Would it shock anyone to know I actually did this reboot to a malfunctioning public Wifi base station recently and it worked?

I had a client moving into a new commercial location where the local cable company (Shaw) has one of their public Wi-Fi terminals installed.

They did not have their own network connection yet (booked for a few days later) so we just joined their computer to the public network but it was horrible. The connection showed moderate to high packet loss which was strange because the base station was in the roof a few feet away. Even doing a ping test to first hop (the base station) was showing the packet loss problem. Increasing the packet size on the ping tests showed the problem was got worse as you increased the packets so anything that wanted a sustained download and not small little transactions was suffering worse effects.

So I went into the back, found the power injector for the base station and cut the power. Plugged it back in, and after the reboot it was working well. No more packet loss, and a usable connection.

Maybe Shaw needs to update the firmware on these Cisco base stations they are using.

The large brained fish decided to focus on their careers instead of settling down to raise a family.

Back when EDI (Electronic data interchange) was new it was often described as each transaction costing "similar to a long distance fax" back in the days when long distance was expensive. Was about $1.50 per transaction.

They measure the data in KC (kilo characters). Typical pricing back when it was popular was $0.50 per KC in early 90's plus many other fees. (could have been more when it first came out)

For a small company you would make a dialup connection to a VAN (Value Added Network) to submit a transaction and check for new transaction responses. Larger companies would have a permanent X25 network connection to the VAN which would have it's own monthly connection fees and data fees but was faster and near instant. There are still legacy users of these EDI VAN networks who have not shifted to the Internet versions of the EDI standards. Hopefully they renegotiated their rates at some point and didn't just let their contract auto-renew all these years.

SMS is easily the most expensive current communication on a per MB basis in common use today and it gets more expensive as providers tend to increase the rates on SMS and not lower them. $0.25 per message domestic, $0.60 per roaming message on Telus.

I was randomly selected for the SSS tag on my boarding pass. It was great. We were in Phoenix and the regular screening line was massive, at least an hour long. The "special" line had about 10 people in it. We zipped right through. Would have needed to skip lunch if we were in the regular line.

We noticed the letters on the pass too before entering the lines so I guess they have not really cared about this "issue" in the past.

I think the special screening is more of a quality control measure on the regular screening guys than it's a real boost to security.

It was possible to register the same name with a different province but the original owner would have to give you written permission first so it was less likely to occur. I can find a few examples where two different companies did get their provincial level domain and now one of them has claimed the second level domain. But it's very rare. Most of the time if another company wanted to register the domain in their province and the system told them it was unavailable they wouldn't pursue it further and try to get permission, they would just pick something else.

So yes, owning mydomain.ab.ca used to mean that the system would not allow anyone else to register mydomain.bc.ca or mydomain.ca. They used to require proof that your corporation was registered nationwide before they would let you use the second level national domain but they would reserve all variations on second and third levels of your domain name automatically. When the system switched to putting all domains at the second level then most of those provincial domain name owners got their second level name registered. They can keep the historical old one and keep paying for it or let it expire and only keep the second level version. There was no discount or extra costs for second or third level domains. They never tried to kick up the costs to register the second level domains.

Maybe the UK could handle their second level domains the same way? I mean they still get the extra money from people who decide to keep both versions but at least they are not raising the pricing.

Primary reason is the many billions of dollars of development needed to figure it all out.

There is no design for a "working commercial thorium reactors". It's all just bits and pieces of theory, and experimental reactors that only answered some of the questions.

It's a possible technology, just not an actual technology. Kind of like the guy at NASA who recently got into the news for a pen and paper proposal of how warp speed might be possible. We are still a long way from building interstellar spaceships. Just like we are long way from building a Thorium salt reactor that works and is economically viable.

Yes. Spent fuel has always been considered a long term asset by the nuclear industry. People in that industry believe that as mining the raw ore becomes more expensive and the technology for reprocessing the spent fuel becomes better it starts to become a more valuable source of future fuel.

The industry would be very different if the governments did not push the technology towards weapons production. The reactor designs we have are all old and they are designed in a way that facilitates the production of plutonium. If the research into other reactor and fuel designs that did not have as many dangerous byproducts were pursued it would be a safer industry today.

The most promising alternative is and was to use Thorium fuelled reactors instead of uranium. There is the potential for far safer reactor designs and far less hazardous waste when using that type of fuel. The USA took a relatively short look at this but then they stopped since they could not also produce weapons from these reactors and at the time it was all about the bomb. But from what I have read they will likely become a technology that becomes more interesting over time as it's capable of using depleted uranium along with the Thorium as a way to use up that spent fuel that's hanging around.

It should be obvious though there are significant challenges to getting the theory into a practical design. All those research reactor projects back in the 50's that gave engineers and scientists the knowledge to build the current reactors would need similar efforts to develop the technology for these alternative fuels and reprocessing technologies. It's starting to happen but in China and India where they have not lost their love for nuclear power yet.

Oh, you noticed they effectively doubled the price of SQL server on April 1 too?

Yeah, they went from pricing based on how many CPU's were in the server to how many cores are on those chips. But the price only remains the same if you have 4 cores in the server yet brand new machines genrally have 8 core CPU's now so it's twice the price now compared to last month for a new server. Microsoft says that the average CPU in the field has 4 CPU's but the average server is a few years old and when it is time to replace it you need to spend twice as much.

Good advice. I would suggest the outcome will depend on if the outside project is related in any way to the job you do. If it can be argued that your knowledge required to complete the project was acquired as a result of your employment or a result of training your received at work then things may not be resolved in your favour.

Hardware issue on Galaxy S. No software fix possible. Using a GPS test app you can only see a small number of satellites in most conditions. Unless you are sitting out in a wide open field on a nice day when there are no sources of interference nearby or high solar activity it will not lock on.

Even the windows in a car will attenuate the GPS signal enough to give you poor performance. Turn it off is the best advice I can give. It will only serve to lower your battery life and frustrate you.