Being self-employed or running a business isn't all that hard and it is much more rewarding, especially for a computer geek now in internet age.
Having worked in various sized companies, from self-employed through 10, 20 and 500-1000 people, it became apparent to me that all businesses need:
1) Sales and Marketing 2) Accounting 3) A product
If you have no interest in 1) or 2), being self-employed is not for you. Also, when taking into account what you get paid for your "Product" as a coder, bear in mind the hours invested in Sales, Marketing, and Accounting for essentially zero compensation..
"In this economy" and all that rot, unless you're an orphan, you're probably related to an unemployed person or persons who happen to specialize in need #1 and need #2. Possibly someone typing in a non-techie website right now, that all they need to start their own business is a tech/product guy, if only they knew an interested one... Of course family businesses can result in some of the most spectacular business related drama known to mankind. Be careful not to end up on Dr Phil or CourtTV or whatever its called now. On the other hand, if you're both currently unemployed, what were you going to do today otherwise, watch Oprah reruns?
Bad idea to focus too narrowly. Your average suit might not even know what Drupal is. Keep an open mind. The job you get manipulating Joomla or Wordpress might lead eventually to your "dream Drupal job"... however...
So, I think I wanna do BGP routing on Cisco routers because I happen to have years of experience and I'm extremely good at it. That's nice, if only there were any hiring spots for that skillset at a location and salary I can tolerate. "Meanwhile" I'm working with RoR and Perl and a variety of SQL backends. Heck I don't even know if I wanna go back to being a router jockey, as if that opportunity will ever exist again for me. I really miss those weekly 2am on call emergencies, err, no not really. But this job puts me close both physically and technologically to the local OSPF operators, so if I wanted to, it would be an easy stepping stone back into routing and switching.
started learning BASIC at age 12
See, you're not trying to write CGI scripts in MSBasic so we know you've got an open mind... Go with the flow. Drupal is cool, don't get me wrong, but its not the end stage of technological progress or the end stage of your career unless you're in your 60s and planning on this being your toe-tag job.
Show examples. Show your hobby projects. Show sites that you've built and that currently are in use. Show contributions you've made to open source projects.
Also local volunteer work. Sounds like the OP is Mr Webmaster at heart
teaching myself web-design, Linux/LAMP, Javascript, and now Drupal.
You set up the local homeless shelter promotional/donation seeking/contact page website, assuming they somehow don't have one, for free. Actually it costs you a little to register the domain, whatever. Schmooze at the organizational meetings with the group's volunteer accountant, who hires you to fancy up her self promotional website for a very nominal fee (probably not enough to buy dinner, barely enough to break even after paying for the homeless shelter domain registration out of your pocket). The accountant is best friends with a local bank manager, who needs to hire an IT worker with excellent references... This was more or less how a friend of mine started out. Next thing you know, she's working at the bank, in a paradise of AS/400s and token ring (yeah, this was awhile ago).
You can also go the "work at a startup" route. They might not pay you, or might not pay you much, but its something to do, and looks interesting on a resume.
I thought about it a bit, and it would have worked on a PWR, but it would have worked REALLY WELL on a BWR, if you can survive the pressure fluctuations, which it probably could have. Of course if they're not running the reactivity control loop past engineering, they're not going to run the hydrodynamic control loop past engineering, so they might have industriously found a way to blow themselves up that way too.
PWRs are dead stable, not terribly sexy, quite heavy and bulky, and have more moving parts. If the coolant is boiling in the core, you're doin' it wrong in a PWR.
BWRs are way less stable (but seem rock solid compared to a RBMK), used to be the new sexiness before pebble bed reactors and all that, smaller and lighter, and have fewer moving parts. If the coolant is boiling in the core, you're doin' it right, in a BWR.
The point is if you survive the surge, the BWR is happy, actually thrilled, to have some core boiling, whereas the PWR might get royally pissed off if the pressurizer can't pressurize.
GIVEN that their procedures were shit, maintenance actually made things worse and thus cased Chernobyl.
I'm guessing you were going for the sarcasm points, but for those who don't know about nuke eng as much as myself and presumably scamper, they had perfectly good procedures for experiment engineering evaluation that they mysteriously chose not to follow, and there was no maintenance involvement at all. Its the opposite of what he was claiming.
The quickie one liner of what happened is a RBMK has an extremely sensitive control loop by the very nature of what it means to be a RBMK, and the engineers who know exactly what happens when you suddenly slam the gain of a control loop like that up to 11 were intentionally cut out of the loop; no one officially knows why; the negative oscillations to zero were not terribly impressive, but everyone noticed the final positive swing to 40 GW or so.
The ironic part is they were trying to improve safety by figuring out a ultra short term blackstart capability for the safety systems. It would actually have worked pretty well on a PWR design, which is probably what gave them that peculiar idea. One of the dead guys probably successfully did that "all the time" on his old PWR...
For example, what many of go through with our cars - the dealer wants us to come in every 3k miles for an oil change, whereas realistically most mfr's and my own experience dictates that ~5k (if not longer depending on circumstance) is much more cost effective.
LOL old Saturn cars were famous for a valve issue where the engine suddenly starts to burn about a quart of oil per 1k mile after about 125K miles of service... engine capacity is 4 quarts oil... "most" owners don't even know what a dip stick is, much less how to read it... lots of saturn engines dead with an empty oil pan...
You'd be surprised how often the manufacturers actually know what they're doing with stuff like that.
Something I never understood about that whole mentality.. pay the bank $40000 in payments to buy a $30000 car then destroy the car by trying to save $30. I can see never doing maintenance on a $500 beater, but...
Also don't forget driving style is modified. "F it, you guys are going to tear the thing down anyway so I'm gonna lean it out to sneak in a couple more laps per tank" is replaced with babying the car.
Check your transfer switch ratings. I guarantee it will be spec'd much lower than you think. The electricians think it'll only be switched a couple times in its life. The diesel service provider thinks you're running it twice a week. Whoops. If you run it once a week, it'll only survive a couple years, then you'll get a facility wide multi-hour outage. I've personally seen it over and over again over the past two decades. The best part is "we have a procedure" so it'll only be run during maint hours and the desk jockeys 200 miles away will run it rain or shine, so its guaranteed that the xfer switch destroys itself at 2 am during a blizzard and it'll take half a day to repair.
Very few xfer switches are more reliable than commercial utility power. Installing a UPS actually lowers reliability in almost all professional situations.
My favorite power outage was caused by a gas leak a couple blocks away, where the utility co shut down the AC and then threatened to take an axe to the gen/UPS if not also shut off. This was not in the official written report, just word of mouth.
Not without a fuckton of mods. A 15 year old GMC Safari (a huge fucking van) has a better 0 to 60 and quarter mile time than a 2012 prius.
I have many hours behind the wheel of my wife's Prius, and I agree almost anything on the road beats it 0 to 60, but I would hazard a guess that there is nothing on 4 wheels in normal civilian hands that is faster 0 to 25 than a prius. Something to do with electric motors outputting peak torque at low RPM vs gas motors outputting minimum torque at idle. If it were not for traction control I think it would be nearly impossible to drive. Its got the acceleration curve of an unloaded electric forklift, at least up to 25 or so. Almost bad enough to see stars if your head slaps into the headrest..
Also, at least at commute time, there is no where nearby where I live, that I can try to do 0 to 60 or a quarter mile. I can do 0 to 25 and beat at least some motorcycles. Maybe not the "ninjas" but I've beaten some Harleys and touring bikes in the prius, admittedly not a heroic achivement, but still moderately impressive. Incredibly fast car, in stop and go traffic or any time you're below 35 or so, like in the city.
On the track, not so good. On a empty, cop radar free interstate, not so good. But I never get to experience that anyway, so...
This is actually very easy to deal with. The driver is still liable.
Have the driver be a judgment proof citizen of India who clicks a button when Siri says to click it. Game over all done. Why make this more complicated than necessary?
I would have 3rd worlders drive the cars directly, skipping all this autonomous stuff, but I've seen how they drive in their native land and how they drive after they illegally immigrate here, and I think we're better off not having them even try to turn the wheel. Just push the button when Siri says to push it.
Absolutely! By all means, answer "No" to all of the questions and play along with their stupid, ignorant, idiocy! Please do!
Noooo, my entire point is that as I recall, the answer is yes, but they want incredibly detailed information that is impossible to provide. "please transcribe The Pentagon Papers into this two line blank space".
Let me say one last time: The state of Georgia - the home of Newt Gingrich - is a bunch of ignorant, Bible thumbing, dipshit, fucking, morans and God created US this way!
I was an average vaguely centrist republican before the BBQ crowd took over, financial conservative and extremely social liberal, RINO type of guy. I even considered, briefly, running for office. BBQ = Bible-thumpers, Bigots, and Quislings (Q's of the 1%ers, the multinational corporations, etc), all that's left of the once proud R party. We really weren't that bad as a group, in ye olden days, before our village idiots took us over from within. I donno how that happened, really. The process of radicalization is kind of like making sausage, maybe I'm better off it I don't watch it? It seemed to go from normal middle class suburban people to fringe neonazi radicals suddenly, like in the late 90s or so. Maybe when it happened, depends where you live. I don't think I was the one who changed, I'm "older" and set in my ways.
The community college or tech school could have a side business that allows supervised access to the technology for a price.
They almost certainly already do.
Where I live, several programs are operated as open lab, do 15 "quests" assigned by the instructor at your own pace whenever the lab is open, earn a cert, repeat until you have a degree (in welding, and the non-book half of the automotive degree).
Anyone can audit any class as long as they convince the instructor and there's no waiting list (probably OK for at least 90% of classes).
All divisions have independent study class, if you wanna do your own AS/400 thing and they've got the gear, they'll assign an instructor to baby sit you and possibly even help, if you'll pay your tuition (about $200 per quarter). I know for a fact their CCNA-bootcamp gear was hired out by a bunch of guys working on their CCNP using that strategy on the weekends because I already had my CCNP and they wanted advice from me, I donno how it all turned out, but sounded like a good plan. I also know a guy who built a CO2 laser power supply this way. And another guy who built a ham radio 10 GHz transverter (a man after my own heart I'm sure). The school has/had a HP spectrum analyzer/tracking oscillator/phase noise analysis rig with rubidium stabilized source worth something like 1/2 the cost of my house, other than at the CC I have no idea how to even access that kind of gear without getting a job in the field. Even renting from one of the rental operations would be impossible.
I've never understood this about the "makerspace" movement. So, basically, you want to create an unaccredited community college night school, but you think you can do it for everyone for free or at least cheaper than my local CC? My local CC has open lab "classes" for welding, machining, and I believe electronics and they are NOT free nor have they ever been free, that just doesn't work economically. All divisions have always had "independent study" class for any subject they don't outright have "open lab time" class, so if you can convince exactly one instructor/adviser that you are not a hazard to yourself or fellow students, you're golden. They've got decades of experience doing exactly what a makerspace seems to want to start to do. And the non-profit CC charges somewhat under $200 a quarter to do it, which is actually pretty decent compared to some makerspaces asking over $100/month. And they've got new equipment, not makerspace castoffs. They've already got multiple clubs meeting there, in some cases in the open labs, two ham radio clubs and two car clubs that I formally know of, so its not like there's no one to hang out with.
So, other than a trendy marketing campaign and endless free publicity, what exactly do makerspaces have going for them that I can't get at the CC?
I want a metal brake, CNC mill, CNC lathe, cutting laser, water jet cutter, and TIG welding outfit at my library.
My community college vocational ed building is next door to it's library... and its got all that goodness, just sign up to audit a class. Plus you get a free instructor. Literally, I'm not kidding, $174 for 4 months access to the welding lab two nights a week open lab hours, do whatever you want at your own pace in the open lab, although if you do their curriculum at their recommended rate and the instructor approves your work, you can earn a cert every quarter eventually leading to an associates degree in welding. I've been meaning to do this for over a quarter century now. I taught myself soldering and brazing and some stick welding decades ago, always wanted to do TIG. Also the nurse/medical voc tech school is next door, if you're lonely...
Specialist technical books, rare books, etc are too expensive for most people to buy. A library means you have the opportunity to enjoy & learn from them.
Not where I live. Nothing beyond high school level WRT to tech books. Hundreds of new paperback vampire chick and zombie escape paperbacks, but all they've got for automotive repair, for example, is the '73 Dodge Dart Chilton manual. That's about it. You don't wanna know what I found in the computer section, its unspeakable. Lets just say I could relive my childhood pretty well, and I'm not young (as you can see by my/. UID).
Oddly enough they've got plenty of dough, being a rich suburb. Stacks of new paperbacks, open long hours, well/heavily staffed, clean well lit and well maintained, tons of new DVDs and music cds, the internet access computers aren't too awful, if you could clear the virii keyloggers and worms off them.
They just don't see their place as providing technical books to "the public". Never have, really. I wish I had a big nearby university library to browse in.
the overthrow of the government of the United States or of the government of the state of Georgia by force or violence?
Ah you are misquoting the "force or violence" makes it a bit simpler.
So, I can volunteer at your library as long as I've only worked to overthrow my own (non-GA) state and city... great, I think?
Have you ever been convicted or are any charges now pending against you, by Federal, State or other law enforcing authority, for any violation of any federal law, state law, county or municipal law, regulation, or ordinance? If the answer to (a) is “Yes”, state the reason convicted, the date convicted, and the place where convicted
Can't google answer that for me? I literally don't know. This is easier if you've only been an adult for a couple years, but I got a speeding ticket sometime in the 90s and I donno where the courthouse was in the 90s for that sleeply little 'burb, probably haven't even thought about it in over a decade. I've got a municipal loitering ticket (wtf you have an ashtray, how can you ticket somebody that stands there and that uses it?). I've got a couple parking tickets and yes they are over $35.
"Starting" to shift? Libraries haven't been about books in at least 10 years (since I became a librarian). In fact, the "it's not about books" thing was a long-tired cliche even then.
I think its a physical remodel thing, it takes awhile to remodel, so that what they wanna do reflects the building layout. The recently completed remodel of our local public library just dropped below 50% of floor space devoted to books. When I was a kid it was between 50 and 75 percent. About 10% kids play and meeting and reading area next to the childrens library desk (beanbags, etc), also a separate glass walled "teen area" with teen books and scheduled book readings and book discussion groups. Study areas have imploded down to less than 10%, too many homeless were living in the study desks, I donno where they go now. Computers and computer area has exploded to at least 10%, must be two dozen virus, worm, and keylogger-laden windows PCs there slowly chugging away, I wouldn't touch those machines with a ten foot pole, or at least without an elaborate forensics kit. About 10% current and recent magazines and newspapers, note they subscribe to about 25 national and world daily newspapers. About 10% non-traditional library media, we're a depository library for genealogical microfilm and have rows of readers and printers to use it, well over a hundred years of local newspaper on microfiche, etc. About 10% DVDs, audiobooks, music CDs, and ancient 1980s 1990s computer cds/dvds (shareware, multimedia shovelware, etc). About 10% meeting spaces ranging from small office like collaboration areas to a 100 or so person meeting hall. That leaves about 30% remaining for old fashioned physical paper books. Still the largest area by far, but a far cry from the old library.
Linux, for example, permits viruses to be written. So does OS X. The reason why viruses do not proliferate on those systems is because they're not a particularly interesting attack target
LOL you must be new to this "internet" thing or channeling 1995.
because (specifically in case of Linux) they are typically run by competent users who don't run random binaries off the Net.... iOS, on the other hand, does not have viruses, because 1) all software comes from a trusted location with no way to circumvent this,
The linux and ios situation are closer than you seem to think.
I would guess than 99.999% of Debian installs have nothing but debian.org packages and perhaps a handful of nvidia drivers, multimedia repo files, and maybe some weird firmware files. All my "server" type boxes are 100% nothing but Debian packages, only my desktops and mythtv frontends have anything else.
Make it impossible to circumvent, people get annoyed at the restriction, simply because it is a restriction, regardless if they intend to actually go beyond it. Make it really inclusive, easy to add, as open as possible, and inconvenient to avoid, and people are OK with it. Golden handcuffs, sorta.
Kindles are sometimes rendered useless by airport baggage handling and security checks. Many people report no problems at all but if something is going wrong, the culprit may not be the X-ray scanner, but a static shock.
Maybe, just maybe, its because they beat the heck out of it or dropped it and don't want to admit it and don't think anyone would guess what they did and would agree with a witchcraft-level explanation. Just maybe...
If only the flight attendants would let me read the stupid thing during take-off and landing.
We're getting close to the power levels where they'll let you.
If a small battery can run the thing for a month, even if it channeled all that power into an intentionally interfering signal, it still wouldn't be a problem.
The biggest problem, aside from tradition, is convincing passengers that a milliwatt class Kindle is "low enough" yet the 100 watt gamer laptop is "too high". I could see all the airlines and manufacturers conspiring into releasing devices with green cases, or maybe pink with glitter, if they're "aircraft rated" as being safe. Then they just have to tell stewardesses to look out for gamer laptops with obvious done-at-home spray paint jobs.
True, assuming you can do it without incurring huge student loan debt.
Which means you have to get an elite level job to pay for the elite level loan. This can have some severe issues WRT quality of life, if you take a "small" pool of jobs and make it even smaller by only being able to survive with the most elite of that already small pool. So you'll be the last STEM guy who's job is exported to India, who cares, you'll only be a couple years behind me, in the long run it won't matter to either of us... If you want to work 80 hour weeks and not recognize spouse/kids, go to MIT, if you want 40 hrs/wk like I have, then... don't. I caught a lot of flack 25 years ago telling my HS guidance counselor that I appreciate that he insists I should apply to more elite schools because of grades / scores whatever, but I don't want to go and want to attend state U instead (because I was obsessed with the then new-ish movie "Animal House", and I later re-enacted most of those scenes as a freshman, except for the motor cycle up the front stairs, but that's a whole 'nother (fun) story)
3) The vendors who supply and support the SCADA systems feverishly demand that the SCADA systems be easily accessible over the Internet for their convenience for remote support, and frankly do not give a rat's ass about the customers' security... their response is that security is not their problem it's ours.
Can't allow VPNs instead of wide open access? Even the place I'm at now, has exclusively VPN access for "outside engineering suppliers"
Historically, back when dial up support was the way to go, I worked at a place where IBM had remote access to "our" multiple mainframes only when a orange cable was draped across the desk of our security officer (this is before orange meant fiber, it was just orange "silver satin" 4 conductor modular phone wire).... Being a "mahogany row" level management position, this cable was only installed when absolutely necessary with the sec officers personal involvement. The jack leading to the modem was inside a cheap walmart-ish safe, which could be bypassed if you wanted to get fired... I donno who could open the safe, but it had to be someone with access to the security officer's palatial office, not a peon like I was.
This was at a company that was tangentially involved in about 1-5% of stock exchange transactions that happen in this county, depending how you do the numbers, at least way back then before high freq trading became cool. Should be good enough solution for a small town water-pump.
And a guy I know at another plant described "adversarial SCADA" to me where two separate systems from two separate mfgrs and two separate consultants, one run by an "operator" and reporting up the operations management chain all the way to the board, and another run by "safety" and reporting up the safety management chain all the way up to the board.
The operations guy and his SCADA system do whatever they want whenever they want, but if the safety guy and his SCADA detect an overspeed or an overtemp or underpressure then safety guy and his scada cuts power to the operations guy and his scada. Also operations guy can "get even" with safety guy because he has relays installed that can simulate sensor failure, and the safety guy has to respond within X minutes following whatever procedures, and the operations guy is presumably intelligent enough to only perform those tests when operationally convenient.
Also although technically either the safety guy OR the operations guy can punch the "give up" buttons, because the safety guy does not answer to the bean counters, that means the dump tank and suppression buttons are for all intents and purposes exclusively operated by the safety guy... The operations guys have training issues in not bothering to even know how to operate the fire suppression valves, for example. Which is bad, because the centers are geographically separate, so if a tornado wiped out the safety center, or even just a failure or a hack event took it out, the ops guys might literally not know how to put out a fire at the plant, even though they are technically capable.
This is a fail when weird plant conditions require jury rigging and close coordination, and also a financial failure because the independent supplier of the operations scada knows the plant shuts down if they try to change out, so he's free to charge as much as he pleases.
Hack our safety scada yesterday? who cares, ops will safe the plant. Hack our ops today? who cares, safety will safe the plant. Hack both separate systems with separate designs and separate manufactures tomorrow at the same time? who cares, that has to be an inside job...
Slashdot Mirror
Being self-employed or running a business isn't all that hard and it is much more rewarding, especially for a computer geek now in internet age.
Having worked in various sized companies, from self-employed through 10, 20 and 500-1000 people, it became apparent to me that all businesses need:
1) Sales and Marketing
2) Accounting
3) A product
If you have no interest in 1) or 2), being self-employed is not for you. Also, when taking into account what you get paid for your "Product" as a coder, bear in mind the hours invested in Sales, Marketing, and Accounting for essentially zero compensation..
"In this economy" and all that rot, unless you're an orphan, you're probably related to an unemployed person or persons who happen to specialize in need #1 and need #2. Possibly someone typing in a non-techie website right now, that all they need to start their own business is a tech/product guy, if only they knew an interested one...
Of course family businesses can result in some of the most spectacular business related drama known to mankind. Be careful not to end up on Dr Phil or CourtTV or whatever its called now.
On the other hand, if you're both currently unemployed, what were you going to do today otherwise, watch Oprah reruns?
how can I (specifically with Drupal)
Bad idea to focus too narrowly. Your average suit might not even know what Drupal is. Keep an open mind. The job you get manipulating Joomla or Wordpress might lead eventually to your "dream Drupal job"... however...
So, I think I wanna do BGP routing on Cisco routers because I happen to have years of experience and I'm extremely good at it. That's nice, if only there were any hiring spots for that skillset at a location and salary I can tolerate. "Meanwhile" I'm working with RoR and Perl and a variety of SQL backends. Heck I don't even know if I wanna go back to being a router jockey, as if that opportunity will ever exist again for me. I really miss those weekly 2am on call emergencies, err, no not really. But this job puts me close both physically and technologically to the local OSPF operators, so if I wanted to, it would be an easy stepping stone back into routing and switching.
started learning BASIC at age 12
See, you're not trying to write CGI scripts in MSBasic so we know you've got an open mind... Go with the flow. Drupal is cool, don't get me wrong, but its not the end stage of technological progress or the end stage of your career unless you're in your 60s and planning on this being your toe-tag job.
Show examples. Show your hobby projects. Show sites that you've built and that currently are in use. Show contributions you've made to open source projects.
Also local volunteer work. Sounds like the OP is Mr Webmaster at heart
teaching myself web-design, Linux/LAMP, Javascript, and now Drupal.
You set up the local homeless shelter promotional/donation seeking/contact page website, assuming they somehow don't have one, for free. Actually it costs you a little to register the domain, whatever. Schmooze at the organizational meetings with the group's volunteer accountant, who hires you to fancy up her self promotional website for a very nominal fee (probably not enough to buy dinner, barely enough to break even after paying for the homeless shelter domain registration out of your pocket). The accountant is best friends with a local bank manager, who needs to hire an IT worker with excellent references... This was more or less how a friend of mine started out. Next thing you know, she's working at the bank, in a paradise of AS/400s and token ring (yeah, this was awhile ago).
You can also go the "work at a startup" route. They might not pay you, or might not pay you much, but its something to do, and looks interesting on a resume.
Many independent contractors are hired into permanent positions, if you want that path.
I thought about it a bit, and it would have worked on a PWR, but it would have worked REALLY WELL on a BWR, if you can survive the pressure fluctuations, which it probably could have. Of course if they're not running the reactivity control loop past engineering, they're not going to run the hydrodynamic control loop past engineering, so they might have industriously found a way to blow themselves up that way too.
PWRs are dead stable, not terribly sexy, quite heavy and bulky, and have more moving parts. If the coolant is boiling in the core, you're doin' it wrong in a PWR.
BWRs are way less stable (but seem rock solid compared to a RBMK), used to be the new sexiness before pebble bed reactors and all that, smaller and lighter, and have fewer moving parts. If the coolant is boiling in the core, you're doin' it right, in a BWR.
The point is if you survive the surge, the BWR is happy, actually thrilled, to have some core boiling, whereas the PWR might get royally pissed off if the pressurizer can't pressurize.
GIVEN that their procedures were shit, maintenance actually made things worse and thus cased Chernobyl.
I'm guessing you were going for the sarcasm points, but for those who don't know about nuke eng as much as myself and presumably scamper, they had perfectly good procedures for experiment engineering evaluation that they mysteriously chose not to follow, and there was no maintenance involvement at all. Its the opposite of what he was claiming.
The quickie one liner of what happened is a RBMK has an extremely sensitive control loop by the very nature of what it means to be a RBMK, and the engineers who know exactly what happens when you suddenly slam the gain of a control loop like that up to 11 were intentionally cut out of the loop; no one officially knows why; the negative oscillations to zero were not terribly impressive, but everyone noticed the final positive swing to 40 GW or so.
The ironic part is they were trying to improve safety by figuring out a ultra short term blackstart capability for the safety systems. It would actually have worked pretty well on a PWR design, which is probably what gave them that peculiar idea. One of the dead guys probably successfully did that "all the time" on his old PWR...
For example, what many of go through with our cars - the dealer wants us to come in every 3k miles for an oil change, whereas realistically most mfr's and my own experience dictates that ~5k (if not longer depending on circumstance) is much more cost effective.
LOL old Saturn cars were famous for a valve issue where the engine suddenly starts to burn about a quart of oil per 1k mile after about 125K miles of service ... engine capacity is 4 quarts oil... "most" owners don't even know what a dip stick is, much less how to read it... lots of saturn engines dead with an empty oil pan...
You'd be surprised how often the manufacturers actually know what they're doing with stuff like that.
Something I never understood about that whole mentality.. pay the bank $40000 in payments to buy a $30000 car then destroy the car by trying to save $30. I can see never doing maintenance on a $500 beater, but...
Also don't forget driving style is modified. "F it, you guys are going to tear the thing down anyway so I'm gonna lean it out to sneak in a couple more laps per tank" is replaced with babying the car.
The various carbon markets and carbon trading schemes have likewise been plagued with fraud
Equally true statement for all other markets if you cut out the word "carbon"
The various markets and trading schemes have likewise been plagued with fraud
Its just another crooked tax and intermediary scheme to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. What a huge surprise.
Check your transfer switch ratings. I guarantee it will be spec'd much lower than you think. The electricians think it'll only be switched a couple times in its life. The diesel service provider thinks you're running it twice a week. Whoops. If you run it once a week, it'll only survive a couple years, then you'll get a facility wide multi-hour outage. I've personally seen it over and over again over the past two decades. The best part is "we have a procedure" so it'll only be run during maint hours and the desk jockeys 200 miles away will run it rain or shine, so its guaranteed that the xfer switch destroys itself at 2 am during a blizzard and it'll take half a day to repair.
Very few xfer switches are more reliable than commercial utility power. Installing a UPS actually lowers reliability in almost all professional situations.
My favorite power outage was caused by a gas leak a couple blocks away, where the utility co shut down the AC and then threatened to take an axe to the gen/UPS if not also shut off. This was not in the official written report, just word of mouth.
Not without a fuckton of mods. A 15 year old GMC Safari (a huge fucking van) has a better 0 to 60 and quarter mile time than a 2012 prius.
I have many hours behind the wheel of my wife's Prius, and I agree almost anything on the road beats it 0 to 60, but I would hazard a guess that there is nothing on 4 wheels in normal civilian hands that is faster 0 to 25 than a prius. Something to do with electric motors outputting peak torque at low RPM vs gas motors outputting minimum torque at idle. If it were not for traction control I think it would be nearly impossible to drive. Its got the acceleration curve of an unloaded electric forklift, at least up to 25 or so. Almost bad enough to see stars if your head slaps into the headrest..
Also, at least at commute time, there is no where nearby where I live, that I can try to do 0 to 60 or a quarter mile. I can do 0 to 25 and beat at least some motorcycles. Maybe not the "ninjas" but I've beaten some Harleys and touring bikes in the prius, admittedly not a heroic achivement, but still moderately impressive. Incredibly fast car, in stop and go traffic or any time you're below 35 or so, like in the city.
On the track, not so good. On a empty, cop radar free interstate, not so good. But I never get to experience that anyway, so...
This is actually very easy to deal with. The driver is still liable.
Have the driver be a judgment proof citizen of India who clicks a button when Siri says to click it. Game over all done. Why make this more complicated than necessary?
I would have 3rd worlders drive the cars directly, skipping all this autonomous stuff, but I've seen how they drive in their native land and how they drive after they illegally immigrate here, and I think we're better off not having them even try to turn the wheel. Just push the button when Siri says to push it.
Absolutely! By all means, answer "No" to all of the questions and play along with their stupid, ignorant, idiocy! Please do!
Noooo, my entire point is that as I recall, the answer is yes, but they want incredibly detailed information that is impossible to provide. "please transcribe The Pentagon Papers into this two line blank space".
Let me say one last time: The state of Georgia - the home of Newt Gingrich - is a bunch of ignorant, Bible thumbing, dipshit, fucking, morans and God created US this way!
I was an average vaguely centrist republican before the BBQ crowd took over, financial conservative and extremely social liberal, RINO type of guy. I even considered, briefly, running for office. BBQ = Bible-thumpers, Bigots, and Quislings (Q's of the 1%ers, the multinational corporations, etc), all that's left of the once proud R party. We really weren't that bad as a group, in ye olden days, before our village idiots took us over from within. I donno how that happened, really. The process of radicalization is kind of like making sausage, maybe I'm better off it I don't watch it? It seemed to go from normal middle class suburban people to fringe neonazi radicals suddenly, like in the late 90s or so. Maybe when it happened, depends where you live. I don't think I was the one who changed, I'm "older" and set in my ways.
The community college or tech school could have a side business that allows supervised access to the technology for a price.
They almost certainly already do.
Where I live, several programs are operated as open lab, do 15 "quests" assigned by the instructor at your own pace whenever the lab is open, earn a cert, repeat until you have a degree (in welding, and the non-book half of the automotive degree).
Anyone can audit any class as long as they convince the instructor and there's no waiting list (probably OK for at least 90% of classes).
All divisions have independent study class, if you wanna do your own AS/400 thing and they've got the gear, they'll assign an instructor to baby sit you and possibly even help, if you'll pay your tuition (about $200 per quarter). I know for a fact their CCNA-bootcamp gear was hired out by a bunch of guys working on their CCNP using that strategy on the weekends because I already had my CCNP and they wanted advice from me, I donno how it all turned out, but sounded like a good plan. I also know a guy who built a CO2 laser power supply this way. And another guy who built a ham radio 10 GHz transverter (a man after my own heart I'm sure). The school has/had a HP spectrum analyzer/tracking oscillator/phase noise analysis rig with rubidium stabilized source worth something like 1/2 the cost of my house, other than at the CC I have no idea how to even access that kind of gear without getting a job in the field. Even renting from one of the rental operations would be impossible.
Perhaps try your local community college?
I've never understood this about the "makerspace" movement. So, basically, you want to create an unaccredited community college night school, but you think you can do it for everyone for free or at least cheaper than my local CC? My local CC has open lab "classes" for welding, machining, and I believe electronics and they are NOT free nor have they ever been free, that just doesn't work economically. All divisions have always had "independent study" class for any subject they don't outright have "open lab time" class, so if you can convince exactly one instructor/adviser that you are not a hazard to yourself or fellow students, you're golden. They've got decades of experience doing exactly what a makerspace seems to want to start to do. And the non-profit CC charges somewhat under $200 a quarter to do it, which is actually pretty decent compared to some makerspaces asking over $100/month. And they've got new equipment, not makerspace castoffs. They've already got multiple clubs meeting there, in some cases in the open labs, two ham radio clubs and two car clubs that I formally know of, so its not like there's no one to hang out with.
So, other than a trendy marketing campaign and endless free publicity, what exactly do makerspaces have going for them that I can't get at the CC?
I want a metal brake, CNC mill, CNC lathe, cutting laser, water jet cutter, and TIG welding outfit at my library.
My community college vocational ed building is next door to it's library... and its got all that goodness, just sign up to audit a class. Plus you get a free instructor. Literally, I'm not kidding, $174 for 4 months access to the welding lab two nights a week open lab hours, do whatever you want at your own pace in the open lab, although if you do their curriculum at their recommended rate and the instructor approves your work, you can earn a cert every quarter eventually leading to an associates degree in welding. I've been meaning to do this for over a quarter century now. I taught myself soldering and brazing and some stick welding decades ago, always wanted to do TIG. Also the nurse/medical voc tech school is next door, if you're lonely...
Specialist technical books, rare books, etc are too expensive for most people to buy. A library means you have the opportunity to enjoy & learn from them.
Not where I live. Nothing beyond high school level WRT to tech books. Hundreds of new paperback vampire chick and zombie escape paperbacks, but all they've got for automotive repair, for example, is the '73 Dodge Dart Chilton manual. That's about it. You don't wanna know what I found in the computer section, its unspeakable. Lets just say I could relive my childhood pretty well, and I'm not young (as you can see by my /. UID).
Oddly enough they've got plenty of dough, being a rich suburb. Stacks of new paperbacks, open long hours, well/heavily staffed, clean well lit and well maintained, tons of new DVDs and music cds, the internet access computers aren't too awful, if you could clear the virii keyloggers and worms off them.
They just don't see their place as providing technical books to "the public". Never have, really. I wish I had a big nearby university library to browse in.
the overthrow of the government of the United States or of the government of the state of Georgia by force or violence?
Ah you are misquoting the "force or violence" makes it a bit simpler.
So, I can volunteer at your library as long as I've only worked to overthrow my own (non-GA) state and city... great, I think?
Have you ever been convicted or are any charges now pending against you, by Federal, State or other law enforcing authority, for any violation of any federal law, state law, county or municipal law, regulation, or ordinance? If the answer to (a) is “Yes”, state the reason convicted, the date convicted, and the place where convicted
Can't google answer that for me? I literally don't know. This is easier if you've only been an adult for a couple years, but I got a speeding ticket sometime in the 90s and I donno where the courthouse was in the 90s for that sleeply little 'burb, probably haven't even thought about it in over a decade. I've got a municipal loitering ticket (wtf you have an ashtray, how can you ticket somebody that stands there and that uses it?). I've got a couple parking tickets and yes they are over $35.
"Starting" to shift? Libraries haven't been about books in at least 10 years (since I became a librarian). In fact, the "it's not about books" thing was a long-tired cliche even then.
I think its a physical remodel thing, it takes awhile to remodel, so that what they wanna do reflects the building layout. The recently completed remodel of our local public library just dropped below 50% of floor space devoted to books. When I was a kid it was between 50 and 75 percent. About 10% kids play and meeting and reading area next to the childrens library desk (beanbags, etc), also a separate glass walled "teen area" with teen books and scheduled book readings and book discussion groups. Study areas have imploded down to less than 10%, too many homeless were living in the study desks, I donno where they go now. Computers and computer area has exploded to at least 10%, must be two dozen virus, worm, and keylogger-laden windows PCs there slowly chugging away, I wouldn't touch those machines with a ten foot pole, or at least without an elaborate forensics kit. About 10% current and recent magazines and newspapers, note they subscribe to about 25 national and world daily newspapers. About 10% non-traditional library media, we're a depository library for genealogical microfilm and have rows of readers and printers to use it, well over a hundred years of local newspaper on microfiche, etc. About 10% DVDs, audiobooks, music CDs, and ancient 1980s 1990s computer cds/dvds (shareware, multimedia shovelware, etc). About 10% meeting spaces ranging from small office like collaboration areas to a 100 or so person meeting hall. That leaves about 30% remaining for old fashioned physical paper books. Still the largest area by far, but a far cry from the old library.
Linux, for example, permits viruses to be written. So does OS X. The reason why viruses do not proliferate on those systems is because they're not a particularly interesting attack target
LOL you must be new to this "internet" thing or channeling 1995.
because (specifically in case of Linux) they are typically run by competent users who don't run random binaries off the Net.... iOS, on the other hand, does not have viruses, because 1) all software comes from a trusted location with no way to circumvent this,
The linux and ios situation are closer than you seem to think.
I would guess than 99.999% of Debian installs have nothing but debian.org packages and perhaps a handful of nvidia drivers, multimedia repo files, and maybe some weird firmware files. All my "server" type boxes are 100% nothing but Debian packages, only my desktops and mythtv frontends have anything else.
Make it impossible to circumvent, people get annoyed at the restriction, simply because it is a restriction, regardless if they intend to actually go beyond it. Make it really inclusive, easy to add, as open as possible, and inconvenient to avoid, and people are OK with it. Golden handcuffs, sorta.
Kindles are sometimes rendered useless by airport baggage handling and security checks. Many people report no problems at all but if something is going wrong, the culprit may not be the X-ray scanner, but a static shock.
Maybe, just maybe, its because they beat the heck out of it or dropped it and don't want to admit it and don't think anyone would guess what they did and would agree with a witchcraft-level explanation. Just maybe...
My kindle has been on many flights.
If only the flight attendants would let me read the stupid thing during take-off and landing.
We're getting close to the power levels where they'll let you.
If a small battery can run the thing for a month, even if it channeled all that power into an intentionally interfering signal, it still wouldn't be a problem.
The biggest problem, aside from tradition, is convincing passengers that a milliwatt class Kindle is "low enough" yet the 100 watt gamer laptop is "too high". I could see all the airlines and manufacturers conspiring into releasing devices with green cases, or maybe pink with glitter, if they're "aircraft rated" as being safe. Then they just have to tell stewardesses to look out for gamer laptops with obvious done-at-home spray paint jobs.
Where you go sure can help, though.
True, assuming you can do it without incurring huge student loan debt.
Which means you have to get an elite level job to pay for the elite level loan. This can have some severe issues WRT quality of life, if you take a "small" pool of jobs and make it even smaller by only being able to survive with the most elite of that already small pool. So you'll be the last STEM guy who's job is exported to India, who cares, you'll only be a couple years behind me, in the long run it won't matter to either of us... If you want to work 80 hour weeks and not recognize spouse/kids, go to MIT, if you want 40 hrs/wk like I have, then... don't. I caught a lot of flack 25 years ago telling my HS guidance counselor that I appreciate that he insists I should apply to more elite schools because of grades / scores whatever, but I don't want to go and want to attend state U instead (because I was obsessed with the then new-ish movie "Animal House", and I later re-enacted most of those scenes as a freshman, except for the motor cycle up the front stairs, but that's a whole 'nother (fun) story)
3) The vendors who supply and support the SCADA systems feverishly demand that the SCADA systems be easily accessible over the Internet for their convenience for remote support, and frankly do not give a rat's ass about the customers' security... their response is that security is not their problem it's ours.
Can't allow VPNs instead of wide open access? Even the place I'm at now, has exclusively VPN access for "outside engineering suppliers"
Historically, back when dial up support was the way to go, I worked at a place where IBM had remote access to "our" multiple mainframes only when a orange cable was draped across the desk of our security officer (this is before orange meant fiber, it was just orange "silver satin" 4 conductor modular phone wire).... Being a "mahogany row" level management position, this cable was only installed when absolutely necessary with the sec officers personal involvement. The jack leading to the modem was inside a cheap walmart-ish safe, which could be bypassed if you wanted to get fired... I donno who could open the safe, but it had to be someone with access to the security officer's palatial office, not a peon like I was.
This was at a company that was tangentially involved in about 1-5% of stock exchange transactions that happen in this county, depending how you do the numbers, at least way back then before high freq trading became cool. Should be good enough solution for a small town water-pump.
And a guy I know at another plant described "adversarial SCADA" to me where two separate systems from two separate mfgrs and two separate consultants, one run by an "operator" and reporting up the operations management chain all the way to the board, and another run by "safety" and reporting up the safety management chain all the way up to the board.
The operations guy and his SCADA system do whatever they want whenever they want, but if the safety guy and his SCADA detect an overspeed or an overtemp or underpressure then safety guy and his scada cuts power to the operations guy and his scada. Also operations guy can "get even" with safety guy because he has relays installed that can simulate sensor failure, and the safety guy has to respond within X minutes following whatever procedures, and the operations guy is presumably intelligent enough to only perform those tests when operationally convenient.
Also although technically either the safety guy OR the operations guy can punch the "give up" buttons, because the safety guy does not answer to the bean counters, that means the dump tank and suppression buttons are for all intents and purposes exclusively operated by the safety guy... The operations guys have training issues in not bothering to even know how to operate the fire suppression valves, for example. Which is bad, because the centers are geographically separate, so if a tornado wiped out the safety center, or even just a failure or a hack event took it out, the ops guys might literally not know how to put out a fire at the plant, even though they are technically capable.
This is a fail when weird plant conditions require jury rigging and close coordination, and also a financial failure because the independent supplier of the operations scada knows the plant shuts down if they try to change out, so he's free to charge as much as he pleases.
Hack our safety scada yesterday? who cares, ops will safe the plant. Hack our ops today? who cares, safety will safe the plant. Hack both separate systems with separate designs and separate manufactures tomorrow at the same time? who cares, that has to be an inside job...