Domain: blogspot.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to blogspot.com.
Comments · 20,258
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Re:Pumped Storage and Compressed Air Storage
Thanks for these links. This is really helpful. I'm trying to collect ideas on enrgy storage at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/why-renewable
s -displace-nukes-first.html because this is crucial to converting to renewables. There is a link to a promising flywheel technology there that should be helpful for distibuted storage at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/saving-not-bor rowing.html.
The main article is talking about load shifting rather than energy storage through there is a delta T involved. A number of industries can do this and do when they get discounts. But, at the point where the renewable power sources on the grid can meet total demand at some instant in time, we are going to need a fairly robust energy storage network or else we'll need to leave a portion of the energy unused. This would be a roadblock to making renewables the dominant energy source to further displace polluting energy sources. The traditional way of doing this, using biofuels as storage, could play a big role if we think of these as supplemental rather than replacement sources of energy. I'm not sure I'm saying this clearly: Straight catchem as you can renewables can supply our total energy need while biofuels have an efficiency problem and can't, so it is better not to think of them as a replacement but rather as a useful kluge that can help around the edges. At http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/02/photosynthesis .html I sketch out the relative efficiencies of various biofuels and PV solar power.
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You can get going with solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html -
Re:Pumped Storage and Compressed Air Storage
Thanks for these links. This is really helpful. I'm trying to collect ideas on enrgy storage at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/why-renewable
s -displace-nukes-first.html because this is crucial to converting to renewables. There is a link to a promising flywheel technology there that should be helpful for distibuted storage at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/saving-not-bor rowing.html.
The main article is talking about load shifting rather than energy storage through there is a delta T involved. A number of industries can do this and do when they get discounts. But, at the point where the renewable power sources on the grid can meet total demand at some instant in time, we are going to need a fairly robust energy storage network or else we'll need to leave a portion of the energy unused. This would be a roadblock to making renewables the dominant energy source to further displace polluting energy sources. The traditional way of doing this, using biofuels as storage, could play a big role if we think of these as supplemental rather than replacement sources of energy. I'm not sure I'm saying this clearly: Straight catchem as you can renewables can supply our total energy need while biofuels have an efficiency problem and can't, so it is better not to think of them as a replacement but rather as a useful kluge that can help around the edges. At http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/02/photosynthesis .html I sketch out the relative efficiencies of various biofuels and PV solar power.
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You can get going with solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html -
Re:They just got $1 Million
Here's a link showing some data that suggests Wikipedia is not in any real trouble at all: http://dan100.blogspot.com/2007/02/wikipedia-shor
t -of-money-no.html/ -
alt fuels and systems
Very nice. However, we're still just window dressing the Titanic.
500,000 years+ worth of stored energy in oil has been used in 200 years, and will be gone in another 200. Bummer. We found it, and used it. We have 6 billion people now (and growing fast) who want energy -- lots and lots of it.
All the alternative-fuels scenarios - even in the very best case where we grow vast oceans and fields of seaweed and switchgrass and use yeasts to process cellulosic 5-carbon sugars and make ethanol -- even in these best case scenarios (which incidentally would close the carbon loop), humans are still 1-2 orders of magnitude lower in energy production compared to the current oil-fueled system. If we add to that calculation efficiency measures we get closer, lower population - closer still, conservation - still closer... but: the harsh inescapable reality humanity faces in the next 30-50 years is this: there will just not be enough energy for the growing (first-world) population.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulosic_ethanol
http://bioconversion.blogspot.com/2006/08/celunols -wet-biomass-conversion.html
We need to perfect nuclear power engineering, software, and extremely long term storage processes as soon as possible. -
Re:Dump iron dust in the ocean to feed the plankto
Making this profitable seems a little difficult at first blush, but the article mentions that fish were attracted in the second experiment. Since world fisheries are collapsing all over the place, one might consider this a form of aquaculture: build your own fishery. Some of the big harvesting ships might carry iron out, fish, deliver and repeat. This could take pressure off the natural ecosystem and give it a chance to recover. Owing to the Law of the Sea, it is very hard to come to fishing arrangements that avoid over fishing. It needs to be done at the diplomatic level usually on a species by species basis and even then enforcement is very difficult in international waters. This is sometimes called the tragedy of the commons. Perhaps a deal could be struck to allow real enforcement on fishing of non-fertilized species in exchange for economic territories in the desolate low iron zones.
Since the prize is for reducing the atmospheric CO2 concentration, the scheme mentioned at the end of the article won't work with regard to winning the prize. Any carbon credits earned would have to be retired wihout being traded.
With regard to measuring sequestration, one would want to subtract the carbon in the fish since in this case we'll breath it back out to the atmosphere, but this should be only a small fraction of the carbon flux. If anyone wants to help with the numbers, I'd be interested in forming a group to consider entering this for the prize. What do you think denis-The-menace?
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Switch to solar http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html -
I'll answer to an AC
The PEAR group consistently obtained positive results for 30 years.
Where are they. I certainly find NO POSITIVE RESULT WHATSOEVER. Care to do a citation. Peer reviewed journal would be nice.
And if you check the parapsychological literature Ha. HA. Let me guess. Not peer reviewed. Not even remotely in the science citation index. Certainly does not look like it.
As for the rest of your drivel, if you had read the ORIGINAL paper from the PEAR team and what they admit you would not be adament on "positive" result. Here is the link already psoted by another psoter :Pear is a failure in all respect of statistical analisys -
Re:Um.... we believe you...
The "Good Math, Bad Math" blog has had a few articles about PEAR.
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Re:Fine print
You can get it now. Click any of the links at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
s -selling-solar.html. Large scale fabrication brings the cost down to $1.53 per peak W. -
Re:Plant Respiration
The prize conditions do mention that the carbon has to be kept out of the atmosphere for 1000 years, so if you make a useful product, you've got to be sure that it is not useful in a way that it goes back into the atmopshere. Fuel is out, some plastics which degrade are out too. For long term storage, mineralization looks good: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/300
/ 5626/1677 though not terribly useful. Need to read whole article so this might send you to the library. It might be better to put the carbon into soil as charcoal, using the only a portion of the potential combustion energy from biofuels. Engineer-Poet has been working on this.
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Don't burn coal http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html -
Plant Respiration = Charcoal
Plant respiration is half a solution. Then you need to sequester the carbon in the plants.
I particularly like Engineer-Poet's plan as a solution for this. In particular, steps 1 (gasification) and 7 (burial of charcoal) are in themselves a solution, with 2 (electricity generation from the gas) and 8 (sequestering CO2) as good additions. By his calculations, we could make >500 million tons of charcoal, which is basically pure carbon, just in the United States. That equates to over 1.8 gigatons of CO2, so there's a good deal of leeway. The gas could also power up to half the United States with electricity, offsetting the cost of the plan.
The biggest issue I see is that charcoal is better than the highest-grade coal you can dig out of the earth. So instead of burying charcoal while digging up coal, at the moment it would just make sense to burn the charcoal. -
Re:Ok but that brings me back to the 2nd question
OK, so at present consumption we've got 100 years.... Instead of 20% we go to 100% plus transportation and heating and we've got less than 10 years, fifty with your scratch dirt reserves, it's hardly worth building the reactors. http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/why-renewable
s -displace-nukes-first.html -
Solar already is cheaper
Solar competes now with retail electric rates in all markets except those with big hydro. Check out the map on any of the links at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
s -selling-solar.html. Click on any non-white state to see rates. They'll go down to $0.07 per kWh but not lower so some potential customers in Washington are left out. Dark blue means all utilities are required to offer net metering, but not all utilities are listed in Washington. Elsewhere, solar can compete. That means it costs less than coal, oil, gas and nuclear. I'm always looking for more feedback on this article: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/why-renewables -displace-nukes-first.html. Post a comment if you think of something. -
Solar already is cheaper
Solar competes now with retail electric rates in all markets except those with big hydro. Check out the map on any of the links at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
s -selling-solar.html. Click on any non-white state to see rates. They'll go down to $0.07 per kWh but not lower so some potential customers in Washington are left out. Dark blue means all utilities are required to offer net metering, but not all utilities are listed in Washington. Elsewhere, solar can compete. That means it costs less than coal, oil, gas and nuclear. I'm always looking for more feedback on this article: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/why-renewables -displace-nukes-first.html. Post a comment if you think of something. -
Fine printYou've got to be able to make money at it. This is what commercially viable means.
Entrants must submit a commercially viable design (the "Design") to achieve the net removal of significant volumes of anthropogenic, atmospheric greenhouse gases each year for at least 10 years without countervailing harmful effects (the "Removal Target"). The removal achieved by the Design must have long term benefits (measured over say 1,000 years) and must contribute materially to the stability of the Earth's climate.
So, if you say something like you'll spend the prize on this, that is 10 billion tons at $25 million so it can only cost 0.25 cents per ton. CO2 trades at $3.55 a ton on the Chicago Climate Exchange http://www.chicagoclimatex.com/trading/stats/daily /st_070208.html so the prize is a pittance. If the method is viable, you're going to be making a billion at $0.10 per ton profit. This is the real prize and it looks to me that what is needed is some use for putting CO2 away. I suspect that engineer_poet is onto the useful stuff that can go at this kind of scale. http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/ 29/1228200
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Solar is carbon free: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html -
Re:"Rum, sodomy, and the lash"
And it wasn't about the strength of the RN, but (supposedly) in response from complaints by the Sea Lords that he was ignoring naval tradition.
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Re:Life's Short. Think Hard.
I put up a blog post on my new blogger site wading through some of the bullshit. For those who care. The site is supposed to be strictly for me to practice image manipulation, and now its soiled with psychoanalysis. Sigh. Won't anything maintain order for more than five days?
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Re:Movie deal
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Re:microgenerators
Remember that the grant givers have other concerns. If I asked you to ship off for six months nestled cozily next to a nuclear reactor a kilometer under the ocean, you'd want other reasons besides personal safety to say yes. An application in exoskeletons is mentioned in the article.
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Solar, its simply better: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html -
Whom
A preposition is awkward to end a sentence with. But, "whom" is the word "on" is followed by.
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Solar follows the rules for grammer. http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html -
microgenerators
At least one of your objections has already been covered on slashdot. http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/
2 5/1331227
This link also covers the effort reported in the present post. Your comment on the efficiency of the proposed turbine anticipates some comments here. http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=130810 &cid=10918320.
It was one of Bucky Fuller's favorite things to point out that heat management becomes easier with scale since the ratio of surface area (where heat escapes)-to-volume (where heat is stored) goes down in inverse proportion to the increase in linear dimension. This is why he felt that enclosing cities with his domes would be a good idea.
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Take the solar scale advantage: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html -
Re:Something about the numbers doesn't add up...
You've got a typo which threw me, you want 33 kWh/kg. But isn't a low efficiency to be expected? One wants a big delta T for high efficiency and that is going to be hard to achieve on small scales. However, if these are very durable, connecting them is series rather than in parallel might get you something. You might build up to a very high delta T having one feed into another. But, then you've just built a modular large turbine so there might not be any point.
Since fuel cells don't depend of delta T, small versions of these can be pretty powerful and also efficient.
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Solar, its not just for calculators any more. http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html -
Re:A progressive achievement
I agree, the motivation to conserve is to reduce environmental impact, (or to save money) but it is not a virtue in itself. I would rather not even use the word conserve. I'd much rather see a goal to eliminate the use of fossil fuels. In doing that, I'd like to create a situation where we can use as much power as we like, play with it, enjoy it, leave the lights on all night just for fun (though draw the shades cause I like to see the stars when I'm out at night). Right now we live in a scarcity driven energy economy and this is no good at all.
The potential for renewable energy to provide much more power than we use now is clearly present. The Sun provides more than enough power directly and it also drives wind. What has been lacking up until now is large scale solar and wind power fabrication capacity. This is what makes these sources cheaper than coal which has already taken its scale advantage.
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Solar: its abundant http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html -
Re:Huge arrays?
Power loss on the grid is about 7% http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_trans
m ission#Losses which is significant, but not so large that you save much if you are carting fuel to your distributed power generation system. High volatage power transmission does not have a whole lot of rolling friction. If the "fuel" is already distributed like solar or wind then you make power where you happen to be since it is really all the same. But saving on transmission losses is not a big motivator. If there is net metering, then you are competing at retail prices, and this can be an advantage for distributed power generation.
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Save money with solar http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html -
Size matters
The thing about these is that they are so small. The figures given are not all that much greater than the Li ion batteries, so in terms of applications is transportation, one does a whole lot better putting five 5 gal gas cans in your trunk for a 1400 mile range. For compact applications getting more power in a tight spot is a great advantage. If you are carrying a lot of electronics this really helps in reducing the weight. But, I'm not sure you'd want to use these to replace the two stroke in an chainsaw.
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1000 W/m^2 http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html -
Hotmail hotmail hotmail, how you trouble me!
I might take this opportunity to plug a blog I'm currently working on, trying to get Microsoft to manage their passport.net / hotmail / xbox live syncing / linking a little better.
(no, there's no ads on there)
I wouldn't say it's well written, nor would I say it's a major issue but it is an annoyance.
http://msnemailchange.blogspot.com/
To quickly summarise, Microsoft has a policy where if you have a passport.net account to log in to some of their services, you can't change your login / backend email if you opted to chose a hotmail account, quite the frustrating if you simply don't want to use hotmail anymore.
On top of that, those of us who own an Xbox 1 or Xbox 360 and use live can get frustrated that the live "gamertag" is permanently bound to a passport.net id which we may no longer want to use (be it avoiding people on MSN, sick of hotmail's email interface or simply want to use another email address)
To my knowledge several other Microsoft web "products" use these live id's / passports but how well they integrate with passport.net / liveid I don't know - I believe there's a myspace kind of clone and also Zune owners need a passport - however, don't quote me on that.
I wouldn't be surprised if there's more integration with Vista too, perhaps the messenger package installed as default, however that one is also speculation.
So just to finalize my comment, yes I realize it's my own fault using MS's products and well yeah it's not a real major issue but it's annoying and could be handled a lot better, if anyone has any information on this, specifically names within MS / Xbox divisions for me to question, I'd appreciate it.
and yes, I'm new to starting one of these ranty style pages so it's a mess, sorry all.
- Scott -
Re:Can we get a new icon?Greek for "picture". What do I win?
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Re:Coherence changed my lifeSeeing as you can get a machine equivalent to a MacBook (except for external design) from a number of manufacturers, I don't see much of a point getting a MacBook for running Windows, unless you're specifically after the case design.
I see a MacBook more as a supported platform for OS X, and getting one is comparable to getting a particular hardware configuration as a supported platform for Linux, or a PC configuration meeting Windows Vista's requirements.
--Juhana Siren--State of Security--
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Re:A Common ProblemWe have more 3rd parties in Canadian politics than the US, but they serve more to offset the balance of power and have no real chance at governing (NDP, Greens, Bloc Quebecois).
Actually NDP and libs were about neck and neck during the last election (within a few percentage points). No one really noticed because the big story was the conservatives winning. The NDPs greatest obstacle is getting the Canadian population to stop believing that the NDP will never win. They have alot of support. On top of that, because of our stupid voting system, there are ALOT of would-be NDP voters who are scared of the conservative party winning, and end up voting strategically in favour of libs. It is worth noting that all of our small useless parties are left leaning. It is also worth noting that our one big right leaning party was formed by combining two smaller right leaning parties. You can thank our voting system for this stupid states of affairs where the majority of Canadians are clearly and decisively left leaning, but we are ruled by a minority conservative government. Crappy.
I am a bit disappointed in the federal government now though..
I am more than a bit disappointed with this government. Besides hacking away at social programs, increasing taxes for the lowest bracket ( http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2006/01/06/taxes-tory 060122.html ), and refusing to speak with the media ( http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/05/24/harper05 242006.html ), the conservatives, who ran on a platform of "accountability", are already being investigated for illegal activities ( http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNew s/20061226/conservatives_donations_061226/20061226 ?hub=Canada , http://www.wernerpatels.com/musings/2007/01/conser vative_pa.html, http://bcinto.blogspot.com/2007/01/putting-con-in- conservative.html), after only a year! Not to mention the fact that Harper is a climate change denier (until about three days ago when I suppose a pollster told him the issue was important to Canadians). Plus, I think the fact that he's spending massive amounts of money for military patrols of Northern waters is a nice touch; only Americans ever trespass there -is Harper planning to shoot them? To finish, how about some nice quotes from Canada's present leader (sadly), Steve (as Bush called him):- Human rights commissions, as they are evolving, are an attack on our fundamental freedoms and the basic existence of a democratic society...
- I don't know all the facts o-n Iraq, but I think we should work closely with the Americans.
- I've always been clear, I support the traditional definition of marriage.
- In terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half, don't feel particularly bad for many of these people. They don't feel bad about it themselves, as long as they're receiving generous social assistance and unemployment insurance.
- "I was asked to speak about Canadian politics. It may not be true, but it's legendary that if you're like all Americans, you know almost nothing except for your own country. Which makes you probably knowledgeable about one more country than most Canadians
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Re:Are People The Only Ones?
There is a naive but simple experiment with email protecting on http://publiusdict.blogspot.com/
The idea is the following: on internet places where it is not allowed - or not advisable - to spell out your email address (or any other identity) leave a message of some free text, and conceal some unique keywords within a simple, innocent-looking sentence. The same keywords can be stored again at a safer part of the internet (in the "publiusdict") where they will be easily found by any good search engines.
That is a simple email address (or pseudonym, whatever you want) disctionary with associate keywords. Everyone, who were interested in your "identity" at the other place, will find it in the "publiusdict".
Some slashdotting of the dictionary will help the search engines to remember it :)
CU (or NOT!?): "berna mendulo" http://services.nexodyne.com/email/icon/6e4dIYq4aV U%3D/rmNOXlw%3D/QU9M/0/image.png" -
Re:Future Essays Leaked - get a grip
- it's a quote from fakesteve
http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/
the frigtards done given him away -
Re:Jail TimeOK. How about a fine? Let's see. It costs what, a billion dollars (a year) to cope with spam, right? Triple damages would be $3,000,000,000. Oh, and add interest. Until the fine is paid in full, the spammer and family must live in poverty equivelent to the worse poverty on Earth.
Bill Gates could afford it. But for most of us, jail starts to look pretty good.
I just hope the UK has equally tough spammer laws.
This is what i think of jail and poverty.
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Net Neutrality?
I haven't thought much about Net Neutrality until Comcast disconnected my HSI service and terminated the account because I used the internet too much. Now I'm finding people all over the country who have had similar problems including a journalist for the Deseret Spectacle.
I've found other people throughout Utah who are dealing with this problem. My search has lead me to other states with people asking the same questions I have been asking .
This is just a couple of instances where Comcast has demonstrated unfair business practices. I'm wondering if Net Neutrality would curb this sort of abuse from companies. I'm ok with following the rules (don't get me wrong). But to be expected to minimize Internet usage without knowing what the rules are is pure B.S.
Heck, I've had people on my blog accuse me of all sorts of stuff. Unfortunately, it's not even close to the truth.
If I'm misunderstanding what Net Neutrality is please enlighten me.
BTW, if you are from Utah and have been disconnected by Comcast please contact me by posting on the blog. I receive all messages. I'm compiling a list and plan on passing it along to Bill Gephart. We've been working for the last few weeks to resolve this. He's already begun interviewing people I've found. Thanks! -
Re:Great fuels
Most ethanol production in the US comes from fermenting the corn kernels, but there are new methods of breaking down cellulose http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulosic_ethanol that use the whole plant and thus could use a failed crop (ears don't form). Silage is used as an animal feed source, though a fundemental competition between food and fuel is going to push most beef out of the market pretty quickly because feedlots just won't be able to operate. Range fed cattle would continue unless arid lands were also converted to fuel production.
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Energy problems? Don't have a cow, go solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html -
Re:Great fuels
On surplus food, we actually keep that stuff around as a hedge against crop failure. The current surplus is quite low: http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Grain/inde
x .htm while demand for this as a biofuel is growing: http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2007/Update63. htm. So, while we do need energy,
our need for food seems a little more basic and setting up a competition between the two may be a big mistake.
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Solar: It's not for dinner. http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html -
Silicon is abundant
Actually, silicon, the traditional material for making solar cells is very abundant. Shortages have been in purified silicon because the solar cell industry has attempted to save on cost by taking semiconductor grade silicon scrap as its raw material. Since there is nowhere near enough pentiums produced to cover everyone's roof with them, the supply of scrap is inadequate for serious solar power production. However, refining silicon expressly for solar power fabrication eliminates this issue. Useful cell lifetimes are approching 40 years with no more than a 20% degradation after 25 years.
On the biorefinery, the limit is mainly the amount of available fuel. Serious biofuel production probably has to go through algae http://www.greenfuelonline.com/ since the surface area requirements for biofuel production are very constraining and need all the help they can get. The 15% efficiency of solar is much higher even than algae. The curent waste stream is much too small to provide a significant portion of our energy use and conservation does not help since this also implies reducing the waste stream flow rate proportionally.
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Solar: better than photosynthesis: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html -
Solar EROEI
One aspect of large scale solar fabrication is that heat management is easier. One only has to get silicon up to temperature but you don't have to keep it there with more energy in, so the 5 year figure you give is coming down dramatically. EROEI should end up near 40 on a single fabrication cycle, and potentially much higher depending on how recycling of the cells is handled during subsequent fabrication cycles. If the dopant gradiant is preserved through a cell-by-cell reannealing process to repair cosmic ray damage, then the energy requirements for recycling solar cells could be quite low compared to the initial fabrication requirements and thus boost the final EROEI over many recovery cycles. If not, one still saves on initial purification costs. Since we are considering a 40 year cycle, it is possible that silicon will be displaced by something more efficient, and it will become a nitch application, in which case determining the recycled EROEI will depend on how much silicon is retained in the energy generation sector.
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Happy days are here again: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html -
DemocracyNow!
The place where I use Ogg is at DemocracyNow! which includes this format along with realplay, cd and mp3. http://www.democracynow.org/streampage.pl. This show tends to cover problems with voting machines, corporate control of media and net neutrality that are also covered on slashdot, as well as other issues.
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One person one solar power system! http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html -
Re:That reminds me
The city of Chicago can apparantly get away with copyrighting a public space. http://newurbanist.blogspot.com/2005/01/copyright
i ng-of-public-space.html -
Debunked
Thoroughly debunked (even shows why it's bad) at http://nsona.blogspot.com/ (No Sex Offenders Need Apply).
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Re:The Gettier problem
G.'s promise of secret knowledge is a little problematic. C.S. Lewis has treated the problem of the "inner circle" as it pertains to ways to make people do things that they would not ordinarily do. Still, I get the feeling that G. is sincere in his belief that only esoteric training can communicate what he has to teach.
When Jung speaks of differentiation, I think he feels that there is some ab inito material to work with so I'm not sure the Monty Python bit gets this just right. Still, one path is through attentive work and is probably open to many for whom the Road to Damascus presents difficulties.
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Solar Enlightenment: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html -
When were you protecting me?
I appreciate that things must have sucked for you, being shouted at and running in circles for three years. (Also, being shot at, if you were deployed.) But honestly, you were "protecting" me only in the vaguest and hand-waviest of senses. (Here's a good article about what I mean.) American soldiers are, at best, fighting to protect George Bush's fragile ego and assure that his failures can be blamed on whatever grownup has to extricate us from his mess, and at worst, are simply "gangsters for capitalism", as Smedley Butler put it.
But no, I'm not going to tell you how much I admire you because you fell for the propaganda, or because you were forced into a dirty, dangerous job. Plenty of people work dirty, dangerous jobs, and yet we're not exhorted to run around thanking our timber cutters, fishers, pilots and structural steel workers. It's jingoism, it's militarism, and it carries with it some disturbing baggage, such as the recent habit of calling the President "the Commander in Chief".
I understand your sacrifice, but you didn't do it for my freedom. I'm sorry if you thought it was all for a good reason, I really am. -
Re:The Gettier problem
I've been fascinates by Ouspensky's books and surmised that "My Dinner With Andre" was an echo of G.'s teachings but I had no idea that there was so much more material. Thanks for the link.
I think James Joyce took some important steps on the problem of communicating internal experience in a way that induces close resonace with the communicator's own experience in the reader, and I also think generally that art is most able to bring about the sort of direct communication the G. was concerned with. Music performance, when it is working as intended, is certainly soul-to-soul transmission.
On the communication of ideas though I find Einstein's introduction to "The Meaning of Relativity" to cover the basics. The external (objective) world provides a field on which we may mutually tune our internal experience and arrive at pretty good certainty that our experiences are adequately interchangable. I think this actually provides an answer to Chuang Tzu's dream in that he can discuss his dream as a philosopher but not as a butterfly and that participation with us in the discussion taken associatively with our particpation with Einstein in a recheckable discussion of the objective means that he is a philosopher and we are not merely the dream of a butterfly. This tie in answers a whole class of mystical intuitions that the world is illusion. What is actually happening is that the difficulty in communication of internal experience is providing a problem that is profound enough to warrant such speculation, but systematic effort shows that communication is possible and so the speculation needs to be directed elsewhere.
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Not Really New
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Re:All time greatest...
Personally, I miss Saddam Hussein's 2003 blog at Saddam's Cyber Palace. Not a great start, but really got rolling once the war began.
I thought it was ended with his capture, but it re-appeared with "Episode II" in 2004, and I never realized until recently. Cartoons break up the flow of Ep. II entries. Found it just in time for it to be discontinued again, probably permanently. -
Re:What's the problem with having a national ID ca
The card could carry an electronic hash code that gets sent to a central database to retrieve data, so any really important data, such as SSN, wouldn't be stored directly on the card itself. For added security in some scenarios (like banking), biometric data of some sort could be stored in the central database as well. The central database could be cut off from any network to eliminate (or minimize) hacking and it could occasionally be connected to a shadow database with a down stream only connection. The shadow database would be the one actually accessed for data requests and it would be auto-updated multiple times a day, so even if it were hacked somehow it would be corrected automatically and any changes could be reported.
You're expecting a lot of tech-savviness from the government that didn't even think of buying www.whitehouse.com and www.whitehouse.org until they'd already been bought and turned into a porn site and an anti-Bush site.
Not to mention the passports with unencrypted RFID chips.
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Re:This isn't a problem
Hum, I got the impression that a priori was considered more rigorous that a postieriori. Certainly in science, theories that are fruitfully predictive are considered more beneficial than those which are simply usefully descriptive.
The theory that the Sun is very likely to rise tommorrow because that is what it usually does in our experience is taken as less elegant than saying given the conservation of angular momentum as a fundemental law of physics, the Sun must rise tomorrow.
I've suspected that there is a problem in this division, that the correspondence between physical law and repeated behavior formed a tautology somewhere. But then I look at Maxwell's Equations and say, Nah, couldn't be.
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Re:The Gettier problem
It has happened to me a number of times that I have been right for the wrong reason, and only further work showed that the reasons that draped themselves on intuition were specious. Yet the certainty of the feeling of correctness that conjured those films of argument made me seek out the more subtle arguments that may have been present but not perceived at the initial insight. Then there have been more times when I just found out I was wrong from the git-go. To me, those "faith" feelings are guides to what might be important but do not count as knowledge, only hints. I've taken 'justified true belief' to mean rigorously demonstrated comprehension, and perhaps this is not what is meant. I see knowing you could be correct, and knowing you are correct as two different stages.
Perhaps my hang up is that I tend to hold the word 'belief' in reserve for the unknowable. I'll use it when answering a question about where some one is: 'I beleive she is at the store.' meaning I don't know for sure but that was the plan.
I suspect there is something more to this problem that I'm proposing, basically that it is like an early compiler that allowed ambigous entry points. But I haven't really felt any discomfort with the problem either to urge that it is fundemental.
In any case, being right by accident must have something to do with it, and your example makes me think that God smiles at all our attemts in that particular direction.
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Re:Scary
When was the last time that a Christian church was prosecuted for preaching intolerance?
Nick Griffin, the Christian leader of the BNP, got prosecuted for airing 'intolerant' views about Islam, amongst other things. -
Re:How about somebody taking on the problem of ...
They're under the Associated Federation of Organizations. You can read about them here: http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/2006/
1 2/31/scripts/rhubarb.shtml
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Re:This isn't a problem
I'm reading, slowly, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, where there is a quaint attitude that a priori Knowledge is preferable. All creationist should read Hume to understand why they belittle God.
I have heard good reports of Jaynes' book and I am a collector of books on statistics, being rather suspicious of them, so I think I'll follow your advice.
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