And if "johnny-come-lately ISP" wants to join the fracus, if they have to lease from Bell, then Bell can harm their business, dampen/choke any market competition, and continue to screw their customers. The CRTC has missed the boat on this. As long as they can force competition's customers to suffer the same as they force their own customers to suffer, then Bell has no competition other than what lip service can be provided by those resellers. With the CRTC and government types firmly entrenched in their stance against consumers there is not likely to be anyone with several billion dollars who wants to even try to compete on that last mile problem. That's the real problem right there. Traffic shaping is only one symptom of it.
This week the RIAA decided to sue Sourceforge. How is a world wide grid going to help anyone? Who is going to stand up and tell the **AA to fuckoffanddie. While this sounds like a good idea, there are many legal problems to work out as the RIAA have demonstrated this week.
Even if they find a way to make grid computing attractive for many applications, who has responsibility? There are economics to think of etc. If money was no object, we could all travel to work in a limo. If traffic was no problem, we could all leave home within minutes of having to be at work. If security was no problem we would not need locks on our doors.
I'm not saying that grid computing has no place, but it does not seem feasible in the near term for most people/entities due to one or more of the many concerns. Does anyone know of a link or many links that show why this should not be a concern?
Any mistake a skydiver makes is one they have the rest of their life to correct.... as they say. People with 200+ jumps are not making a tacit commitment when they jump out the doorway. It is a commitment that is made with full knowledge, and full responsibility. I'm not sure of others here reading, but when I hire someone, I want that kind of forbearance.
Speaking as someone with 22+ years of successful project management and zero failed projects, this is something I both strive for and admire. Knowing when to not get on the plane is important, more important than knowing how to untangle a tangled set of canopy lines. Both are important, but knowing how to not get in that situation is more so.
I have 4 jumps. That's not a lot. Certainly not enough to say I'm a skydiver. In the time that I made those jumps, I learned many things. One of my skills is to process and apply new information to existing or yet to exist problems. I used skydiving for an example as it is well recognized.
Not every IT project carries such definitive end results. Just the same, if someone exhibits such talents/skills it is important in work life. Scope creep, indecision, feature creep, and many other project maladies are quickly remedied by those who know how to do things right. Hiring someone should include understanding that person's ability in this arena, and how important it is for their function in the company.
BTW, for those wondering... I fucking totally loved skydiving. There is no greater adrenalin high that I've experienced.
Trust me, the REAL world is nothing like those annoying tests. If you can pick up a scripting language or other and write a hello world program and keep going, there is nothing lacking in your qualities, only in your experience... if that.
The tests they do seem to often have nothing to do with reality, even if slightly related to the job applied for. The truth of the matter is that most people do not know how to interview. A great candidate knows how to run the interview if the interviewer is failing. Resume's only get you on the short list, and unfortunately that is often a poor way to make the list.
I have interviewed several hundred people for technical and IT related positions in my career. It is the hands-on tests that actually tell you what skill levels a candidate has. Everything else is just talk. I've done the 'hello world' test and an electronics equivalent of it. For one IT position, I handed them a pot of coffee and all the parts needed to build a PC and timed applicants on build/install of OS. That hands on part saves lots of questions that have dodgey answers.
Compare skydiving accidents http://www.dropzone.com/fatalities/ with auto accidents, motorcycle accidents, sporting accidents (hunting with Cheney is BAD!) and pretty much any other activity. It's safer than you think.
A skydiver would know. Ever panic and make a mistake? Skydivers don't do that often. Those who do are often not around to tell you what happened or went wrong. Staying calm under pressure is a skill, not just an attitude. Taking risks is a good thing in moderation. Repeatedly taking the same risk creates skills. Crossing the street is a skill you learned long ago, but it takes practice and always involves risk. Risk taking has many forms. It's more of a strength than weakness.
Translated: Yeah, ok, I don't know language xyz or have not used ABC IDE, but lets go for it if that is the management decision. A skydiver (as an example) will also know that if you are asking for something that will probably cause an accident, the time to speak is before getting on the plane, not as you jump out of the doorway. There are other things I could relate to skydiving... or other hobbies. The point is that personal activities tell you more than many certification papers will if you understand what you are looking at.
Certs are like the Md after someone's name. Q: Know what they call a doctor that graduated 800th out of 800 in their class? A: Doctor.
Do you care where your doctor graduated in their class if they have performed dozens of operations just like you're about to undergo with 100% success rate? A walking breathing skydiver that jumps twice a month is like that.
Character is worth a lot. You can glean what a person's character is like from a lot of things. These were just examples. Some might not want a risk taker on their team.
There was a trend to hire young IT people because certifications were the thing to have, and younger people work longer hours for less money. The problems with those types of qualifications are starting to bite the IT industry on it's collective ass.
If you want qualified personnel, ask questions that quantify them as a good technical and social fit. Pick some script language they don't know. Ask them if they would take a few minutes to create a 'hello world' script. If all they know is one programming language as seen via one particular IDE... well, it's something you want to know.
It's odd, but hobbies can tell you a lot or nothing about an individual. If they skydive twice a month on average, it says something. If they are working on an OSS project and can show you the sourceforge page... that says something.
There are other considerations; There are not many young Cobol programmers. If an applicant was invovled with the team that implemented X.25 for a large IT company back in the 90s, he's probably a better fit for X.25 network systems than a 23 year old would be.
If all you need is a [name your language here] monkey... you can find that in any age.
Look at your requirements, find a good match to that. Age does not dictate value, but experience can. Anyone of any age 'can' have the right experience, but statistically, it usually works out a bit lopsided.
When you get the weather forecast, since you don't know the meteorologist's job it will seem like he is incompetent when you get rained on in what is supposed to be a sunny day. Your expectations of their abilities clouds your understanding of what can really happen.
The same things happen in the IT world. When those in charge have clouded vision (some even wear bloody blindfolds) they will have no useful understanding of how to manage an IT project. I believe that in the London area this is not the first demonstration that government types are fairly blind to how to successfully complete a major IT project. In fact, there have been so many stories of such blindness from London that it makes one wonder how they planned to use IT to manage all those cameras.
Anyway, when you only know two companies that want to do the job... whose CEOs happen to drink in the same club that you do..... errr well, a change in name should be good enough. After all, it worked for those blokes who make voting machines in America. Right!
Sir, I understand your confusion. It happens that I'm the sysadmin for > two dozen Solaris/Linux servers where I work, and the class D network segment that they are attached to.
Laptops are necessary for us. The business functions 24/7 and there are not enough people to have someone always at work, 'forget about it' if we want to take a vacation. We could not function if the engineering department had no laptops. Within the company are many widely varied functions/groups. In a small company that might not make sense, but the call center has mind-boggling different requirements from the marketing group or the engineering group etc.
We all used different profiles and login scripts UNTIL SarBox requirements came along and they forced everyone to use the same network profile. Some of that is good, but consider that there are ALWAYS issues with one-size-fits-all answers. I have two applications that unwisely have hard coded the Windows home directory, in this case drive H:\, so when the login script mapped that drive to a network drive I had trouble using those two apps anywhere but at work. Even if I was connected via VPN it was a problem because the login from VPN did not map the H drive. It worked fine for just about everyone else, but not my group. So yes, I do know better how to maintain the pc's in my care than that lonely one-size-fits-all script setup. I have never wantonly configured a system to use ALL disk space and never check to see how much there is. You can configure Windows to do that... Guess what's in the script? That script will not make backup copies of anything that I personally find important in my work that is not stored (and cannot be) in a directory that IT chose for everyone's data. Sure, I can use shortcuts and links to get it done, but you see... the script doesn't do that for me. I have to do that.
In short, it's not that I know better because I think I'm smart, it's that I know better because I HAVE to know better. You might be able to adjust things for all the little problems in a small company, and that would be good, but where rules and needs clash it is always a problem. It took fully 4 months to get change so that the data on my laptop WOULD be held in compliance with SarBox. The one-size-fits-all solution left out coverage for data on several of my groups pc's. Short reply: Don't assume that I'm wrong because I don't fit your version of what IT should be like at work.
It's not purely the boot time of the computer. Many places require that you open several applications in order to accomplish your assigned tasks. These can take time to load and access as well. If the system administrator(s) use the wisdom of IT to use boot time to scan drives for application and other content audits, it can take quite a while before the machine is actually usable. Same sort of thing happens at shutdown in many places.
I have had myself removed from the 'normal' network profile to avoid all that crap on my work laptop. I archive at home on the weekends (at my cost) and scan at night for malware etc. I do not need their invasive methods as I am not helpless and lazy as are the users who have forced them to resort to this kind of methodology to comply with security policies, SarBox etc.
It is more than possible that people spend 30 minutes a day waiting on routine maintenance processes that are run during bootup and shutdown.
The part I like is that I use the laptop at home, and may be actively running scripts overnight, yes for work. The 'normal' profile includes a forced reboot at 3 a.m. I have spoken quite heatedly several times to IT people about the completely asshat idea that a forced nightly reboot is required for LAPTOPS used by people traveling with the laptop.
IMO, if you are forced to be at work, and to tend to the pc, then it's payable labor.
Perhaps what you might consider is: WTF? They can test that? So the NSA has been keeping a botnet going for testing of things like this?
Tinfoil hat types will be wondering how much the NSA has had to do with maliciousness on the Internet in general now.
Little Freudian slips like that will lead people to think that electronic/network spying and warfare is not something new to the US government nor is it something they know nothing about. Can you say 'underwater cable cuts' without getting cynical?
Yeah yeah, I know that's all conspiracy theory crap. You have to admit that news stories like this kind of lend themselves to that sort of thinking.
Yes, running live on the Internet with no protection as system administrator is soooooo much better than sudo and learning to use it. Remember that probably more than 50% of viri and damage done by them is thanks to that problem.
Trust me, learning sudo and surfing with locked down accounts is not that difficult to learn and deal with. I have two computer illiterates in my house who do just fine with it. A third is partially literate and she does fine also even though she sometimes finds it inconvenient.
None of them care about command line interfaces, nor does Ubuntu require they use one.
And on to DLLs, when you install one app and it brings with it an older system DLL, all is good till you go to use a program that needed the updated version. ALL systems have dependency problems... get over it.
There are a lot of jobs like that in the world. Do cops get a percentage cut of any drug money they capture? How about firemen getting a '2% of the value of the house' bonus from each homeowner whose home they save from fire? The list goes on. You have to be a C?O or sports player to get the kind of thing you're thinking of.
That won't just send a message to Microsoft, it would also send a message to the population in general. That message being: Microsoft is fucked, and we have your solution right here. No need to pay the MS tax, we have Linux pre-installed for just a few dollars more, you can sign up for our Linux class. It takes 4 hours for orientation, you get a free training CD, and 3 months support for $75.00
If they do any two or more of the things I've just hinted at, MS might have a really bad year. Redmond is blowing it. They have no back-out strategy from the strong-arm tactics they have been using on manufacturers and retailers. If those deals go sour Redmond will not be an easy place to get a job in IT.
Not quite like ambulance chasing. This is a reward for helping to see that the patent system gets the information it needs to work as it was designed. That is like outsourcing patent examiners, in an after the fact mode.
I have not yet finished college.. forced to take night classes, and have no where near as much campus time/experience as you and many others have, but it only took me about... oh, 20 seconds to Google for some good sites, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_equation has links to pretty much all you mentioned. The links there point to other links for further reading. Note that in the reference section of wikipedia articles are links or information to books and such. I believe they're called citations. (citation needed)
As a third-year PhD math student.....
I'd think you would already have tried Google or Wikipedia. Your browser should have them on speed dial. So, really, what is your question?
You are quite correct but the point is that using DC powered equipment still has more advantages than AC powered equipment, especially in that 24/7 environment. The 48 volt setting is also due to the fact that your POTS line was powered by it. There are safety factors and equipment requirements from long ago that help determine such parameters. The DC power to the phone is ages old, and ensured that your phone worked even when your power was out. Early technology required this, reliability helped ensure it's lasting existence.
Still, the point remains. If AC power had become more efficient or economical, they would have abandoned DC power for main/central equipment... they didn't.
There are seemingly not many fans of the DC powered data center on/.
Every little bit helps and point of load DC-DC converters are quite efficient, thus do not generate much heat. Additionally, since the back-up power for a data center is based on batteries... well, you can do the math on that. Generators are a different issue, but even they don't have to be AC, though probably more efficient if they are.
Every reduction in heat generation improved energy efficiency. Likewise, running on DC would reduce energy consumption by some measure. There is a reason that telephone exchanges are run on -48VDC, and it's not some fscked up reason like "oh, that's how they ran the first switches in England, and we never got around to changing."
It will take many small steps to achieve big results. DC power is but one of them.
I think there may be a small problem with that. Didn't the USA offer a reward similar to this for Osama Bin Laden?
The trouble with being a friend of this extortionist is that all your sins are likely to be discovered if you turn them in, even if you do get the money.
I'd like to see the reward work, but am not holding my breath for it.
I'm glad to hear this news. It will be only a matter of time before others follow suit. Time to dust off the resume.. I think soon being a Linux coder will be a useful item on that list.
Linux has suffered some lag with driver releases, and even manufacturer hostility toward Linux. This is the year that I start a side business based on Linux and support for it. Not simply because of this news, but news like this in general. I'm thoroughly impressed with Ubuntu and other distributions to get done what I want to get done.
Anyone (not I have not Googled extensively yet) know of any good sites that detail gaming on Linux? If you do, what is your take on this news?
Slashdot Mirror
And if "johnny-come-lately ISP" wants to join the fracus, if they have to lease from Bell, then Bell can harm their business, dampen/choke any market competition, and continue to screw their customers. The CRTC has missed the boat on this. As long as they can force competition's customers to suffer the same as they force their own customers to suffer, then Bell has no competition other than what lip service can be provided by those resellers. With the CRTC and government types firmly entrenched in their stance against consumers there is not likely to be anyone with several billion dollars who wants to even try to compete on that last mile problem. That's the real problem right there. Traffic shaping is only one symptom of it.
The missing spider is N teh toobz stealN yur webz, no interplanetary internet for you! bad astronaut!
This week the RIAA decided to sue Sourceforge. How is a world wide grid going to help anyone? Who is going to stand up and tell the **AA to fuckoffanddie. While this sounds like a good idea, there are many legal problems to work out as the RIAA have demonstrated this week.
Even if they find a way to make grid computing attractive for many applications, who has responsibility? There are economics to think of etc. If money was no object, we could all travel to work in a limo. If traffic was no problem, we could all leave home within minutes of having to be at work. If security was no problem we would not need locks on our doors.
I'm not saying that grid computing has no place, but it does not seem feasible in the near term for most people/entities due to one or more of the many concerns. Does anyone know of a link or many links that show why this should not be a concern?
Awesome! Help me out, I'm trying to make skydiving analogies the new meme, replacing car analogies :-)
Blue skies
Any mistake a skydiver makes is one they have the rest of their life to correct.... as they say. People with 200+ jumps are not making a tacit commitment when they jump out the doorway. It is a commitment that is made with full knowledge, and full responsibility. I'm not sure of others here reading, but when I hire someone, I want that kind of forbearance.
Speaking as someone with 22+ years of successful project management and zero failed projects, this is something I both strive for and admire. Knowing when to not get on the plane is important, more important than knowing how to untangle a tangled set of canopy lines. Both are important, but knowing how to not get in that situation is more so.
I have 4 jumps. That's not a lot. Certainly not enough to say I'm a skydiver. In the time that I made those jumps, I learned many things. One of my skills is to process and apply new information to existing or yet to exist problems. I used skydiving for an example as it is well recognized.
Not every IT project carries such definitive end results. Just the same, if someone exhibits such talents/skills it is important in work life. Scope creep, indecision, feature creep, and many other project maladies are quickly remedied by those who know how to do things right. Hiring someone should include understanding that person's ability in this arena, and how important it is for their function in the company.
BTW, for those wondering... I fucking totally loved skydiving. There is no greater adrenalin high that I've experienced.
Trust me, the REAL world is nothing like those annoying tests. If you can pick up a scripting language or other and write a hello world program and keep going, there is nothing lacking in your qualities, only in your experience... if that.
The tests they do seem to often have nothing to do with reality, even if slightly related to the job applied for. The truth of the matter is that most people do not know how to interview. A great candidate knows how to run the interview if the interviewer is failing. Resume's only get you on the short list, and unfortunately that is often a poor way to make the list.
I have interviewed several hundred people for technical and IT related positions in my career. It is the hands-on tests that actually tell you what skill levels a candidate has. Everything else is just talk. I've done the 'hello world' test and an electronics equivalent of it. For one IT position, I handed them a pot of coffee and all the parts needed to build a PC and timed applicants on build/install of OS. That hands on part saves lots of questions that have dodgey answers.
skydiver analogies are a new meme, you insensitive clod!
Compare skydiving accidents http://www.dropzone.com/fatalities/ with auto accidents, motorcycle accidents, sporting accidents (hunting with Cheney is BAD!) and pretty much any other activity. It's safer than you think.
A skydiver would know. Ever panic and make a mistake? Skydivers don't do that often. Those who do are often not around to tell you what happened or went wrong. Staying calm under pressure is a skill, not just an attitude. Taking risks is a good thing in moderation. Repeatedly taking the same risk creates skills. Crossing the street is a skill you learned long ago, but it takes practice and always involves risk. Risk taking has many forms. It's more of a strength than weakness.
Translated: Yeah, ok, I don't know language xyz or have not used ABC IDE, but lets go for it if that is the management decision. A skydiver (as an example) will also know that if you are asking for something that will probably cause an accident, the time to speak is before getting on the plane, not as you jump out of the doorway. There are other things I could relate to skydiving... or other hobbies. The point is that personal activities tell you more than many certification papers will if you understand what you are looking at.
Certs are like the Md after someone's name.
Q: Know what they call a doctor that graduated 800th out of 800 in their class?
A: Doctor.
Do you care where your doctor graduated in their class if they have performed dozens of operations just like you're about to undergo with 100% success rate? A walking breathing skydiver that jumps twice a month is like that.
Character is worth a lot. You can glean what a person's character is like from a lot of things. These were just examples. Some might not want a risk taker on their team.
There was a trend to hire young IT people because certifications were the thing to have, and younger people work longer hours for less money. The problems with those types of qualifications are starting to bite the IT industry on it's collective ass.
If you want qualified personnel, ask questions that quantify them as a good technical and social fit. Pick some script language they don't know. Ask them if they would take a few minutes to create a 'hello world' script. If all they know is one programming language as seen via one particular IDE... well, it's something you want to know.
It's odd, but hobbies can tell you a lot or nothing about an individual. If they skydive twice a month on average, it says something. If they are working on an OSS project and can show you the sourceforge page... that says something.
There are other considerations; There are not many young Cobol programmers. If an applicant was invovled with the team that implemented X.25 for a large IT company back in the 90s, he's probably a better fit for X.25 network systems than a 23 year old would be.
If all you need is a [name your language here] monkey... you can find that in any age.
Look at your requirements, find a good match to that. Age does not dictate value, but experience can. Anyone of any age 'can' have the right experience, but statistically, it usually works out a bit lopsided.
When you get the weather forecast, since you don't know the meteorologist's job it will seem like he is incompetent when you get rained on in what is supposed to be a sunny day. Your expectations of their abilities clouds your understanding of what can really happen.
The same things happen in the IT world. When those in charge have clouded vision (some even wear bloody blindfolds) they will have no useful understanding of how to manage an IT project. I believe that in the London area this is not the first demonstration that government types are fairly blind to how to successfully complete a major IT project. In fact, there have been so many stories of such blindness from London that it makes one wonder how they planned to use IT to manage all those cameras.
Anyway, when you only know two companies that want to do the job... whose CEOs happen to drink in the same club that you do..... errr well, a change in name should be good enough. After all, it worked for those blokes who make voting machines in America. Right!
Sir, I understand your confusion. It happens that I'm the sysadmin for > two dozen Solaris/Linux servers where I work, and the class D network segment that they are attached to.
Laptops are necessary for us. The business functions 24/7 and there are not enough people to have someone always at work, 'forget about it' if we want to take a vacation. We could not function if the engineering department had no laptops. Within the company are many widely varied functions/groups. In a small company that might not make sense, but the call center has mind-boggling different requirements from the marketing group or the engineering group etc.
We all used different profiles and login scripts UNTIL SarBox requirements came along and they forced everyone to use the same network profile. Some of that is good, but consider that there are ALWAYS issues with one-size-fits-all answers. I have two applications that unwisely have hard coded the Windows home directory, in this case drive H:\, so when the login script mapped that drive to a network drive I had trouble using those two apps anywhere but at work. Even if I was connected via VPN it was a problem because the login from VPN did not map the H drive. It worked fine for just about everyone else, but not my group. So yes, I do know better how to maintain the pc's in my care than that lonely one-size-fits-all script setup. I have never wantonly configured a system to use ALL disk space and never check to see how much there is. You can configure Windows to do that... Guess what's in the script? That script will not make backup copies of anything that I personally find important in my work that is not stored (and cannot be) in a directory that IT chose for everyone's data. Sure, I can use shortcuts and links to get it done, but you see... the script doesn't do that for me. I have to do that.
In short, it's not that I know better because I think I'm smart, it's that I know better because I HAVE to know better. You might be able to adjust things for all the little problems in a small company, and that would be good, but where rules and needs clash it is always a problem. It took fully 4 months to get change so that the data on my laptop WOULD be held in compliance with SarBox. The one-size-fits-all solution left out coverage for data on several of my groups pc's. Short reply: Don't assume that I'm wrong because I don't fit your version of what IT should be like at work.
It's not purely the boot time of the computer. Many places require that you open several applications in order to accomplish your assigned tasks. These can take time to load and access as well. If the system administrator(s) use the wisdom of IT to use boot time to scan drives for application and other content audits, it can take quite a while before the machine is actually usable. Same sort of thing happens at shutdown in many places.
I have had myself removed from the 'normal' network profile to avoid all that crap on my work laptop. I archive at home on the weekends (at my cost) and scan at night for malware etc. I do not need their invasive methods as I am not helpless and lazy as are the users who have forced them to resort to this kind of methodology to comply with security policies, SarBox etc.
It is more than possible that people spend 30 minutes a day waiting on routine maintenance processes that are run during bootup and shutdown.
The part I like is that I use the laptop at home, and may be actively running scripts overnight, yes for work. The 'normal' profile includes a forced reboot at 3 a.m. I have spoken quite heatedly several times to IT people about the completely asshat idea that a forced nightly reboot is required for LAPTOPS used by people traveling with the laptop.
IMO, if you are forced to be at work, and to tend to the pc, then it's payable labor.
Perhaps what you might consider is: WTF? They can test that? So the NSA has been keeping a botnet going for testing of things like this?
Tinfoil hat types will be wondering how much the NSA has had to do with maliciousness on the Internet in general now.
Little Freudian slips like that will lead people to think that electronic/network spying and warfare is not something new to the US government nor is it something they know nothing about. Can you say 'underwater cable cuts' without getting cynical?
Yeah yeah, I know that's all conspiracy theory crap. You have to admit that news stories like this kind of lend themselves to that sort of thinking.
Crap! I love that one argument about sudo
Yes, running live on the Internet with no protection as system administrator is soooooo much better than sudo and learning to use it. Remember that probably more than 50% of viri and damage done by them is thanks to that problem.
Trust me, learning sudo and surfing with locked down accounts is not that difficult to learn and deal with. I have two computer illiterates in my house who do just fine with it. A third is partially literate and she does fine also even though she sometimes finds it inconvenient.
None of them care about command line interfaces, nor does Ubuntu require they use one.
And on to DLLs, when you install one app and it brings with it an older system DLL, all is good till you go to use a program that needed the updated version. ALL systems have dependency problems... get over it.
There are a lot of jobs like that in the world. Do cops get a percentage cut of any drug money they capture? How about firemen getting a '2% of the value of the house' bonus from each homeowner whose home they save from fire? The list goes on. You have to be a C?O or sports player to get the kind of thing you're thinking of.
That won't just send a message to Microsoft, it would also send a message to the population in general. That message being: Microsoft is fucked, and we have your solution right here. No need to pay the MS tax, we have Linux pre-installed for just a few dollars more, you can sign up for our Linux class. It takes 4 hours for orientation, you get a free training CD, and 3 months support for $75.00
If they do any two or more of the things I've just hinted at, MS might have a really bad year. Redmond is blowing it. They have no back-out strategy from the strong-arm tactics they have been using on manufacturers and retailers. If those deals go sour Redmond will not be an easy place to get a job in IT.
Not quite like ambulance chasing. This is a reward for helping to see that the patent system gets the information it needs to work as it was designed. That is like outsourcing patent examiners, in an after the fact mode.
I have not yet finished college.. forced to take night classes, and have no where near as much campus time/experience as you and many others have, but it only took me about ... oh, 20 seconds to Google for some good sites, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_equation has links to pretty much all you mentioned. The links there point to other links for further reading. Note that in the reference section of wikipedia articles are links or information to books and such. I believe they're called citations. (citation needed)
As a third-year PhD math student.....
I'd think you would already have tried Google or Wikipedia. Your browser should have them on speed dial. So, really, what is your question?
BTW, Google has 916K hits for http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&output=googleabout&btnG=Search+our+site&q=physics%20of%20partial%20differential%20equations
Not to rant, but why do people post 'ask Slashdot' questions that are so vague a 20 second search seems to answer them? Editors!!???
You are quite correct but the point is that using DC powered equipment still has more advantages than AC powered equipment, especially in that 24/7 environment. The 48 volt setting is also due to the fact that your POTS line was powered by it. There are safety factors and equipment requirements from long ago that help determine such parameters. The DC power to the phone is ages old, and ensured that your phone worked even when your power was out. Early technology required this, reliability helped ensure it's lasting existence.
Still, the point remains. If AC power had become more efficient or economical, they would have abandoned DC power for main/central equipment... they didn't.
There are seemingly not many fans of the DC powered data center on /.
Every little bit helps and point of load DC-DC converters are quite efficient, thus do not generate much heat. Additionally, since the back-up power for a data center is based on batteries... well, you can do the math on that. Generators are a different issue, but even they don't have to be AC, though probably more efficient if they are.
Every reduction in heat generation improved energy efficiency. Likewise, running on DC would reduce energy consumption by some measure. There is a reason that telephone exchanges are run on -48VDC, and it's not some fscked up reason like "oh, that's how they ran the first switches in England, and we never got around to changing."
It will take many small steps to achieve big results. DC power is but one of them.
That's exactly what would happen if this was done on Second Life! And it would be funny too
I think there may be a small problem with that. Didn't the USA offer a reward similar to this for Osama Bin Laden?
The trouble with being a friend of this extortionist is that all your sins are likely to be discovered if you turn them in, even if you do get the money.
I'd like to see the reward work, but am not holding my breath for it.
This might be better filed under fsckthatyoudontmakesense instead of suddenoutbreakofcommonsense
I'm glad to hear this news. It will be only a matter of time before others follow suit. Time to dust off the resume.. I think soon being a Linux coder will be a useful item on that list.
Linux has suffered some lag with driver releases, and even manufacturer hostility toward Linux. This is the year that I start a side business based on Linux and support for it. Not simply because of this news, but news like this in general. I'm thoroughly impressed with Ubuntu and other distributions to get done what I want to get done.
Anyone (not I have not Googled extensively yet) know of any good sites that detail gaming on Linux? If you do, what is your take on this news?