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User: Elfich47

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  1. Re:SystemD? RTFM? You're using THAT Desktop?? on Why Aren't People Abandoning Windows For Linux? (slashgear.com) · · Score: 1

    The average user does not know what a man page is, how to find it, how to use it. And once they spend 10 minutes flailing around (assuming they get this far), reading arcane text written in a language that looks like english, they bail out take the computer to Best Buy and have its guts wiped and replaced with Windows. And they do that because they don't want to have to get a CS degree so they can use a web browser.

  2. Re:Autodesk software on Why Aren't People Abandoning Windows For Linux? (slashgear.com) · · Score: 1

    Is that going to work at the enterprise level where the license server is several states away?

  3. Re:Not Practical / Cost Efficient on Why Aren't People Abandoning Windows For Linux? (slashgear.com) · · Score: 1

    Because the alternative is more expensive, less reliable and possibly not HIPAA certified. If you are in the medical profession, software has to be certified as HIPAA compliant.

  4. Re:Were you not paying attention... on Why Aren't People Abandoning Windows For Linux? (slashgear.com) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A big part of the problem is this: The world has a near infinite number of problems out there that are all clamoring for attention: Whatever you do for work, The environment, mowing the lawn, Political Parties, taking the cat to the vet, gridlock on the drive home, What's for dinner, Today's school shooting, List of HoneyDos on the weekend, political scandal of the week, Homeybees are going extinct, the neighbors next door don't want a solar power plant built down the street, there is a rally a city hall for a righteous cause, churches asking for money, the list goes on and on and on.

    The last thing you want to do when you home is spend energy trying to figure out why your computer isn't working. So it isn't a case of deliberate ignorance, it is a case of being worn out at the end of the day and not wanting to deal with another problem. Windows is a know entity that works well enough. The barrier to entry for linux is that everything looks different and acts different enough that people don't want to have to be retrained, especially then they have to use windows at work and Linux at home.

  5. Usability on Why Aren't People Abandoning Windows For Linux? (slashgear.com) · · Score: 1

    As has been commented elsewhere in this thread: People want a tool that is easy to use, fairly reliable, has all the programs they need on a daily basis, doesn't have any esoteric UI choices, and doesn't need any under the hood work.

    If you want people to switch to Linux the system has to operate faster, crash less, be easier to use and have all of the programs they routinely use. None of this "Open Office works just as well as Windows Office" crap. People want the integrated presentation that MS office has trained people to accept. Without MS Office, AutoDesk AutoCad and Revit, Photoshop (Wine doesn't count) you aren't going to get any traction.

    People don't want the solution to be "Well you need an emulator to run that program because it doesn't run natively in Linux". That by itself shoots Linux in the foot.

  6. Re:Autodesk software on Why Aren't People Abandoning Windows For Linux? (slashgear.com) · · Score: 1

    Right now Revit is a Windows Product. You can't get it on any other platform. So anybody in Architecture, Structural engineering and other consulting engineering (Landscape, surveying, Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing) all work on windows.

  7. Re:Where are we going to land? on Cringely Predicts: Professional Drivers With Drone Landing Platforms (cringely.com) · · Score: 1

    That is very case by case basis. There are vehicles using aluminum now as parts of their exterior. So the drone landing and expecting a magnetic grapple is going to need all sorts of safeties in the landing software to ensure that there is a firm grapple before the rotor blades spin down.

    I actually see the snow being a real problem: target recognition. Requiring drivers to get out of their car during a snow storm to clear the targets mounted on the roof so the drone can see the landing target? During a heavy snow fall the driver would have to be out of their car constantly clearing it to ensure the drone has a clean target. That is part of the reason why helicopter landing pads use automatic snow melting systems to ensure their pads are clear.

  8. Re:Swing and a miss on Cringely Predicts: Professional Drivers With Drone Landing Platforms (cringely.com) · · Score: 1

    To sort out residential versus commercial deliveries would be a huge issue.

    Fed Ex and UPS would have to run a second delivery shift in order to have evening delivery. And that means paying adjusted rate to their drivers . And in addition their entire delivery logistics at the delivery stations would have to be rethought, likely the entire building would have to be rebuilt from the ground up. The dock doors for the morning runs have those trucks in them once they come back and are busy being unloaded from their pick ups.

    Loading, unloading, and internal sorting logistics would have to be rethought. Right now the parcels come in on the 53' foot trucks, go onto the sorters and are loaded into the trucks. You are talking about having to place all the residential parcels into holding or buffering while the morning deliveries are gotten out of the way first.

    And in addition you are talking about a significant cost increase: More drivers, more runs, more trucks to service, more redundant runs. Plus the companies have to figure out if each and every address is residential or commercial. Plus the complication of people running businesses out of their own homes and that means delivery companies would have to deliver to the same address multiple times in the same day - either due to home businesses in apartment blocks, or apartment blocks having public businesses on the first floor. Night delivery is not an item I can see happening right now.

  9. That is why cars have strict laws for muffler sizing.

  10. This operation will have to be insured. This will be the stumbling block. Until it can be insured and shown to be reliable and not a threat to health and welfare when be operated or moved, it will not be operated. Think of it this wa: how many things have you seen go flying off of a car at high speed?

  11. You want UL certification for "drone platform" on Cringely Predicts: Professional Drivers With Drone Landing Platforms (cringely.com) · · Score: 1

    Because if you want a drone landing platform on a car to be insured, I will bet dollars to donuts that all of that will have to be UL certified. And that means some sort of permanent installation on the car so the installation doesn't get torn off the car through wind resistance, weather or other problems.

  12. Where are we going to land? on Cringely Predicts: Professional Drivers With Drone Landing Platforms (cringely.com) · · Score: 1

    As the observation was made to me: If the car is not parked on a flat surface, how is the drone going to land on the car?

    I can think of plenty of places where city streets are on hills. Plus throw in weather (rain, sleet, snow, freezing rain) and a drone landing on a car that is parked on a slope is a drone that is crashed in the street and run over by a car and then everyone has lawsuits and insurance payouts.

    This need to go back to the drawing boards with a bit more reality attached.

  13. Customer Service improves with competition on Is Bad Customer Service More Profitable Than Good? (hbr.org) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    the companies that you see having the worst customer service often have little to no competition. The worst offenders here being Cable TV/ISPs. Often there is one or two providers available for a given address, so the Cable provider is of the opinion that the customer has to come to them if they want service. So treating them like crap doesn't lose them anything.

    On the flip side, you look at the larger internet sales companies. There are fifty people selling the same product, and normally within fifty cents of everyone else. So if you get a crappy customer sales experience, you will take you next purchase down the road to someone else.

    Good customer service is about triage and customer retention. If a customer has called customer service, you have already lost money on the sale because you have to pay a service rep to help this customer out. That help could be anything from hand holding, an exchange, refunds or gift cards. If the customer walks away from the customer service experience saying "This company fixed the problem in a pain free way and didn't complain or make my life difficult. I'd try them again." then you have a chance at another sale. If the customer is thinking "I got my refund but I had to pull teeth and sit on the phone for an hour", then that customer is going to reduce their shopping at that store and tell their friends about it.

    In environments where the customer service rep is instructed to stymie or frustrate the caller: The short term goal of keeping the customers money is fulfilled. The long term goal of getting more of the customer's money fails. This adds to the fact that the customer service rep does not bring any perceived value to the customer.

    So in a low competition environment, customer service sucks, because it is seen as not needed. In a high competition environment, customer service helps retain customers. Improved customer service takes a long time to see results; it can take months or years to see the results of a loyal customer base that is willing to pay an extra quarter on a product because they trust that customer service is not going to screw them if the product is wrong.

  14. Paging Oliver Wendell Jones on 12-Year-Old Boy Reportedly Builds A Nuclear Fusion Reactor (theguardian.com) · · Score: 2

    Bloom County Elementry School would like to state that the school evacuation during the Science Fair was not a drill. The NRC has safely removed the dangerous device from the school.

  15. Re:Summary doesn't mention what's contested!? on Return To Sender: High Court To Hear Undeliverable Mail Case (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 2

    This popped up in other news sources: Part of the argument is this: "....A person can challenge the patent....". Is the postal service a person in the context of this argument?

  16. Manpower is never planned on tax breaks on AT&T Preps For New Layoffs Despite Billions In Tax Breaks and Regulatory Favors (vice.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Companies never plan their manpower needs based on tax breaks and incentives. Companies look at the work that needs to get done, the money they have, they billing they expect and from there decide how much manpower they need. These companies are not going to hire people to sit on their thumbs doing nothing. So if they have to much manpower, they layoff. Government tax breaks are not going to affect this process.

  17. Wrong tempratue range on A Flexible Way To Convert Waste Heat To Electricity (asianscientist.com) · · Score: 1

    The operating range of this system is 100C-150C (200-300F), so we are well above the boiling point of water. This system is more likely to get picked up in industrial fields first: Power generation, heavy trucking, shipping. equipment with big engines and big generators where the heat recovery will make a noticeable dent.

    Since most data centers run in the 65-85F range, the cooling systems run chilled water in the 40-45 range. The work required to get the temperature of the rejected heat up to something useful would be prohibitive.

  18. Re:Why generate the waste heat? on A Flexible Way To Convert Waste Heat To Electricity (asianscientist.com) · · Score: 1

    So you have pushed the problem upstream to the power generation plants. The power plants currently generate lots of waste heat and adding the automotive load to this will only increase this (solar power doesn't have the efficiency yet to drive cars around full power on solar cells).

    Power plant industry (and trucking) are going to look at this technology and going to snap it up. I have shown the math elsewhere in this thread. But they can get a nominal 1% power increase out of this technology. Both Power generation and trucking are highly competitive with low profit margins and anything they can do to improve their bottom line will be done.

  19. Here is where you are missing it on A Flexible Way To Convert Waste Heat To Electricity (asianscientist.com) · · Score: 1

    The intent is not to use this as the primary power source, but as part of the heat recovery system after the primary systems have used the heat.They are getting 2% efficiency on the waste heat rejected. So this heat recovery works on industrial processes that generate lots of heat as well: Foundry work, forges, HVAC applications, molding, and industrial process where there there is waste heat and steam. So if I have a power plant that is 35% efficient (pretty standard, some can get as high as 40% now), that power plant is rejecting 65% of the energy to the atmosphere. Usually this heat is rejected by cooling towers. The intent here is to recover 2% of the 65% that is being lost. So that recovers roughly 1.3% of the original power input.

    Here is an example (this is simplified):

    I have a 1 MW power plant that is 35% efficient. In order to power this power plant I have to inject 2.85 MW of heat into the power plant. 1MW goes to the generators and the other 1.85 MW goes to the cooling towers. If I could recover 2% of the 1.85 MW going to the cooling towers, I produce an additional 37,000 KW (0.037 MW) of power and that much less has to go to the cooling towers reducing cost to operate the cooling towers.

  20. Here is the break down on A Flexible Way To Convert Waste Heat To Electricity (asianscientist.com) · · Score: 2

    Your assumptions on engine usage and efficiency are way way off. By your estimate: 20HP to the wheels and 5HP rejected as waste (you didn't mention the radiator so I am assuming you are including the radiator in this number), the engine of the car would be 80% efficient. Not only would you be upsetting known engine design and tip toeing up to (or over) the line on known modern physics and metallurgy, most engine manufacturers would be knocking on your door asking what the secret is.

    Reality: An ICE engine is roughly 25% efficient (with variations per manufacturer and their patented goodies), and an ICE car has a tank to wheel efficiency around 17%-19% (to account for other losses- transmission, parasitic losses, wheel contact losses, etc). I'll use the 25% for this exercise.

    Using the 20HP to maintain highway speeds. The engine produces 20HP at the shaft and this goes to the wheels. So the thermal input to the engine is 80 HP: 20HP goes to the shaft and 60HP gets rejected through the radiator, direct radiation from the engine or down the tailpipe. The majority of the heat rejection is through the radiator: This is a controlled point of heat rejection. The only heat lost at the tail pipe is the heat carried by the ejected mass of that is left over from the products of combustion (CO2, H20 and some un-combusted hydrocarbons that made it into the exhaust pipe). So if this new heat-to-electricity generator is 1.84% efficient. It draws power off the rejected heat. In this case the car is rejecting 60HP in heat and would be getting 1.1HP in electrical power out of it. This is assuming the waste heat could be channeled into a useful shape. But automotive engineers are clever, I think they could work something out.

    So this would be an at a glance improvement of 1%. It is actually more though. By removing the alternator, some of the parasitic losses (that contribute to the total of 17-19%) are removed. So the car gets more power at the wheel and a higher fuel efficiency. Even if the automotive industry doesn't jump on this, you can bet the trucking industry will leap on a 1% engine efficiency improvement. And this savings will be bigger for the refrigerator trailers that draw electricity off the trucks. For them, every shipping dollar counts.

  21. I can many industries adopting this on A Flexible Way To Convert Waste Heat To Electricity (asianscientist.com) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The industries I can see adopting this quickly:

    Automotive industry: There is a continuing push to improve overall mileage of a car. If waste heat can be captured as electrical power, It will get adopted.
    Power industry: These guys are already trying to up their efficiency and the competition is stiff. If the power industry can implement this it will get implemented real fast.
    Industrial processes: These guys vent so much waste heat it isn't funny. But they do have space normally. I can see them intentionally re-tuning their discharge temperatures to take advantage of this. Many of these industries are (also) very competitive. If they can shave a couple tenths of a percent of their costs, they will do it.

    I expect most people in the industries I mentioned will not immediately notice it. But one of those industries will see it and get it implemented. And then Ford or Chevy or Subaru will come out with a car that doesn't have an alternator in it. All of the electrical power is generated from a rebuilt radiator and exhaust system that recycles the power from the heat. A lot of alternators on a car can draw 1-2 hp. So that is now either top end power or additional MPG. Either way everyone else in the industry is now saying "how do we do that?"

    I expect the same thing to occur in industrial process, only the average consumer will never hear of it. In metal refining their price per ton will drop by a penny or two consistently and everyone else will start asking how they managed to shave that much cost off without reducing anymore many power.
    In either case, once this gets adopted in a particular industry, everyone in that industry will stampede to adopt it so they can stay competitive.

  22. Long Term Short Term on GoPro To Move US-Bound Camera Production Out of China (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    Well to your point: you are building custom equipment, not commodity or mass production equipment. The market is there for custom equipment that has support within the same country. Its not like you want to call up someone in China (let alone have someone fly out from China) if you need tech support or repairs.

    On the other hand, all of the commodity and mass production equipment is made overseas (China, Vietnam, India, Take your pick of a SE Asian country). You even admit to ordering commodity overseas parts. I assume you can't even get US made commodity parts that are cost competitive with overseas manufacturers.

    So the tariffs are a mixed bag at best. Right now, any factory that produces mass market commodity goods are shifting production out of China and into another SE Asian country. The production for those goods are not shifting back to the US. Those factories have to be cost competitive after the tariffs are rolled back and some new trade agreement is put in place. Once the tariffs are rolled back, any commodity product factory in the US will get ground under.

    So yes, your production is at capacity. But the moment someone figures out how to make a mass market version of what you are producing, expect it to start being produced in China or Vietnam or Korea or India.

  23. A fool and his money are soon parted.

  24. Stallman can afford to take this stand because he understands what is involved in programming; the ins, the outs, the nitty gritty.
    br> My mom doesn't have the time, energy, inclination to learn how to program or maintain a home spooled build or double check the source code of every app she uses. She just wants it to work. And apple, for all of the complaints about the walled garden provides products that just work.

    For comparison look at Android. Android has a much more open applications market. Also look at the Android current scandal involving hundreds of applications, ad fraud and millions of dollars. The casual user doesn't have the time to figure out if a particular app is also a time bomb, bitcoin miner, ad fraud machine or something else.

    Yes, apple keeps things locked down with so tight it squeaks. But it also limits malevolent actors from stealing from innocent people. People trust that apps in the apple app store are not malicious. And that is the trade off: Safe Apps that aren't malicious instead of the android wild wild west.

  25. The turn around time for lunch is usually shorter. You walk down to the cafeteria. You grab lunch, eat it and are back at your desk inside the allotted lunch window. If you have to go out, then the travel time is up, there is weather to contend with, lines, its more of a hassle.

    The tech companies have made the decision that providing lunch is a bennie and it keeps people inside the bubble longer. If San Fransisco passes the "no cafeteria" regs, expect the corporate offices to rent food trucks on a rotation to stop in front of their office, seven days a week. The press on the local food establishments will be insane. People don't want to integrate into the community, they want to work and go home. Forcing them to go out for take out just annoys them.

    San Fransisco has a lot of growing up to do: They have to come to terms if they want the big companies to be in town, they need to build at least 100,000 more apartment units, quickly. And those will get snapped up in about 30 seconds with people screaming for more. Watching the city slowly destroy itself with the: "But we don't want to build anymore units because it will change the city" get trampled by the stratospheric rent rates has been fun to watch from a far distance.