Also, in the event of a natural disaster, the people of NZ might be in for even more hurt. The US Navy, more than any other force on the globe, is a massive resource for quickly sending out a great deal of logistical support for disaster relief. I wonder if they would suspend that policy in the event of a disaster, even though I hope that need never arises.
You mean like a series of earthquakes which reduces large parts of its second largest city in soggy piles of rubble? New Zealand is well setup for disaster relief locally because they know what can go wrong. The largest city sits on a volcanic field, the next two are on fault lines, the largest lake is a volcanic crater, the list goes on.
This is sort of a recurring theme in a lot of Kickstarter projects -- why did this particular project need to go to Kickstarter?
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Your right these guys looks like they have a pile of money already so they didn't need the kickstarter to get the thing built. But as it stands they have $3.5 million in advertising and pre-orders that someone else paid for.
If they had just released the console in 9 months time like they planned how seriously do you think people would have taken them? As a bonus they now have 27,000 fans who can say they were there from the beginning (never underestimate the power of fanboyism (see Apple)).
The lady whose electric bill shot up 300%... either she was somehow not being billed for the power she used all along, or else the new meter is faulty. THAT is a legitimate concern.
Assuming that the meter was properly certified before it was installed most likely the 40-50 year mechanical meter that it replaced was running slow, other time those old meters do wear out and under read I know my one did until it completely stopped one day but the power was still on. The thing is people treat the meter installed at their house as theirs, even though it is owned by the power company, and therefore any discount they get from it running slow is theirs as well, so they are thinking "how dare the power company replace MY meter and get rid of MY discount without asking me"
I'll be these folks lodged some of their complaints over a mobile phone.
That's the best thing in more remote areas where the houses are too far apart (more that 100m) to use RF mesh networks do you know how the meters send their readings? that's right over the cell network
They can see your usage in real time. Depending on how accurate it is, they can determine when you turn on a light, TV, computer, etc and perhaps determine the make and model of them.
I have worked with a number of companies that own and read smart meters, they may be taking readings at the meter every 15-30 minutes but that doesn't mean that someone sitting at the office can see if you turned something on.
Normally the meters only send readings back to the power company at most once day, generally at night, and normally they are only read once a month when it is time to send out a bill. The only time that the meters transmit anything without being asked is when there is a power cut, they use a small battery to send an SOS back to base so the power company knows exactly how big a problem they have to fix.
The police find you and throw you in jail until the court case (you couldn't make bail).
Your not working so you can't pay the lease on your car, so the leasing firm wants to repossess it, but the police say it is evidence of your crime and has to stay where it is until the trial.
replace you with Megaupload, a hit and run with copyright infringement, the police with FBI and the car leasing firm with Carpathia. Megaupload never owned the servers, only leased them, Carpathia owns the servers but can't do anything with them because the FBI wants them kept as evidence, so they are being punished through financial losses for a crime they didn't commit, just like in the analogy the leasing company has a car they are not getting any money for and can't do anything with it.
As long as the empty chair is counted as voting for the status quo, otherwise it is just fewer people that need bribing to pass a bad law.
E.g. if you had a house of 300 people , Company X needs to bribe 151 to get their law past. If you had a house of 300 people where 100 where empty chairs and don't vote then X only needs to bribe 101 people (much cheaper). Under my plan X would still need to bribe 151 people but there are only 200 people to bribe (because the 100 empty chairs automatically vote against) so they need to bribe 75%+1 instead of 50%+1 and hopefully you can get 25% of the elected to be decent people and stop the paid for law.
And hw many of those allow me to catch up on the show I missed last night because I was out/power went off 5 minutes before it started/you get the idea, before next weeks episode.
DVD/Bluray/Walmart/Target/whatever (really all your listing is places to buy DVDs) - no because they won't be out until the season is over.
Amazon Prime/Netflix/Hulu/iTunes - How many of these services do I have to subscribe to to make sure all the programs I/my wife/my kids watch are available. Do I have to watch it on computer? will it work with my set top box/smart TV?
This is what people want, one place where they can go and get the show that they missed or movie that they want to see, and here I am allowing for old movies that have been locked in a vault since they were released on VHS 20 years ago. Because at the moment the only place like this is TPB. That is why the music industry had so many problems before iTunes, could you walk into your local music store and get any album you wanted even if it wasn't in the charts? No and that is almost where TV and movies are today, were can I go today to get every TV show.
I graduated abut the same time as you and I saw al the same types of job ads (just in a different country so don't think it is only the US like this). My personal favourite was "requires 5 years experience with Windows 2000" (in 2003), my friend claimed to meet this as he had been using 80 hours a week for 2.5 years.
I finally got a job at a place that didn't expect graduates to have 2+ years experience in a program that company wrote in house (another job ad that I saw). Interestingly that was the only place that didn't want to see my CV before inviting me in for a test and a short interview with HR (who told me I wouldn't get the job because I was nervous and therefore couldn't work with customers), followed in later days by interviews with the department manager and the GM.
On top of that, if those companies do field work, destinations are as varied as a nice, genteel home in a good part of town, to a dirty, grimy warehouse in a bad part of town, to a construction yard, and everywhere in between.
If you think a dirty warehouse or construction yard are worst places for a IT job you are missing a few things. One of my friends got a job because he didn't throw up walking to the computer he had to maintain on the killing floor of an abattoir.
I still believe that you will find overall the morning and evening peaks that I was talking about, but I will accept that there may be localised places where 9-5 factories make up the bulk of of the demand, of course adding a second shift at a factory changes it's demand profile. I am not saying you are wrong I just have never seen that profile before. I couldn't find a similar site to mine for Germany, but the UK and Australia do show similar profiles to NZ, for example in NSW, AU for the first week of April this week peak demand was at 18:30 each day.
If you go back to my original link you will see that the country is broken down into four areas. Upper North has half the population and the usual mix of industry, paper mills, steel refinery, oil refinery, a large number of dairy factories all of which operate extended hours, day time demand peaks morning and night but during the day demand is twice what it is at night.
However if you look at Lower South, there is only ~200,000 people and one of the largest aluminium smelters in the world day demand is only 30% higher than night but you still have the clear morning and night peaks.
As I said I know of industries that feel it is cheaper to pay people to work nights and get cheap electricity then run the factory during the day.
I suggest that you check the link that I supplied it shows the total consumption for for an entire country (both industry and residential), if the consumption for the day is not showing much look at the 3 hourly generation for that last 24 hours. Yes 9am till 5pm is higher that at night but it also shows that the two highest periods are those I gave. I am not assuming that residential consumption is responsible for those peaks it is as I mentioned in another post the times when some people are at home and others still at work and therefore the power is on in both places that is the peak.
If you can back up your claims with proof like I have I will be willing to accept that some countries have a different load profile.
Also don't assume that all industry runs from 9am to 5pm, I know of at least two places which run all of the equipment overnight to get the cheapest energy.
My profession: writing and supporting utility billing software, I have setup the tariffs, I have seen the half hourly meter readings, I know what I am talking about here.
I will repeat part of my earlier post here, peak load on an electricity network is not at midday, it is at 7-8am and 7-8 pm, while some people are still at the office, so all the lights and air-con are n there and other people are at home cooking, so all the lights and appliances are on there as well. This is not the peak time for solar. Add to this the Winter heating load (if you are in a winter peak area, I know a lot of people here are in summer peak areas where air-con in the middle of summer is more important that a heater in winter).
Midnight isn't the problem; power consumption is quite low then, and only drops more as the clock continues, only to start climbing well after dawn. Power generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure has to be built for peak, and that's the problem. Fortunately, a lot of the peak load is during daylight hours. A lot of it is also in the evening as well, but it's not about finding a magic bullet, it's about helping cut back on (not eliminate) the need to use coal or nuclear power.
Your right midnight is not a problem the load is low at the time. The problem is 7-8pm during winter the is the peak power period, with 7-8am closely following. At both of these times you do not have much if any sunlight, which means you are going to be running coal/gas plants at full power during these periods to pick up the slack and then dropping away to nothing.
To do this you need peaking power plants (which basically all run on gas (which for Germany means importing from Russia)) do you really think it is a god idea to put all your eggs in that one basket, what if Russia and the Ukraine start arguing again and Russia cuts the gas off (again).
If you want to see what a countries load profile looks like for a day try here , this is for New Zealand but most western countries will be similar (data displayed is mostly live so depending on the time of day the current day may not have much information and it is currently Sunday)
Ok, I haven't been to any of the three countries that you have listed but I have lived in a country with a similar level of GDP (and when you compare it to China piracy). I can tell you how many computers I have seen in stores with Linux pre-installed (0) and with Windows pre-installed (1). Do you know what they have pre-installed in those countries... FreeDos. All the big name manufacturers install FreeDos on the computers when the leave the factory so none of the computers are running in the store. When you buy a computer in the sales person will tell you to return in an half an hour to an hour to pickup your computer, when you get back it will have Windows, Office, Photoshop, random music, everything loaded on it.
So all those low end PCs will be running windows, just don't expect anyone to have paid Microsoft.
Try the smaller (1-3 screen) local cinemas if there is one in your area, I was on holiday a few years ago and found an independent cinema which just happened to be running Dr Strangelove once a day that week.
But in saying that the major chain near my old place currently has Back to the Future (parts 1, 2 & 3) and Bridge over the River Kwai listed as coming soon (normally they do this on a weekend one screening a day and the next week the film moves onto the next cinema). But this cinema also shows Rocky Horror at least once a year.
By the way this applies to New Zealand YCMV (Your Country May Vary).
I don't think its that they don't want the Government to intervene. Look at who has implemented it, we will ignore the two small ISPs for now. Telecom, Vodafone and Telstra Clear are all network owners in New Zealand.
The government is currently deciding who will get 1.5 billion dollars to roll out fibre to the home in the main towns of New Zealand replacing Telecom's network and to a lesser extent taking customers off Telstra Clear's cable networks in Wellington and Christchurch. Telecom has placed two bids for the fibre money. Vodafone with its mobile network is interested in the second stage of funding for rural broadband. So they have reason to buddy up with the Government, Telecom in particular because it has the most to lose.
It is also interesting that one of the ISPs that say they are not going to use the filter is Orcon, which is owned by Kordia, which is a state owned enterprise. The government can't even get the ISP they own to use it.
It is not Firefox specific, I get the weird boxes and icons in Safari on Windows and Mac OS X and yes it did start about the same time as the white on white comment title was fixed. Perhaps it is a coincidence but since the bug was fixed I have had a new set of mod points every three days.
I don't know the specifics of how fast their connection is but they paid for 10 km of fibre to be laid out to their offices so no they wouldn't be on ADSL.
I don't know about the US but in New Zealand a certain three lettered corp paid to have their product advertised before each episode of TNG during it's original run.
I still remember the voice over "Star Trek: The Next Generation, brought to you by OS/2 Warp"
Thank you, I didn't have the numbers myself when I submitted the story but I knew that it may have been a percentage drop but an increase in absolute numbers.
Slashdot Mirror
That and the fact that he wrote his thesis on the Statute of Anne
Also, in the event of a natural disaster, the people of NZ might be in for even more hurt. The US Navy, more than any other force on the globe, is a massive resource for quickly sending out a great deal of logistical support for disaster relief. I wonder if they would suspend that policy in the event of a disaster, even though I hope that need never arises.
You mean like a series of earthquakes which reduces large parts of its second largest city in soggy piles of rubble? New Zealand is well setup for disaster relief locally because they know what can go wrong. The largest city sits on a volcanic field, the next two are on fault lines, the largest lake is a volcanic crater, the list goes on.
This is sort of a recurring theme in a lot of Kickstarter projects -- why did this particular project need to go to Kickstarter?
Advertising
Your right these guys looks like they have a pile of money already so they didn't need the kickstarter to get the thing built. But as it stands they have $3.5 million in advertising and pre-orders that someone else paid for.
If they had just released the console in 9 months time like they planned how seriously do you think people would have taken them? As a bonus they now have 27,000 fans who can say they were there from the beginning (never underestimate the power of fanboyism (see Apple)).
The lady whose electric bill shot up 300% ... either she was somehow not being billed for the power she used all along, or else the new meter is faulty. THAT is a legitimate concern.
Assuming that the meter was properly certified before it was installed most likely the 40-50 year mechanical meter that it replaced was running slow, other time those old meters do wear out and under read I know my one did until it completely stopped one day but the power was still on. The thing is people treat the meter installed at their house as theirs, even though it is owned by the power company, and therefore any discount they get from it running slow is theirs as well, so they are thinking "how dare the power company replace MY meter and get rid of MY discount without asking me"
I'll be these folks lodged some of their complaints over a mobile phone.
That's the best thing in more remote areas where the houses are too far apart (more that 100m) to use RF mesh networks do you know how the meters send their readings? that's right over the cell network
They can see your usage in real time. Depending on how accurate it is, they can determine when you turn on a light, TV, computer, etc and perhaps determine the make and model of them.
I have worked with a number of companies that own and read smart meters, they may be taking readings at the meter every 15-30 minutes but that doesn't mean that someone sitting at the office can see if you turned something on.
Normally the meters only send readings back to the power company at most once day, generally at night, and normally they are only read once a month when it is time to send out a bill. The only time that the meters transmit anything without being asked is when there is a power cut, they use a small battery to send an SOS back to base so the power company knows exactly how big a problem they have to fix.
You are accused of committing a hit and run.
The police find you and throw you in jail until the court case (you couldn't make bail).
Your not working so you can't pay the lease on your car, so the leasing firm wants to repossess it, but the police say it is evidence of your crime and has to stay where it is until the trial.
replace you with Megaupload, a hit and run with copyright infringement, the police with FBI and the car leasing firm with Carpathia. Megaupload never owned the servers, only leased them, Carpathia owns the servers but can't do anything with them because the FBI wants them kept as evidence, so they are being punished through financial losses for a crime they didn't commit, just like in the analogy the leasing company has a car they are not getting any money for and can't do anything with it.
E.g. if you had a house of 300 people , Company X needs to bribe 151 to get their law past. If you had a house of 300 people where 100 where empty chairs and don't vote then X only needs to bribe 101 people (much cheaper). Under my plan X would still need to bribe 151 people but there are only 200 people to bribe (because the 100 empty chairs automatically vote against) so they need to bribe 75%+1 instead of 50%+1 and hopefully you can get 25% of the elected to be decent people and stop the paid for law.
DVD/Bluray/Walmart/Target/whatever (really all your listing is places to buy DVDs) - no because they won't be out until the season is over.
Amazon Prime/Netflix/Hulu/iTunes - How many of these services do I have to subscribe to to make sure all the programs I/my wife/my kids watch are available. Do I have to watch it on computer? will it work with my set top box/smart TV?
This is what people want, one place where they can go and get the show that they missed or movie that they want to see, and here I am allowing for old movies that have been locked in a vault since they were released on VHS 20 years ago. Because at the moment the only place like this is TPB. That is why the music industry had so many problems before iTunes, could you walk into your local music store and get any album you wanted even if it wasn't in the charts? No and that is almost where TV and movies are today, were can I go today to get every TV show.
I finally got a job at a place that didn't expect graduates to have 2+ years experience in a program that company wrote in house (another job ad that I saw). Interestingly that was the only place that didn't want to see my CV before inviting me in for a test and a short interview with HR (who told me I wouldn't get the job because I was nervous and therefore couldn't work with customers), followed in later days by interviews with the department manager and the GM.
On top of that, if those companies do field work, destinations are as varied as a nice, genteel home in a good part of town, to a dirty, grimy warehouse in a bad part of town, to a construction yard, and everywhere in between.
If you think a dirty warehouse or construction yard are worst places for a IT job you are missing a few things. One of my friends got a job because he didn't throw up walking to the computer he had to maintain on the killing floor of an abattoir.
If you go back to my original link you will see that the country is broken down into four areas. Upper North has half the population and the usual mix of industry, paper mills, steel refinery, oil refinery, a large number of dairy factories all of which operate extended hours, day time demand peaks morning and night but during the day demand is twice what it is at night.
However if you look at Lower South, there is only ~200,000 people and one of the largest aluminium smelters in the world day demand is only 30% higher than night but you still have the clear morning and night peaks.
As I said I know of industries that feel it is cheaper to pay people to work nights and get cheap electricity then run the factory during the day.
If you can back up your claims with proof like I have I will be willing to accept that some countries have a different load profile.
Also don't assume that all industry runs from 9am to 5pm, I know of at least two places which run all of the equipment overnight to get the cheapest energy.
My profession: writing and supporting utility billing software, I have setup the tariffs, I have seen the half hourly meter readings, I know what I am talking about here.
I will repeat part of my earlier post here, peak load on an electricity network is not at midday, it is at 7-8am and 7-8 pm, while some people are still at the office, so all the lights and air-con are n there and other people are at home cooking, so all the lights and appliances are on there as well. This is not the peak time for solar. Add to this the Winter heating load (if you are in a winter peak area, I know a lot of people here are in summer peak areas where air-con in the middle of summer is more important that a heater in winter).
What percentage is generated at midnight?
Midnight isn't the problem; power consumption is quite low then, and only drops more as the clock continues, only to start climbing well after dawn. Power generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure has to be built for peak, and that's the problem. Fortunately, a lot of the peak load is during daylight hours. A lot of it is also in the evening as well, but it's not about finding a magic bullet, it's about helping cut back on (not eliminate) the need to use coal or nuclear power.
Your right midnight is not a problem the load is low at the time. The problem is 7-8pm during winter the is the peak power period, with 7-8am closely following. At both of these times you do not have much if any sunlight, which means you are going to be running coal/gas plants at full power during these periods to pick up the slack and then dropping away to nothing.
To do this you need peaking power plants (which basically all run on gas (which for Germany means importing from Russia)) do you really think it is a god idea to put all your eggs in that one basket, what if Russia and the Ukraine start arguing again and Russia cuts the gas off (again).
If you want to see what a countries load profile looks like for a day try here , this is for New Zealand but most western countries will be similar (data displayed is mostly live so depending on the time of day the current day may not have much information and it is currently Sunday)
So all those low end PCs will be running windows, just don't expect anyone to have paid Microsoft.
You mean the James Cameron who has decided that New Zealand might be a better place to live?
But in saying that the major chain near my old place currently has Back to the Future (parts 1, 2 & 3) and Bridge over the River Kwai listed as coming soon (normally they do this on a weekend one screening a day and the next week the film moves onto the next cinema). But this cinema also shows Rocky Horror at least once a year.
By the way this applies to New Zealand YCMV (Your Country May Vary).
National Automotive Safety Advisors?
I don't think its that they don't want the Government to intervene. Look at who has implemented it, we will ignore the two small ISPs for now. Telecom, Vodafone and Telstra Clear are all network owners in New Zealand.
The government is currently deciding who will get 1.5 billion dollars to roll out fibre to the home in the main towns of New Zealand replacing Telecom's network and to a lesser extent taking customers off Telstra Clear's cable networks in Wellington and Christchurch. Telecom has placed two bids for the fibre money. Vodafone with its mobile network is interested in the second stage of funding for rural broadband. So they have reason to buddy up with the Government, Telecom in particular because it has the most to lose.
It is also interesting that one of the ISPs that say they are not going to use the filter is Orcon, which is owned by Kordia, which is a state owned enterprise. The government can't even get the ISP they own to use it.
It is not Firefox specific, I get the weird boxes and icons in Safari on Windows and Mac OS X and yes it did start about the same time as the white on white comment title was fixed. Perhaps it is a coincidence but since the bug was fixed I have had a new set of mod points every three days.
I was a customer of an ISP that did that once, of course you had to mail them the blank CDs first and the only distro that they had was Debian stable.
I'm not joking, this was back in the good old days of dial up.
I don't know the specifics of how fast their connection is but they paid for 10 km of fibre to be laid out to their offices so no they wouldn't be on ADSL.
I don't know about the US but in New Zealand a certain three lettered corp paid to have their product advertised before each episode of TNG during it's original run. I still remember the voice over "Star Trek: The Next Generation, brought to you by OS/2 Warp"
Thank you, I didn't have the numbers myself when I submitted the story but I knew that it may have been a percentage drop but an increase in absolute numbers.