Anyone know if I can use this thing with Pay TV set top boxes - ie Foxtel or Austar? Seems pretty lame if it will only work with the 5 free to air tv stations we have here in Aus...
I realise that games testing is not what we all envisioned when we were young, but 60+ hours a week is typical when working to deadlines in nearly all software engineering fields.
I work as a test lead for a small group (5-15 depending on the time of year) working on a hardware simulator (thats as much as I can say) and I find that 60+ hours when in a formal test phase would be nice sometimes. Testers in general (especially leads) are known to work very long hours - the same goes for designers, and coders, and product architects. I think it just goes with the territory. Whether this is a good thing or not I leave that up to the reader to decide but in todays job climate I'd prefer to be working these hours than to have no job at all...
Mind you I'd prefer to be testing games than comparing wave forms outputted from a simulator:)
OK, I see what you are saying although I would estimate my costs of electricity around the $10-12K mark for 15 years. (I live in a fairly energy efficient apartment near a city center in Australia and yes this is factoring inflation of around 2-3% and guestimating rising costs).
The point of my post is that many people only ever look at the impact on thier own wallet. Buring fossil fuels are damaging our environment and sometime in the future (we are starting now but in limited capacity) we are going to have to spend $millions to fix this up. Factor this into the electricity bill argument (on a national level basis) and you have a far higher electricity bill.
The fact is people are saying that solar power is to expensive and we currently cant afford it. Maybe we cant afford not to do it when looking at the big picture.
One thing that I've heard of a little lately is the argument that can we afford not to use these alternative forms of generating electricity?
Ie say a current solar panel costs say $10k to buy and set up. Over the 15 year or so life span of the setup, I doubt that me personally would use $10k of electricity.
But, look at the secondary benefits that I have gained - no wasting my time running to the post office to pay those pesky electricity bills (15 * 1/4ly bills = 60 * 20 mins of my time = 20hrs of bill paying fun!), no fossil fuels being burned to produce electricity to power my slashdot reading, I don't need ugly power lines string up around my house (although there still will be for a long time...)
A lot of people seem to over look the benefits other than direct $ when discussing the pros and cons of solar power. There is more than just this direct benefit people!
Mind you, I am still on the standard electricity grid and don't produce any of my own electricity at all! (I sometimes recycle - does that count?)
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Anyone know if I can use this thing with Pay TV set top boxes - ie Foxtel or Austar? Seems pretty lame if it will only work with the 5 free to air tv stations we have here in Aus...
And no one will ever need more than 640K of memory...
I realise that games testing is not what we all envisioned when we were young, but 60+ hours a week is typical when working to deadlines in nearly all software engineering fields.
I work as a test lead for a small group (5-15 depending on the time of year) working on a hardware simulator (thats as much as I can say) and I find that 60+ hours when in a formal test phase would be nice sometimes. Testers in general (especially leads) are known to work very long hours - the same goes for designers, and coders, and product architects. I think it just goes with the territory. Whether this is a good thing or not I leave that up to the reader to decide but in todays job climate I'd prefer to be working these hours than to have no job at all...
Mind you I'd prefer to be testing games than comparing wave forms outputted from a simulator :)
The point of my post is that many people only ever look at the impact on thier own wallet. Buring fossil fuels are damaging our environment and sometime in the future (we are starting now but in limited capacity) we are going to have to spend $millions to fix this up. Factor this into the electricity bill argument (on a national level basis) and you have a far higher electricity bill.
The fact is people are saying that solar power is to expensive and we currently cant afford it. Maybe we cant afford not to do it when looking at the big picture.
Just my 2 cents.
Ie say a current solar panel costs say $10k to buy and set up. Over the 15 year or so life span of the setup, I doubt that me personally would use $10k of electricity.
But, look at the secondary benefits that I have gained - no wasting my time running to the post office to pay those pesky electricity bills (15 * 1/4ly bills = 60 * 20 mins of my time = 20hrs of bill paying fun!), no fossil fuels being burned to produce electricity to power my slashdot reading, I don't need ugly power lines string up around my house (although there still will be for a long time...)
A lot of people seem to over look the benefits other than direct $ when discussing the pros and cons of solar power. There is more than just this direct benefit people!
Mind you, I am still on the standard electricity grid and don't produce any of my own electricity at all! (I sometimes recycle - does that count?)