zigbee???

Right, mostly because they live in contries with rather incompetent government. But once you get correspondence going the chances improve because now there can be some mentoring.

The best sort of mentoring is what some volunteer IEEE members do in South America. There, lots of people die from lung diseases because they read using kerosine lamps at night. So they install a few solar-battery-LED thingamagics in the first 2-3 huts while some of the more clever villagers look at how the work is done. Then, they hand the toolbox and the materials for the next dozen huts to the villagers.

For small projects of great complexity:

Else just order a roll, they come in sizes where you need a 30-ton faltbed trailer. Technically that's all one sheet :-)

So there, what? That used HP server I ponted to in this thread has a single 325 watt supply, and dual 3 GHz processors.

Because it's designed as cheap, disposable consumer grade crap. Whine all you want, but you have a toy.

Obviously it won't even remotely rival my server box in terms of power efficiency, else they'd never put a 325W supply in there.

A toy that works quietly (unlike most rack server modules) and so far without failing. You don't need a 5-ton truck to go to the grocery store :-)

and

Certainly government is at the root of the problem.

But without food and clean water, reading is a luxury.

Cool! There are some folks who actually do this academically! Sheesh! And I thought the Department of Alchemy was a boondoggle...

Better yet, a mobius strip... (you never know when you've reached the "end of page")

On a more serious note, I *do* find that adage to be very poignant. It seems like modules/functions/routines that get much bigger quickly become less productive to develop/maintain. I noticed that I have changed my coding style over the years to conserve vertical space for exactly this reason. :<

Of course, coming up with design approaches that have just that right level of decomposition is the trick! Too "fine" and it becomes *equally* complex! :<

Oh, they do have that. Even cerveza, or probably chicha (in Quechua). Those people have lived there and farmed that sparse and rough terrain for hundreds of year, but now they want to afford their kids some education (or maybe have to). They really eke out a meager living, far from what we are used to. The son of a couple from our church was down there on a long term technical mission, building stuff etc. He said the utmost in delicatessen when there is a really important feast was cooked chicken feet. He really had to get used to some things there.

It's just that there is no electricity within whole swaths of countryside. Not one lone powerline crossing the mountain ranges. So those smoke-belching lanterns are their only affordable option.

and

need.

By your sick logic, you and your wife should be using an original five slot IBM PC with 64 kB of RAM and a cassette drive instead of multiple computers. After all, it only had a 63 Watt power supply since it draws less than what you're using now.

You do, if you have a big enough load. Either buying, or selling. Try supplying a restaurant with a bicycle.

and

need.

Nothing sick about my logic. You need to remember that time has progressed. A li'l box can nowadays do a lot more than you think. Case in point is my Samsung NC-10 computer. It runs a whopping eight (!) hours on a 11.1V 4.4Ah LiIon battery. Word processing, Internet, database, spreadsheets, schematic design.

And most of the time I even have the WLAN on which consumes significant power.

I continually juggle 3-4 designs/debugs for clients, concurrently. Not a problem at all.

You can do those jobs with it, but it's still limited in function. You claim that a server will use more than the rated power. This computer has a 250 Watt power supply. It is on 24/7 which would be 186 kWh if it used the full 250 watts at all times. That would only be $21.38 a month which is less than half of the costs for broadband internet.

You blow a hell of a lot more on your poll and beer. Computers is one of my hobbies, so it's really none of your business.

Changing topics midstream, because you have no valid argument. How much power does each of your computers use? Each printer? We already know that you use more electricity than I do.

I never claimed it used above rated power, just gave an example of a server (since you said you didn't have yours yet).

Computers are part of my business. Always have been. But certainly not my hobby.

No, it's you snipping so much that you don't know what I was answering to. I meant that this little server does 100% of the stuff I want from it in my business. No more and no less.

Desktop 50-60W, on heavy Spice sims more. The monitor is a hog at around

Read it again. I said we run pool pumps. Have to, because the pool was here when we bought the house. Then perimeter lighting etc. You need to compare apples to apples here.

I had already posted links to several servers that used 325 watts, or close to that.

It was my business, too, till the VA decided that I am not allowed to work anymore.

I snipped it after you changed the subject, since it was no longer relevant.

It's not a server . It's a NAS.

I generally have one computer on, one monitor, the cable modem and the router. My Wattmeter is buried in a pile of things stuffed into a small storeroom out in the shop with most of my other test equipment till the rest of the roof is repaired.

No, you could drain the pool and not use it. You could fill in the hole, to give the dogs more room to play. It's your choice to have a pool, just like it's mine to consolidate my driver collection to a server, and use it to learn the software needed to run a server. It is a tool that you choose not to learn how to use. I don't plan to stop learning, till I'm dead.

You haven't been up here. It would cost a huge amount of money to get this much dirt up there. Realistically only by bucket and crane, costly permit to block the street way below, and so on. Plus I'd instantly destroy 10-20% of the home's market value. That would not be a very smart thing to do, no ROI to be had.

That doesn't stop you from draining it, and putting a cover over it.

Probably the same thing that happens in Florida when you leave it drained... the water table pushes it out of the ground. ...Jim Thompson

And somebody falling in an me being sued. Oh yeah ...

This pool is huge, and anything that remotely resembles a cover goes flying out here.

Yup. Although not ours, its on bedrock. Had to be blasted.

They seem to be surviving fine.

Heh. Why do you think most pools are ABOVE ground around here? That, and hurricanes. It takes too long to drain a below ground pool to prep it for a hurricane. :)