Perhaps Watson and Crick's citation list was rather lite
I don't understand what the big deal is . . . this is science . . . Scientists at the top of their field are egotistical and competitive just like the people in most other careers.
Just because someone else sat in the lab and ran the experiments doesn't mean that conclusions drawn by others based on the same dataset should be credited to the original person that ran the experiments. I think that credit should be given to Watson and Crick for putting together lots of other pieces of knowledge and drawing a conclusion that fits all the data from all the sources in question. That's not stealing, that's not cheating . . . that's just good science.
The double helix structure of DNA . . . first published in 1953 won the Nobel Prize in 1962 . . . And the echos of this discovery are still being felt today.
Perhaps this discovery is the discovery of "smallpox vaccine" or the "Laws of Motion" of genetic engineering . . . each of these discoveries, profound and novel as a standalone discovery, enabled and launched an entirely new series of scientific research and discoveries over a period of hundreds of years.
300 years from now, we might say the same about Watson and Crick's discovery as we do about the discoveries of Copernicus, Newton, or Galileo.
Maybe Google is hiring those Indian IT guys to click the ads . . . that way Google increases their revenue. . .
Ok, that wasn't fair . . . in all seriousness, this would devalue google's most significant revenue source by increasing the number of clickthroughs that happen per dollar revenue for the companies that pay for the ads. The bid price for clickthrough ads would invariably go down.
I'm surprised that Google hasn't been working on this problem harder, because if I remember from the article correctly, over 90% of google's revenue comes from ads. If Google fails to correct this problem, their whole business model may be destroyed (or at least crippled) by this problem.
The documents are a matter of public record . . . . how does this shed light on "secretive workings" The only difference here is that this website does is try to shed a little light on the documents and reduce the "practical obscurity"* of them.
I'm not saying this isn't without value, but come on . . . I thought that responsible editors were supposed to make sure that such ridiculous exaggeration never make it to press.
* Practical obscurity . . . a term used by courts to indicate that documentation that is a matter of public record, but cumbersome to find (e.g. going to city hall and having to search records to find a specific document). The practical obscurity due to the the effort needed to find the documents affords some level of privacy in and of itself. Putting documents on internet reduces their "practical obscurity."
WOuld the music industry actually be able to win a lawsuit against a university? I know that defending the university against a lawsuit is expensive and I know that universities have reputations to protect but . . . .
If a consortion of universities got together and fought this RIAA pressure would they be able to win? Remember the RIAA has never successfully prosecuted someone for offering music or providing network bandwidth unless this party had a commercial interest in the activity e.g. selling copies rather than sharing with friends (this is to the best of my knowledge). The black and white of the copyright laws say that the person making the copies is the one liable . . . wouldn't this be individual students? And not the university.
For example a public library is not liable for copyright infringement if someone photocopies a whole book on their photocopy machine. The person making the copies is the legally responsible party. This is exactly why photocopiers are now mostly self service in libraries (and even Kinkos). Because then the owner of the machine is not liable . . . wouldn't this work for universities? The owner of the machine (in this case the network) would not be liable for the actions of the people that used the machine (the individuals that are copying the music). Thus individual students would have to be prosecuted, not the university.
Assuming all this is true, I would hope that some university would stand up and fight the RIAA rather than rolling over and becoming the RIAA's B****.
Why is the RIAA going after universities and "extorting" (ok maybe that's harsh . .."pressuring") universities to grant a cumpulsory license to each student. What about the music student that's studying 16th century harpsicord? If this student doesn't want to listen to pop-garbage or even some of the better stuff in the napster library or if this person has a very trained ear, and they don't want/like to hear compressed music, then why is a portion of their tuition/fees going to napster for a servie that they don't want?
The RIAA is preying on the lawsuit fears of universities in an attempt to gain a captive market of students that are forced to have Napster whether they want it or not.
I will admit that I don't run the latest and greatest machine (AMD Barton core 2200 and a midrange graphics card), but I slowly started shutting down all those extra case fans and slowed down my CPU fan. I'm now running the cpu fan, the power supply fan, GPU fan, and a motherboard fan that sits on either the southbridge or the northbridge (don't remember). I run this system in an unairconditioned house near the Mediteranean (read:hot and humid) and I've never experienced overheating issues.
Not to say that there aren't systems/users out there that need better cooling than what I have, but I've found that sticking with the basics seems to work pretty well . . . I know a lot of people that drill big holes in their cases, mount gargantu-fans in the case, buy gazillion dollar heat transfer compund, etc. . . but most of the people that I know that do this stuff do it before doing any system characterization.
The fact that its hard to find a handheld device with a remote temperature probe (thermocouple) at a normal computer shop is indicative to me that most of the folks that go overboard on the cooling have not characterized their system before going out and buying the "superduper cooling kit." Does it really make sense to install XXX number of fans in a case before doing any serious temperature monitoring and characterization to identify whether they really need to go to these sorts of extreme measures. (I know, I know, there's usually a couple of thermocouples on the MB . . . but do the third and fourth case fan really have a significant effect on the MB thermocouples, or would it make more sense to also measure temperatures near other heat sensitive components in nooks and crannies of the case that one would expect to have poor ventilation (e.g. a graphics board installed next to another PCI board) . ..for that a probe would be useful to determine which fans where have the most significant effect)
And for that matter what about characterizing the temperature profile after installing the "supercooling solution" to determine whether it made a significant difference.
And for that matter, how much of a difference is really significant anyway?
I almost think that people like to brag about how much cooling their case has whether the system needs it or not "I have 6 cooling fans" . . . "Oh, yeah well I have 7" . . . "oh yeah, well I have a liquid circulating cooling kit on my overclocked system that cost me more than just buying a faster processor would have." . . . do you see the logic here? I don't.
I don't claim to understand it, but I guess its just cool to be cool . . .
It also notes that VoIP customers may not be listed in the local phone book, causing problems with "major fast food companies" (do they mean pizza deliveries?),
That's a luddite comment if I've ever heard one . . . I've ordered pizza/fast food via email before without any phone numbers/phone calls entering into the equation. To imply that pizza delivery places can't or will have difficulty adapting to VoIP is naive at best . . .
(Note I'm not knocking the original topic poster that I quoted from, but rather the article that he cites)
I think that laws regarding telephone systems and 911 often say that 911 systems must be on communication systems with nines 9's of uptime 99.999%. . . at least this was the original intent.
VoIP doesn't meet this criteria, thus laws may need to be modified to account for this.
Additionally, I don't understand the 911 hub-bub anyway . . . cell phones didn't have 911 for years . . . even while people were replacing their POTS with a cellphone in the house
Wow! I hadn't seen one of these since the early 80's when they were installed at several Burger King's and quickly retired because they jammed and people weren't getting the right drink.
But my point was that even the robots made especially to do this kind of activity couldn't get it right . . . plug in the syrups and the carbonated water . . . load the cups and plug in water for the ice maker, and you still don't get a successful affordable drink dispensing robot for the fast food industry . . . Now you want to add the complexity of stereoscopic vision, bipedal walking across a potentially wet and slippery floor and avoiding dynamic obstacles (other employees) . . . not to mention the added difficulties of grabbign the cup, making sure its only 1 cup (not two or more stuck inside each other), placing it properly to fill it with ice and liquid (in proper proportions and filled to the top . ..) and then putting one of those flimsy plastic top on it (I have trouble with that one myself) and then delivering the product.
Now incorporate all the failure modes: Bent cup, broken soda machine, bad lid, out of syrup, no carbonation, no cups, no lids, etc. . . .
Can you even imagine all the matrix math just to prevent interferences with static objects?
If we can't do it with a dedicated robot first, I think its wishful thinking to think that it will be affordable to do it with a humanoid robot (unless the dedicated robot is the humanoid robot . ..tasks that are specifically suited for humaniod shaped robots)
Distributed computing has its uses, but remeber: the public will only be willing to help you as long as they feel like they're contributing to something worthwhile.
Uh, I'm not sure what this has to do with the TeraGrid . . . The TeraGrid is a distributed computing system . . . but it does not use the "public's" computers. It uses university and computing center machines across the USA (e.g. NCSA, Argonne National Labs, Purdue, etc.) .
If you read the book
"Fast Food Nation" you'll find that robotic burger flippers and robotic softdrink dispensers have been tried since the 60's all with dismal success . . . designing even a burger flipping robot that can cook a burger sufficiently without over/undercooking it is not a trivial task.
I suppose that such robots could be designed now, but more important to the industry is the upfront cost and longterm ownership cost of such a robot (as well as the speed and accuracy of the robot's performance). Nowadays its honestly cheaper to hire minimum wage-slaves than to buy robots.
Perhaps a good hike in the minimum wage would be a good boost to the robot industry (and perhaps unfortunately, unemployment)
Absolutely . . . . I can't imagine industry paying a premium for a robot that looks cool and is less productive than the robot that may not look humanoid but is more ideally suited for its task.
Also, I don't think that the cost of ownerhip of humanoid robots has been considered. I would guess that specialized stepper motors, servos, or whatever drive systems that are being used in humanoid robots require more maintenance than traditional specialized robots. This would be because traditional robots do not face the same design constraints (size, shape, appearance) that the humanoid robot is constrained by so designers have more freedom to use more robust components.
The only commercially viable thing that I see humanoid robots doing in the near future is replacing humans where the cost or danger of sending a human exceeds that of the robot.
Also, I think it would be easier to deal with humanoid robots in public space then lumbering machines.
That sounds naive . . . instead of "cow tipping", teenagers would go "robot tipping" . . . knocking over poor defenseless janitorial custodial and landscaping robots with extreme prejudice.
Lumbering machines are meant to withstand abuse from vandals and pranksters . . .
This is what I was afraid of when I posted the original post . . . Personally I get the impression that a lot of open source folks create great applications for themselves or their peers . . . few seem to want or to know how to write applications for the average joe.
Perhaps there is an unspoken rule in the community that "easy user interfaces" = "simplistic programming" and perhaps that causes one to lose points in the open source "meritocracy"?
I really like your idea of designing interfaces for tasks and then developing the code to support the interface next. It implies that the user's need is defined first by the design of the interface. This locks the programmer into coding in a way that meets the user's need exactly as specified by the UI. It's a shame that didn't take off . . . But perhaps that doesn't leave enough creative freedom for the programmers to feel the project is "fun" enough to work on.
When we design systems for plants we typically involve the users . . . like for a compactor, the users demanded that two separate buttons be pressed to engage the machine and the buttons must be held down and must be located about 1 yard apart.
Why? Because then to operate the machine, each of the users hands had to hold down a separate button making it nearly impossible for the user to inadvertently reach into the machine while it was running.
At first I thought it was a silly thing to do that would insult the operator's intelligence (who would be stupid enough to reach into a compactor while it was running?) But one of the operators confided that it was a great idea because after being burned out from working a couple of double shift days in a row, he didn't want to loose his hand from a simple operational oversight.
The operational interface was well recieved because we gave the users ownership in the design process. I think that the same should apply in designing software UIs.
But the windows interface is familiar . . . and that makes it useful to stay with the same conventions.
Open Source stuff could leverage that familiarity by create exactly the same sort of interface with all the advantages and disadvantages it provides because that would at least be familiar to the Joe Average user.
I'm not an active open source community person (just a user) . . . but I have to wonder if the open source community attracts the kind of people typically needed to create excellent interfaces. I'm talking about people that are into ergonomics, spatial perceptions and relationships for desingning interfaces e.g. psychologists, product designers and the like. These are the kind of folks that come up with familiar and intuitive interfaces and design button layouts for consumer products.
Bandwidth is already limited on existing (Directway) satellite internet systems by d/l limitations. Pull down your whole quota and the system slows you down to 56k . . . last I heard from a friend that had Directway, the quota works is like a bucket with a hole in the bottom. The hole in the bottom drains at 128kbps and the fillstream at the top runs a 56k. You can d/l at full 128kbps until the bucket empties . . . then you drain the bucket as fast as it fills (56k) until you stop using the system and allow the bucket to refill.
Wait till the ad people get ahold of the footage
on
1984 Comes To Boston
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· Score: 1
How long before some company like your friendly neighborhood credit agency/marketing company pays for the footage to see what kind of people walk through certain areas at certain times and use targeted advertising (e.g. TV's/flatpanels that run ads) that target different audiences at different times based on the profile of traffic on the CCTV?
e.g. Families use this MTBA stop during the weekday early afternoons . . . time to run the Pokemon ads. The nightclub crowd is here weekends at 10PM . . . let's run the red-bull ads. . .
Sure some of this can be done now, but with CCTVs they can fine tune it and actually see if anyone pays attention to the ad or not.
a few streets were covered with CCTV cameras. Result: crime shifted towards other areas,
Maybe we could put cameras all over the US except for one tiny area (e.g. Jersey City . . . sorry if your from there) and all the criminals would find themselves corraled into a tiny area.
I got the Niemen Marcus cookie recipe thing before I ever saw this one . . . not really a hoax per say, but still one of those "send it to everyone you know" emails . . .
Complex control systems cost money. Communications links to another system that announnces when there is high demand cost money. More electronics is more things to go wrong.
These control systems are not complex, the technology is old, the systems are well known and standard in office buildings etc. I don't work in office building controls, but in manufacturing plant controls, as things have become more complex, and more solid state, MTBF (mean time between failure) has gone down. It was the older simpler systems that are the maintenence nightmares.
Communications links are "newer" . . . but are very reliable when used for non life or death situtations (like this. Remember reliability is relative . . . I don't need superduper reliability for load balancing a single building. I'll reserve that expense for a 911 call system). I agree that failure modes should be in place and that cost benefit analyses should be done, but the history of demand management and things like more complex thermostat control systems have proved there worth countless times and are standard in the industry.
Switching off a freezer for twenty minutes does not save any money. It gets warmer while it's off. When it is turned back on the therostat starts the compressor and it uses just a much electricity in one go as it would have to run ocasionally during the twenty minutes.
Its cheaper if you turn off the freezer during peak hours when the cost of electricity is higher . . . and turn it back on when the cost of electricity is cheaper. The amount of electricity used is the same but cost = (price per unit)*(units). If you buy the same quantity, but buy when (price per unit) is less, you pay less.
Why not just turn the thermostat up a few degrees and save money by not having a complex control system?
Again, office building control systems have been around for a long long time . . . . The same concepts are used in DCS's and PLC's for manufacturing systems. Systems to change thermostats automatically are neither new nor overly complex. They are standard technology and the cost savings by installing them has been proven countless times in buildings and manufactuering systems.
Increasing the temperature difference between inside and outside increase the flow of heat energy through the insulation.
This is indeed true, however, the driving force for heat transfer in a modern office building would not change enough to offset the savings associated with the technology. Again one could do the math. And again one is not trying to use less energy overall, one is trying to use more energy when it is cheaper and less when it is more expensive.
This kind of technology in controls is old and reliable, tried and true. Real time pricing is the new part of this technology, not load balancing, thermostat adjustment, control systems etc. These have been around a long time
Even if new buildings are connected to Internet, they usually don't communicate between themselves. And when it comes to electricity, these buildings are selfish and consume what they want without any coordination.
Am I missing something here? I just reread the articles and I didn't see anything about buildings communicating between themselves. . . I saw an article about buildings configured to respond to energy price information . . . but this information is not shared between buildings. In fact there is a diagram at this link from the original post . . . and it shows XML sent from a central center, not between buildings.
In fact . . . Quoting from the same link:
Beyond price, systems could be programmed to respond to changes in air quality, to participate in emissions trading schemes, to tap into sustainable energy sources, to coordinate the responses of groups of buildings, and possibly to minimize local brownout threats and price spikes, according to Connors. "There's still some wiggle room. But, all in all, it's a very cool beginning," he said.
The article says that one could . . . coordinate responses between buildings
The people who did this did not make buildings communicate which each other . . . they said that the could use the same technology to do this. The original post is at best misleading. At worst just plain wrong (according to the articles it cites). Either way it strikes me as an example of exagerated irresponsible journalism.
Slashdot Mirror
Science is a competitive field
The person that publishes first wins
Perhaps Watson and Crick's citation list was rather lite
I don't understand what the big deal is . . . this is science . . . Scientists at the top of their field are egotistical and competitive just like the people in most other careers.
Just because someone else sat in the lab and ran the experiments doesn't mean that conclusions drawn by others based on the same dataset should be credited to the original person that ran the experiments. I think that credit should be given to Watson and Crick for putting together lots of other pieces of knowledge and drawing a conclusion that fits all the data from all the sources in question. That's not stealing, that's not cheating . . . that's just good science.
Perhaps this discovery is the discovery of "smallpox vaccine" or the "Laws of Motion" of genetic engineering . . . each of these discoveries, profound and novel as a standalone discovery, enabled and launched an entirely new series of scientific research and discoveries over a period of hundreds of years.
300 years from now, we might say the same about Watson and Crick's discovery as we do about the discoveries of Copernicus, Newton, or Galileo.
Ok, that wasn't fair . . . in all seriousness, this would devalue google's most significant revenue source by increasing the number of clickthroughs that happen per dollar revenue for the companies that pay for the ads. The bid price for clickthrough ads would invariably go down.
I'm surprised that Google hasn't been working on this problem harder, because if I remember from the article correctly, over 90% of google's revenue comes from ads. If Google fails to correct this problem, their whole business model may be destroyed (or at least crippled) by this problem.
I'm not saying this isn't without value, but come on . . . I thought that responsible editors were supposed to make sure that such ridiculous exaggeration never make it to press.
* Practical obscurity . . . a term used by courts to indicate that documentation that is a matter of public record, but cumbersome to find (e.g. going to city hall and having to search records to find a specific document). The practical obscurity due to the the effort needed to find the documents affords some level of privacy in and of itself. Putting documents on internet reduces their "practical obscurity."
If a consortion of universities got together and fought this RIAA pressure would they be able to win? Remember the RIAA has never successfully prosecuted someone for offering music or providing network bandwidth unless this party had a commercial interest in the activity e.g. selling copies rather than sharing with friends (this is to the best of my knowledge). The black and white of the copyright laws say that the person making the copies is the one liable . . . wouldn't this be individual students? And not the university.
For example a public library is not liable for copyright infringement if someone photocopies a whole book on their photocopy machine. The person making the copies is the legally responsible party. This is exactly why photocopiers are now mostly self service in libraries (and even Kinkos). Because then the owner of the machine is not liable . . . wouldn't this work for universities? The owner of the machine (in this case the network) would not be liable for the actions of the people that used the machine (the individuals that are copying the music). Thus individual students would have to be prosecuted, not the university.
Assuming all this is true, I would hope that some university would stand up and fight the RIAA rather than rolling over and becoming the RIAA's B****.
The RIAA is preying on the lawsuit fears of universities in an attempt to gain a captive market of students that are forced to have Napster whether they want it or not.
I will admit that I don't run the latest and greatest machine (AMD Barton core 2200 and a midrange graphics card), but I slowly started shutting down all those extra case fans and slowed down my CPU fan. I'm now running the cpu fan, the power supply fan, GPU fan, and a motherboard fan that sits on either the southbridge or the northbridge (don't remember). I run this system in an unairconditioned house near the Mediteranean (read:hot and humid) and I've never experienced overheating issues.
Not to say that there aren't systems/users out there that need better cooling than what I have, but I've found that sticking with the basics seems to work pretty well . . . I know a lot of people that drill big holes in their cases, mount gargantu-fans in the case, buy gazillion dollar heat transfer compund, etc. . . but most of the people that I know that do this stuff do it before doing any system characterization.
The fact that its hard to find a handheld device with a remote temperature probe (thermocouple) at a normal computer shop is indicative to me that most of the folks that go overboard on the cooling have not characterized their system before going out and buying the "superduper cooling kit." Does it really make sense to install XXX number of fans in a case before doing any serious temperature monitoring and characterization to identify whether they really need to go to these sorts of extreme measures. (I know, I know, there's usually a couple of thermocouples on the MB . . . but do the third and fourth case fan really have a significant effect on the MB thermocouples, or would it make more sense to also measure temperatures near other heat sensitive components in nooks and crannies of the case that one would expect to have poor ventilation (e.g. a graphics board installed next to another PCI board) . . .for that a probe would be useful to determine which fans where have the most significant effect)
And for that matter what about characterizing the temperature profile after installing the "supercooling solution" to determine whether it made a significant difference.
And for that matter, how much of a difference is really significant anyway?
I almost think that people like to brag about how much cooling their case has whether the system needs it or not "I have 6 cooling fans" . . . "Oh, yeah well I have 7" . . . "oh yeah, well I have a liquid circulating cooling kit on my overclocked system that cost me more than just buying a faster processor would have." . . . do you see the logic here? I don't.
I don't claim to understand it, but I guess its just cool to be cool . . .
It also notes that VoIP customers may not be listed in the local phone book, causing problems with "major fast food companies" (do they mean pizza deliveries?), That's a luddite comment if I've ever heard one . . . I've ordered pizza/fast food via email before without any phone numbers/phone calls entering into the equation. To imply that pizza delivery places can't or will have difficulty adapting to VoIP is naive at best . . . (Note I'm not knocking the original topic poster that I quoted from, but rather the article that he cites)
VoIP doesn't meet this criteria, thus laws may need to be modified to account for this.
Additionally, I don't understand the 911 hub-bub anyway . . . cell phones didn't have 911 for years . . . even while people were replacing their POTS with a cellphone in the house
Seems that I'm a bit behind the times . . .
Now incorporate all the failure modes: Bent cup, broken soda machine, bad lid, out of syrup, no carbonation, no cups, no lids, etc. . . .
Can you even imagine all the matrix math just to prevent interferences with static objects?
If we can't do it with a dedicated robot first, I think its wishful thinking to think that it will be affordable to do it with a humanoid robot (unless the dedicated robot is the humanoid robot . . .tasks that are specifically suited for humaniod shaped robots)
Distributed computing has its uses, but remeber: the public will only be willing to help you as long as they feel like they're contributing to something worthwhile. Uh, I'm not sure what this has to do with the TeraGrid . . . The TeraGrid is a distributed computing system . . . but it does not use the "public's" computers. It uses university and computing center machines across the USA (e.g. NCSA, Argonne National Labs, Purdue, etc.) .
I suppose that such robots could be designed now, but more important to the industry is the upfront cost and longterm ownership cost of such a robot (as well as the speed and accuracy of the robot's performance). Nowadays its honestly cheaper to hire minimum wage-slaves than to buy robots.
Perhaps a good hike in the minimum wage would be a good boost to the robot industry (and perhaps unfortunately, unemployment)
Also, I don't think that the cost of ownerhip of humanoid robots has been considered. I would guess that specialized stepper motors, servos, or whatever drive systems that are being used in humanoid robots require more maintenance than traditional specialized robots. This would be because traditional robots do not face the same design constraints (size, shape, appearance) that the humanoid robot is constrained by so designers have more freedom to use more robust components.
The only commercially viable thing that I see humanoid robots doing in the near future is replacing humans where the cost or danger of sending a human exceeds that of the robot.
That sounds naive . . . instead of "cow tipping", teenagers would go "robot tipping" . . . knocking over poor defenseless janitorial custodial and landscaping robots with extreme prejudice.
Lumbering machines are meant to withstand abuse from vandals and pranksters . . .
Perhaps there is an unspoken rule in the community that "easy user interfaces" = "simplistic programming" and perhaps that causes one to lose points in the open source "meritocracy"?
I really like your idea of designing interfaces for tasks and then developing the code to support the interface next. It implies that the user's need is defined first by the design of the interface. This locks the programmer into coding in a way that meets the user's need exactly as specified by the UI. It's a shame that didn't take off . . . But perhaps that doesn't leave enough creative freedom for the programmers to feel the project is "fun" enough to work on.
Why? Because then to operate the machine, each of the users hands had to hold down a separate button making it nearly impossible for the user to inadvertently reach into the machine while it was running.
At first I thought it was a silly thing to do that would insult the operator's intelligence (who would be stupid enough to reach into a compactor while it was running?) But one of the operators confided that it was a great idea because after being burned out from working a couple of double shift days in a row, he didn't want to loose his hand from a simple operational oversight.
The operational interface was well recieved because we gave the users ownership in the design process. I think that the same should apply in designing software UIs.
Open Source stuff could leverage that familiarity by create exactly the same sort of interface with all the advantages and disadvantages it provides because that would at least be familiar to the Joe Average user.
Bandwidth is already limited on existing (Directway) satellite internet systems by d/l limitations. Pull down your whole quota and the system slows you down to 56k . . . last I heard from a friend that had Directway, the quota works is like a bucket with a hole in the bottom. The hole in the bottom drains at 128kbps and the fillstream at the top runs a 56k. You can d/l at full 128kbps until the bucket empties . . . then you drain the bucket as fast as it fills (56k) until you stop using the system and allow the bucket to refill.
e.g. Families use this MTBA stop during the weekday early afternoons . . . time to run the Pokemon ads. The nightclub crowd is here weekends at 10PM . . . let's run the red-bull ads. . .
Sure some of this can be done now, but with CCTVs they can fine tune it and actually see if anyone pays attention to the ad or not.
Maybe we could put cameras all over the US except for one tiny area (e.g. Jersey City . . . sorry if your from there) and all the criminals would find themselves corraled into a tiny area.
I got the Niemen Marcus cookie recipe thing before I ever saw this one . . . not really a hoax per say, but still one of those "send it to everyone you know" emails . . .
These control systems are not complex, the technology is old, the systems are well known and standard in office buildings etc. I don't work in office building controls, but in manufacturing plant controls, as things have become more complex, and more solid state, MTBF (mean time between failure) has gone down. It was the older simpler systems that are the maintenence nightmares.
Communications links are "newer" . . . but are very reliable when used for non life or death situtations (like this. Remember reliability is relative . . . I don't need superduper reliability for load balancing a single building. I'll reserve that expense for a 911 call system). I agree that failure modes should be in place and that cost benefit analyses should be done, but the history of demand management and things like more complex thermostat control systems have proved there worth countless times and are standard in the industry.
Switching off a freezer for twenty minutes does not save any money. It gets warmer while it's off. When it is turned back on the therostat starts the compressor and it uses just a much electricity in one go as it would have to run ocasionally during the twenty minutes.
Its cheaper if you turn off the freezer during peak hours when the cost of electricity is higher . . . and turn it back on when the cost of electricity is cheaper. The amount of electricity used is the same but cost = (price per unit)*(units). If you buy the same quantity, but buy when (price per unit) is less, you pay less.
Why not just turn the thermostat up a few degrees and save money by not having a complex control system?
Again, office building control systems have been around for a long long time . . . . The same concepts are used in DCS's and PLC's for manufacturing systems. Systems to change thermostats automatically are neither new nor overly complex. They are standard technology and the cost savings by installing them has been proven countless times in buildings and manufactuering systems.
Increasing the temperature difference between inside and outside increase the flow of heat energy through the insulation.
This is indeed true, however, the driving force for heat transfer in a modern office building would not change enough to offset the savings associated with the technology. Again one could do the math. And again one is not trying to use less energy overall, one is trying to use more energy when it is cheaper and less when it is more expensive.This kind of technology in controls is old and reliable, tried and true. Real time pricing is the new part of this technology, not load balancing, thermostat adjustment, control systems etc. These have been around a long time
Even if new buildings are connected to Internet, they usually don't communicate between themselves. And when it comes to electricity, these buildings are selfish and consume what they want without any coordination.
Am I missing something here? I just reread the articles and I didn't see anything about buildings communicating between themselves. . . I saw an article about buildings configured to respond to energy price information . . . but this information is not shared between buildings. In fact there is a diagram at this link from the original post . . . and it shows XML sent from a central center, not between buildings.
In fact . . . Quoting from the same link: Beyond price, systems could be programmed to respond to changes in air quality, to participate in emissions trading schemes, to tap into sustainable energy sources, to coordinate the responses of groups of buildings, and possibly to minimize local brownout threats and price spikes, according to Connors. "There's still some wiggle room. But, all in all, it's a very cool beginning," he said.
The article says that one could . . . coordinate responses between buildings
The people who did this did not make buildings communicate which each other . . . they said that the could use the same technology to do this. The original post is at best misleading. At worst just plain wrong (according to the articles it cites). Either way it strikes me as an example of exagerated irresponsible journalism.