BULLSHIT. My wife is an educator of 10 years in public school. We're in a poor state and she has taught in 3 districts, one actually qualifying for federal assitance as a troubled community, one typical city school district, and one upper-middle class priviladged district.
The education provided in each case is EXACTLY the same, or at least I should say the curriculum OFFERRED is exactly the same. In each school (ALL 3!) she has had to deal with everything from children in drug using households, abused children, children suffering through divorce, children with mental deficiencies, children with violent or aggressive attitudes, and more. She's had some true gems who alsdo tried very hard to succede. Success is NOT measured by 100% grades and extra credit assignments, success is measured by what the kid is actually capable of, and DO THEY MEET THAT EXPECTATION.
Some kids just can't learn, for others it's easy. There are smart people and dumb people. It's partly genetic, part environmental, and a very large part PARENTING. NONE OF THAT concerns my wife... There are children that TRY to learn and struggle, and others that trey to learn and do well. Then there are those who don't try, and as many of them are super smart as dumb, and they come from ALL backgrounds.
Some of her best students have been from houses where one parent is IN PRISON, and the child has virtually no social discipline, but the child TRYS to grow beyond that. Some of her WORST children have been from stable white households, but simply have no discipline what so ever and fail at anything and everything because they make no effort and the parents do nothing about it.
The education a student comes out of 12th grade with is the same that was offered and conveyed to every other student in the school, and that education is consistant with every school in the distriics and most in the state (they all take the same tests, and they all teach TO those tests). What they come out the door with is ENTIRELY ON THEM AND THE PARENTS. The teachers bend over backwards to help these kids, the problem is, there's NO SUPPORT FROM HOME for all the kids who could succede but fail.
Students who REQUIRE special assistance are given it. Students who COULD succeed but CHOOSE not to do NOT get special assistance. If we were to coddle them too much, where do you think that will get them?
EVERY method of encouraging a student has been stripped from teachers today. There is no discipline the school can provide beyond a moderately toned spoken lecture. Anything more and parents sue schools. There's no money for true rewards so positive encouragement beyond good grades and pats on the back are forbidden or limited in effect. The parents MUST get involved or the kids will FAIL.
The problem is NOT the school, it's the American belief that the school teaches a child everything they need. NO! The school exists to give them ONLY what's required to operate as a productive member of society. If they choose not to accept that, then they become criminals or work at McDonalds... YOU NEED TO EDUCATE YOUR CHILD AT HOME, and PUSH THEM, through whatever works, to make themselves BETTER THAN YOU.
College is where real LEARNIG happens. Everything before 12th grade, with the exception of OPTIONAL education (extra curricular and special program classes) the child can CHOOSE to take is a BASIC education only. Simply job skills, finances, basic math, and a SAMPLING of various schools of study and thought. Public school is NOT an institution, it's a menu of appetisers. They teach you how to eat and provide you a selection of food. YOUR CHILD chooses what to eat and how much.
Public school is also about a LOT more than knowledge. It;s about learning how to behave in groups, self dicipline, physical activity, team and competitive spirit. It;s also about simple social interactions, life, love, and more. It;s also a place where they can see the others that suffer, and fail to succeed, and a place where they can learn that th
Children not only need to learn material, far more imortantly, especially in younger kids, is that they learn social interaction, group discipline, experience varied environments, work in groups, experience physical activities and sports, work in teams, compete, etc. NO home schhol environment can offer this.
By educating your children at home you are stunting their social and psychological growth.
The biggest problem with American Schools is NOT the school, curriculum, or teachers, it's the PARENTS! Americans VERY INCORRECTLY assume that thgeir kid goes to school to learn and comes how with homework and that's all they need. FALSE! EVERY KID IS HOMESCHOOLED!!! When they come home, they should be LEARNING FROM YOU, and receiving the supplemental education that YOU think they should have above and beyond their lessons in school provide.
If you child is not disciplined in school, it's 90% likely it's YOUR fault. If your child is not learning what you want them to learn, it;s YOUR fault. The school curriculum is provided free as a BASE education to prepare them for the basic needs of life and for those who rise to it, preperation for college, but it IS NOT the sum of their education.
Sure, at home you can teach them math, science, writing, etc, but I seriously doubt there is a single home school parent out there who can provide a dynamic environment for education at home, who can perform all the lab expereiments required, afford to take their child on trips to experience the world outside their books, who can bring performances and programs into the house, and who can provide the social environment to allow their child to excel to more than simple smarts in life.
My wife IS a teacher. You would expect an elementary teacher would be a NATURAL resource to home school. In her decade teaching, she has taught about 30 children that were previously home schooled, and EVERY SINGLE ONE had social problems, was far behind the rest of their class in at leasdt one if not all subjects, had serious issues with authority and direction, was virtually incapable of working in teams, and had no idea how to behave in a gym or when playing sports, and had no competitive ability without a serious psychological slant to it.
Life happens OUTSIDE of books. School is designed to get them the basic education they deserve based on the effort YOU convince them to put forward. It prepares them for life and the social interactions it requires. Sometimes getting their ass kicked is PART of that learning process. Being exposed to situations and things they don't fully understand is also part of that process. When they come home, it;s YOUR JOB to help them disceminate what they EXPERIENCED, plus what they learned, and help them form an understanding and move up the ladder of life.
WAY too many parents simply think dropping their kid off at school and picking them up is good enough, and all they need to do at home is talk about drugs, sex, drinking, condoms, and AIDS and they're done, the TV can do the rest... WRONG!
If you don't like the education (knowledge) the school provides, either supplement it at home or put them in a private school or prep school whenre they teach on higher levels, but DO NOT take the rest of learning, the LIFE learning, away from a child by isolating them at home.
Home schooling with truly dedicated parents who not only educate, but also discipline their child, continually bring them to exhibitions, theatre, museums and the like, and who involve their children in social systems and team sports are a rarity, but with lots of time and money it can be successful. But the harsh reality is very few of the 1.1 million children being legally homeschooled will receive such treatment, and many enter into lives of crime or violence(reaction to isolation and strict rule, or heavily religious environments), or become socially isolated and fail to compete in the workplace. Additionally, colleges tend to frown on home-school admissions that are not accompanied by extremel
The problem is threefold: 1) tenure. It's a BITCH to fire someone with tenure in most states. Basically, they have to break the law and then the board has to agree to persue termination (which is a political nightmare depending on the person they're going after or the principal in the school, remember, these people are elected, and thus easily bought). Even if the board agrees, a court is usually still involved, plus appeals and more. In nearly all cases, firing a teacher exceeds their anual salary many fold. 2) performance analysis. All the state (or district) cares about is that the schools overall numbers are good or improving. In most states, only when the school itself falls below certain metrics do people outside get involved to find out why. It takes a couple years in a row of numbers analysis to determine which teachers are doing well and which are not. This is made even more difficult as teach unions have successfully banned nearly every attempt at classroom monitoring for teacher performance. Really, the only method a school can use is watching several years of students go through a single teacher's room and see if they improve or decline during their time with that teacher. You can't base teacher performance on 1 year of test scores as bad classrooms happen, and teachers get a mix of students each year that veries dramatically, combined with a continually changing curriculum even one class to the next is difficult to measure. In SC, the process for determining teaching ability takes 4 years... that process starts 2 years after a school is targeted for poor performance while they first look at the administration... not once in SC has this actually gone all 6 years as by that time a new state school board changes all the rules and new processes and new metrics are used instead, and the old process is never completed. Even with all this analysis, in the end, this usually only requires the teacher to go through an education series, take some classes and change her teaching style. Then it's probationary teaching for a few years under scrutiny. If they make it through that, the whole process starts all over.
3) Teacher Shortage and funding issues. Most schools skate the line of maxumim classroom size so closely for budget reasons that firing a few teachers would cause great disruption in the school, causing classrooms on the grade level to swell when the terminated teachers students are redivided. In most cases, classrooms either can't accomodate the extra kids, or if they can the schools max class size would be exceeded (possibly costing not just state, but federal finding as well). A new teacher can't simply be brought in as a replacement without weeks of training, and substitute contracts prevent permanant installation in a classroom. Besides, the disruption to the kids in the classroom from terminating a teacher is FAR worse than that from simply a bad teacher. Heck, having a teacher out on medical leave for a few weeks can set a classroom back as much as a month! Starting over with a new teacher, especially a new teacher who is not already familiar with the kids and does not know what to expect from them is arecipie for disaster.
Teachers don't just teach their class, they're constantly talking to other teachers and learning about the kids they might get the next year. Classroom assignments are done weeks before school begins to give teachers time to understand who will be in their classes, and what issues those kids have (and the ALL have issues of some kind!). Taking a new teacher into a school is a difficult thing since that teacher comes with no experience, and I'm not talking about classroom experience, I'm talking about experience with the school, the people in it, the rules that change from one bulding to another and one district to another, and the lack of experience with the specific kids in the school.
In high school, it's a bit easier (for the school, not the teachers). Kids adapt more readily to new teachers, and classroom behaviors and styles of
Well, since this is a business product (not available on the retail SKUs), and since it's only intended for business apps that require XP to be run, which should be relatively few and limited to database apps and such, and also requires processor based virtualization support (so most workstations won't be able to use it anyway, even many of the new ones!), I don't really expect a lot of businesses to even use it (most will stick to XP).
Home users are right out. No support. Even the more pro users will typically find alternatives easily to their XP native apps, and since the VM engine doesn't support 3D graphic pass through (with any reasonable performance) they'll be dual booting to XP to play their older games.
Since VXP is controlled by group policy, AD, and other enterprise security solutions, we can say a few things up front: corporate users should not be able to enter and leave XP mode, which should prevent unauthorized app installation (a key source of viruses in networks). The boxes would also typically pull updates from a WUS, not the internet, and any IE6 website access requirements would likely be intranets and local app systems, so internet access for the VM'd IE6 could simply be disabled completely, cutting off the next big AV source. 3rd, the Win7 firewall would protect the XP instance from being directly attacked by network viruses and zombies. Any XP vulnerabilities would not be exposed to network traffic. 4th, any files entering or leaving the box would first be scanned by Win 7 as the XP uses shared home directories, not it;s own independent file systems (yes, they're there in the VMDK, but a user can't get to them since they can't switch to VXP mode). That makes it pretty simple...
Now, in my network, we'd have a few issues: if the XP instance has it's own IP (necessary for most firewalls to be able to prevent it's access to the internet) then it would have to be scanned and remediated to DOD standards. That means it needs several non-AV clients which cost money. We have some users today that require connectivity into multiple segregated networks, so they each have 2 PCs, with the 2nd monitor connected to both so they can use dual display on one, or use both PCs seperately at the same time. Since the license cost is the same, it would actually be easier to give users a new Win 7 machine without the VM capable CPU and with less RAM, and then simply leave them with an XP machine... None of our dual network users have legacy apps in both networks, so that would work. It would also enable us to have 1 machine down without the other being down.
The advertising budget is part of the production budget of a motion picture. Prints are purchased by the theatres showing the film, they are in fact not free... The movie theatre's cut (for the first 2-6 weeks depending on the film's estimated popularity) is strictly in concesion sales as well, 100% of ticket price goes to the production company. After the initial period the theatres get a small cut of ticket sales as well.
1) LiPo and Li-Tit batteries have a less than 1% depretiation in capacity over 5 years. This is NOT NiCad technology, these batteries do not depreciate over time. They do blow cells, but presumably, these dead cells would be detected (its easy) and the batteries would be refurbished.
2) This is a PIPE DREAM! These batteries are so expensive ($7-15K per car) that there is NO WAY a business model could be sustained by stocking and rotating them. The sheer cost of the batteries alone, combined with the mass charging infrastructure (let alone the power requirements to rrapid charge 30-40 batteries at a tie, if not hundreds) is simply not a reality. Also, you have to worry about cross shipping batteries as well. People don;t drive the same routs and stop at the same stations, so the battery you drop off could easily have to rotate to another station to fulfil demand, creating a logistics nightmare and massive trucking initiative.
3) How does a station deal with people (like me) who would NEVER bring my battery to a swapping station while it was mostly new, then would swap out a few times until it replaced my battery with a much newer one and then continue to charge that, it's like free batteries, whicle they're stuck with an ever aging supply of cells...
4) Li-Tit and otehr new batteries can chare to between 80 and 90% in 90 seconds on the right power connector. Less than 10 minutes on a general 4 phase power line... I can't even fill my gas tank that fast on most days. Why the hell ould I swap a battery (at a significant upcharge given my above ovjections and noted extreme costs) when i could simply stop for roughly the exact same time amount and pay for the power plus a few cents markup per KW/hr loaded into it.
5) Why swap the battery at all. When it runs down to 30%, the gas generator kicks in and charges it. Yes, the gas will cost twice the cost per mile, but it should be a fraction of the cost of a battery swap.
Technically you are right, silver does quickly corrode, however, silver compunds tend to resist this, like how steel is made into stainless steel, plus, solveroxide is also highly conductive.
No. This is proven science. AC currents, especially over high output 3 and 4 phaze commercial cabling, produce a small magnetic oscilating field. This field in close proximity to UTP cabling produces a similar effect to a transformer, and actually generates a very tiny but measurable current in the ethernet cables. Over extended periods, this causes damage to the network switch. This is a simlilar, but less dramatic, effect to getting bad AC power. microfractures can occur in the electronics due to this effect.
5 and 5e are only rated for 100MHz per pair, so although you can get link speed aggregated at 1000bT, your max throughput due to crosstalk, signal reflection, and EMI is going to limit your switch to a speed closer to 300-400Mbit. Many switches will detect Cat-5 issues and downgrade your link connection automatically on problematic runs.
Connector quality has more to do with the connection quality than the cable itself. 5e simply has tighter specs to maintain. Really, there's not much of a difference, especially is you're using good patch panels.
Cat 6 runs 250MHz per pair, tru gigabit speeds are supported.
10G over copper is most commonly limited to 15M, and requires special 4 lane copper cabling, not Cat6 cabling. It's similar to Infiniband in design. A Cat 6 option was later offered, though few companies support this format. It's limited to 66m, and suffers similar bandwidth issues due to signal quality that running Gig-e over Cat-5 exhibits. Cat6a cabling can be used for 100m 10G deployments. Note this requires 650MHz Cat 6 cable ends, not 250MHz cat 6 cable ends as are normally deployed, for which there is a difference, and also requires 10G rated patch panels. Cat 6 cable can come in one of 3 thicknesses (guage). only one of these is commonly reccomended for 10G speeds.
Cables do go bad over time, due either to environmental factors or movement. Exposure to direct sunlight is bad fort cabling. Non-constant temperatures is also a cause of degredation.(cables in plenem space or inside walls tend not to remain at constant temperatures). Oxidation of the copper connector is the most common failure. higher quality cables and patch panels use silver, gold, or other corrosion resistant metals for this reason. Many cables are also made with lower quality plastics that simply fail over time (some are practically designed that way I sometimes feel). When the plastic fails, the cables corrode quickly.
More often I find a switch port fails before a cable (usually because someone plugged something in they should not have, or a charge makes it way into the cable due to being too close to a power cord, or long term exposue to magnetic fields causes elecrical resistance and damages the switch over time.
typically, I'd leave cables in place until a hardware upgrade or data bottleneck justifies the change. ALLWAYS use high quality cables rated for the installation location. lower guage (thicker copper) are generally better, but they should ALLWAYS be within spec. Buy cables from companies that offer 20 year lifetime warranty. (Hitachi, Mowhawk, etc) Have them installed by professionals who back that warranty and use properly rated panels and punch downs and you should have no issues. Anytime you;re running cables, allways run a class of cable 2-3 tiers better than your current needs, and for workstation drops or other complicated runs, allways run spares (the labor typically costs more than the cable, and running 2 or 3 at once costs less than 1 now and 1 later). Use cable trays or hooks EVERYWHERE, never let cables lie on ceiling tiles or underneath floors in channles.
This sounds like overkill, and probaly is for a small business, but when you have 14,000 desks in your copmpany (most with 2 netowrk and 2 phone drops) and over 3,500 servers, labor to replace cabling tallies in the millions of dollars...
2 cycle engines have poor torque output, critical to efficient electric generation on a small scale. We have some very low emission 4 cycles available, especially in deisel versions, that could better fit this role than a 2 cycle.
Rotary is efficent on large scale, and hemespherical engines have some advantages, but they're bulky, heavy, and complicated compared to common ICEs (and usually have to be removed from a vehicle to be worked on). Rotary engines definetly have advantages running generators, mostly due to the smooth output instead of the somewhat jerky nature of 4 cylender engines (mane 8 andf 10 cylinder engines perform nearly the same as rotarys in terms of smoothness, but we don't need quite so many cylinders in a small hybrid...)
Turbuines are expensive, and complicated to repair, but their lifecycle far exceeds ICEs and they require very little service. If produced on a larger scale, they could compete with ICEs in terms of 10 year TCO, (higher cost, but lower maintenance, longer life, higher resale, less fuel, etc).
What's going to be REALLY wierd for people to get used to is the noise pattern. You'll be driving along nice and slow, or possibly even parked at a light, and all of a sudden, your engine could roar to life at 4800RPM... Pedestrians especially are going to have a hard time dealing with that!
Fortunately, we're not waiting for the engine block to heat up with this system... 200-250 degrees is not rearly enough. These systems use heat directly in the exhaust, running at several times the temperature. This system is not replacing the radiator, just the alternator (though it may have a heat sink tied to the radiator for some additional energy).
The system is most efficient at the greatest difference in temperature, so actually, it would be more efficient in the winter months. Exhaust temperatures are relatively stable regardless of the external temperature (might vary a few degrees). As the engine warms, the exhaust also warms, but within 3-4 minutes, it;s pretty much running at its peak.
Now, where such a system is REALLY good is in recovery turbines. Our current trend is moving us from ICEs to hybrids. The next major step (Chevy Volt and the like) are electric cars with engine backup generators. It's a hybrid with no physical connection from the engine to the drive train, just a big generator to make more electricity. All engines have a peak output, usually somewhere around 4000RPM. These new hybrids will only turn on engines to make electricity, so should only run the engines at peak performance to do so...
The next evolutionary step is to remove the ICE and replace it with a microturbine engine, kind of like the ones used in some BMW motorcycles. These turbines get about 10% better fuel economy. Recovery turbines are the next evolution of small turbines, allowing waste heat to be reclaimed as energy either for the turbine itself to use for efficiency, or to add to the electric power output of the turbine. Currently, these engines are still slightly larger than comperable output ICEs, and certainly are far more complicated and expensive, but the technology is moving in a rush, and in 10-15 years, I think we'll see more electric hybrids running on turbines than on IC engines.
Though he's got a point, the author misses out on an important trend. It's not just that pirates use the internet to get music, it's not the rating sites steering people towards certain major lable music. Advertising by minor labels can't possibly compete with major brand lables.
However, minor lables ARE making more then the used to. Why? Distribution by association. Many pirates also buy music. Sure, some flatly refuse on principal, but the bulk of pirates justify downloading as "I only have so much money to giove, the rest I steal, since they're not loosing the money i don't have anyway." They buy what they like. When they hear a good song, they're apt to find things like it. Many streaming music services, now even iTunes, provide you input into either what other people listening to what you like also like, or services like Pandora simply play other music like what you selected. You pick a band you like, and you hear a dozen other bands that are similar, regardless of label.
If "indie" lables can get their bands into services like iTunes, Pandora, and other music streaming systems, people hear the songs, and some of them will buy what they listen to regardless of what's advertised to them or recomended by some popularity chart.
I can say 100% for certain, never in my life have I ever sought out a band just because it was on a top 100 list (not for ANY genre, let alone the Pop top 100.) I seek out music becaus esomeone or something tells me "this other band sounds a lot like this, I think you'll like them" or I simply hear the song and like it and find out who it is.
The music industry however is not really dying from piracy. Most people who steal, as I mentioned, do so simply due to a lack of funds. They can only buy the tracks or albums they can afford. It used to be they bought only albums (once singles went the way of the dodo). $18 for 12-15 songs sounds like a good idea, and 20 years ago when a 12 track album had 8-10 good songs on it I didn't mind as much. Most bands I get 2-3 songs on an album i like, so at $0.99 each, why spend $18? (or $9-12 as it might be). Couple the uptake in DVD and games, and where kids used to almost exclusively buy music, annd an occasional VHS, now they're buying movies ($15-25), games ($20-80), computer software ($30-50), controllers ($30-50), and more! There's simply not enough money to spread around....
Don't forget the cost of the 66M tower to put it on... and the cabling cost, maintenance cost, and these "micro-turbines" also don't have 20-30 year lifespans like commercial units.
Plus, you have to play nice with your electric grid. That means either fast spin-up generators when wind speed falls off, electric storage systems, supercondicting grds to pass excess energy off to neighboring cities, or other expensive options to deal with random power generation.
There are a few systems that take GREAT advantage of overflow power, like the RFTS WindFuels H2 + CO2 to Hydrocarbon system (dotyenergy.com). their system also doesn't require 60Hz balanced power, making the generators about 30% more efficient and about 30% cheaper at the same time (multiple windmills don't need to be synced, and don;t have to spin and fixed rates (no braking except to max safe speed control). Unfortunately, noone has come up with a cheap system to handle underproduction. Wind energy is only as good as the grid you put it on, and the bigger the grid the better. Wind is very BAD for localized power, and would be exceedingly bad on a per-home or per-community basis.
Well, honestly most of the Suck behind Microsoft is not Microsoft at all, but poorly designed infrastructures; lack of professional admins who understand monitoring, tweaking, and sizing tools; lack of proper application design; a complete failure to code for effiency ("oh, that massive library has one code sequence I need, instead of making my own subset of code for this problem, I'll just link the whole library in!"); Lack of understanding from the bean counters that more money on quality systems instead of low end Dell Crap servers is actually CHEAPER in the long run; Lack of Admins customizing the Windows install for their specific needs (uh, hello, of the 3+ GB of bloat in 2003R2, you can cut it back to about 600MB and not loose a bit of functionality, and by trimming the applications and services loaded, you can more than half it;s boot time and double it's response time.
The REAL problem with Microsoft is the people who adminster it, and the people who budget it. People who are given underfunded, underdesigned, undertested hardware and simply slap the OS and an AV program on it and put it into production without running it through 2-3 months of load testing, tweaking, and hardware adjustments are destined to have tier app crash on them sooner rather than later, and then they blame it on the OS Vendor.
There are litterally TENS of THOUSANDS of pages of microsoft documentation just covering Exchange 2007 server... I'VE READ THEM, and we've recently deployed a true Tier 0 infrastructure for it. Yes, it took 9 months to develop and deploy. yes it cost over a million dollars including 28 servers, 2 load balancers, and all the licences, and a new DR solution (and that's not including support infrastructure like AD, DNS, switches, etc, nor the CALs for outlook). We have 16,000 users on this. It's overdesigned, overpowered, and complex. It's also never going to loose connectiv ity unless we loose the physical connection to the world (and even then the MX record is in the cloud and we deployed a failover site using Geo-clusters)
Ya know what? Our exchange team has learned so much through this process that this level of attention is being focused on our other 2000+ x86/64 servers. We expect to save this company over 15 million this year by analyzing our hardware and software infrastructure, combining this type of focus to reduce our systems into VMWare and z/VM linux, cut our storage dependency by about 100TB, shrink our DR system, and in the end, have a more resilient, better performing, less crashing solution that costs less to operate and takes up 1/6th the amount of floor space in our datacenters. This is not the first project to get this level of attention. Our Sharepoint infrastructure, IP phone system, Citrix farms, have all gone through this in the last 2 years. We have had appreciably 0 downtime since they've gone through review (this excludes PLANNED downtime).
Yes, M$ solutions take more resources to do the same job. Hardware is cheap, skilled unix admins are not. (we have about 300 AIX servers and 12 mainframes, so we're quite familiar...)...and no, M$ is NOT the right solution for every job. In fact, we thing it's right for less than half our server needs. That said, there are MANY things it can do better, simpler, and with higher compatability than anything else we've deployed.
Is it the best desktop OS? no, I'd place it 3rd behind Apple and Linux. Is it the best server OS? not even close. Are their apps the best? no, actually office kind of sucks. however, the ability to tie that together, and have universal vendor support is workth a lot more...
I tell ya, If I could ride a high speed rail to and from some of the major urban areas on the east coast, I'd take a lot more trips...
Think of living in the New Your area and being able to go to DC in 3 or 4 hours, see a museum, and come home in the same day.... Or vica-versa and see a broadway performance. Go from Hartford to Boston in an hour or so... Go from the mid atlantic to Myrtle Beach to play golf and back again and only spend a night in a hotel, or maybe even just a long day trip...
NYC to Buffalo in 4 hours. Ohio to Greenbay, WI. PA to DC. These all becone 1-2 day trips for a fraction of the price of an airline ticket, far less hassle, and in most cases LESS TIME!!!
I used to fly in and out of cities on the Atlantic all the time with my old job. Often, the amount of time it took to fly 400 miles was longer than the time it took to drive the same! Get to airport 90 minutes early; plane takes off 30 minutes late; wait for baggage; rent a car, I could blow 4 hours not even including the time in the air, and the same coming back again. Taking a train at 200MPH with at most a 30 minute boarding time would be easy, and since these would be mostly major city to major city routes (hopefully) and for short trips I wouldn't need a car or lots of luggage for these kinds of trips. Even if it took an hour longer overall, on a train you can use WiFi, Cell Phones, eat what you want, move around, sit in a Bar Car, and of course there's no fear of plumeting into the ground in a crash!
I was in a grocery store parking lot last night at about 10PM. There could not have been 30 cars in the whole lot. Some fat A-hole in an SUV was parked waiting for a car in the second spot closest to the door to pull out so he could get the spot!!! He must have waited for like 5 minutes while the other guy loaded an entire grocery cart into his car before he backed out. There was an empty spot not 3 spaces further down the lane, maybe 20 feet???. I parked in another row, walked to the store, got a cart, and went inside and he was still parked there waiting for that spot.
Fat, lazy, F*ing A-hole. People do that in Walmart parking lots at 6PM and make it impossible to find a spot because they're all blocking the lanes so noone else can find themselves a spot.
It makes me want to key their cars when i come back out or something... It should be illegal to wait on a spot like that.
"I mean, how do you lug all your stuff daily to/from work?" Well, How do you get from your car to your office in a city? You might find a spot right in front, or 6 blocks away, either way you need to be equally as prepared as if you had taken the bus... Crap, even if i got lucky and parked on the same block as my office I'd stillget drenched getting to the front door without an umbrella...
Most gyms have a locker service for a few dollars a month (mine does). They even wash the gym clothes for me. The only time I take anything in or out of the gym is when I'm bringing some new stuff in for the first time. i grab gym food (energy foods) AT the gym... My office has a cafeteria that costs me about $3.50 a day. I don't bring lunch very often. I do have a stock of food I keep in my office, but i leave the office and shop at a local store for that stuff, i don;t bring it on the commute, that's simply innefficient and dumb. As for "laptop, books, etc" Well, I carry my laptop and everything I need in a backpack. I don't carry "books" to and from work. I do keep a rolling bag at the office in case i do need to bring a lot home, but It's very rare that I do so.
My city streets don't flood. I've lived in 6 big towns, and have NEVER seen this to be an issue, not even in Boston where it pours in sheets. I keep business shoes in my office and hoof it wearing more appropriate all weather shoes (i change footwear when I get to work and before i leave). My collapsible umberlla weighs about 6 ounces, works well, fits nicely in my backpackand cost $3. A proper trenchcoat or parka handles the rest depending on the season. yes in the dead heat of the summer it can be a bit warm, and sweating is common, but damn man, it isn't that hard to freshen up in the mens room when you get to work...
I don't usually shop using public transit. Sometimes I do for a couple of items, but lets face it, one plastic bag of groceries is NOT a burden. What I usually do is get back in my car at the park-n-ride and shop close to home... The train station is about 6 miles from my house, but driving there and taking the train, then a bus, and a 2 block walk is about 30 minutes quicker than simply driving in, and the metro pass is about the same price per day on the flat monthly rate as it cost me in gas, let alone parking and tolls on top. The company also kicks in towards mass transit, but not personal travel expenses or parking, so it's an incentive, a BIG incentive.
When I do the rounds for Costo and the like, I do a big run, maybe once a month. I do very little weekly shopping except for fresh produce and perishables. This is actually a personal choice as the grocery store is only 1 block away from my home, but the TIME I wasted simply going therte 3-4 times a week was worth planning better (and turned out to be cheaper as I'm taking advantage of more deals as well). Not shopping multiple days during the week allows me to run other erands, do laundry, take care of other home issues. I'm NEVER doing any of that on the weekend. I'm always in front of the TV by 8PM unless I'm out with friends or family doing something more interesting.
My commute is only 50 minutes each way by mass transit. A fairly short commute compared to sime in the NYC area or other big cities. I find no issues getting to the gym, running erands, or any real impact to my life. My old job I commuted about 20 minutes, so one would assume I'm loosing 60 minutes a day. Of course, i no longer eat breakfast in my house, i eat it on the train (carying a small bag on the train which is thrown out before I get off), so I'm actually getting up at exactly the same time I used to, so in reality, I'm only loosing 30 minutes a day... Oh, i also catch up on daily news on the train via my iPhone, so I'm actually saving the time I'd otherwise be in front of the TV watching the boring newscasters... The way I see it, i'm breaking even on time ve my old job.
I can be home by 6PM most nights, this is NOT a burden... If I drove (I tried th
Yea, it would be REALLY NICE if MSFT would put Exchange inside of something other than a Jet engine database... Then maybe I could have a high performance database that wasn't capped at 200GB for performance reasons, and I could have one big database per server cluster instead of 12-16... and I could front end that with a half a dozen exchange servers and have all 20,000 users inside of a single database and eliminate all the wasted space from single indexing!
For Chrsits sake, can't the Exchange people and the SQL people work together, and combine the log shipping asynchronous non-cluster replciation features of exchange with a REAL F*ING DATABASE ENGINE!?!?!?!
You misread... That's for the REPLICATED copy. i.e. You keep your live database on RAID 1/0, but you keep the realtime replicated copy on JBOD. With EXCH 2007 microsoft began (for very good reasons) recomending DAS instead of SAN (due to application and database high availablility features of Exchange 2007). Now, half of your DAS modular array units don't require expensive controllers, further reducing your costs without detracting from availability. Since the server fron end no longer needs to be a microsoft Cluster as well, Enterprise Server is no longer a requirement either.
We recently deployed a 20K user solution under Exch2007. We lobied for a modular extensible DAS storage solution, but instead upper management insisted on big iron SAN chassis (2 of them). We spent $450K on disks where we could have spent less than 100K and had the same performance and reliability simply because upper management (and apparently you) have not read or do not understand the new database architecture proposed in Exchange 2007. 2010 improves upon that by removing some server side hurdles while maintaining the same data reliablity.
You're keeping 2-3 local, active, asynchronously replicated (with real time log rollback) copies of your exchange system, with 30 second or less automatic failover that does not disconnect users in the process. Why keep them all on RAID 10 if you can simply fail from one over to the other? The only reason to keep any 1 of them on RAID 10 is simply to keep from failing over the first time! (and you'll recover and be back on the RAID 10 in 24-48 hours and you still have redundancy in log shipping, offsite server replication, and traditional backups to supplement that, all without clusters!
Actually, I'm currently running Vista because my new Motherboard RAID 5 controller drivers needed to be slipstreamed into an XPSP2 CD in order to install XP as I no longer had a functioning USB floppy drive and this board has no floppy port. I was not only too cheap to spend $60 on a USB floppy that was $14 a few years ago (and too impatient to wait for it to arrive), but once I got Vista installed, I realized I didn't have a Vista Native CD burner app that could actually do the job and make the slipstreamed disk... I was also to cheap to buy an app online to do it, so I gave Vista a "trial" until I could acquire the media elsewhere....14 months later, it's still running Vista. Lets face it, I've got a DX10.1 GPU, and Vista actually does benchmark better playing games than XP (most of them anyway). It also gives me the chance to betatest more software than I otherwise would on XP alone, and Vista actually does have some quite handy features. Plus, after a few months I got over the quirks, tweaked it out for optimal performance, and discovered that the integrated backup tools are actually quite nice. When using XP at work, i actually find I miss some of Vista's features...
Of course, my main daily use computer is actually a Mac... Yes, I've built a high perfomance gaming rig, but honestly, with a 16 month old baby I have barely logged into a game in 2 months. I'm working with photos, video, blogs, websites, and all that is not only easier on the mac, but honestly without spending a couple grand on PC software, i simply can't even do some of the things I do on the Mac with a PC at all.. We're getting the wife a 17" powerbook Pro in a few months and a new high end iMac for me, so we'll probably just use those as gaming computers by dual booting to Windows (Except for a few of the games that are Mac native) and turn the old workhorse gaming machine into a Linux Server...
oh, I probably should mention I'm a lead decision maker at a firm that has multiple Gig, 10gig, OC6, DS3, and T3 connections running through AT&T.... If it wasn't illegal or immoral, I'd half expexct them to hook up my house with the best of their services at no charge... We have a Metro E provided by 2 seperate ISPs connecting our facilites in nearly 20 cities in 6 states and point to point private networks to dozens of locations across the country. We're certainly not their biggest account, but we're big enough that pissing off a decision maker is not in their interest, not over a few exta GB per month on a residential account...
Since it qualifies as negotiated competitive terms, an AT&T supervisor can apply that notation to my account, and any future supervisor will simply apply the appropriate discound should I ever be charged. I did this with AT&T about 6 years ago as a competitive response to MCI local offering unlimited calling and had a competitive price cap enforced on my bill. I had to call in every few months, but they were very accomodating, and more often than I had expected not only reversed any charges, but also compensated me aditionally for the mistake, usually by throwing in a couply hundred additional free minutes.
I have every faith that AT&T will maintain my no limit measures. besides, per my state law, and since this is a contract for service (not month to month service), they become legally binding to uphold it. As long as I'm a consistant subscriber, they can't forcibly remove me from my contract, only from service entirely.
However, with recent actions in Washington, I'm not really worried caps will be imposed anyway, and if they are, I'll likely never hit them. Also, most of my worry is hitting the cap through the use of IPTV and Netflix services. Once i get Uverse installed in a few months, that won't really be a concern anymore (and that becomes a 2 year contract).
That's not a bad idea... Unfortunately, most of the Starbucks I've been in QoS each user's connection to about 512K down, so good luck doing big dowloads or watching IP TV from there... Occasionally I've found better, but rarely. If we abused it too much, and Starbucks started eating charges I'm sure they'd impose daily caps on each MAC address, or impose their own throttling.
I just signed up for AT&T DSL at a house I'm moving into Wednesday. Even including the dryline costs, it was $10 a month cheaper than TWCs offerd rate ($17 cheaper including TWC's upcharge for not having cable). I'm getting 6dn/512up. TWCs equivolent is 7dn/384up, which actually, is not as fast, and has higher contention rates since most people wrongly think DSL can't do those speeds and thus don't have DSL. TWC indicated they could change that rate, the amount of bandwidth I receive, or impose caps at any time without notice.
Anyway, as part of signing up, I had the AT&T account rep add a notation to my account that; while a continuing subscriber no bandwidth caps or use costs would ever be assessed to my account, and further that this was for "unlimited" internet for upload and dowload for non-commercial purposes (including that I MAY work from home over that connection). I also ensured that should the available bandwidth increase at the same price, or should i wish to drop to a lower or different plan option, that the act of doing so would not change the condition that I am a "continuing" subscriber. They guaranteed me that they would not impose caps on my account, even if they impose ones on new subscribers. Basically, unless something miraculous happens, they just guaranteed I'll be a subscriber for life. I also made sure this statement would still be in effect should i switch from DSL to uVerse when available (I'm told 6 months tops).
There is HTML, and you don't even need ANY of the books to use it, just a membership to DnDi. It's called the compendium, and it;s a fully searchable web based database of every thing in every currently published DnD 4e book.
I find the books incredibly usefull though. not all my gamers bring laptops, nor do i have the space for 7 people to sit at a table with computers, character sheets, books, and still have enough room to rol dice... A couple of guys bring a PC and sit at a table, the rest of them prefer comfy couches, and use the books as a stiff backing for writing on their character sheets...
I use the LCD TV as a virtual game table with the help of a didital cartography tool called MapTool (freeware). I have a small stack of books I distribulte (PH, FR campaign guide players version, and the adventurer's vault). I also keep a copy of the DMG and MM open in PDF form, an open link to the DnDi Compendium, and OneNote (stores my campaign notes and copied sections of the DMG, MM, and other date relevent to the night's adventure) open on my laptop. I also have a spreadsheet for initiative tracking. I've been using Dicenomicon on the iPhone with a bunch of cusom written DnD4e rolling programs so combat flies by.
Prior to all this, it used to take us about 2 hours to have a typical combat encounter. Now we get through one in about 50 minutes. (typicaly takes 4-6 rounds).
The PDF will be part of their upcoming DnDi revisions based around the virtual game table. The PDFs will be downloadable, but I understand there's some back end linking (watermarking maybe) to your account so if you distribute the files you'll be easy to identify. You'll have to be a subscriber to get the copies (for one month, then you can unsubscribe).
I "re-installed" the app to 4 machines i regularly use. All I had to do was enter my existing account information and it worked. If you stopped subscribing, yes, you'll have to pay for one more menth to "reinstall" but you don't need a new account, just pay for 1 month on your existing account.
Besides, you're only excpeced to use the software as an active member... It's to your benefit they don;t retroazctively disable the software if you stop subscribing. If they ever cancel the service, you can continue using the software, at least until your system crashes...
Of course, backup is about more than just files. If you're not imaging the OS itself you're only moving data, not backing up the computer. We call it BareMetal backup. Some refer to it as a "ghost" or image backup. You should do one every 90-180 days or anytime you install new software that can't be "re-installed." Also handy to do just before and then again just after any major patch or upgrade. Keep in mind, images are the whole volume, they're not selective, so you'll want nothing on your C: drive but applications that must be recovered that way. Anything that can be reinstalled later, or that is not required for systemm functionality should be on a D: (apps) volume and data should be on it's own volume. This is not a requirement, but if you've got 100GB of MP3s, putting all that in both your image AND your data backup is a big waste... I have a 700GB data volume, a 150GB apps volume, and less than 20GB on C:... I image monthly simply because I have the storage available on my 2TB NAS.
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BULLSHIT. My wife is an educator of 10 years in public school. We're in a poor state and she has taught in 3 districts, one actually qualifying for federal assitance as a troubled community, one typical city school district, and one upper-middle class priviladged district.
The education provided in each case is EXACTLY the same, or at least I should say the curriculum OFFERRED is exactly the same. In each school (ALL 3!) she has had to deal with everything from children in drug using households, abused children, children suffering through divorce, children with mental deficiencies, children with violent or aggressive attitudes, and more. She's had some true gems who alsdo tried very hard to succede. Success is NOT measured by 100% grades and extra credit assignments, success is measured by what the kid is actually capable of, and DO THEY MEET THAT EXPECTATION.
Some kids just can't learn, for others it's easy. There are smart people and dumb people. It's partly genetic, part environmental, and a very large part PARENTING. NONE OF THAT concerns my wife... There are children that TRY to learn and struggle, and others that trey to learn and do well. Then there are those who don't try, and as many of them are super smart as dumb, and they come from ALL backgrounds.
Some of her best students have been from houses where one parent is IN PRISON, and the child has virtually no social discipline, but the child TRYS to grow beyond that. Some of her WORST children have been from stable white households, but simply have no discipline what so ever and fail at anything and everything because they make no effort and the parents do nothing about it.
The education a student comes out of 12th grade with is the same that was offered and conveyed to every other student in the school, and that education is consistant with every school in the distriics and most in the state (they all take the same tests, and they all teach TO those tests). What they come out the door with is ENTIRELY ON THEM AND THE PARENTS. The teachers bend over backwards to help these kids, the problem is, there's NO SUPPORT FROM HOME for all the kids who could succede but fail.
Students who REQUIRE special assistance are given it. Students who COULD succeed but CHOOSE not to do NOT get special assistance. If we were to coddle them too much, where do you think that will get them?
EVERY method of encouraging a student has been stripped from teachers today. There is no discipline the school can provide beyond a moderately toned spoken lecture. Anything more and parents sue schools. There's no money for true rewards so positive encouragement beyond good grades and pats on the back are forbidden or limited in effect. The parents MUST get involved or the kids will FAIL.
The problem is NOT the school, it's the American belief that the school teaches a child everything they need. NO! The school exists to give them ONLY what's required to operate as a productive member of society. If they choose not to accept that, then they become criminals or work at McDonalds... YOU NEED TO EDUCATE YOUR CHILD AT HOME, and PUSH THEM, through whatever works, to make themselves BETTER THAN YOU.
College is where real LEARNIG happens. Everything before 12th grade, with the exception of OPTIONAL education (extra curricular and special program classes) the child can CHOOSE to take is a BASIC education only. Simply job skills, finances, basic math, and a SAMPLING of various schools of study and thought. Public school is NOT an institution, it's a menu of appetisers. They teach you how to eat and provide you a selection of food. YOUR CHILD chooses what to eat and how much.
Public school is also about a LOT more than knowledge. It;s about learning how to behave in groups, self dicipline, physical activity, team and competitive spirit. It;s also about simple social interactions, life, love, and more. It;s also a place where they can see the others that suffer, and fail to succeed, and a place where they can learn that th
Children not only need to learn material, far more imortantly, especially in younger kids, is that they learn social interaction, group discipline, experience varied environments, work in groups, experience physical activities and sports, work in teams, compete, etc. NO home schhol environment can offer this.
By educating your children at home you are stunting their social and psychological growth.
The biggest problem with American Schools is NOT the school, curriculum, or teachers, it's the PARENTS! Americans VERY INCORRECTLY assume that thgeir kid goes to school to learn and comes how with homework and that's all they need. FALSE! EVERY KID IS HOMESCHOOLED!!! When they come home, they should be LEARNING FROM YOU, and receiving the supplemental education that YOU think they should have above and beyond their lessons in school provide.
If you child is not disciplined in school, it's 90% likely it's YOUR fault. If your child is not learning what you want them to learn, it;s YOUR fault. The school curriculum is provided free as a BASE education to prepare them for the basic needs of life and for those who rise to it, preperation for college, but it IS NOT the sum of their education.
Sure, at home you can teach them math, science, writing, etc, but I seriously doubt there is a single home school parent out there who can provide a dynamic environment for education at home, who can perform all the lab expereiments required, afford to take their child on trips to experience the world outside their books, who can bring performances and programs into the house, and who can provide the social environment to allow their child to excel to more than simple smarts in life.
My wife IS a teacher. You would expect an elementary teacher would be a NATURAL resource to home school. In her decade teaching, she has taught about 30 children that were previously home schooled, and EVERY SINGLE ONE had social problems, was far behind the rest of their class in at leasdt one if not all subjects, had serious issues with authority and direction, was virtually incapable of working in teams, and had no idea how to behave in a gym or when playing sports, and had no competitive ability without a serious psychological slant to it.
Life happens OUTSIDE of books. School is designed to get them the basic education they deserve based on the effort YOU convince them to put forward. It prepares them for life and the social interactions it requires. Sometimes getting their ass kicked is PART of that learning process. Being exposed to situations and things they don't fully understand is also part of that process. When they come home, it;s YOUR JOB to help them disceminate what they EXPERIENCED, plus what they learned, and help them form an understanding and move up the ladder of life.
WAY too many parents simply think dropping their kid off at school and picking them up is good enough, and all they need to do at home is talk about drugs, sex, drinking, condoms, and AIDS and they're done, the TV can do the rest... WRONG!
If you don't like the education (knowledge) the school provides, either supplement it at home or put them in a private school or prep school whenre they teach on higher levels, but DO NOT take the rest of learning, the LIFE learning, away from a child by isolating them at home.
Home schooling with truly dedicated parents who not only educate, but also discipline their child, continually bring them to exhibitions, theatre, museums and the like, and who involve their children in social systems and team sports are a rarity, but with lots of time and money it can be successful. But the harsh reality is very few of the 1.1 million children being legally homeschooled will receive such treatment, and many enter into lives of crime or violence(reaction to isolation and strict rule, or heavily religious environments), or become socially isolated and fail to compete in the workplace. Additionally, colleges tend to frown on home-school admissions that are not accompanied by extremel
The problem is threefold:
1) tenure. It's a BITCH to fire someone with tenure in most states. Basically, they have to break the law and then the board has to agree to persue termination (which is a political nightmare depending on the person they're going after or the principal in the school, remember, these people are elected, and thus easily bought). Even if the board agrees, a court is usually still involved, plus appeals and more. In nearly all cases, firing a teacher exceeds their anual salary many fold.
2) performance analysis. All the state (or district) cares about is that the schools overall numbers are good or improving. In most states, only when the school itself falls below certain metrics do people outside get involved to find out why. It takes a couple years in a row of numbers analysis to determine which teachers are doing well and which are not. This is made even more difficult as teach unions have successfully banned nearly every attempt at classroom monitoring for teacher performance. Really, the only method a school can use is watching several years of students go through a single teacher's room and see if they improve or decline during their time with that teacher. You can't base teacher performance on 1 year of test scores as bad classrooms happen, and teachers get a mix of students each year that veries dramatically, combined with a continually changing curriculum even one class to the next is difficult to measure. In SC, the process for determining teaching ability takes 4 years... that process starts 2 years after a school is targeted for poor performance while they first look at the administration... not once in SC has this actually gone all 6 years as by that time a new state school board changes all the rules and new processes and new metrics are used instead, and the old process is never completed.
Even with all this analysis, in the end, this usually only requires the teacher to go through an education series, take some classes and change her teaching style. Then it's probationary teaching for a few years under scrutiny. If they make it through that, the whole process starts all over.
3) Teacher Shortage and funding issues. Most schools skate the line of maxumim classroom size so closely for budget reasons that firing a few teachers would cause great disruption in the school, causing classrooms on the grade level to swell when the terminated teachers students are redivided. In most cases, classrooms either can't accomodate the extra kids, or if they can the schools max class size would be exceeded (possibly costing not just state, but federal finding as well). A new teacher can't simply be brought in as a replacement without weeks of training, and substitute contracts prevent permanant installation in a classroom. Besides, the disruption to the kids in the classroom from terminating a teacher is FAR worse than that from simply a bad teacher. Heck, having a teacher out on medical leave for a few weeks can set a classroom back as much as a month! Starting over with a new teacher, especially a new teacher who is not already familiar with the kids and does not know what to expect from them is arecipie for disaster.
Teachers don't just teach their class, they're constantly talking to other teachers and learning about the kids they might get the next year. Classroom assignments are done weeks before school begins to give teachers time to understand who will be in their classes, and what issues those kids have (and the ALL have issues of some kind!). Taking a new teacher into a school is a difficult thing since that teacher comes with no experience, and I'm not talking about classroom experience, I'm talking about experience with the school, the people in it, the rules that change from one bulding to another and one district to another, and the lack of experience with the specific kids in the school.
In high school, it's a bit easier (for the school, not the teachers). Kids adapt more readily to new teachers, and classroom behaviors and styles of
Well, since this is a business product (not available on the retail SKUs), and since it's only intended for business apps that require XP to be run, which should be relatively few and limited to database apps and such, and also requires processor based virtualization support (so most workstations won't be able to use it anyway, even many of the new ones!), I don't really expect a lot of businesses to even use it (most will stick to XP).
Home users are right out. No support. Even the more pro users will typically find alternatives easily to their XP native apps, and since the VM engine doesn't support 3D graphic pass through (with any reasonable performance) they'll be dual booting to XP to play their older games.
Since VXP is controlled by group policy, AD, and other enterprise security solutions, we can say a few things up front: corporate users should not be able to enter and leave XP mode, which should prevent unauthorized app installation (a key source of viruses in networks). The boxes would also typically pull updates from a WUS, not the internet, and any IE6 website access requirements would likely be intranets and local app systems, so internet access for the VM'd IE6 could simply be disabled completely, cutting off the next big AV source. 3rd, the Win7 firewall would protect the XP instance from being directly attacked by network viruses and zombies. Any XP vulnerabilities would not be exposed to network traffic. 4th, any files entering or leaving the box would first be scanned by Win 7 as the XP uses shared home directories, not it;s own independent file systems (yes, they're there in the VMDK, but a user can't get to them since they can't switch to VXP mode). That makes it pretty simple...
Now, in my network, we'd have a few issues: if the XP instance has it's own IP (necessary for most firewalls to be able to prevent it's access to the internet) then it would have to be scanned and remediated to DOD standards. That means it needs several non-AV clients which cost money. We have some users today that require connectivity into multiple segregated networks, so they each have 2 PCs, with the 2nd monitor connected to both so they can use dual display on one, or use both PCs seperately at the same time. Since the license cost is the same, it would actually be easier to give users a new Win 7 machine without the VM capable CPU and with less RAM, and then simply leave them with an XP machine... None of our dual network users have legacy apps in both networks, so that would work. It would also enable us to have 1 machine down without the other being down.
The advertising budget is part of the production budget of a motion picture. Prints are purchased by the theatres showing the film, they are in fact not free... The movie theatre's cut (for the first 2-6 weeks depending on the film's estimated popularity) is strictly in concesion sales as well, 100% of ticket price goes to the production company. After the initial period the theatres get a small cut of ticket sales as well.
1) LiPo and Li-Tit batteries have a less than 1% depretiation in capacity over 5 years. This is NOT NiCad technology, these batteries do not depreciate over time. They do blow cells, but presumably, these dead cells would be detected (its easy) and the batteries would be refurbished.
2) This is a PIPE DREAM! These batteries are so expensive ($7-15K per car) that there is NO WAY a business model could be sustained by stocking and rotating them. The sheer cost of the batteries alone, combined with the mass charging infrastructure (let alone the power requirements to rrapid charge 30-40 batteries at a tie, if not hundreds) is simply not a reality. Also, you have to worry about cross shipping batteries as well. People don;t drive the same routs and stop at the same stations, so the battery you drop off could easily have to rotate to another station to fulfil demand, creating a logistics nightmare and massive trucking initiative.
3) How does a station deal with people (like me) who would NEVER bring my battery to a swapping station while it was mostly new, then would swap out a few times until it replaced my battery with a much newer one and then continue to charge that, it's like free batteries, whicle they're stuck with an ever aging supply of cells...
4) Li-Tit and otehr new batteries can chare to between 80 and 90% in 90 seconds on the right power connector. Less than 10 minutes on a general 4 phase power line... I can't even fill my gas tank that fast on most days. Why the hell ould I swap a battery (at a significant upcharge given my above ovjections and noted extreme costs) when i could simply stop for roughly the exact same time amount and pay for the power plus a few cents markup per KW/hr loaded into it.
5) Why swap the battery at all. When it runs down to 30%, the gas generator kicks in and charges it. Yes, the gas will cost twice the cost per mile, but it should be a fraction of the cost of a battery swap.
Technically you are right, silver does quickly corrode, however, silver compunds tend to resist this, like how steel is made into stainless steel, plus, solveroxide is also highly conductive.
No. This is proven science. AC currents, especially over high output 3 and 4 phaze commercial cabling, produce a small magnetic oscilating field. This field in close proximity to UTP cabling produces a similar effect to a transformer, and actually generates a very tiny but measurable current in the ethernet cables. Over extended periods, this causes damage to the network switch. This is a simlilar, but less dramatic, effect to getting bad AC power. microfractures can occur in the electronics due to this effect.
5 and 5e are only rated for 100MHz per pair, so although you can get link speed aggregated at 1000bT, your max throughput due to crosstalk, signal reflection, and EMI is going to limit your switch to a speed closer to 300-400Mbit. Many switches will detect Cat-5 issues and downgrade your link connection automatically on problematic runs.
Connector quality has more to do with the connection quality than the cable itself. 5e simply has tighter specs to maintain. Really, there's not much of a difference, especially is you're using good patch panels.
Cat 6 runs 250MHz per pair, tru gigabit speeds are supported.
10G over copper is most commonly limited to 15M, and requires special 4 lane copper cabling, not Cat6 cabling. It's similar to Infiniband in design. A Cat 6 option was later offered, though few companies support this format. It's limited to 66m, and suffers similar bandwidth issues due to signal quality that running Gig-e over Cat-5 exhibits. Cat6a cabling can be used for 100m 10G deployments. Note this requires 650MHz Cat 6 cable ends, not 250MHz cat 6 cable ends as are normally deployed, for which there is a difference, and also requires 10G rated patch panels. Cat 6 cable can come in one of 3 thicknesses (guage). only one of these is commonly reccomended for 10G speeds.
Cables do go bad over time, due either to environmental factors or movement. Exposure to direct sunlight is bad fort cabling. Non-constant temperatures is also a cause of degredation.(cables in plenem space or inside walls tend not to remain at constant temperatures). Oxidation of the copper connector is the most common failure. higher quality cables and patch panels use silver, gold, or other corrosion resistant metals for this reason. Many cables are also made with lower quality plastics that simply fail over time (some are practically designed that way I sometimes feel). When the plastic fails, the cables corrode quickly.
More often I find a switch port fails before a cable (usually because someone plugged something in they should not have, or a charge makes it way into the cable due to being too close to a power cord, or long term exposue to magnetic fields causes elecrical resistance and damages the switch over time.
typically, I'd leave cables in place until a hardware upgrade or data bottleneck justifies the change. ALLWAYS use high quality cables rated for the installation location. lower guage (thicker copper) are generally better, but they should ALLWAYS be within spec. Buy cables from companies that offer 20 year lifetime warranty. (Hitachi, Mowhawk, etc) Have them installed by professionals who back that warranty and use properly rated panels and punch downs and you should have no issues. Anytime you;re running cables, allways run a class of cable 2-3 tiers better than your current needs, and for workstation drops or other complicated runs, allways run spares (the labor typically costs more than the cable, and running 2 or 3 at once costs less than 1 now and 1 later). Use cable trays or hooks EVERYWHERE, never let cables lie on ceiling tiles or underneath floors in channles.
This sounds like overkill, and probaly is for a small business, but when you have 14,000 desks in your copmpany (most with 2 netowrk and 2 phone drops) and over 3,500 servers, labor to replace cabling tallies in the millions of dollars...
2 cycle engines have poor torque output, critical to efficient electric generation on a small scale. We have some very low emission 4 cycles available, especially in deisel versions, that could better fit this role than a 2 cycle.
Rotary is efficent on large scale, and hemespherical engines have some advantages, but they're bulky, heavy, and complicated compared to common ICEs (and usually have to be removed from a vehicle to be worked on). Rotary engines definetly have advantages running generators, mostly due to the smooth output instead of the somewhat jerky nature of 4 cylender engines (mane 8 andf 10 cylinder engines perform nearly the same as rotarys in terms of smoothness, but we don't need quite so many cylinders in a small hybrid...)
Turbuines are expensive, and complicated to repair, but their lifecycle far exceeds ICEs and they require very little service. If produced on a larger scale, they could compete with ICEs in terms of 10 year TCO, (higher cost, but lower maintenance, longer life, higher resale, less fuel, etc).
What's going to be REALLY wierd for people to get used to is the noise pattern. You'll be driving along nice and slow, or possibly even parked at a light, and all of a sudden, your engine could roar to life at 4800RPM... Pedestrians especially are going to have a hard time dealing with that!
Fortunately, we're not waiting for the engine block to heat up with this system... 200-250 degrees is not rearly enough. These systems use heat directly in the exhaust, running at several times the temperature. This system is not replacing the radiator, just the alternator (though it may have a heat sink tied to the radiator for some additional energy).
The system is most efficient at the greatest difference in temperature, so actually, it would be more efficient in the winter months. Exhaust temperatures are relatively stable regardless of the external temperature (might vary a few degrees). As the engine warms, the exhaust also warms, but within 3-4 minutes, it;s pretty much running at its peak.
Now, where such a system is REALLY good is in recovery turbines. Our current trend is moving us from ICEs to hybrids. The next major step (Chevy Volt and the like) are electric cars with engine backup generators. It's a hybrid with no physical connection from the engine to the drive train, just a big generator to make more electricity. All engines have a peak output, usually somewhere around 4000RPM. These new hybrids will only turn on engines to make electricity, so should only run the engines at peak performance to do so...
The next evolutionary step is to remove the ICE and replace it with a microturbine engine, kind of like the ones used in some BMW motorcycles. These turbines get about 10% better fuel economy. Recovery turbines are the next evolution of small turbines, allowing waste heat to be reclaimed as energy either for the turbine itself to use for efficiency, or to add to the electric power output of the turbine. Currently, these engines are still slightly larger than comperable output ICEs, and certainly are far more complicated and expensive, but the technology is moving in a rush, and in 10-15 years, I think we'll see more electric hybrids running on turbines than on IC engines.
Though he's got a point, the author misses out on an important trend. It's not just that pirates use the internet to get music, it's not the rating sites steering people towards certain major lable music. Advertising by minor labels can't possibly compete with major brand lables.
However, minor lables ARE making more then the used to. Why? Distribution by association. Many pirates also buy music. Sure, some flatly refuse on principal, but the bulk of pirates justify downloading as "I only have so much money to giove, the rest I steal, since they're not loosing the money i don't have anyway." They buy what they like. When they hear a good song, they're apt to find things like it. Many streaming music services, now even iTunes, provide you input into either what other people listening to what you like also like, or services like Pandora simply play other music like what you selected. You pick a band you like, and you hear a dozen other bands that are similar, regardless of label.
If "indie" lables can get their bands into services like iTunes, Pandora, and other music streaming systems, people hear the songs, and some of them will buy what they listen to regardless of what's advertised to them or recomended by some popularity chart.
I can say 100% for certain, never in my life have I ever sought out a band just because it was on a top 100 list (not for ANY genre, let alone the Pop top 100.) I seek out music becaus esomeone or something tells me "this other band sounds a lot like this, I think you'll like them" or I simply hear the song and like it and find out who it is.
The music industry however is not really dying from piracy. Most people who steal, as I mentioned, do so simply due to a lack of funds. They can only buy the tracks or albums they can afford. It used to be they bought only albums (once singles went the way of the dodo). $18 for 12-15 songs sounds like a good idea, and 20 years ago when a 12 track album had 8-10 good songs on it I didn't mind as much. Most bands I get 2-3 songs on an album i like, so at $0.99 each, why spend $18? (or $9-12 as it might be). Couple the uptake in DVD and games, and where kids used to almost exclusively buy music, annd an occasional VHS, now they're buying movies ($15-25), games ($20-80), computer software ($30-50), controllers ($30-50), and more! There's simply not enough money to spread around....
Don't forget the cost of the 66M tower to put it on... and the cabling cost, maintenance cost, and these "micro-turbines" also don't have 20-30 year lifespans like commercial units.
Plus, you have to play nice with your electric grid. That means either fast spin-up generators when wind speed falls off, electric storage systems, supercondicting grds to pass excess energy off to neighboring cities, or other expensive options to deal with random power generation.
There are a few systems that take GREAT advantage of overflow power, like the RFTS WindFuels H2 + CO2 to Hydrocarbon system (dotyenergy.com). their system also doesn't require 60Hz balanced power, making the generators about 30% more efficient and about 30% cheaper at the same time (multiple windmills don't need to be synced, and don;t have to spin and fixed rates (no braking except to max safe speed control). Unfortunately, noone has come up with a cheap system to handle underproduction. Wind energy is only as good as the grid you put it on, and the bigger the grid the better. Wind is very BAD for localized power, and would be exceedingly bad on a per-home or per-community basis.
Well, honestly most of the Suck behind Microsoft is not Microsoft at all, but poorly designed infrastructures; lack of professional admins who understand monitoring, tweaking, and sizing tools; lack of proper application design; a complete failure to code for effiency ("oh, that massive library has one code sequence I need, instead of making my own subset of code for this problem, I'll just link the whole library in!"); Lack of understanding from the bean counters that more money on quality systems instead of low end Dell Crap servers is actually CHEAPER in the long run; Lack of Admins customizing the Windows install for their specific needs (uh, hello, of the 3+ GB of bloat in 2003R2, you can cut it back to about 600MB and not loose a bit of functionality, and by trimming the applications and services loaded, you can more than half it;s boot time and double it's response time.
The REAL problem with Microsoft is the people who adminster it, and the people who budget it. People who are given underfunded, underdesigned, undertested hardware and simply slap the OS and an AV program on it and put it into production without running it through 2-3 months of load testing, tweaking, and hardware adjustments are destined to have tier app crash on them sooner rather than later, and then they blame it on the OS Vendor.
There are litterally TENS of THOUSANDS of pages of microsoft documentation just covering Exchange 2007 server... I'VE READ THEM, and we've recently deployed a true Tier 0 infrastructure for it. Yes, it took 9 months to develop and deploy. yes it cost over a million dollars including 28 servers, 2 load balancers, and all the licences, and a new DR solution (and that's not including support infrastructure like AD, DNS, switches, etc, nor the CALs for outlook). We have 16,000 users on this. It's overdesigned, overpowered, and complex. It's also never going to loose connectiv ity unless we loose the physical connection to the world (and even then the MX record is in the cloud and we deployed a failover site using Geo-clusters)
Ya know what? Our exchange team has learned so much through this process that this level of attention is being focused on our other 2000+ x86/64 servers. We expect to save this company over 15 million this year by analyzing our hardware and software infrastructure, combining this type of focus to reduce our systems into VMWare and z/VM linux, cut our storage dependency by about 100TB, shrink our DR system, and in the end, have a more resilient, better performing, less crashing solution that costs less to operate and takes up 1/6th the amount of floor space in our datacenters. This is not the first project to get this level of attention. Our Sharepoint infrastructure, IP phone system, Citrix farms, have all gone through this in the last 2 years. We have had appreciably 0 downtime since they've gone through review (this excludes PLANNED downtime).
Yes, M$ solutions take more resources to do the same job. Hardware is cheap, skilled unix admins are not. (we have about 300 AIX servers and 12 mainframes, so we're quite familiar...) ...and no, M$ is NOT the right solution for every job. In fact, we thing it's right for less than half our server needs. That said, there are MANY things it can do better, simpler, and with higher compatability than anything else we've deployed.
Is it the best desktop OS? no, I'd place it 3rd behind Apple and Linux. Is it the best server OS? not even close. Are their apps the best? no, actually office kind of sucks. however, the ability to tie that together, and have universal vendor support is workth a lot more...
I tell ya, If I could ride a high speed rail to and from some of the major urban areas on the east coast, I'd take a lot more trips...
Think of living in the New Your area and being able to go to DC in 3 or 4 hours, see a museum, and come home in the same day.... Or vica-versa and see a broadway performance. Go from Hartford to Boston in an hour or so... Go from the mid atlantic to Myrtle Beach to play golf and back again and only spend a night in a hotel, or maybe even just a long day trip...
NYC to Buffalo in 4 hours. Ohio to Greenbay, WI. PA to DC. These all becone 1-2 day trips for a fraction of the price of an airline ticket, far less hassle, and in most cases LESS TIME!!!
I used to fly in and out of cities on the Atlantic all the time with my old job. Often, the amount of time it took to fly 400 miles was longer than the time it took to drive the same! Get to airport 90 minutes early; plane takes off 30 minutes late; wait for baggage; rent a car, I could blow 4 hours not even including the time in the air, and the same coming back again. Taking a train at 200MPH with at most a 30 minute boarding time would be easy, and since these would be mostly major city to major city routes (hopefully) and for short trips I wouldn't need a car or lots of luggage for these kinds of trips. Even if it took an hour longer overall, on a train you can use WiFi, Cell Phones, eat what you want, move around, sit in a Bar Car, and of course there's no fear of plumeting into the ground in a crash!
GO TRAINS!
I was in a grocery store parking lot last night at about 10PM. There could not have been 30 cars in the whole lot. Some fat A-hole in an SUV was parked waiting for a car in the second spot closest to the door to pull out so he could get the spot!!! He must have waited for like 5 minutes while the other guy loaded an entire grocery cart into his car before he backed out. There was an empty spot not 3 spaces further down the lane, maybe 20 feet???. I parked in another row, walked to the store, got a cart, and went inside and he was still parked there waiting for that spot.
Fat, lazy, F*ing A-hole. People do that in Walmart parking lots at 6PM and make it impossible to find a spot because they're all blocking the lanes so noone else can find themselves a spot.
It makes me want to key their cars when i come back out or something... It should be illegal to wait on a spot like that.
"I mean, how do you lug all your stuff daily to/from work?"
Well, How do you get from your car to your office in a city? You might find a spot right in front, or 6 blocks away, either way you need to be equally as prepared as if you had taken the bus... Crap, even if i got lucky and parked on the same block as my office I'd stillget drenched getting to the front door without an umbrella...
Most gyms have a locker service for a few dollars a month (mine does). They even wash the gym clothes for me. The only time I take anything in or out of the gym is when I'm bringing some new stuff in for the first time. i grab gym food (energy foods) AT the gym... My office has a cafeteria that costs me about $3.50 a day. I don't bring lunch very often. I do have a stock of food I keep in my office, but i leave the office and shop at a local store for that stuff, i don;t bring it on the commute, that's simply innefficient and dumb. As for "laptop, books, etc" Well, I carry my laptop and everything I need in a backpack. I don't carry "books" to and from work. I do keep a rolling bag at the office in case i do need to bring a lot home, but It's very rare that I do so.
My city streets don't flood. I've lived in 6 big towns, and have NEVER seen this to be an issue, not even in Boston where it pours in sheets. I keep business shoes in my office and hoof it wearing more appropriate all weather shoes (i change footwear when I get to work and before i leave). My collapsible umberlla weighs about 6 ounces, works well, fits nicely in my backpackand cost $3. A proper trenchcoat or parka handles the rest depending on the season. yes in the dead heat of the summer it can be a bit warm, and sweating is common, but damn man, it isn't that hard to freshen up in the mens room when you get to work...
I don't usually shop using public transit. Sometimes I do for a couple of items, but lets face it, one plastic bag of groceries is NOT a burden. What I usually do is get back in my car at the park-n-ride and shop close to home... The train station is about 6 miles from my house, but driving there and taking the train, then a bus, and a 2 block walk is about 30 minutes quicker than simply driving in, and the metro pass is about the same price per day on the flat monthly rate as it cost me in gas, let alone parking and tolls on top. The company also kicks in towards mass transit, but not personal travel expenses or parking, so it's an incentive, a BIG incentive.
When I do the rounds for Costo and the like, I do a big run, maybe once a month. I do very little weekly shopping except for fresh produce and perishables. This is actually a personal choice as the grocery store is only 1 block away from my home, but the TIME I wasted simply going therte 3-4 times a week was worth planning better (and turned out to be cheaper as I'm taking advantage of more deals as well). Not shopping multiple days during the week allows me to run other erands, do laundry, take care of other home issues. I'm NEVER doing any of that on the weekend. I'm always in front of the TV by 8PM unless I'm out with friends or family doing something more interesting.
My commute is only 50 minutes each way by mass transit. A fairly short commute compared to sime in the NYC area or other big cities. I find no issues getting to the gym, running erands, or any real impact to my life. My old job I commuted about 20 minutes, so one would assume I'm loosing 60 minutes a day. Of course, i no longer eat breakfast in my house, i eat it on the train (carying a small bag on the train which is thrown out before I get off), so I'm actually getting up at exactly the same time I used to, so in reality, I'm only loosing 30 minutes a day... Oh, i also catch up on daily news on the train via my iPhone, so I'm actually saving the time I'd otherwise be in front of the TV watching the boring newscasters... The way I see it, i'm breaking even on time ve my old job.
I can be home by 6PM most nights, this is NOT a burden... If I drove (I tried th
Yea, it would be REALLY NICE if MSFT would put Exchange inside of something other than a Jet engine database... Then maybe I could have a high performance database that wasn't capped at 200GB for performance reasons, and I could have one big database per server cluster instead of 12-16... and I could front end that with a half a dozen exchange servers and have all 20,000 users inside of a single database and eliminate all the wasted space from single indexing!
For Chrsits sake, can't the Exchange people and the SQL people work together, and combine the log shipping asynchronous non-cluster replciation features of exchange with a REAL F*ING DATABASE ENGINE!?!?!?!
You misread... That's for the REPLICATED copy. i.e. You keep your live database on RAID 1/0, but you keep the realtime replicated copy on JBOD. With EXCH 2007 microsoft began (for very good reasons) recomending DAS instead of SAN (due to application and database high availablility features of Exchange 2007). Now, half of your DAS modular array units don't require expensive controllers, further reducing your costs without detracting from availability. Since the server fron end no longer needs to be a microsoft Cluster as well, Enterprise Server is no longer a requirement either.
We recently deployed a 20K user solution under Exch2007. We lobied for a modular extensible DAS storage solution, but instead upper management insisted on big iron SAN chassis (2 of them). We spent $450K on disks where we could have spent less than 100K and had the same performance and reliability simply because upper management (and apparently you) have not read or do not understand the new database architecture proposed in Exchange 2007. 2010 improves upon that by removing some server side hurdles while maintaining the same data reliablity.
You're keeping 2-3 local, active, asynchronously replicated (with real time log rollback) copies of your exchange system, with 30 second or less automatic failover that does not disconnect users in the process. Why keep them all on RAID 10 if you can simply fail from one over to the other? The only reason to keep any 1 of them on RAID 10 is simply to keep from failing over the first time! (and you'll recover and be back on the RAID 10 in 24-48 hours and you still have redundancy in log shipping, offsite server replication, and traditional backups to supplement that, all without clusters!
Actually, I'm currently running Vista because my new Motherboard RAID 5 controller drivers needed to be slipstreamed into an XPSP2 CD in order to install XP as I no longer had a functioning USB floppy drive and this board has no floppy port. I was not only too cheap to spend $60 on a USB floppy that was $14 a few years ago (and too impatient to wait for it to arrive), but once I got Vista installed, I realized I didn't have a Vista Native CD burner app that could actually do the job and make the slipstreamed disk... I was also to cheap to buy an app online to do it, so I gave Vista a "trial" until I could acquire the media elsewhere. ...14 months later, it's still running Vista. Lets face it, I've got a DX10.1 GPU, and Vista actually does benchmark better playing games than XP (most of them anyway). It also gives me the chance to betatest more software than I otherwise would on XP alone, and Vista actually does have some quite handy features. Plus, after a few months I got over the quirks, tweaked it out for optimal performance, and discovered that the integrated backup tools are actually quite nice. When using XP at work, i actually find I miss some of Vista's features...
Of course, my main daily use computer is actually a Mac... Yes, I've built a high perfomance gaming rig, but honestly, with a 16 month old baby I have barely logged into a game in 2 months. I'm working with photos, video, blogs, websites, and all that is not only easier on the mac, but honestly without spending a couple grand on PC software, i simply can't even do some of the things I do on the Mac with a PC at all.. We're getting the wife a 17" powerbook Pro in a few months and a new high end iMac for me, so we'll probably just use those as gaming computers by dual booting to Windows (Except for a few of the games that are Mac native) and turn the old workhorse gaming machine into a Linux Server...
oh, I probably should mention I'm a lead decision maker at a firm that has multiple Gig, 10gig, OC6, DS3, and T3 connections running through AT&T.... If it wasn't illegal or immoral, I'd half expexct them to hook up my house with the best of their services at no charge... We have a Metro E provided by 2 seperate ISPs connecting our facilites in nearly 20 cities in 6 states and point to point private networks to dozens of locations across the country. We're certainly not their biggest account, but we're big enough that pissing off a decision maker is not in their interest, not over a few exta GB per month on a residential account...
Since it qualifies as negotiated competitive terms, an AT&T supervisor can apply that notation to my account, and any future supervisor will simply apply the appropriate discound should I ever be charged. I did this with AT&T about 6 years ago as a competitive response to MCI local offering unlimited calling and had a competitive price cap enforced on my bill. I had to call in every few months, but they were very accomodating, and more often than I had expected not only reversed any charges, but also compensated me aditionally for the mistake, usually by throwing in a couply hundred additional free minutes.
I have every faith that AT&T will maintain my no limit measures. besides, per my state law, and since this is a contract for service (not month to month service), they become legally binding to uphold it. As long as I'm a consistant subscriber, they can't forcibly remove me from my contract, only from service entirely.
However, with recent actions in Washington, I'm not really worried caps will be imposed anyway, and if they are, I'll likely never hit them. Also, most of my worry is hitting the cap through the use of IPTV and Netflix services. Once i get Uverse installed in a few months, that won't really be a concern anymore (and that becomes a 2 year contract).
That's not a bad idea... Unfortunately, most of the Starbucks I've been in QoS each user's connection to about 512K down, so good luck doing big dowloads or watching IP TV from there... Occasionally I've found better, but rarely. If we abused it too much, and Starbucks started eating charges I'm sure they'd impose daily caps on each MAC address, or impose their own throttling.
I just signed up for AT&T DSL at a house I'm moving into Wednesday. Even including the dryline costs, it was $10 a month cheaper than TWCs offerd rate ($17 cheaper including TWC's upcharge for not having cable). I'm getting 6dn/512up. TWCs equivolent is 7dn/384up, which actually, is not as fast, and has higher contention rates since most people wrongly think DSL can't do those speeds and thus don't have DSL. TWC indicated they could change that rate, the amount of bandwidth I receive, or impose caps at any time without notice.
Anyway, as part of signing up, I had the AT&T account rep add a notation to my account that; while a continuing subscriber no bandwidth caps or use costs would ever be assessed to my account, and further that this was for "unlimited" internet for upload and dowload for non-commercial purposes (including that I MAY work from home over that connection). I also ensured that should the available bandwidth increase at the same price, or should i wish to drop to a lower or different plan option, that the act of doing so would not change the condition that I am a "continuing" subscriber. They guaranteed me that they would not impose caps on my account, even if they impose ones on new subscribers. Basically, unless something miraculous happens, they just guaranteed I'll be a subscriber for life. I also made sure this statement would still be in effect should i switch from DSL to uVerse when available (I'm told 6 months tops).
There is HTML, and you don't even need ANY of the books to use it, just a membership to DnDi. It's called the compendium, and it;s a fully searchable web based database of every thing in every currently published DnD 4e book.
I find the books incredibly usefull though. not all my gamers bring laptops, nor do i have the space for 7 people to sit at a table with computers, character sheets, books, and still have enough room to rol dice... A couple of guys bring a PC and sit at a table, the rest of them prefer comfy couches, and use the books as a stiff backing for writing on their character sheets...
I use the LCD TV as a virtual game table with the help of a didital cartography tool called MapTool (freeware). I have a small stack of books I distribulte (PH, FR campaign guide players version, and the adventurer's vault). I also keep a copy of the DMG and MM open in PDF form, an open link to the DnDi Compendium, and OneNote (stores my campaign notes and copied sections of the DMG, MM, and other date relevent to the night's adventure) open on my laptop. I also have a spreadsheet for initiative tracking. I've been using Dicenomicon on the iPhone with a bunch of cusom written DnD4e rolling programs so combat flies by.
Prior to all this, it used to take us about 2 hours to have a typical combat encounter. Now we get through one in about 50 minutes. (typicaly takes 4-6 rounds).
The PDF will be part of their upcoming DnDi revisions based around the virtual game table. The PDFs will be downloadable, but I understand there's some back end linking (watermarking maybe) to your account so if you distribute the files you'll be easy to identify. You'll have to be a subscriber to get the copies (for one month, then you can unsubscribe).
I "re-installed" the app to 4 machines i regularly use. All I had to do was enter my existing account information and it worked. If you stopped subscribing, yes, you'll have to pay for one more menth to "reinstall" but you don't need a new account, just pay for 1 month on your existing account.
Besides, you're only excpeced to use the software as an active member... It's to your benefit they don;t retroazctively disable the software if you stop subscribing. If they ever cancel the service, you can continue using the software, at least until your system crashes...
Of course, backup is about more than just files. If you're not imaging the OS itself you're only moving data, not backing up the computer. We call it BareMetal backup. Some refer to it as a "ghost" or image backup. You should do one every 90-180 days or anytime you install new software that can't be "re-installed." Also handy to do just before and then again just after any major patch or upgrade. Keep in mind, images are the whole volume, they're not selective, so you'll want nothing on your C: drive but applications that must be recovered that way. Anything that can be reinstalled later, or that is not required for systemm functionality should be on a D: (apps) volume and data should be on it's own volume. This is not a requirement, but if you've got 100GB of MP3s, putting all that in both your image AND your data backup is a big waste... I have a 700GB data volume, a 150GB apps volume, and less than 20GB on C:... I image monthly simply because I have the storage available on my 2TB NAS.