This psyco-babble about grandma being the target annoys me. Sure everyone is a novice at sometime. However most applications are used by experts. (they started at beginers, but have learned it) How do you support those experts who are doing a task everyday? They have different demands, now your easy to learn app needs to be easy to get the common tasks done with. That is a completely differnent level of design.
Take configuring the network on windows. It is fairly easy, except for two points: the task itself is complex (Assume that dhcp isn't implimented for whatever reason), and getting it wrong can be serious (though microsoft will detect and prevent a lot of getting it wrong problems, good design there) to the rest of the network. Experts only territory, if you don't know what those fields mean, you should be taught by an expert. Because it is experts only territory, seperating things (DNS from ip/netmask) just slows down the expert who wants to type in a bunch of numbers and move on. The beginner should be turned off by the amount of data there, in hopes that they don't screw things up. (in NT based systems the user isn't given access to change this, more good design) Note that I specificly picked something where making it easy for the beginner makes it harder for the expert, and made the argument that the beginner shouldn't be here anyway - this argument doesn't apply to everything, often you need to support both types of users.
Broke? Last time I donated plasma there were several buisness men in their suit in the waiting room, mentioning they did this twice a week because it is a good break from the stress of life and it helps people. They don't need the money, they need time when they can't be interupted.
I have a real job now, and I wish there was a place near by, I'd be a regular just for the time to relax in the middle of the day and the feeling that I'm helping someone who needs it. (I'd donate blood, but I faint every time, giving plasma didn't bother me, but blood did - thats just me though.
Who said anything about standing still, or not doing pure research? I said that Space based reserach is for the most part not worth it. When the US only has the shuttle (for all practical purposes) which isn't even able to get far out of the atmosphere for 20 years, you know that research in space isn't being done anyway. If real science has a need for science I don't object. Most of the science we are doing in space now is not science, but rather science fair. That is neat, but not advanceing science very far.
There is plenty of research that can be done a lot cheaper on earth. It isn't like we do an expiriment in space, or all science stops. Instead it is we do this neat expiriment in space (which may significantly advance science, don't get me wrong, some space based science does), or do something different on earth and advance science that way.
Let the chinese get a few wins in space. They are wins not worth obtaining at this point. Someday I hope going to Mars is a routine thing, just like going to Europe (from North America) is today. Someday it will be worth while to mine asteriods. That day isn't today, or in the near enough future that we will behind if we don't start building those rockets now. That day is far enough in the future that we are better off a) figgureing out how to make do with what we have on earth until that day, and b) advancing science in all directions until it is advanced enoguh that we can engineer ships cheap enough to make the trip worthwhile.
They might get some use for the GIMP too. It isn't as good as Photoshop, but it is free and does some useful things. Rumor is they are modifying a spcial animation version specific your movie studio use, but I couldn't find any links to confirm that so I'll leave it as a rumor.
I'm not against it, but what is the point of Space exploration today? We can do it, we have proven that. It is very expensive though. Satalites yes, but they are self funded, and profitable for private industry. Very little scientific research needs to be done in space.
Sure it is neat to say you went into space, for the small group of people who have done it, but otherwise what value is there in it? Sit in a small space for a few days with nothing to do but look at the earth. I hope you can get some good books/movies, because once the novilty of seeing the earth from above is over with you need something to do.
Scientific research sounds good, but most of it can be done on earth. Few scientific research projects going on in space now even have value to science. If you can come up with a good space research project, good. Except it is so expensive to get into space, you better be sure that you can't get results any other way. Even then, a unmaded probe would be better.
ISS has value, but only because it gets a few russian scientists a job so they don't have develop mistles for evil dictators just to survive. A worthy cause to be sure, but otherwise of no important use.
I say let the chinese get to Mars first. We have enough probes there to be pretty sure that there is no value in sending people there. If a probe discovers something of value that we need people to check out, fine, but until then why have a highly trained person waste months on the trip?
That isn't to say we should stand still. Lets develope something of use here. We can catch up to the Chinese anytime. (if only because the spys mean they can't keep the technology secert for very long...)
I have other things to spend my money on. I hear many retired folks complaining about socal security, I always respond that my parents were not old enough to vote when they sent their socal security money to the moon, so don't blame me for the mess we are in. (Yes that situation is complex than that) I'd like to keep my tax money. Selfish perhaps, but if you won't let me keep it, at least spend it on something that is of use, not waste it on space.
It just occured to me that 802.11 IIRC runs on a similear frequency to weather radar (at least those that are running on 2.4 GHz). Could you build a 802.11(letter) station with an ultra sensitive reciever, and while transmitting, look for echo returns and figgure out distance, and from there extrapulate some data. Obviously you would need some triangelation with other nearby stations to figgure out where things are (the antennas are not directional or moving so you would just get a return "there is something x miles away), but that can be done any a computer elsewhere. I'm not sure if technology is up to recievers that can seperate the data at that low of level, but it would be really cool to have a few basestations that also told me something about the weather.
On the origional XP keyboard it was hard to hit accidently. On a modern 101 key keybaord, with num-lock turned off you can get it accidently, as I discovered one night in a lab when I removed a keyboard from a shelf and rebooted the machine. (I hope noone else was using it for something - it was a weekend and a test lab, but even still I don't like thinking about what I could have done to someone's test that fails on time in 100 hours)
Microsoft has fixed that problem. A PC Must show the windows XP logo in 6 seconds, or something like that. Of course that is nothing coompared to linux booting completely in 200ms, but a good start compared to the full minute BIOS takes on my PC. Details can be downloaded at http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/winlogo/downloads.ms px. (I didn't like it cause microsoft changes links often, and I can only find a word document there, which I can't open so I'm not ever positive I have the details right)
I'm told that linux bios can get your system up fast too, but I don't know much about that project.
My local power company is offering a deal to those considering a backup generator. (generally for their comptuer room) Allow them to install a box that forces it to start up automaticly and disconnect the comptuers from the grid, and they will sell power for much cheaper. They win because when there isn't enough capacity some customers are swtiched off. The customer wins twice, once because they get cheaper power, second because that generation equipment is tested regularly so they know it works (if it doesn't they stay on the grid but pay more for power).
Nothing new there, big industry often installs gas/oil boilers, running gas normally at a reduced rate. When the gas company calls they switch to oil. Been going on for years, electric companies are just starting to catch on.
No, ideally power plants would be built close to the fuel. Transmission line losses over a high voltage line are small. What is the energy loss to transport a train load of coal from a mine (coal isn't found everywhere you know) to the power plant. How about the cost to pump gas (somewhat self flowing, but they still have to pump it at times) from the well to the power plant? High voltage elecrisity is a good cheap low loss way to transport energy.
The best way to transport electrisity is DC, so you need a DC-AC inverter plant close to the city, but that is invisiable compared to a power plant.
Power lines are dangerious, but I'd call trains more dangerious. A power line is normally up in the air, and you can walk under it just fine without watching your step. A train track cannot be crossed without looking and often waiting - and a power plant takes enough coal that there are trains going by every 20 minutes just to supply that plant. (Not to mention the other uses of the train) Every once in a while someone stalls on the tracks (or more likely losses a race) and it hit by a train, generally killing several people.
True, but it doesn't take many comptuers to cost CompUSA a lot of money. And Comptuers themselfs are not nessicarly the target. I couldn't shiplift a 19 inch monitor if the gaurd is paying attention, but a 2.5 inch harddrive, memory module, or even the latest sexy teenie bopper CD fits in my pocket. Do your crime in winter and a lot will fit under a coat. (I hope you get caught if you try, it drves the prices up for honest people)
I think cables are marked up so much mostly because the market will bear it. If I need a cable I need it now (or I'd go to the internet for a cheaper place), and I'll pay $25 to get my gadget working before my friends (yeah right...) get here. However there is also the issue of shelf space, cables don't seem to be very high volumn, compared to the shelf space they take. They could put something with less markup that moved better in that place and make the same money - except that If I go for a cable and find it isn't there I might decide they have nothing and not come back. Retail is complex, and I don't even know all the considerations.
Don't forget the cost of doing buisness. If you count only the cost of food, McDonald's as a 200% markup. Food and labor is about 100% (these two were about half the costs in the resteraunt I worked at). However after all the other little things add up, profit of 5% not obtainable no matter how hard we tried, and some months we lost money. Overhead gets you every time...
I used to work at StorageTek, and I don't know if I believe the 700% markup. Only because how do you figgure that. If just the cost of making the parts, that is beliveable. They don't have a lot of volumn (compared to say DELL), but all their systems have a lot of engineering in them, so they have to recover a lot of costs from each sale. I know many smaller products never directly became profitable, and were only worth it because they helped drive a bigger sale.
I don't think Cisco wants to be in the RAM buisness. They are used to selling either big machines for a lot of money, or small machines to re-sellers. Call them up for a $50 ram module, and they may have more than $50 in overhead just to answer the phone, get it off the shelf, and ship it. The salemen selling it may require more than $50 himself just to make it worthwhile to write up the stupid order. (time is money, and that time could be spent trying for a big sale) Call them direct and you might get a vice president more inclined to sell in lots of 1000 than single lots, and you have to pay for his time. Their processes don't support selling memory, but they know they have to. They charge to make up for their process, plus some extra to either profit or make you go elsewhere. (one other point is they have to keep memory for old systems around ever after it is hard to get, you may be paying for an assumption that they have made their last order of that part and have to conserve inventory)
Buisness is complex. That doesn't excuse you from not looking for the best value. Don't buy the expensive parts if a cheap one is just as good. Unless your time itself is worth more than the effort it would take to find a cheaper supplier. If you are a high level executive, getting memory from Cisco may be a better use of your time than searching for memory suppliers. I could find them on google and 5 minutes latter have the order done, but if you don't do that I could see it taking 20 mines, which means the executive would need to make $250 an hour - cheap for a CEO. (though why a CEO isn't telling an underling to do the job I don't understand - something they should know how to do in one minute)
Your professor holds office hours, and announces them at the begining of class. (at least in the university I went to, I assume the others are similear) Get in his office and complain that paper books are too heavy and askward, you want paper books. Don't forget to mention that cost is also a problem with books. Thank the professors who do pay attention to money (even if it is accidental...) too. While you are there (and now that you know the way and when to go) use those office hours regularly get help on the class. Perhaps you can get an A. (I always wished I had taken my own advice...)
Most text books are written by professors. If you demand e-books, they will see a demand, and make sure at the very least their next book has an electronic format.
You as a student have little power in itself. Professors are human though, and they have power. Work on them, and they will use the power to represent your interests.
I had to go back and re-read my post. I think it clear enough. I suggest you re-read it, and then re-consider what you wrote in reply. I hope you have enough sense to feel like a fool.
I hate to be that harse, but your reply only makes sense if you didn't bother to read what I said.
No way. One thing worse than our government as it stands today is the government that we would end up with once the people get dupped by all the con artists (mostly they attempt to get into congress now...) make a new government. At least with have a system of checks and balances. I fear the next government would do worse, not better, and the danger of that is much worse than the slowness of reforming our current government. (not to mention impossibility)
Aren't those the same africian countries with 70% infected with HIV? Modern treatment hasn't gotten the expected lifespan byond 20 years for those infected, last I heard.
How do they come up with 7.52% growth in china? Their one child per family has been in effect for at least 2 generations already. As soon as the old folks start dieing off (which will happen in less than 50 years, expect to see the first generation of that policy gone, and the next dropping off) thier population will begin shrinking.
Some countries in Europe are already losing native born population only imigration is keeping their population from shrinking already.
In other words I don't belive that chart. It contradicts several "facts" that are checkable with a forcast that cannot be checked for many years.
Not nessicarly. If he is saving clients 10 mintues, they might like that enough to give him more buisness. Or maybe he bills like a lawyer, and the 10 minutes saves on a job is still billed, be he works on someone else's project which is also billed by the hour, thus making double for that 10 minutes, and also servicing the next client a little faster.
Either way he wins. His clients might or might not consider it a win.
I've heard many claims that GIMP is trying to be just as good as photshop, but not there yet. I've heard claims that there are one or two things GIMP does better, while overall it is worse. I've heard that it is a good start, but still not there yet. I've heard that "EVERYONE", or "a friend of a friend" claims it is better. I've never actually heard someone claim it is better.
If you are an artist, you should check it out, it might do one or two things that you need. It might be something to put on your todo list for one year from now to see if it is better. Because it is free (beer) you can check it out anytime. Don't do it when you have a big deadline, but most artists are having a hard time finding work now, if you have downtime with no leads check it out.
You pretty much have to move to a new job in a new city to pull this off, but if you can it is worth it.
Develope religion. Seriously develop religion. If you are jewish do the full nazerine vow (Never cut your hair), other religions have similear. Dress in scrict going to church clothes all the time. Carry a bible with your everywhere, and be seen reading it - got 30 seconds before a meeting starts, read it. Reject holidays that are not in your religion. (Halloween, and christmass - the latter is a good one for christians to reject because everyone belives it is a christian holiday, but historicly it is not, obviously pagans would celibrate some form of them) Don't be annoying, but invite everyone to church with you. Don't let this get in the way of real work.
Make sure you take jokes in stride. So long as the joke isn't out of hand laugh with everyone else. You may need this part of your reputation latter if any setup requires some help.
After you have established a reputation of being nearly perfect you can pull off a lot of complex setups that require some gulability because you are not suspected. "It sounds strange, but Joe would never..."
Remember you have to restrain yourself, the reputation of a religous person who is always perfectly serious can be lost. There is nothing wrong with a religious person who is always playing jokes, but you can't pull off the really good ones.
So an engineer saw a problem and was concerned. My question is how often does this happen. If after every launch there are 100 engineers who noticed a potential problem, then I'd have ignored this too (along with the 99 other potential problems that didn't kill columbia) If enginneers almost never see a potential problem then this should have been taken seriously.
Others have pointed out that there is an esclation process for problems belived to be serious, and that wasn't followed. In hind site it should have been, but they didn't have hind site to work with then, so we have to be realistic i our expectations.
Others have pointed out a small minority of cars that have electric power steering.
Requiring you to know how to test power steering for a drivers test is stupid IMO. Check oil yes because all car (currently electric cars are rare) have a dipstick and need oil checked. Likewise tires nearly all have air that needs to be checked. Tail lights need to be checked once in a while. The power steering check you provided fails on most implimentations, so it is a useless test to learn on most cars. When power steering does brake it is normally a sudden thing - it is working just fine until the belt snaps, or the hose brakes, and then you have none (but I've never seen electric so I don't know how it works) - even then you still have steering, it is just hard.
You maintain the parts that are designed for maintance. You replace the parts with a recomended replacement intervile. You replace parts the computer says are bad (and then curse when the problem doesn't go away...). When parts fall into none of those catagories you hope they don't brake, and when they do, you deal with it from the side of the road.
If power steering int he Vauxhall Corsa requires testing with every startup, then there is a problem with the design. Most people will not do it, so they shouldn't require it. Of cousre most people won't check their oil, yet a modern engine requires it, so this isn't a new situation. Still they should try to do better.
While I understand the value of putting all comptuers in a server room, I think that you would be better of to just have the computer in a closet outside the room, or in a soundproof (yet well cooled...) cabinet inside. I'm not convinced you will be changing hardware often enough to make pushing a button in each cabin a problem. Software updates are a different issue, and those you might change often.
I strongly recomend you keep most of your disks in a file server, and store all files on that. With SAMBA (windows networking can work too) to share as needed. Keep the harddrive noise far away because it is on the network. Also puts the componants you most want to replace in a central location next to the comptuer they are connected to, and lusers can't touch that machine.
Extended cables work ok at best, but you are introducing potential problems with them. By having the comptuer just outside you can run a few more cables inside the room, and still get off just as good.
Drop the USB cd drives for ieee1394 (firewire). A little more complex, but you have a solution that was designed for data drives from the start. If you have a lot of money fibre channel would be nice, but odds are you don't.
USB in theory allows you to plug multipul devices in. I'd expiriment with a usb hub local to the machine for pluging a second keyboard/mouse into without unpluging the one in the remote room. Dual monitor graphics cards exist, I'd consider putting one in each machine, so you don't have to unplug the remote monitor. Remember unpluging cables is what damages them, so you want to avoid that. Monitor are not always hot-plug, so you don't want to unplug them anyway. Or, instead of the complexities of the above, will VNC or similear solve all console admin needs?
Expiriment first. Try all the technology on one computer (that you can borrow for the purpose) first, to make sure it will work ok. If there is a problem that you can't overcome you don't want to have bought a large setup only to find it won't work.
One other thing I'd be tempted to try is some custom mini-ITX boards in a custom case. Use flash for booting, and set it read-only so that lusers don't go breaking the configuration. (better yet boot from the net, but that isn't easy) Provides most of the outputs you want, and use the network for all your admin. With the right heatsinks and case design they make no noise. When you do have to do a hardware change, you pull a spare off the shelf, make the change, test it, then bring the whole system to the cabin and replace the old on.
Not all these ideas are compatable. Only you know your exact setup, so only you know what will work for you.
One what car? I know of no car where power steering works when the key is on. The cars I know of with power steering all all operated by a pump connected by belt to the engine. Every one I have ever seen or heard of works this way. When the engine is not turning you don't have power steering. (I drive a stick so I can have a situation where the engine is running, but still turning, automatics work differently)
As for power breaks, some might work off electrical power, I don't know. I know several power brake systems that work off of engine vacuume, and thus do not work unless the engine is running. With some systems you can feel this in the brake pedal: start the car while pressing the brake, and a moment latter the pedal will sink as power brakes kick in.
Personally I prefer not to have power assist on either brakes or steering, as it is just one more part to go wrong. Cars with power assist are designed so they difficult for strong people to use without assist. Cars without work just fine without it.
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Perhaps they are. Where is this 7 year old girl who like orgies and is into guys with both a large penis and big breasts? For extra credit, how can I get her body into outerspace so the world isn't just rid of her life, but also her body?
I once did delete someones files. Back in high school someone wrote a little Gbasic script that looked exactly like the Netware login screen, would accept your login and password, and then beep and give a "fooled you" message. I already had heard of password loggers by then, so when that happened to me I just hit control-c, and then grabed a dos prompt and deleted all his files. If anyone would have caught me my defense was password loggers existed, and I didn't have time to figgure out where he was loging them, so I deleted everything.
The admin trusted me back then, and I have a good idea who did it (one of 3 who I saw spoofing the screen from time to time, none were trusted) so I would have got away with it.
Nowadays if I suspected that would happen to me I'd write a C program that displayed "Quit faking the loging screen to collect password." and then loged the user out, so he would have to get admins involved to do his homework.
I don't miss high school. I didn't like putting up with that type of thing.
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This psyco-babble about grandma being the target annoys me. Sure everyone is a novice at sometime. However most applications are used by experts. (they started at beginers, but have learned it) How do you support those experts who are doing a task everyday? They have different demands, now your easy to learn app needs to be easy to get the common tasks done with. That is a completely differnent level of design.
Take configuring the network on windows. It is fairly easy, except for two points: the task itself is complex (Assume that dhcp isn't implimented for whatever reason), and getting it wrong can be serious (though microsoft will detect and prevent a lot of getting it wrong problems, good design there) to the rest of the network. Experts only territory, if you don't know what those fields mean, you should be taught by an expert. Because it is experts only territory, seperating things (DNS from ip/netmask) just slows down the expert who wants to type in a bunch of numbers and move on. The beginner should be turned off by the amount of data there, in hopes that they don't screw things up. (in NT based systems the user isn't given access to change this, more good design) Note that I specificly picked something where making it easy for the beginner makes it harder for the expert, and made the argument that the beginner shouldn't be here anyway - this argument doesn't apply to everything, often you need to support both types of users.
Broke? Last time I donated plasma there were several buisness men in their suit in the waiting room, mentioning they did this twice a week because it is a good break from the stress of life and it helps people. They don't need the money, they need time when they can't be interupted.
I have a real job now, and I wish there was a place near by, I'd be a regular just for the time to relax in the middle of the day and the feeling that I'm helping someone who needs it. (I'd donate blood, but I faint every time, giving plasma didn't bother me, but blood did - thats just me though.
Who said anything about standing still, or not doing pure research? I said that Space based reserach is for the most part not worth it. When the US only has the shuttle (for all practical purposes) which isn't even able to get far out of the atmosphere for 20 years, you know that research in space isn't being done anyway. If real science has a need for science I don't object. Most of the science we are doing in space now is not science, but rather science fair. That is neat, but not advanceing science very far.
There is plenty of research that can be done a lot cheaper on earth. It isn't like we do an expiriment in space, or all science stops. Instead it is we do this neat expiriment in space (which may significantly advance science, don't get me wrong, some space based science does), or do something different on earth and advance science that way.
Let the chinese get a few wins in space. They are wins not worth obtaining at this point. Someday I hope going to Mars is a routine thing, just like going to Europe (from North America) is today. Someday it will be worth while to mine asteriods. That day isn't today, or in the near enough future that we will behind if we don't start building those rockets now. That day is far enough in the future that we are better off a) figgureing out how to make do with what we have on earth until that day, and b) advancing science in all directions until it is advanced enoguh that we can engineer ships cheap enough to make the trip worthwhile.
Wine (not sure if straight wine, or one of the comercial versions) runs photoshop.
They might get some use for the GIMP too. It isn't as good as Photoshop, but it is free and does some useful things. Rumor is they are modifying a spcial animation version specific your movie studio use, but I couldn't find any links to confirm that so I'll leave it as a rumor.
I'm not against it, but what is the point of Space exploration today? We can do it, we have proven that. It is very expensive though. Satalites yes, but they are self funded, and profitable for private industry. Very little scientific research needs to be done in space.
Sure it is neat to say you went into space, for the small group of people who have done it, but otherwise what value is there in it? Sit in a small space for a few days with nothing to do but look at the earth. I hope you can get some good books/movies, because once the novilty of seeing the earth from above is over with you need something to do.
Scientific research sounds good, but most of it can be done on earth. Few scientific research projects going on in space now even have value to science. If you can come up with a good space research project, good. Except it is so expensive to get into space, you better be sure that you can't get results any other way. Even then, a unmaded probe would be better.
ISS has value, but only because it gets a few russian scientists a job so they don't have develop mistles for evil dictators just to survive. A worthy cause to be sure, but otherwise of no important use.
I say let the chinese get to Mars first. We have enough probes there to be pretty sure that there is no value in sending people there. If a probe discovers something of value that we need people to check out, fine, but until then why have a highly trained person waste months on the trip?
That isn't to say we should stand still. Lets develope something of use here. We can catch up to the Chinese anytime. (if only because the spys mean they can't keep the technology secert for very long...)
I have other things to spend my money on. I hear many retired folks complaining about socal security, I always respond that my parents were not old enough to vote when they sent their socal security money to the moon, so don't blame me for the mess we are in. (Yes that situation is complex than that) I'd like to keep my tax money. Selfish perhaps, but if you won't let me keep it, at least spend it on something that is of use, not waste it on space.
It just occured to me that 802.11 IIRC runs on a similear frequency to weather radar (at least those that are running on 2.4 GHz). Could you build a 802.11(letter) station with an ultra sensitive reciever, and while transmitting, look for echo returns and figgure out distance, and from there extrapulate some data. Obviously you would need some triangelation with other nearby stations to figgure out where things are (the antennas are not directional or moving so you would just get a return "there is something x miles away), but that can be done any a computer elsewhere. I'm not sure if technology is up to recievers that can seperate the data at that low of level, but it would be really cool to have a few basestations that also told me something about the weather.
On the origional XP keyboard it was hard to hit accidently. On a modern 101 key keybaord, with num-lock turned off you can get it accidently, as I discovered one night in a lab when I removed a keyboard from a shelf and rebooted the machine. (I hope noone else was using it for something - it was a weekend and a test lab, but even still I don't like thinking about what I could have done to someone's test that fails on time in 100 hours)
Microsoft has fixed that problem. A PC Must show the windows XP logo in 6 seconds, or something like that. Of course that is nothing coompared to linux booting completely in 200ms, but a good start compared to the full minute BIOS takes on my PC. Details can be downloaded at http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/winlogo/downloads.ms px. (I didn't like it cause microsoft changes links often, and I can only find a word document there, which I can't open so I'm not ever positive I have the details right)
I'm told that linux bios can get your system up fast too, but I don't know much about that project.
My local power company is offering a deal to those considering a backup generator. (generally for their comptuer room) Allow them to install a box that forces it to start up automaticly and disconnect the comptuers from the grid, and they will sell power for much cheaper. They win because when there isn't enough capacity some customers are swtiched off. The customer wins twice, once because they get cheaper power, second because that generation equipment is tested regularly so they know it works (if it doesn't they stay on the grid but pay more for power).
Nothing new there, big industry often installs gas/oil boilers, running gas normally at a reduced rate. When the gas company calls they switch to oil. Been going on for years, electric companies are just starting to catch on.
No, ideally power plants would be built close to the fuel. Transmission line losses over a high voltage line are small. What is the energy loss to transport a train load of coal from a mine (coal isn't found everywhere you know) to the power plant. How about the cost to pump gas (somewhat self flowing, but they still have to pump it at times) from the well to the power plant? High voltage elecrisity is a good cheap low loss way to transport energy.
The best way to transport electrisity is DC, so you need a DC-AC inverter plant close to the city, but that is invisiable compared to a power plant.
Power lines are dangerious, but I'd call trains more dangerious. A power line is normally up in the air, and you can walk under it just fine without watching your step. A train track cannot be crossed without looking and often waiting - and a power plant takes enough coal that there are trains going by every 20 minutes just to supply that plant. (Not to mention the other uses of the train) Every once in a while someone stalls on the tracks (or more likely losses a race) and it hit by a train, generally killing several people.
True, but it doesn't take many comptuers to cost CompUSA a lot of money. And Comptuers themselfs are not nessicarly the target. I couldn't shiplift a 19 inch monitor if the gaurd is paying attention, but a 2.5 inch harddrive, memory module, or even the latest sexy teenie bopper CD fits in my pocket. Do your crime in winter and a lot will fit under a coat. (I hope you get caught if you try, it drves the prices up for honest people)
I think cables are marked up so much mostly because the market will bear it. If I need a cable I need it now (or I'd go to the internet for a cheaper place), and I'll pay $25 to get my gadget working before my friends (yeah right...) get here. However there is also the issue of shelf space, cables don't seem to be very high volumn, compared to the shelf space they take. They could put something with less markup that moved better in that place and make the same money - except that If I go for a cable and find it isn't there I might decide they have nothing and not come back. Retail is complex, and I don't even know all the considerations.
Don't forget the cost of doing buisness. If you count only the cost of food, McDonald's as a 200% markup. Food and labor is about 100% (these two were about half the costs in the resteraunt I worked at). However after all the other little things add up, profit of 5% not obtainable no matter how hard we tried, and some months we lost money. Overhead gets you every time...
I used to work at StorageTek, and I don't know if I believe the 700% markup. Only because how do you figgure that. If just the cost of making the parts, that is beliveable. They don't have a lot of volumn (compared to say DELL), but all their systems have a lot of engineering in them, so they have to recover a lot of costs from each sale. I know many smaller products never directly became profitable, and were only worth it because they helped drive a bigger sale.
I don't think Cisco wants to be in the RAM buisness. They are used to selling either big machines for a lot of money, or small machines to re-sellers. Call them up for a $50 ram module, and they may have more than $50 in overhead just to answer the phone, get it off the shelf, and ship it. The salemen selling it may require more than $50 himself just to make it worthwhile to write up the stupid order. (time is money, and that time could be spent trying for a big sale) Call them direct and you might get a vice president more inclined to sell in lots of 1000 than single lots, and you have to pay for his time. Their processes don't support selling memory, but they know they have to. They charge to make up for their process, plus some extra to either profit or make you go elsewhere. (one other point is they have to keep memory for old systems around ever after it is hard to get, you may be paying for an assumption that they have made their last order of that part and have to conserve inventory)
Buisness is complex. That doesn't excuse you from not looking for the best value. Don't buy the expensive parts if a cheap one is just as good. Unless your time itself is worth more than the effort it would take to find a cheaper supplier. If you are a high level executive, getting memory from Cisco may be a better use of your time than searching for memory suppliers. I could find them on google and 5 minutes latter have the order done, but if you don't do that I could see it taking 20 mines, which means the executive would need to make $250 an hour - cheap for a CEO. (though why a CEO isn't telling an underling to do the job I don't understand - something they should know how to do in one minute)
Your professor holds office hours, and announces them at the begining of class. (at least in the university I went to, I assume the others are similear) Get in his office and complain that paper books are too heavy and askward, you want paper books. Don't forget to mention that cost is also a problem with books. Thank the professors who do pay attention to money (even if it is accidental...) too. While you are there (and now that you know the way and when to go) use those office hours regularly get help on the class. Perhaps you can get an A. (I always wished I had taken my own advice...)
Most text books are written by professors. If you demand e-books, they will see a demand, and make sure at the very least their next book has an electronic format.
You as a student have little power in itself. Professors are human though, and they have power. Work on them, and they will use the power to represent your interests.
I had to go back and re-read my post. I think it clear enough. I suggest you re-read it, and then re-consider what you wrote in reply. I hope you have enough sense to feel like a fool.
I hate to be that harse, but your reply only makes sense if you didn't bother to read what I said.
No way. One thing worse than our government as it stands today is the government that we would end up with once the people get dupped by all the con artists (mostly they attempt to get into congress now...) make a new government. At least with have a system of checks and balances. I fear the next government would do worse, not better, and the danger of that is much worse than the slowness of reforming our current government. (not to mention impossibility)
Aren't those the same africian countries with 70% infected with HIV? Modern treatment hasn't gotten the expected lifespan byond 20 years for those infected, last I heard.
How do they come up with 7.52% growth in china? Their one child per family has been in effect for at least 2 generations already. As soon as the old folks start dieing off (which will happen in less than 50 years, expect to see the first generation of that policy gone, and the next dropping off) thier population will begin shrinking.
Some countries in Europe are already losing native born population only imigration is keeping their population from shrinking already.
In other words I don't belive that chart. It contradicts several "facts" that are checkable with a forcast that cannot be checked for many years.
Not nessicarly. If he is saving clients 10 mintues, they might like that enough to give him more buisness. Or maybe he bills like a lawyer, and the 10 minutes saves on a job is still billed, be he works on someone else's project which is also billed by the hour, thus making double for that 10 minutes, and also servicing the next client a little faster.
Either way he wins. His clients might or might not consider it a win.
I've heard many claims that GIMP is trying to be just as good as photshop, but not there yet. I've heard claims that there are one or two things GIMP does better, while overall it is worse. I've heard that it is a good start, but still not there yet. I've heard that "EVERYONE", or "a friend of a friend" claims it is better. I've never actually heard someone claim it is better.
If you are an artist, you should check it out, it might do one or two things that you need. It might be something to put on your todo list for one year from now to see if it is better. Because it is free (beer) you can check it out anytime. Don't do it when you have a big deadline, but most artists are having a hard time finding work now, if you have downtime with no leads check it out.
You pretty much have to move to a new job in a new city to pull this off, but if you can it is worth it.
Develope religion. Seriously develop religion. If you are jewish do the full nazerine vow (Never cut your hair), other religions have similear. Dress in scrict going to church clothes all the time. Carry a bible with your everywhere, and be seen reading it - got 30 seconds before a meeting starts, read it. Reject holidays that are not in your religion. (Halloween, and christmass - the latter is a good one for christians to reject because everyone belives it is a christian holiday, but historicly it is not, obviously pagans would celibrate some form of them) Don't be annoying, but invite everyone to church with you. Don't let this get in the way of real work.
Make sure you take jokes in stride. So long as the joke isn't out of hand laugh with everyone else. You may need this part of your reputation latter if any setup requires some help.
After you have established a reputation of being nearly perfect you can pull off a lot of complex setups that require some gulability because you are not suspected. "It sounds strange, but Joe would never ..."
Remember you have to restrain yourself, the reputation of a religous person who is always perfectly serious can be lost. There is nothing wrong with a religious person who is always playing jokes, but you can't pull off the really good ones.
So an engineer saw a problem and was concerned. My question is how often does this happen. If after every launch there are 100 engineers who noticed a potential problem, then I'd have ignored this too (along with the 99 other potential problems that didn't kill columbia) If enginneers almost never see a potential problem then this should have been taken seriously.
Others have pointed out that there is an esclation process for problems belived to be serious, and that wasn't followed. In hind site it should have been, but they didn't have hind site to work with then, so we have to be realistic i our expectations.
Others have pointed out a small minority of cars that have electric power steering.
Requiring you to know how to test power steering for a drivers test is stupid IMO. Check oil yes because all car (currently electric cars are rare) have a dipstick and need oil checked. Likewise tires nearly all have air that needs to be checked. Tail lights need to be checked once in a while. The power steering check you provided fails on most implimentations, so it is a useless test to learn on most cars. When power steering does brake it is normally a sudden thing - it is working just fine until the belt snaps, or the hose brakes, and then you have none (but I've never seen electric so I don't know how it works) - even then you still have steering, it is just hard.
You maintain the parts that are designed for maintance. You replace the parts with a recomended replacement intervile. You replace parts the computer says are bad (and then curse when the problem doesn't go away...). When parts fall into none of those catagories you hope they don't brake, and when they do, you deal with it from the side of the road.
If power steering int he Vauxhall Corsa requires testing with every startup, then there is a problem with the design. Most people will not do it, so they shouldn't require it. Of cousre most people won't check their oil, yet a modern engine requires it, so this isn't a new situation. Still they should try to do better.
While I understand the value of putting all comptuers in a server room, I think that you would be better of to just have the computer in a closet outside the room, or in a soundproof (yet well cooled...) cabinet inside. I'm not convinced you will be changing hardware often enough to make pushing a button in each cabin a problem. Software updates are a different issue, and those you might change often.
I strongly recomend you keep most of your disks in a file server, and store all files on that. With SAMBA (windows networking can work too) to share as needed. Keep the harddrive noise far away because it is on the network. Also puts the componants you most want to replace in a central location next to the comptuer they are connected to, and lusers can't touch that machine.
Extended cables work ok at best, but you are introducing potential problems with them. By having the comptuer just outside you can run a few more cables inside the room, and still get off just as good.
Drop the USB cd drives for ieee1394 (firewire). A little more complex, but you have a solution that was designed for data drives from the start. If you have a lot of money fibre channel would be nice, but odds are you don't.
USB in theory allows you to plug multipul devices in. I'd expiriment with a usb hub local to the machine for pluging a second keyboard/mouse into without unpluging the one in the remote room. Dual monitor graphics cards exist, I'd consider putting one in each machine, so you don't have to unplug the remote monitor. Remember unpluging cables is what damages them, so you want to avoid that. Monitor are not always hot-plug, so you don't want to unplug them anyway. Or, instead of the complexities of the above, will VNC or similear solve all console admin needs?
Expiriment first. Try all the technology on one computer (that you can borrow for the purpose) first, to make sure it will work ok. If there is a problem that you can't overcome you don't want to have bought a large setup only to find it won't work.
One other thing I'd be tempted to try is some custom mini-ITX boards in a custom case. Use flash for booting, and set it read-only so that lusers don't go breaking the configuration. (better yet boot from the net, but that isn't easy) Provides most of the outputs you want, and use the network for all your admin. With the right heatsinks and case design they make no noise. When you do have to do a hardware change, you pull a spare off the shelf, make the change, test it, then bring the whole system to the cabin and replace the old on.
Not all these ideas are compatable. Only you know your exact setup, so only you know what will work for you.
One what car? I know of no car where power steering works when the key is on. The cars I know of with power steering all all operated by a pump connected by belt to the engine. Every one I have ever seen or heard of works this way. When the engine is not turning you don't have power steering. (I drive a stick so I can have a situation where the engine is running, but still turning, automatics work differently)
As for power breaks, some might work off electrical power, I don't know. I know several power brake systems that work off of engine vacuume, and thus do not work unless the engine is running. With some systems you can feel this in the brake pedal: start the car while pressing the brake, and a moment latter the pedal will sink as power brakes kick in.
Personally I prefer not to have power assist on either brakes or steering, as it is just one more part to go wrong. Cars with power assist are designed so they difficult for strong people to use without assist. Cars without work just fine without it.
Perhaps they are. Where is this 7 year old girl who like orgies and is into guys with both a large penis and big breasts? For extra credit, how can I get her body into outerspace so the world isn't just rid of her life, but also her body?
I once did delete someones files. Back in high school someone wrote a little Gbasic script that looked exactly like the Netware login screen, would accept your login and password, and then beep and give a "fooled you" message. I already had heard of password loggers by then, so when that happened to me I just hit control-c, and then grabed a dos prompt and deleted all his files. If anyone would have caught me my defense was password loggers existed, and I didn't have time to figgure out where he was loging them, so I deleted everything.
The admin trusted me back then, and I have a good idea who did it (one of 3 who I saw spoofing the screen from time to time, none were trusted) so I would have got away with it.
Nowadays if I suspected that would happen to me I'd write a C program that displayed "Quit faking the loging screen to collect password." and then loged the user out, so he would have to get admins involved to do his homework.
I don't miss high school. I didn't like putting up with that type of thing.