Don't you have fixed pricing with your utility company? Or can they just randomly increase the price whenever they want?
Not randomly. Conditions are governed by the Public Utilities Commissions, etc.
But any time they are forced to fire up either the Diesel Generators or (horrers) the Combustion Turbines the price fuel surcharge kicks in. And, when your area is getting all of its power from hydro, and you suddenly have to go on the generators it makes an enormous difference.
I'm sure the research scientist or business major that learns a great deal about applied computer usage, including some aspect of programming, need never pass by a CS classroom or know Donald Knuth from Donald Duck. Similarly, those students that get into hardware infrastructure don't need a great deal of programming either.
Still, the bill seems more aimed at allowing people to get out of high school without ever once encountering a Spanish word not written on a menu, than actually growing the computer literacy in the state.
Not to mention that storing enough gas on site to run a generation facility is pretty much impossible and dangerous.
Even spec prices don't do you any good unless you have a direct pipeline to the source. Most places are on the large pipe network, and there is no way you can blindly pump gas in form your spec source and expect it to arrive ONLY at the those sites with spec contracts.
Its easier to just add a fuel surcharge to the end user's electric bill. Which is exactly what happens in most places.
You might be tempted to believe this was just the usual "Headline Hype" on the part of Forbes.
However, in this case it was an appropriate use of the term since the units fired up were in fact combustion turbines, (jet engines turning turbines), also used on many Navy ships.
As a consequence, the grid operators have resorted to some rather unusual steps. Energy Choice Matters reported today that ISO-New England asked Public Service of New Hampshire (PSNH – a subsidiary of NorthEast Utilities) to operate its entire generation fleet this week to help keep the lights on. This included firing up several infrequently-deployed combustion turbines which ran on jet fuel.
These are usually used as a source of last resort. They are usually avoided even for peaking demand. They are loud, suck fuel like crazy. They exist for precisely this type of emergency, fuel shortage, scheduled down time of gas fired plants, or any grid failure.
In Alaska where I lived for 30 years, you saw exhaust from the turbines, you knew your next electric bill was going to hurt, because hydro and gas plants were down. You also knew that the LAST backup system was in use, so you stoked up the wood stove and turned off all unnecessary electrical load.
And of course when a Republican gets back in the White House, they'll be repealing this and get back to passing oppressive laws like nobody's business. It astounds me how people keep voting for Kang or Kodos.
By extension, Democrats are only for wholesale violation of constitutional rights as long as it can be used to keep them in office.
Be prepared for the pedantic lecture on your improper use of "begs the question" arriving in 3, 2, 1
The "corrected these errors automatically" part is probably nothing more than rolled back to prior known good state when it couldn't contact the remote servers any more. This may have taken several attempts because a cascading failure sometimes has to be fixed with a cascading correction.
On recovering by using the "last known good" configuration. What wizardry!
I expect we'll be seeing the Google patent application on that shortly </sarcasm>
In other words: They still have no clue what happened, because the system in question "fixed itself".
Sounds a lot like a BGP routing mishap problem rather than anything to do with Google's actual server farms. The lack of specificity suggests they still haven't got much of a clue. I suspect they were pwned by someone watching them brag on reddit, and decided it was time for a lesson in humility.
Annual reports are the very LAST PLACE anyone would expect to find pertinent information.
Its jus boiler plate. Written months or years ago. A mere wrapper around obfuscated somewhat current numbers specifically designed to leave the reader guessing.
This is also a red-herring. Go ask Verizon how "easy" it is/was to get fiber everywhere in NYC. Red tape out the wazzo from the city itself. And then an independent fight with every major property owner. And then the city has to put it's nose in there again. (damned extensive grounding requirements for a f'ing glass fiber connectivity device.)
Why wouldn't you ground it?
Is the fiber not armored? Does it not have a metal shield? It could be rather unpleasant dicking around with your unplugged router and getting 110 zap because you bone headed neighbor decided it was ok to run his fiber thru his toaster of something.
Serial lines don't fall into any category labeled "Smart Network"
Once the attacker can get at your serial lines, they are pretty much inside your plant. Serial runs aren't that long..
The problem come when someone tries to send this across a cheap unencrypted modem connection or some such. If they put them on TCP/IP and send it through an encrypted link the problem is largely solved.
On the other hand, lets say we send another Curiosity, with minimal changes. Building 10 of these in parallel. That 1.8 billion drops dramatically, because its already developed. We build in better wheels (they are taking a beating), but leave the rest pretty much the same, resisting the urge to redesign everything from scratch all over again.
Now that 1.8B drops to just the cost in time and personnel to build, test, and package, I'm guessing maybe.2B ea, but lets go with.5B. Same.7B to launch and operate for each vehicle. So the whole fleet of these, plus launch and operations cost 15B, or about the same as One Gerald R Ford
Orders of magnitude more difficult to reach, far more difficult terrain to rover, far narrower communications windows...
Orders of magnitude more difficult to reach? I doubt that. Some of these canyons are very wide, with large flat bottoms, but you don't even have to go for the worst canyons just the most interesting ones. http://www.msss.com/mars_image... The radar directed skycrane mechanism used for Curiosity, with a little more fuel could probably drop in much tighter quarters that they've been willing to try so far.
We've got enough orbiters that the communications windows are also less of a problem. I think the rovers need bigger diameter wheels. It would reduce wheel wear and wheel loading, and allow traversing much more cluttered ground, and perhaps steeper slopes.
Land area of Earth 148 million km. Surface area of Mars 144.8 million km
So our sample to date is pretty miserable. However, our samples to date agree with out space based observations. Both on earth and on mars. We don't have to turn over every rock.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't you have fixed pricing with your utility company?
Or can they just randomly increase the price whenever they want?
Not randomly.
Conditions are governed by the Public Utilities Commissions, etc.
But any time they are forced to fire up either the Diesel Generators or (horrers) the Combustion Turbines the price fuel surcharge kicks in.
And, when your area is getting all of its power from hydro, and you suddenly have to go on the generators it makes an enormous difference.
Actually a lot of peaking plants now are natural gas fired turbines. Natural Gas is a lot cheaper than jet fuel.
Exactly, but in this case, as the summary mentions, there was a shortage of gas (or fear of shortage) and they fired up
the jet turbines.
Pretty much spot on.
I'm sure the research scientist or business major that learns a great deal about applied computer usage, including some aspect of programming, need never pass by a CS classroom or know Donald Knuth from Donald Duck. Similarly, those students that get into hardware infrastructure don't need a great deal of programming either.
Still, the bill seems more aimed at allowing people to get out of high school without ever once encountering a Spanish word not written on a menu, than actually growing the computer literacy in the state.
Not to mention that storing enough gas on site to run a generation facility is pretty much impossible and dangerous.
Even spec prices don't do you any good unless you have a direct pipeline to the source. Most places are on the large pipe network, and there is no way you can blindly pump gas in form your spec source and expect it to arrive ONLY at the those sites with spec contracts.
Its easier to just add a fuel surcharge to the end user's electric bill. Which is exactly what happens in most places.
Of course with a pipeline full of gas, they could fire up their own generators, no?
You might be tempted to believe this was just the usual "Headline Hype" on the part of Forbes.
However, in this case it was an appropriate use of the term since the units fired up were in fact combustion turbines, (jet engines turning turbines), also used on many Navy ships.
As a consequence, the grid operators have resorted to some rather unusual steps. Energy Choice Matters reported today that ISO-New England asked Public Service of New Hampshire (PSNH – a subsidiary of NorthEast Utilities) to operate its entire generation fleet this week to help keep the lights on. This included firing up several infrequently-deployed combustion turbines which ran on jet fuel.
These are usually used as a source of last resort. They are usually avoided even for peaking demand. They are loud, suck fuel like crazy.
They exist for precisely this type of emergency, fuel shortage, scheduled down time of gas fired plants, or any grid failure.
In Alaska where I lived for 30 years, you saw exhaust from the turbines, you knew your next electric bill was going to hurt, because hydro and gas plants were down. You also knew that the LAST backup system was in use, so you stoked up the wood stove and turned off all unnecessary electrical load.
Thank you for your assurances Anonymous Coward.
I will give it all due regard (none) in the future.
And of course when a Republican gets back in the White House, they'll be repealing this and get back to passing oppressive laws like nobody's business. It astounds me how people keep voting for Kang or Kodos.
By extension, Democrats are only for wholesale violation of constitutional rights as long as it can be used to keep them in office.
Be prepared for the pedantic lecture on your improper use of "begs the question" arriving in 3, 2, 1
The "corrected these errors automatically" part is probably nothing more than rolled back to prior known good state when it couldn't contact the remote servers any more. This may have taken several attempts because a cascading failure sometimes has to be fixed with a cascading correction.
Not that clever.
Sort of what you expect, of a company that big, other than that bit of going down in the first place.
On recovering by using the "last known good" configuration. What wizardry!
I expect we'll be seeing the Google patent application on that shortly </sarcasm>
In other words: They still have no clue what happened, because the system in question "fixed itself".
Sounds a lot like a BGP routing mishap problem rather than anything to do with Google's actual server farms.
The lack of specificity suggests they still haven't got much of a clue. I suspect they were pwned by someone
watching them brag on reddit, and decided it was time for a lesson in humility.
Annual reports are the very LAST PLACE anyone would expect to find pertinent information.
Its jus boiler plate. Written months or years ago. A mere wrapper around obfuscated somewhat current numbers specifically designed to leave the reader guessing.
So you are 35, and you have already done this 150 times and you haven't got ONE suggested solution for a community calendar?
All the fiber I've dealt with (and yes, son, I've dealt with a lot of it) is armored, for direct burial.
This is also a red-herring. Go ask Verizon how "easy" it is/was to get fiber everywhere in NYC. Red tape out the wazzo from the city itself. And then an independent fight with every major property owner. And then the city has to put it's nose in there again. (damned extensive grounding requirements for a f'ing glass fiber connectivity device.)
Why wouldn't you ground it?
Is the fiber not armored? Does it not have a metal shield?
It could be rather unpleasant dicking around with your unplugged router and getting 110 zap because you bone headed neighbor decided it was ok to run his fiber thru his toaster of something.
But how many things are ever watched more than once?
Maybe click the first link in the story ?
Nah, that would never work.
Even non technical users have friends.
Those friends tell them at a minimum, to disable the bloatware in the settings, and never
use those icons.
Well, in many cases, they simultaneously hack their warranty.
Serial lines don't fall into any category labeled "Smart Network"
Once the attacker can get at your serial lines, they are pretty much inside your plant. Serial runs aren't that long..
The problem come when someone tries to send this across a cheap unencrypted modem connection or some such.
If they put them on TCP/IP and send it through an encrypted link the problem is largely solved.
Wait, how do they make more money with bloatware?
Everybody ignores the bloatware, installs the apps they want, disables the paid bloatware ones.
They waste money with bloatware, piss off users, slow down their updates, and cause people to hack their phones.
Dear South Korea: Can we borrow your judges?
There are lots of these to investigate: http://www.msss.com/mars_image...
On the other hand, lets say we send another Curiosity, with minimal changes.
Building 10 of these in parallel.
That 1.8 billion drops dramatically, because its already developed. We build in better wheels (they are taking a beating), but leave the rest pretty much the same, resisting the urge to redesign everything from scratch all over again.
Now that 1.8B drops to just the cost in time and personnel to build, test, and package, I'm guessing maybe .2B ea, but lets go with .5B. .7B to launch and operate for each vehicle.
Same
So the whole fleet of these, plus launch and operations cost 15B, or about the same as One Gerald R Ford
Orders of magnitude more difficult to reach, far more difficult terrain to rover, far narrower communications windows...
Orders of magnitude more difficult to reach? I doubt that.
Some of these canyons are very wide, with large flat bottoms, but you don't even have to go for the worst canyons
just the most interesting ones. http://www.msss.com/mars_image...
The radar directed skycrane mechanism used for Curiosity, with a little more fuel could probably drop in much tighter quarters that they've been willing to try so far.
We've got enough orbiters that the communications windows are also less of a problem.
I think the rovers need bigger diameter wheels. It would reduce wheel wear and wheel loading, and allow traversing much more cluttered ground, and perhaps steeper slopes.
Right. the LAND area of Mars and Earth are close.
Land area of Earth 148 million km.
Surface area of Mars 144.8 million km
So our sample to date is pretty miserable.
However, our samples to date agree with out space based observations. Both on earth and on mars. We don't have to turn over every rock.
We need rovers that can get to some more risky locations. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap03...