I've seen the power of 4 formula in a New Scientist article and in a separate NYT article way way back so I can't give you references to those. I did a web search at one to try to find web references to it. Nothing came up but it's one of those you know the info is out there how do you phrase the search request things.
I did come up with a lot of state highway dept studies to be used for determining truck taxes and tolls. Massive amount of forulas and calulations. Lot's more varibles, number of axles, road surface construction details, etc... The amount of politics and lobbying has to be incredible.
I agree that the power of 4 rule of thumb does seem to be unbelievable and it would be nice to have a reference so it doesn't sound like an alien conspiracy theory. Perhaps any civil engineers out there have some info on this.
The problem with the US rail system isn't some technical issue. It's that it doesn't have the huge massive hidden subsidy that the US trucking industry has.
The civil engineering rule of thumb for wear and tear on roads is a power of 4 by vehicle weight. This means that a 10 ton truck causes as much road wear as 10000 1 ton cars. That means for every $10 in highway taxes a car pays, a 10 ton truck should pay $100,000 dollars. But they don't. Most of it is subsized by taxpayers. If railroads got even a fraction of that, railroads could burn money for fuel and still be more econimical than trucks.
Unfortunately, because this is a hidden subsidy, it totally distorts the perception of problems with the US rail system.
The housing market in Kingston wasn't that bad back then. I sold my condo. Of course I had to take a $40k hit to do so. Forced sale since I was going to lose my insurance as I had moved out of state to find computer work and the condo was unoccupied. Renting it out was a worse option due to the extreme decline in quality of tenents. Ha, and NY state audited me because I didn't report a profit on the sale.
But if I stayed then, I could probably be an assistant manager at one of those burger places by now.
Oh, wait. This is about predictions. Ok. Serial ATA drives really will become available. Netscape will devise a hot pluggable drive enclosure scheme using this and call it "device bay". Microsoft will come out with their own version of "device bay" claiming that it is more properly a part of the operating system rather than a separate component.
Usually when they propose these ideas in the US, there is some huge hidden subsidy which makes the alternative source of energy appear economical. If they're going to keep pushing schemes like this, they should give the Nobel prize in economics to Milo Minderbinder.
I used to work for a dot com with a business model based on outsourcing, "managed care". It doesn't work. Customers' expectations are too high. You can't possibly provide those kind of service levels economically.
I think, however, that you could do something like that on a ala cart basis. Outsource stuff piecemeal. Remote 3rd party backup, remote 3rd party network monitoring, etc... The customer expectations are different that level. The interface issues are smaller and more manageable. And in more narrow specialties, you have a better chance at getting ecnonomy of scale.
Especially the "over qualified" problem which is a euphanism for being too old. I'm personally experienced enough to have software in the Smithsonian (if I can go by the paperwork they wanted), but I've now edited my experience down to about 7 years.
The sysadmin job exists because admining those systems is complicated, counter-intuitive, and non-obvious. Do you seriously think that the people that brought you that massive piece of bloat call J2EE, Swing, etc... are going to come up with something simple and easy to use?
What? Do they think they're going to turn us into a bunch of Maytag repairmen? (Although I do have to admit I achieved that state of sysadmin nirvana for a while by not applying any patches).
That was my impression also. It's a fake. Stuff like that wouldn't show up without similiar examples of that kind of stuff, even if more simple.
Cutouts of the gears I think was something invented by clock makers to reduce gear inertia. Pendulums don't exert a lot of force. This wasn't something driven by a pendulum.
Basically, it's some medium that allows a complex random arrangement that then remains stable. I believe this technique is already in use in creating non-forgeable traceable labels based on the random arrangment of the fibers in the label. The labels are created, the "unique" patterns are recorded and registered, and then the labels can be used. One of the applications of these labels is for software packaging. Those Microsoft cerficates of authenticity look rather suspicious. Of course, who Microsoft is trying to convince of their authenticity I don't know. I can't tell if the labels are authentic of not.
A little OT, but this technology would ideal for the USPS to use for traceable mail, privacy concerns aside.
They may not want to release it under GPL if it includes their own propietary code. If they are foreced to release it anyway that will certainly bolster Microsofts argument and scare a lot of companies from using or contributing to GPLed code.
If the DRM stuff prevents people from writing programs that require DRM to run, where are they going to find enough experienced programmers to write all those DRM programs? I suggest we nominate DRM for a Darwin award.
Hopefully the quality will improve. Most of the present ones all seem to involve some cheap aluminum casting made with a mold form that hasn't been replaced for years and is worn way out of spec meaning you can barely get the mounting screws to fit. And the screws. These are the cheapest crap screws I have ever seen, barely worthy of being called screws. But you are stuck with them since standard screws won't fit. Usually height clearence problems.
Look at this BBC news article on a tanning "pill". It would have allowed all us palid geek types to get a cool tan without having to compromise our lifestyle (or lack of it). I was going to submit it to slashdot but umm, look at those before and after photos. Those remind you those scam ads in certain tabloid magazines? The use of different camera and lighting angles to make the "before" picture look much worse than the "after" picture. I don't know but I think some bogon alerts should have been set off on this one.
I used to spend all my Saturdays in those kind of surroundings. It was one of those industrial surplus places. The back lot on this place looked literally like those photos. I used to kid about it being the next Superfund site.
Lot of neat stuff used to show up. Dirt cheap. Stepper motors - $.50. Optical encoders - $2. I got a unused W.Bergman 100:1 gear reducer for $1. It was about $200 about 20 years ago. Can't image what it would go for now.
But all the technology changed. It used to be all discrete componets you could reuse/recycle, vacuum tubes, transisters, etc... Now you can hardly reuse that stuff. It's all surface mount stuff.
Recycling raw materials is borderline economical even for the Chinese. Gold plating is only a few angstroms thick. Composite plastics can't be recycled that I know of.
Of course, since all the stuff is made there to begin with, perhaps the Chinese ought to think about manufacturing the stuff so it's easier and safer to recyle.
I'm one of those who solve problems with some kind of backgroud mental process so I am usually asleep with I come up with a solution. Unfortunately, it's considered bad form to fall asleep during the interview.
for their toner cartridges. If you don't agree to the terms, basically you can't recycle the cartridge with anybody except them, you can exchange it for a cartidge without a EULA which you pay extra for.
I'm not sure the thread problems are all that serious. Is the memory model broken? Not really. There are some areas where additional specification would help clarify certain issues. But the big problem is that Java thread semantics are overly cumbersome. Replacing the Java memory model with a slightly different memory model isn't going to help that. Now it is possible to state thread semantics without resorting to a meta implementation. I've done it as an exercise and it is a lot simpler and easier to understand and use than the official specification. But given the political reality of things I don't think that is going to happen.
Decouple monitors from objects? Yeah, it would have been nice if it was that way from the start. The easy way to avoid most of the problems that arise from it is to use private synchronization objects in your class implementations.
Thread groups? That was an attempt to deal with thread scheduling issues. POSIX threads has some of the same issues. Both it and Java have to deal with having to be implemented on different platforms with unknown scheduling capabilities. Unless you are on an IBM mainframe, everything seems to devolve down to darwinian scheduling and you'd better get used to its consequences and cope with it.
Slashdot Mirror
I did come up with a lot of state highway dept studies to be used for determining truck taxes and tolls. Massive amount of forulas and calulations. Lot's more varibles, number of axles, road surface construction details, etc... The amount of politics and lobbying has to be incredible.
I agree that the power of 4 rule of thumb does seem to be unbelievable and it would be nice to have a reference so it doesn't sound like an alien conspiracy theory. Perhaps any civil engineers out there have some info on this.
The civil engineering rule of thumb for wear and tear on roads is a power of 4 by vehicle weight. This means that a 10 ton truck causes as much road wear as 10000 1 ton cars. That means for every $10 in highway taxes a car pays, a 10 ton truck should pay $100,000 dollars. But they don't. Most of it is subsized by taxpayers. If railroads got even a fraction of that, railroads could burn money for fuel and still be more econimical than trucks.
Unfortunately, because this is a hidden subsidy, it totally distorts the perception of problems with the US rail system.
But if I stayed then, I could probably be an assistant manager at one of those burger places by now.
Oh, wait. This is about predictions. Ok. Serial ATA drives really will become available. Netscape will devise a hot pluggable drive enclosure scheme using this and call it "device bay". Microsoft will come out with their own version of "device bay" claiming that it is more properly a part of the operating system rather than a separate component.
Usually when they propose these ideas in the US, there is some huge hidden subsidy which makes the alternative source of energy appear economical. If they're going to keep pushing schemes like this, they should give the Nobel prize in economics to Milo Minderbinder.
I think, however, that you could do something like that on a ala cart basis. Outsource stuff piecemeal. Remote 3rd party backup, remote 3rd party network monitoring, etc... The customer expectations are different that level. The interface issues are smaller and more manageable. And in more narrow specialties, you have a better chance at getting ecnonomy of scale.
Especially the "over qualified" problem which is a euphanism for being too old. I'm personally experienced enough to have software in the Smithsonian (if I can go by the paperwork they wanted), but I've now edited my experience down to about 7 years.
Of course, they'll have to seize the CEO's computer as evidence. I wonder how many corporate skeletons in the closet that computer will have.
What? Do they think they're going to turn us into a bunch of Maytag repairmen? (Although I do have to admit I achieved that state of sysadmin nirvana for a while by not applying any patches).
Cutouts of the gears I think was something invented by clock makers to reduce gear inertia. Pendulums don't exert a lot of force. This wasn't something driven by a pendulum.
A little OT, but this technology would ideal for the USPS to use for traceable mail, privacy concerns aside.
and you wouldn't need a ride on the Russian space taxi.
They may not want to release it under GPL if it includes their own propietary code. If they are foreced to release it anyway that will certainly bolster Microsofts argument and scare a lot of companies from using or contributing to GPLed code.
If the DRM stuff prevents people from writing programs that require DRM to run, where are they going to find enough experienced programmers to write all those DRM programs? I suggest we nominate DRM for a Darwin award.
Hopefully the quality will improve. Most of the present ones all seem to involve some cheap aluminum casting made with a mold form that hasn't been replaced for years and is worn way out of spec meaning you can barely get the mounting screws to fit. And the screws. These are the cheapest crap screws I have ever seen, barely worthy of being called screws. But you are stuck with them since standard screws won't fit. Usually height clearence problems.
Look at this BBC news article on a tanning "pill". It would have allowed all us palid geek types to get a cool tan without having to compromise our lifestyle (or lack of it). I was going to submit it to slashdot but umm, look at those before and after photos. Those remind you those scam ads in certain tabloid magazines? The use of different camera and lighting angles to make the "before" picture look much worse than the "after" picture. I don't know but I think some bogon alerts should have been set off on this one.
Lot of neat stuff used to show up. Dirt cheap. Stepper motors - $.50. Optical encoders - $2. I got a unused W.Bergman 100:1 gear reducer for $1. It was about $200 about 20 years ago. Can't image what it would go for now.
But all the technology changed. It used to be all discrete componets you could reuse/recycle, vacuum tubes, transisters, etc... Now you can hardly reuse that stuff. It's all surface mount stuff.
Recycling raw materials is borderline economical even for the Chinese. Gold plating is only a few angstroms thick. Composite plastics can't be recycled that I know of.
Of course, since all the stuff is made there to begin with, perhaps the Chinese ought to think about manufacturing the stuff so it's easier and safer to recyle.
I'm one of those who solve problems with some kind of backgroud mental process so I am usually asleep with I come up with a solution. Unfortunately, it's considered bad form to fall asleep during the interview.
for their toner cartridges. If you don't agree to the terms, basically you can't recycle the cartridge with anybody except them, you can exchange it for a cartidge without a EULA which you pay extra for.
Decouple monitors from objects? Yeah, it would have been nice if it was that way from the start. The easy way to avoid most of the problems that arise from it is to use private synchronization objects in your class implementations.
Thread groups? That was an attempt to deal with thread scheduling issues. POSIX threads has some of the same issues. Both it and Java have to deal with having to be implemented on different platforms with unknown scheduling capabilities. Unless you are on an IBM mainframe, everything seems to devolve down to darwinian scheduling and you'd better get used to its consequences and cope with it.
Joe Seigh