I invoke the insensitive clod clause.

Here we go off for a litre -- you can go and enjoy your 2.11338 pints of fizzy beverage (and btw, was that Imperial or US pints?). Also, discuss base 10 maths if you must, but base 16 may be more interesting and useful around here.

Also, this way we get more beer.

Yes. Here they call it Bureau en Gros, of course, but it's all very much of a muchness. My point is that whatever the sector, it turns out that there are several apparent retailers, but closer examination reveals that what's on offer is the same stuff, at nearly identical prices, and in fact has the same owners.

For that matter, many of the people here probably have (at least indirectly) small amounts of most of these companies in their 401Ks / IRAs / RRSPs / whatever.

True, but the monopoly happened in 2001 when Best Buy bought Future Shop to begin with. Since then, they've been taking advantage of a public that was given the mistaken impression that there was some competition, when in fact there was none.

So perhaps this will ultimately be good for competition, as customers pissed off with one won't cross the street and go into the other. Instead, they can go down the block to Office Depot...

Also, a big dam is a huge local environmental change, but that happens only once, and eventually wildlife and vegetation re-establish themselves in a new pattern. But thereafter, the dam keeps producing electricity for decades or centuries.

Quebec, for example, built the James Bay project (which covers an area the size of the state of New York) in the 1970s, and it continues to provide Quebec and much of New England with some of the cheapest power in the world. FWIW, Quebec has generated 99.8% of its power from renewables for decades -- the remainder comes from a few small diesel facilities to back up wind farms in remote regions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...

No, but I remember a similar one of his about hacker-types disabling all the "cops-eyes" (his term) used to monitor a public park. Everything goes to hell shortly thereafter. I still have it around here somewhere...

I think you don't understand the meaning of "Fiat". By definition, these are non-fiat currencies. Fiat currencies are those created by government decree (a.k.a. a fiat).

After about ten years of struggling with this I've settled on two 27" 1920p monitors, using broad but low +1.5 glasses that I can peer over when I glance at anything else in the room. I can actually work with the monitors without the glasses as long as Chrome is set to 125% zoom, but it's slightly more comfortable with the glasses, since I can then use the default fonts for virtually everything.

I prefer my turkey...

at about 3PM on October 12th , thank you very much!

Yes. We use PowerChute everywhere; it's a good product.

But, at least in a production system, you still should be doing regular "real" failover tests to ensure that what is supposed to happen does really happen. For example, a common problem is a sequence like:

- Power fails, UPS predicts 20 minutes of runtime;
- Servers are set to shut themselves down when 5 minutes of runtime remains;
- Fifteen minutes later, the servers start their shutdown sequences;
- The increased CPU and disk activity from the shutdown increase the power draw, causing the battery to empty and all power to be cut 90 seconds earlier than expected.

Another issue is that software added during a system's lifetime can cause a server that took 180 seconds to shut down last year to now require 240 seconds.

Either issue can mean you wind up with servers that powered off with a 90% completed shutdown.

The only way you'll discover these kinds of problems is to actually simulate a real power fail once in a while.

Don't forget to add the cost of replacing the UPS battery every year or two. Plus the time to setup and regularly test the fail-over and auto-shutdown.

FWIW I generally use a UPS on the servers and firewalls, but not on any of the clients.