If you had a run of the mill GPS system, and you drove your car very, very, far North, eventually you'd lose signal.
What I imagine is going on here, is that there is a ring of base stations watching the GPS satellites around each pole. If you know the base stations haven't moved w.r.t. the pole, then you can calculate where the center of spin is, thus where the pole is.
My mom, also a grandmother, still uses an OS9 machine next to but not networked into her OS X laptop.
I've been stockpiling parts so I should be able to keep it running for at least 20 more years. (B.t.w. I have 33 year old arcade machines that are still running fine)
You are correct. The problem is that people don't know what they want. But perhaps, if they tried, the networks would find that "Box of Puppies" and "Pictures of Cats with Funny Captions" are their highest rated programs.
With any battery technology, it's almost never the "Memory Effect", but simple overcharging. If your laptop batteries are always hot just sitting there when the laptop is plugged into the mains, they won't last as long as ones that are properly charged and left alone until they are needed for discharge. With cheap cordless drills and other tools, simple putting a timer on the charger will greatly increase the number of cycles you can get out of the batteries.
If Steve Jobs were still alive, he'd just find the next big thing, and stop using NAND flash. Memristors anyone?
Of course, if anyone else tried this, the new tech would be non-viable, but Steve would use his force of will to make the new tech work at the price he wanted to pay.
...
Naturally then the company needs to dump all the profitable stuff and focus on what they're bad at.
Seriously why do companies do that?
We a company is in trouble it needs to cut costs and sell assets. You can sell off your crap, but nobody wants to pay much money for crap, so you'd go under anyway. The only thing that's going to make enough money to keep you afloat, is to sell your "seed corn". So you sell your most valuable assets, keep the crap and hope that someone left can spin that crap into gold.
Yes, 99 times out of 100, you are going under anyway, but if every other way has 100% chance of failure, it's time to throw the Hail Mary pass and hope for the best.
A switch to a pay-TV subscription model would stymie Aereo but could hurt affiliate stations
Can they even do this? Don't affiliates have multi-year contracts, with exclusive territory agreements ? Who would agree to be a network affiliate if they could just pull the plug from you at any time?
The insolvability of the "halting problem" is only for arbitrary programs with arbitrary input. Certain defined classes of problems with defined inputs are very solvable.
It's not often done because it's extraordinarily time-consuming; the time it takes to do goes up exponentially with program length/complexity, I believe.
But it's not doable to automatically ensure the specs are correct. i.e. If you have correct specifications for an adult, those might not be appropriate for an child or infant.
...
He refused to put his life at risk when the police threatened him, and they made good on the threat, even if he was within the law....
True, but man, how cool could it have been if he had agreed? He, and his family were already in danger, even if he didn't cooperate with the feds.
They were going to set him up with a shop with everything he needed. He could have modded cars for the CIA, and become "Q". If I were him, the first mod would be to put machine guns in my own car.
Suppose I stream a DRM'd movie from Netflix that's 4GB. I don't know how to measure it explicitly on my computer, but I know I can do the decode entirely in software, and that the TDP of my CPU is 35 watts. I doubt that the difference between playing the movie with and without encryption is that big of a fraction of that -- perhaps 5W?
How does that compare to the power used by the routers etc. that carried that data to me?
Good question, but unencrypted data caches better. If you and your neighbors all want to watch the same show, a torrent-type protocol that sends a bit of the show to each, then your computers trade amongst themselves, is much more efficient that sending a specific stream to each machine.
imagine if mobile data service was non-proprietary: your phone simply negotiated a 5 minute service contract with the set of carriers it could detect at the moment, wherever you happen to be. (voice and text would simply layer over data, of course.) yes, that sort of thing is obvious to any techie as The Right Way, but it's our fault that the public has gone along the proprietary route: we need to speak up.
There's precedence for this. Imagine that every broadcast system, AM, FM and TV used it's own frequencies and protocols. If you wanted to watch CBS you'd need a different TV from the one that watches ABC. Exclusive deals would be made, and some TVs could receive NBC, FOX and ABC, but some would only receive independents. That's what's happening with Internet TV right now. The thought is we're still in the shakeout phase, but once the great ideas bubble to the top, everything will work. But with exclusive contracts, it's possible that there will never be one (inexpensive) platform that will display all internet broadcasts.
never sure why weapons that use a small explosive charge to propel a metal slug are particularly special in this regard
Arms aren't "weapons that use a small explosive charge to propel a metal slug".
Arms are weapons that you can carry. Cannon are weapons that need help. (horse & or carriage)
Individuals were allowed to own weapons they could carry, but not the big stuff. Your example is apt. The Supremes have decided that some small weapons *could* be regulated, regardless of the 2nd amendment. No backpack nukes.
You can mod all you want, but you can't sell the device/process that makes the mods. Even selling you moded console after you are done with it is grey.
Unless your console is a cell phone that was under contract with a cell carrier.
As the United Kingdom's National Grid operators have found, a small decline in electricity consumption does not translate into less energy being pumped into the grid, and therefore will not reduce emissions
The article didn't say, "almost zero" emission reductions, it claimed zero.
The reality is that the original article is lying by omission. Yes, if one person turns off one 100 watt bulb, the generating plants don't burn any less fuel, what happens is everyone else's bulbs get a few millionths of a volt more, and put out a few millionths more lumens. No-one notices.
If *everyone* turns off every light bulb in their house, then there should be a noticeable drop in load at the generators, and less fuel should be burned. Energy companies could also shift load from the more expensive generator stations.
Let's run that in reverse. A small increase in energy usage, like my one, 100 watt, bulb, won't increase the amount of energy pumped into the grid, so I shouldn't have to pay for it. (It's only 100 watts)
Let's get everyone to do that! Free energy!! Perpetual Motion!!!
That's the best idea so far. A few machines that students can trash are invaluable. If the students spend most of the time tearing it down, and rebuilding the cluster, it's not going to use much power.
You could have them predict what changing CPU/Memory/Interconnect will do to performance, then make them try it out. Put some *Science* into Computer Science.
Bulges are bad. Leaks are bad. If the smoke has been released, doubly bad.
Other than that, you have to know what voltage is supposed to be on them, and measure it. If you still suspect something use a scope. Worst case, you have to desolder it, then check it's value and ESR. Mostly, I don't bother, I just replace suspect caps until whatever is working.
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You're tough, you didn't die, you've lived to post about it.
Every kid that was killed by weird diseases caused by picking things up, isn't posting.
Cool. I stand corrected.
The Global plates are moving all the time, so this has had to be taken into account when you are doing high accuracy surveying.
If you had a run of the mill GPS system, and you drove your car very, very, far North, eventually you'd lose signal.
What I imagine is going on here, is that there is a ring of base stations watching the GPS satellites around each pole. If you know the base stations haven't moved w.r.t. the pole, then you can calculate where the center of spin is, thus where the pole is.
My mom, also a grandmother, still uses an OS9 machine next to but not networked into her OS X laptop.
I've been stockpiling parts so I should be able to keep it running for at least 20 more years. (B.t.w. I have 33 year old arcade machines that are still running fine)
Sometimes there's no reason to upgrade.
You are correct. The problem is that people don't know what they want. But perhaps, if they tried, the networks would find that "Box of Puppies" and "Pictures of Cats with Funny Captions" are their highest rated programs.
With any battery technology, it's almost never the "Memory Effect", but simple overcharging. If your laptop batteries are always hot just sitting there when the laptop is plugged into the mains, they won't last as long as ones that are properly charged and left alone until they are needed for discharge. With cheap cordless drills and other tools, simple putting a timer on the charger will greatly increase the number of cycles you can get out of the batteries.
If Steve Jobs were still alive, he'd just find the next big thing, and stop using NAND flash. Memristors anyone?
Of course, if anyone else tried this, the new tech would be non-viable, but Steve would use his force of will to make the new tech work at the price he wanted to pay.
... Naturally then the company needs to dump all the profitable stuff and focus on what they're bad at.
Seriously why do companies do that?
We a company is in trouble it needs to cut costs and sell assets. You can sell off your crap, but nobody wants to pay much money for crap, so you'd go under anyway. The only thing that's going to make enough money to keep you afloat, is to sell your "seed corn". So you sell your most valuable assets, keep the crap and hope that someone left can spin that crap into gold.
Yes, 99 times out of 100, you are going under anyway, but if every other way has 100% chance of failure, it's time to throw the Hail Mary pass and hope for the best.
The largest employers forbid employees from posting "official" reviews. The largest software vendors forbid *anyone* from posting performance reviews.
Other than that, great idea!
A switch to a pay-TV subscription model would stymie Aereo but could hurt affiliate stations
Can they even do this? Don't affiliates have multi-year contracts, with exclusive territory agreements ? Who would agree to be a network affiliate if they could just pull the plug from you at any time?
wow, does it solve the halting problem as well?
The insolvability of the "halting problem" is only for arbitrary programs with arbitrary input. Certain defined classes of problems with defined inputs are very solvable.
It's doable to ensure a program does exactly what its specs say it should do. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_verification.
It's not often done because it's extraordinarily time-consuming; the time it takes to do goes up exponentially with program length/complexity, I believe.
But it's not doable to automatically ensure the specs are correct. i.e. If you have correct specifications for an adult, those might not be appropriate for an child or infant.
... He refused to put his life at risk when the police threatened him, and they made good on the threat, even if he was within the law. ...
True, but man, how cool could it have been if he had agreed? He, and his family were already in danger, even if he didn't cooperate with the feds. They were going to set him up with a shop with everything he needed. He could have modded cars for the CIA, and become "Q". If I were him, the first mod would be to put machine guns in my own car.
Yes, but you forgot:
You are a large bank, the failure of which would cripple the economy. You get a bailout and bonuses for your C level.
Is it CPU cycles that take the power?
Suppose I stream a DRM'd movie from Netflix that's 4GB. I don't know how to measure it explicitly on my computer, but I know I can do the decode entirely in software, and that the TDP of my CPU is 35 watts. I doubt that the difference between playing the movie with and without encryption is that big of a fraction of that -- perhaps 5W?
How does that compare to the power used by the routers etc. that carried that data to me?
Good question, but unencrypted data caches better. If you and your neighbors all want to watch the same show, a torrent-type protocol that sends a bit of the show to each, then your computers trade amongst themselves, is much more efficient that sending a specific stream to each machine.
imagine if mobile data service was non-proprietary: your phone simply negotiated a 5 minute service contract with the set of carriers it could detect at the moment, wherever you happen to be. (voice and text would simply layer over data, of course.) yes, that sort of thing is obvious to any techie as The Right Way, but it's our fault that the public has gone along the proprietary route: we need to speak up.
There's precedence for this. Imagine that every broadcast system, AM, FM and TV used it's own frequencies and protocols. If you wanted to watch CBS you'd need a different TV from the one that watches ABC. Exclusive deals would be made, and some TVs could receive NBC, FOX and ABC, but some would only receive independents. That's what's happening with Internet TV right now. The thought is we're still in the shakeout phase, but once the great ideas bubble to the top, everything will work. But with exclusive contracts, it's possible that there will never be one (inexpensive) platform that will display all internet broadcasts.
never sure why weapons that use a small explosive charge to propel a metal slug are particularly special in this regard
Arms aren't "weapons that use a small explosive charge to propel a metal slug".
Arms are weapons that you can carry. Cannon are weapons that need help. (horse & or carriage)
Individuals were allowed to own weapons they could carry, but not the big stuff. Your example is apt. The Supremes have decided that some small weapons *could* be regulated, regardless of the 2nd amendment. No backpack nukes.
You can mod all you want, but you can't sell the device/process that makes the mods. Even selling you moded console after you are done with it is grey.
...
Unless your console is a cell phone that was under contract with a cell carrier.
Unless your local prosecutor is having a bad day.
Unless
As the United Kingdom's National Grid operators have found, a small decline in electricity consumption does not translate into less energy being pumped into the grid, and therefore will not reduce emissions
The article didn't say, "almost zero" emission reductions, it claimed zero.
The reality is that the original article is lying by omission. Yes, if one person turns off one 100 watt bulb, the generating plants don't burn any less fuel, what happens is everyone else's bulbs get a few millionths of a volt more, and put out a few millionths more lumens. No-one notices.
If *everyone* turns off every light bulb in their house, then there should be a noticeable drop in load at the generators, and less fuel should be burned. Energy companies could also shift load from the more expensive generator stations.
Anyway, this is an example of Poe's law.
Let's run that in reverse. A small increase in energy usage, like my one, 100 watt, bulb, won't increase the amount of energy pumped into the grid, so I shouldn't have to pay for it. (It's only 100 watts)
Let's get everyone to do that! Free energy!! Perpetual Motion!!!
As for the hardware, a 2006 processor could be a Intel Core 2 running at 2.6 Ghz - 2.6 TRILLION operations per second. ...
You must be on the other side of the Pond. Over here in the USA, a 2.6GHz machine can only do 2.6 Billion OPS.
That's the best idea so far. A few machines that students can trash are invaluable. If the students spend most of the time tearing it down, and rebuilding the cluster, it's not going to use much power.
You could have them predict what changing CPU/Memory/Interconnect will do to performance, then make them try it out. Put some *Science* into Computer Science.
How do you check motherboards for bad capacitors?
Bulges are bad. Leaks are bad. If the smoke has been released, doubly bad.
Other than that, you have to know what voltage is supposed to be on them, and measure it. If you still suspect something use a scope. Worst case, you have to desolder it, then check it's value and ESR. Mostly, I don't bother, I just replace suspect caps until whatever is working.