There is a certain theatrical element to all aspects of the SuperNAP - Switch doesn't make that a secret. I recall a tour when someone said, "Why do we have the lights set up like that? 'Cause it looks cool." As a geek, you gotta respect that. And the touch of theater is pretty nice when you meet a client in Vegas and take them on a tour.
Just because there is a theatrical element does not mean that they are not physically secure. Having toured facilities (some hosting some pretty well-known sites) where the "security" is basically a bored-looking half-asleep receptionist at the door I can say that it is refreshing to be in a facility with a well-staffed and alert security crew.
But I've yet to hear of any data-center being breached or disrupted by a physical attack on the facility so as a customer, I'm far more interested in the "availability" part of the security triad. As such, the dual independent power supplies to our cabinets (with a third bus available to cross-over if one bus is down) are one of the things that keep me happy.
I have been in the facility for a while now and I have found "itchy trigger finger" to be as far as possible from the truth. Yes, they are professional. But they are also extremely helpful and friendly - something I've found with the techs as well. And no, they don't walk around with assault rifles. They do have arms available in the security office but typically patrol with pepper-spray and Tasers. Like all data-centers (or any workplace) there are rules. But they are pretty basic and easy to follow. I've never found that they impede my ability to get work done.
People think the desert is hot. As a born and raised in the Mojave desert "desert rat" I can say that is only true sometimes. Dry air heats quickly and cools quickly and winters are chilly - they even had snow on the strip last year. According to Switch (I have had equipment in the SuperNAP for well over 2 years) they only need to chill the outside air 30% of the year. Then you switch to evaporative. But they are able to run air-cooled as well - they don't need water to keep things cool, it just costs more in power.
For some reason exotic BBQ seems to attract geeks. It seems that a lot of the people who hang out on the Komodo Kamado forum are IT/math/... types. So of course there is discussion of homebrew controllers. http://komodokamado.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=4126
Come on. The headline is misleading. XP won't suddenly stop working - rather it will simply not be supported by Microsoft.
Look at Canonical's official support policy for Ubuntu. "Long-Term" support versions mean 3-years on the desktop, 5 on the server.
PostgreSQL has dropped support for a number of old releases - you can read volumes of discussion on the subject in mailing archives.
Even cars are only officially supported for something like 10 years (I think that's the required time for manufacturers to provide replacement parts). I've had a number of instances where I had to go to aftermarket for replacements but I can't really complain that my 26-year old car is not supported.
It isn't two sides, it is two utterly different things.
It is one thing to be acting in the *professional* capacity of a physician/engineer/cpa/attorney/hairdresser. You are typically being paid for your work and people are relying on your allegedly demonstrated expertise.
It is another thing entirely to act as a private member of society. I can bandage my wife's knee or give medicine to my daughter. I cannot hang out a shingle and do either for pay. I can cut my kid's hair but I can't work as a barber. I can put up a playhouse in my yard. I can not sign off on the load-bearing capacity of the swing-set my neighbor wants to sell. I can represent myself in court or even offer ideas on how to fight a traffic-ticket to a friend. I cannot work as an attorney.
I have gone to city-council meetings in my town. People show up and present their arguments pro or con on issues up for discussion. I've heard people demand the council ban smart-meters because they "cause cancer". As silly as I think they are, I'm not going to suggest that they should be charged with practicing medicine without a license. Other people are well prepared. They have a list of relevant laws and codes, photos, maps, diagrams and other info to help make their case. They are not acting as attorney/surveyor/engineer. They are acting as concerned and prepared citizens in a democracy.
The disturbing thing about this story is that a government official is basically saying, "we'll tolerate your pathetic little show of citizenship and democracy as long as you play the fool and go along with what we say but don't you *dare* show up prepared with a good argument and supporting evidence or we will crush you like a bug."
I liked Bob Lewis' commentary on Nicholas Carr. First he says IT doesn't matter, then the cloud is everything (er, um, IT matters after all) and now, IT matters but it's evil.
Lewis lumps Carr into those who throughout history have proclaimed that X (where X=radio, movies, talkies, television, calculators, computers, video-games, cell-phones...) will be the ruination of society. And somehow society continues. I'm getting a bit tired of Carr and his ever failed proclamations.
From the books by Pinker that I have read, he is a fascinating writer with a gift for clear explanations.
William “Burro” Schmidt started in 1902 and spent 33 years digging his 2087-foot tunnel through solid rock on Copper Mountain. About all people could get as a reason was that it was a "shortcut."
I suggest that Mr. Tony Wright learn a thing or two about significant digits. What a glorious heap of bull to take input like "if we assume our userbase is representative", "if we take Wolfram Alpha at its word","approximate cost of", "about 11,000" and then assert a figure like $298,803,988. 10 significant digits?!? Right.
Given their methodology, you'd better add the weight of all the colocation facilities. That's a heap of concrete, lead-acid batteries, flywheels, generators, steel supports and cabinets, etc.
- Raised floor is certainly important, and a given. Check
Not so fast. I've been very happy at the Switch SuperNAP which is on concrete with all cabling run overhead. And for very good reason. The typical (though changing) datacenter has mixed hot and cold air - typically cold air pumped up from the bottom (?!? kind of fighting nature, there) then allowed to rise into the ceiling. The alternative at Switch is strict hot/cold-isle isolation. Cold air drops down as per nature on the cold (intake) side and is contained on the hot-side where it rises and is pulled from the building.
Additionally, they can handle extremely heavy equipment loads that could be difficult on raised floors.
- Cooling capacity is hard to judge, should be scalable. Redundancy is often overlooked but is often even more important that capacity... Check
Indeed. Many centers talk about redundant power but that is useless if the cooling goes out. High-density centers can go well past 100F in just a few minutes without cooling but I've seen SLAs that allow a several-hour cooling outage. Not to be a Switch shill (though we are happy), they have developed a setup that allows them to run indefinitely, albeit less efficiently, using air-exchange only if their cooling water supply is cut off.
- Power quality: never seen a big datacenter without a Liebert, or at least UPS in every rack.
I'm happy with the arrangement at Switch. Three full power buses. Sure they are all generator backed (with aggressive testing cycles) UPS backed, yada, yada as with other centers I use. But they also insist on customers taking power from two buses so if, in spite of generator and UPS protection, a power bus fails you will still have power. And since they only run at 2/3 power/bus, they can reroute power and continue providing dual redundant power if one bus is down.
If controls were centred and symmetric then the car could be driven from either side. I don't know how well most right-handed people would adjust to using their left-hand but it's probably not a problem - when I fly power planes I hold the wheel/yoke with the left and the throttle with the right while in gliders I hold the stick in the right and the spoilers/speed-brake in the left.
What this would mean is no more changes needed for right-hand/left-hand drive countries or for delivery vehicles where the driver enters/exits from the curb-side.
It would also mean that the front occupants could switch off while driving - nice for grabbing a snack/nap/phone-call.
But there are pitfalls. We've seen aircraft accidents where there was confusion over who was flying. And "back-seat-drivers" would no longer be limited to yapping - they could grab the stick. And for law-enforcement there would be the issue of having to prove who was at the control when the vehicle was stopped for speeding, drunk, etc.
Take a look at the annual reports of some big drug companies and you'll find they spend more on marketing (we need to keep the prices high to support R&D...) than they do on actual R&D.
"This American Life" had an interesting episode a year or two back involving research on couples where they were asked to discuss some contentious point in their relationship. They played segments of the various arguments. At first blush, some of the arguments seemed pretty bad but what the research had discovered was the little clues in the discussions. At one point in a heated discussion the guy paused and commented "Are those new shoes? They are nice." The researcher commented that traditional wisdom would call that avoiding the discussion but in fact the monitors showed that blood pressure, breathing and such dropped and they continued the discussion. A different example didn't sound as bad at first but the couple ended up throwing in put-downs of the other person. This was a relationship in trouble.
I am a Linux geek who married a literary bookworm and after nine years I can say that it's good. We have a 5-year-old who thinks all computer programs involve Penguins and who hides under her covers with a flashlight so she can read. There are amusing moments that highlight our different backgrounds. Friends of ours named their boat "Prufrock". I googled it. She just started reciting the poem from memory.
It's a quick read. The main thing to do in this situation is to mull over the project and decide on the single next thing that needs to be done. Then do it.
But if you aren't careful, you will work back too far and become overwhelmed with non-coding issues and optimize too-early. "Research version-control systems" may be important but it can just as easily be a non-productive stalling technique.
There's a guy in the Bay Area who claims he can predict earthquakes with high accuracy and offers up the fact that he has predicted every recent large earthquake. But as one scientist commented (borrowing from somewhere, I believe) that, "indeed, he has predicted 150 of the last 8 earthquakes."
Based on what we know so-far, he predicted a destructive quake on March 29. This did not happen. Prediction failed.
But there was another earthquake that day. Big deal - isn't that what "seismically active" means?
Just looking at the current Northern California map I see over 170 quakes listed. And that's only the last 7 days where this predicted event was 9 days before the quake. I'm not surprised there was a "smaller" quake that day. There are usually quite a few every day.
As to the charge of "silenced", I'll wait and see what that really means. If he was ordered to destroy scientific publications with his claims or cease his research discussions it's one thing. If they declined to once-again drive vans with bullhorns around town having falsely reported an imminent quake just a month earlier, it's another thing entirely. It will probably end up being somewhere between those extremes.
Radon emission changes have preceded earthquakes. But they have also "preceded" non-quakes. And quakes have been preceded by the lack of change in radon as well. Hardly a reliable predictor, so far.
One should not lambaste officials without looking at the scientist's track-record. I have yet to see a single item suggesting that he had a serious track-record of predicting with any reasonable level of accuracy the time, place and magnitude of an event as well as "safe" periods.
I think it would have been more responsible to just lay out the facts. There is evidence that certain events we are monitoring (radon, ground-water changes, full/new-moon,...) tend to precede an earthquake. We feel the risk is higher than normal. Please be sure you are as prepared as possible with the usual recommended supplies of food, water, tools, etc. and consider training if you haven't done-so in the past.
Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, IBM's various research labs, 3M's research and others have all generated wonderful new things from their basic research. Google is just one company that encourages employees to spend a portion of their work time on personal research projects.
And now as we bemoan the "next-quarter" mentality of corporate officers and the decimation of basic research, along comes this bunch.
If corporations can't do basic research for fear of being sued, we might as well just pack up our remaining industry and ship it overseas right now.
I have an eu2000i as well. Great little generator though a tad pricey.
Why I like it...
One: Excellent surge-current capacity - I tried it on everything in the house including furnace, dishwasher, microwave, fridge, table-saw, etc. (one at a time, of course) and while it bogged a bit on table-saw startup and the microwave startup it did handle everything.
Two: Quiet and clean (power). Actual output is delivered by inverter which means that the engine can throttle back while still delivering clean 60Hz power - and the power is plenty good for electronics for powering computers, ham radios, etc. in the field.
Three: Light/small - can carry with one hand, drop in trunk, store easily...
I have an (illegal) homemade cheater. One end is a male 240V plug with the two hot-sides shorted together and connected to the hot-side on the male 120 plug and the neutral side of the 240 connected to the neutral 120.
If plugged into the socket while the house was powered the result would be sparks and blown breaker. But one must, must, must turn off the main breaker anyway before backfeeding most importantly to protect utility and emergency service workers. The generator only supplies 120 so running 240v appliances is moot, anyway, and shorting the who hots means I can feed both sides of the 120 to the house.
I usually shut off the main first then all breakers. Hook up the back feed and fire up the generator next, then turn on the circuits I need.
Pink keyboard? Big deal. I was at the range yesterday and they had pink rifles. Gun makers are catering to the female market (http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/29437539.html) precluding the need for custom work like the Hell Kitten AR-15 (http://blog.riflegear.com/archive/2007/12/26/hello-kitty-ar-15---evil-black-rifle-meets-cute-and.aspx).
Quite a few women and girls at the range, too. Though none of them had pink guns.
I believe that the standard should be that the advertisement must show an accurate representation of the average product as it will be delivered to the consumer. To do otherwise, is fraud.
That includes Wendy's and all the rest of the fast-food crowd. In fact, pretty much all food advertising. (Many years ago the Wall Street Journal had a very funny article about making food adverts. Jello was mixed at several times the usual concentration to keep it solid under the lights. Tensions got high on the set and someone hurled a jello chunk at someone else. The other person ducked and the jello rebounded off the wall like a superball.)
How about stores? I sure wish the nearby Safeway were bright, clean and open instead of old, dingy and cramped.
The before/after pics for weight-loss schemes would be pretty funny.
Oh, sorry. Lost myself for a moment there. Forgot that it is our Patriotic Duty to buy into the advertising fantasies in order to keep the economic fantasy growing.
He knows his child better than you do. My daughter is not a "prodigy" but she, too was fascinated by the computer when she was two. The first thing she grabs playing with her friend a few doors over is the play laptop (a toy her friend shows no interest in at all).
At two, she wanted to sit in my lap and play Tuxpaint (a.k.a. paint-penguins - since all the machines here run linux she calls all programs *-penguins - paint-penguins, running-penguins, sliding-penguins...)
At first she didn't have the motor skills to use the mouse - especially the full-sized one so she would point or describe what she wanted.
But kids catch you off-guard with what they learn. A bit before she turned three, she typed her name and "mommy", "daddy" plus a couple other words. She could also type the alphabet.
I picked up a laptop mouse that fit her hand and by 3-1/2 or so she was not only playing Tuxpaint on her own but navigating the menus to start the programs she wanted.
But be careful what you wish for. Kids may be good at figuring things out but they have lousy impulse control. If he learns how to do things on the computer, don't expect that telling him "you have to ask daddy before touching" will protect you. My daughter will jump in my lap and "get to work" - not so good when I'm remoted into work trying to repair a server.
There are some great free programs available - Tuxpaint for starters (available for Win/Mac, too). But given that they need supervision, a separate computer isn't necessary at this point. If you really want to get him his own, I think the OLPC is probably the best bet in terms of durability. I think that the buy one donate one deal is available again.
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There is a certain theatrical element to all aspects of the SuperNAP - Switch doesn't make that a secret. I recall a tour when someone said, "Why do we have the lights set up like that? 'Cause it looks cool." As a geek, you gotta respect that. And the touch of theater is pretty nice when you meet a client in Vegas and take them on a tour.
Just because there is a theatrical element does not mean that they are not physically secure. Having toured facilities (some hosting some pretty well-known sites) where the "security" is basically a bored-looking half-asleep receptionist at the door I can say that it is refreshing to be in a facility with a well-staffed and alert security crew.
But I've yet to hear of any data-center being breached or disrupted by a physical attack on the facility so as a customer, I'm far more interested in the "availability" part of the security triad. As such, the dual independent power supplies to our cabinets (with a third bus available to cross-over if one bus is down) are one of the things that keep me happy.
I have been in the facility for a while now and I have found "itchy trigger finger" to be as far as possible from the truth. Yes, they are professional. But they are also extremely helpful and friendly - something I've found with the techs as well. And no, they don't walk around with assault rifles. They do have arms available in the security office but typically patrol with pepper-spray and Tasers. Like all data-centers (or any workplace) there are rules. But they are pretty basic and easy to follow. I've never found that they impede my ability to get work done.
People think the desert is hot. As a born and raised in the Mojave desert "desert rat" I can say that is only true sometimes. Dry air heats quickly and cools quickly and winters are chilly - they even had snow on the strip last year. According to Switch (I have had equipment in the SuperNAP for well over 2 years) they only need to chill the outside air 30% of the year. Then you switch to evaporative. But they are able to run air-cooled as well - they don't need water to keep things cool, it just costs more in power.
For some reason exotic BBQ seems to attract geeks. It seems that a lot of the people who hang out on the Komodo Kamado forum are IT/math/... types. So of course there is discussion of homebrew controllers.
http://komodokamado.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=4126
Come on. The headline is misleading. XP won't suddenly stop working - rather it will simply not be supported by Microsoft.
Look at Canonical's official support policy for Ubuntu. "Long-Term" support versions mean 3-years on the desktop, 5 on the server.
PostgreSQL has dropped support for a number of old releases - you can read volumes of discussion on the subject in mailing archives.
Even cars are only officially supported for something like 10 years (I think that's the required time for manufacturers to provide replacement parts). I've had a number of instances where I had to go to aftermarket for replacements but I can't really complain that my 26-year old car is not supported.
In other words, nothing to see here, move along.
http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-2.3-highlights.html
See first entry under "New ways of communicating"
A writer in SFGate had a pretty good commentary. The stats show that this makes Craigslist 11,000 times safer than Oakland.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/techchron/detail?entry_id=83684
It isn't two sides, it is two utterly different things.
It is one thing to be acting in the *professional* capacity of a physician/engineer/cpa/attorney/hairdresser. You are typically being paid for your work and people are relying on your allegedly demonstrated expertise.
It is another thing entirely to act as a private member of society. I can bandage my wife's knee or give medicine to my daughter. I cannot hang out a shingle and do either for pay. I can cut my kid's hair but I can't work as a barber. I can put up a playhouse in my yard. I can not sign off on the load-bearing capacity of the swing-set my neighbor wants to sell. I can represent myself in court or even offer ideas on how to fight a traffic-ticket to a friend. I cannot work as an attorney.
I have gone to city-council meetings in my town. People show up and present their arguments pro or con on issues up for discussion. I've heard people demand the council ban smart-meters because they "cause cancer". As silly as I think they are, I'm not going to suggest that they should be charged with practicing medicine without a license. Other people are well prepared. They have a list of relevant laws and codes, photos, maps, diagrams and other info to help make their case. They are not acting as attorney/surveyor/engineer. They are acting as concerned and prepared citizens in a democracy.
The disturbing thing about this story is that a government official is basically saying, "we'll tolerate your pathetic little show of citizenship and democracy as long as you play the fool and go along with what we say but don't you *dare* show up prepared with a good argument and supporting evidence or we will crush you like a bug."
Don't know about tours, but there is currently a big "25 years of Pixar" exhibit at the Oakland Museum of California: http://museumca.org/exhibit/pixar-25-years-animation
I liked Bob Lewis' commentary on Nicholas Carr. First he says IT doesn't matter, then the cloud is everything (er, um, IT matters after all) and now, IT matters but it's evil.
Lewis lumps Carr into those who throughout history have proclaimed that X (where X=radio, movies, talkies, television, calculators, computers, video-games, cell-phones...) will be the ruination of society. And somehow society continues. I'm getting a bit tired of Carr and his ever failed proclamations.
From the books by Pinker that I have read, he is a fascinating writer with a gift for clear explanations.
http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/self-proclaimed-experts-predict-ruination-new-technologies-ignore-them-489?page=0,0
William “Burro” Schmidt started in 1902 and spent 33 years digging his 2087-foot tunnel through solid rock on Copper Mountain. About all people could get as a reason was that it was a "shortcut."
http://www.desertusa.com/mag05/sep/tunnel.html
I suggest that Mr. Tony Wright learn a thing or two about significant digits. What a glorious heap of bull to take input like "if we assume our userbase is representative", "if we take Wolfram Alpha at its word","approximate cost of", "about 11,000" and then assert a figure like $298,803,988. 10 significant digits?!? Right.
Given their methodology, you'd better add the weight of all the colocation facilities. That's a heap of concrete, lead-acid batteries, flywheels, generators, steel supports and cabinets, etc.
- Raised floor is certainly important, and a given. Check
Not so fast. I've been very happy at the Switch SuperNAP which is on concrete with all cabling run overhead. And for very good reason. The typical (though changing) datacenter has mixed hot and cold air - typically cold air pumped up from the bottom (?!? kind of fighting nature, there) then allowed to rise into the ceiling. The alternative at Switch is strict hot/cold-isle isolation. Cold air drops down as per nature on the cold (intake) side and is contained on the hot-side where it rises and is pulled from the building.
Additionally, they can handle extremely heavy equipment loads that could be difficult on raised floors.
- Cooling capacity is hard to judge, should be scalable. Redundancy is often overlooked but is often even more important that capacity... Check
Indeed. Many centers talk about redundant power but that is useless if the cooling goes out. High-density centers can go well past 100F in just a few minutes without cooling but I've seen SLAs that allow a several-hour cooling outage. Not to be a Switch shill (though we are happy), they have developed a setup that allows them to run indefinitely, albeit less efficiently, using air-exchange only if their cooling water supply is cut off.
- Power quality: never seen a big datacenter without a Liebert, or at least UPS in every rack.
I'm happy with the arrangement at Switch. Three full power buses. Sure they are all generator backed (with aggressive testing cycles) UPS backed, yada, yada as with other centers I use. But they also insist on customers taking power from two buses so if, in spite of generator and UPS protection, a power bus fails you will still have power. And since they only run at 2/3 power/bus, they can reroute power and continue providing dual redundant power if one bus is down.
If controls were centred and symmetric then the car could be driven from either side. I don't know how well most right-handed people would adjust to using their left-hand but it's probably not a problem - when I fly power planes I hold the wheel/yoke with the left and the throttle with the right while in gliders I hold the stick in the right and the spoilers/speed-brake in the left.
What this would mean is no more changes needed for right-hand/left-hand drive countries or for delivery vehicles where the driver enters/exits from the curb-side.
It would also mean that the front occupants could switch off while driving - nice for grabbing a snack/nap/phone-call.
But there are pitfalls. We've seen aircraft accidents where there was confusion over who was flying. And "back-seat-drivers" would no longer be limited to yapping - they could grab the stick. And for law-enforcement there would be the issue of having to prove who was at the control when the vehicle was stopped for speeding, drunk, etc.
Take a look at the annual reports of some big drug companies and you'll find they spend more on marketing (we need to keep the prices high to support R&D...) than they do on actual R&D.
"This American Life" had an interesting episode a year or two back involving research on couples where they were asked to discuss some contentious point in their relationship. They played segments of the various arguments. At first blush, some of the arguments seemed pretty bad but what the research had discovered was the little clues in the discussions. At one point in a heated discussion the guy paused and commented "Are those new shoes? They are nice." The researcher commented that traditional wisdom would call that avoiding the discussion but in fact the monitors showed that blood pressure, breathing and such dropped and they continued the discussion. A different example didn't sound as bad at first but the couple ended up throwing in put-downs of the other person. This was a relationship in trouble.
I am a Linux geek who married a literary bookworm and after nine years I can say that it's good. We have a 5-year-old who thinks all computer programs involve Penguins and who hides under her covers with a flashlight so she can read. There are amusing moments that highlight our different backgrounds. Friends of ours named their boat "Prufrock". I googled it. She just started reciting the poem from memory.
Best wishes for a long and happy life together.
It's a quick read. The main thing to do in this situation is to mull over the project and decide on the single next thing that needs to be done. Then do it.
But if you aren't careful, you will work back too far and become overwhelmed with non-coding issues and optimize too-early. "Research version-control systems" may be important but it can just as easily be a non-productive stalling technique.
There's a guy in the Bay Area who claims he can predict earthquakes with high accuracy and offers up the fact that he has predicted every recent large earthquake. But as one scientist commented (borrowing from somewhere, I believe) that, "indeed, he has predicted 150 of the last 8 earthquakes."
Based on what we know so-far, he predicted a destructive quake on March 29. This did not happen. Prediction failed.
But there was another earthquake that day. Big deal - isn't that what "seismically active" means?
Just looking at the current Northern California map I see over 170 quakes listed. And that's only the last 7 days where this predicted event was 9 days before the quake. I'm not surprised there was a "smaller" quake that day. There are usually quite a few every day.
As to the charge of "silenced", I'll wait and see what that really means. If he was ordered to destroy scientific publications with his claims or cease his research discussions it's one thing. If they declined to once-again drive vans with bullhorns around town having falsely reported an imminent quake just a month earlier, it's another thing entirely. It will probably end up being somewhere between those extremes.
Radon emission changes have preceded earthquakes. But they have also "preceded" non-quakes. And quakes have been preceded by the lack of change in radon as well. Hardly a reliable predictor, so far.
One should not lambaste officials without looking at the scientist's track-record. I have yet to see a single item suggesting that he had a serious track-record of predicting with any reasonable level of accuracy the time, place and magnitude of an event as well as "safe" periods.
I think it would have been more responsible to just lay out the facts. There is evidence that certain events we are monitoring (radon, ground-water changes, full/new-moon, ...) tend to precede an earthquake. We feel the risk is higher than normal. Please be sure you are as prepared as possible with the usual recommended supplies of food, water, tools, etc. and consider training if you haven't done-so in the past.
top **AA lawyers
Don't you mean ??AA or, perhaps (RI)|(MP)AA or ..AA (pick your favorite regex or glob)?
Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, IBM's various research labs, 3M's research and others have all generated wonderful new things from their basic research. Google is just one company that encourages employees to spend a portion of their work time on personal research projects.
And now as we bemoan the "next-quarter" mentality of corporate officers and the decimation of basic research, along comes this bunch.
If corporations can't do basic research for fear of being sued, we might as well just pack up our remaining industry and ship it overseas right now.
I have an eu2000i as well. Great little generator though a tad pricey.
Why I like it...
One: Excellent surge-current capacity - I tried it on everything in the house including furnace, dishwasher, microwave, fridge, table-saw, etc. (one at a time, of course) and while it bogged a bit on table-saw startup and the microwave startup it did handle everything.
Two: Quiet and clean (power). Actual output is delivered by inverter which means that the engine can throttle back while still delivering clean 60Hz power - and the power is plenty good for electronics for powering computers, ham radios, etc. in the field.
Three: Light/small - can carry with one hand, drop in trunk, store easily...
I have an (illegal) homemade cheater. One end is a male 240V plug with the two hot-sides shorted together and connected to the hot-side on the male 120 plug and the neutral side of the 240 connected to the neutral 120.
If plugged into the socket while the house was powered the result would be sparks and blown breaker. But one must, must, must turn off the main breaker anyway before backfeeding most importantly to protect utility and emergency service workers. The generator only supplies 120 so running 240v appliances is moot, anyway, and shorting the who hots means I can feed both sides of the 120 to the house.
I usually shut off the main first then all breakers. Hook up the back feed and fire up the generator next, then turn on the circuits I need.
Pink keyboard? Big deal. I was at the range yesterday and they had pink rifles. Gun makers are catering to the female market (http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/29437539.html) precluding the need for custom work like the Hell Kitten AR-15 (http://blog.riflegear.com/archive/2007/12/26/hello-kitty-ar-15---evil-black-rifle-meets-cute-and.aspx).
Quite a few women and girls at the range, too. Though none of them had pink guns.
It is the norm. It should not be.
I believe that the standard should be that the advertisement must show an accurate representation of the average product as it will be delivered to the consumer. To do otherwise, is fraud.
That includes Wendy's and all the rest of the fast-food crowd. In fact, pretty much all food advertising. (Many years ago the Wall Street Journal had a very funny article about making food adverts. Jello was mixed at several times the usual concentration to keep it solid under the lights. Tensions got high on the set and someone hurled a jello chunk at someone else. The other person ducked and the jello rebounded off the wall like a superball.)
How about stores? I sure wish the nearby Safeway were bright, clean and open instead of old, dingy and cramped.
The before/after pics for weight-loss schemes would be pretty funny.
Oh, sorry. Lost myself for a moment there. Forgot that it is our Patriotic Duty to buy into the advertising fantasies in order to keep the economic fantasy growing.
He knows his child better than you do. My daughter is not a "prodigy" but she, too was fascinated by the computer when she was two. The first thing she grabs playing with her friend a few doors over is the play laptop (a toy her friend shows no interest in at all).
At two, she wanted to sit in my lap and play Tuxpaint (a.k.a. paint-penguins - since all the machines here run linux she calls all programs *-penguins - paint-penguins, running-penguins, sliding-penguins...)
At first she didn't have the motor skills to use the mouse - especially the full-sized one so she would point or describe what she wanted.
But kids catch you off-guard with what they learn. A bit before she turned three, she typed her name and "mommy", "daddy" plus a couple other words. She could also type the alphabet.
I picked up a laptop mouse that fit her hand and by 3-1/2 or so she was not only playing Tuxpaint on her own but navigating the menus to start the programs she wanted.
But be careful what you wish for. Kids may be good at figuring things out but they have lousy impulse control. If he learns how to do things on the computer, don't expect that telling him "you have to ask daddy before touching" will protect you. My daughter will jump in my lap and "get to work" - not so good when I'm remoted into work trying to repair a server.
There are some great free programs available - Tuxpaint for starters (available for Win/Mac, too). But given that they need supervision, a separate computer isn't necessary at this point. If you really want to get him his own, I think the OLPC is probably the best bet in terms of durability. I think that the buy one donate one deal is available again.