We have to supply the readings ourselves, and I assume that they then investigate if the readings don't match / are above the norm from your neighbourhood.
Smart meters aren't about meter reading. They're about being able to cut off your energy without having anyone physically visit you. Plus, I guess, a way to provide greater lock-in / revenue growth (i.e. customers must pay for meters, energy company buys them, so they always pay 10x the real price and pocket the difference).
1. We can do it for sewer/subways, so we can do it for this. 2....and trucks, roads etc don't neet maintence? 3....unsticking trucks when they get stuck on bridges / ontop of passanger cars. 4....have you ever been on the M25 (or insert-name-of-big-highway) on a Friday afternoon? 5....you think it'll be worse than shoplifting / 'falling off the back of a lorry'? 6....and this is worse than road deaths / train deaths right now? 7. Fuel strikes?
Sure, you've raised some valid points, but you've completely omitted any mention of perspective. What's important is how such a system would compare in relation to the alternatives... and from where I'm standing, it certainly sounds like it's an idea worth investigating.
I dunno about the whole 'just works' thing. A friend of mine is a big mac user (non-techie), she seems to have the mac equivelent of BSOD several times a week. Graphics designer, so the mac is needed.
I gather that this is pretty standard in the Mac world.
26 years supporting Windows Desktops and Server Products 10 years VMware. BA in Computer Science from Correspondence University of Pennsylvania. Post-it-note with "Please hire me;-)" attached to a USD bill sporting the face of Ben Franklin
and a picture of the hiring manager in a compromising position with he CEO's wife?
Microsoft's Small Business Server isn't that expensive, and is as idiot proof as Microsoft OSes go.
Now, considering that the OP seems to have 0 experience in IT (so he/she is either a kid out of uni, or has blagged it), it would be prudent to recommend he look at the simplest solution from the market leader. Something he can't mess up.
Anyhow, my 2p:
Computers: buy them from dell. Best price/quality ratio. Pick a cheapish desktop for office-based users. Consider buying 1-2 extra as hot swaps (cut downtime during repairs). Laptops for users who're mobile (Dells are again okay, especially the Latitudes). Internal network: buy a general purpose server with Windows SBS. That'll be your domain controller, file server, and exchange server. Web server: host it externally. either rent a server, a colocation or just rent shared space.
Depending on just how much media you've got, you could invest in a NAS box / SAN. QNAP are pretty well rated.
Backups: you're probably looking at USB drives. You'll have too much data to have to rely on tape.
What the ORM gives you (in addition to the obvious) is the power to make large scale changes to your persistance infrastructure quickly and easily.
Take caching as an example. Every time you touch the database, you pay a relatively high cost. If the data you're accessing doesn't have complex sorting or querying, then you can dramatically improve performance by caching in the webserver's memory. If your db is on the network, then the cost is even higher. Guess what? With an ORM such as nHibernate, you can have this data cached, with just a runtime setting. No downtime. No code changes.
For projects of a certain size (not tiny, but not google/facebook size) the ability to be able to tweak your data access via configuration is well worth the initial 'extra' cost of using an ORM.
As you say though, there are too many poor developers out there who don't understand their tools. However, you can't disparage a whole technology just because a certain group of users are too stupid to be able to use it right. It's actually a good thing: inept developers / architects / 'engineers' are flagged early on when they treat an ORM as "magic persistance layer". Much better than hiding in the woodwork until it's too late get rid of them.
...with any kind of accuracy. Apples can't self pollinate, which means you'll never get the same variety of apple out of its seeds. Sure, you'll get an apple, but not the same apple you were expecting.
As far as tomatoes go I was refering to certain popular crop tomatoes which, as I understand it, do not produce viable seeds.
I understand that a lot of the varieties grown commercially have similar problems. They've either been designed to be sterile, or they involve splicing one plant onto another (see: apple tree) or something similar...
Like most crop varieties of apples, bananas and tomatoes?
Or do they manually pollinate them? Whilst crossing fingers and hoping for the best (apple trees take a long time to grow to fruit bearing age so it's hard to validate)..
We Europeans tend to forget that the US is massive. It's twice the size of the entire EU, though only has 3/5 of the population. Population wise it's comparible to the Eurozone countries.
The major difference is that the culture seems to be based around 'city states' more than 'countries' as it is in the Eurozone..... your average Texan is as close to someone from New York as a Finn is to a Greek.
Summary (paraphrased): modified lighting leads to a 15% increase in concentration of school children. Followup research must be done to prove any link to performance. Trial was done at two schools, and sponsored by Philips.
My personal experiences back this up: daylight lamps in particular are fantastic, they're more effective than coffee at keeping me alert.
Every time I see those advertised I think back to that Onion article.
Stopped buying Gillette blades around that time too. It seemed to me that their 2-blad razors suddenly got a lot blunter, so I switched over to Wilkinson Sword's twin-blade system. Which is much sharper and thus more comfortable.
> The way things should work is that a CS degree ought to be enough for a development position, period. > And that no one earns such a degree if they can't develop.
Erm, in my experience that isn't true. It surprised me too, that someone who got a good grade in CS at a very very good university couldn't code for shit. It wasn't just coding either: he didn't have any kind of aptitude for computers. Though he was an expert in playing with MSN all day, and playing flash games on the internet. Then demanding a full time position (he was an intern).
Yup, you can only use certain pans... but from what I've seen, compatible pans are usually the nice ones:) I've got gas, and all my good pans work on induction.
Temp changed seemed as immediate as with gas to me, though heating seemed faster. It feels as if the heat is applied evenly, which results in, say, the water boiling all over the pan at the same time. Not around the edges first as it does with gas.
If you can, then switch to induction. It's the closest thing you'll get to cooking on gas... and to be honest, if I had a new kitchen installed tomorrow I'd take it over gas. It's safer, cooks just as well and is real easy to clean. Heats up very quickly too.
Sounds like we've got a similar background. I've been developing with SQL for the best part of 14 years, longer than I've been coding Java or C# (10 and 7 years respectivly).
MS T-SQL is really nice (MSSQL2005+). It allows fairly clean code, and can be very *very* fast in execution.
One of my previous large projects was implemented almost entirely in MS-TSQL with a very dumb web layer (which is purely display).
The project which I'm currently working on is the replacement for that. We've moved all of the logic from the database and implemented it in the application through use of a domain model.
Why? Because there's a point where the logic is simply unmanagably complex. Even with a lot of effort put into TSQL code reuse we've still got hundreds of scripts which can be replaced by a few dozen objects.
It's questions like "this customer must pay this rate on mondays, that rate on tuesdays unless they've got a blue shirt on. In which case they use a totally different rate." which are hard (or a lot more work) to implement in TSQL.
Sure, you can go a long way whilst implementing everything in TSQL. If you don't need complex logic then you'll likely outperform any object oriented application.
What I'm really saying really boils down to this: use the right tool for the job.
Don't know what that is because the job isn't clear enough? Then start with the easiest (and fastest) option, but be prepared to throw everything away and start again.
> We'd be better served by a relational database system that embedded > its features inside a good programming language. I'll be bold and sneak > in the suggestion that this ought to be a functional language; after all, > the relational algebra is a simple kind of functional language.
It's a problem which will be solved. Whoever solves it is going to be a very rich man. How do you combine the best features of the relation model (high performance when working with sets, fantastic domain specific language in SQL and data integrity) with those of an object database (better scalability curve and if done right the logic's coupled to the data).
I've not mentioned reporting, mainly because you quickly hit the limits of a normalised relation model and have to implement OLAP cubes to handle the data. Which, although clever, is a hack.... and doesn't really need all of the features of relation databases (locking, for example, is often not required).
Smart object-db providers would ship a SQL-fascade for their datastores to allow complex querying, but the performance and specifically integrity model of current implementations need a lot of work. Which is why ORM is still used so often..
Slashdot Mirror
I've never had an actual person read our meters.
We have to supply the readings ourselves, and I assume that they then investigate if the readings don't match / are above the norm from your neighbourhood.
Smart meters aren't about meter reading. They're about being able to cut off your energy without having anyone physically visit you. Plus, I guess, a way to provide greater lock-in / revenue growth (i.e. customers must pay for meters, energy company buys them, so they always pay 10x the real price and pocket the difference).
This is slashdot. What do you expect me to do? Actually READ the f***** article? ;)
Still seems odd that so many students fail, what with all of the talk right now of growing carbon sinks..
Huh. They teach you in high school biology that 60%+ of the mass of most organisms is water.
Because some posters speak more than one language? and make occasional mind farts when writing in English?
"en" is a pluralising suffix in Dutch, and might well be in other languages.
1. We can do it for sewer/subways, so we can do it for this. ...and trucks, roads etc don't neet maintence? ...unsticking trucks when they get stuck on bridges / ontop of passanger cars. ...have you ever been on the M25 (or insert-name-of-big-highway) on a Friday afternoon? ...you think it'll be worse than shoplifting / 'falling off the back of a lorry'? ...and this is worse than road deaths / train deaths right now?
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7. Fuel strikes?
Sure, you've raised some valid points, but you've completely omitted any mention of perspective. What's important is how such a system would compare in relation to the alternatives... and from where I'm standing, it certainly sounds like it's an idea worth investigating.
> I threw up after looking at that nerd. He has the whitest skin I've ever seen
Racist.
Her, and she doesn't even know what RAM is let alone how to upgrade it. The Apple Store have done everything for her.
Not sure what version she has, but her macbook's about 18 months old.
I dunno about the whole 'just works' thing. A friend of mine is a big mac user (non-techie), she seems to have the mac equivelent of BSOD several times a week. Graphics designer, so the mac is needed.
I gather that this is pretty standard in the Mac world.
Haven't seen BSOD in Windows for a long while.
26 years supporting Windows Desktops and Server Products ;-)" attached to a USD bill sporting the face of Ben Franklin
10 years VMware.
BA in Computer Science from Correspondence University of Pennsylvania.
Post-it-note with "Please hire me
and a picture of the hiring manager in a compromising position with he CEO's wife?
Microsoft's Small Business Server isn't that expensive, and is as idiot proof as Microsoft OSes go.
Now, considering that the OP seems to have 0 experience in IT (so he/she is either a kid out of uni, or has blagged it), it would be prudent to recommend he look at the simplest solution from the market leader. Something he can't mess up.
Anyhow, my 2p:
Computers: buy them from dell. Best price/quality ratio. Pick a cheapish desktop for office-based users. Consider buying 1-2 extra as hot swaps (cut downtime during repairs). Laptops for users who're mobile (Dells are again okay, especially the Latitudes).
Internal network: buy a general purpose server with Windows SBS. That'll be your domain controller, file server, and exchange server.
Web server: host it externally. either rent a server, a colocation or just rent shared space.
Depending on just how much media you've got, you could invest in a NAS box / SAN. QNAP are pretty well rated.
Backups: you're probably looking at USB drives. You'll have too much data to have to rely on tape.
What the ORM gives you (in addition to the obvious) is the power to make large scale changes to your persistance infrastructure quickly and easily.
Take caching as an example. Every time you touch the database, you pay a relatively high cost. If the data you're accessing doesn't have complex sorting or querying, then you can dramatically improve performance by caching in the webserver's memory. If your db is on the network, then the cost is even higher. Guess what? With an ORM such as nHibernate, you can have this data cached, with just a runtime setting. No downtime. No code changes.
For projects of a certain size (not tiny, but not google/facebook size) the ability to be able to tweak your data access via configuration is well worth the initial 'extra' cost of using an ORM.
As you say though, there are too many poor developers out there who don't understand their tools. However, you can't disparage a whole technology just because a certain group of users are too stupid to be able to use it right. It's actually a good thing: inept developers / architects / 'engineers' are flagged early on when they treat an ORM as "magic persistance layer". Much better than hiding in the woodwork until it's too late get rid of them.
...with any kind of accuracy. Apples can't self pollinate, which means you'll never get the same variety of apple out of its seeds. Sure, you'll get an apple, but not the same apple you were expecting.
Google for more info:
http://www.google.nl/search?q=growing+apples+from+seed
As far as tomatoes go I was refering to certain popular crop tomatoes which, as I understand it, do not produce viable seeds.
I understand that a lot of the varieties grown commercially have similar problems. They've either been designed to be sterile, or they involve splicing one plant onto another (see: apple tree) or something similar...
Like most crop varieties of apples, bananas and tomatoes?
Or do they manually pollinate them? Whilst crossing fingers and hoping for the best (apple trees take a long time to grow to fruit bearing age so it's hard to validate)..
We Europeans tend to forget that the US is massive. It's twice the size of the entire EU, though only has 3/5 of the population. Population wise it's comparible to the Eurozone countries.
The major difference is that the culture seems to be based around 'city states' more than 'countries' as it is in the Eurozone..... your average Texan is as close to someone from New York as a Finn is to a Greek.
Hans Rosling expained it really well at TED.
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html
Research here in Netherlands points towards to daylight lighting having large influence on the performance of school children.
Link is in dutch: http://www.ed.nl/onderwijs/6474024/Meer-profijt-scholen-door-beter-licht.ece
Summary (paraphrased): modified lighting leads to a 15% increase in concentration of school children. Followup research must be done to prove any link to performance. Trial was done at two schools, and sponsored by Philips.
My personal experiences back this up: daylight lamps in particular are fantastic, they're more effective than coffee at keeping me alert.
> Not much you can do about the virus ..except vaccination...
Not sure how you'd deliver a vaccine to the bee colony, though.
Their lawsuit gives them leverage over her.
If she wins, she gets power.
It's good for business to have leverage over people in power.
Every time I see those advertised I think back to that Onion article.
Stopped buying Gillette blades around that time too. It seemed to me that their 2-blad razors suddenly got a lot blunter, so I switched over to Wilkinson Sword's twin-blade system. Which is much sharper and thus more comfortable.
> The way things should work is that a CS degree ought to be enough for a development position, period.
> And that no one earns such a degree if they can't develop.
Erm, in my experience that isn't true. It surprised me too, that someone who got a good grade in CS at a very very good university couldn't code for shit. It wasn't just coding either: he didn't have any kind of aptitude for computers. Though he was an expert in playing with MSN all day, and playing flash games on the internet. Then demanding a full time position (he was an intern).
Yup, you can only use certain pans... but from what I've seen, compatible pans are usually the nice ones :) I've got gas, and all my good pans work on induction.
Temp changed seemed as immediate as with gas to me, though heating seemed faster. It feels as if the heat is applied evenly, which results in, say, the water boiling all over the pan at the same time. Not around the edges first as it does with gas.
If you can, then switch to induction. It's the closest thing you'll get to cooking on gas... and to be honest, if I had a new kitchen installed tomorrow I'd take it over gas. It's safer, cooks just as well and is real easy to clean. Heats up very quickly too.
Just to add, when I said this:
In my experience you'll usually get the task done better and faster (in coding time) with your programming language
I was refering to a problem which involves *complex* logic.
Sounds like we've got a similar background. I've been developing with SQL for the best part of 14 years, longer than I've been coding Java or C# (10 and 7 years respectivly).
MS T-SQL is really nice (MSSQL2005+). It allows fairly clean code, and can be very *very* fast in execution.
One of my previous large projects was implemented almost entirely in MS-TSQL with a very dumb web layer (which is purely display).
The project which I'm currently working on is the replacement for that. We've moved all of the logic from the database and implemented it in the application through use of a domain model.
Why? Because there's a point where the logic is simply unmanagably complex. Even with a lot of effort put into TSQL code reuse we've still got hundreds of scripts which can be replaced by a few dozen objects.
It's questions like "this customer must pay this rate on mondays, that rate on tuesdays unless they've got a blue shirt on. In which case they use a totally different rate." which are hard (or a lot more work) to implement in TSQL.
Sure, you can go a long way whilst implementing everything in TSQL. If you don't need complex logic then you'll likely outperform any object oriented application.
What I'm really saying really boils down to this: use the right tool for the job.
Don't know what that is because the job isn't clear enough? Then start with the easiest (and fastest) option, but be prepared to throw everything away and start again.
> We'd be better served by a relational database system that embedded
> its features inside a good programming language. I'll be bold and sneak
> in the suggestion that this ought to be a functional language; after all,
> the relational algebra is a simple kind of functional language.
It's a problem which will be solved. Whoever solves it is going to be a very rich man. How do you combine the best features of the relation model (high performance when working with sets, fantastic domain specific language in SQL and data integrity) with those of an object database (better scalability curve and if done right the logic's coupled to the data).
I've not mentioned reporting, mainly because you quickly hit the limits of a normalised relation model and have to implement OLAP cubes to handle the data. Which, although clever, is a hack.... and doesn't really need all of the features of relation databases (locking, for example, is often not required).
Smart object-db providers would ship a SQL-fascade for their datastores to allow complex querying, but the performance and specifically integrity model of current implementations need a lot of work. Which is why ORM is still used so often..