If this is a serious production application, consider optimizing your software. Firstly, spawning endless threads is rarely an efficient use of resources. After the thread count exceeds the number of available threads the CPU can process, the overhead of managing threads becomes pure overhead. The degree to which this overhead can be reduced is application dependent, but it is often worth chasing.
Additionally, applying 10,000 and 200 rules at a rate of one thread per rule per packet is probably not a sensible strategy. Consider merging the rules and using one or more state machines to process the packet data once. That way only one set of reads occur per incoming packet, and the rest of the code is executed in tight state machines that cache efficiently.
Finally, did you mean 65535*2*10k + 4*252*200?
If ^ is interpreted as a power symbol, 65535^2^10k+4^252^200 results in a fantastically large number that all the supercomputers in the world could not process in real-time.
This is the reason why gcc (or any other compiler) should never be installed on any production Linux machine.
Having a compiler installed permits the add-hoc creation of code, with all the resultant security risks. Self-modifying code, including compiled self-modifying code, is an elegant solution in certain environments, however it is a huge security and reliability risk in any production application.
The problem with the Windows NT 4.0 security model was that security was present almost everywhere, except if an application could be tricked into loading a DLL which then permitted uncontrolled code execution. Microsoft developed Internet Explorer and Active/X, and Microsoft Windows platform security has been weak every since. If you want a secure system, it is necessary to block all methods of running unapproved and unverified code.
Funny. I would have said that QNX crashes often in 1988.
Are their any QNX success stories?
The issue with obscure operating systems is in the device driver support. If the project will take two to three years to develop, and be in the market for another five to ten years, then several different hardware platforms will be required. If you are not running an operating system that supports a wide range of hardware with pre-built drivers, then multiple different device drivers may be needed over the life of the project. It really helps to be running a standard operating system.
The result is that the projects that use Linux with Real-Time extensions tend to get finished much faster and have better ongoing support than projects which use an obscure RTOS with limited hardware support.
Then why did Gibson go through such a convoluted delivery route with so much incorrectly filled paperwork? I mean, if they don't care and it is trivial, why take the risk to lie on the customs declaration?
For an international shipment, the routing presented, and its issues, are standard. It is very rare for shipments to be sufficiently large that only one shipping company is involved. Generally, small shipments involve a specialised exporter, a shipping company, and a specialised importer. UPS shipments from the US to Canada often involve 4 parties: exporter (vendor), UPS, UPS Customer Brokers, and importer (customer). Even with experienced shippers, about 1 shipment in 4 is misclassified by the broker.
By the terms of the Lacey act, having sex with your girlfriend while on vacation could result in a 20 year prison sentence.
In this case, it would be "your underage girlfriend carrying fake ID you made" for the analogy to work.
Abu Dhabi - Great beaches. Don't kiss your girlfriend on them, and be sure to file the hotel paperwork correctly.
Fornication and adultery is illegal in many locations all over the world, including in Wisconsin. The Lacey act makes it a felony punishable by 20 years in prison.
Somehow, I don't think the government of India cares about the difference between 6 mm and 10 mm boards. Officially, the Indian government bans all exports of HS 4407 wood, but it is trivial to find companies that ship wood outside of India. It is likely that when the regulation was written, the prospect of a small volume wood purchaser was not considered by the Indian government.
The only reason why US Customs cares about this is that someone is encouraging this investigation, as no US laws are being violated. This is the big problem of the Lacey act. It makes no allowance for foreign regulations that are not being enforced. Additionally, the Lacey act does not calibrate the penalties with what would be considered reasonable penalties in the country where the regulations were written. By the terms of the Lacey act, having sex with your girlfriend while on vacation could result in a 20 year prison sentence.
Of the million's of major technical issues in building Geordi's visor, Patent #8,000,000 is about automatically turning off Geordi's visor when it isn't being worn.
Despite the fact that almost every portable device has sophisticated software systems to automatically power down any unneeded subsystems, they patented automatic power down when "an error is detected". This patent is a great example of what is wrong with the U.S. patent system. Almost every new RF and power distribution standard comes with automatic power down protocols for safety and power savings reasons. Every cell phone automatically powers up and down the transmit and receive circuitry to save battery life. Almost all portable medical devices incorporate automatic power down for safety reasons, and to save on battery life and power consumption. This patent covers a feature absolutely necessary on any practical implementation of "Geordi's visor", without contributing any useful technical information.
Thanks to this patent, if someone actually solves all of the technical issues in allowing blind people to see, they can look forward to being sued for mega-bucks for their great service to mankind.
Rating agencies tend to be lagging indicators about the stability of debt. They react far after the crisis has hit or when the crisis becomes exceedingly obvious. In this case, a large number of US policies have been building in an unsustainable fashion for a long time. S&P is reacting only now.
Any reaction from the bond rating agencies is a clear sign of a massive unresolved problem. The US is almost certain to short foreign owners of US debt, either by devaluing the dollar or by defaulting, and will probably do so much sooner than most are expecting.
EESTOR had a super capacitor storage technology that was supposed to work at 1800 (V). They have filed 30+ patents. Last I checked, I couldn't find any announcements from them. I couldn't even find an EESTOR sign in front of the EESTOR office building on Google Earth.
Bang on. A single federal tax is the way to go. Unfortunately, with the current Obama-Republican-Tea Party fight in Congress, a federal tax is unlikely to happen.
A federal tax would go a long way to fixing the deficit however.
Giving huge bonuses for short term profitability causes bankruptcy. I listened to a detailed presentation from a top automotive sector analyst on what went wrong in the auto sector. Every bad decision listed was an effort that created short term gains and long term liabilities. The managers of GM, Ford, and Chrysler have been brilliant in finding ways to boost short term profits, however they have done so by sacrificing long-term gains. Just before the crash, Chrysler boosted its short-term profitability by cancelling new car development!
Analysts have commented that the only profitable companies in the automotive sector are private. Fundamentally, a car company only lasts so long before it must produce new models of cars. A private investor wants both short term and long term profit, and balances those needs.
Find a list of the best companies in North America for consistent long-term growth, and you will get a list of companies with strong private interests putting the brake on unbridled short term growth.
State sales taxes act as an inducement to not purchase goods locally. As a foreigner, I cannot understand why the U.S. does not have a single sales tax for the entire country, and tax imported goods when they cross the border. That way everyone pays the same tax rate.
Does the U.S. lack a federal sales tax because every American President promises "no new taxes"?
Content delivery is changing. People are not going to pay for Cable TV anymore. The cool kids are moving to other mediums: You Tube and NetFlix. In the Internet age, why would I watch TV on someone else's schedule? The new TV shows will be delivered over the internet, likely as short micro-broadcasts.
People may still be willing to pay for good sci-fi. In a few years, when the results of the transition are more obvious, then people will be able to watch the shows they want. Money from the audience will flow directly to the production companies. People will be able to directly influence new content in a way they currently cannot.
Until then, with NBC owning SyFy, forget about good new sci-fi. NBC has never been able to manage sci-fi programming, and never will. NBC that canceled Star Trek in 1969, and they haven't changed since then.
AMD/ATI have already tried the good better best system. The problem lies with the marketers always requiring new words for "best". For example, ATI first started with the "Graphics Solution" video card. After a few years, it became the "VGA Wonder" card, which was replaced by the "VGA Wonder Plus" card. After a few more years, ATI was selling an "Ultra Pro Turbo". When ATI started selling video cards with three different words for "best" and none for "graphics", it became obvious that a different naming scheme was required.
AMD broke Good, Better, Best marketing for the entire computer industry, and no one is looking back.
Caps Lock is required for any shop floor industrial work. CNC lathes and CNC mills require Caps Lock. Fanuc CNC controls only use upper case ASCII characters. If lower case is used, even in a comment, the Fanuc controls will display error messages. (I lost a bet on this once.)
Some of the convention for using upper case letters comes from the fact that upper case is much more readable in a restricted environment. Upper case only is quicker to key in, too. There is no need to use the shift key, which is a big savings on the shop floor. As such, Allen Bradley PLCs routinely have upper case variable names. Almost any CNC control that uses G-Code uses upper case. Drafting conventions also specify all upper case for dimensioning, too.
AutoCAD worked in upper case only.
In modern times, the new convention appears to be lower case only. "i see students omitting all capitalization and punctuation in essays" The old upper case only convention improved readability at a time when computers were not so flexible.
Some of the professors at universities are extremely research focused, and do not place sufficient attention on undergraduate teaching. In one class, the teacher scheduled five midterms. After each midterm, he would hand out the answers to the midterm after the test.
Very quickly, the procedure switched to leaving the answers at the front of the class, so people could pick up their answers on the way out of class. It is a boring to invigilate a mid-term, so the professor quit showing up at the midterms. Similarly, the T.A.'s left.
By the third midterm, the answers were passed around - during the exam. Someone complained to the Dean about this, and considerable efforts were made to reform undergraduate teaching.
If Microsoft believed in open source, they would open source Microsoft Office.
Some people inside Microsoft want F# to succeed. The PHBs making decisions want their careers to succeed. F# needs to grow to succeed. There is no market success in "MS is a heavy in-house F# user." For market success, you need sales. Sales make a product. No sales = no product.
F# will either succeed or fail. Either way, key figures at Microsoft will succeed. This decision is about their careers.
They are planning to starve the development team of resources, prior to cancelling the project. As they are reducing development resources anyway, this open source experiment does not cost anything. If some huge success comes of the effort, then the PHB in charge claims it was his brilliant idea.
I often note that multiple simultaneous low-priority file copies implemented as:
ionice -c 3 rsync bigfilein directoryout
run faster than multiple simultaneous high-priority copies implemented as:
rsync bigfilein directoryout
If the copies are run one at a time, the higher priority rsync runs faster. For multiple copies, often the lower priority rsyncs run faster. Also, desktop usability is much improved with the lower priority rsyncs.
I suspect a priority inversion occurs inside the file systems write back cache. At regular priority levels, data is not written back to disk in a timely manner. The ionice -c 3 gives the disk caches a higher priority than the rsync I/O commands, preventing the I/O commands from filling the cache and creating a priority inversion.
The Gnome GUI in Ubuntu is particularly vulnerable to this priority inversion, as by default it does multiple copies simultaneously inside a separate window. Ubuntu usually performs better than Windows however. Between the A-V software in Windows, and the tendency to swap applications out of memory to maximize disk cache, Windows usually performs the same copy operations more slowly than Ubuntu and with less system responsiveness.
I just sat through a presentation from a person who patented his "million-dollar idea" in 180 countries. 6 other people have already asked me to build similar inventions. The idea is so popular, other companies are already producing very similar products, and standards have been written on how to implement very similar products.
With $500,000, you can patent anything.
After getting the patent without a single implementation, how do you explain to them that they patented the obvious?
Although designing something like this would be trivial...
Designing a circuit to measure power consumption, especially in as-billed dollars, can be surprisingly complicated. It really depends on the application. For many applications, measuring current consumption will correlate sufficiently well with power consumption, that many consumers will never know the difference.
True power measurement is surprisingly complicated. There are 4 wires going into the average household, 2 lines, one neutral, and one ground. Power should flow on only 3 of those 4 lines, and never on the ground. Does this actually happen? Are the power line transformer and all connected loads, like pool heaters, all "good"?
The next issue is power factor. Only current in phase with the incoming load is considered "power", the rest is just reactive energy cycling up and down the power lines. Depending on your billing, the utility will charge for real power, and usually has penalties for reactive power. Utilities are not supposed to bill for simple current consumption.
Next, the issue of "harmonics" surfaces. Depending on your meter technology, you may or may not be charged for these. Personally, I've always wanted to study how power meters measured harmonics, to see if they charged extra for them, or charged less for them. I'm pretty sure many power meters do not measure them accurately.
Finally, you have the issue of time-of-day billing, fixed billing costs, demand charges, and extra load-proportional charges. These need to be factored into any kind of power analysis too.
If you go through the pain of doing all of the above, you probably also want to implement some technologies to actually reduce power consumption. The circuits to implement dynamic power factor correction and dynamic load shedding are complex indeed...
Hint: for many industrial customers, and some residential customers, the utility can provide, for free, a complete breakdown of power consumed by time of day, often for month-long periods of time.
No. I am nearly certain Google will lose this suit. The strategy to make money from cell phone patents is:
a) Patent something.
b) Go in front of the International Trade Commission (ITC), which is a branch of the U.S. government.
c) Get the ITC to ban import of the physical product (cell phones) into the U.S.
d) Force the company in question to pay, or stop selling product in the U.S.
e) Profit!!!
This is the strategy that Rambus used against Nvidia, and the cell phone makers regularly use against each other.
The patent in question is never tested in court. Since the ITC is a relatively quick process, you can enforce patents before the patent office and/or the courts throw them out. Valid patents are not required.
I think the Grand Parent Poster's point was that if CitiBank and the College said it would cost $200,000 for a Teacher's certificate, they would not have done it. Instead, they promised 2% interest and a 6 month program. After starting the program, the school started revised the program length. Ultimately the 6-month program required 2 to 3 years to complete.
Once a student is in a program, the pressure to complete it is HUGE. You either walk away with nothing, or do what it takes to complete the program.
Slashdot Mirror
If this is a serious production application, consider optimizing your software. Firstly, spawning endless threads is rarely an efficient use of resources. After the thread count exceeds the number of available threads the CPU can process, the overhead of managing threads becomes pure overhead. The degree to which this overhead can be reduced is application dependent, but it is often worth chasing.
Additionally, applying 10,000 and 200 rules at a rate of one thread per rule per packet is probably not a sensible strategy. Consider merging the rules and using one or more state machines to process the packet data once. That way only one set of reads occur per incoming packet, and the rest of the code is executed in tight state machines that cache efficiently.
Finally, did you mean 65535*2*10k + 4*252*200?
If ^ is interpreted as a power symbol, 65535^2^10k+4^252^200 results in a fantastically large number that all the supercomputers in the world could not process in real-time.
This is the reason why gcc (or any other compiler) should never be installed on any production Linux machine.
Having a compiler installed permits the add-hoc creation of code, with all the resultant security risks. Self-modifying code, including compiled self-modifying code, is an elegant solution in certain environments, however it is a huge security and reliability risk in any production application.
The problem with the Windows NT 4.0 security model was that security was present almost everywhere, except if an application could be tricked into loading a DLL which then permitted uncontrolled code execution. Microsoft developed Internet Explorer and Active/X, and Microsoft Windows platform security has been weak every since. If you want a secure system, it is necessary to block all methods of running unapproved and unverified code.
Funny. I would have said that QNX crashes often in 1988.
Are their any QNX success stories?
The issue with obscure operating systems is in the device driver support. If the project will take two to three years to develop, and be in the market for another five to ten years, then several different hardware platforms will be required. If you are not running an operating system that supports a wide range of hardware with pre-built drivers, then multiple different device drivers may be needed over the life of the project. It really helps to be running a standard operating system.
The result is that the projects that use Linux with Real-Time extensions tend to get finished much faster and have better ongoing support than projects which use an obscure RTOS with limited hardware support.
The invaders came from Mars in "War of the Worlds", written in 1898, and people have been fixated on it ever since.
Don't expect either the U.S. military or NASA to update their plans for invasion based on almost 115 years of scientific research.
Seriously, the plan was to go to Mars since JFK's time, because he thought the Russians might beat us to the moon. NASA never updated the roadmap.
Then why did Gibson go through such a convoluted delivery route with so much incorrectly filled paperwork? I mean, if they don't care and it is trivial, why take the risk to lie on the customs declaration?
For an international shipment, the routing presented, and its issues, are standard. It is very rare for shipments to be sufficiently large that only one shipping company is involved. Generally, small shipments involve a specialised exporter, a shipping company, and a specialised importer. UPS shipments from the US to Canada often involve 4 parties: exporter (vendor), UPS, UPS Customer Brokers, and importer (customer). Even with experienced shippers, about 1 shipment in 4 is misclassified by the broker.
By the terms of the Lacey act, having sex with your girlfriend while on vacation could result in a 20 year prison sentence.
In this case, it would be "your underage girlfriend carrying fake ID you made " for the analogy to work.
Abu Dhabi - Great beaches. Don't kiss your girlfriend on them, and be sure to file the hotel paperwork correctly.
Fornication and adultery is illegal in many locations all over the world, including in Wisconsin. The Lacey act makes it a felony punishable by 20 years in prison.
Somehow, I don't think the government of India cares about the difference between 6 mm and 10 mm boards. Officially, the Indian government bans all exports of HS 4407 wood, but it is trivial to find companies that ship wood outside of India. It is likely that when the regulation was written, the prospect of a small volume wood purchaser was not considered by the Indian government.
The only reason why US Customs cares about this is that someone is encouraging this investigation, as no US laws are being violated. This is the big problem of the Lacey act. It makes no allowance for foreign regulations that are not being enforced. Additionally, the Lacey act does not calibrate the penalties with what would be considered reasonable penalties in the country where the regulations were written. By the terms of the Lacey act, having sex with your girlfriend while on vacation could result in a 20 year prison sentence.
Not sure if enough information is present to load Ubuntu onto an HP TouchPad.
Of the million's of major technical issues in building Geordi's visor, Patent #8,000,000 is about automatically turning off Geordi's visor when it isn't being worn.
Despite the fact that almost every portable device has sophisticated software systems to automatically power down any unneeded subsystems, they patented automatic power down when "an error is detected". This patent is a great example of what is wrong with the U.S. patent system. Almost every new RF and power distribution standard comes with automatic power down protocols for safety and power savings reasons. Every cell phone automatically powers up and down the transmit and receive circuitry to save battery life. Almost all portable medical devices incorporate automatic power down for safety reasons, and to save on battery life and power consumption. This patent covers a feature absolutely necessary on any practical implementation of "Geordi's visor", without contributing any useful technical information.
Thanks to this patent, if someone actually solves all of the technical issues in allowing blind people to see, they can look forward to being sued for mega-bucks for their great service to mankind.
Rating agencies tend to be lagging indicators about the stability of debt. They react far after the crisis has hit or when the crisis becomes exceedingly obvious. In this case, a large number of US policies have been building in an unsustainable fashion for a long time. S&P is reacting only now.
Any reaction from the bond rating agencies is a clear sign of a massive unresolved problem. The US is almost certain to short foreign owners of US debt, either by devaluing the dollar or by defaulting, and will probably do so much sooner than most are expecting.
EESTOR had a super capacitor storage technology that was supposed to work at 1800 (V). They have filed 30+ patents. Last I checked, I couldn't find any announcements from them. I couldn't even find an EESTOR sign in front of the EESTOR office building on Google Earth.
Anyone know if they are still alive?
Bang on. A single federal tax is the way to go. Unfortunately, with the current Obama-Republican-Tea Party fight in Congress, a federal tax is unlikely to happen.
A federal tax would go a long way to fixing the deficit however.
Giving huge bonuses for short term profitability causes bankruptcy. I listened to a detailed presentation from a top automotive sector analyst on what went wrong in the auto sector. Every bad decision listed was an effort that created short term gains and long term liabilities. The managers of GM, Ford, and Chrysler have been brilliant in finding ways to boost short term profits, however they have done so by sacrificing long-term gains. Just before the crash, Chrysler boosted its short-term profitability by cancelling new car development!
Analysts have commented that the only profitable companies in the automotive sector are private. Fundamentally, a car company only lasts so long before it must produce new models of cars. A private investor wants both short term and long term profit, and balances those needs.
Find a list of the best companies in North America for consistent long-term growth, and you will get a list of companies with strong private interests putting the brake on unbridled short term growth.
People do not set out to write vaporware. Release dates slip when the software is not fit for release.
Sometimes, bad software design decisions cannot be fixed.
State sales taxes act as an inducement to not purchase goods locally. As a foreigner, I cannot understand why the U.S. does not have a single sales tax for the entire country, and tax imported goods when they cross the border. That way everyone pays the same tax rate.
Does the U.S. lack a federal sales tax because every American President promises "no new taxes"?
Content delivery is changing. People are not going to pay for Cable TV anymore. The cool kids are moving to other mediums: You Tube and NetFlix. In the Internet age, why would I watch TV on someone else's schedule? The new TV shows will be delivered over the internet, likely as short micro-broadcasts.
People may still be willing to pay for good sci-fi. In a few years, when the results of the transition are more obvious, then people will be able to watch the shows they want. Money from the audience will flow directly to the production companies. People will be able to directly influence new content in a way they currently cannot.
Until then, with NBC owning SyFy, forget about good new sci-fi. NBC has never been able to manage sci-fi programming, and never will. NBC that canceled Star Trek in 1969, and they haven't changed since then.
AMD/ATI have already tried the good better best system. The problem lies with the marketers always requiring new words for "best". For example, ATI first started with the "Graphics Solution" video card. After a few years, it became the "VGA Wonder" card, which was replaced by the "VGA Wonder Plus" card. After a few more years, ATI was selling an "Ultra Pro Turbo". When ATI started selling video cards with three different words for "best" and none for "graphics", it became obvious that a different naming scheme was required.
AMD broke Good, Better, Best marketing for the entire computer industry, and no one is looking back.
Caps Lock is required for any shop floor industrial work. CNC lathes and CNC mills require Caps Lock. Fanuc CNC controls only use upper case ASCII characters. If lower case is used, even in a comment, the Fanuc controls will display error messages. (I lost a bet on this once.)
Some of the convention for using upper case letters comes from the fact that upper case is much more readable in a restricted environment. Upper case only is quicker to key in, too. There is no need to use the shift key, which is a big savings on the shop floor. As such, Allen Bradley PLCs routinely have upper case variable names. Almost any CNC control that uses G-Code uses upper case. Drafting conventions also specify all upper case for dimensioning, too. AutoCAD worked in upper case only.
In modern times, the new convention appears to be lower case only. "i see students omitting all capitalization and punctuation in essays" The old upper case only convention improved readability at a time when computers were not so flexible.
Some of the professors at universities are extremely research focused, and do not place sufficient attention on undergraduate teaching. In one class, the teacher scheduled five midterms. After each midterm, he would hand out the answers to the midterm after the test.
Very quickly, the procedure switched to leaving the answers at the front of the class, so people could pick up their answers on the way out of class. It is a boring to invigilate a mid-term, so the professor quit showing up at the midterms. Similarly, the T.A.'s left.
By the third midterm, the answers were passed around - during the exam. Someone complained to the Dean about this, and considerable efforts were made to reform undergraduate teaching.
If Microsoft believed in open source, they would open source Microsoft Office.
Some people inside Microsoft want F# to succeed. The PHBs making decisions want their careers to succeed. F# needs to grow to succeed. There is no market success in "MS is a heavy in-house F# user." For market success, you need sales. Sales make a product. No sales = no product.
F# will either succeed or fail. Either way, key figures at Microsoft will succeed. This decision is about their careers.
Agreed. This is a prelude to cancellation.
They are planning to starve the development team of resources, prior to cancelling the project. As they are reducing development resources anyway, this open source experiment does not cost anything. If some huge success comes of the effort, then the PHB in charge claims it was his brilliant idea.
I often note that multiple simultaneous low-priority file copies implemented as:
run faster than multiple simultaneous high-priority copies implemented as:
If the copies are run one at a time, the higher priority rsync runs faster. For multiple copies, often the lower priority rsyncs run faster. Also, desktop usability is much improved with the lower priority rsyncs.
I suspect a priority inversion occurs inside the file systems write back cache. At regular priority levels, data is not written back to disk in a timely manner. The ionice -c 3 gives the disk caches a higher priority than the rsync I/O commands, preventing the I/O commands from filling the cache and creating a priority inversion.
The Gnome GUI in Ubuntu is particularly vulnerable to this priority inversion, as by default it does multiple copies simultaneously inside a separate window. Ubuntu usually performs better than Windows however. Between the A-V software in Windows, and the tendency to swap applications out of memory to maximize disk cache, Windows usually performs the same copy operations more slowly than Ubuntu and with less system responsiveness.
I just sat through a presentation from a person who patented his "million-dollar idea" in 180 countries. 6 other people have already asked me to build similar inventions. The idea is so popular, other companies are already producing very similar products, and standards have been written on how to implement very similar products.
With $500,000, you can patent anything.
After getting the patent without a single implementation, how do you explain to them that they patented the obvious?
Designing a circuit to measure power consumption, especially in as-billed dollars, can be surprisingly complicated. It really depends on the application. For many applications, measuring current consumption will correlate sufficiently well with power consumption, that many consumers will never know the difference.
True power measurement is surprisingly complicated. There are 4 wires going into the average household, 2 lines, one neutral, and one ground. Power should flow on only 3 of those 4 lines, and never on the ground. Does this actually happen? Are the power line transformer and all connected loads, like pool heaters, all "good"?
The next issue is power factor. Only current in phase with the incoming load is considered "power", the rest is just reactive energy cycling up and down the power lines. Depending on your billing, the utility will charge for real power, and usually has penalties for reactive power. Utilities are not supposed to bill for simple current consumption.
Next, the issue of "harmonics" surfaces. Depending on your meter technology, you may or may not be charged for these. Personally, I've always wanted to study how power meters measured harmonics, to see if they charged extra for them, or charged less for them. I'm pretty sure many power meters do not measure them accurately.
Finally, you have the issue of time-of-day billing, fixed billing costs, demand charges, and extra load-proportional charges. These need to be factored into any kind of power analysis too.
If you go through the pain of doing all of the above, you probably also want to implement some technologies to actually reduce power consumption. The circuits to implement dynamic power factor correction and dynamic load shedding are complex indeed ...
Hint: for many industrial customers, and some residential customers, the utility can provide, for free, a complete breakdown of power consumed by time of day, often for month-long periods of time.
No. I am nearly certain Google will lose this suit. The strategy to make money from cell phone patents is:
a) Patent something.
b) Go in front of the International Trade Commission (ITC), which is a branch of the U.S. government.
c) Get the ITC to ban import of the physical product (cell phones) into the U.S.
d) Force the company in question to pay, or stop selling product in the U.S.
e) Profit!!!
This is the strategy that Rambus used against Nvidia, and the cell phone makers regularly use against each other.
The patent in question is never tested in court. Since the ITC is a relatively quick process, you can enforce patents before the patent office and/or the courts throw them out. Valid patents are not required.
I think the Grand Parent Poster's point was that if CitiBank and the College said it would cost $200,000 for a Teacher's certificate, they would not have done it. Instead, they promised 2% interest and a 6 month program. After starting the program, the school started revised the program length. Ultimately the 6-month program required 2 to 3 years to complete.
Once a student is in a program, the pressure to complete it is HUGE. You either walk away with nothing, or do what it takes to complete the program.