You may indeed pay road taxes for the gasoline that you use on toll roads, but in Massachusetts at least you can apply for a rebate on all state excise taxes paid on the fuel consumed on a toll/private road. It is a cumbersome process and they don't make it easy, but you can apply.
So let them do it and I would want to be the first guy to try and claim a refund for viewing a paid for website.
Not sure if you have tried this, but I know that you can install temperature regulating valves for individual radiators. I just did a quick google search for the valves, and if you are handy with plumbing tools you could do it yourself. Or just get an HVAC contractor to install it for you. Here is a link to a catalog with thermostatic radiator valves. Hope it helps.
Predictive things work great in a commercial building, when what you need to consider is heating and cooling but you are not very concerned about hot water production. But I am willing to bet that the home in question uses oil for both heat and hot water and it is probably a tankless system. The system is going to be running everyday anyways.
Now I suppose you could do some pretty neat things to automate a heat and hot water system, like have it learn when you usually do dishes/ laundry/take a shower and anticipate those needs etc. But that seems like overkill. The low tech solution of a standard $50 7 day programable thermostat situated correctly for each zone, and designing the right zones would make the most sense.
But even if it isn't the most practical for teh averahe home owner - your system does sound pretty cool
Oil heat is usedd predominately in the North East states. In New England oil has been by far the most economical choice for most of the past 15 years. In Massachusetts it is a real drawback when you try and resell a house if it is electric heat.
I locked in my oil price at $2.04/gallon this year. I will burn on average about 1000 gallons, but this is due to windows needing to be replaced and other issues. Electric would be much more.
To reduce my consumption I did just purchase a cheap ($45) 7 day programable thermostat from Home Depot. It breaks the day into separate time blocks and can change the setting based on what day of the week it is.
That being said, radiant heat systems utilizing forced hot water are effecient and comfortable ways to heat. Especially in a garage or in any room with stone or ceramic tile floor.
I don't think that the problem is people who don't know technology, making uninformed decicions. So much as people having a flagrant disregard for the concept that what they do with their own PC effects everyone. For example, if I never learned to program the clock on my VCR and it flashed 12:00 all teh time, it only effects me. But if all I want to use it for is watching videos from Blockbuster, then who cares, there is absolutly no harm.
People apply the same logic to their PCs. As long as they can check their AOL mail and play solitaire, they think everything is fine. The classic car analogy mentioned above doesn't capture what most people think is happening. If their PC is full of spyware and crap, it is only a nuisance to them alone they believe. Like if their car didn't have a working gas gauge, or if the radio would not work. An anoyance, yes, but not the end of the world and in no way effecting anyone else.
The avergae person wouldn't want to drive a car that was leaking gasoline and oil all over the place all the while spewing clouds of polluting black smoke, but they don't understand that this is the state that they let their PCs get to.
The challange is not to teach them the technology, nor even design a system that protects people from their own dum actions, but to teach them that their actions can create havoc for other people.
It's not, "Don't open any email attachments from anyone ever, or your computer will be screwwed.", it should be "Don't open email attachments from anyone ever, or your PC will start infecting other peoples computers and be used to host kiddie porn."
Service is a two way street. A server should treat the customer like a human being and the customer should treat the server like a human being.
Personally I cringe at the way some waitresses, checkout clerks, etc., get treated by "paying customers". But there are just as many "servers" who aren't interested in serving and would rather talk on the phone, hide in the kitchen, or whatever, than serve the customer.
If I expect "pleasant" service, I'd damn well better be pleasant as well. If I am acting like a jerk, well then how can i blame the other person for giving me anymore than the minimum.
The distractions and annoyances that you mentioned are a Dell, specifically Dell "home/small business" problem. A fresh installation of Win XP is much cleaner, or a Dell Optiplex instead of a Dimension.
That being said, you are right that people just accept whatever crap they are given. But you have to remember these are the same people who will click to get the smiley face icons, or call AOL the "Internet", or open random email attachments.
I wish that I could share your opinion of most users and think that they would not "put up with it" if they were used to Mac or Linux desktop. But many people have their system so kludged up with spyware/viruses/needless applications that they wouldn't notice a better OS.
Re:Oblivious to the problem, or resigned to it?
on
Insider Threat
·
· Score: 1
Having just read the review, I think the book agrees that security is a cost/benefit analysis, but that many companies screw up the analysis. They will throw good money after bad for external threats, but not secure themselves from internal ones. To pull another example from retail - our cashiers have "drive-offs", where someone does not pay for the gasoline they purchased and drives offs. There are only three possible ways for this to happen, the customer paid a cashier who either forgot to ring in teh sale or pocketed it herself, the customer intended to steal the gasoline, or the customer thought he paid for the gasoline, but his card was declined, swiped backwards, etc. You need to watch the video of the cashier as well as the customer. No one should be accused of anything until there is conclusive evidence, but at the same time no one should automatically be "trusted".
At a loss prevention seminar I heard something that made sense to me. 15% of people will never steal anything for any reason, no matter what. 10% of people will steal compulsively, no matter the consequences. But the other 75% will steal if 3 conditions are present. A) Is that they have a need, real or perceived, i.e. family is starving, feed a drug habit, they think their boss is a prick, etc. B) Is that they have the oppourtunity, i.e. access to money, supplies, information, etc. and C) That they feel they won't get caught, or that there are very little consequences if they do get caught.
Now if you go around actively thinking all your employees are thieves, or if you get rid of all email access, or get rid of all outside telephone access so that employees can't "steal" time while on personal calls - YOU are creating one part of the "thief" equation. At the other end of the spectrum, let it be known that you trust every employee implicitly and that whatever expense they want to submit, they clearly must have a valid business reason for, so it will be reimbursed no questions asked. Well, that is just creating another part of the "thief" equation in that there are no consequences or even chance of getting caught.
Purely conjecture here, but Cingular may send out bulk spam mails and if you were a customer who had opted out, they want to make sure you don't recieve the mail, so they don't get sued.
Friars - I suppose that begging is about the same level as working at McDonald's. But it is the Illuminati that are secretly in every store, that is how they run the world.
If you look at all the "Live" cd distros, they do a pretty good job of sniffing out hardware, so I don't know how much of an issue this is. But more to the point, how many average people actually add devices to their system -- Maybe they add a printer and a camera, well, just buy them from Dell, Dell gets the sale and the customer gets workable hardware. But what will make linux less attractive to the average customer, and thus Dell, is that they can't install the PC games they buy from the bargain bin at Walmart. Combine that with the general belief among the average user that the only way to write anything using a PC is to use MicroSoft Word, the only way to work with numbers is to use Excel, etc. Dell does ship systems with Wordperfect, but I am willing to bet that 98% of them have a pirated copy of Office installed on them within a week of arival. The availability of commercial software and teh dominance of Microsoft Office is what keeps windows in front.
Perhaps there was a judicious use of the double negative - By clicking "Agree" below you agree to the terms of this EULA. By clicking "Decline" below, you are declining to disagree with the terms of this EULA.
And people claim that there is a slashdot groupthink. I do have mod points, but I wish that there was a way of moving your comments to the top of teh discussion. There are plenty of reasons for outrage at our current government, but this one is dubious. As near as I can remember, interlibrary loan forms did NOT include my SS#. If you go to the University of Mass site, you can check out their interlibrary loan and I don't see any "official Peking" version even available. It is too bad that this story will find roots and become "fact". Blind acceptance of either left or right propoganda claims is a sad state of affairs in the US now.
I wouldn't even go so far as to compare this to complex things. The "unecessary" steps are often what keeps most of us alive. Wearing a helmet when you ride a bicycle is "unecessary", unless you crash. The same applies to anything safety related such as, speed limits,seat belts, etc. This imitation is what (usually) keeps children from climbing bookcases to reach a toy, or running into traffic because they saw something interesting.
The "unecessary" steps are not evidence of experimentation, but of safety. For example, there is no need for seat belts in a car, unless you are in a car crash. How many miles have you driven, and how many car crashes have you been in. For most people, seatbelts are an "unnecessary" step. Taken to the broadest extreme, one could argue that manners, morals, and all the other stuff that allows society to function are "unnecessary" steps.
I suppose the "save as" button is analogous to "dialing" a telephone. You would be hard pressed to find an actualy pulse type dial phone in the USA, but you don't "press" a phone number, you "dial" it. Things things make sense because of something in the past.
At a loss prevention seminar heard teh following: 5% of people will always steal no matter what, 10% of people will never steal no matter what, but teh other 85% will steal if thefollowing conditions are met. 1 That they don't feel they will get caught 2 That they have a need, real or perceived for the money, item, etc. 3 They have the oppourtunity. If you make a manager pay for shrink out of pocket, then the employer is creating a "need, real or percieved" in the manager to steal it back. Not a very smart idea, since they already have the oppourtunity and they probably know how lickely it would be for them to be caught.
It can restrict some rights, such as requiring you to have insurance on your home or car, etc. Anyone entering into any contract should read and understand it before they sign, because it MAY restrict their rights. I suppose that the reasoning behind this ignition lock is that if you don't make your payments, you are violating your contract and you are no longer "the owner" of the car. I would love to see a suit where someone can prove that they had made payments, the ignition was locked out, and the driver was placed in danger.
Well this shows how totally out of touch I am with books these days. When you said your daughter was a huge HP fan, my first thought was Lovecraft and not Rowling.Cthulu for kids, what a concept, although I did notice at Barnes and Noble that they have a "Edgar Allan Poe for Children".
I especially liked how the article says that this electric device is not tied to teh volatile natural gas market - unless your country generates all its electricity from geothermal, nuclear, or coal, then your electricty is generated from natural gas or heavy oil. So your electricty costs are pretty well tied to those commodities.
Gee, I guess that using heating oil to heat your house and your domestic hot water doesn't exist. In the Northeast part of the USA, a "tankless" hot water heater is very common. It is an oil fired unit or gas fires, that uses a separate zone for domestic hot water. You can increase teh volume of hot water by having a seprate thermos bottle like tank attached. In the winter your furnace is running to heat the house and your water is warm with no real extra effort. of course in the summer, your furnace must run occasionally, but it is far more efficient than electric anyways.
Eco appeals to the word geek more than the standard geek. That being said, all of his writtings, from the light stuff, to the literary, to the essays on linguistics are good reads and should appeal to anyone who loves intelligent thought. I actually made a bit of a pilgrimage to the museum in Paris, some 15 years ago, just to see the "actual" pendulum.
Slashdot Mirror
You may indeed pay road taxes for the gasoline that you use on toll roads, but in Massachusetts at least you can apply for a rebate on all state excise taxes paid on the fuel consumed on a toll/private road. It is a cumbersome process and they don't make it easy, but you can apply.
So let them do it and I would want to be the first guy to try and claim a refund for viewing a paid for website.
Not sure if you have tried this, but I know that you can install temperature regulating valves for individual radiators. I just did a quick google search for the valves, and if you are handy with plumbing tools you could do it yourself. Or just get an HVAC contractor to install it for you. Here is a link to a catalog with thermostatic radiator valves. Hope it helps.
a talog/thermostaticvalves.pdf
http://www.armstrong-intl.com/common/allproductsc
Predictive things work great in a commercial building, when what you need to consider is heating and cooling but you are not very concerned about hot water production. But I am willing to bet that the home in question uses oil for both heat and hot water and it is probably a tankless system. The system is going to be running everyday anyways.
Now I suppose you could do some pretty neat things to automate a heat and hot water system, like have it learn when you usually do dishes/ laundry/take a shower and anticipate those needs etc. But that seems like overkill. The low tech solution of a standard $50 7 day programable thermostat situated correctly for each zone, and designing the right zones would make the most sense.
But even if it isn't the most practical for teh averahe home owner - your system does sound pretty cool
Oil heat is usedd predominately in the North East states. In New England oil has been by far the most economical choice for most of the past 15 years. In Massachusetts it is a real drawback when you try and resell a house if it is electric heat.
I locked in my oil price at $2.04/gallon this year. I will burn on average about 1000 gallons, but this is due to windows needing to be replaced and other issues. Electric would be much more.
To reduce my consumption I did just purchase a cheap ($45) 7 day programable thermostat from Home Depot. It breaks the day into separate time blocks and can change the setting based on what day of the week it is.
That being said, radiant heat systems utilizing forced hot water are effecient and comfortable ways to heat. Especially in a garage or in any room with stone or ceramic tile floor.
I don't think that the problem is people who don't know technology, making uninformed decicions. So much as people having a flagrant disregard for the concept that what they do with their own PC effects everyone. For example, if I never learned to program the clock on my VCR and it flashed 12:00 all teh time, it only effects me. But if all I want to use it for is watching videos from Blockbuster, then who cares, there is absolutly no harm.
People apply the same logic to their PCs. As long as they can check their AOL mail and play solitaire, they think everything is fine. The classic car analogy mentioned above doesn't capture what most people think is happening. If their PC is full of spyware and crap, it is only a nuisance to them alone they believe. Like if their car didn't have a working gas gauge, or if the radio would not work. An anoyance, yes, but not the end of the world and in no way effecting anyone else.
The avergae person wouldn't want to drive a car that was leaking gasoline and oil all over the place all the while spewing clouds of polluting black smoke, but they don't understand that this is the state that they let their PCs get to.
The challange is not to teach them the technology, nor even design a system that protects people from their own dum actions, but to teach them that their actions can create havoc for other people.
It's not, "Don't open any email attachments from anyone ever, or your computer will be screwwed.", it should be "Don't open email attachments from anyone ever, or your PC will start infecting other peoples computers and be used to host kiddie porn."
Service is a two way street. A server should treat the customer like a human being and the customer should treat the server like a human being.
Personally I cringe at the way some waitresses, checkout clerks, etc., get treated by "paying customers". But there are just as many "servers" who aren't interested in serving and would rather talk on the phone, hide in the kitchen, or whatever, than serve the customer.
If I expect "pleasant" service, I'd damn well better be pleasant as well. If I am acting like a jerk, well then how can i blame the other person for giving me anymore than the minimum.
The distractions and annoyances that you mentioned are a Dell, specifically Dell "home/small business" problem. A fresh installation of Win XP is much cleaner, or a Dell Optiplex instead of a Dimension.
That being said, you are right that people just accept whatever crap they are given. But you have to remember these are the same people who will click to get the smiley face icons, or call AOL the "Internet", or open random email attachments.
I wish that I could share your opinion of most users and think that they would not "put up with it" if they were used to Mac or Linux desktop. But many people have their system so kludged up with spyware/viruses/needless applications that they wouldn't notice a better OS.
Having just read the review, I think the book agrees that security is a cost/benefit analysis, but that many companies screw up the analysis. They will throw good money after bad for external threats, but not secure themselves from internal ones. To pull another example from retail - our cashiers have "drive-offs", where someone does not pay for the gasoline they purchased and drives offs. There are only three possible ways for this to happen, the customer paid a cashier who either forgot to ring in teh sale or pocketed it herself, the customer intended to steal the gasoline, or the customer thought he paid for the gasoline, but his card was declined, swiped backwards, etc. You need to watch the video of the cashier as well as the customer. No one should be accused of anything until there is conclusive evidence, but at the same time no one should automatically be "trusted".
At a loss prevention seminar I heard something that made sense to me. 15% of people will never steal anything for any reason, no matter what. 10% of people will steal compulsively, no matter the consequences. But the other 75% will steal if 3 conditions are present. A) Is that they have a need, real or perceived, i.e. family is starving, feed a drug habit, they think their boss is a prick, etc. B) Is that they have the oppourtunity, i.e. access to money, supplies, information, etc. and C) That they feel they won't get caught, or that there are very little consequences if they do get caught.
Now if you go around actively thinking all your employees are thieves, or if you get rid of all email access, or get rid of all outside telephone access so that employees can't "steal" time while on personal calls - YOU are creating one part of the "thief" equation. At the other end of the spectrum, let it be known that you trust every employee implicitly and that whatever expense they want to submit, they clearly must have a valid business reason for, so it will be reimbursed no questions asked. Well, that is just creating another part of the "thief" equation in that there are no consequences or even chance of getting caught.
Purely conjecture here, but Cingular may send out bulk spam mails and if you were a customer who had opted out, they want to make sure you don't recieve the mail, so they don't get sued.
Easy enough, because it ain't Nextel anymore - it is Sprint.
Friars - I suppose that begging is about the same level as working at McDonald's. But it is the Illuminati that are secretly in every store, that is how they run the world.
If you look at all the "Live" cd distros, they do a pretty good job of sniffing out hardware, so I don't know how much of an issue this is. But more to the point, how many average people actually add devices to their system -- Maybe they add a printer and a camera, well, just buy them from Dell, Dell gets the sale and the customer gets workable hardware. But what will make linux less attractive to the average customer, and thus Dell, is that they can't install the PC games they buy from the bargain bin at Walmart. Combine that with the general belief among the average user that the only way to write anything using a PC is to use MicroSoft Word, the only way to work with numbers is to use Excel, etc. Dell does ship systems with Wordperfect, but I am willing to bet that 98% of them have a pirated copy of Office installed on them within a week of arival. The availability of commercial software and teh dominance of Microsoft Office is what keeps windows in front.
Federal agent's visit was a hoax, just in case you missed the newest posting http://www.southcoasttoday.com.nyud.net:8090/daily /12-05/12-24-05/a01lo719.htm/ [nyud.net]
Perhaps there was a judicious use of the double negative - By clicking "Agree" below you agree to the terms of this EULA. By clicking "Decline" below, you are declining to disagree with the terms of this EULA.
And people claim that there is a slashdot groupthink. I do have mod points, but I wish that there was a way of moving your comments to the top of teh discussion. There are plenty of reasons for outrage at our current government, but this one is dubious. As near as I can remember, interlibrary loan forms did NOT include my SS#. If you go to the University of Mass site, you can check out their interlibrary loan and I don't see any "official Peking" version even available. It is too bad that this story will find roots and become "fact". Blind acceptance of either left or right propoganda claims is a sad state of affairs in the US now.
I wouldn't even go so far as to compare this to complex things. The "unecessary" steps are often what keeps most of us alive. Wearing a helmet when you ride a bicycle is "unecessary", unless you crash. The same applies to anything safety related such as, speed limits,seat belts, etc. This imitation is what (usually) keeps children from climbing bookcases to reach a toy, or running into traffic because they saw something interesting.
The "unecessary" steps are not evidence of experimentation, but of safety. For example, there is no need for seat belts in a car, unless you are in a car crash. How many miles have you driven, and how many car crashes have you been in. For most people, seatbelts are an "unnecessary" step. Taken to the broadest extreme, one could argue that manners, morals, and all the other stuff that allows society to function are "unnecessary" steps.
I suppose the "save as" button is analogous to "dialing" a telephone. You would be hard pressed to find an actualy pulse type dial phone in the USA, but you don't "press" a phone number, you "dial" it. Things things make sense because of something in the past.
At a loss prevention seminar heard teh following: 5% of people will always steal no matter what, 10% of people will never steal no matter what, but teh other 85% will steal if thefollowing conditions are met. 1 That they don't feel they will get caught 2 That they have a need, real or perceived for the money, item, etc. 3 They have the oppourtunity. If you make a manager pay for shrink out of pocket, then the employer is creating a "need, real or percieved" in the manager to steal it back. Not a very smart idea, since they already have the oppourtunity and they probably know how lickely it would be for them to be caught.
It can restrict some rights, such as requiring you to have insurance on your home or car, etc. Anyone entering into any contract should read and understand it before they sign, because it MAY restrict their rights. I suppose that the reasoning behind this ignition lock is that if you don't make your payments, you are violating your contract and you are no longer "the owner" of the car. I would love to see a suit where someone can prove that they had made payments, the ignition was locked out, and the driver was placed in danger.
Well this shows how totally out of touch I am with books these days. When you said your daughter was a huge HP fan, my first thought was Lovecraft and not Rowling.Cthulu for kids, what a concept, although I did notice at Barnes and Noble that they have a "Edgar Allan Poe for Children".
I especially liked how the article says that this electric device is not tied to teh volatile natural gas market - unless your country generates all its electricity from geothermal, nuclear, or coal, then your electricty is generated from natural gas or heavy oil. So your electricty costs are pretty well tied to those commodities.
Gee, I guess that using heating oil to heat your house and your domestic hot water doesn't exist. In the Northeast part of the USA, a "tankless" hot water heater is very common. It is an oil fired unit or gas fires, that uses a separate zone for domestic hot water. You can increase teh volume of hot water by having a seprate thermos bottle like tank attached. In the winter your furnace is running to heat the house and your water is warm with no real extra effort. of course in the summer, your furnace must run occasionally, but it is far more efficient than electric anyways.
Eco appeals to the word geek more than the standard geek. That being said, all of his writtings, from the light stuff, to the literary, to the essays on linguistics are good reads and should appeal to anyone who loves intelligent thought. I actually made a bit of a pilgrimage to the museum in Paris, some 15 years ago, just to see the "actual" pendulum.
That is scary but true. Googling for the official Microsoft FAQ on eulas, states that if it is an OEM install and the license affixed to the machine, then you are out of luck http://www.microsoft.com/singapore/staylegal/faq/d efault.aspx#LostEULA/