"While the grid might not be a battery, it certainly contains some fairly large ones."
The operative word in that sentence being "some". Given all of the electrical grids on the planet, it looks like about three-four dozen or so are pumped storage systems. I also liked the following quote: "In 2000 the United States had 19500 MWe capacity of pumped storage. This produced a net -5500 MWe of power because they consume more power filling their reservoirs than they generate by emptying them."
"for example pump water up a mountain to a storage lake and let it run down durring the night for power"
Okay... just for what it's worth, have you ever been to the Hover Dam? Ever seen the amount of water that goes through the turbines each day? Assuming, or course, you're not in Kansas or Indiana or some place lacking in available mountains.
Or considered just how many flywheels you'd need, and how large they'd have to be, to power an entire city for a night.
"You sell power to the power company when generating, and you buy it back when you're not generating. Simple."
Simplistic, you mean. Repeat after me: The grid is not a battery. Yes, you may be able to sell some excess power to the "grid", but the "grid" doesn't store energy, it just distributes it. You can't buy "your" power back again.
So to repeat, a power station connected to the grid still needs to be able to supply ALL of the energy everyone needs at home on a cold night.
"Come on people, do you honestly think such a trivial problem would go unsolved for so long?"
I think of quite a few "trivial" problems that, like this one, remain unsolved.
But it's not a battery. Yes, you may be able to sell some excess power to the "grid", but the "grid" doesn't store energy, it just distributes it. As such, a power station connected to the grid still needs to be able to supply ALL of the energy everyone needs at night.
So at night solar has issues. In fact, it's not too great on cloudy, snowy, short winter days either.
"Lots of people do not go solar because it simply does not draw enough power for the amount of money they have to use to build the system."
I can see solar as a potential option for some businesses, but for home use you still have the small problem of no power output during the night. And that's usually just when you want some lights, television, heat, and so forth.
If they want solar to REALLY catch on someone is going to need to develop not just a cost-effective solar cell, but also a cost-effective way to store and reuse the energy collected during the day.
"My problem is how blatantly incompatible they do everything."
And his point was that, within the Windows environment, they ARE compatible, staying with their existing libraries, tools, and languages. Given that perspective, importing yet another language and toolset from Unix would be the incompatibility.
Why does the entire world have to look like a scripting language from an OS designed four decades ago?
"It has little or nothing to do with sexism, and everything to do with cheering for people with survival traits."
Survival traits? Sorry, not even that. And I could, for example, make a pretty good case for greed BEING a survial trait for you and yours.
No, such films are nothing more than grown up versions of the boogyman stories parents would tell their children, all about what happens to little kids who do bad things.
Seriously, it's a convention, not a standard, as practiced by the majority of web browsers and probably the majority of web sites. Of late it's been deconstructed to be just colored text within plain text, or underlined text, but blue/underlined is still a convention. Just like making your web site's logo also a link back to the home page is a convention.
You can configure your browser however you wish, but that doesn't change the fact that there is a web interface convention of text links being blue and underlined. In fact, that's how most browsers will render unvisited links, unless directed otherwise (as you did).
So it's not HIS convention, nor is it your exception.
FYI: A company I know of that relies on user registrations automatically flags email addresses, usernames, and passwords that contain anon, bugme, spam, asd, sdf, and other key words. Most such accounts are automatically closed.
...the right side ports are: DVI (supports VGA, S-Video, composite), 10/100/1000 ethernet, FireWire 800, FireWire 400, 1 USB 2.0, security port.
I wish they'd wise up and change the security port location. You're most likely to use a SP when your computer is a) at a desk and b) plugged into A/C power.
So why isn't it back next to the power connector to minimze cable runs? No, you have to have a power cable on the left, and then run a security cable all the way around the computer, and in front of all the other cables on the right.
But no, they have to do the cute asethetic biggest hole to smallest hole port ordering.
Speaking of battery life. Apple finally put those specs on their product page.
15-inch MacBook Pro
60-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery (with integrated charge indicator LEDs) providing up to 4.5 hours of battery life(1)
17-inch MacBook Pro
68-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery (with integrated charge indicator LEDs) providing up to 5.5 hours of battery life(1)
Notice that the bigger notebook gets an extra hour's worth of power. Odd they made this choice, since on the PB line both the 15 and the 17 got about the same life per charge (about 5.5 hours).
Another artificial differentiation between it and its little brother? The 17 also has FW800 and the 8X SuperDrive, which were dropped from the 15" version.
If you're writing software for a company as an employee, then you gave up the speculative portion of the job for a paycheck every Friday, benefits, and three weeks vacation a year. As such, it's not you taking the risk, but the company, and as such they profit accordingly.
Want a recurring revenue stream from your work? Then strike out and take those risks yourself. Find a product you think people will want, write it, and sell it. You might fail, you might succeed, and you just might succeed beyond your wildest dreams.
But don't sit there in the safety of your cubicle and tell me that the people who DO take those risks don't deserve the reward that comes from doing so.
The first Macs had a 72DPI to match print point sizes (1/72th inch). The ImageWriter's output resolution was 144DPI. The resolution of the first LaserWriter was 300DPI. Look it up.
"Most sexual abuse is committed by men (90%) and by persons known to the child (70% to 90%), with family members constituting one-third to one-half of the perpetrators against girls and 10% to 20% of the perpetrators against boys" (Finkelhor, 1994).
Let me answer a question with a question: Do you believe that every book, album, and movie produced is a blockbuster?
Obviously not. Now a tougher one. Is every book book, album, and movie profitable? Again, if you look at the number of books and albums that are remaindered, and the number of movies who are off the screens after the first week, or the ones who go straight to DVD to start with, you'll have an answer to that question as well.
So yes, investments are recouped over time. In more cases that you'd suspect, the investment is never fully recouped, and those production costs are subsidized by more successful efforts. And don't quote "investment" at me. That's exactly what it is. And not all investments pan out.
Almost forgot. Learn something other than programming. If you can program, and understand business or physics or biology or some other field, then you're a lot more valuable than the guy who only knows how to stuff numbers into an array.
"The challenge in IT is that you need to be nimble with your skills independent of your employer."
Just to elaborate, you need to be nimble with your skills independent of your employer, no matter what job or industry you're in. See: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0977100200
Second, you need to realize that in all likelyhood, you don't have just an IT job. What you have is an IT job in telcom, or manufacturing, on insurance, or service. You need to keep a weather eye open for problems and opportunities in your sector and react accordingly. Too many at a company see people laid off, see their industry and stock pricde decline, see more people laid off, hear rumors, and then are suprised when THEY are laid off. Duh.
Third, find a job you're skilled at and enjoy doing. I know lots of developers who treat it as a job, don't enjoy it, run home when the clock hits five, and as such fail to keep up with trends and skills. And again, are suprised when they are the ones in the unemployment line.
"But you're right: at this point we can't go back and change it, so we're basically screwed."
No, we just need to develop the technologies needed to get people from A-to-B cheaply and easily. It may be painful for a while, but pain is in itself an incentive to change.
Slashdot Mirror
"While the grid might not be a battery, it certainly contains some fairly large ones."
The operative word in that sentence being "some". Given all of the electrical grids on the planet, it looks like about three-four dozen or so are pumped storage systems. I also liked the following quote: "In 2000 the United States had 19500 MWe capacity of pumped storage. This produced a net -5500 MWe of power because they consume more power filling their reservoirs than they generate by emptying them."
"for example pump water up a mountain to a storage lake and let it run down durring the night for power"
Okay... just for what it's worth, have you ever been to the Hover Dam? Ever seen the amount of water that goes through the turbines each day? Assuming, or course, you're not in Kansas or Indiana or some place lacking in available mountains.
Or considered just how many flywheels you'd need, and how large they'd have to be, to power an entire city for a night.
Not saying your ideas aren't practical, but...
"You sell power to the power company when generating, and you buy it back when you're not generating. Simple."
Simplistic, you mean. Repeat after me: The grid is not a battery. Yes, you may be able to sell some excess power to the "grid", but the "grid" doesn't store energy, it just distributes it. You can't buy "your" power back again.
So to repeat, a power station connected to the grid still needs to be able to supply ALL of the energy everyone needs at home on a cold night.
"Come on people, do you honestly think such a trivial problem would go unsolved for so long?"
I think of quite a few "trivial" problems that, like this one, remain unsolved.
"You use the grid as your battery."
But it's not a battery. Yes, you may be able to sell some excess power to the "grid", but the "grid" doesn't store energy, it just distributes it. As such, a power station connected to the grid still needs to be able to supply ALL of the energy everyone needs at night.
So at night solar has issues. In fact, it's not too great on cloudy, snowy, short winter days either.
"Lots of people do not go solar because it simply does not draw enough power for the amount of money they have to use to build the system."
I can see solar as a potential option for some businesses, but for home use you still have the small problem of no power output during the night. And that's usually just when you want some lights, television, heat, and so forth.
If they want solar to REALLY catch on someone is going to need to develop not just a cost-effective solar cell, but also a cost-effective way to store and reuse the energy collected during the day.
"My problem is how blatantly incompatible they do everything."
And his point was that, within the Windows environment, they ARE compatible, staying with their existing libraries, tools, and languages. Given that perspective, importing yet another language and toolset from Unix would be the incompatibility.
Why does the entire world have to look like a scripting language from an OS designed four decades ago?
"Now we're thinking about a separate OS for each App? Ack."
Especially as all you need is one operating system capable of sandboxing each app as needed. Alas, virtualization is the new buzzword.
"It has little or nothing to do with sexism, and everything to do with cheering for people with survival traits."
Survival traits? Sorry, not even that. And I could, for example, make a pretty good case for greed BEING a survial trait for you and yours.
No, such films are nothing more than grown up versions of the boogyman stories parents would tell their children, all about what happens to little kids who do bad things.
"Dude where is the convention?"
This year it's in Vegas.
Seriously, it's a convention, not a standard, as practiced by the majority of web browsers and probably the majority of web sites. Of late it's been deconstructed to be just colored text within plain text, or underlined text, but blue/underlined is still a convention. Just like making your web site's logo also a link back to the home page is a convention.
Want a list of conventions and stats? See: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/073571102X
You can configure your browser however you wish, but that doesn't change the fact that there is a web interface convention of text links being blue and underlined. In fact, that's how most browsers will render unvisited links, unless directed otherwise (as you did).
So it's not HIS convention, nor is it your exception.
"In the tradition of Slashdot, I have not RTFM but..." here's my opinion anyway.
Sort of a microcosm of the world at large, don't you think?
All I know is that if I'm going to be running a half-dozen different OS'es on my notebook I'm going to need a LOT more space.
I'm tired of hearing about super-large full-sized drives and RAID arrays. Where's my 250GB 2.5" notebook drive?
"... untill the [sic] implemented that policy..."
Yeah, it's obvious you're in their primary demographic.
FYI: A company I know of that relies on user registrations automatically flags email addresses, usernames, and passwords that contain anon, bugme, spam, asd, sdf, and other key words. Most such accounts are automatically closed.
...the right side ports are: DVI (supports VGA, S-Video, composite), 10/100/1000 ethernet, FireWire 800, FireWire 400, 1 USB 2.0, security port. I wish they'd wise up and change the security port location. You're most likely to use a SP when your computer is a) at a desk and b) plugged into A/C power. So why isn't it back next to the power connector to minimze cable runs? No, you have to have a power cable on the left, and then run a security cable all the way around the computer, and in front of all the other cables on the right. But no, they have to do the cute asethetic biggest hole to smallest hole port ordering.
Notice that the bigger notebook gets an extra hour's worth of power. Odd they made this choice, since on the PB line both the 15 and the 17 got about the same life per charge (about 5.5 hours).
Another artificial differentiation between it and its little brother? The 17 also has FW800 and the 8X SuperDrive, which were dropped from the 15" version.
If you're writing software for a company as an employee, then you gave up the speculative portion of the job for a paycheck every Friday, benefits, and three weeks vacation a year. As such, it's not you taking the risk, but the company, and as such they profit accordingly.
Want a recurring revenue stream from your work? Then strike out and take those risks yourself. Find a product you think people will want, write it, and sell it. You might fail, you might succeed, and you just might succeed beyond your wildest dreams.
But don't sit there in the safety of your cubicle and tell me that the people who DO take those risks don't deserve the reward that comes from doing so.
The first Macs had a 72DPI to match print point sizes (1/72th inch). The ImageWriter's output resolution was 144DPI. The resolution of the first LaserWriter was 300DPI. Look it up.
When do we start putting cameras inside the home?
"Most sexual abuse is committed by men (90%) and by persons known to the child (70% to 90%), with family members constituting one-third to one-half of the perpetrators against girls and 10% to 20% of the perpetrators against boys" (Finkelhor, 1994).
Let me answer a question with a question: Do you believe that every book, album, and movie produced is a blockbuster?
Obviously not. Now a tougher one. Is every book book, album, and movie profitable? Again, if you look at the number of books and albums that are remaindered, and the number of movies who are off the screens after the first week, or the ones who go straight to DVD to start with, you'll have an answer to that question as well.
So yes, investments are recouped over time. In more cases that you'd suspect, the investment is never fully recouped, and those production costs are subsidized by more successful efforts. And don't quote "investment" at me. That's exactly what it is. And not all investments pan out.
Almost forgot. Learn something other than programming. If you can program, and understand business or physics or biology or some other field, then you're a lot more valuable than the guy who only knows how to stuff numbers into an array.
"The challenge in IT is that you need to be nimble with your skills independent of your employer."
Just to elaborate, you need to be nimble with your skills independent of your employer, no matter what job or industry you're in. See: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0977100200
Second, you need to realize that in all likelyhood, you don't have just an IT job. What you have is an IT job in telcom, or manufacturing, on insurance, or service. You need to keep a weather eye open for problems and opportunities in your sector and react accordingly. Too many at a company see people laid off, see their industry and stock pricde decline, see more people laid off, hear rumors, and then are suprised when THEY are laid off. Duh.
Third, find a job you're skilled at and enjoy doing. I know lots of developers who treat it as a job, don't enjoy it, run home when the clock hits five, and as such fail to keep up with trends and skills. And again, are suprised when they are the ones in the unemployment line.
According to the current stats and despite all the horror stories, perhaps 1 in 10 IT jobs have been outsourced.
"But you're right: at this point we can't go back and change it, so we're basically screwed."
No, we just need to develop the technologies needed to get people from A-to-B cheaply and easily. It may be painful for a while, but pain is in itself an incentive to change.