If every component part (computer, network switch, ups, monitor, etc.) were labeled with its power and cooling requirements, data center operators would use that information to select equipment that costs less to operate. In the life cycle of a piece of equipment, the electricity to operate it is a big part of the cost. When we go to buy new equipment, we usually have to choose from among several different units that could fit the purpose. The numbers that determine the operating cost absolutely would be used during that selection process.
The nameplate electricity rating for a lot of equipment is usually inflated and overly conservative, representing the worst-worst-worst case peak load. Usually the equipment, even at what would be considered full load, is well below the nameplate rating. It's like saying your car has a 500-hp engine, when in reality it would take a trained driver on a racetrack to coax and demand that much.
The nameplate rating usually doesn't reflect the as-built configuration. Fill all the hard drive bays and DIMM slots, add that extra processor, and you might come closer to the nameplate. On the other hand, if you don't fully populate the chassis, how useful is that nameplate going to be?
It might the case where datacenter designers are starting to consider electricity and cooling in total-cost-of-ownership when deciding between equipment. In the past, however, it was usually just how much did something cost upfront, because datacenters require lots of upfront capital and energy was cheap. That's why so many computers have abysmally inefficient power supplies - they're cheaper upfront.
An electric bill for the last 30 days (or last year) probably isn't fine enough to be of much use. Probably, in order to design useful standards, the power usage would need to be broken down between what the servers use, what the storage uses, what the cooling demand is, lighting, etc. They probably also would like to correlate that with usage data like: how many processes running, pages served up, GB in and out, and so on.
I wouldn't be surpised if there was some format(s) that the EPA needs this data in. If people just threw random electric bills at the EPA, there'd be no way to make any sense of it.
It is also important to note that the people who might have access to this data - the IT people, HVAC people, and building engineers, are almost certainly not the people who see and pay the bills.
If you do contact Google, MSN, etc., don't do it through electronic means. Don't even do it over the phone. Do it in writing. Yes, actual letters on paper sent via (registered) snail mail. Include copies of the death certificate, obituaries, etc. Don't use your name and address - you are nobody as far as legal standing is concerned. Channel all the communications through one of the parents - have them sign the letters, use their name and address.
I wouldn't worry about the battery so much. This person clearly has the chops for opening up the case and replacing the battery, a task that only takes a screwdriver and a few minutes' time, since the battery isn't soldered in. Even if it was soldered, I doubt that'd be a problem for this guy. When he needs a replacement battery, he'll have no trouble getting an after-market one.
The article links to a fuzzy YouTube video of the device going through what looks like a boot loader, then booting Leopard, then flipping through a variety of Mac applications.One can also hear what I think are the OQO's fans working overtime to keep up.
The video looks credible, but it would be nice if it were recorded with something that could focus in closer.
SI prefixes have been applied to satellites for a while now. They are used to differentiate satellites based on weight. Instead of three orders-of-magnitude per prefix (e.g., micro -> nano = 10^-3), they are one order-of-magnitude. In general, the classification has been broken like so:
minisatellite: 100 - 1000 kg
micro-: 10 - 100 kg
nano-: 1 - 10 kg
pico-: 100 g - 1 kg
Theoretically, these satellites come down by orders of magnitude in cost, too. An example of a Picosat would be the CubeSat program that a number of colleges have tinkered with - a relatively inexpensive satellite 10 cm to a side that could be launched with a few dozen other cubesats, thus amortizing the launch cost over many participants.
It has actually amazed me that, with the price of diesel being what it is today (and probably will be in the future), that there hasn't been a big push for hybrid garbage trucks. I watch the trucks come by, pick up my trash, rev up the engine, move 50 feet down the road to my neighbor, pick up their trash, etc., etc. With each iteration, they convert diesel (inefficiently) into kinetic energy, then turn it into heat when braking. So much energy wasted just moving things in small increments. Between each increment is a brief period of just sitting still while the trash is collected - during which the truck is idling. It is the very worst of city stop-and-go driving; it just begs for efficiency improvements. If you could incorporate and electric motor into the powertrain, you could do regenerative braking and assisted acceleration.
I know you'd need a really big electric motor and a really big storage bank (batteries, supercapacitors, whatever), and all that adds to the cost of the truck. On the other hand, it could double the fuel economy (not too hard - we're talking about the worst city driving, not highway mileage). That would be tens of dollars saved per day per truck - thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per year.
[When I got done writing this, I searched around to see if such a vehicle exists. As it turns out, this comment is well timed. Volvo will be producing hybrid heavy trucks (including garbage trucks) starting in 2009.]
That was my thought. If the patent is so invalid, and would be invalidated upon review, why not just do the maneuver, flip Boeing the bird as you swing past Earth for the last time, and sort it out in court later.
That could be counter-productive. Most of the important parts of the LHC use powerful superconductive magnets. The main accelerator ring has 1600 superconducting magnets along its length for steering the proton beams. Most of the experiments have very strong magnetic fields in them to cause deflections on the particles left over from collisions.
So, if you want to use a crowbar, just be sure it is made of something (more or less) non-magnetic, such as 300-series stainless steel or titanium alloy.
People have been. Perhaps not for radiation therapy, which tends not to leave residual radiation, but there are plenty of nuclear medicine diagnostic tests that, by design, cause a person to emit detectable radiation for hours or days afterwards. For most of these tests, the patient is injected with a radioisotope that concentrates in a particular part of the body, which is then imaged. The list of isotopes that get used is really mind-boggling. Most have half-lives measured in minutes to hours, but the amount of radiation emitted after many half-lives, while not medically relevant or useful, is still enough to trigger radiation detectors DHS has deployed. Some of them can be detected weeks after administration (e.g., Tl-201)
Here is at least one article on the subject. Here is another, and a third. Another (which you probably can't find for free, sorry) would be Dauer et al. in the J of Nuclear Cardiology (vol 14, no 4, pg 582) on Thallium-201 stress tests and homeland security.
The summary asks if someone is trying to make money off 9/11. The article makes no such claim - doesn't even allude to it. The only direct mention of 9/11 in the article is that members of the 9/11 Commission are asking the FCC to look into the allegations of fraud and collusion. Is the reference to 9/11 something that the submitter slipped in to try to generate additional interest in the story - like just about every form of media these days (and at least one defunct presidential candidate)?
The only connection the D-block auction has to 9/11 is the fact that it is meant, not just for a commercial communications network, but also for emergency responders to have access to it as well. The different agencies responding on 9/11 (and in the days that followed) were hampered by the fact that they use different radio systems and had difficulty communicating with one another.
I'd say this statement is a reflection of the ignorance most people have about science and technology. It surrounds every facet of their lives - they're just too oblivious to realize it. From the car they drive to work, to the computer they use once they get there (be it a powerful workstation or a cash register), to the device playing music in the background, to the TV they watch at home while tucking into a microwaved dinner - science and technology is all around them.
Most people don't recognize this fact until some piece of technology fails them. Then they wail and cry because they can't watch the latest episode of American Idol, and rail against the "scientists" who have betrayed them with a TV that's broken. Never mind that science and technology have enriched their lives, guarded them from disease and famine, advanced civilization, and allowed them to even have the freetime to squander on reality TV.
In general, it is a fact of technology that, once it is well established, it fades into the background and doesn't register in people's minds. That's no excuse for failing to recognize its importance. That includes the media, too.
These craft - their software, hardware, and the interactions between them - are so complex that there is no way to exhaustively test everything. It's complex enough that you can't even determine what an exhaustive test criteria would be. If we wanted exhaustive testing to ensure that nothing wrong ever happens, we'd never get anything off the ground. Mistakes happen, the unforeseen happens, and when communications take hours to go through, it is just plain hard. You live with it, correct mistakes as they happen, and make the best of it. They'll get a chance to try again. They have already logged tremendous amounts of data that couldn't have been gotten any other way - it's not like the whole $1.5b mission is a bust. This probe, the largest and most complex NASA has ever launched, has been operating continuously, with very few problems and no critical failures, for over a decade now.
NASA, in general, is a lot more stringent with its software than most organizations. If you would like to know more about it, you could start here.
Uranium is very dense stuff - about 19 g/cc. Compare that to 11 g/cc for lead and 7-8 g/cc for steel. It's not terribly strong, either.
So, yes, a uranium sword would be pretty sweet, but you wouldn't be able to wield it very well or, if you could, it would get all dinged up the first time you used it.
Another business model is to do energy-intensive things at night, when electricity is cheapest. A local school district, in their new elementary school, has an AC system that produces huge amounts of ice overnight, then uses that to produce cool air during the day. I believe some high-rises are starting to do this, too, because the cost of electricity for cooling during peak hours of the day is exceptionally high. More large buildings would probably do this, but are too short-sighted to see that a larger capital expenditure up front can be cheaper over the long haul.
An important distinction to be made about VoIP programs is that they are not outright forbidden, you just can't use the cellular data network to run them - they'll be relegated to WiFi only. That's just fine, because the EDGE network doesn't have high enough bandwidth nor low enough latency for VoIP to work, anyway.
When it comes to the 3G-connected iPhone, whenever that arrives, I imagine that VoIP would still be difficult - perhaps unworkable - in terms of bandwidth and latency. I imagine that, technical issues aside, the lock-out of VoIP is more due to Apple's relationship to AT&T (and other carriers) than anything else.
Calling it an "ejection" system is a misnomer. It's not like the ejection seats in a fighter jet, or the Gemini capsule. It doesn't actually eject the crew from the capsule, but rather lifts the whole capsule away from the launch stack. The article mentions that the first few tests will be more or less static tests, but eventually work their way up:
a trio of in-flight trials is scheduled between 2009 and 2011 to measure the escape system's effectiveness at subsonic and supersonic speeds, as well as during a tumbling motion. A high-altitude test during the second Ares I launch, slated to fly in 2012 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, will check the escape system at the upper limit of its design
I just don't understand why there can't be both or more. Different words are often spelled and pronounced differently in different languages, why can't science or more simply, evolution be taught the same way. When dealing with X you use X rules. When dealing with anything else, well, you do whatever anything else does.
Because most everyone on either side of the debate are absolutist. It's not entirely their fault. Humans have been brought up in an uncertain world (whether billions or thousands of years old, this much is true for human history) - they like things they can count on, answers. Multiple, completely contradictory explanations about the world around them aren't comforting at all. Instead, they like there to be one, and only one, right answer.
So, in their minds, the counter-argument to your proposal simply boils down to "Well, one is truth, and the rest is bullshit."
Under normal use the sole power source is wave energy, but the boat can also use sails or an outboard motor when entering or leaving harbor, or in case of emergencies. While cruising, the outboard motor and sails will not be used.
Vince Desjardins: I'll tell you how they're gonna find him. Ten years from now, some hunter's gonna go in the woods to take a leak, wind up pissing on his bones.
Charlie Hogan: I bet you a thousand bucks, they'll find him before then.
Eyeball: Bet you two thousands dollars, they don't.
Charlie Hogan: Well, asshole...
Billy Tessio: Hey, what's the big deal? Who cares?
Ace: Will you two just shut the fuck up? If either of you assholes had two-thousand dollars, I'd kill you both.
I'd like to believe the US isn't behind it for any number of reasons. One of those many reasons that occurs to me is the precedent it sets: if we declare that cutting cables is a valid way of pursuing foreign policy, what implications does that have for the US, who has more cables than anyone, relies on their cables more than anyone, and has the most $$$ invested in those cables? Put simply, if cables become fair game, the US has more to lose than anyone else. The powers-that-be couldn't be that stupid, could they? Sure, they're stupid enough to start a senseless war that's quagmired our foreign policy and military, but to do something stupid enough to threaten our livelihood (and pr0n)? (this is a half-sarcastic, half-pleading comment. I know that they really could be that stupid.)
Keep in mind, too, that these cables aren't, for the most part, state owned assets like radar stations or bridges - they are the private assets of companies and conglomerates, who have invested many billions in their installation. Those conglomerates are able to pursue the US for damages much more effectively than, say, Iran.
I think it would take an unsympathetic view to your not providing your own identification, proper identification of course...
There's an important distinction, however, between not having (or forgetting to bring) a driver's license or other photo ID to the courthouse, and having a perfectly valid state ID from a state that has decided not to comply with REAL ID. The individual citizen should not be penalized because he or she doesn't have access to the appropriate identification.
And, no, getting a federally-issued passport is not a solution for everyone. Only 30% of Americans have a passport (according to the Wired article in the summary). A passport's sole purpose is to allow someone to travel outside of the country - it shouldn't be a requirement to do anything within the country. It costs $100 and takes 6 weeks to get one. There should be no minimum barrier for someone to be able to petition to government in court, and certainly not a minimum barrier for someone to defend themselves in court. It's right up there with a poll tax, which has time and again been ruled unconstitutional.
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And if you're wrong, well, that keyboard probably isn't worth much anyway.
The nameplate rating usually doesn't reflect the as-built configuration. Fill all the hard drive bays and DIMM slots, add that extra processor, and you might come closer to the nameplate. On the other hand, if you don't fully populate the chassis, how useful is that nameplate going to be?
It might the case where datacenter designers are starting to consider electricity and cooling in total-cost-of-ownership when deciding between equipment. In the past, however, it was usually just how much did something cost upfront, because datacenters require lots of upfront capital and energy was cheap. That's why so many computers have abysmally inefficient power supplies - they're cheaper upfront.
An electric bill for the last 30 days (or last year) probably isn't fine enough to be of much use. Probably, in order to design useful standards, the power usage would need to be broken down between what the servers use, what the storage uses, what the cooling demand is, lighting, etc. They probably also would like to correlate that with usage data like: how many processes running, pages served up, GB in and out, and so on.
I wouldn't be surpised if there was some format(s) that the EPA needs this data in. If people just threw random electric bills at the EPA, there'd be no way to make any sense of it.
It is also important to note that the people who might have access to this data - the IT people, HVAC people, and building engineers, are almost certainly not the people who see and pay the bills.
If you do contact Google, MSN, etc., don't do it through electronic means. Don't even do it over the phone. Do it in writing. Yes, actual letters on paper sent via (registered) snail mail. Include copies of the death certificate, obituaries, etc. Don't use your name and address - you are nobody as far as legal standing is concerned. Channel all the communications through one of the parents - have them sign the letters, use their name and address.
I wouldn't worry about the battery so much. This person clearly has the chops for opening up the case and replacing the battery, a task that only takes a screwdriver and a few minutes' time, since the battery isn't soldered in. Even if it was soldered, I doubt that'd be a problem for this guy. When he needs a replacement battery, he'll have no trouble getting an after-market one.
The article links to a fuzzy YouTube video of the device going through what looks like a boot loader, then booting Leopard, then flipping through a variety of Mac applications.One can also hear what I think are the OQO's fans working overtime to keep up.
The video looks credible, but it would be nice if it were recorded with something that could focus in closer.
SI prefixes have been applied to satellites for a while now. They are used to differentiate satellites based on weight. Instead of three orders-of-magnitude per prefix (e.g., micro -> nano = 10^-3), they are one order-of-magnitude. In general, the classification has been broken like so:
minisatellite: 100 - 1000 kg
micro-: 10 - 100 kg
nano-: 1 - 10 kg
pico-: 100 g - 1 kg
Theoretically, these satellites come down by orders of magnitude in cost, too. An example of a Picosat would be the CubeSat program that a number of colleges have tinkered with - a relatively inexpensive satellite 10 cm to a side that could be launched with a few dozen other cubesats, thus amortizing the launch cost over many participants.
It has actually amazed me that, with the price of diesel being what it is today (and probably will be in the future), that there hasn't been a big push for hybrid garbage trucks. I watch the trucks come by, pick up my trash, rev up the engine, move 50 feet down the road to my neighbor, pick up their trash, etc., etc. With each iteration, they convert diesel (inefficiently) into kinetic energy, then turn it into heat when braking. So much energy wasted just moving things in small increments. Between each increment is a brief period of just sitting still while the trash is collected - during which the truck is idling. It is the very worst of city stop-and-go driving; it just begs for efficiency improvements. If you could incorporate and electric motor into the powertrain, you could do regenerative braking and assisted acceleration.
I know you'd need a really big electric motor and a really big storage bank (batteries, supercapacitors, whatever), and all that adds to the cost of the truck. On the other hand, it could double the fuel economy (not too hard - we're talking about the worst city driving, not highway mileage). That would be tens of dollars saved per day per truck - thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per year.
[When I got done writing this, I searched around to see if such a vehicle exists. As it turns out, this comment is well timed. Volvo will be producing hybrid heavy trucks (including garbage trucks) starting in 2009.]
That was my thought. If the patent is so invalid, and would be invalidated upon review, why not just do the maneuver, flip Boeing the bird as you swing past Earth for the last time, and sort it out in court later.
That could be counter-productive. Most of the important parts of the LHC use powerful superconductive magnets. The main accelerator ring has 1600 superconducting magnets along its length for steering the proton beams. Most of the experiments have very strong magnetic fields in them to cause deflections on the particles left over from collisions.
So, if you want to use a crowbar, just be sure it is made of something (more or less) non-magnetic, such as 300-series stainless steel or titanium alloy.
People have been. Perhaps not for radiation therapy, which tends not to leave residual radiation, but there are plenty of nuclear medicine diagnostic tests that, by design, cause a person to emit detectable radiation for hours or days afterwards. For most of these tests, the patient is injected with a radioisotope that concentrates in a particular part of the body, which is then imaged. The list of isotopes that get used is really mind-boggling. Most have half-lives measured in minutes to hours, but the amount of radiation emitted after many half-lives, while not medically relevant or useful, is still enough to trigger radiation detectors DHS has deployed. Some of them can be detected weeks after administration (e.g., Tl-201)
Here is at least one article on the subject. Here is another, and a third. Another (which you probably can't find for free, sorry) would be Dauer et al. in the J of Nuclear Cardiology (vol 14, no 4, pg 582) on Thallium-201 stress tests and homeland security.
So, in short, this kind of thing happens.
The summary asks if someone is trying to make money off 9/11. The article makes no such claim - doesn't even allude to it. The only direct mention of 9/11 in the article is that members of the 9/11 Commission are asking the FCC to look into the allegations of fraud and collusion. Is the reference to 9/11 something that the submitter slipped in to try to generate additional interest in the story - like just about every form of media these days (and at least one defunct presidential candidate)?
The only connection the D-block auction has to 9/11 is the fact that it is meant, not just for a commercial communications network, but also for emergency responders to have access to it as well. The different agencies responding on 9/11 (and in the days that followed) were hampered by the fact that they use different radio systems and had difficulty communicating with one another.
I'd say this statement is a reflection of the ignorance most people have about science and technology. It surrounds every facet of their lives - they're just too oblivious to realize it. From the car they drive to work, to the computer they use once they get there (be it a powerful workstation or a cash register), to the device playing music in the background, to the TV they watch at home while tucking into a microwaved dinner - science and technology is all around them.
Most people don't recognize this fact until some piece of technology fails them. Then they wail and cry because they can't watch the latest episode of American Idol, and rail against the "scientists" who have betrayed them with a TV that's broken. Never mind that science and technology have enriched their lives, guarded them from disease and famine, advanced civilization, and allowed them to even have the freetime to squander on reality TV.
In general, it is a fact of technology that, once it is well established, it fades into the background and doesn't register in people's minds. That's no excuse for failing to recognize its importance. That includes the media, too.
Well, that's convenient - my hand cannon holds six bullets.
These craft - their software, hardware, and the interactions between them - are so complex that there is no way to exhaustively test everything. It's complex enough that you can't even determine what an exhaustive test criteria would be. If we wanted exhaustive testing to ensure that nothing wrong ever happens, we'd never get anything off the ground. Mistakes happen, the unforeseen happens, and when communications take hours to go through, it is just plain hard. You live with it, correct mistakes as they happen, and make the best of it. They'll get a chance to try again. They have already logged tremendous amounts of data that couldn't have been gotten any other way - it's not like the whole $1.5b mission is a bust. This probe, the largest and most complex NASA has ever launched, has been operating continuously, with very few problems and no critical failures, for over a decade now.
NASA, in general, is a lot more stringent with its software than most organizations. If you would like to know more about it, you could start here.
Uranium is very dense stuff - about 19 g/cc. Compare that to 11 g/cc for lead and 7-8 g/cc for steel. It's not terribly strong, either.
So, yes, a uranium sword would be pretty sweet, but you wouldn't be able to wield it very well or, if you could, it would get all dinged up the first time you used it.
Another business model is to do energy-intensive things at night, when electricity is cheapest. A local school district, in their new elementary school, has an AC system that produces huge amounts of ice overnight, then uses that to produce cool air during the day. I believe some high-rises are starting to do this, too, because the cost of electricity for cooling during peak hours of the day is exceptionally high. More large buildings would probably do this, but are too short-sighted to see that a larger capital expenditure up front can be cheaper over the long haul.
An important distinction to be made about VoIP programs is that they are not outright forbidden, you just can't use the cellular data network to run them - they'll be relegated to WiFi only. That's just fine, because the EDGE network doesn't have high enough bandwidth nor low enough latency for VoIP to work, anyway.
When it comes to the 3G-connected iPhone, whenever that arrives, I imagine that VoIP would still be difficult - perhaps unworkable - in terms of bandwidth and latency. I imagine that, technical issues aside, the lock-out of VoIP is more due to Apple's relationship to AT&T (and other carriers) than anything else.
So, in their minds, the counter-argument to your proposal simply boils down to "Well, one is truth, and the rest is bullshit."
from Stand By Me:
Vince Desjardins: I'll tell you how they're gonna find him. Ten years from now, some hunter's gonna go in the woods to take a leak, wind up pissing on his bones.
Charlie Hogan: I bet you a thousand bucks, they'll find him before then.
Eyeball: Bet you two thousands dollars, they don't.
Charlie Hogan: Well, asshole...
Billy Tessio: Hey, what's the big deal? Who cares?
Ace: Will you two just shut the fuck up? If either of you assholes had two-thousand dollars, I'd kill you both.
I'd like to believe the US isn't behind it for any number of reasons. One of those many reasons that occurs to me is the precedent it sets: if we declare that cutting cables is a valid way of pursuing foreign policy, what implications does that have for the US, who has more cables than anyone, relies on their cables more than anyone, and has the most $$$ invested in those cables? Put simply, if cables become fair game, the US has more to lose than anyone else. The powers-that-be couldn't be that stupid, could they? Sure, they're stupid enough to start a senseless war that's quagmired our foreign policy and military, but to do something stupid enough to threaten our livelihood (and pr0n)? (this is a half-sarcastic, half-pleading comment. I know that they really could be that stupid.)
Keep in mind, too, that these cables aren't, for the most part, state owned assets like radar stations or bridges - they are the private assets of companies and conglomerates, who have invested many billions in their installation. Those conglomerates are able to pursue the US for damages much more effectively than, say, Iran.
There's an important distinction, however, between not having (or forgetting to bring) a driver's license or other photo ID to the courthouse, and having a perfectly valid state ID from a state that has decided not to comply with REAL ID. The individual citizen should not be penalized because he or she doesn't have access to the appropriate identification.
And, no, getting a federally-issued passport is not a solution for everyone. Only 30% of Americans have a passport (according to the Wired article in the summary). A passport's sole purpose is to allow someone to travel outside of the country - it shouldn't be a requirement to do anything within the country. It costs $100 and takes 6 weeks to get one. There should be no minimum barrier for someone to be able to petition to government in court, and certainly not a minimum barrier for someone to defend themselves in court. It's right up there with a poll tax, which has time and again been ruled unconstitutional.