Its the low end digital cameras that are going to lose market - and possible disappear.
No one that would consider buying a dSLR would seriously consider using a camera phone for anything more than quick snaps when you forgot or chose not to brig your proper camera along. The cameras in phones these days are good enough for the snaps most people want to take - especially if they include an led flash (pretty pathetic in real terms but again good enough to take a snap of your friend while in the pub)
If you have in your pocket something that can take good pictures anyway, then the quality difference you are going to require to justufy having a digital camera is going to be quite large.
I don't have a dSLR myself, I wanted something more all round when I got a digital camera - ie small enough to carry easily to take snaps. So I got the cannon powershot S50. This was 6 years ago and at the time it had the features closest to an SLR while still being a compact design.
Now I have a fairly good 2mp camera in my phone. Its got no zoom and no flash but its good enough that unless I specifically want a camera I'll leave the cannon at home. Because of thisnext camera I buy will probably be a dSLR - it doesn't need to fit the compact requirement as I have a device for that, for the separate device I want something with quality.
So yes, I think camera phones will spell the end of the camera market - atleast part of it. Cameras will become the province of specialists, people looking for holiday snaps will use their phones. All in all not a huge change from the way things used to be with SLRs for the serious people and 35mm compacts and disposable cameras for those wanting holiday snaps. The vast availablility of digital cameras with ease of use and low cost blurred these lines for a while, but I suspect it will settle right back where it used to be, but with dSLRs for the specialists and camera phones for the rest in almost all cases.
My only worry is what this will do to the choice of dSLRs, how many companies will be able to cope with losing their mass market revenues to phones...
My point wasn't suggesting that complying with the law should not make a company bankrupt.
It was about applying aditional regulation to an otherwise legitmatly operating company should not force a company bankrupt - its a subtle difference.
In this case its not even an issue - its the difference between making huge profits at the expense of competition and making reasonable profits with fair competition. Obviously the EU should do what it can to make it the latter and not the former. Interface protocols should be free - that simple.
It would be nice if it would work that way and goverments are trying to do that - though its still quite common for large scale criminals to keep much of their ill gotten gains.
As for my original point it was making the assumption that the company was complying with the law, and saying that a legitimate company should be able to comply with the law and make a profit (otherwise the company is going to fold)
I don't think thats an issue for microsoft - the issue as I'm sure they see it is they want to make a huge profit with minimum competition and minimum effort - technically thats not illegal, fortunately the goverments do tend to try and do something about that - as in this case.
Well if it bankrupted the company then yes that would be too far certainly. If it made it so the company when complying with the law (ie not being fined) could not actualy make a profit after costs, that would be too far.
Many prices are restricted by goverments - I suspect even in the US though I don't know for certain. Things like the cost per unit of electricity, water, gas, telecoms, public transport when run by private companies. These are to ensure that companies that have effective monopolies cannot abuse the position.
Same with mircosoft. I agree they should be able to charge what they want for their software. But where they have a protocol or an API that completely separate instance of software talk to (eg from a different computer on the network of from a piece of software that is not part of the OS, or not part of the same software suite) then those interfaces, protocols and APIs should be documented and the information provided for free.
Yes they can protect their code and their implementations, but the fact you have a microsoft server should not force you to have a microsoft desktop in order to use it - other desktop made by others should be able to communicate on the same level. And vice versa, it should be perfectly possible, from complete and freely available documentation to implement a server that will behave from a clients point of view in the same way a microsoft server would. This is simply fair competition.
Microsoft would then have to get by on the merits of it software, rather than on vendor lock in.
The Godiva over there is crap - atleast if its the same stuff that your southern neighbours have.
The Godiva over here (Netherlands and its made in belgium) is extremely good chocolate - but then we have lots and lots of very good chocolate to choose from here:)
As one of the above comments said - its seems that companies exporting to north america are quite happy to send crap since thats what is allowed to be sold there
I think it happens with a lot of things for export.
Take heineken for example, its undrinkable in the UK - sex in a canoe and the stuff they export to the US is as bad.
Here in Amsterdam I was ver disappointed to find its what most of the resturants sell... I was extremely shocked to find its surprisingly good - ok its not as good as a lot of the other lagers here but its actually a pretty decent beer.
I do know what you mean - I'm rather fond of lindt myself - ironically green and blacks are now owned by cadbury's
Its a touch off the track for purely chocolate but if you are ever in the area I would ehartily recommend the sanfrancisco fudge factory http://www.sanfranciscofudge.co.uk/ in bath - best fudge I have ever bought and their chocolates are pretty good too - amusing given this general topic that it has an american name though
Ghirardelli I only really know of for their coffee chocolate syrups...
Godiva I do know well though. Its an excellent chocolate - if you buy it in europe (where its made in belgium)
The stuff sold in the states is terrible though, like most us chocolate, it leaves a nasty waxy taste in your mouth - as I understand it consumption grade parafin is allowed to be added in certain quantities there and it still legally count as chocolate.
Its not as if you have to buy luxary chocolate here to get anything decent - a dairy milk bar is fine - and is still far supierior to anything I tried from the supermarket shelves in the states.
While I do like going to luxary chocolate stores, you know there is something wrong when its the only way you can find decent chocolate - as is the case in the us.
Ah yes almost forgot to mention screen - I take it far too much for granted these days.
Also never under estimate the usefulness of screen -x
(if you never tried it then do so, open up 2 xterms, start screen normall in on, and run screen -x in the other, 2 xterms, 1 set of shared screen sessions)
Ignore me please, my apologies - I'm losing my top at everyone today due to the medication I am taking causing both irritability and sleep deprivation - you really should just pity my co workers
The real key to unix (any unix) is knowing how to use the tools that you get installed with the OS to make your life easier.
First things first is the terminal (xterm, kterm whichever it doesn't matter) use it. Forget the GUIs, use the shell.
That brings us onto the shell itself. Pick one and stick with it for a while. On linux most people prefer bash, its a good choice as even though its not on all unixes by default its not difficult to obtain (just don't try to set the root users default shell to bash on solaris)
Learn the language of the shell, pipes, redirects, command line interpretation of special characters, handy tricks like tab complete, loops, variables, tests and use these all on one liners - progress to script files and also learn about functions - shell scripts are usually going to be fairly primitive tasks but they are the key to an easy life as an admin.
Man is your friend - and should always be the first place you turn for help, then google, then forums.
Learn the basic commands, ls, mv, cp, rm, learn their options and understand the justifications for using them (-i? -f?)
Pick an editor and learn to drive it - this is a long process but well worth it. Don't bother with a GUI one, consider that later. On a default linux install you will probably have vim and emacs - try them both, see which you like and use it. Check out guides on how to customise them until they behave just how you want them (I have a 10 line.vimrc file I can create from memory that makes vi behave just as I like) - ok yes vim != vi, but to shock vi purists I like to be able to use the cursor keys while in insert mode!
learn atleast the basics of the other important tools - at the very least find and grep. Awk and sed should certainly be on the list as you will encounter many scripts that use them, atleast some basic knowlege of perl would be handy (I prefer to use perl instead of awk and sed but thats my preference not everyone would agree)
Set up services and experiment, run a webserver, database server, mail server and learn as much as you can stand to about iptables to secure your box.
Keep backups, don't be afraid to break things, fixing what you broke (after finding out what you did to break it) is some of the best education yuo can have
True, even in the UK the VAT would be claimed back, but those payments for the network will show up as income for the telecoms company - the telecoms company will then pay some of that out in tax (profit, staff wages and the tax on that, etc)
Everything you pay out has a cut taken out of it for tax, usually every step of the way - there are plenty of essays around analysing just how much of your wages ends up going in tax - most vary in their results from 70% at face value to converging to 100% depending how deep you dig.
1) VAT/sales tax on the subscription and game purchase - oh they already do this don't they?:) (not to mention tax on electricity usage, network connections staff wages and all the other costs the company incurs, oh and on their profits if any)
2) On in game items that are bought and sold for real money - ie a commission on in game to real life transfers.
I'll accept "I'm John and I'm the only John in the office", or "I'm John and my extension is xxxx" quite happily. In fact I did the exact same when I worked in sales they are free to have my first name, (and it was rather obvious since I wore a name badge saying so), and since I was the only male staff member in the store it wasn't going to be hard to identify me.
What I want is a way to be able to uniquely identify that person within the company that I have contacted, having a company policy of not giving out last names or real names is fine by me.
As long as I can have a name that can be linked back to you if I need to speak to your manager or bring up comments you have said or promises you made that I may later rely on in a court case. I'd be very happy if more customer service centers offered their staff ID numbers to give out for the exact same reasons as you listed - also preferably not their employee number since that has potential identity fraud problems.
The only exception I make on this is managers - those I do expect to give out full names, it comes with the responsibility of the job. I've also never had a problem in getting a managers full name so this is obviously something they understand.
Not giving me such a unique identifier is extremely bad customer service. I make a record of all conversations with customer service - not a recording (though occasionally I will, but only after informing the other party, not getting their permssion, legally I don't need that I just have to inform them) but a record using good old fashioned pen and paper, time, date, name and what they said - it comes in very very useful if things go wrong.
One case where someone (working for a major bank and credit card company) refused to give me a full name or an extention, they asked what I wanted it for, I told them so I could write it down for the record. At that point they hung up. Probably a stupid thing to do as when 30 minutes later I did get to someone on management level it put the manager on the deffensive having to apologise for the behaviour of a member of staff and they assured me that staff member would be disciplined - not something I wanted, I merely wanted my problem sorted out, the staff member in question dug their own grave.
I don't get angry with staff on the phone, they are just doing their job, thats why when they say no I go up a level, when they stop putting things higher up without solving my problem (or convincing me that I am incorrect) I will ask them if this is their final response, if so I'll ask them to put it in writing and inform them my next step will be the courts. I'll admit half the places take this as a bluff, half of them become more cooperative, or make "gestures of goodwill". After the court papers are served almost everywhere will back down. Those few I've had to take to court have been won easily.
Being agressive with customer service will not help you, if anything it will just put them on the defensive - there are far more effective ways of dealing with people than shouting, either in person or on the phone, ideally you want to put them in a position where helping you the way you want to be helped is the easiest option for them.
Its a rule I follow when dealing with customer service people.
Technical problems, services, banking, whatever it doesn't matter.
I don't want people to say no. I want them to fix me problem and give me what I want.
But I also realise some customer service people, especially those on the front line do not have the authority to say "yes". It is their job to say "no".
So as soon as they refuse something I insist on being esclated, either to the next level of support up or to their supervisor/manager. I'm not rude about it, but I am persistant. I also make sure that I have the persons name at the start of the conversation (full name, and if they won't give it I make a note of that), and inform them if they don't escalate me I will be mentioning that when I do get through to higher up.
Obviously when you get to the top there is only small claims court (in the uk) left as an option but thats a very simple and painless process that doesn't even involve legal costs (between 10 and 100 in court costs is all and the losing party pays)
Its an effective method, admittedly I am generally right when I call up about things, have done my research and made sure I know as much as possible where I stand. But I'm also reasonably enough to accept the possibility that I could be wrong and given suitable proof of that will accept it - but it has to be well proven to me, not just assumed I am wrong and that I have to prove my case.
its just that half the pdfs the receive are scan the wrong way, and while a 3 day training course they were on taught them how to turn upside down faxes the right way round, they found the same methods don't work for PDFs. One the monitor is turned upside down it tends to wobble and creates a health and safety hazard.
You can do better than 100% efficiency - true not in the case of solar panels but in other technologies it is possible.
Efficiency is the ratio of energy in to useful energy out - obviously you can only get better than 100% efficiency if the useful energy out is greater than the energy you put in - this means (unless you are going to violate the laws of thermodynamics) you are going to be puling in energy from elsewhere, but that energy is not anything you are putting in.
The key example is heat pumps. A 4KW ground source heat pump can easily provide 10KW of heating for a home - 250% efficient.
I'll just splice that bit from that torrent, that bit from that one... it should work, I mean they are all the same TV episode and they are all mpeg4 - the file name says so...
Hmmm how about which bitrates, codecs, if it was from TV whether it was started at the same time??
That guy seriously has to be joking - the byte offsets are unlikely to ever specify a suitable join - and even if they rewrote the protocol so it split by seconds rather than fixed file widths you'd still have changing codecs and bitrates to deal with. Personally I'll stick to torrents with decent known trackers
I've overheard her discussing the whole home server obsession with her friends, she is fairly tolerant of my hobby and believes it has one major saving grace.
Its clean!
Especially compared to say motorbikes as a hobby, oily bike parts in the sink are not a good way to endear yourself aparantly...
But now servers come in oil? I can see problems starting here!!;)
What kind of fly wheel are you talking about? Scale? Materials? Stored in vacuum? What kind of mass? Which plane does it spin in? How does it cope with effects of the coreolis forces?
And of course you know it would have to be stationary? Having a fly wheel with any decent level of energy storage would also have a huge resistance against turning!!
Just to throw some numbers in the air... lets say you had a 0.2m thick 1m radius disk of lead, it would weigh approximately 7000kg, spinning it would store, lets say it is spinning at 120rpm (pretty fast given how heavy this thing is) its going to store about 550KJ. However you have the aditional loss of air resistance and friction on the axle which as it wears will get worse.
What else can you do with 7000kg? Well if you heat that much water by 50 degrees C and insulate it well you could store 1.5MJ. Still you have the factor of loss.
If you pumped 7000Kg of water up to the top floor of your house - lets say 6 meters up, it would store 420KJ of potential energy - and no real worry of loss unless your tank leaks.
So fly wheels don't seem to stack up that great...
Unless you are talking about some serious speed... lets say you can get it running with minimal friction and 3600rpm - thats only double what some washing machines do on the spin cycle. Now you are talking in the region of 125MJ of stored energy... but your losses due to friction and air resistances also increase, not to mention the complexity of gearing a motor to feed energy into it and a generator to extract energy from it. Oh and to give that more useful numbers, 125MJ is about 35KWh, somewhat less than the average household daily usage...
Maybe you could get it going faster than that without significant losses - I don't know - obviously energy stored would quadruple when you double the rotation rate so it has got potential... if you have any links to research I'd be interested in seeing it!
Slashdot Mirror
Its the low end digital cameras that are going to lose market - and possible disappear.
_ N95-part_3_the_Camera.php that gives some interesting comparisons with a proper camera - I'll admit I almost bought the phone though in the end price difference drove me to the HTC P3300.
No one that would consider buying a dSLR would seriously consider using a camera phone for anything more than quick snaps when you forgot or chose not to brig your proper camera along. The cameras in phones these days are good enough for the snaps most people want to take - especially if they include an led flash (pretty pathetic in real terms but again good enough to take a snap of your friend while in the pub)
I've seen a fairly indepth review of the nokia N95 on here http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia
If you have in your pocket something that can take good pictures anyway, then the quality difference you are going to require to justufy having a digital camera is going to be quite large.
I don't have a dSLR myself, I wanted something more all round when I got a digital camera - ie small enough to carry easily to take snaps. So I got the cannon powershot S50. This was 6 years ago and at the time it had the features closest to an SLR while still being a compact design.
Now I have a fairly good 2mp camera in my phone. Its got no zoom and no flash but its good enough that unless I specifically want a camera I'll leave the cannon at home. Because of thisnext camera I buy will probably be a dSLR - it doesn't need to fit the compact requirement as I have a device for that, for the separate device I want something with quality.
So yes, I think camera phones will spell the end of the camera market - atleast part of it. Cameras will become the province of specialists, people looking for holiday snaps will use their phones. All in all not a huge change from the way things used to be with SLRs for the serious people and 35mm compacts and disposable cameras for those wanting holiday snaps. The vast availablility of digital cameras with ease of use and low cost blurred these lines for a while, but I suspect it will settle right back where it used to be, but with dSLRs for the specialists and camera phones for the rest in almost all cases.
My only worry is what this will do to the choice of dSLRs, how many companies will be able to cope with losing their mass market revenues to phones...
My point wasn't suggesting that complying with the law should not make a company bankrupt.
It was about applying aditional regulation to an otherwise legitmatly operating company should not force a company bankrupt - its a subtle difference.
In this case its not even an issue - its the difference between making huge profits at the expense of competition and making reasonable profits with fair competition. Obviously the EU should do what it can to make it the latter and not the former. Interface protocols should be free - that simple.
It would be nice if it would work that way and goverments are trying to do that - though its still quite common for large scale criminals to keep much of their ill gotten gains.
As for my original point it was making the assumption that the company was complying with the law, and saying that a legitimate company should be able to comply with the law and make a profit (otherwise the company is going to fold)
I don't think thats an issue for microsoft - the issue as I'm sure they see it is they want to make a huge profit with minimum competition and minimum effort - technically thats not illegal, fortunately the goverments do tend to try and do something about that - as in this case.
What point could it?
Well if it bankrupted the company then yes that would be too far certainly. If it made it so the company when complying with the law (ie not being fined) could not actualy make a profit after costs, that would be too far.
Many prices are restricted by goverments - I suspect even in the US though I don't know for certain. Things like the cost per unit of electricity, water, gas, telecoms, public transport when run by private companies. These are to ensure that companies that have effective monopolies cannot abuse the position.
Same with mircosoft. I agree they should be able to charge what they want for their software. But where they have a protocol or an API that completely separate instance of software talk to (eg from a different computer on the network of from a piece of software that is not part of the OS, or not part of the same software suite) then those interfaces, protocols and APIs should be documented and the information provided for free.
Yes they can protect their code and their implementations, but the fact you have a microsoft server should not force you to have a microsoft desktop in order to use it - other desktop made by others should be able to communicate on the same level. And vice versa, it should be perfectly possible, from complete and freely available documentation to implement a server that will behave from a clients point of view in the same way a microsoft server would. This is simply fair competition.
Microsoft would then have to get by on the merits of it software, rather than on vendor lock in.
The Godiva over there is crap - atleast if its the same stuff that your southern neighbours have.
:)
The Godiva over here (Netherlands and its made in belgium) is extremely good chocolate - but then we have lots and lots of very good chocolate to choose from here
As one of the above comments said - its seems that companies exporting to north america are quite happy to send crap since thats what is allowed to be sold there
I think it happens with a lot of things for export.
Take heineken for example, its undrinkable in the UK - sex in a canoe and the stuff they export to the US is as bad.
Here in Amsterdam I was ver disappointed to find its what most of the resturants sell... I was extremely shocked to find its surprisingly good - ok its not as good as a lot of the other lagers here but its actually a pretty decent beer.
I do know what you mean - I'm rather fond of lindt myself - ironically green and blacks are now owned by cadbury's
Its a touch off the track for purely chocolate but if you are ever in the area I would ehartily recommend the sanfrancisco fudge factory http://www.sanfranciscofudge.co.uk/ in bath - best fudge I have ever bought and their chocolates are pretty good too - amusing given this general topic that it has an american name though
Ghirardelli I only really know of for their coffee chocolate syrups...
Godiva I do know well though. Its an excellent chocolate - if you buy it in europe (where its made in belgium)
The stuff sold in the states is terrible though, like most us chocolate, it leaves a nasty waxy taste in your mouth - as I understand it consumption grade parafin is allowed to be added in certain quantities there and it still legally count as chocolate.
Its not as if you have to buy luxary chocolate here to get anything decent - a dairy milk bar is fine - and is still far supierior to anything I tried from the supermarket shelves in the states.
While I do like going to luxary chocolate stores, you know there is something wrong when its the only way you can find decent chocolate - as is the case in the us.
Ah yes almost forgot to mention screen - I take it far too much for granted these days.
Also never under estimate the usefulness of screen -x
(if you never tried it then do so, open up 2 xterms, start screen normall in on, and run screen -x in the other, 2 xterms, 1 set of shared screen sessions)
Ignore me please, my apologies - I'm losing my top at everyone today due to the medication I am taking causing both irritability and sleep deprivation - you really should just pity my co workers
So nice of you to show your name
This post is obviously getting rather tedious and seems to show up posted as AC witht he same AC replies every couple of days...
Seems you forgot to click the Post Anonymously button this time old chap
The real key to unix (any unix) is knowing how to use the tools that you get installed with the OS to make your life easier.
.vimrc file I can create from memory that makes vi behave just as I like) - ok yes vim != vi, but to shock vi purists I like to be able to use the cursor keys while in insert mode!
First things first is the terminal (xterm, kterm whichever it doesn't matter) use it. Forget the GUIs, use the shell.
That brings us onto the shell itself. Pick one and stick with it for a while. On linux most people prefer bash, its a good choice as even though its not on all unixes by default its not difficult to obtain (just don't try to set the root users default shell to bash on solaris)
Learn the language of the shell, pipes, redirects, command line interpretation of special characters, handy tricks like tab complete, loops, variables, tests and use these all on one liners - progress to script files and also learn about functions - shell scripts are usually going to be fairly primitive tasks but they are the key to an easy life as an admin.
Man is your friend - and should always be the first place you turn for help, then google, then forums.
Learn the basic commands, ls, mv, cp, rm, learn their options and understand the justifications for using them (-i? -f?)
Pick an editor and learn to drive it - this is a long process but well worth it. Don't bother with a GUI one, consider that later. On a default linux install you will probably have vim and emacs - try them both, see which you like and use it. Check out guides on how to customise them until they behave just how you want them (I have a 10 line
learn atleast the basics of the other important tools - at the very least find and grep. Awk and sed should certainly be on the list as you will encounter many scripts that use them, atleast some basic knowlege of perl would be handy (I prefer to use perl instead of awk and sed but thats my preference not everyone would agree)
Set up services and experiment, run a webserver, database server, mail server and learn as much as you can stand to about iptables to secure your box.
Keep backups, don't be afraid to break things, fixing what you broke (after finding out what you did to break it) is some of the best education yuo can have
All in all
Have fun!!
True, even in the UK the VAT would be claimed back, but those payments for the network will show up as income for the telecoms company - the telecoms company will then pay some of that out in tax (profit, staff wages and the tax on that, etc)
Everything you pay out has a cut taken out of it for tax, usually every step of the way - there are plenty of essays around analysing just how much of your wages ends up going in tax - most vary in their results from 70% at face value to converging to 100% depending how deep you dig.
As long as its one of 2 ways
:) (not to mention tax on electricity usage, network connections staff wages and all the other costs the company incurs, oh and on their profits if any)
1) VAT/sales tax on the subscription and game purchase - oh they already do this don't they?
2) On in game items that are bought and sold for real money - ie a commission on in game to real life transfers.
Anything else is just pure nonsense!!
According to buddhism once you reach enlitenment you will fully understand the nature of the universe and you can stop reincarnating...
I just wondered though... do you stop reincarnating because they take your season ticket away for cheating???
I'll accept "I'm John and I'm the only John in the office", or "I'm John and my extension is xxxx" quite happily. In fact I did the exact same when I worked in sales they are free to have my first name, (and it was rather obvious since I wore a name badge saying so), and since I was the only male staff member in the store it wasn't going to be hard to identify me.
What I want is a way to be able to uniquely identify that person within the company that I have contacted, having a company policy of not giving out last names or real names is fine by me.
As long as I can have a name that can be linked back to you if I need to speak to your manager or bring up comments you have said or promises you made that I may later rely on in a court case. I'd be very happy if more customer service centers offered their staff ID numbers to give out for the exact same reasons as you listed - also preferably not their employee number since that has potential identity fraud problems.
The only exception I make on this is managers - those I do expect to give out full names, it comes with the responsibility of the job. I've also never had a problem in getting a managers full name so this is obviously something they understand.
Not giving me such a unique identifier is extremely bad customer service. I make a record of all conversations with customer service - not a recording (though occasionally I will, but only after informing the other party, not getting their permssion, legally I don't need that I just have to inform them) but a record using good old fashioned pen and paper, time, date, name and what they said - it comes in very very useful if things go wrong.
One case where someone (working for a major bank and credit card company) refused to give me a full name or an extention, they asked what I wanted it for, I told them so I could write it down for the record. At that point they hung up. Probably a stupid thing to do as when 30 minutes later I did get to someone on management level it put the manager on the deffensive having to apologise for the behaviour of a member of staff and they assured me that staff member would be disciplined - not something I wanted, I merely wanted my problem sorted out, the staff member in question dug their own grave.
I don't get angry with staff on the phone, they are just doing their job, thats why when they say no I go up a level, when they stop putting things higher up without solving my problem (or convincing me that I am incorrect) I will ask them if this is their final response, if so I'll ask them to put it in writing and inform them my next step will be the courts. I'll admit half the places take this as a bluff, half of them become more cooperative, or make "gestures of goodwill". After the court papers are served almost everywhere will back down. Those few I've had to take to court have been won easily.
Being agressive with customer service will not help you, if anything it will just put them on the defensive - there are far more effective ways of dealing with people than shouting, either in person or on the phone, ideally you want to put them in a position where helping you the way you want to be helped is the easiest option for them.
Its a rule I follow when dealing with customer service people.
Technical problems, services, banking, whatever it doesn't matter.
I don't want people to say no. I want them to fix me problem and give me what I want.
But I also realise some customer service people, especially those on the front line do not have the authority to say "yes". It is their job to say "no".
So as soon as they refuse something I insist on being esclated, either to the next level of support up or to their supervisor/manager. I'm not rude about it, but I am persistant. I also make sure that I have the persons name at the start of the conversation (full name, and if they won't give it I make a note of that), and inform them if they don't escalate me I will be mentioning that when I do get through to higher up.
Obviously when you get to the top there is only small claims court (in the uk) left as an option but thats a very simple and painless process that doesn't even involve legal costs (between 10 and 100 in court costs is all and the losing party pays)
Its an effective method, admittedly I am generally right when I call up about things, have done my research and made sure I know as much as possible where I stand. But I'm also reasonably enough to accept the possibility that I could be wrong and given suitable proof of that will accept it - but it has to be well proven to me, not just assumed I am wrong and that I have to prove my case.
Still based on birds though.
early jumpbo jets used the landings of pigeons as a basis for example - those techniques are still used
its just that half the pdfs the receive are scan the wrong way, and while a 3 day training course they were on taught them how to turn upside down faxes the right way round, they found the same methods don't work for PDFs. One the monitor is turned upside down it tends to wobble and creates a health and safety hazard.
Maybe the EU could help with that...
"God, we are fining you 3 million Euros a day until you provide fully documented APIs for all neural functions"
You can do better than 100% efficiency - true not in the case of solar panels but in other technologies it is possible.
Efficiency is the ratio of energy in to useful energy out - obviously you can only get better than 100% efficiency if the useful energy out is greater than the energy you put in - this means (unless you are going to violate the laws of thermodynamics) you are going to be puling in energy from elsewhere, but that energy is not anything you are putting in.
The key example is heat pumps. A 4KW ground source heat pump can easily provide 10KW of heating for a home - 250% efficient.
Sure this is going to work... really
I'll just splice that bit from that torrent, that bit from that one... it should work, I mean they are all the same TV episode and they are all mpeg4 - the file name says so...
Hmmm how about which bitrates, codecs, if it was from TV whether it was started at the same time??
That guy seriously has to be joking - the byte offsets are unlikely to ever specify a suitable join - and even if they rewrote the protocol so it split by seconds rather than fixed file widths you'd still have changing codecs and bitrates to deal with. Personally I'll stick to torrents with decent known trackers
You'd be surprised - I got an 8Gb nano just as they game out figuring that my music collection was unlikely to beat that size
Turned out it already filled it - actually had to cut some out.
Now I have about 14Gb and have to pick and choose play lists....
I'll admit there are tracks I haven't even listened to yet in there but I really don't have the time to trim it all down more neatly
what I'd love is a 8Gb nano with a microSD or similar slot on the side - especially one capabele of taking 4 or 8gb cards
I've overheard her discussing the whole home server obsession with her friends, she is fairly tolerant of my hobby and believes it has one major saving grace.
;)
Its clean!
Especially compared to say motorbikes as a hobby, oily bike parts in the sink are not a good way to endear yourself aparantly...
But now servers come in oil? I can see problems starting here!!
Ok I'll bite on the fly wheel idea....
What kind of fly wheel are you talking about? Scale? Materials? Stored in vacuum? What kind of mass? Which plane does it spin in? How does it cope with effects of the coreolis forces?
And of course you know it would have to be stationary? Having a fly wheel with any decent level of energy storage would also have a huge resistance against turning!!
Just to throw some numbers in the air... lets say you had a 0.2m thick 1m radius disk of lead, it would weigh approximately 7000kg, spinning it would store, lets say it is spinning at 120rpm (pretty fast given how heavy this thing is) its going to store about 550KJ. However you have the aditional loss of air resistance and friction on the axle which as it wears will get worse.
What else can you do with 7000kg? Well if you heat that much water by 50 degrees C and insulate it well you could store 1.5MJ. Still you have the factor of loss.
If you pumped 7000Kg of water up to the top floor of your house - lets say 6 meters up, it would store 420KJ of potential energy - and no real worry of loss unless your tank leaks.
So fly wheels don't seem to stack up that great...
Unless you are talking about some serious speed... lets say you can get it running with minimal friction and 3600rpm - thats only double what some washing machines do on the spin cycle. Now you are talking in the region of 125MJ of stored energy... but your losses due to friction and air resistances also increase, not to mention the complexity of gearing a motor to feed energy into it and a generator to extract energy from it. Oh and to give that more useful numbers, 125MJ is about 35KWh, somewhat less than the average household daily usage...
Maybe you could get it going faster than that without significant losses - I don't know - obviously energy stored would quadruple when you double the rotation rate so it has got potential... if you have any links to research I'd be interested in seeing it!