YES. I live in New York City and in my area we have a few in the neighborhood. I have never been more repulsed by a group of people. They walk around trying to get money by repairing dents in cars. They leave the cans of paint, and bondo all over the sidewalk where they worked on the car. Its a belief they are the ones who dent cars in parking lots and then come by offering to fix the damage. The other great part is how the women will load up a shopping cart at the local supermarket, then walk around the store and beg for money to pay for it. If you own a store the kids come in trying to buy something for pennies on the dollar. I caught one trying to steal while another distracted me with his constant fast talking bargaining. And when they come into your shop its a posse of about 6-8 to distract you while they try to steal. Then they speak romani right in front of you so you don't know what they are talking about or plotting. Romani is their own language, only they speak it so its like a secret language. I got fed up with them and flat out told them to get the fuck out of my building and never step foot on my property again. They got the message. The group near us are the romani people who originated from India. They are so inbred that a few I have seen were deformed and severely mentally handicapped.
Bottom line, if they all disappeared tomorrow they wouldn't be missed by a single person.
Most cameras are low resolution and are often placed up high to prevent vandalism/theft and provide a wider field of view. They very often fail to capture enough detail to make a positive ID on the suspect.
I helped a guy in our neighborhood install a 7 camera CCTV system complete with DVR. He converted his house to a three family and was having problems with one of the tenants boyfriends. After a dispute with the tenant he woke up the following day to find the windows on his car broken out on the street side. I helped him pull up the video and then save it to a thumb drive. The problem was the camera was not clear enough to capture the persons face who smashed the windows. Plus he hid his face with a hood and sunglasses and a bandanna. He knew it was the boyfriend but the video was inconclusive, no positive ID could be made. So in that case the cameras did not help. BUT a few weeks later he did capture the tenants daughter and two friends assaulting his wife. Only one problem, the assault happened on the street only 30 feet from the cameras but the low camera resolution combined with the video compression made it impossible to see the two friends faces. The daughter was caught because she walked into the house where her face was clearly visible on the camera (dumb ass). She was arrested but the other two got away because the cameras did not capture their faces and the daughter kept quiet. He had problems and had to move out of the house and left the camera system running. The DVR died on him and during that time someone ripped down and stole four of the cameras (how I don't know. I had them 15 feet off the ground). Only the two indoor cameras were left behind. Frustrated, he never had them replaced and to this day the wires still hang off the front of the house.
So whats the lesson here? They do work in some situations but most of the time the video is too blurry to do much of anything. If the suspect covers his face the dam things are useless. Only stupid spur of the moment fights or perhaps a desperate mugger that isn't thinking strait gets caught robbing someone. CCTV can be a deterrent, but lets not fool ourselves into thinking it can solve every crime caught on tape.
It has to do with market share, PERIOD. Remember id has been purchased by ZeniMax Studios to enable id to get more capital for a bigger and better dev team. Maybe ZeniMax doesn't like the idea of time and money spent on a Linux port. Maybe Carmack has lost interest in the Linux platform. If he did loose interest, it would primarily be because he wants to focus on technology and making a great game, not ideals.
You have to understand that OpenGL vs. Direct 3D isn't the only obstacle in the way. You have to also consider sound, input, networking GUI and other libraries that enable the game to tie into the OS. There are open alternatives like SDL and fmod/OpenAL for sound but they typically lack the popularity of their DirectX counterparts.
id might be using DX10 or extensively using the other DirectX API's, I don't know. But its not as simple as porting OpenGL code.
You are 100% correct. Its just like the Abner Louima case here in New York City, cops just dont violate people for fun. Not saying that the cops are justified in their actions but some people can only take so much verbal abuse.
That customer must have been a total piece of shit prick and probably even deserved the beating he took. I have dealt with plenty of snobby, nasty, pricks that deserve to be shot in the head and left to rot in the sun. But you just have to keep your cool, and get the job done as fast as possible to get away from these people.
I do feel a bit bad for the tech, who knows what type of verbal abuse he had to put up with. I can imagine he has had plenty of it before and that day was his breaking point.
Not every game needs to be bleeding edge to attract players. There are plenty of simple casual games that have a much larger market than the "core" gamer market that will run perfectly fine on a netbook (or what ever the hell they are calling them now). The idea is to focus on game play and mechanics rather than eye candy.
I like how the Google chrome logo looks like one of those ominous all seeing eyes of a HAL or Skynet like computer. If any company has the potential to create a skynet, its Google. All hail CHROME!
There are two problems I see with creating and remembering passwords. First off many people simply do not understand the threat of weak passwords and blissfully use the name of their children or pets as a password. Second, people do not understand how to effectively create and remember strong passwords. I honestly believe that there should be a password or network security seminar that each person/employee should attend at their place of work. It doesn't have to be long, just enough time to explain why passwords are important to network security and how to create strong passwords. Hand out a simple sheet with examples or strong and weak passwords and suggestions on how to create strong passwords while avoiding weak ones. Also explain that passwords and log-in credentials are highly sensitive and should be considered personal information just like credit card and social security numbers. They should never be divulged to anyone but trusted IT staff. Explain the dangers of writing down passwords on random pieces of paper or post-it notes. And if it is necessary to write them down, put the paper in a secure, LOCKED place. I bet you could make the seminar only ten to fifteen minutes long and still get the point across. Bottom line is if you are trusting people with your data, why should they remain ignorant of the importance of the passwords used to access and protect that data?
Another problem I see with passwords if the sheer number of them that need to be created for users personal accounts. Banking, social networking, blogging, forum, e-commerce and gaming sites all require users to have unique passwords for each and every one of those accounts. Off the top of my head I estimate I have over two dozen accounts each needing a separate password. All too often this leads users to re use passwords and/or use weak, easy to remember passwords. At one time I had a little notepad at home that was just for writing down user names and passwords to the various accounts I have floating around. My solution to password hell was coming up with a password formula that helped me not only create but remember my passwords. Its not easy to explain but I take data from those websites that I have an account with and apply it to a simple formula which will give me a strong password. I don't actually have to remember the password because I can use the formula and data from the site to derive the password. Its not complex but clever enough to simplify the creation and recollection of passwords.
People can be password savvy, they just need to be educated a bit.
The problem with that very few people today want to tinker with a simple computer that consists of ROM chips and a simple CPU. They are used to doing things like surfing the web, watching you tube videos and play graphically intense games. People have become desensitized to technology. When I was growing up simple computer systems like the Apple II and the PC clones were amazing. When in college and working on building simple 8086 projects it was not only nostalgic but really fun at the same time. Now try to tell a kid how cool it is to burn a ROM with a simple assembly program that read in data from dip switches and displayed the output on LEDs. It will eave them bored and unimpressed when they compare it to their quad core systems with GPU's churning out over a terraflop of single precision number crunching power to their high def screens.
Also look at electronics. It used to be a big time hobby for geeks but those were the days when it was cheaper to build it than but it. Everything was analog and components for analog systems were easily purchased and assembled. There was even a time when you built your own computer from kits or designed your own using dozens of TTL chips, a CPU, ROM chips and a few Kb of RAM chips. Today it is impossible to hand build a motherboard for a modern CPU and support logic. Pin count is in the hundreds for simple support chips and CPUs plus their support logic have over a thousand needing tight tolerances for trace length and line impedance to handle the gigahertz signals flowing through them. Plus add to that the fact that small SMT, QFP and BGA chip packages makes soldering a near impossible task.
And how many of these new LCD TV's, home theater systems and Bluray players are serviceable? Many of the electronic gadgets sold today are full of ASICS soldered to large motherboards full of QFP and BGA chips. Remember when TV's were easily serviceable? Picture messed up? Just try and tweak the pots to compensate for component drift or replace a bad transistor or capacitor. Gone are those days. Servicing them consists of determining what board is defective and replacing it. Its mostly throw away stuff now. Just try and order a schematic for that new LCD TV or Bluray player. What about the numerous electronic repair shops that existed? 15 years ago I could have counted the number on two hands that were within walking distance. Now there are none. Some tried to adapt by also adding computer servicing but they eventually failed. Why? Simple, big box retailers (Best Buy etc.) and computer makers (Dell, Gateway etc.) offer in-house/on-site repair or replacement for most items. Most of the time they just give you a new one and be done with it. The broken ones are shipped back to the manufacturer and repaired or junked and then sold as refurbished for a discount.
The electronics hobbyist died a long time ago. Sure there are still people practicing but the number of young people and children interested is dwindling. Schools by me that used to teach electronics and engineering have dropped the courses because there is little interest, funding and teachers to teach it. By me there is a lone electronics shop still in business. Every time I go in there its like walking back in time 20+ years. You still see components in packaging from the 80's covered in a film of dust. The owner still writes receipts on the old mechanical receipt machine that spits out the carbon copy when he pulls a lever. Its an old building and he have been there for over 30 years, its amazing he is still there.
Here is some food for thought: I learned about electric motors and generators back in my shop classes including winding and servicing. How many people today could even construct the most basic and necessary electric component of them all: a generator?
Exactly! That and the fact that most game developers are in fact, white males. Sure there are Asian/Black/Hispanic developers but they tend to be in the minority (especially the latter of the two). If there were more non white developers or studios founded by non white people then we would see more diversity in games. Look at how Portal featured what looks like a non white (Hispanic?) female character, the project lead was Kim Swift, a girl.
Also another problem is too many times non whites are stereo typed. Blacks don't have to jive talk or sound like they are from the projects. Hispanic characters don't have to sound like they just came off the boat. And Asians are no where to be found most of the time in western developed games. Maybe I don't play enough games but this is how I perceive the industry.
I should have worded that last sentence better. It should have read "Does anyone know off the top of their head the name of a PVC pipe manufacturer?"
You will have a good percentage of the general populace that knows Sony = Play Station and Microsoft = Xbox. I bet that the only people who know of PVC pipe manufactures are plumbers and their suppliers. And I bet that a good percentage of plumbers never even bother to look at who makes the PVC pipe they are installing.
You don't have to lay them on extendable flat beds or standard low boys. Wind towers are very strong and can support themselves. Many times a wind tower trailer is nothing more then a goose neck and dolly designed to utilize the tower section as the trailer. Only air, hydraulic and electric lines are ran through the tower section for control. With this setup you can adjust the tower height so you can get it a few inches from the ground if necessary or raise it up to clear obstacles. Though some parts cant work like this most of them can
Another problem in North America is nobody seems to utilize the forced hydraulic steering for the trailer axles like they do in Europe. The trailer makers there use a system of hydraulic cylinders and tie rods to steer special axles so the trailer steers into the turn along with the tractor. Some trailers can also be manually steered if necessary. Makes maneuvering a much easier job for the truck driver.
Another great fact of DC transmission is it allows for synchronized grids to be tied together. 60Hz AC power generation has to be synchronized between multiple generators and generating stations. With DC transmission you don't have to worry about synchronizing the grid ties or even grid frequency. In japan there exists both a 50Hz grid and 60Hz grid. The two are tied together via HVDC links so both grids can operate as one without worrying about frequency or voltage.
HV dc transmission can also be of mono polar design in which only one transmission line is used for one pole and the earth is used as the other. The only problem is there have been reports of plant life and possibly wildlife being affected by the huge return currents flowing through the ground.
The real benefit is you wont have to worry about cross talk or other electromagnetic interference. The short haul of the board level optical interconnects means we can have very high speed chip to chip interconnects without worrying too much about trace routing or length. And LED's are quite efficient when it comes to turning to electrical power into light. Metal wires at high frequencies develop a high resistance which has to be overcome by using more energy.
Or when its the other way around and your giving someone directions telling them to go north or west. The best navigation system I ever had was a digital compass in my rear view mirror. That's all I needed to know, my heading. That and I had a few large maps in my back seat, two smaller local maps in my glove box (Hagstrom) and a USA atlas. I navigated to Peru, Indiana to pickup some truck parts then drove to a friends house in Lakewood, Illinois to spend a few days with. All with the USA atlas, no BS Map Quest directions or GPS. I suppose I have my father (eagle scout) and the boy scouts to thank for the map reading skills.
It really is a shame that people are more and more relying on gadgets to help them with everyday tasks. It used to be if you were driving you had a compass, map, tools, extra vehicle parts like fan belts radiator hoses and fluids. Plus most vehicles were stick shift, something no one can seem to grasp anymore. Now we have cars that park themselves and tell the driver how to get to where they are going. Is this really progress?
I tried everything. Started with checking the volume, kernel revisions, and swapping every bit of hardware. The only other thing it could be is the difference in drives. If I yank the one disk that is different the system boots and the array is initialized but does not get mounted. I did not investigate any further because I did not want to play Russian roulette with my data. I do want to put together another raid array because I need allot of storage but I would rather a file system like Btrfs.
And what allot of people don't realize is if you build a RAID array and a drive fails can you replace the drive with the exact make and model? Raids work best when every disk in the array is the same model and revision. If you plan to build a 5 disk raid array you should also purchase a 6th drive to keep as a cold spare.
I built a RAID 5 array using three 500GB disks via mdadm under Linux. I assembled the array and formatted it. Within minutes of testing I was getting mail from mdadm telling me the array was degraded. I then began to test each disk for defects and lo and behold one disk was bad right from the start. I tried to RMA the disk but newegg had informed me those disks were now obsolete. Great. I was credited for the bad disk and purchased a new one that closely matched the other two. It was a nightmare as during some boots the disks went haywire and I would get a "Could not bd_claim sdaX" And it would hang for a while and I would have no array. It happend once in a rare while until it became a real problem. I kept my most precious data safely backed up on different disks I had spread around. It finally got so bad that I would have to constantly reboot the machine for up to ten times before the disks were synced up and the array worked. I purchased a 1TB disk and copied all the data off the array to it and used the 500gb disks in other systems. RAID is great for big fat storage arrays but it can become very sensitive and then one day POOF its all gone.
This is the reason OEM drives from Dell, Apple, HP etc. Cost four times what a retail drive would cost. The cost is no way associated with quality but rather consistency. Retail SATA drives are constantly changing: less/more platters, faster seek and read speeds and firmware revisions. Those costly OEM drives are the same disk every time right down to the inner workings and firmware. So if you buy an Apple 1TB disk on a sled and it takes a dump in three years you can be confident Apple will replace that drive with the EXACT same one. Its not a magical Apple disk of superior quality but a Maxtor/WD/Hitachi disk that is produced for Apple with no revision changes unless Apple orders it. Unlike retail drives which are changed at the manufactures whim.
So if you are building your own raid plan for failures and try to buy a spare for your array. I don't know disk shelf live but it will save you down the line. Also keep a USB or 1394 disk around for backups. Spread your most precious data around like pictures home movies and documents. If you have a few computers around the house keep a mirror of that data one those machines. Music, and downloaded video can be re downloaded but home movies and pictures cannot. Put all the silly stuff on the raid along with the precious stuff for access but keep backups of the good stuff!
It says in the summary that hopefully they will phase out the gas tax ($0.28) by 2020.
My concern is how will you be taxed? What if the vehicle is driven off road, will the GPS unit know for sure you didn't put those miles on regulated roads? What about heavier vehicles such as trucks, how will they be charged? What is to stop someone from altering the unit so that long 3000 mile road trip they took does not show up? I realize there could be a discrepancy in the odometer and actual road tax GPS unit. But how could it b proved that the car was driven on taxable roads?
Sounds like an interesting idea, especially for trucks that have to report their mileage for the IFTA which is a pain in the ass. Now they can just drive and receive a bill instead of logging miles compiling them and figuring out which states they drove in and how many miles.
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No these are the Romani people, they look like they could be Indian and not in any way European. I haven't heard of any Irish Travelers in my area.
"Do you hate gypsies?"
YES. I live in New York City and in my area we have a few in the neighborhood. I have never been more repulsed by a group of people. They walk around trying to get money by repairing dents in cars. They leave the cans of paint, and bondo all over the sidewalk where they worked on the car. Its a belief they are the ones who dent cars in parking lots and then come by offering to fix the damage. The other great part is how the women will load up a shopping cart at the local supermarket, then walk around the store and beg for money to pay for it. If you own a store the kids come in trying to buy something for pennies on the dollar. I caught one trying to steal while another distracted me with his constant fast talking bargaining. And when they come into your shop its a posse of about 6-8 to distract you while they try to steal. Then they speak romani right in front of you so you don't know what they are talking about or plotting. Romani is their own language, only they speak it so its like a secret language. I got fed up with them and flat out told them to get the fuck out of my building and never step foot on my property again. They got the message. The group near us are the romani people who originated from India. They are so inbred that a few I have seen were deformed and severely mentally handicapped.
Bottom line, if they all disappeared tomorrow they wouldn't be missed by a single person.
How about this:
Most cameras are low resolution and are often placed up high to prevent vandalism/theft and provide a wider field of view. They very often fail to capture enough detail to make a positive ID on the suspect.
I helped a guy in our neighborhood install a 7 camera CCTV system complete with DVR. He converted his house to a three family and was having problems with one of the tenants boyfriends. After a dispute with the tenant he woke up the following day to find the windows on his car broken out on the street side. I helped him pull up the video and then save it to a thumb drive. The problem was the camera was not clear enough to capture the persons face who smashed the windows. Plus he hid his face with a hood and sunglasses and a bandanna. He knew it was the boyfriend but the video was inconclusive, no positive ID could be made. So in that case the cameras did not help. BUT a few weeks later he did capture the tenants daughter and two friends assaulting his wife. Only one problem, the assault happened on the street only 30 feet from the cameras but the low camera resolution combined with the video compression made it impossible to see the two friends faces. The daughter was caught because she walked into the house where her face was clearly visible on the camera (dumb ass). She was arrested but the other two got away because the cameras did not capture their faces and the daughter kept quiet. He had problems and had to move out of the house and left the camera system running. The DVR died on him and during that time someone ripped down and stole four of the cameras (how I don't know. I had them 15 feet off the ground). Only the two indoor cameras were left behind. Frustrated, he never had them replaced and to this day the wires still hang off the front of the house.
So whats the lesson here? They do work in some situations but most of the time the video is too blurry to do much of anything. If the suspect covers his face the dam things are useless. Only stupid spur of the moment fights or perhaps a desperate mugger that isn't thinking strait gets caught robbing someone. CCTV can be a deterrent, but lets not fool ourselves into thinking it can solve every crime caught on tape.
It has to do with market share, PERIOD. Remember id has been purchased by ZeniMax Studios to enable id to get more capital for a bigger and better dev team. Maybe ZeniMax doesn't like the idea of time and money spent on a Linux port. Maybe Carmack has lost interest in the Linux platform. If he did loose interest, it would primarily be because he wants to focus on technology and making a great game, not ideals.
You have to understand that OpenGL vs. Direct 3D isn't the only obstacle in the way. You have to also consider sound, input, networking GUI and other libraries that enable the game to tie into the OS. There are open alternatives like SDL and fmod/OpenAL for sound but they typically lack the popularity of their DirectX counterparts.
id might be using DX10 or extensively using the other DirectX API's, I don't know. But its not as simple as porting OpenGL code.
How bout:
Standard web browser that can have more than one page open at a time
minimize the web browser to watch a movie or do whatever
Most web enabled phones cant do any of that.
You are 100% correct. Its just like the Abner Louima case here in New York City, cops just dont violate people for fun. Not saying that the cops are justified in their actions but some people can only take so much verbal abuse.
That customer must have been a total piece of shit prick and probably even deserved the beating he took. I have dealt with plenty of snobby, nasty, pricks that deserve to be shot in the head and left to rot in the sun. But you just have to keep your cool, and get the job done as fast as possible to get away from these people.
I do feel a bit bad for the tech, who knows what type of verbal abuse he had to put up with. I can imagine he has had plenty of it before and that day was his breaking point.
Not every game needs to be bleeding edge to attract players. There are plenty of simple casual games that have a much larger market than the "core" gamer market that will run perfectly fine on a netbook (or what ever the hell they are calling them now). The idea is to focus on game play and mechanics rather than eye candy.
I like how the Google chrome logo looks like one of those ominous all seeing eyes of a HAL or Skynet like computer. If any company has the potential to create a skynet, its Google. All hail CHROME!
There are two problems I see with creating and remembering passwords. First off many people simply do not understand the threat of weak passwords and blissfully use the name of their children or pets as a password. Second, people do not understand how to effectively create and remember strong passwords. I honestly believe that there should be a password or network security seminar that each person/employee should attend at their place of work. It doesn't have to be long, just enough time to explain why passwords are important to network security and how to create strong passwords. Hand out a simple sheet with examples or strong and weak passwords and suggestions on how to create strong passwords while avoiding weak ones. Also explain that passwords and log-in credentials are highly sensitive and should be considered personal information just like credit card and social security numbers. They should never be divulged to anyone but trusted IT staff. Explain the dangers of writing down passwords on random pieces of paper or post-it notes. And if it is necessary to write them down, put the paper in a secure, LOCKED place. I bet you could make the seminar only ten to fifteen minutes long and still get the point across. Bottom line is if you are trusting people with your data, why should they remain ignorant of the importance of the passwords used to access and protect that data?
Another problem I see with passwords if the sheer number of them that need to be created for users personal accounts. Banking, social networking, blogging, forum, e-commerce and gaming sites all require users to have unique passwords for each and every one of those accounts. Off the top of my head I estimate I have over two dozen accounts each needing a separate password. All too often this leads users to re use passwords and/or use weak, easy to remember passwords. At one time I had a little notepad at home that was just for writing down user names and passwords to the various accounts I have floating around. My solution to password hell was coming up with a password formula that helped me not only create but remember my passwords. Its not easy to explain but I take data from those websites that I have an account with and apply it to a simple formula which will give me a strong password. I don't actually have to remember the password because I can use the formula and data from the site to derive the password. Its not complex but clever enough to simplify the creation and recollection of passwords.
People can be password savvy, they just need to be educated a bit.
The problem with that very few people today want to tinker with a simple computer that consists of ROM chips and a simple CPU. They are used to doing things like surfing the web, watching you tube videos and play graphically intense games. People have become desensitized to technology. When I was growing up simple computer systems like the Apple II and the PC clones were amazing. When in college and working on building simple 8086 projects it was not only nostalgic but really fun at the same time. Now try to tell a kid how cool it is to burn a ROM with a simple assembly program that read in data from dip switches and displayed the output on LEDs. It will eave them bored and unimpressed when they compare it to their quad core systems with GPU's churning out over a terraflop of single precision number crunching power to their high def screens.
Also look at electronics. It used to be a big time hobby for geeks but those were the days when it was cheaper to build it than but it. Everything was analog and components for analog systems were easily purchased and assembled. There was even a time when you built your own computer from kits or designed your own using dozens of TTL chips, a CPU, ROM chips and a few Kb of RAM chips. Today it is impossible to hand build a motherboard for a modern CPU and support logic. Pin count is in the hundreds for simple support chips and CPUs plus their support logic have over a thousand needing tight tolerances for trace length and line impedance to handle the gigahertz signals flowing through them. Plus add to that the fact that small SMT, QFP and BGA chip packages makes soldering a near impossible task.
And how many of these new LCD TV's, home theater systems and Bluray players are serviceable? Many of the electronic gadgets sold today are full of ASICS soldered to large motherboards full of QFP and BGA chips. Remember when TV's were easily serviceable? Picture messed up? Just try and tweak the pots to compensate for component drift or replace a bad transistor or capacitor. Gone are those days. Servicing them consists of determining what board is defective and replacing it. Its mostly throw away stuff now. Just try and order a schematic for that new LCD TV or Bluray player. What about the numerous electronic repair shops that existed? 15 years ago I could have counted the number on two hands that were within walking distance. Now there are none. Some tried to adapt by also adding computer servicing but they eventually failed. Why? Simple, big box retailers (Best Buy etc.) and computer makers (Dell, Gateway etc.) offer in-house/on-site repair or replacement for most items. Most of the time they just give you a new one and be done with it. The broken ones are shipped back to the manufacturer and repaired or junked and then sold as refurbished for a discount.
The electronics hobbyist died a long time ago. Sure there are still people practicing but the number of young people and children interested is dwindling. Schools by me that used to teach electronics and engineering have dropped the courses because there is little interest, funding and teachers to teach it. By me there is a lone electronics shop still in business. Every time I go in there its like walking back in time 20+ years. You still see components in packaging from the 80's covered in a film of dust. The owner still writes receipts on the old mechanical receipt machine that spits out the carbon copy when he pulls a lever. Its an old building and he have been there for over 30 years, its amazing he is still there.
Here is some food for thought: I learned about electric motors and generators back in my shop classes including winding and servicing. How many people today could even construct the most basic and necessary electric component of them all: a generator?
"And what do you propose to do with all those corporate lawyers"
Target practice.
NO.
I had to read the title three times before that buzz word filled mess made any sense. There should be a law against buzz words.
"write what you know."
Exactly! That and the fact that most game developers are in fact, white males. Sure there are Asian/Black/Hispanic developers but they tend to be in the minority (especially the latter of the two). If there were more non white developers or studios founded by non white people then we would see more diversity in games. Look at how Portal featured what looks like a non white (Hispanic?) female character, the project lead was Kim Swift, a girl.
Also another problem is too many times non whites are stereo typed. Blacks don't have to jive talk or sound like they are from the projects. Hispanic characters don't have to sound like they just came off the boat. And Asians are no where to be found most of the time in western developed games. Maybe I don't play enough games but this is how I perceive the industry.
Security? I thought their annoying popup windows for allow/deny stuff was cracked within a matter of weeks after release?
I should have worded that last sentence better. It should have read "Does anyone know off the top of their head the name of a PVC pipe manufacturer?"
You will have a good percentage of the general populace that knows Sony = Play Station and Microsoft = Xbox. I bet that the only people who know of PVC pipe manufactures are plumbers and their suppliers. And I bet that a good percentage of plumbers never even bother to look at who makes the PVC pipe they are installing.
Maybe its because they have a bigger profile and more money. Does anyone even know the name of a company that produces PVC pipe?
You don't have to lay them on extendable flat beds or standard low boys. Wind towers are very strong and can support themselves. Many times a wind tower trailer is nothing more then a goose neck and dolly designed to utilize the tower section as the trailer. Only air, hydraulic and electric lines are ran through the tower section for control. With this setup you can adjust the tower height so you can get it a few inches from the ground if necessary or raise it up to clear obstacles. Though some parts cant work like this most of them can
Another problem in North America is nobody seems to utilize the forced hydraulic steering for the trailer axles like they do in Europe. The trailer makers there use a system of hydraulic cylinders and tie rods to steer special axles so the trailer steers into the turn along with the tractor. Some trailers can also be manually steered if necessary. Makes maneuvering a much easier job for the truck driver.
I don't know about natural lakes but man made ponds have been used for just that purpose.
Another great fact of DC transmission is it allows for synchronized grids to be tied together. 60Hz AC power generation has to be synchronized between multiple generators and generating stations. With DC transmission you don't have to worry about synchronizing the grid ties or even grid frequency. In japan there exists both a 50Hz grid and 60Hz grid. The two are tied together via HVDC links so both grids can operate as one without worrying about frequency or voltage.
HV dc transmission can also be of mono polar design in which only one transmission line is used for one pole and the earth is used as the other. The only problem is there have been reports of plant life and possibly wildlife being affected by the huge return currents flowing through the ground.
The real benefit is you wont have to worry about cross talk or other electromagnetic interference. The short haul of the board level optical interconnects means we can have very high speed chip to chip interconnects without worrying too much about trace routing or length. And LED's are quite efficient when it comes to turning to electrical power into light. Metal wires at high frequencies develop a high resistance which has to be overcome by using more energy.
Or when its the other way around and your giving someone directions telling them to go north or west. The best navigation system I ever had was a digital compass in my rear view mirror. That's all I needed to know, my heading. That and I had a few large maps in my back seat, two smaller local maps in my glove box (Hagstrom) and a USA atlas. I navigated to Peru, Indiana to pickup some truck parts then drove to a friends house in Lakewood, Illinois to spend a few days with. All with the USA atlas, no BS Map Quest directions or GPS. I suppose I have my father (eagle scout) and the boy scouts to thank for the map reading skills.
It really is a shame that people are more and more relying on gadgets to help them with everyday tasks. It used to be if you were driving you had a compass, map, tools, extra vehicle parts like fan belts radiator hoses and fluids. Plus most vehicles were stick shift, something no one can seem to grasp anymore. Now we have cars that park themselves and tell the driver how to get to where they are going. Is this really progress?
AO? Anal Orifice?
Thanks for the kind reply.
I tried everything. Started with checking the volume, kernel revisions, and swapping every bit of hardware. The only other thing it could be is the difference in drives. If I yank the one disk that is different the system boots and the array is initialized but does not get mounted. I did not investigate any further because I did not want to play Russian roulette with my data. I do want to put together another raid array because I need allot of storage but I would rather a file system like Btrfs.
And what allot of people don't realize is if you build a RAID array and a drive fails can you replace the drive with the exact make and model? Raids work best when every disk in the array is the same model and revision. If you plan to build a 5 disk raid array you should also purchase a 6th drive to keep as a cold spare.
I built a RAID 5 array using three 500GB disks via mdadm under Linux. I assembled the array and formatted it. Within minutes of testing I was getting mail from mdadm telling me the array was degraded. I then began to test each disk for defects and lo and behold one disk was bad right from the start. I tried to RMA the disk but newegg had informed me those disks were now obsolete. Great. I was credited for the bad disk and purchased a new one that closely matched the other two. It was a nightmare as during some boots the disks went haywire and I would get a "Could not bd_claim sdaX" And it would hang for a while and I would have no array. It happend once in a rare while until it became a real problem. I kept my most precious data safely backed up on different disks I had spread around. It finally got so bad that I would have to constantly reboot the machine for up to ten times before the disks were synced up and the array worked. I purchased a 1TB disk and copied all the data off the array to it and used the 500gb disks in other systems. RAID is great for big fat storage arrays but it can become very sensitive and then one day POOF its all gone.
This is the reason OEM drives from Dell, Apple, HP etc. Cost four times what a retail drive would cost. The cost is no way associated with quality but rather consistency. Retail SATA drives are constantly changing: less/more platters, faster seek and read speeds and firmware revisions. Those costly OEM drives are the same disk every time right down to the inner workings and firmware. So if you buy an Apple 1TB disk on a sled and it takes a dump in three years you can be confident Apple will replace that drive with the EXACT same one. Its not a magical Apple disk of superior quality but a Maxtor/WD/Hitachi disk that is produced for Apple with no revision changes unless Apple orders it. Unlike retail drives which are changed at the manufactures whim.
So if you are building your own raid plan for failures and try to buy a spare for your array. I don't know disk shelf live but it will save you down the line. Also keep a USB or 1394 disk around for backups. Spread your most precious data around like pictures home movies and documents. If you have a few computers around the house keep a mirror of that data one those machines. Music, and downloaded video can be re downloaded but home movies and pictures cannot. Put all the silly stuff on the raid along with the precious stuff for access but keep backups of the good stuff!
It says in the summary that hopefully they will phase out the gas tax ($0.28) by 2020.
My concern is how will you be taxed? What if the vehicle is driven off road, will the GPS unit know for sure you didn't put those miles on regulated roads? What about heavier vehicles such as trucks, how will they be charged? What is to stop someone from altering the unit so that long 3000 mile road trip they took does not show up? I realize there could be a discrepancy in the odometer and actual road tax GPS unit. But how could it b proved that the car was driven on taxable roads?
Sounds like an interesting idea, especially for trucks that have to report their mileage for the IFTA which is a pain in the ass. Now they can just drive and receive a bill instead of logging miles compiling them and figuring out which states they drove in and how many miles.