There is no point in getting certifications for exactly the two
reasons you pointed out in the question, unless you want to get
a job for some dimwitted PHB who cannot tell the difference between
the cluefull and the clueless.
That is its own reward.
I have never gotten any certification, nor has any employer
seriously asked me for one. The one time I was asked, in passing, I
replied, No employer is willing to pay me to get a certification in
something I already know, and I am disinclined to work for an employer
who needs validation from some group of nobodies to hire me. It is
worth noting at this point, that I did get the job.
Finally, as a person in a hiring position, I do not consider them at all, and
am definitely prejudiced against someone who puts them on their resume.
Oh, one more thing... it is a good way to earn money, if you set up Smilin' Erica's Certification Company.
Consider this:
Energy content of gasoline: ~45 MJ/kg
Density of gasoline: 737 kg/m3
1 cubic meter = 264.172051 gallons, equals 2.79 MJ/gallon.
Ask for a refund on your high school education, as they failed to deliver.
737 kg/m3 divided by 264.17 is the number of kilograms per gallon of gasoline. Multiplying the 2.79kg that a gallon of gasoline weighs by the net energy content of 44 MJ/kg gives you 122 MJ per gallon of gasoline, or the equivalent of 34 kWh of electricity.
I pay about USD 20 cents per kWh of electricity with tax, so the electrical equivalent for a gallon of gasoline would be about USD 6.80. Or, I can buy gasoline at about USD 2.15.
The more interesting question is: For each of those joules combusted in the engine, how many of them make it to the rubber/road interface (according to one FAQ about 0.2) and for each of the joules my ersatz-electric car pulls out of the wall socket, how many of THEM make it into the rubber/road interface (according to another FAQ about 0.6). Of course regen braking lets me use some of those joules over and over again, how much of which is highly dependent on driving conditions.
So, it turns out that the utility-electric-sourced car is about $11.30 per mega-newton-meter/second at the road surface, while the gasoline car is at about $10.75 - although it would not take very much regeneration at ALL to push that to the other side of the equation.
The thing that always frosts me, is whenever The Industry talks about
piracy they always bandy about numbers like (from TFA), three
billion dollars per year in lost revenue. I would really love to
see their methodology.
It seems to me that, people who are going to pirate content, probably come in three basic
groups
Hoarders: These are the guys (gals?) who just want to fill up
disc space with media they never look at, just to be able to brag on
Slashdot about their gigs and gigs of DVD rips. They would
never purchase the media, as that defeats their Virtual Dick Length.
Povs: Want the content, but cannot afford to pay retail. They
go to the flea
market and get the 3-dollar knockoffs. These people probably have
some budget for media, but choose to get more bang for their
buck by pirating.
Lookie loos:Not really interested in the content, but if it's
very cheap (or free), they will take a look. They probably spend a
lot of money on media, and usually want the real
deal for the packaging and extras.
Has anyone ever done a study on what percentage of users of
pirated content, would have purchased that content, had it not been
available outside the legitimate distribution channels?
Has that study been done, and The Industry discovered that it is
such a tiny fraction as to make no difference?
Of course, I can see how large-scale commercial piracy really
does hurt the distribution system. If a retailer buys three
dozen copies of a title for sale as the genuine article, and those
three dozen copies SELL as the genuine article at retail price, but
were knocked off by a Chinese plant, then that represents a
true loss of revenue. What percentage of the discs sold
world-wide (I know this is a serious problem in Europe and
the Orient) as legitimate are really pirated?
Perhaps that day will arrive, shortly after we develop some manner of genetic test to prevent Slashdotters from posting who are incapable of spelling the words carpal or tunnel.
unless things have changed in the 25+ years since I took a college physics class, we measure POWER in WATTS, and CURRENT in AMPS. So the number you quoted in AMPS that you claims is eqaual to four times the POWER in amps doesn't make any sense.
Well, it seems to me, in the kind of physics they are engaging in, the actual voltage does not matter a white. So long as it is sufficient to pass the required current through the sample. So, to fix up the sentence to offend your eyes less:
they generated a current, at sufficient voltage to be equal to about four times all the electrical power on Earth.
No, I think they can stand by the all the power generated on earth. because their system does not actually generate any power. It just stores up power from The Grid for a longish while and then dumps it in a (quote) few microseconds. The power being dissipated in that chunk of plasma-ball-former-aluminium-puck is indeed excess to all the power being currently generated (Well, actually, converted from some existing source of potential or chemical energy, if we want to get superpedantic... ) world-wide.
Although, having read the press release, I do believe the four
times the net energy production figure; without telling us what
voltage this few-microsecond pulse is at, it is impossible to
know what the instantaneous power is.
One would need to scrounge around in Wikipedia or something for the total
worldwide electricity production, multiply by four, do the
arithmetic, and know the peak voltage. But maybe they meant the
energy dissipated in those microseconds, which case you'd
need to know the discharge curve. That's what, 0.5*C*V**2, right? Quick, what's the resistance for a tuna-can-sized chunk of some random aluminium alloy?
Maybe because Twinax wasn't a popular medium for Decnet? Only place I ever saw Twinax was on IBM 3270-class hardware.
The most popular medium for DECNet was ethernet -- using the DEUNA (and later DELUA) cards on your Unibus machines, the DEQNA (and later DELQA) cards on your Q-Bus machines. Other architectures also had ethernet hardware available.
Of course, if your machines were further apart than an ethernet could go, you would use the serial version (DDCMP? My memory is getting vague here) that would run over plain old async ports like your garden variety DZ11, or low speed sync ports at speeds of 56k or 64k. For higher speed point-to-point circuits there were T1 and E1 speed hardware (DMU something, right?).
Ahhh, VMS and DrECknet
on
DECnet Isn't Dead
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I remember having a heterogynous network with VMS w/ the CMU-TEK TCP/IP package and Sun 4 with DECNET. You could telnet to the Vax, or at the vax say
SET HOST SPARKY
.
Those who wished to mock VMS would say "VMS Only has two commands, SET and LOGOUT"
Sadly, SET was terribly overloaded... SET DEFAULT was how you changed (among other things) your current working directory; logging into another host across the network was SET HOST; disabling traps in a.com file was SET NOON;
I loved VMS, not because it was a speedy lightweight OS (it was absolutely the opposite in every way) ; but it was the friendliest OS out there for the hard-core assembly language programmer, and the VAX has an architecture that makes programming in assembly a joy.
... there was no question in my mind. And, tying to another thread some months ago, it is what differentiates the mere coder from the true hacker. To draw an analogy to the painter: On the one hand you have Hank the Housepainter, and on the other hand you have Michelangelo. They both apply paint to surfaces, and as good a housepainter as Hank ever becomes, he will never be an artist.
Similarly, designing a complex system looks to an outsider like merely writing one line of code after another. It is only when you step back and see how the lines of code merge into a subroutine, and subroutines coalesce into cogent modules, and these modules get connected together to become a useful system that you can see the art. One square centimeter of yellow paint is not art, that square in the middle of one piece in a series of paintings on a theme is.
There are a lot more housepainters than artists. There are a lot more coders than there are hackers.
At a POPE, one of my Major Projects was bringing inhouse all of our datacenter operations that we had been paying (dearly) for outsourcing.
The reason is simple: Nobody cares as much about your business as you do. Any outsourcing or insourcing vendor you choose is going to maximize their profits by providing cookie-cutter solutions, and hiring worst-in-breed talent to maintain them.
Unless your needs are truly mundane, you are better of swallowing the bitter pill, and using all of the experience you have already paid for to keep the systems going yourselves.
So, they magically went back in time to get approval from the ethics committee after getting caught? Shit -- fuck the write-up on the phishing -- describe the time machine!
While I could easily imagine designing a disk that could work in space, you can not pull the old ST41201J out of your box and launch it into space. The flying head effect requires an atmosphere between the surface of the disk and the head. Stock disks have a vent (wiht a filter similar to that of a filter-tip cigarette), such that exposed to vacuum, the heads would crash.
Even manned aircraft might experience low atmospheric pressure (or even total vacuum) from time to time -- I guess they could pack a pressurized "space suit" enclosure for the computer.... quick -- get to work and make a mint.
While we all want to start lambasting him for his obvious lack of understanding of the obvious,
I think it is actually endemic of the real problem.
People do not understand anything about computer security.
They do not understand how to limit exposure.
They do not understand the vectors of software virus infection.
They do not understand the true problems of viral infection (that is: they want to eliminate the side effects, but do not care about the primary problem).
Mocking people for being clueless does not actually make them smarter, nor does it impress them with your 31337 Haxor Skillz.
And the reason the parties are able to distract us with these non-issues such as gun control or gay marriage, is there is a force even stronger than selfishness in the American psyche: The desire to impress my arbitrary moral values on someone else.
Getting back on-topic: I have strong libertarian leanings, and am of the general belief that the government at any level is the least qualified entity to provide any service. If a private enterprise cannot compete against the demonstrably least efficient corporation in the history of the universe, then they truly deserve to fail. (This does make the rather polyanna assumption, that the government plays at least reasonably fair.)
I guess we can thank our lucky stars that the Professional Private Firefighter Association is not lobbying congress to pass laws against municipally operated fire brigades.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no point in getting certifications for exactly the two reasons you pointed out in the question, unless you want to get a job for some dimwitted PHB who cannot tell the difference between the cluefull and the clueless.
That is its own reward.
I have never gotten any certification, nor has any employer seriously asked me for one. The one time I was asked, in passing, I replied, No employer is willing to pay me to get a certification in something I already know, and I am disinclined to work for an employer who needs validation from some group of nobodies to hire me. It is worth noting at this point, that I did get the job.
Finally, as a person in a hiring position, I do not consider them at all, and am definitely prejudiced against someone who puts them on their resume.
Oh, one more thing ... it is a good way to earn money, if you set up Smilin' Erica's Certification Company.
Does this mean, that if I continue to gain weight I will need less sleep?
Woohoo! Pass me another jelly donut!
Please stop looking at my ass ...
D'oh ... Nobody has called me on it yet, but in my last paragraph I made a braino in dimensional analysis and put MNm/S when I meant to say MNm.
As to the guy who got his flame on about the energy content analysis. Did you fail to read the very next paragraph before replying?
Ask for a refund on your high school education, as they failed to deliver.
737 kg/m3 divided by 264.17 is the number of kilograms per gallon of gasoline. Multiplying the 2.79kg that a gallon of gasoline weighs by the net energy content of 44 MJ/kg gives you 122 MJ per gallon of gasoline, or the equivalent of 34 kWh of electricity.
I pay about USD 20 cents per kWh of electricity with tax, so the electrical equivalent for a gallon of gasoline would be about USD 6.80. Or, I can buy gasoline at about USD 2.15.
The more interesting question is: For each of those joules combusted in the engine, how many of them make it to the rubber/road interface (according to one FAQ about 0.2) and for each of the joules my ersatz-electric car pulls out of the wall socket, how many of THEM make it into the rubber/road interface (according to another FAQ about 0.6). Of course regen braking lets me use some of those joules over and over again, how much of which is highly dependent on driving conditions.
So, it turns out that the utility-electric-sourced car is about $11.30 per mega-newton-meter/second at the road surface, while the gasoline car is at about $10.75 - although it would not take very much regeneration at ALL to push that to the other side of the equation.
The thing that always frosts me, is whenever The Industry talks about piracy they always bandy about numbers like (from TFA), three billion dollars per year in lost revenue. I would really love to see their methodology.
It seems to me that, people who are going to pirate content, probably come in three basic groups
Has anyone ever done a study on what percentage of users of pirated content, would have purchased that content, had it not been available outside the legitimate distribution channels?
Has that study been done, and The Industry discovered that it is such a tiny fraction as to make no difference?
Of course, I can see how large-scale commercial piracy really does hurt the distribution system. If a retailer buys three dozen copies of a title for sale as the genuine article, and those three dozen copies SELL as the genuine article at retail price, but were knocked off by a Chinese plant, then that represents a true loss of revenue. What percentage of the discs sold world-wide (I know this is a serious problem in Europe and the Orient) as legitimate are really pirated?
Perhaps that day will arrive, shortly after we develop some manner of genetic test to prevent Slashdotters from posting who are incapable of spelling the words carpal or tunnel.
Well, it seems to me, in the kind of physics they are engaging in, the actual voltage does not matter a white. So long as it is sufficient to pass the required current through the sample. So, to fix up the sentence to offend your eyes less:
No, I think they can stand by the all the power generated on earth. because their system does not actually generate any power. It just stores up power from The Grid for a longish while and then dumps it in a (quote) few microseconds. The power being dissipated in that chunk of plasma-ball-former-aluminium-puck is indeed excess to all the power being currently generated (Well, actually, converted from some existing source of potential or chemical energy, if we want to get superpedantic ... ) world-wide.
Although, having read the press release, I do believe the four times the net energy production figure; without telling us what voltage this few-microsecond pulse is at, it is impossible to know what the instantaneous power is.
One would need to scrounge around in Wikipedia or something for the total worldwide electricity production, multiply by four, do the arithmetic, and know the peak voltage. But maybe they meant the energy dissipated in those microseconds, which case you'd need to know the discharge curve. That's what, 0.5*C*V**2, right? Quick, what's the resistance for a tuna-can-sized chunk of some random aluminium alloy?
Maybe because Twinax wasn't a popular medium for Decnet? Only place I ever saw Twinax was on IBM 3270-class hardware.
The most popular medium for DECNet was ethernet -- using the DEUNA (and later DELUA) cards on your Unibus machines, the DEQNA (and later DELQA) cards on your Q-Bus machines. Other architectures also had ethernet hardware available.
Of course, if your machines were further apart than an ethernet could go, you would use the serial version (DDCMP? My memory is getting vague here) that would run over plain old async ports like your garden variety DZ11, or low speed sync ports at speeds of 56k or 64k. For higher speed point-to-point circuits there were T1 and E1 speed hardware (DMU something, right?).
Those who wished to mock VMS would say "VMS Only has two commands, SET and LOGOUT"
Sadly, SET was terribly overloaded ... SET DEFAULT was how you changed (among other things) your current working directory; logging into another host across the network was SET HOST; disabling traps in a .com file was SET NOON;
I loved VMS, not because it was a speedy lightweight OS (it was absolutely the opposite in every way) ; but it was the friendliest OS out there for the hard-core assembly language programmer, and the VAX has an architecture that makes programming in assembly a joy.
Similarly, designing a complex system looks to an outsider like merely writing one line of code after another. It is only when you step back and see how the lines of code merge into a subroutine, and subroutines coalesce into cogent modules, and these modules get connected together to become a useful system that you can see the art. One square centimeter of yellow paint is not art, that square in the middle of one piece in a series of paintings on a theme is.
There are a lot more housepainters than artists. There are a lot more coders than there are hackers.
At a POPE, one of my Major Projects was bringing inhouse all of our datacenter operations that we had been paying (dearly) for outsourcing.
The reason is simple: Nobody cares as much about your business as you do. Any outsourcing or insourcing vendor you choose is going to maximize their profits by providing cookie-cutter solutions, and hiring worst-in-breed talent to maintain them.
Unless your needs are truly mundane, you are better of swallowing the bitter pill, and using all of the experience you have already paid for to keep the systems going yourselves.
Maybe you, like I, are wondering, Where is it?. One would find Computex 2005 in Taipei.
...and this guy says it best.
Well, I think it would be a perfectly reasonable defense, since you have in your hand the signed permission from the ethics committee.
So, they magically went back in time to get approval from the ethics committee after getting caught? Shit -- fuck the write-up on the phishing -- describe the time machine!
... to find that they did this experiment under the oversight of the university's Human Subjects Committee.
If that doesn't sound like some sort of ethical guidelines I don't know what does.
... including the last paragraph on the second page that begins
While I could easily imagine designing a disk that could work in space, you can not pull the old ST41201J out of your box and launch it into space. The flying head effect requires an atmosphere between the surface of the disk and the head. Stock disks have a vent (wiht a filter similar to that of a filter-tip cigarette), such that exposed to vacuum, the heads would crash.
Even manned aircraft might experience low atmospheric pressure (or even total vacuum) from time to time -- I guess they could pack a pressurized "space suit" enclosure for the computer .... quick -- get to work and make a mint.
While we all want to start lambasting him for his obvious lack of understanding of the obvious, I think it is actually endemic of the real problem.
People do not understand anything about computer security.
They do not understand how to limit exposure.
They do not understand the vectors of software virus infection.
They do not understand the true problems of viral infection (that is: they want to eliminate the side effects, but do not care about the primary problem).
Mocking people for being clueless does not actually make them smarter, nor does it impress them with your 31337 Haxor Skillz.
And the reason the parties are able to distract us with these non-issues such as gun control or gay marriage, is there is a force even stronger than selfishness in the American psyche: The desire to impress my arbitrary moral values on someone else.
Getting back on-topic: I have strong libertarian leanings, and am of the general belief that the government at any level is the least qualified entity to provide any service. If a private enterprise cannot compete against the demonstrably least efficient corporation in the history of the universe, then they truly deserve to fail. (This does make the rather polyanna assumption, that the government plays at least reasonably fair.)
I guess we can thank our lucky stars that the Professional Private Firefighter Association is not lobbying congress to pass laws against municipally operated fire brigades.
Now, if your sig were available for lease I would consider it, but as a capital expense, I'm not interested in buying it.
Iff their is anythign moor ironic then a speliing flame with misspealings, I dunno what it is.