Have I ever touched a wrench across both terminals? Not intentionally, I have shorted the positive battery connnection either to the body of the car or the negative terminal accidentally while removing or installing a cable many, many times. It will definitely throw sparks and cause pitts in your tool, but I don't remember it ever being painful. What I have done, more times than I care to admit, is touch a coil wire or spark plug when the engine is running. That is painful. The coil transforms the 12 Volts and 1000 amps into several thousand volts and correspondingly low amperage so that the spark will jump the tiny gap in the spark plug. 12 Volts won't jump the gap no matter how much current you have in it.
Low voltage definitely has power behind it, with enough current behind it and a low impedance path to ground it will generate sparks and heat. The original discussion was about how high current is good to burn things with, but current is useless without voltage to accompany it with. If you had a low enough voltage source, less than is required to overcome the impedence of the conductor, even shorting with a piece of steel would not result in any heat or light.
How about if you cross the terminals with a steel socket wrench. YOU DEFINETILY FEEL SOMETHING THEN!!!
All that will happen is the wrench will get hot after a few seconds, and this is only because the 12 volts is large enough to create current across the impedence of the wrench. A steel wrench has a much lower impedence than a human body.
On a side note, you would have to have a very large socket to reach across the terminals on most batteries. I would probably use a box end, open end, combination, rachet or breaker bar rather than a socket.
you can have high amps, and low voltage,
or high voltage and low amps (power lines)
Or high amps and high voltage (or I suppose low amps and low voltage). Watts are Amps * Volts (P=IV), or at least they were when I was in school. High amperage won't burn anything without some voltage. A car battery typically is rated for around 1000 Amps, but only 12 volts. As such you can touch both terminals of a 12 volt car battery and not feel a thing. OTOH, a power line has 120V and around 30 amps (before you blow the breaker), but a residential power line will definitely burn things.
A very large current is useless if the voltage is too low to overcome the impedance of the circuit you want to use. Including voltage, thus power, into the equation is the only way to really measure usefulness.
Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god.
Jean Rostand, Thoughts of a Biologist (1939)
(1894 - 1977)
The theory I read in The Cartoon History of the Universe (great book) was that as the gases condensed to form the Sun they began to spin faster and faster. This scattered out debris that would orbit around the Sun along the same plane. It is that debris which condensed to form what I consider to be planets.
Figured it was something like that. Still seems like there could have been some variation over the last billion years or so.
Even though it may not be the technical definition, I like the idea of the offspring of the Sun being the de facto planets in our Solar System.
I don't think that would work. Are planets only from our Sun? What do you do with so called 'rouge planets'? How do we know if it came from the Sun or not? Didn't all of the asteriods and such come from the Sun, why wouldn't they be planets?
Mr. Lee was _free_ to choose whether or not to sign the non-compete contract when he took the job on his own accord.
OK, fine. If that's the case why is Microsoft suing Google? Google didn't sign a contract. Seems to me that Google can hire anyone they want - any contract issues would have to be handled by the individuals. Also thought that somewhere in these articles about this part of Mr. Lee's motivation was to be able to move back to China. Why the heck doesn't he move back and Google hire him there. Microsoft is going to have a hell of a time getting their contract lawsuit to hold up in Chinese court.
That's a good point. Most software companies do compete with Microsoft on some level, or if they don't they could at any moment. Microsoft has it's hand in every possible aspect of software production. If this case had involved someone moving from Oracle, Sun, IBM, HP, or any other number of tech companies I doubt it would have much merit at all. The only other companies that would have problems with one of their engineers working for Google would be someone like Yahoo or Ask Jeeves.
Two questions. First, what's the story on the plane of all the inner planets. Why are they all on the same plane. Seems to me that there should be some kind of random distribution of the orbits.
Second, what exactly is a "planet"? Is there a size criteria or some other magic qualification that distinguishes an asteroid or some other hunk of rock from a planet? Seems to me if there is, and Pluto doesn't meet the qualifications, it should be downgraded (although I for one will miss it). OTOH, if there is no formal criteria, let's just let it stay a planet.
As the old addage goes, there's an exception to every rule and you have one. Cable internet service in my area happens to be very reliable. I have only had one outage in the past year. Also, cell phones run on batteries, if they are charged using them during a power outage isn't a problem.
Landlines are very reliable and it's reasonable for anyone that has potential health problems that may require assistance to have the most reliable means of communication possible. It may only take ONE time, but as also mentioned elswhere in this thread, life is a series of trade-offs. We don't live in a perfectly safe world, for me it's not worth $40/month for the extra comfort of a landline when I have a cell phone that is very reliable. For your grandmother this may not be a viable option, although I imagine statistically having an emergency where a cell or VOIP phone fails is much less than many other life threatening circumstances.
Define blow up? Even if the Linux system would allow all of the resources to be taken up by your process it would still run. I have had similar circumstances many times and the machine will become unresponsive because there are no resources to respond with, but it doesn't crash and doesn't reboot - unless I manually intervene. As far as the system knows it's doing exactly what you want it to, if you didn't want it to fork and infinite number of processes you should have set a soft or hard limit.
The only times I've seen a linux machine spontaneously reboot there has been a kernel panic generally due to a hardware error. I can't say the same for Windows.
No doubt. I can count on one hand how many times I've called 911 in the last 30 years. Most of those situations haven't been life threatening emergencies where arrival was critical. Most recently called 911 because some old man was wandering into traffic on a busy street - more preemptive than emergency. People are all crazy about this alleged 911 problem, but I bet the odds are better of getting struck by lightning than being in a situation where you have to call 911 and your cell phone either doesn't work or you aren't coherent enough to tell the dispatcher where you are. I know there have been incidents where crime victims have called 911 from a cell and the emergency personnel have not been able to reach them, but they are few and far between.
That said, I don't see how DSL is economical at all. Landline service is relatively expensive. We are all going to have cell phones anyway, why pay for both. I got a cable modem and got rid of my land line. It's pretty much a wash - and DSL wouldn't have been cheaper if I combined the DSL charge with my landline charge.
That is just the silliest expression ever. Why have a cake if you aren't going to eat it? If I don't have a cake, who's cake can I eat? I'm pretty sure people get irritated if I go around stealing their cake and eating it. Don't think the whole "You can't have your cake and eat it too." argument is going to get me out of cake stealing jail.
There is a market for web based apps, just look how many there are out there right now. I would use an online word processer, maybe not for $10/month, but maybe for $1/use. I hardly ever use an actual word processor - most of my personal stuff are straight text files that I use Vi for. For the once a month or so that I need to send a letter, invoice or something I would gladly log into a web based app, especially if they would print an envelope and mail my letter for me. That's just one idea, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of applications that would be great to be able to run from the web if they were platform independent and reasonably priced.
The difference between that and this article is the idea that the net would be one huge computer you would just tap in to. That's just never going to happen. First, how are you ever going to get everyone to buy in to that idea. Second, who is going to keep it running and keep performance where we need it. The very thing that has made the net so successful is the fact that it's so heterogenous. The ability for anyone anywhere to add a page, product, service, or online store to it easily and quickly is what's fueld it's existence. If it evolves into one large entity where everyone is doing the same thing at the same time it's usefulness and appeal will diminish.
our job as parents is to teach them right from wrong so that they can resist bad influences on their own, and to intervene when they aren't doing what they know is right.
Absolutely right. It's not Hillary's job, it's not the government's job, it's the parent's job. I'm not so sure that our politcal system is dominated by everyone's fear. I think it's more of an attitude that 'hey, that's a good idea'. Most responsible parents don't want their kids playing games like GTA, so they have not problem with the government passing laws to restrict games like that. People that aren't so responsible and don't care generally don't care enough to vote or get involved in politics otherwise.
I think the real problem with our political environment right now has more to do with our economic and social situation. The masses in general are happy and busy. If our economy took a serious downturn and everyone was too broke to pay $9.00 to see a movie, we might see some people get involved in the political process again. As it is now, as long as everyone has a job and can afford the latest DVD everything is good.
20$ is not good for CD, nor is 20$ for 200 mins or air time or 0.10$ per SMS or 49.95$ per month for net or 92.5 cents/litre for fuel or 2.60$ per litre of pop or...
Difference is, everything you mentioned, except CDs, is in a competitive market. I don't be $20 for 200 minutes of air time, I pay $40 for 1000 - which makes 200 minutes about $10. I pay $7 for 1000 SMS which makes each message about 0.007$. At least here in the states, fuel prices can vary signficantly based on the day or the station you are at. If you don't like $2.60 for a liter of pop buy the store brand for $1.50. The problem with the price of CDs is they are ALL $20. Doesn't matter if they are good, if they suck, if they are popular or if they are collecting dust they are all pretty much the same price when they initially come out. Sounds like price fixing to me.
Re:Why fuss with KDE when can buy an Apple?
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Preview of KDE 3.5
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Who cares?
I do. If you like MacOS X, want to pay for it, make Jobs even richer and use it, great. I OTOH really like the ability to "tune them to world's end", plus the overall flexibility of Linux.
I would agree that the Linux GUIs (kde, gnome, whatever...) are not perfect - probably not as good as the MacOS X GUI, but they are constantly changing and improving. If you don't like it, don't use it, but don't disparage those of us that still value freedom and choice.
This bullshit of placing ads is likely to backfire and people will stay away in droves.
Thing is much advertising for consumer products is about name recognition. The idea is try to get the consumer to remember your name when they are trying to pick from the 400 beers your local restaurant has on tap. Unless the ad is truly offensive it doesn't make a big enough impact for a person to actually conciously remember the product AND avoid it. Much more likely for the consumer to say "Hey, I've heard of brand X beer. I'll order it and see what it's like".
1. I'm not an Apple Zealot - strictly Linux
2. You are right, they don't normally charge for service packs (unless you consider Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000 and Windows XP service packs). Should have said we will have to purchase "Virtual Earth 2006" or "Virtual Earth Professional" for the latest updated maps.
...Microsoft is not interested (historically) in providing people with data or resources as much as they are interested in making money.
So let me guess, I'm going to have to purchase Virtual Earth SP1 to get the up to date maps. If I want maps from 1994 I can use the free ones, but to get current stuff I'll have to buy the service pack. Sounds like a typical Microsoft revenue model to me.
by your reasoning, microsoft should have sued the individual in question and not google. that individual left microsoft and violated the contract, google did not.
Good point. I'm not sure how Microsoft is getting away with suing Google over this. My guess is this guy is moving back to China so he doesn't really care what the US courts say about him personally, not like China is going to be super supportive over Microsoft's lawsuit. Microsoft's other alternative is to sue Google - that's probably a wasted effort too, but it makes Google look like an evil corporation that is stealing employees from other companies. As is typical for Microsoft this will probably backfire because many people think they are evil already so it's OK do to evil things to them.
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Have I ever touched a wrench across both terminals? Not intentionally, I have shorted the positive battery connnection either to the body of the car or the negative terminal accidentally while removing or installing a cable many, many times. It will definitely throw sparks and cause pitts in your tool, but I don't remember it ever being painful. What I have done, more times than I care to admit, is touch a coil wire or spark plug when the engine is running. That is painful. The coil transforms the 12 Volts and 1000 amps into several thousand volts and correspondingly low amperage so that the spark will jump the tiny gap in the spark plug. 12 Volts won't jump the gap no matter how much current you have in it.
Low voltage definitely has power behind it, with enough current behind it and a low impedance path to ground it will generate sparks and heat. The original discussion was about how high current is good to burn things with, but current is useless without voltage to accompany it with. If you had a low enough voltage source, less than is required to overcome the impedence of the conductor, even shorting with a piece of steel would not result in any heat or light.
How about if you cross the terminals with a steel socket wrench. YOU DEFINETILY FEEL SOMETHING THEN!!!
All that will happen is the wrench will get hot after a few seconds, and this is only because the 12 volts is large enough to create current across the impedence of the wrench. A steel wrench has a much lower impedence than a human body.
On a side note, you would have to have a very large socket to reach across the terminals on most batteries. I would probably use a box end, open end, combination, rachet or breaker bar rather than a socket.
you can have high amps, and low voltage, or high voltage and low amps (power lines)
Or high amps and high voltage (or I suppose low amps and low voltage). Watts are Amps * Volts (P=IV), or at least they were when I was in school. High amperage won't burn anything without some voltage. A car battery typically is rated for around 1000 Amps, but only 12 volts. As such you can touch both terminals of a 12 volt car battery and not feel a thing. OTOH, a power line has 120V and around 30 amps (before you blow the breaker), but a residential power line will definitely burn things.
A very large current is useless if the voltage is too low to overcome the impedance of the circuit you want to use. Including voltage, thus power, into the equation is the only way to really measure usefulness.
Your post reminds me of this quote:
Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god.
Jean Rostand, Thoughts of a Biologist (1939) (1894 - 1977)
Dammit! I meant 'rogue planets' of course.
The theory I read in The Cartoon History of the Universe (great book) was that as the gases condensed to form the Sun they began to spin faster and faster. This scattered out debris that would orbit around the Sun along the same plane. It is that debris which condensed to form what I consider to be planets.
Figured it was something like that. Still seems like there could have been some variation over the last billion years or so.
Even though it may not be the technical definition, I like the idea of the offspring of the Sun being the de facto planets in our Solar System.
I don't think that would work. Are planets only from our Sun? What do you do with so called 'rouge planets'? How do we know if it came from the Sun or not? Didn't all of the asteriods and such come from the Sun, why wouldn't they be planets?
Mr. Lee was _free_ to choose whether or not to sign the non-compete contract when he took the job on his own accord.
OK, fine. If that's the case why is Microsoft suing Google? Google didn't sign a contract. Seems to me that Google can hire anyone they want - any contract issues would have to be handled by the individuals. Also thought that somewhere in these articles about this part of Mr. Lee's motivation was to be able to move back to China. Why the heck doesn't he move back and Google hire him there. Microsoft is going to have a hell of a time getting their contract lawsuit to hold up in Chinese court.
That's a good point. Most software companies do compete with Microsoft on some level, or if they don't they could at any moment. Microsoft has it's hand in every possible aspect of software production. If this case had involved someone moving from Oracle, Sun, IBM, HP, or any other number of tech companies I doubt it would have much merit at all. The only other companies that would have problems with one of their engineers working for Google would be someone like Yahoo or Ask Jeeves.
Two questions. First, what's the story on the plane of all the inner planets. Why are they all on the same plane. Seems to me that there should be some kind of random distribution of the orbits.
Second, what exactly is a "planet"? Is there a size criteria or some other magic qualification that distinguishes an asteroid or some other hunk of rock from a planet? Seems to me if there is, and Pluto doesn't meet the qualifications, it should be downgraded (although I for one will miss it). OTOH, if there is no formal criteria, let's just let it stay a planet.
As the old addage goes, there's an exception to every rule and you have one. Cable internet service in my area happens to be very reliable. I have only had one outage in the past year. Also, cell phones run on batteries, if they are charged using them during a power outage isn't a problem.
Landlines are very reliable and it's reasonable for anyone that has potential health problems that may require assistance to have the most reliable means of communication possible. It may only take ONE time, but as also mentioned elswhere in this thread, life is a series of trade-offs. We don't live in a perfectly safe world, for me it's not worth $40/month for the extra comfort of a landline when I have a cell phone that is very reliable. For your grandmother this may not be a viable option, although I imagine statistically having an emergency where a cell or VOIP phone fails is much less than many other life threatening circumstances.
Define blow up? Even if the Linux system would allow all of the resources to be taken up by your process it would still run. I have had similar circumstances many times and the machine will become unresponsive because there are no resources to respond with, but it doesn't crash and doesn't reboot - unless I manually intervene. As far as the system knows it's doing exactly what you want it to, if you didn't want it to fork and infinite number of processes you should have set a soft or hard limit.
The only times I've seen a linux machine spontaneously reboot there has been a kernel panic generally due to a hardware error. I can't say the same for Windows.
No doubt. I can count on one hand how many times I've called 911 in the last 30 years. Most of those situations haven't been life threatening emergencies where arrival was critical. Most recently called 911 because some old man was wandering into traffic on a busy street - more preemptive than emergency. People are all crazy about this alleged 911 problem, but I bet the odds are better of getting struck by lightning than being in a situation where you have to call 911 and your cell phone either doesn't work or you aren't coherent enough to tell the dispatcher where you are. I know there have been incidents where crime victims have called 911 from a cell and the emergency personnel have not been able to reach them, but they are few and far between.
That said, I don't see how DSL is economical at all. Landline service is relatively expensive. We are all going to have cell phones anyway, why pay for both. I got a cable modem and got rid of my land line. It's pretty much a wash - and DSL wouldn't have been cheaper if I combined the DSL charge with my landline charge.
You can't have your cake and eat it too.
That is just the silliest expression ever. Why have a cake if you aren't going to eat it? If I don't have a cake, who's cake can I eat? I'm pretty sure people get irritated if I go around stealing their cake and eating it. Don't think the whole "You can't have your cake and eat it too." argument is going to get me out of cake stealing jail.
Jump through hoops? I was verified in under thirty seconds with two clicks,
Just because you are a fast jumper doesn't mean it wasn't a hoop.
There is a market for web based apps, just look how many there are out there right now. I would use an online word processer, maybe not for $10/month, but maybe for $1/use. I hardly ever use an actual word processor - most of my personal stuff are straight text files that I use Vi for. For the once a month or so that I need to send a letter, invoice or something I would gladly log into a web based app, especially if they would print an envelope and mail my letter for me. That's just one idea, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of applications that would be great to be able to run from the web if they were platform independent and reasonably priced.
The difference between that and this article is the idea that the net would be one huge computer you would just tap in to. That's just never going to happen. First, how are you ever going to get everyone to buy in to that idea. Second, who is going to keep it running and keep performance where we need it. The very thing that has made the net so successful is the fact that it's so heterogenous. The ability for anyone anywhere to add a page, product, service, or online store to it easily and quickly is what's fueld it's existence. If it evolves into one large entity where everyone is doing the same thing at the same time it's usefulness and appeal will diminish.
our job as parents is to teach them right from wrong so that they can resist bad influences on their own, and to intervene when they aren't doing what they know is right.
Absolutely right. It's not Hillary's job, it's not the government's job, it's the parent's job. I'm not so sure that our politcal system is dominated by everyone's fear. I think it's more of an attitude that 'hey, that's a good idea'. Most responsible parents don't want their kids playing games like GTA, so they have not problem with the government passing laws to restrict games like that. People that aren't so responsible and don't care generally don't care enough to vote or get involved in politics otherwise.
I think the real problem with our political environment right now has more to do with our economic and social situation. The masses in general are happy and busy. If our economy took a serious downturn and everyone was too broke to pay $9.00 to see a movie, we might see some people get involved in the political process again. As it is now, as long as everyone has a job and can afford the latest DVD everything is good.
Will they take a personal check?
20$ is not good for CD, nor is 20$ for 200 mins or air time or 0.10$ per SMS or 49.95$ per month for net or 92.5 cents/litre for fuel or 2.60$ per litre of pop or ...
Difference is, everything you mentioned, except CDs, is in a competitive market. I don't be $20 for 200 minutes of air time, I pay $40 for 1000 - which makes 200 minutes about $10. I pay $7 for 1000 SMS which makes each message about 0.007$. At least here in the states, fuel prices can vary signficantly based on the day or the station you are at. If you don't like $2.60 for a liter of pop buy the store brand for $1.50. The problem with the price of CDs is they are ALL $20. Doesn't matter if they are good, if they suck, if they are popular or if they are collecting dust they are all pretty much the same price when they initially come out. Sounds like price fixing to me.
Who cares?
I do. If you like MacOS X, want to pay for it, make Jobs even richer and use it, great. I OTOH really like the ability to "tune them to world's end", plus the overall flexibility of Linux.
I would agree that the Linux GUIs (kde, gnome, whatever...) are not perfect - probably not as good as the MacOS X GUI, but they are constantly changing and improving. If you don't like it, don't use it, but don't disparage those of us that still value freedom and choice.
Yeah, I assumed that was the case - just thought a waterpark in Moscow sounded funny.
New freeways, inexpensive cars, waterparks, big businesses
Waterparks in Moscow? Now that sounds like a moneymaker. Enjoy that sunshine for what, 3 weeks a year or so?
This bullshit of placing ads is likely to backfire and people will stay away in droves.
Thing is much advertising for consumer products is about name recognition. The idea is try to get the consumer to remember your name when they are trying to pick from the 400 beers your local restaurant has on tap. Unless the ad is truly offensive it doesn't make a big enough impact for a person to actually conciously remember the product AND avoid it. Much more likely for the consumer to say "Hey, I've heard of brand X beer. I'll order it and see what it's like".
Question, Apple Zealot
1. I'm not an Apple Zealot - strictly Linux
2. You are right, they don't normally charge for service packs (unless you consider Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000 and Windows XP service packs). Should have said we will have to purchase "Virtual Earth 2006" or "Virtual Earth Professional" for the latest updated maps.
...Microsoft is not interested (historically) in providing people with data or resources as much as they are interested in making money.
So let me guess, I'm going to have to purchase Virtual Earth SP1 to get the up to date maps. If I want maps from 1994 I can use the free ones, but to get current stuff I'll have to buy the service pack. Sounds like a typical Microsoft revenue model to me.
by your reasoning, microsoft should have sued the individual in question and not google. that individual left microsoft and violated the contract, google did not.
Good point. I'm not sure how Microsoft is getting away with suing Google over this. My guess is this guy is moving back to China so he doesn't really care what the US courts say about him personally, not like China is going to be super supportive over Microsoft's lawsuit. Microsoft's other alternative is to sue Google - that's probably a wasted effort too, but it makes Google look like an evil corporation that is stealing employees from other companies. As is typical for Microsoft this will probably backfire because many people think they are evil already so it's OK do to evil things to them.