupt.
or put up an ad for a used one, and require the S.M.A.R.T. readout, and check whether the ones offered have the 'head parking click' syndrome or some other hard/impossible-to-fix problem. A suspiciously low price could indicate such a problem with the drive model or series. If you don't know how to read the readout, post it on a forum where someone does, and ask whether you should buy it or not. You can ignore any drives offered, that have a Reallocated_Event_Count or Reallocated_Sector_Ct over 0. Any with a Current_Pending_Sector count over 0, but in the single digit area might be O.K., but should be cheap.
Hmm, I'm starting to wonder - some of us should get together and make a database over drives with design flaws and other impossible/hard-to-fix problems, or does this already exist? That would make it a lot safer to buy used drives, if you could check the model nr. against such a database.
Are you sure that that's the reason, or are you just guessing (too)? - As long as a (single)player hasn't gone for an extended run/flight/sailing trip, the world is only a few MB in size. No reason to keep that in thousands of small files.
Funny you should mention it. Java is the main reason I stopped playing minecraft and started looking for (C++) clones using a different 3D engine. Minecraft sucks on linux; even with a non-integrated graphics card (Radeon HD34xx/43xx, maybe even 45xx), it isn't playable on highest settings. You have to buy a power-sucking semi-expensive one, and we're talking 3D-graphics that looks like it was made on an Amiga 500. Load time is just laughable, could take over a minute. Secondly, the world saves are tens of thousands of files. If you want to copy/move/[un]zip/[un]rar/ a save, be ready to go make tea or something, because it'll take a while, unless perhaps you've got a SSD, which will fail in a much shorter time due to the extreme number of files written to it while you play minecraft. NTFS is also to blame, but still.. There's a free, GPL'ed clone on the rise: minetest-c55 (which I imagine will be renamed at some point). http://test.mine.bz/~celeron55/minetest/ It's nowhere near finished, probably at the stage minecraft was in the infdev days. It can be played on a laptop with Intel 945GM graphics - try doing that with minecraft.
Btw, the 14.6 mio. users is probably the number of people who have signed up over the last 2.5 years, not active players. I still come across people who have never heard of minecraft, and that's in an IT School..
(I'm from Europe; here it's known as GMO (Genetically Modified Organism). I may call it GM / GMO interchangeably).
I'm pretty sure I have been eating mostly GM foods, probably for the past 20 years of my life.
I'm pretty sure you haven't. Luckily, there aren't that many GM foods being grown yet, and used for human consumption.
With plenty of preservatives, added sugar, caffeine, sodium and every other nasty chemical ever put in food. Never had any diet-related health problems. Healthy blood sugar, healthy immune system, body mass actually slightly under normal but not unhealthily so.
Almost like me, then. Until I became 32, I was fine too. Then I started feeling weird from drinking Coke, so I stopped drinking soda drinks entirely. Since then, things have started tasting weird or made me uncomfortable, one at a time, so I've stopped drinking or eating them. Butter, most dairy products, white bread, pork, tea (once I had had green tea, I couldn't drink ordinary tea anymore, it just tasted 'dead').
Also, I believe I have seen that movie. I am aware of the almost comically evil nature of Monsanto. They're third in line on my list of people to line against the wall when the revolution happens (after the professional lobbyists and the MAFIAA).
Good.
However, "evil corporation" does not imply "unsafe food".
No, but it damn well doesn't imply "safe food" either. The "evil corporation" doesn't care, one way or the other, as long as they can turn a profit, which is why such 'food' should be checked rigorously, for decades, under controlled conditions, before entering field testing, if ever. Once a GMO plant is out, the genome will spread in nature, there's no taking it back. Also, the modified genome can transfer to your gut bacteria, which is very bad. Anyway, Monsanto's plan is to get their hands into each and every big and small farmer's pockets: http://www.percyschmeiser.com/conflict.htm They don't give a damn if they destroy the worlds food supply in the process, as long as they can retire with billions in their bank accounts.
Wrt. FDA, I consider them to be thoroughly corrupt, but we can discuss that elsewhere.
Point me at one instance of someone dying from GM food (specifically because the food was GM, mind you, not because it was spoiled or something) and I can point you at ten people who died from normal food, and a thousand more who died from the lack of any food.
Very good point. How would I or anyone else know, if someone who died from cancer or some infection due to a damaged immune system, got that way because he/she ate GM food? Human trials with GM food are practically non-existent, because they would reveal all too clearly in what ways one's health would deteriorate once you start eating GM food in quantity on a daily basis. Rats are good substitutes for human subjects, though. You might also want to read a position paper from the American Academy of Environmental Medicine.
PS: Was marking me a foe really necessary?
No. The point I wanted to put across, was that you'll very easily make enemies when discussing GMO, because there's so much at stake; the world's food supply. If it gets irreversibly contaminated with harmful/deadly genes, we're all dead. Game over. Anyway, I've read hundreds, if not thousands of pages about GM(O), and I made up my mind a couple of years ago; at the very least, it's harmful, and should be abolished.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jf200456j This article debunks your article.
An article hidden behind a paywall. Very clever.
Other animals than mice have been exposed to RAI from transgenic peas. Rats, pigs, and chickens were fed raw, transgenic peas at around 30% or more of their diet in short feeding trials. The only effects on their health could be attributed to dose- dependent reductions of the digestion of starch due to amylase inhibition rather than immunological effects, diarrhea in the case of pigs, and a reduction of weight gain in the case of chickens.2022 We found no evidence for increased immunogenicity of the transgenic RAI, and we note that immunogenicity is not sufficient for allergenicity.
So, some of the animals couldn't digest starch anymore, the pigs got diarrhea, and the chickens didn't gain as much weight as they should have. Am I supposed to believe this was due to 'other causes'? I wish someone would find some 'long feeding trials', not the short ones where any irregularity can be arbitrarily attributed to 'other factors' and dismissed.
Conclusion some people are allergic to peanuts. This shows no concerns over GMO crops.
The example you quoted was about peas, not peanuts. Did you even read it?
Lets see an advertisement for lecture of a guy that doesn't perform any current research anymore.
Oh yeah, let's forget about his 30 years of relevant research, and the fact that he was fired for bringing the issue with the GMO potatoes to the public's knowledge. Ever heard of ad hominem attacks?
Also hidden behind a paywall. How very nice of you.
As explained in previous chapters, crop breeding by both conventional means and by genetic modification has theoretically the potential to modify the plant com- position beyond that particular trait that was intended, thus resulting in ‘unintended effects’. To analytically determine all possibilities of unintended effects is a huge undertaking with many technical challenges. A further challenge is to determine the real significance of any unintended effect on consumer health. Unintended effects do not automatically imply a health hazard.
Unintended effects certainly do not either automatically imply, that there isn't a health hazard.
Hazards may be considered if the nutritional profile of the plant has been altered, if proteins have been altered in such a way so as to affect their allergenic potential, or if new or increased levels of potentially toxic secondary metabolites are produced. However, unintended effects may have absolutely no impact on health, or may even be beneficial by reducing potentially toxic substances.
.. or they may adversely affect people's health. Nothing new here.
In case you're wondering how that would apply; let's say some GMO plant starts to be grown on a wide scale, and the modified genome transfers to wild plants. Years later, it's discovered that the transgenic part leads to colon cancer, it just takes 8-12 years to develop. The modified genome has now spread to plants in all parts of the world - we can't get rid of it. There's one option: We can grow non-GMO plants in greenhouses, taking extreme care not to get them contaminated with pollen from GMO plan
I would *love* to see you live on only or mostly GM foods for a year or so. Then, if you're still alive, you can come back and tell your story. GoodLuck.
Oh, and when you've got time for it, go see a movie called "The World According To Monsanto".
We've had the capability to remote-control and computer control a car for YEARS.
We've had remote-control for over a century. Nikola Tesla made a remote-controlled toy boat in 1898. For computer-control, it's somewhere around five or six decades.
Automated cars are like the "flying cars" of science fiction - yeah, it'd be cool, and we probably have the technology - but do you really want joy-riders flying over your house?
Just like for airplanes, flight would very likely be restricted to air corridors over mostly low- and unpopulated areas. Radar has been around for three-quarters of a century, and would likely be installed on tall chimneys and radio towers, partially for warning systems, partially for detecting off-limit flight. So yes, the occasional/rare joyrider wouldn't worry me, since flying off-limits would practically certainly be punished much harder than reckless driving.
If the power factor or phi is being recorded too, any number of light bulbs have phi=0 (no phase angle between voltage and current) and power factor = cos(phi) = 1, while a compute cluster with switch-mode PSU's would be a somewhat inductive load, with cos(phi) typically around 0.9-0.99 with PFC, and 0.7-0.8 without PFC. By comparing the load and phi before and after something switches on or off, you can make a fairly good guess as to what it is.
"So, that person has a PSU without PFC = an old PC, then he/she might need a new PC soon. Let's target him/her with PC ads." or "That might be a marijuana farm - let's make sure they see some ads for drug paraphernalia (bongs), special light bulbs, and indoor gardening supplies (automatic watering)."
.. we soon see new, cheap H67/P67 motherboards with only 4 SATA ports; two 6 Gbps and two 3 Gbps, of which the two 3 Gbps internally switch to non-used SATA ports, once one starts giving more than a few errors per day? That way, the issue wouldn't show up for maybe 5-7 years; so far down the road that any warranty would be long expired.
This behaviour would probably be very noticeable for people running some Unix-like OS, but to Windows users, I'm not even sure if a reboot would be required to make the drive accessible again, unless it's the drive where the system boots from.
Slashdot Mirror
If Microsoft got what it demands, that ARM devices that runs Win 8 be permanently locked, then the only option that I have, as a consumer, is to NOT BUY THAT DEVICE
Considering the hordes of people who happily buy locked-down/restrictive Apple devices, I am quite concerned that software freedom could be eradicated by consumers, who don't consider the ramifications of their purchases - in other words, how they vote with their wallet.
An ounce of gold will buy you approximately the same goods it did 100 years ago, or even 2000 years ago in the roman empire.
If not exactly set-in-stone static, it certainly looks that way.
Good point.
Ideally, we should probably have one in each hemisphere, and one on the equator, to be able to observe all objects and/or events fairly well.
Though by splitting it up, they're going to have to know the distance between the sites very precisely, to synchronize the images.
(as in; way better than GPS accuracy).
Problem is, if earthquakes in the (Richter) 8+ range modify the planet even slightly, the distance(s) will have to be measured again.
I'm thinking of something similar to the 2010 earthquake in Chile:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/03/100302-chile-earthquake-earth-axis-shortened-day/
If the axis shifts a little, hopefully it will just be a (software) reconfiguration matter.
if one of the arrays is close enough to an earthquake, the base of every dish in that array might have to be realigned - the axii of the dish support bases need to be parallel.
Did anyone else read this as
"Pharmaceuticals would still be in clinical trials when their patients would expire"?
No offence taken - but citations from independent research/experiments that say the polywell concept doesn't work, or STFU yourself.
And all it would take to implode that market, is for someone to develop a refrigerator/oven-sized device that turns nuclear power into electricity.
How about an alpha- or betavoltaic battery, coupled with the knowledge that any specific isotope of a radioactive element will have a much shorter halflfe when exposed to a certain sound or EM frequency.
Specifically, the frequency used for NMR imaging, or a sub-octave thereof.
"Jostle" an already unstable atomic core with its resonant frequency, and it is very likely to decay when the frequency abruptly disappears.
Attack-decay, attack-decay, attack-decay.
Naturally, a fairly abundant radioactive element having only one isotope, or nearly so, would be a good candidate for such a battery.
1970's: We're going to collapse because of piracy by people making cassettes of their LP's!
1980's: We're going to collapse because of the threat of portable music players and people making cassettes of their CD's and LP's!
1990's: We're going to collapse because of the threat of people ripping CDs to MP3 players and computers!
2000's: We're going to collapse because of the threat of people sharing media online!
You forgot;
"Late 1980's: We're going to collapse because people are making copies of VHS cassettes with their VCRs".
and
"Late 1990's: We're going to collapse because people are making copies of CDs with their CD-burners".
and probably similar ones for DVD-burners and Blu-Ray-burners.
Maybe a case for avaaz.org?
Important questions:
Does it have to be diamonds, or can it be other crystals?
How big do they have to be?
Do they need to be cut to a special shape?
Do you need a special laser, or will any laser/laserdiode do?
You need glasses. The summary says $82 billion, and if you actually follow the link, it says $81.6 billion.
Makes me think of what I found out recently; I added together the wealth of the 100 richest people in the world.
Collectively, they own around 2.2% of all money in the world.
I wonder how many percent the 1000 richest people in the world collectively own..
A thought; should there be a limit to how much you can own? - I mean, just those 100 people (around 0.00000143 % of us all) have managed to hoard a
sizeable chunk of all money in existence, and now, there's barely enough left for the rest of us, and some countries are bankrupt.
or put up an ad for a used one, and require the S.M.A.R.T. readout, and check whether the ones offered have the 'head parking click' syndrome or some other hard/impossible-to-fix problem.
A suspiciously low price could indicate such a problem with the drive model or series.
If you don't know how to read the readout, post it on a forum where someone does, and ask whether you should buy it or not.
You can ignore any drives offered, that have a Reallocated_Event_Count or Reallocated_Sector_Ct over 0.
Any with a Current_Pending_Sector count over 0, but in the single digit area might be O.K., but should be cheap.
Hmm, I'm starting to wonder - some of us should get together and make a database over drives with design flaws and other impossible/hard-to-fix problems, or does this already exist?
That would make it a lot safer to buy used drives, if you could check the model nr. against such a database.
http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20030204
Yeah, sorry about that. I think I was starting to rant about minecraft's failings, so that slipped in too.
Are you sure that that's the reason, or are you just guessing (too)? - As long as a (single)player hasn't gone for an extended run/flight/sailing trip, the world is only a few MB in size. No reason to keep that in thousands of small files.
.. if we found an ancient civilization's landfill.
Funny you should mention it. Java is the main reason I stopped playing minecraft and started looking for (C++) clones using a different 3D engine.
Minecraft sucks on linux; even with a non-integrated graphics card (Radeon HD34xx/43xx, maybe even 45xx), it isn't playable on highest settings. You have to buy a power-sucking semi-expensive one, and we're talking 3D-graphics that looks like it was made on an Amiga 500.
Load time is just laughable, could take over a minute.
Secondly, the world saves are tens of thousands of files. If you want to copy/move/[un]zip/[un]rar/ a save, be ready to go make tea or something, because it'll take a while, unless perhaps you've got a SSD, which will fail in a much shorter time due to the extreme number of files written to it while you play minecraft.
NTFS is also to blame, but still..
There's a free, GPL'ed clone on the rise: minetest-c55 (which I imagine will be renamed at some point).
http://test.mine.bz/~celeron55/minetest/
It's nowhere near finished, probably at the stage minecraft was in the infdev days.
It can be played on a laptop with Intel 945GM graphics - try doing that with minecraft.
Btw, the 14.6 mio. users is probably the number of people who have signed up over the last 2.5 years, not active players.
I still come across people who have never heard of minecraft, and that's in an IT School..
You are assuming a constant deployment rate. .......
Assumption is the mother of all
(I'll let you find / figure out the last word on your own).
(I'm from Europe; here it's known as GMO (Genetically Modified Organism). I may call it GM / GMO interchangeably).
I'm pretty sure I have been eating mostly GM foods, probably for the past 20 years of my life.
I'm pretty sure you haven't. Luckily, there aren't that many GM foods being grown yet, and used for human consumption.
With plenty of preservatives, added sugar, caffeine, sodium and every other nasty chemical ever put in food. Never had any diet-related health problems. Healthy blood sugar, healthy immune system, body mass actually slightly under normal but not unhealthily so.
Almost like me, then. Until I became 32, I was fine too. Then I started feeling weird from drinking Coke, so I stopped drinking soda drinks entirely.
Since then, things have started tasting weird or made me uncomfortable, one at a time, so I've stopped drinking or eating them.
Butter, most dairy products, white bread, pork, tea (once I had had green tea, I couldn't drink ordinary tea anymore, it just tasted 'dead').
Also, I believe I have seen that movie. I am aware of the almost comically evil nature of Monsanto. They're third in line on my list of people to line against the wall when the revolution happens (after the professional lobbyists and the MAFIAA).
Good.
However, "evil corporation" does not imply "unsafe food".
No, but it damn well doesn't imply "safe food" either. The "evil corporation" doesn't care, one way or the other, as long as they can turn a profit, which is why such 'food' should be checked rigorously, for decades, under controlled conditions, before entering field testing, if ever. Once a GMO plant is out, the genome will spread in nature, there's no taking it back. Also, the modified genome can transfer to your gut bacteria, which is very bad.
Anyway, Monsanto's plan is to get their hands into each and every big and small farmer's pockets: http://www.percyschmeiser.com/conflict.htm
They don't give a damn if they destroy the worlds food supply in the process, as long as they can retire with billions in their bank accounts.
Wrt. FDA, I consider them to be thoroughly corrupt, but we can discuss that elsewhere.
Point me at one instance of someone dying from GM food (specifically because the food was GM, mind you, not because it was spoiled or something) and I can point you at ten people who died from normal food, and a thousand more who died from the lack of any food.
Very good point. How would I or anyone else know, if someone who died from cancer or some infection due to a damaged immune system, got that way because he/she ate GM food?
Human trials with GM food are practically non-existent, because they would reveal all too clearly in what ways one's health would deteriorate once you start eating GM food in quantity on a daily basis.
Rats are good substitutes for human subjects, though.
You might also want to read a position paper from the American Academy of Environmental Medicine.
PS: Was marking me a foe really necessary?
No. The point I wanted to put across, was that you'll very easily make enemies when discussing GMO, because there's so much at stake; the world's food supply. If it gets irreversibly contaminated with harmful/deadly genes, we're all dead. Game over.
Anyway, I've read hundreds, if not thousands of pages about GM(O), and I made up my mind a couple of years ago; at the very least, it's harmful, and should be abolished.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jf200456j This article debunks your article.
An article hidden behind a paywall. Very clever.
Other animals than mice have been exposed to RAI from transgenic peas. Rats, pigs, and chickens were fed raw, transgenic peas at around 30% or more of their diet in short feeding trials. The only effects on their health could be attributed to dose- dependent reductions of the digestion of starch due to amylase inhibition rather than immunological effects, diarrhea in the case of pigs, and a reduction of weight gain in the case of chickens.2022
We found no evidence for increased immunogenicity of the transgenic RAI, and we note that immunogenicity is not sufficient for allergenicity.
So, some of the animals couldn't digest starch anymore, the pigs got diarrhea, and the chickens didn't gain as much weight as they should have.
Am I supposed to believe this was due to 'other causes'?
I wish someone would find some 'long feeding trials', not the short ones where any irregularity can be arbitrarily attributed to 'other factors' and dismissed.
Conclusion some people are allergic to peanuts. This shows no concerns over GMO crops.
The example you quoted was about peas, not peanuts. Did you even read it?
Luck.
Lets see an advertisement for lecture of a guy that doesn't perform any current research anymore.
Oh yeah, let's forget about his 30 years of relevant research, and the fact that he was fired for bringing the issue with the GMO potatoes to the public's knowledge.
Ever heard of ad hominem attacks?
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=MImg&_imagekey=B6T6P-4C004D3-3-C&_cdi=5036&_user=409620&_pii=S0278691504000444&_origin=&_coverDate=07%2F31%2F2004&_sk=999579992&view=c&wchp=dGLbVzW-zSkzS&_valck=1&md5=ef423dc2441395950524ecce3b73afcc&ie=/sdarticle.pdf
Also hidden behind a paywall. How very nice of you.
As explained in previous chapters, crop breeding by both conventional means and by genetic modification has theoretically the potential to modify the plant com- position beyond that particular trait that was intended, thus resulting in ‘unintended effects’. To analytically determine all possibilities of unintended effects is a huge undertaking with many technical challenges. A further challenge is to determine the real significance of any unintended effect on consumer health. Unintended effects do not automatically imply a health hazard.
Unintended effects certainly do not either automatically imply, that there isn't a health hazard.
Hazards may be considered if the nutritional profile of the plant has been altered, if proteins have been altered in such a way so as to affect their allergenic potential, or if new or increased levels of potentially toxic secondary metabolites are produced. However, unintended effects may have absolutely no impact on health, or may even be beneficial by reducing potentially toxic substances.
.. or they may adversely affect people's health. Nothing new here.
Ever heard of the Precautionary Principle?
In case you're wondering how that would apply; let's say some GMO plant starts to be grown on a wide scale, and the modified genome transfers to wild plants.
Years later, it's discovered that the transgenic part leads to colon cancer, it just takes 8-12 years to develop. The modified genome has now spread to plants in all parts of the world - we can't get rid of it.
There's one option: We can grow non-GMO plants in greenhouses, taking extreme care not to get them contaminated with pollen from GMO plan
I would *love* to see you live on only or mostly GM foods for a year or so.
Then, if you're still alive, you can come back and tell your story.
Good Luck.
Oh, and when you've got time for it, go see a movie called "The World According To Monsanto".
We've had the capability to remote-control and computer control a car for YEARS.
We've had remote-control for over a century. Nikola Tesla made a remote-controlled toy boat in 1898.
For computer-control, it's somewhere around five or six decades.
Automated cars are like the "flying cars" of science fiction - yeah, it'd be cool, and we probably have the technology - but do you really want joy-riders flying over your house?
Just like for airplanes, flight would very likely be restricted to air corridors over mostly low- and unpopulated areas.
Radar has been around for three-quarters of a century, and would likely be installed on tall chimneys and radio towers, partially for warning systems, partially for detecting off-limit flight.
So yes, the occasional/rare joyrider wouldn't worry me, since flying off-limits would practically certainly be punished much harder than reckless driving.
When I read the headline, this old story came to mind:
http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Best_of_2006_0x3a__The_Virtudyne_Saga.aspx
I was actually a bit disappointed to find that the donkeys were just for smuggling videos :/
If the power factor or phi is being recorded too, any number of light bulbs have phi=0 (no phase angle between voltage and current) and power factor = cos(phi) = 1, while a compute cluster with switch-mode PSU's would be a somewhat inductive load, with cos(phi) typically around 0.9-0.99 with PFC, and 0.7-0.8 without PFC.
By comparing the load and phi before and after something switches on or off, you can make a fairly good guess as to what it is.
"So, that person has a PSU without PFC = an old PC, then he/she might need a new PC soon. Let's target him/her with PC ads."
or
"That might be a marijuana farm - let's make sure they see some ads for drug paraphernalia (bongs), special light bulbs, and indoor gardening supplies (automatic watering)."
Do you mean; what's it used for?
Well, for one thing it's part of the formula to calculate the volume of a torus:
V = 2 * Pi^2 * R * r^2
.. we soon see new, cheap H67/P67 motherboards with only 4 SATA ports; two 6 Gbps and two 3 Gbps, of which the two 3 Gbps internally switch to non-used SATA ports, once one starts giving more than a few errors per day?
That way, the issue wouldn't show up for maybe 5-7 years; so far down the road that any warranty would be long expired.
This behaviour would probably be very noticeable for people running some Unix-like OS, but to Windows users, I'm not even sure if a reboot would be required to make the drive accessible again, unless it's the drive where the system boots from.