I had a former co-worker a few years back that was looking for a new job. I found the perfect job for him and sent it to him via facebook.

      Facebook gave me the ability to find his contact information via the town he was living in, his name, his profile picture, and some mutual friends. I was then able to start a conversation with him and have a few messages back and forth. Neither of us wanted the relationship to move beyond a few polite messages, and I probably would not have gone to the inconvenience of paying a dollar through facebook just to give him a job link that he may not have been interested in.

      Facebook provides a convenient way for me to communicate with friends, family, and strangers spread across North America. As soon as this service becomes less convenient due to fees or advertising, I imagine that we will all migrate over to the next big thing. I had hoped that G+ was it, but apparently isn't.

To make the maths easier, lets assume you can improve your efficiency by 25% (that's huge) and assume you're loading it to 400 watts, (also huge) and assume you run it 8 hours a day, 5 days a week with 2 weeks off a year (running at full capacity).

That's 100 watts of savings, 2000 hours a year... 0.1kw X 2000 = 200kWh per year.

I pay about $0.10/kWh

You could save up to $20/year.

Reality? You'd probably see a lot less savings then that.

While I agree with the last two sentences, it's worth noting two points which undercut your first two sentences rather dramatically:

(1) Taking BSD-licensed code and making a proprietary fork doesn't make the previous release magically go away; it makes a new fork. If I love the open source editor FooEdit and FooEdit has a vibrant community around it, then somebody else comes along and starts selling BarEdit based on their proprietary, closed source fork, I can either choose to switch to BarEdit and accept the risks, or keep using FooEdit. (And arguably that's not a binary proposition in the first place: I can switch to BarEdit and then switch back to FooEdit.) The worst case hypothetical is that somehow BarEdit's creation kills the FooEdit community, but in reality that seems very unlikely; in practice, I can't think of a single BSD-licensed project that this has happened to. Can you? Yes, it's possible that in my scenario BarEdit would get cool new features denied to FooEdit users, but if you're deliberately choosing your software based on its "openness" then you've already decided to forgo cool features that are only in proprietary software. Furthermore, you can hardly point to BarEdit and say, "those cool BarEdit-only features would be in FooEdit if only it had been under the GPL"; the more likely case is that BarEdit would simply never have existed.

(2) While the anonymous coward who responded with "ROFL" was perhaps unduly acerbic, his point is correct: an end user who can't debug and patch code is dependent on the developers to fix bugs regardless of the license the software she's using is under. As much as people don't like to hear this around these parts, I know an awful lot of end users who look for free software because it's free as in beer.

Don't worry. Every civilization comes and goes. Ours is not very sustainable. Soon the natural selection will be restored. Lets hope it won't take too long, so some of our race will survive the upcoming 'selection'.

Myself, I'm a newb radio technician, so I know where you're coming from.

What you want is a "Yagi" antenna. Very directional and therefore, longer range.

Search for "Cantenna"

Also try: http://www.skyscan.ca/Antennas.htm

I had previously found a website that had a good modeling program to show you the lobe of radiated power, but don't have time this morning to find it again.

I'm also not sure what frequency you want to build it for. Some sites say 700mhz, some 1800mhz.

Hopefully someone with more radio know-how can add to the discussion. If you're near south-east BC, bring it by and we'll test the antenna on my (absurdly expensive) service monitor. I'm wanting to build a long range wifi net connecting to several buddies in town, so I'll be watching and hoping for some insightful help on this thread.

There are times when I have to endure the company of appallingly stupid people, but they all involve either getting paid or public transportation. Slashdot is neither of these, and I am fucking done. When I find myself missing the expert guidance of CmdrTaco, it is well past time to move on.

I think it must be some multiple of a quatloo.

Like a lot of people, I had incredibly shitty math teachers in school who managed to completely turn me off to the subject. Later in life, once I learned what mathematics is actually good for -- which is nearly everything -- I sat down with cheap used textbooks and Schaum's guides and started with algebra and worked through calculus, and then branched out into advanced mathematics. Right now, I'm teaching myself group theory. It is a bit harder to do it on your own without someone to answer questions when you get stuck, but I'm not sure that's actually a disadvantage in the long run: the concept you struggle to understand is remembered better than the one that is handed to you.

So now there are online courses. The difference between a MOOC and a book is what, besides lower information content?

Poor union workers are a sign of a manager without the balls to do his job properly!

My union contract (IBEW) has a lot of room to get yourself fired. Right now the big item is personal cell phone use. If I am caught using my personal cell phone at work, I can be fired. Simple as that. The union has even told us flat out that it cannot defend us if we break the corporate policy.

Useless middle managers who won't do their job are the problem. If a manager won't make the workers under him do their job, how is it the fault of the union?

And that is why instead of Google Drive, I'm looking for an alternative that encrypts my family photo's rather than analyzes them.

I don't THINK I have anything illegal in my photo drive, but you never know what may be spotted by a robot looking through my thousands of photos.

Gimme a break. Unions are the only thing that defends the middle class from the rich shareholders that demand ever increasing dividends.

Should have called it "Sauronsaur".

Yeah so... I'm never going to buy anything that has a digital lock as now I can pirate for my personal use and not be worried about a ridiculous fine.

Worst case Ontario they come after me for (up to) $5000, I go to court and represent myself wasting as much of their time as I can asking dumb questions and I have sell my truck to pay for the fine.

It's worth the risk... but I'm not a lawyer so this should be a good laugh...

The railway industry agrees.

Don't get me started on trains and time zones!

I'm employed by a railway, and have to accommodate 2 time zones every day. The town is located in the mountain time zone and so uses MT. The trains however come from the west in Pacific Time, head north to the main line, then go back west to the coast. In order to keep it simple, they just run Pacific Time.

I leave for work using the clock on the stove. I leave at about 6:50 AM and arrive for work at 6:00 AM. At the end of the day, I leave work at 3:00 PM and get home at about 4:10 PM.

Just today we had a safety meeting that was scheduled in a conference room at a local hotel. Invites were sent out using "Town Time", but this wasn't stated in the email. Everyone in my department showed up an hour late. One of the old guys was vocal... that was awesome.

Since I have had this job, I have become a time change HATER. I like the DST right now because the sun is just coming up when I am starting my day of work, but I hate the change. It just makes my life more complicated than it needs to be.