Too much locally-generated energy is bad for the grid.
For a grid-tied domestic solar installation, for example, to push power back onto the grid, it must generate a voltage higher than the existing grid to push the power backwards. So what happens is that all the local solar installations are competing against each other to power the grid.
We need to re-think and re-design how power is delivered if our ultimate goal is to have every house generate its own electricity and use the grid as fallback
The Wankel rotary engine also had significantly fewer moving parts than a standard internal combustion engine, but a Mazda RX-7 was just as costly to maintain as any other car. Why? Because, it's not the moving parts in the engine that cause most of the maintenance costs, it's all the rest of them, like suspension, steering, brakes, air compressors, and the like.
I owned an RX7 (FD) for a number of years and beg to differ. All the maintenance costs were on the engine or ancillary systems.
I owned the car from 90k kms till about 150k kms. In that time I had an engine rebuild, replaced water pump, replaced all vacuum hoses (causing boost issues), multiple fuel filters (a pain in the ass to change because it sits above the rear axle).
Nothing else went wrong with the car. Ran like clockwork otherwise.
I'm guessing Canberra. It's a small/medium city (~370k residents), 45 minutes from great fresh-water fishing in the mountains. 2 hours from world-class fishing on the coast (Batemen's Bay, Bermagui - some of the best fishing in the world). International airport is exactly 3 hours away (Sydney Intl).
Great schools (being a government town). Low crime rate, etc, etc.
Oh, it's also a few hours away from the ski fields, too. He forgot to mention that.
This would work similarly to how the.com.au works in Australia. I know there's numerous work-arounds, but for the most part you need an ABN (Australian Business Number) registered for the domain name you're after.
I'm not a fan, but it has reduced much of the cyber squatting and other issues (sorry, can't site sources).
The Australian Patent Office - IP Australia (disclosure: I work there) back in 2001 introduced another form of IP called an "Innovation Patent" to address this need. An Innovation Patent differs from a normal patent in the following ways:
* Innovation Patents are not examined. They are simply rubber stamped and put on file. Thus they are granted usually within a month.
* Innovation Patents last 8 years vs 20 for a standard patent.
* You only need to pay to have an Innovation Patent examined when you need to stop others from copying your invention.
You make a good point. However TFA doesn't explain this. So there's two situations here:
* You're "in the know", as you seem to be, and don't need this article to tell you anything new. Result: The article is useless
* You're not "in the the know". You run a website where a single (or clustered) firewall *can* easily handle the load on your small pipe. Result: The article is useless.
The rest of the world does not "tip". They pay their staff a proper wage. The prices are not higher... they just effectively include the tip in the price.
Funnily enough, the rest of the world are NOT out of jobs.
I've traveled extensively through europe, asia AND the US. I live in Australia. For all the "tipping" that happens in the US, it does not have better customer service than anywhere else in the world.
the artificial restrictions on root (hey - it's MY computer, not yours)
What the hell are you talking about. This isn't windows, you don't have to and shouldn't be using the root account for day to day activities, but when you need it "sudo -s" gets you a nice little root shell and off you go. And if you really really want to login as root, it takes seconds to turn that on. Not having root enabled by default encourages people to use standard accounts and that's a good thing. If you don't like it, stop whining and change it to work the way you want to.
Unlike you, I'm totally at ease working with root privileges. I'm not worried about accidentally removing a partition, etc. Sometimes, it's just darned convenient to have a root session going in a terminal, so I can tail the last few entries in a log file, ifconfig to see my external ip, and chown a few files from my own account to www|nobody (all of which I've done in the last 24 hours).
Congratulations, you've just discovered a piece of software that isn't designed for you. Yet you seem to have given a very emotional response for a piece of software that you don't even use. Why is that?
Let's see. AutoCad isn't designed for me. But you'd think I was an idiot if I went on about its stupid name choice (you know what a Cad is, don't you?), and its fugly (engineering) colour scheme.
People should both be aware of the existence of root, and be able to use it when needed on their machines. Knowledge is not a bad thing.
I did argue against your main point. You were saying that off shoring saves costs and that is obvious.
You say main point as if I made more than one. So... you're saying that my point (that of the cost savings) is obvious, yet you argued against it? Your paragraph is nonsensical at best, and obstinate at worst.
What is not obvious is that it actually increased performance.
Uhhh.. I think both the Slashdot summary and the linked-to article made the performance increase rather obvious. So much so, that all the posts prior to mine were discussing the performance aspect of the switch to Linux/Solaris.
That was the news. That may not be just due to off shoring and at least in this case seems to be due to architectural differences and the ability to modify Linux kernel and user space (and lack of a.NET layer slowing things down).
No, the news was primarily about the cost savings. I know this because it was mentioned first in the summary. Eg:
"The switch is a pretty savage indictment of the costs of a complex.Net system. The GNU/Linux-based software is also faster..."
I never commented on the performance increase because that was already well covered by numerous other posts. However the cost savings, and indeed the fact that it was offshored, seemed to be ignored, hence my post.
I suggest, rather than criticizing my spelling (in my earlier post), you might be better served spending your time focusing on your logical argument.
Huh? How is this a troll? Can somebody please explain it to me?
I love the fact that they moved to a Linux/Solaris platform. But the fact is, however, that for less money than employing expensive consultants, they can employ 300-400 developers in Sri Lanka to make a better product.
Linux (and open source in general) has nothing to do with this (one) aspect of the cost savings.
Oh, I agree completely. I never mentioned any of the other advantages, because they're being well covered by other posts (performance, etc). I *like* the fact that they moved to a Linux/Solaris solution. It tickles me pink.
It's just that the Slashdot community seems to be giving themselves collective pats on the back and high-fives aplenty, and having open source take credit for *everything* in this story.
The fact is, however, that for less money than employing expensive consultants, they can employ 300-400 developers in Sri Lanka to make a better product.
Linux (and open source in general) has nothing to do with this aspect of the cost savings.
Newsflash! Ditching a custom Accenture solution for an offshore offering from Sri Lanka cuts costs! News at 11.
Look guys, I'm a Microsoft basher along with the best of them (I'm a Solaris administrator), but it seems to me like most of this cost savings is delivered by offshoring and ditching a major systems integrator.
If they have to sue Woolworths then they also have to sue Taco Bell
But Taco Bell haven't submitted a their trademark in the consumer electronic products and services category. Woolworths HAVE, positioning themselves as a competitor to Apple which is why Apple raised an objection to the trademark.
You're correct. Trademarks have categories for exactly that purpose. The issue in this case is that Woolworths submitted the trademark in EVERY category (ie, 1-43). This covers every single product and service, including computers.
The latter is a drug addled fantasy as a purchase price of two billion plus dollars is generally reserved for high performing or very high potential companies, not for startups with a paper profit, a few million in cash flow, and heavy obligations.
Tell that to myspace, youtube, et al.
As for Tesla, a potentially disruptive company to a 100 year old industry, with a nice patent portfolio in an area that will clearly be around for the next 50 years; now that's a "high potential" company.
Exactly. It's my impression that the tax would apply to, for example, a USB TV stick, rather than to the whole computer itself. It's the TV stick that has the capability to "receive TV signals".
Honestly, this country is so big...there is plenty going on here to keep me occupied just trying to keep up with it. Unlike the EU, where you're countries are small and close togetherm we are not used to interacting or driving easily to another country. If you don't get that kind of exposure growing up, you really do kind of live in an isolated world. I rarely hear much going on outside the US, and I've never really had much need to do so.
This has nothing to do with geography. Australia is even more isolated that the US and also has no exposure to "driving easily to another country" yet Aussies are one of the more well-traveled people in the world. At least US citizens *can* drive to Mexico or Canada.
I suspect it has more to do with a culture of fear and oppression. You are not encouraged to explore the world... you are taught to fear it and you had better stay at home and be a good little consumer.
Do you really think the medical industry wants to work without reaping the rewards for their hard labor? We're not talking about a non-profit religion. We are talking about JOBS. When you remove the incentive to work hard, people often cut back on the quality of their services or jump ship to another career all together.
Unless you plan on holding a gun to a doctors head and enslaving them to indentured servitude, it's not going to be better than a privatized system either. Even then, I still wouldn't trust the system.
And yet, the life expectancy in a socialized healthcare system (say, Australia's at 81.4 years) can exceed that of your treasured privatized system (say, the US' at 78.1 years).
I've never played with it either. Although another commenter made a point about it not being dynamic. Table schema changes do not replicate; in fact it takes effort to fix the replication after such a change. This makes it difficult to maintain databases.
I guess my initial point was that management-types look only at the glossy for a product. When you look at Postgres' feature matrix you don't see replication anywhere on it. Compare that to Oracle's offerings (Industrial-strength replication built-in! Call us now!)... well, you get the gist.
I saw the Bucardo project. Unfortunately it doesn't get replication onto the glossy for Postgres, which instantly rules it out of consideration for the enterprise customer's I've worked for.
would have been nice. It certainly needs a better solution if they want to chase serious enterprise customers. A couple of years ago I was on a project with geographically dispersed sites and the client was determined to use Postgres. All I remember from that project was that the replication was a PIA. We had to rig up a complicated fail-over system in lieu of multi-master replication. Not at all elegant.
Slashdot Mirror
If you are going to go through the time and money to store electricity in a battery, why not stick it into a car?
Because that's a lot of extra weight to lug around with you all day.
Too much locally-generated energy is bad for the grid.
For a grid-tied domestic solar installation, for example, to push power back onto the grid, it must generate a voltage higher than the existing grid to push the power backwards. So what happens is that all the local solar installations are competing against each other to power the grid.
We need to re-think and re-design how power is delivered if our ultimate goal is to have every house generate its own electricity and use the grid as fallback
.
"The device is categorized as 'sports glasses' to 'take phone calls and listen to music during workouts.' "
Uhhh.. won't a $2 pair of ear buds do the same?
The Wankel rotary engine also had significantly fewer moving parts than a standard internal combustion engine, but a Mazda RX-7 was just as costly to maintain as any other car. Why? Because, it's not the moving parts in the engine that cause most of the maintenance costs, it's all the rest of them, like suspension, steering, brakes, air compressors, and the like.
I owned an RX7 (FD) for a number of years and beg to differ. All the maintenance costs were on the engine or ancillary systems.
I owned the car from 90k kms till about 150k kms. In that time I had an engine rebuild, replaced water pump, replaced all vacuum hoses (causing boost issues), multiple fuel filters (a pain in the ass to change because it sits above the rear axle).
Nothing else went wrong with the car. Ran like clockwork otherwise.
I'm guessing Canberra. It's a small/medium city (~370k residents), 45 minutes from great fresh-water fishing in the mountains. 2 hours from world-class fishing on the coast (Batemen's Bay, Bermagui - some of the best fishing in the world). International airport is exactly 3 hours away (Sydney Intl).
Great schools (being a government town). Low crime rate, etc, etc.
Oh, it's also a few hours away from the ski fields, too. He forgot to mention that.
This would work similarly to how the .com.au works in Australia. I know there's numerous work-arounds, but for the most part you need an ABN (Australian Business Number) registered for the domain name you're after.
I'm not a fan, but it has reduced much of the cyber squatting and other issues (sorry, can't site sources).
The Australian Patent Office - IP Australia (disclosure: I work there) back in 2001 introduced another form of IP called an "Innovation Patent" to address this need. An Innovation Patent differs from a normal patent in the following ways:
Sounds pretty much what you're after?
* You're "in the know", as you seem to be, and don't need this article to tell you anything new. Result: The article is useless
* You're not "in the the know". You run a website where a single (or clustered) firewall *can* easily handle the load on your small pipe. Result: The article is useless.
Summary: The article is useless.
Funnily enough, the rest of the world are NOT out of jobs.
I've traveled extensively through europe, asia AND the US. I live in Australia. For all the "tipping" that happens in the US, it does not have better customer service than anywhere else in the world.
Unlike you, I'm totally at ease working with root privileges. I'm not worried about accidentally removing a partition, etc. Sometimes, it's just darned convenient to have a root session going in a terminal, so I can tail the last few entries in a log file, ifconfig to see my external ip, and chown a few files from my own account to www|nobody (all of which I've done in the last 24 hours).
Congratulations, you've just discovered a piece of software that isn't designed for you. Yet you seem to have given a very emotional response for a piece of software that you don't even use. Why is that?
Let's see. AutoCad isn't designed for me. But you'd think I was an idiot if I went on about its stupid name choice (you know what a Cad is, don't you?), and its fugly (engineering) colour scheme.
People should both be aware of the existence of root, and be able to use it when needed on their machines. Knowledge is not a bad thing.
Umm... you've just described the use of sudo.
I did argue against your main point. You were saying that off shoring saves costs and that is obvious.
You say main point as if I made more than one. So... you're saying that my point (that of the cost savings) is obvious, yet you argued against it? Your paragraph is nonsensical at best, and obstinate at worst.
What is not obvious is that it actually increased performance.
Uhhh.. I think both the Slashdot summary and the linked-to article made the performance increase rather obvious. So much so, that all the posts prior to mine were discussing the performance aspect of the switch to Linux/Solaris.
That was the news. That may not be just due to off shoring and at least in this case seems to be due to architectural differences and the ability to modify Linux kernel and user space (and lack of a .NET layer slowing things down).
No, the news was primarily about the cost savings. I know this because it was mentioned first in the summary. Eg:
"The switch is a pretty savage indictment of the costs of a complex .Net system. The GNU/Linux-based software is also faster..."
I never commented on the performance increase because that was already well covered by numerous other posts. However the cost savings, and indeed the fact that it was offshored, seemed to be ignored, hence my post.
I suggest, rather than criticizing my spelling (in my earlier post), you might be better served spending your time focusing on your logical argument.
Huh? How is this a troll? Can somebody please explain it to me?
I love the fact that they moved to a Linux/Solaris platform. But the fact is, however, that for less money than employing expensive consultants, they can employ 300-400 developers in Sri Lanka to make a better product.
Linux (and open source in general) has nothing to do with this (one) aspect of the cost savings.
Oh, I agree completely. I never mentioned any of the other advantages, because they're being well covered by other posts (performance, etc). I *like* the fact that they moved to a Linux/Solaris solution. It tickles me pink.
It's just that the Slashdot community seems to be giving themselves collective pats on the back and high-fives aplenty, and having open source take credit for *everything* in this story.
The fact is, however, that for less money than employing expensive consultants, they can employ 300-400 developers in Sri Lanka to make a better product.
Linux (and open source in general) has nothing to do with this aspect of the cost savings.
Ah you got me. That's what I get for juggling family and trying to get out the door for work in the morning.
Interesting that you didn't actually argue against my point, though :)
Newsflash! Ditching a custom Accenture solution for an offshore offering from Sri Lanka cuts costs! News at 11.
Look guys, I'm a Microsoft basher along with the best of them (I'm a Solaris administrator), but it seems to me like most of this cost savings is delivered by offshoring and ditching a major systems integrator.
(Discloser: I also used to work for Accenture).
That means Apple owns all logos that are apple shaped?
No, just the ones in the consumer electronics and music categories. And also just the ones with a reasonable likeness to theirs.
If they have to sue Woolworths then they also have to sue Taco Bell
But Taco Bell haven't submitted a their trademark in the consumer electronic products and services category. Woolworths HAVE, positioning themselves as a competitor to Apple which is why Apple raised an objection to the trademark.
You're correct. Trademarks have categories for exactly that purpose. The issue in this case is that Woolworths submitted the trademark in EVERY category (ie, 1-43). This covers every single product and service, including computers.
The latter is a drug addled fantasy as a purchase price of two billion plus dollars is generally reserved for high performing or very high potential companies, not for startups with a paper profit, a few million in cash flow, and heavy obligations.
Tell that to myspace, youtube, et al.
As for Tesla, a potentially disruptive company to a 100 year old industry, with a nice patent portfolio in an area that will clearly be around for the next 50 years; now that's a "high potential" company.
Exactly. It's my impression that the tax would apply to, for example, a USB TV stick, rather than to the whole computer itself. It's the TV stick that has the capability to "receive TV signals".
Honestly, this country is so big...there is plenty going on here to keep me occupied just trying to keep up with it. Unlike the EU, where you're countries are small and close togetherm we are not used to interacting or driving easily to another country. If you don't get that kind of exposure growing up, you really do kind of live in an isolated world. I rarely hear much going on outside the US, and I've never really had much need to do so.
This has nothing to do with geography. Australia is even more isolated that the US and also has no exposure to "driving easily to another country" yet Aussies are one of the more well-traveled people in the world. At least US citizens *can* drive to Mexico or Canada.
I suspect it has more to do with a culture of fear and oppression. You are not encouraged to explore the world... you are taught to fear it and you had better stay at home and be a good little consumer.
Do you really think the medical industry wants to work without reaping the rewards for their hard labor? We're not talking about a non-profit religion. We are talking about JOBS. When you remove the incentive to work hard, people often cut back on the quality of their services or jump ship to another career all together.
Unless you plan on holding a gun to a doctors head and enslaving them to indentured servitude, it's not going to be better than a privatized system either. Even then, I still wouldn't trust the system.
And yet, the life expectancy in a socialized healthcare system (say, Australia's at 81.4 years) can exceed that of your treasured privatized system (say, the US' at 78.1 years).
It was a nice theory, though.
I guess my initial point was that management-types look only at the glossy for a product. When you look at Postgres' feature matrix you don't see replication anywhere on it. Compare that to Oracle's offerings (Industrial-strength replication built-in! Call us now!)... well, you get the gist.
I saw the Bucardo project. Unfortunately it doesn't get replication onto the glossy for Postgres, which instantly rules it out of consideration for the enterprise customer's I've worked for.
would have been nice. It certainly needs a better solution if they want to chase serious enterprise customers. A couple of years ago I was on a project with geographically dispersed sites and the client was determined to use Postgres. All I remember from that project was that the replication was a PIA. We had to rig up a complicated fail-over system in lieu of multi-master replication. Not at all elegant.
Postgres 9 maybe?