Comment Re:What an amazing surprise! (Score 1) 181
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There is only one person to pay for everything. The end user customer.
All other 'customers' must pass through the costs as a cost of doing business, or go out of business eventually..
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There is only one person to pay for everything. The end user customer.
All other 'customers' must pass through the costs as a cost of doing business, or go out of business eventually..
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Future peripherals
Replicator
Holographic Storage (basically infinite)
Transporter
closet turned into a 'tardis holosuite' (bigger in the inside than out! Not just seeming like it is =8
Future software/hardware with enhancements
Truly secure hardware and software while being easily accessible from anywhere and obviously networked! With fast, light speed encryption/decryption.
And a 'you know what I mean' compiler, so it will do what I want and not just what I tell it to.
Reasonable robotic avatar, similar to the Robin Williams 'robot' in "Bicentennial Man"
A way to transmit 'upon death' my life program into my robotic avatar to keep family and friends from missing me.
Thanks for the license to dream...
Plumbing / main wiring via a 'utility corridor' to make maintenance easy.
Solar power with emergency generator, NiFe battery.
Both vapor barrier and air block membranes throughout, 2x the recommended insulation as well.
Prefer Monolithic Dome (monolithic.com) built to be FEMA near tornado proof (wrong term, but ultra hardy in all kinds of weather and storms).
Rainwater catchment system with option for potable water use from it.
Concrete (properly sealed) or wood hard floors.
Cool using indirect evaporative air conditioning or mini-split if refrigeration is the only way.
4 car garage/shop with heat and air separate from living space (but nice covered walk between. (half of area is 'shop')
Easy to mow with 'robot mowers' (design for it, not back into it).
Ceiling fans (we love them) throughout. Prefer similar to BigAss Fan Haiku series.
LED lighting throughout. Projection video to inside of dome surface!
Lots of outside light, directly or with solar tubes like Solatube in prescribed areas.
Home control system that is understandable and works without much 'input' from users (btw Haiku fans now do some of this themselves!)
Energy efficient appliances & windows.
Parking/driveway with permeable concrete or pavers. Allows water to soak in if not collected. Permeable concrete can also collect water if put over impermeable area.
Yes, I dream of a lot. Even more if I think about it. Most is doable. But I am starting to get of the age it isn't going to get done.
I told my kids to give away 10% (biblical yes, but I have found it helped me not to focus to much on money as the reason for life - life is for living, money is a tool, like a screwdriver or a hammer, to make life easier), save 20% (ROTH, IRA, 401K, with 1/3 tax paid, 2/3 tax deferred), save another 10% for short term savings (vacations, new car - pay cash, car insurance, house down payment, etc), live on the rest. If there is any left over, put it in short term savings. Don't take money out of IRAs or 401Ks for life expenses even as loans.
All this is very fatherly advice, but it helped once I figured it out, it helped me and my family greatly. I hope you find what is best for you and yours.
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Play by the rules, (mainly don't run out of cash), secondarily, follow laws where you are and where you market, thirdly, take care of employees AND customers.
Balance it all, and you stay in business. Don't, and you are gone.
Mandriva is gone. Why? Sounds like they ran out of cash and couldn't pay people, and follow the laws (including paying court defined costs of doing business), keep people happy, and paying customers happy to pay enough to support it all.
Point fingers anywhere you want. They are gone due to lack of cash, why? Any number of reasons, and at this point assigning blame doesn't fix the problem, Mandriva is still gone.
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Calculate your DC requirement to have bigger battery (by 20%) if running AC, vs cost of 'new' appliances and larger wire needed for the same power in DC. Whoever wins in that equation should (and in the long run will, IMHO) win.
This is true for solar panels and power from them to the battery charge circuits too. The further the DC power needs to go, the more it costs in losses of power or cost of wire.
Wind, like solar, is a temporal energy and not 'available on demand'.
I am not going to downplay them, but we need a way to power the 'grid' of power we use today and in the future. Adding supply methods, like wind and solar, are good. But we also need to invest in non-renewable energy that is reasonably clean.
To me, Thorium based nuke power is preferable to uranium/radium based. It can consume our current stockpile of waste (and plutonium). The byproducts from thorium reactions are shorter lifetime and less radioactive. Thorium is not limited to just 'rich countries' and is no worse to collect/process than uranium. It is almost impossible to generate weaponizable materials. If built right, they could be built into 'containers' and drop shipped to current/old coal power plants to provide the hot water for the same turbine generators.
The first Thorium reactor was turned off for weekends when it wasn't needed at Oak Ridge TN for years. If built correctly, it CANNOT 'melt down'.
Currently India and China, and to a minor extent Canada, are actively developing the technologies with production coming soon. The USA did the basic research and now it will probably be sold back to us for us to be a consumer rather than a producer nation.
We need to research and support ALL the directions to make inexpensive energy available. Support renewable (solar and wind), higher efficiency living (insulate, water/vapor barriers, Energy Star or better ratings, and non-uranium based nuclear engineering.
Yes, many may never go 'hard core back-pack' camping out of the reach of a cell tower, but some will. Prepare for it.
Physical education, musical education, literary, history, economic (macro and micro), political science (civics in the old days), public speaking, all should be required and add to the quality and tapestry of life.
The trick is to balance them.
and secondarily Federal Management (not allowed to raise rates or reduce schedule to live within means, so deficits ensue, paid for from the General Fund, and Congress not willing to provide more support/funds).
Poor management? OK, some of that in there too.
Mix well, bake for 100+ years of 'rail experience' in the US, and you get the current Amtrak. But then, this is just my perspective. I am sure pubic healthcare will work equally as well as Amtrak or USPS.
Yes, there have been power grabs, politics, and any other kind of thing we could guess (I only assume someone has tried to 'buy Linus off' but thankfully he and his family have been well taken care of so that wasn't a primary need.
There are other great leaders and curmudgeons in the Linux arena, but Linus is still top dog, and for one, I approve.
But to get me to program again in any language, I need to be paid enough to cover MY 'threshold of pain' involved in working for someone else.
My threshold was less when I needed to feed, clothe, and house my family. Now days, that is a LOT easier to do, so I can set my threshold where I want it to be.
My current consulting rate for a rusty programmer/sysadmin is $80/hr + expenses on a W2. That is enough to get me interested. Less than that, give GEEK SQUAD a call and see if they can help. (I do get some consulting at that rate, but mainly give away services to help local 'little old people' get their AOL account working again).
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I hated COBOL, but did enjoy maintaining code that had gone through 'automatic' PL/1 to COBOL and then back to PL/1 translations
Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU. -- Mt.