Funny I should read this thread. I just finished converting my home over to mostly VoIP. Now, i don't have comcast or other residental providers, so YMMV as my situation is unique:
I have a T1 at home, where I do various policing on my router to insure that my VoIP traffic is able to take that extra little bit over the top that TCP will normally try to stomp all over. (I'm rate limiting inbound tcp from my upstream). I also have LLQ (low latency queueing) configured to insure that the voip packets are the first that are sent out.
I have a setup with a few 7960's, and a cisco 2610 with NM-2V, VIC-2FXO-M1= and VIC-2FXS. These handle taking my PSTN service (which is actually ISDN going through a Motorola BitSurfr Pro) and passing it out the FXS ports to ring throughout my house, as well as using asterisk I have it ring some of the IP phones as well.
This allows me to:
Use my own caller-id database in asterisk
Buy unlocked ata-186's for family so they can call me and my wife for free
Use nufone for outbound LD
Be dependent upon electricity for my phone service (get a small UPS and you can keep yourself up for a day or so powering the BitSurfr, since that's all i need to be able to call 911, etc..)
Route calls the lowest cost (local goes out one of the POTS/Bitsurfr ports)
Log both outbound and inbound call times, so you know exactly when you ordered that pizza
Be geeky and increase my slashdot karma;-)
Now, this is an overly complicated setup, but the point is that it's possible to set up a functional SIP/Asterisk solution for your home. You may be able to get one of the Soekris PCs and install your favorite free unix (yes, Asterisk even works on the dying *BSD;) and keep your power requirements a lot lower (so you can do all that E911 foo).
Nufone works nicely for my setup, and i cancelled my vonage (and gave the ata-186 to my wifes sister for christmas after paying $40+$15) so my overall costs are lower (except for the geeky maint part, and i still need to stick the cdrs into a database so they can be viewed on a webpage).
YMMV if you do something like this, since most carriers are transporting the calls as IP on their own networks, expect the quality to be the same or only slightly degraded (watch the codec being used, you really want something like g711ulaw for the best quality sound) for your calls prior to reaching the foreign countrys PSTN.
This is the only reason why i have a dual-boot system. I don't play a lot of games to be honest, but the ones that I do play require me to be stuck in windoze. When I upgraded my (desktop) system to a p4-2.8 htt/1g/radeon9800pro earlier this year (soon i'll have to say 'last year'), i was forced to update to XP from 98. I just couldn't get things to work correctly. I wasn't expecting the HT to work correctly, just act like a single cpu, but the usb, etc..on the mb just did not have 98/me drivers that would work in my setup.
I took this chance to actually put some cash in m$ pocket when they've been getting "better" on the security, etc... front. Sure, mod me down or whatever for saying these anti-opensource things here. Not like i actually did anything for linux or open source.;-)
I've found that this works the best (aside from my PS/2) for my needs. YMMV depending on what you need.
Since the panels are dark, any light that does come through causes it to melt rather quickly. I'm sure there will be such times that the snow gets quite thick on the roof/panels/whatnot, but combined with the wind, the heat that will naturally escape through the attic/roof, I can't imagine it to be that bad. My plans involve a battery array to be used for storage of excess power.
I'm seeing far less snow year-on-year here, so I think it'll be less of an issue as we unthaw the planet;-).
Not sure what part of michigan you live in, but there are some interesting things that can be done on this front.
Just because you're not getting a lot of sunlight, the fact that there is ambient light coming through the clouds still does generate some power. It may be reduced, but it is still there. If you read the related article Hacking Your Way Off The Utility Grid he approaches it from a reducing his expenditures on power, and providing a cushion for any future price increases.
Additionally, depending on where you're at in Michigan, there are varying classes of wind power available. The inputs listed in the system in the article are pure DC inputs. That means anything that generates DC at the same voltage can be used
for input, being a generator, solar, wind or even a generator attached to your gutters that takes the rain and does hydro power from it. The point is that if you approach it from an overall viewpoint of reducing your power consumption from a grid, you will be helping the system. If everyone reduced their needs from the grid by 1kWH/person/month it would count for a lot.
My approach i'm taking towards my home system i'm planning is to do a combined solar+wind system. Usually where I live (in Ann Arbor/Dexter area, Michigan) the wind is blowing or there is some sunlight. The average wind speeds combined with a wind generator may help reduce the power. If you're living near one of the great lakes, the amount of wind power you can generate is quite reasonable. I know today we're under a high wind advisory (again) so if I had my wind generators up and going now, it would help offset my other electricity costs.
I have a open-loop geothermal system at my home. It's used for heating and cooling of the air. It takes water out of my well, which is a moderated temp year round and uses it to transfer the heat into it during the summer, and takes the heat out of the water in the winter.
You can do the same thing with a closed-loop system (you just pump the water in a big circuit of underground pipes). In a closed-loop system you can even use antifreeze (that stuff that transfers the heat out of your engine block and through the heaters in your car) and the system works simiarly to that.
I'm slowly working on converting some of my more sustained power requirements to a solar/battery powered system. I have a simple parts page online that will allow you to start building a small system to operate lighting or other must-need devices (basically, build your own UPS and charge off of solar/wind/whatever DC voltage source you want).
I just got a 700W inverter on sale recently, and have some older car/boat batteries that the previous owner left here. I just ordered a solar charge controller kit, and am going to borrow some 12-24V solar cells from a friend to do some testing.. If it works well, i'm going to expand my cells and get some good batteries to operate some of my necessary devices.
I'm more concerned about basic socket operations bugs that haven't been resolved yet.. Example PR/26506 which impacts anyone who attempts to use snmp utilities inside a Jail. This means you can't use mrtg, or something else similar..
This one has been impacting me for quite some time.
I was in Michigan Stadium for two games in 2002 where there were moments of silence before the games. It's a sharp contrast from what the place normally sounds like..
Here's the deal with the stadiums. Yeah, it was really windy on saturday here..
Here's a copy of the NOTAM (Notice to airmen) from saturday which applies to Michigan Stadium (and also other large seating stadiums).
3/1862 (PREVIOUSLY MISSING TEXT) PART 1 OF 2 SPECIAL NOTICE. THIS NOTICE MODIFIES FLIGHT RESTRICTIONS PREVIOUSLY ISSUED IN FDC NOTAM 2/0199 TO COMPLY WITH STATUTORY MANDATES DETAILED IN SECTION 352 OF PUBLIC LAW 108-7. EFFECTIVE 0303061100 UTC (0600 LOCAL 03/06/03) UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. PURSUANT TO 14 CFR SECTION 99.7, SPECIAL SECURITY INSTRUCTIONS, COMMENCING ONE HOUR BEFORE THE SCHEDULED TIME OF THE EVENT UNTIL ONE HOUR AFTER THE END OF THE EVENT, ALL AIRCRAFT AND PARACHUTE OPERATIONS ARE PROHIBITED AT AND BELOW 3,000 FEET AGL WITHIN A THREE NAUTICAL MILE RADIUS OF ANY STADIUM HAVING A SEATING CAPACITY OF 30,000 OR MORE PEOPLE IN WHICH A MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL, NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE, NCAA DIVISION ONE FOOTBALL, OR MAJOR MOTOR SPEEDWAY EVENT IS OCCURING. ALL PREVIOUSLY ISSUED WAIVERS TO FDC NOTAM 2/0199 ARE RESCINDED. THOSE WHO MEET ANY OF THE FOLLOWING CRITERIA MAY REAPPLY FOR A WAIVER TO THESE RESTRICTIONS: (A) FOR OPERATIONAL PURPOSES OF AN EVENT, STADIUM, OR OTHER VENUE, INCLUDING (IN THE CASE OF A SPORTI NG EVENT) THE TRANSPORT OF EQUIPMENT OR PARTS, TEAM MEMBERS, OFFICIALS OF THE GOVERNING BODY, THE IMMEDIATE FAMILY MEMBERS AND GUESTS OF SUCH TEAMS, AND OFFICIALS TO AND FROM THE EVENT, STADIUM, OR OTH ER VENUE, END PART 1 OF 2 WIE UNTIL UFN
PART 2 OF 2 SPECIAL NOTICE. (B) FOR BROADCAST COVERAGE FOR ANY BROADCAST RIGHTS HOLDER, (C) FOR SAFETY AND SECURITY PURPOSES OF THE EVENT, STADIUM, OR OTHER VENUE. THIS RESTRICTION DOES NOT APPLY TO; (A) THOSE AIRCRAFT AUTHORIZED BY ATC FOR OPERATIONAL OR SAFETY PURPOSES INCLUDING AIRCRAFT ARRIVING OR DEPARTING FROM AN AIRPORT USING STANDARD AIR TRAFFIC PROCEDURES; (B) DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, LAW ENFORCEMENT, OR AEROMEDICAL FLIGHT OPERATIONS THAT ARE IN CONTACT WITH ATC. STADIUM SITE LOCATIONS AND INFORMATION REGARDING WAIVER APPLICATIONS IN ACCORDANCE WITH SECTION 352 OF PUBLIC LAW 108-7 CAN BE OBTAINED FROM THE FAA WEBSITE AT HTTP://WWW.FAA.GOV/ATS/ATA/WAIVER OR BY CALLING 571-227-1322. PART 2 OF 2 WIE UNTIL UFN
mirror here. The full file is 2,068,115 bytes. It's over half done, and should be finished fairly quickly. I've mirrored other content in the past, so if anyone wants me to host stuff, let me know.. i've been fairly reliable:)
I would consider (if you can, obviously in central London, it may be a bit tough...) a Wind generator that will also feed power into your batteries as well as a solar power source.
Re:THUNK! THUNK! THUNK! OH, HAIL!
on
Solar Shingles
·
· Score: 3, Informative
If I were out to build a new home, I would certainly consider this as a source of power. Even if you are not storing the power in a large battery bank, using what you generate to suplement your existing grid power would cause a decrease in your overall electric costs. Now, there's that whole capex vs opex discussion (cost of shingles vs potential monthly savings + maint costs) which would come into play.. I've mentioned solar and wind powered systems in the past.. if you dig, you can probally find my previous comments on the topic..
NP. I E-mailed scaled.com tech contact.. I see they updated their page with a link to a bittorrent url, maybe they will add my link as well...
I've not yet heard what caused the roll to start. I'm interested in that myself, but I think the key part is will they repeat this on monday (US/Pacific time), or will there be a delay while they continue looking at what happened to insure the trip [on monday] is a safe flight?
You can fill out a request for absentee ballot. At least here in Michigan, I can fill out my local ballot request form online. If you take a quick gander at it, one of the checkboxes is "I cannot attend the polls because I am confined to jail awaiting arraignment or trial." Some of the other boxes might apply as well, including: "I am pyhsically unable to attend the polls without the assistance of another" (eg: I need someone to testify to get me out of jail) or "I expect to be absent from the community in which I am registered for the entire day...".. serving 10-20 in the county lock-up just might cause you to be absent.
I must cite this website as well. It's excellent, IMHO. (Well, except for today when the "votemaster" became a bit more partisan in his comments). It provides useful data for statistics geeks and non-statistics geeks alike. I was one of the weird people in middle school that actually cared how the election came out. In 1992, I remember using prodigy to download debate transcripts of Perot, Bush and Clinton.
My local cities and townships have a nice resource for being able to view the online property and tax status information. This is all suff you could always view by going to the local offices, but it's available online both via the CountyCity and if you live out by me, the Township.
I'd ideally like to also have a list of all ongoing road construction projects, estimated completion dates, as well as current progress (updated daily/weekly).
Re:Looks like there's still a lot to do.
on
FreeBSD 5.3 Beta1
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Yeah, there is still a lot to be done. I think they're going to miss the release date somewhat but the wins that will be seen by 5.3 will be excellent for the FreeBSD release.
The finer grained locking in the subsystems, and all the great work being done by Robert Watson in the NetPerf area is showing up in the stock kernel. I did a half-upgrade (upgrading select packages) to get the 5.3-beta1 kernel to compile on one of my development hosts, and have begun disabling the Giant lock where it's not really needed. This will mean improved disk and network I/O to anyone that has a HTT or SMP system.
FreeBSD has been lagging somewhat in the threads/smp area for some time, and this is helping bring the kernel closer in line to the performance that is seen by other OSes. I'm very exicted and will be looking forward to upgrading my 4.10-REL host to 5.3 as it will do a lot better job with my hardware (2x2.8Xeon 4g dram, em ether, asr0 scsi) and hopefully help solve some of my database performance issues.
I can't remember where i read about it, but it must've been here.. there are actually IP Phones made by one company that are wearable. Their primary market is hospitals. Ah yes, a quick google found me the product link.
I've been using the FreeBSD 4.8-4.10 system to host several Jails on a beefy machine that i have under my control. My personal e-mail system resides within a jail on this system, and there are very few problems i've encountered. The biggest issues i've encountered are as follows:
UDP Kernel bug that breaks SNMP (eg: mrtg) inside a jail
ICMP inside jail needs to be split out better to prevent ugly hacks/kernel patches being required
PostgreSQL needs sysvipc
/sbin/sysctl -w jail.sysvipc_allowed=1
I've managed to work around these various issues (running mrtg from the "jail-side" host, making it chroot to my directories to run. Enabling the required sysctls, including my own kernel patch to let ping/traceroute work..
It lets me and others share a single host that is very beefy (2x2.8G Xeon, 4g ram, 315g raid-5 ultra-320 disk, etc..) on a fast link. The FreeBSD-5 jail subsystem is a bit more refined than that in FreeBSD-4... I'm pondering upgrading the system, but haven't done so yet.. You can also put a small bit of effort into the system and use rsync to keep various (important) system binaries (eg: sshd, sendmail) in-sync across all the systems so they're bug-free if an advisory comes out.. but that's basic sysadmin/patching stuff, not anything jail specific.. but if their jail is r00ted, i don't need to worry about my own files being compromised, unless they get at the 'host' system.. (which runs no services to speak of)...
I've been watching the graph, it's peaked above 10Mb/s on my 100Mb/s link once or twice, but the graphs peg the average closer to 6Mb/s. So, no fear, there is no/.ing near.
Still exist. Try arbornet.org and grex.org/cyberspace.org..
Back "in the day", I ran one of the larger free shell systems out there.. you might have memories of me if you're old skool enough and look at my domain-name.
They don't exactly fly like a Frisbee at all. If you're looking to throw one far, you might try looking at a potato cannon and use pipe sufficently large enough to fit a CD. I wouldn't expect much luck though.
I've been researching over the past year or so in small bursts, how I can become a better enviro-citizen. At my home, I consume a significant amount of power, peaking over 90KwH/day in some cases. I did some rough math on some of my past 18 months of electricity bills (I have no natural gas, only electric, with the exception of my propane grill) and over that 18mo period, i have utilized somewhere around 48MwH.
My home lost power as a result of this outage, (I was on vacation), but since then, I've had several outages in the past 2 months, ranging from 4 to 6 hours in length. During the longer, I started up a small (1100W) generator and was able to run some of my equipment. Being a work-at-home employee that depends on my utilities (telephone, electricity) to work properly, this does create some dilemas for me.
Are there people out there that have reduced your dependence on the utilities using "clean" energy (solar/wind)? What i'm looking at is a hybrid system, where I would take input from: Grid, Solar and Wind. As a result, I would need to store some amount of reserve energy, and prioritize my consumption (eg: Well, Smoke Detectors, Fridge, Stove, Hot Water Heater, etc..). My intention is to not completely disconnect from the grid, or even to sell-back, but to reduce my electrical expenses.
The result would be that I would not depend so much on the outside entities, and see a cost savings after a few years (aside from possible battery replacement costs). I've found some good worksheets online at NW Power (See the calculation help sidebar) and have been using SolarDyne as my cost reference.
Now all I need is some nice blackout curtains that kill the light and output electricity for those days I want to sleep in.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a T1 at home, where I do various policing on my router to insure that my VoIP traffic is able to take that extra little bit over the top that TCP will normally try to stomp all over. (I'm rate limiting inbound tcp from my upstream). I also have LLQ (low latency queueing) configured to insure that the voip packets are the first that are sent out.
I have a setup with a few 7960's, and a cisco 2610 with NM-2V, VIC-2FXO-M1= and VIC-2FXS. These handle taking my PSTN service (which is actually ISDN going through a Motorola BitSurfr Pro) and passing it out the FXS ports to ring throughout my house, as well as using asterisk I have it ring some of the IP phones as well.
This allows me to:
Use my own caller-id database in asterisk
Buy unlocked ata-186's for family so they can call me and my wife for free
Use nufone for outbound LD
Be dependent upon electricity for my phone service (get a small UPS and you can keep yourself up for a day or so powering the BitSurfr, since that's all i need to be able to call 911, etc..)
Route calls the lowest cost (local goes out one of the POTS/Bitsurfr ports)
Log both outbound and inbound call times, so you know exactly when you ordered that pizza
Be geeky and increase my slashdot karma ;-)
Now, this is an overly complicated setup, but the point is that it's possible to set up a functional SIP/Asterisk solution for your home. You may be able to get one of the Soekris PCs and install your favorite free unix (yes, Asterisk even works on the dying *BSD ;) and keep your power requirements a lot lower (so you can do all that E911 foo).
Nufone works nicely for my setup, and i cancelled my vonage (and gave the ata-186 to my wifes sister for christmas after paying $40+$15) so my overall costs are lower (except for the geeky maint part, and i still need to stick the cdrs into a database so they can be viewed on a webpage).
YMMV if you do something like this, since most carriers are transporting the calls as IP on their own networks, expect the quality to be the same or only slightly degraded (watch the codec being used, you really want something like g711ulaw for the best quality sound) for your calls prior to reaching the foreign countrys PSTN.
I took this chance to actually put some cash in m$ pocket when they've been getting "better" on the security, etc... front. Sure, mod me down or whatever for saying these anti-opensource things here. Not like i actually did anything for linux or open source. ;-)
I've found that this works the best (aside from my PS/2) for my needs. YMMV depending on what you need.
I'm seeing far less snow year-on-year here, so I think it'll be less of an issue as we unthaw the planet ;-).
Just because you're not getting a lot of sunlight, the fact that there is ambient light coming through the clouds still does generate some power. It may be reduced, but it is still there. If you read the related article Hacking Your Way Off The Utility Grid he approaches it from a reducing his expenditures on power, and providing a cushion for any future price increases.
Additionally, depending on where you're at in Michigan, there are varying classes of wind power available. The inputs listed in the system in the article are pure DC inputs. That means anything that generates DC at the same voltage can be used for input, being a generator, solar, wind or even a generator attached to your gutters that takes the rain and does hydro power from it. The point is that if you approach it from an overall viewpoint of reducing your power consumption from a grid, you will be helping the system. If everyone reduced their needs from the grid by 1kWH/person/month it would count for a lot.
My approach i'm taking towards my home system i'm planning is to do a combined solar+wind system. Usually where I live (in Ann Arbor/Dexter area, Michigan) the wind is blowing or there is some sunlight. The average wind speeds combined with a wind generator may help reduce the power. If you're living near one of the great lakes, the amount of wind power you can generate is quite reasonable. I know today we're under a high wind advisory (again) so if I had my wind generators up and going now, it would help offset my other electricity costs.
I have a open-loop geothermal system at my home. It's used for heating and cooling of the air. It takes water out of my well, which is a moderated temp year round and uses it to transfer the heat into it during the summer, and takes the heat out of the water in the winter.
You can do the same thing with a closed-loop system (you just pump the water in a big circuit of underground pipes). In a closed-loop system you can even use antifreeze (that stuff that transfers the heat out of your engine block and through the heaters in your car) and the system works simiarly to that.
I'm slowly working on converting some of my more sustained power requirements to a solar/battery powered system. I have a simple parts page online that will allow you to start building a small system to operate lighting or other must-need devices (basically, build your own UPS and charge off of solar/wind/whatever DC voltage source you want).
I just got a 700W inverter on sale recently, and have some older car/boat batteries that the previous owner left here. I just ordered a solar charge controller kit, and am going to borrow some 12-24V solar cells from a friend to do some testing.. If it works well, i'm going to expand my cells and get some good batteries to operate some of my necessary devices.
I'd much rather not have to reinstall my system more than once in a year. my prefered solution is to have sendto() work correctly from inside a jail.
This one has been impacting me for quite some time.
Here's the deal with the stadiums. Yeah, it was really windy on saturday here..
Here's a copy of the NOTAM (Notice to airmen) from saturday which applies to Michigan Stadium (and also other large seating stadiums).
3/1862 (PREVIOUSLY MISSING TEXT) PART 1 OF 2 SPECIAL NOTICE. THIS NOTICE MODIFIES FLIGHT RESTRICTIONS PREVIOUSLY ISSUED IN FDC NOTAM 2/0199 TO COMPLY WITH STATUTORY MANDATES DETAILED IN SECTION 352 OF PUBLIC LAW 108-7. EFFECTIVE 0303061100 UTC (0600 LOCAL 03/06/03) UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. PURSUANT TO 14 CFR SECTION 99.7, SPECIAL SECURITY INSTRUCTIONS, COMMENCING ONE HOUR BEFORE THE SCHEDULED TIME OF THE EVENT UNTIL ONE HOUR AFTER THE END OF THE EVENT, ALL AIRCRAFT AND PARACHUTE OPERATIONS ARE PROHIBITED AT AND BELOW 3,000 FEET AGL WITHIN A THREE NAUTICAL MILE RADIUS OF ANY STADIUM HAVING A SEATING CAPACITY OF 30,000 OR MORE PEOPLE IN WHICH A MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL, NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE, NCAA DIVISION ONE FOOTBALL, OR MAJOR MOTOR SPEEDWAY EVENT IS OCCURING. ALL PREVIOUSLY ISSUED WAIVERS TO FDC NOTAM 2/0199 ARE RESCINDED. THOSE WHO MEET ANY OF THE FOLLOWING CRITERIA MAY REAPPLY FOR A WAIVER TO THESE RESTRICTIONS: (A) FOR OPERATIONAL PURPOSES OF AN EVENT, STADIUM, OR OTHER VENUE, INCLUDING (IN THE CASE OF A SPORTI NG EVENT) THE TRANSPORT OF EQUIPMENT OR PARTS, TEAM MEMBERS, OFFICIALS OF THE GOVERNING BODY, THE IMMEDIATE FAMILY MEMBERS AND GUESTS OF SUCH TEAMS, AND OFFICIALS TO AND FROM THE EVENT, STADIUM, OR OTH ER VENUE, END PART 1 OF 2 WIE UNTIL UFN
PART 2 OF 2 SPECIAL NOTICE. (B) FOR BROADCAST COVERAGE FOR ANY BROADCAST RIGHTS HOLDER, (C) FOR SAFETY AND SECURITY PURPOSES OF THE EVENT, STADIUM, OR OTHER VENUE. THIS RESTRICTION DOES NOT APPLY TO; (A) THOSE AIRCRAFT AUTHORIZED BY ATC FOR OPERATIONAL OR SAFETY PURPOSES INCLUDING AIRCRAFT ARRIVING OR DEPARTING FROM AN AIRPORT USING STANDARD AIR TRAFFIC PROCEDURES; (B) DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, LAW ENFORCEMENT, OR AEROMEDICAL FLIGHT OPERATIONS THAT ARE IN CONTACT WITH ATC. STADIUM SITE LOCATIONS AND INFORMATION REGARDING WAIVER APPLICATIONS IN ACCORDANCE WITH SECTION 352 OF PUBLIC LAW 108-7 CAN BE OBTAINED FROM THE FAA WEBSITE AT HTTP://WWW.FAA.GOV/ATS/ATA/WAIVER OR BY CALLING 571-227-1322. PART 2 OF 2 WIE UNTIL UFN
mirror here. The full file is 2,068,115 bytes. It's over half done, and should be finished fairly quickly. I've mirrored other content in the past, so if anyone wants me to host stuff, let me know.. i've been fairly reliable :)
I would consider (if you can, obviously in central London, it may be a bit tough...) a Wind generator that will also feed power into your batteries as well as a solar power source.
If I were out to build a new home, I would certainly consider this as a source of power. Even if you are not storing the power in a large battery bank, using what you generate to suplement your existing grid power would cause a decrease in your overall electric costs. Now, there's that whole capex vs opex discussion (cost of shingles vs potential monthly savings + maint costs) which would come into play.. I've mentioned solar and wind powered systems in the past.. if you dig, you can probally find my previous comments on the topic..
I've not yet heard what caused the roll to start. I'm interested in that myself, but I think the key part is will they repeat this on monday (US/Pacific time), or will there be a delay while they continue looking at what happened to insure the trip [on monday] is a safe flight?
I also have a mirror i'm putting up right now. The file will be here
You can fill out a request for absentee ballot. At least here in Michigan, I can fill out my local ballot request form online. If you take a quick gander at it, one of the checkboxes is "I cannot attend the polls because I am confined to jail awaiting arraignment or trial." Some of the other boxes might apply as well, including: "I am pyhsically unable to attend the polls without the assistance of another" (eg: I need someone to testify to get me out of jail) or "I expect to be absent from the community in which I am registered for the entire day ...".. serving 10-20 in the county lock-up just might cause you to be absent.
I must cite this website as well. It's excellent, IMHO. (Well, except for today when the "votemaster" became a bit more partisan in his comments). It provides useful data for statistics geeks and non-statistics geeks alike. I was one of the weird people in middle school that actually cared how the election came out. In 1992, I remember using prodigy to download debate transcripts of Perot, Bush and Clinton.
I'd ideally like to also have a list of all ongoing road construction projects, estimated completion dates, as well as current progress (updated daily/weekly).
The finer grained locking in the subsystems, and all the great work being done by Robert Watson in the NetPerf area is showing up in the stock kernel. I did a half-upgrade (upgrading select packages) to get the 5.3-beta1 kernel to compile on one of my development hosts, and have begun disabling the Giant lock where it's not really needed. This will mean improved disk and network I/O to anyone that has a HTT or SMP system.
FreeBSD has been lagging somewhat in the threads/smp area for some time, and this is helping bring the kernel closer in line to the performance that is seen by other OSes. I'm very exicted and will be looking forward to upgrading my 4.10-REL host to 5.3 as it will do a lot better job with my hardware (2x2.8Xeon 4g dram, em ether, asr0 scsi) and hopefully help solve some of my database performance issues.
mirror
I can't remember where i read about it, but it must've been here.. there are actually IP Phones made by one company that are wearable. Their primary market is hospitals. Ah yes, a quick google found me the product link.
- UDP Kernel bug that breaks SNMP (eg: mrtg) inside a jail
- ICMP inside jail needs to be split out better to prevent ugly hacks/kernel patches being required
- PostgreSQL needs sysvipc
I've managed to work around these various issues (running mrtg from the "jail-side" host, making it chroot to my directories to run. Enabling the required sysctls, including my own kernel patch to let ping/traceroute work..It lets me and others share a single host that is very beefy (2x2.8G Xeon, 4g ram, 315g raid-5 ultra-320 disk, etc..) on a fast link. The FreeBSD-5 jail subsystem is a bit more refined than that in FreeBSD-4... I'm pondering upgrading the system, but haven't done so yet.. You can also put a small bit of effort into the system and use rsync to keep various (important) system binaries (eg: sshd, sendmail) in-sync across all the systems so they're bug-free if an advisory comes out.. but that's basic sysadmin/patching stuff, not anything jail specific.. but if their jail is r00ted, i don't need to worry about my own files being compromised, unless they get at the 'host' system.. (which runs no services to speak of)...
I've been watching the graph, it's peaked above 10Mb/s on my 100Mb/s link once or twice, but the graphs peg the average closer to 6Mb/s. So, no fear, there is no /.ing near.
high speed mirror
Still exist. Try arbornet.org and grex.org/cyberspace.org.. Back "in the day", I ran one of the larger free shell systems out there.. you might have memories of me if you're old skool enough and look at my domain-name.
They don't exactly fly like a Frisbee at all. If you're looking to throw one far, you might try looking at a potato cannon and use pipe sufficently large enough to fit a CD. I wouldn't expect much luck though.
My home lost power as a result of this outage, (I was on vacation), but since then, I've had several outages in the past 2 months, ranging from 4 to 6 hours in length. During the longer, I started up a small (1100W) generator and was able to run some of my equipment. Being a work-at-home employee that depends on my utilities (telephone, electricity) to work properly, this does create some dilemas for me.
Are there people out there that have reduced your dependence on the utilities using "clean" energy (solar/wind)? What i'm looking at is a hybrid system, where I would take input from: Grid, Solar and Wind. As a result, I would need to store some amount of reserve energy, and prioritize my consumption (eg: Well, Smoke Detectors, Fridge, Stove, Hot Water Heater, etc..). My intention is to not completely disconnect from the grid, or even to sell-back, but to reduce my electrical expenses.
The result would be that I would not depend so much on the outside entities, and see a cost savings after a few years (aside from possible battery replacement costs). I've found some good worksheets online at NW Power (See the calculation help sidebar) and have been using SolarDyne as my cost reference.
Now all I need is some nice blackout curtains that kill the light and output electricity for those days I want to sleep in.