The UPS (1400W APC) wasn't faulty, it worked like a champ and kept providing power after the circuit breaker in the house tripped.
The problem is inherent in having a large-capacity UPS. If something that is connected to it starts pulling enough load to trip the room's breaker, the UPS keeps the power coming, which kind of defeats the purpose of a circuit breaker. In my case the increased load was a shorted-out mobo, which almost caught fire before the power supply in the computer acted as an expensive circuit breaker between the UPS and the mobo.
In some circumstances, having uninterruptable power can have unforseen results.
I run my system on a UPS for the reasons you state, but I had an experience that makes me wonder.
I had a motherboard that died (fried capacitors, anyone?), and the resulting load tripped the circuit breaker for that room.
But the UPS kept the power coming in spite of the tripped breaker, and the result was a fair amount of smoke from the MB before the power supply in the PC finally gave up and died.
I got lucky, but it could have easily burned the house down...
500W is the capacity of the PS, not the actual power usage. It is all of the -other- components in your computer that determine how much power you are using. The important factor in the power supply itself is its conversion efficiency.
In general, a large-capacity PS is a good thing; if you are only pulling, say 300W through a 500W supply, odds are it will be running cool and quiet, and providing clean power to your components, since you are not pushing the PS to its design limit.
That said, your point that it would be a good thing if people didn't need so much power (ie., used less demanding components) is right on. But I believe it is a good thing to use a bigger PS than you think you need, it helps the rest of your parts last longer if they are getting good, clean power.
There are definitely business models out there that can work. The key is to be able to add value to the product in a way that the PHB can understand.
SourceFire seems to have found a way to do it. Going beyond just packaging Snort on "black boxes" and providing support, they went through the effort to get their commercial version of Snort through the necessary certifications to be allowed on US government networks. It cost them money, but it is going to make them money as well.
My PHB wouldn't have allowed me to deploy Snort, arguably with good reason. But SourceFire, no problem. And from what I hear at other agencies, I'm not the only one.
It works because Snort has established a solid reputation, and SourceFire has added the pieces it takes to sell it to the boss.
Personally, I've always been fond of Archie Bunker's idea of how to deal with hijackers: arm all the passengers so the hijackers know they're ournumbered.
Good idea...until you consider that they are going to start allowing cell phone use on planes. Wait, maybe it would be a good idea. You want to reach for that cell phone? Well punk, you gotta ask yourself, "Do I feel lucky?"
Why would it mean less battery life? Seems like it would mean more battery life if you listened to the radio sometimes instead of accessing the HD for music. Radio reception requires a heck of a lot less power than spinning a HD...
Radio was one (of many!) reasons I chose an iRiver...
I know most people don't care about this, but i really do, and it prevents me from using a lot of software. Mozilla's UI is hideous. It always has been. It doesn't look good on any platform that i've ever used it on
Sucks to be you.
Yet another Mac fanboy whining about the "hideous" interface, or the look of the widgets, or whatever insignificant little thing that makes your life unliveable with anything but the "perfect" Apple interface.
I guess I'm just dense, but doesn't this get down to the level of nitpicking after a while?
Is your life, and your current tool so perfect that something so minor as a less than perfect interface or widget or whatever ruins everything?
I question the intelligence of rejecting reasonably functional software just because the interface, or the look and feel, or the widgets aren't your idea of perfection. Seems like narrow-mindedness of the first order, especially regarding something as subjective as UI.
Have you ever actually called Microsoft for support? Have fun sitting on hold and speaking with a moron once you finally get off hold. Save yourself a bunch of time and just re-install, that's probably what they are going to tell you to do anyway...
In my experience, the problem is if the seal between the layers is imperfect or compromised, moisture gets between the layers, and you will always have fogging problems. You might as well toss the goggles, you will always have problems with them.
But if you find a pair of goggles that happens to have a perfect seal, and you never mess with it, they will never fog (at least between the layers).
I have an old, cheap, scratched up, duct-taped pair of Alpina goggles that I have used (a -lot-) for about 7 years that I just can't bring myself to replace because they are so reliable.
If you find a pair of goggles with a good seal, hold on to them!
I know that I should have, but you know, I was just trying to get the damn plots done. Gnumeric worked, Calc didn't, I've moved on. Call me socially irresponsible...
Just this weekend, I needed to plot some coffee roasting profiles that I had taken data on, so I thought I would use OO Calc to enter/plot them.
What a disaster. I ended up fucking around quite a while trying to get the chart I wanted, and when I started trying to copy/paste charts, the whole thing froze up. Repeatably.
I ended up switching to Gnumeric, which has its own quirks, but at least didn't crash. It also has a nice object tree kind of interface for working on chart options.
Based on my attempt to perform a relatively simple task, I'd have to say that OO Calc has some real stability and usability hurdles to overcome before I would choose it over Gnumeric. Gnumeric got the job done, OO Calc didn't.
The versions are the ones on the Knoppix 4.0 DVD, running from the hard disk...
I have a friend who worked in a lab that was trying to develop a test for MCD, and my hat goes off to the people who do this kind of work.
Since so little is known about the exact infection process, known infected brain samples have to be handled -very- carefully. Working in a high-level biohazard environment is not easy, and is very stressful.
You obviously haven't driven in Europe lately. The 'occasional' tractor-trailer? The German autobahns are choked with them. SUVs? More and more every day.
The reason Smart cars won't take off in the USA is that, compared to Europeans, Americans drive like idiots. It would just be too friggin' dangerous...
If they really wanted to challenge webapps, they could allow non-Microsoft applications access to the deployment mechanism. That way you could have a single OS which auto-updates every application on-demand, which would be worth its weight in gold^Wcode.
The best explanation I have heard is that the physics haven't changed.
We nailed the physics getting Apollo up.
So yes, at first glance it looks like Apollo/Soyuz. But instead of re-inventing Saturn V, they are taking the advances in engine design and applying them to the new rockets.
Makes sense to me, use the parts that worked well (boosters, capsules), ditch the parts that didn't (space plane).
I remember very clearly the first time I saw the shuttle concept proposed. It was 1967, I was in first grade, an avid follower of the Apollo missions. The "Weekly Reader" had a concept drawing of the shuttle, and I thought, "No way is the re-usable part going to work, look at what the apollo capsules look like after re-entry!"
Probably from the ubiquitous "Please use the toilet brush" signs you see in Germany. "Sehr geeherter Toilettenbenutzer - Falls was kleben bleibt, steht die Buerste bereit!"
For much software, config files, switches, and option params still dominate over graphical dialogs, and even those that do exist in polished software are still just checkbox and radio equivalents of config settings, not real objects in the sense of "chopsticks interacting with noodles" (associating entities with containers).
The problem I have with GUI for config settings is that you usually have to click all over the damn place to even see what the config options are. Even if you are very familiar with the interface, you may have to click numerous times in numerous places, just to change a couple of settings.
If I am looking at a text file, I can see all of the settings in -one place-! If I am not familiar with what options I have, I don't have to click through -every- element (tabs, buttons, menus) of a GUI to get an idea of what's possible. And if I am familiar with the options, I don't waste a bunch of time clicking around (hello MS Exchange!) to get things done, I use the search function of a text editor (/ in vi) to get where I need to be, quickly.
IMO, this is one of the biggest reasons why GUI-based administration mostly sucks.
Well let's see, Knoppix shows that Linux (and X11 and a bunch of useful apps) fits on a CD now. As far as other OS's, it depends on what they do and how they choose to do it.
The growth trend for Linux/X11 has been pretty flat. Windows, well that's a different story. I think OSX has had less bloat per release. YMMV.
My original point is that there is something pretty substantial out there -now- and in more and more situations, it is viable. Naysay and nitpick all you want, it is pretty cool to have a CD with a reasonably useful OS/GUI Environment/Apps that can be copied into 500MB of RAM without the need to install anything. And with a boot time that is on the same order of magnitude as a Win2K system.
I have seen the future and the future is zero-install OS.
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The UPS (1400W APC) wasn't faulty, it worked like a champ and kept providing power after the circuit breaker in the house tripped.
The problem is inherent in having a large-capacity UPS. If something that is connected to it starts pulling enough load to trip the room's breaker, the UPS keeps the power coming, which kind of defeats the purpose of a circuit breaker. In my case the increased load was a shorted-out mobo, which almost caught fire before the power supply in the computer acted as an expensive circuit breaker between the UPS and the mobo.
In some circumstances, having uninterruptable power can have unforseen results.
I run my system on a UPS for the reasons you state, but I had an experience that makes me wonder.
I had a motherboard that died (fried capacitors, anyone?), and the resulting load tripped the circuit breaker for that room.
But the UPS kept the power coming in spite of the tripped breaker, and the result was a fair amount of smoke from the MB before the power supply in the PC finally gave up and died.
I got lucky, but it could have easily burned the house down...
500W is the capacity of the PS, not the actual power usage. It is all of the -other- components in your computer that determine how much power you are using. The important factor in the power supply itself is its conversion efficiency.
In general, a large-capacity PS is a good thing; if you are only pulling, say 300W through a 500W supply, odds are it will be running cool and quiet, and providing clean power to your components, since you are not pushing the PS to its design limit.
That said, your point that it would be a good thing if people didn't need so much power (ie., used less demanding components) is right on. But I believe it is a good thing to use a bigger PS than you think you need, it helps the rest of your parts last longer if they are getting good, clean power.
There are definitely business models out there that can work. The key is to be able to add value to the product in a way that the PHB can understand.
SourceFire seems to have found a way to do it. Going beyond just packaging Snort on "black boxes" and providing support, they went through the effort to get their commercial version of Snort through the necessary certifications to be allowed on US government networks. It cost them money, but it is going to make them money as well.
My PHB wouldn't have allowed me to deploy Snort, arguably with good reason. But SourceFire, no problem. And from what I hear at other agencies, I'm not the only one.
It works because Snort has established a solid reputation, and SourceFire has added the pieces it takes to sell it to the boss.
Personally, I've always been fond of Archie Bunker's idea of how to deal with hijackers: arm all the passengers so the hijackers know they're ournumbered.
Good idea...until you consider that they are going to start allowing cell phone use on planes. Wait, maybe it would be a good idea. You want to reach for that cell phone? Well punk, you gotta ask yourself, "Do I feel lucky?"
Why would it mean less battery life? Seems like it would mean more battery life if you listened to the radio sometimes instead of accessing the HD for music. Radio reception requires a heck of a lot less power than spinning a HD...
Radio was one (of many!) reasons I chose an iRiver...
I know most people don't care about this, but i really do, and it prevents me from using a lot of software. Mozilla's UI is hideous. It always has been. It doesn't look good on any platform that i've ever used it on
Sucks to be you.
Yet another Mac fanboy whining about the "hideous" interface, or the look of the widgets, or whatever insignificant little thing that makes your life unliveable with anything but the "perfect" Apple interface.
I guess I'm just dense, but doesn't this get down to the level of nitpicking after a while?
Is your life, and your current tool so perfect that something so minor as a less than perfect interface or widget or whatever ruins everything?
I question the intelligence of rejecting reasonably functional software just because the interface, or the look and feel, or the widgets aren't your idea of perfection. Seems like narrow-mindedness of the first order, especially regarding something as subjective as UI.
Baby, meet bathwater...
Have you ever actually called Microsoft for support? Have fun sitting on hold and speaking with a moron once you finally get off hold. Save yourself a bunch of time and just re-install, that's probably what they are going to tell you to do anyway...
Knoppix.
It seems to vary between individual goggles.
In my experience, the problem is if the seal between the layers is imperfect or compromised, moisture gets between the layers, and you will always have fogging problems. You might as well toss the goggles, you will always have problems with them.
But if you find a pair of goggles that happens to have a perfect seal, and you never mess with it, they will never fog (at least between the layers).
I have an old, cheap, scratched up, duct-taped pair of Alpina goggles that I have used (a -lot-) for about 7 years that I just can't bring myself to replace because they are so reliable.
If you find a pair of goggles with a good seal, hold on to them!
I know that I should have, but you know, I was just trying to get the damn plots done. Gnumeric worked, Calc didn't, I've moved on. Call me socially irresponsible...
Just this weekend, I needed to plot some coffee roasting profiles that I had taken data on, so I thought I would use OO Calc to enter/plot them.
What a disaster. I ended up fucking around quite a while trying to get the chart I wanted, and when I started trying to copy/paste charts, the whole thing froze up. Repeatably.
I ended up switching to Gnumeric, which has its own quirks, but at least didn't crash. It also has a nice object tree kind of interface for working on chart options.
Based on my attempt to perform a relatively simple task, I'd have to say that OO Calc has some real stability and usability hurdles to overcome before I would choose it over Gnumeric. Gnumeric got the job done, OO Calc didn't.
The versions are the ones on the Knoppix 4.0 DVD, running from the hard disk...
I have a friend who worked in a lab that was trying to develop a test for MCD, and my hat goes off to the people who do this kind of work.
Since so little is known about the exact infection process, known infected brain samples have to be handled -very- carefully. Working in a high-level biohazard environment is not easy, and is very stressful.
Oh wait, they do.
It's pretty easy to tell who's who in the DoD...
You obviously haven't driven in Europe lately. The 'occasional' tractor-trailer? The German autobahns are choked with them. SUVs? More and more every day.
The reason Smart cars won't take off in the USA is that, compared to Europeans, Americans drive like idiots. It would just be too friggin' dangerous...
Thanks for the new sig!
If they really wanted to challenge webapps, they could allow non-Microsoft applications access to the deployment mechanism. That way you could have a single OS which auto-updates every application on-demand, which would be worth its weight in gold^Wcode.
Like this?
The best explanation I have heard is that the physics haven't changed.
We nailed the physics getting Apollo up.
So yes, at first glance it looks like Apollo/Soyuz. But instead of re-inventing Saturn V, they are taking the advances in engine design and applying them to the new rockets.
Makes sense to me, use the parts that worked well (boosters, capsules), ditch the parts that didn't (space plane).
I remember very clearly the first time I saw the shuttle concept proposed. It was 1967, I was in first grade, an avid follower of the Apollo missions. The "Weekly Reader" had a concept drawing of the shuttle, and I thought, "No way is the re-usable part going to work, look at what the apollo capsules look like after re-entry!"
Too bad that is a story about the 2004 shootout... Still, it is a good read, thanks!
I thought Potato Head was about the dumbest thing I had ever seen, but from what I've seen, kids of a certain age group LOVE it.
Some of our friends have kids, and without exception, they have no trouble using KDE, and they really like the games.
It's like getting a free babysitter in your box of cereal!
Probably from the ubiquitous "Please use the toilet brush" signs you see in Germany. "Sehr geeherter Toilettenbenutzer - Falls was kleben bleibt, steht die Buerste bereit!"
For much software, config files, switches, and option params still dominate over graphical dialogs, and even those that do exist in polished software are still just checkbox and radio equivalents of config settings, not real objects in the sense of "chopsticks interacting with noodles" (associating entities with containers).
The problem I have with GUI for config settings is that you usually have to click all over the damn place to even see what the config options are. Even if you are very familiar with the interface, you may have to click numerous times in numerous places, just to change a couple of settings.
If I am looking at a text file, I can see all of the settings in -one place-! If I am not familiar with what options I have, I don't have to click through -every- element (tabs, buttons, menus) of a GUI to get an idea of what's possible. And if I am familiar with the options, I don't waste a bunch of time clicking around (hello MS Exchange!) to get things done, I use the search function of a text editor (/ in vi) to get where I need to be, quickly.
IMO, this is one of the biggest reasons why GUI-based administration mostly sucks.
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xine is your friend.
I know, you don't watch on your computer blah blah blah.....
Well let's see, Knoppix shows that Linux (and X11 and a bunch of useful apps) fits on a CD now. As far as other OS's, it depends on what they do and how they choose to do it.
The growth trend for Linux/X11 has been pretty flat. Windows, well that's a different story. I think OSX has had less bloat per release. YMMV.
My original point is that there is something pretty substantial out there -now- and in more and more situations, it is viable. Naysay and nitpick all you want, it is pretty cool to have a CD with a reasonably useful OS/GUI Environment/Apps that can be copied into 500MB of RAM without the need to install anything. And with a boot time that is on the same order of magnitude as a Win2K system.
I have seen the future and the future is zero-install OS.