Yes there's not a lot of profits. But so does the Energy wholesale. Welcome to the wholesale marketing world!
Seriously though in this economy cash is king. Most big-named energy company knows this. With revolving debt or not they keep a handsome amount of cash on-hand from the revenue generated from stable but relatively thin margin business units.
So yeah. Perhaps they just have not learn the shift in paradigm properly and blame the shift as "bad", in reality they just don't know their stuff that's all.
I don't know if you have ever seen a internals of a jack. Basically you have 2 piece of metal, both with a rounded tips, hanging out. The metal act as a spring to apply tension pressure when the plug is inserted, maintaining a constant contact between the tips (remember the rounded tips?) and the plug (both the tip, ring, and sleeve). They usually have only 1 for the for each of the tip, ring, and sleeve.
So essentially the design of the jack right now (in current production) are pretty much one-sided. They just bring the contact where the wire is soldered to another side for easy access.
The things is your typical "PLC" these days is pretty much a ruggedized PC running Windows, and a likely buggy stack of control software packages on top of that; which do not get along with the security patches for Windows, so Windows does not get patched. This is pretty serious problem when these machines are not properly isolated.
Actually the PLC itself is most likely designed with embedded architectures. The only company that advertise the use of an Intel processor is GE and I don't think I have heard them bragging about it for the last couple of years, most likely because their customer (or intended audience) do not like the fact that it is too similar to a standard PC.
What is running the Windows are your operator interfaces, which is what the operator (in this case, the guards) would possibly be using to interface with the PLC. If proper design were followed no interlocks should have been programmed in the operator console and left vulnerable to the generic windows attack.
Believe it or not it is not that hard to tell if someone has done anything to a PLC's programming. All it takes is a simple system periodically scanning the compiled hash stored on the PLC against the authorized copy stored somewhere else. Either the controlled copy or the PLC gets changed it can generate a notification to appropriate personnel.
Last but not least if the control designer have any forethoughts a safety-grade safety relay can be put in-place to kill any commands from the PLC. This would effectively enforce a prison-wide lock-down until it can be mechanically reset. Since these buggers are purely electro-mechanical and once you kill it, it can only be reset locally (by applying a control voltage, which can be permanently turned-off) that is accessible in a safe-zone.
In the end though, this is like any other security issue: It's never perfectly secure. But you can make it very difficult where the time it take to override the entire system is a lot longer than the response time. That would mostly make it an ineffective option compares to legal wrangling or human engineering, which is not part of the discussion.
Okay you got some point. But I can tell you from experience cable management is not as trivial as you describe. I have personally seen "rats nests" made out of unorganized cables and at the end of the day you can't do jack with all the cables. Any time a cable is in question they are being replaced by another cable, adding more to the problem already existed.
Moral of the story? Someone has to put his foot down and demand certain level of cable management and documentation. Without them you are lost in the long run.
Buy some lead-acid batteries and a good charger and an inverter. There you have a simple system to filter out the horrible sine waves diesel generator produce (not to mention the power factor corrections).
Let's think this way:
With SAMs installed to protect buildings taller than 1000':
1. There are more sites/locations that might not be possible to properly guard the installation. Or it would be guarded with lighter regiment of troops.
2. These SAMs sites are going to be A LOT closer to densely populated area.
3. This would makes it a much easier target for terrorists to acquire heavy arms
4. Once the options becomes available. Terrorists can choose to a. Take the missiles/explosives elsewhere or b. deploy/fire it to another target on the spot
5. We make easier for terrorists to accomplish what they want to do: causing damage and create fears among general population.
Since I can get to it (after a long delay), perhaps I would just post TFA itself:
Overclocking Competition
CPU overclocking is old school, and GPU overclocking isn't much newer. Memory overclocking? Been there done that. For all of you hardware modders looking for something else to let the white smoke out of, have we got a challenge for you! Hard drive overclocking! Why do you want to do this? Because you can! And, in these days of really big hard drives, getting data off the things can take a long time. So much time that it has created somewhat of a challenge for the digital forensic boffins – some of their lab coats are starting to get cobwebs from standing around waiting for so long (Have you ever tried dusting off a forensics boffin? No thanks). So, what we want to know is, can you modify a traditional mechanical hard drive so that we can pull data off it more quickly than those conservative hard drive manufacturers want us to. So, for example, if it currently takes 2 hours to read an entire 500GB hard drive, we want to be able to do it in 1 hour. Your job is to come up with a method which allows us to read data as fast as possible, which can be reversed afterwards. Oh, and did we mention the prize?
Aim:
Conduct a once only read for an entire 500 GB hard drive in the maximum time 1 hour.
Materials:
Western Digital Caviar Black 3.5" SATA 500GB hard drive (WD5002AALX).
Method:
The method used to modify the drive must be reversible, and the drive itself must not be damaged. It is acceptable to build a "magic box" to put the drive in to make it go faster if that is a viable solution – the drive doesn't have to be plugged into any particular PC. Flashing firmware, increasing voltage, magic cradles are all possible solutions.
Due Date:
1st September 2011
Submission:
Please send all entries to hdoverclock@secau.net we will organise alternate submission methods for uploading of video or other evidence as necessary to verify the entry.
Other information:
We are interested in any viable method which can be found, so even if you don't hit 1 hour, we would still like to hear from you. In the event that we don't get any entry below 1 hour we will consider awarding money to a method which completes a once through read in a time faster than the default "fastest" time. Also in the event of low entries, we will consider an extension to the due date.
The fine print
The prize will be awarded to the highest viable overclocking method which can be achieved at the closing date of the competition.
The method must be verified by ECU and its employees as being viable, and less than or equal to the 1 hour time as stated. A prize of $5000 will be awarded to the entry which achieves the otherwise fastest read time in the event that no viable method under 1 hour is submitted.
Only one grand prize will be awarded.
ECU retains the right to withdraw or end the competition at any point prior to the end date, and also to extend the end date if necessary.
Whatever provides the voltage is responsible for limiting the current to what it can provide. End of problem. But this "send a voltage request and ack and nak and then toggle this data line to 43 ohms and then draw 3 mA on the other data line and then look for a..." is just crap. Devices with a micro/mini/regular USB connector charge when 5V is applied. Devices with a standard XYZ connector take 19V. (Better would be 12V, but one standard at 19V is better than no standard at all).
I agree with your suggestion. One thing I need more information, however. The standard industrial DC application uses 24VDC, where is the consumer electronic's 19VDC came from?
what about your own service charges? I'm in canada, and more than a handful of transactions in a month and they want to start dinging me money to use debit or a credit card.
In US we don't have service charge for the most part, although some small shops try to enforce minimum to use the credit card for a transaction.
What Microsoft needs is a rapid concept development team that can bring the concepts from their research into marketable products. What that team needs are talented people with enough drives to push the envelope to get things done and get it out in the market. Some of them need to have hard knuckles for corporate food fight.
Then Microsoft needs a new CEO that has enough clout to bring every department in-line and give that rapid concept development team a chance and enough resources to make their goal a reality. Anything short of that Microsoft will not out-duel their competitors out there in the emerging market segments.
Gates used to be able to provide that in the past to cut through red-tapes by simply paying attention to the projects he likes. Story goes that he also at least is willing to listen to people who would tell him how crappy certain programming job is done, and let him fix the problem, even if Gates himself wrote that code. Ballmer simply does not have the breadth and depth of technical knowledge and know how to appreciate and help those who he should cut the red-tapes for.
You realize Foxconn is really a Taiwanese company and China won't care if it dies overnight right? It'll just be replaced by another real Chinese company and absorb all the talents and equipments and run as usual, replacing Foxconn.
they are not 3D, they are just thinner and deeper than the standard, we still dont see transistors on top of each other. the latice is still pretty much 2D. i ussually dont complain too much, but slash dot summaries are batting way below the mendoza line.
No the structure is totally different. Look at how the source, drain, and the gate are arranged. Different geometry here.
The article from AnanTech has the best explanation of the technique I have come across so far today:
How can they limit it if they're letting you access it through any web browser? Maybe if they were requiring you to actually install their software, but it sounds like it's just a basic web interface.
Amazon requires you to log in with your amazon account. Which it does store your credit card information (for a lot of people who actively use their account for legitimate purpose). So for those that actively using their account, I don't foresee too many people sharing their account with friends, especially those wants a free-ride.
Give us sensible copyright laws first and then focus on punishing those who break them.
No.
Law enforcement cannot adequately police the torrents now. Songs are merely a dollar on iTunes -- less other places -- yet the latest pop music album is but a two-minute download via Vuze or some other client within a few days of its release. How will diminishing the copyright term -- which at least assures the artist of some revenue from reputable distributors and honest consumers -- increases the technical efficacy of the forces policing copyright?
Demonstrate how the consumer genie can be placed back in the bottle and then we can have a discussion about attenuating the creators' term of copyright.
Buddy, you got this whole this up-side-down. Fix the structure where it becomes reasonable then most people will find it to be easier to be honest. More people uses iTune to acquire music legally now or using streaming music from legal sources than pirating music nowadays (at least in my circle of friends now). Majority of people will do what is right when they don't feel like being ripped-off on a transaction.
Seriously dude, you were/are a programmer, your job is boring, quit trying to make it should exciting. It's not.
Sorry but I am curious, so what do you do to earn a living? Why are you trolling/. community then?
He might be more passionate about programming than you do. That doesn't make programming more or less interesting. Someone might find car mechanics boring but there are people doing it as a hobby restoring older cars (I am not talking about antiques here).
It's nice to feel passionate about your job. It makes your life happier. Don't take that away from someone else especially you don't know what they do day-to-day. Any job can be fun given the right circumstances. Any job can be boring as hell if you let it.
I think you meant a designer. Someone who can sense/understand the overall bigger issue and balance the desire to get there through business, marketing, engineering, and operations. Innovation happens when someone with a vision can drive that vision through the rest of the divisions under his/her leadership.
Technically, the Google Nexus One is a beautiful, high-performing, genius-simple device.
But as a business it was a total flop.
How many android phones are out there now? I think all Google wanted was to spread android phones, and in fact preferred to do it without making phones themselves. Nexus was a prototype loss leader that got the ball rolling. Looks like a winning strategy to me.
You realize Google isn't making a cent off Android OS directly right? Their revenue/motivation is to still sell more ads.
um...what about Ford? Mullaly is an engineer, and Ford is doing much better, under his leadership, than they have in many years.
Mulally has engineering background. He's been in management for years. He's more of a manager with a common sense in manufacturing than an actual engineer. Nevertheless he's been able to turn the company around since he was able to show the top level executives what kind of crap they were making and not able to admitting to even have a problem in their company culture.
I saw this news clip at msnbc.com over a week before of all places. Why is this getting posted today (and not earlier) from usa today? Did msnbc actually score the news ahead of the major newspaper? Can that be real!
More money then most with an _engineering degree_ and probably some serious student debt? Although if he's been unemployed for a year then maybe he wasn't very good/not employable.. or the job market for engineers has taken an even bigger nose dive then I thought.
Sometimes it really takes someone to give you a chance to get your foot in the door in any particular industry. I have heard of people graduated from good schools and takes them more than a year to find decent paying jobs that is related to his field in the lean years (that was 2003, which was lean in engineering field, especially electrical).
I hope this job will give him the leg up to another better paying job. A job that will actually use some of what he has learned. Knowing how lean the aerospace industries are right now I hope he found another engineering position outside of aerospace industry.
Slashdot Mirror
Amen to that!
This has to be one of the post with the most comments in quite a while. 1242 and counting...
Yes there's not a lot of profits. But so does the Energy wholesale. Welcome to the wholesale marketing world!
Seriously though in this economy cash is king. Most big-named energy company knows this. With revolving debt or not they keep a handsome amount of cash on-hand from the revenue generated from stable but relatively thin margin business units.
So yeah. Perhaps they just have not learn the shift in paradigm properly and blame the shift as "bad", in reality they just don't know their stuff that's all.
I don't know if you have ever seen a internals of a jack. Basically you have 2 piece of metal, both with a rounded tips, hanging out. The metal act as a spring to apply tension pressure when the plug is inserted, maintaining a constant contact between the tips (remember the rounded tips?) and the plug (both the tip, ring, and sleeve). They usually have only 1 for the for each of the tip, ring, and sleeve. So essentially the design of the jack right now (in current production) are pretty much one-sided. They just bring the contact where the wire is soldered to another side for easy access.
The things is your typical "PLC" these days is pretty much a ruggedized PC running Windows, and a likely buggy stack of control software packages on top of that; which do not get along with the security patches for Windows, so Windows does not get patched. This is pretty serious problem when these machines are not properly isolated.
Actually the PLC itself is most likely designed with embedded architectures. The only company that advertise the use of an Intel processor is GE and I don't think I have heard them bragging about it for the last couple of years, most likely because their customer (or intended audience) do not like the fact that it is too similar to a standard PC.
What is running the Windows are your operator interfaces, which is what the operator (in this case, the guards) would possibly be using to interface with the PLC. If proper design were followed no interlocks should have been programmed in the operator console and left vulnerable to the generic windows attack.
Believe it or not it is not that hard to tell if someone has done anything to a PLC's programming. All it takes is a simple system periodically scanning the compiled hash stored on the PLC against the authorized copy stored somewhere else. Either the controlled copy or the PLC gets changed it can generate a notification to appropriate personnel.
Last but not least if the control designer have any forethoughts a safety-grade safety relay can be put in-place to kill any commands from the PLC. This would effectively enforce a prison-wide lock-down until it can be mechanically reset. Since these buggers are purely electro-mechanical and once you kill it, it can only be reset locally (by applying a control voltage, which can be permanently turned-off) that is accessible in a safe-zone.
In the end though, this is like any other security issue: It's never perfectly secure. But you can make it very difficult where the time it take to override the entire system is a lot longer than the response time. That would mostly make it an ineffective option compares to legal wrangling or human engineering, which is not part of the discussion.
Okay you got some point. But I can tell you from experience cable management is not as trivial as you describe. I have personally seen "rats nests" made out of unorganized cables and at the end of the day you can't do jack with all the cables. Any time a cable is in question they are being replaced by another cable, adding more to the problem already existed.
Moral of the story? Someone has to put his foot down and demand certain level of cable management and documentation. Without them you are lost in the long run.
Buy some lead-acid batteries and a good charger and an inverter. There you have a simple system to filter out the horrible sine waves diesel generator produce (not to mention the power factor corrections).
Let's think this way:
With SAMs installed to protect buildings taller than 1000':
1. There are more sites/locations that might not be possible to properly guard the installation. Or it would be guarded with lighter regiment of troops.
2. These SAMs sites are going to be A LOT closer to densely populated area.
3. This would makes it a much easier target for terrorists to acquire heavy arms
4. Once the options becomes available. Terrorists can choose to a. Take the missiles/explosives elsewhere or b. deploy/fire it to another target on the spot 5. We make easier for terrorists to accomplish what they want to do: causing damage and create fears among general population.
Just my 2cents...
Since I can get to it (after a long delay), perhaps I would just post TFA itself:
Overclocking Competition
CPU overclocking is old school, and GPU overclocking isn't much newer. Memory overclocking? Been there done that. For all of you hardware modders looking for something else to let the white smoke out of, have we got a challenge for you! Hard drive overclocking! Why do you want to do this? Because you can! And, in these days of really big hard drives, getting data off the things can take a long time. So much time that it has created somewhat of a challenge for the digital forensic boffins – some of their lab coats are starting to get cobwebs from standing around waiting for so long (Have you ever tried dusting off a forensics boffin? No thanks). So, what we want to know is, can you modify a traditional mechanical hard drive so that we can pull data off it more quickly than those conservative hard drive manufacturers want us to. So, for example, if it currently takes 2 hours to read an entire 500GB hard drive, we want to be able to do it in 1 hour. Your job is to come up with a method which allows us to read data as fast as possible, which can be reversed afterwards. Oh, and did we mention the prize?
Aim:
Conduct a once only read for an entire 500 GB hard drive in the maximum time 1 hour.
Materials:
Western Digital Caviar Black 3.5" SATA 500GB hard drive (WD5002AALX).
Method:
The method used to modify the drive must be reversible, and the drive itself must not be damaged. It is acceptable to build a "magic box" to put the drive in to make it go faster if that is a viable solution – the drive doesn't have to be plugged into any particular PC. Flashing firmware, increasing voltage, magic cradles are all possible solutions.
Due Date:
1st September 2011
Submission:
Please send all entries to hdoverclock@secau.net we will organise alternate submission methods for uploading of video or other evidence as necessary to verify the entry.
Other information:
We are interested in any viable method which can be found, so even if you don't hit 1 hour, we would still like to hear from you. In the event that we don't get any entry below 1 hour we will consider awarding money to a method which completes a once through read in a time faster than the default "fastest" time. Also in the event of low entries, we will consider an extension to the due date.
The fine print
The prize will be awarded to the highest viable overclocking method which can be achieved at the closing date of the competition.
The method must be verified by ECU and its employees as being viable, and less than or equal to the 1 hour time as stated. A prize of $5000 will be awarded to the entry which achieves the otherwise fastest read time in the event that no viable method under 1 hour is submitted.
Only one grand prize will be awarded.
ECU retains the right to withdraw or end the competition at any point prior to the end date, and also to extend the end date if necessary.
-----
EOTFA
Whatever provides the voltage is responsible for limiting the current to what it can provide. End of problem. But this "send a voltage request and ack and nak and then toggle this data line to 43 ohms and then draw 3 mA on the other data line and then look for a ..." is just crap. Devices with a micro/mini/regular USB connector charge when 5V is applied. Devices with a standard XYZ connector take 19V. (Better would be 12V, but one standard at 19V is better than no standard at all).
I agree with your suggestion. One thing I need more information, however. The standard industrial DC application uses 24VDC, where is the consumer electronic's 19VDC came from?
In response to the report MG Siegler from Tech Crunch says that Apple TV is simply "not happening". See: http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/21/the-apple-branded-cake-is-a-lie/
In 2018 slashdot maybe too old to stay alive and /.er may be too old to bother to post anything.
what about your own service charges? I'm in canada, and more than a handful of transactions in a month and they want to start dinging me money to use debit or a credit card.
In US we don't have service charge for the most part, although some small shops try to enforce minimum to use the credit card for a transaction.
Send that invitation to Mike Rowe. Wait, I think he has done that already...
What Microsoft needs is a rapid concept development team that can bring the concepts from their research into marketable products. What that team needs are talented people with enough drives to push the envelope to get things done and get it out in the market. Some of them need to have hard knuckles for corporate food fight.
Then Microsoft needs a new CEO that has enough clout to bring every department in-line and give that rapid concept development team a chance and enough resources to make their goal a reality. Anything short of that Microsoft will not out-duel their competitors out there in the emerging market segments.
Gates used to be able to provide that in the past to cut through red-tapes by simply paying attention to the projects he likes. Story goes that he also at least is willing to listen to people who would tell him how crappy certain programming job is done, and let him fix the problem, even if Gates himself wrote that code. Ballmer simply does not have the breadth and depth of technical knowledge and know how to appreciate and help those who he should cut the red-tapes for.
You realize Foxconn is really a Taiwanese company and China won't care if it dies overnight right? It'll just be replaced by another real Chinese company and absorb all the talents and equipments and run as usual, replacing Foxconn.
they are not 3D, they are just thinner and deeper than the standard, we still dont see transistors on top of each other. the latice is still pretty much 2D. i ussually dont complain too much, but slash dot summaries are batting way below the mendoza line.
No the structure is totally different. Look at how the source, drain, and the gate are arranged. Different geometry here.
The article from AnanTech has the best explanation of the technique I have come across so far today:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4313/intel-announces-first-22nm-3d-trigate-transistors-shipping-in-2h-2011
How can they limit it if they're letting you access it through any web browser? Maybe if they were requiring you to actually install their software, but it sounds like it's just a basic web interface.
Amazon requires you to log in with your amazon account. Which it does store your credit card information (for a lot of people who actively use their account for legitimate purpose). So for those that actively using their account, I don't foresee too many people sharing their account with friends, especially those wants a free-ride.
Give us sensible copyright laws first and then focus on punishing those who break them.
No.
Law enforcement cannot adequately police the torrents now. Songs are merely a dollar on iTunes -- less other places -- yet the latest pop music album is but a two-minute download via Vuze or some other client within a few days of its release. How will diminishing the copyright term -- which at least assures the artist of some revenue from reputable distributors and honest consumers -- increases the technical efficacy of the forces policing copyright?
Demonstrate how the consumer genie can be placed back in the bottle and then we can have a discussion about attenuating the creators' term of copyright.
Buddy, you got this whole this up-side-down. Fix the structure where it becomes reasonable then most people will find it to be easier to be honest. More people uses iTune to acquire music legally now or using streaming music from legal sources than pirating music nowadays (at least in my circle of friends now). Majority of people will do what is right when they don't feel like being ripped-off on a transaction.
Code cowboy?
Seriously?
Did you get on your horse and round up them code?
Seriously dude, you were/are a programmer, your job is boring, quit trying to make it should exciting. It's not.
Sorry but I am curious, so what do you do to earn a living? Why are you trolling /. community then?
He might be more passionate about programming than you do. That doesn't make programming more or less interesting. Someone might find car mechanics boring but there are people doing it as a hobby restoring older cars (I am not talking about antiques here).
It's nice to feel passionate about your job. It makes your life happier. Don't take that away from someone else especially you don't know what they do day-to-day. Any job can be fun given the right circumstances. Any job can be boring as hell if you let it.
I think you meant a designer. Someone who can sense/understand the overall bigger issue and balance the desire to get there through business, marketing, engineering, and operations. Innovation happens when someone with a vision can drive that vision through the rest of the divisions under his/her leadership.
Technically, the Google Nexus One is a beautiful, high-performing, genius-simple device.
But as a business it was a total flop.
How many android phones are out there now? I think all Google wanted was to spread android phones, and in fact preferred to do it without making phones themselves. Nexus was a prototype loss leader that got the ball rolling. Looks like a winning strategy to me.
You realize Google isn't making a cent off Android OS directly right? Their revenue/motivation is to still sell more ads.
um...what about Ford? Mullaly is an engineer, and Ford is doing much better, under his leadership, than they have in many years.
Mulally has engineering background. He's been in management for years. He's more of a manager with a common sense in manufacturing than an actual engineer. Nevertheless he's been able to turn the company around since he was able to show the top level executives what kind of crap they were making and not able to admitting to even have a problem in their company culture.
I saw this news clip at msnbc.com over a week before of all places. Why is this getting posted today (and not earlier) from usa today? Did msnbc actually score the news ahead of the major newspaper? Can that be real!
More money then most with an _engineering degree_ and probably some serious student debt? Although if he's been unemployed for a year then maybe he wasn't very good/not employable.. or the job market for engineers has taken an even bigger nose dive then I thought.
Sometimes it really takes someone to give you a chance to get your foot in the door in any particular industry. I have heard of people graduated from good schools and takes them more than a year to find decent paying jobs that is related to his field in the lean years (that was 2003, which was lean in engineering field, especially electrical).
I hope this job will give him the leg up to another better paying job. A job that will actually use some of what he has learned. Knowing how lean the aerospace industries are right now I hope he found another engineering position outside of aerospace industry.