Slashdot Mirror

According to the Energy Infomration Administration, there are 107 million households in the US. The end-use consumption of electricity by household shows 318 kWh (kilowatt hours) used for a dekstop PC on average per household. There is, unfortunately, no breakdown of the electricity consumption per component in the PC, so I'm left to wonder how much is used by the hard drive specifically.

Profiling your code proves the 80/20 rule is correct. Your program spends 80% of its CPU time in 20% of the code. You would use a profiler to find the real meaty bottlenecks, right? As opposed to guessing where the bottlenecks are. Likewise, if we want to reduce electricity consumption, we're better off using data to guide us. Air conditioning, heating, and major appliances use by far the largest amount of electricity in your average household.

Still, it looks like this site will have to add hard drives to their saved watts: http://www.whosavedwatt.com/

According to the Energy Infomration Administration, there are 107 million households in the US. The end-use consumption of electricity by household shows 318 kWh (kilowatt hours) used for a dekstop PC on average per household. There is, unfortunately, no breakdown of the electricity consumption per component in the PC, so I'm left to wonder how much is used by the hard drive specifically.

Profiling your code proves the 80/20 rule is correct. Your program spends 80% of its CPU time in 20% of the code. You would use a profiler to find the real meaty bottlenecks, right? As opposed to guessing where the bottlenecks are. Likewise, if we want to reduce electricity consumption, we're better off using data to guide us. Air conditioning, heating, and major appliances use by far the largest amount of electricity in your average household.

Still, it looks like this site will have to add hard drives to their saved watts: http://www.whosavedwatt.com/

The real CPI has not been reported since 1986. Here's some of the tricks used.

Gasoline has more than tripled in price in the last decade (1.04 to 3.27) .

Housing? Doubled or tripled. Food? Don't even ask. Sure, you can substitute for some items, but for the stuff you actually NEED, like a roof over your head, food in your stomach, and transportation to and from work?

Also, the calculators of the CPI have already done the "substitution", to such an extent that they use USED cars instead of new cars, and "owner's equivalent rent" instead of the actual cost of the roof over your head. Its a lie.

Lighting at 8.8%.

Lighting at 22%.

http://www.leonardo-energy.org/drupal/node/809

Article mentions this PDF http://www.netl.doe.gov/ssl/workshop/Report%20led%20November%202002a_1.pdf from the DOE that outlines LED technology Roadmap putting LEDs at the same price of CFL lighting by 2012. Currently, LED technology is already ahead of the roadmap. www.LEDSmagazine.com

Also, in commercial spaces as it stands today. LED actually pays out in the long-term(5-10 years) when you factor in the cost of replacing the bulbs every few years. Even better, there is 0 mercury content in LED. Plus, LED is getting cheaper and cheaper every year when you calculate all the costs involved. Which leads to the idea that LED will pretty much replace 90 percent of lighting by 2012.

Fourteen million dollars!?

That's 7/1000 of what the U.S. spend on oil per day, or 1.9×10^5 or nineteen millionths of what they spend on oil in a year.

It's a whole 9.7 minutes of crude.

Gee, thanks mister! If the next several thousand people are so generous, I can buy a whole piece of candy!

I think that in a developed economy, 1% as much spent on R&D for alternative energy as on crude oil is laughably little. If one were to accept this 1% pittance as reasonable, however, then 14 M$ would be good for an hour and a half of R&D.

Fourteen million dollars!?

That's 7/1000 of what the U.S. spend on oil per day, or 1.9×10^5 or nineteen millionths of what they spend on oil in a year.

It's a whole 9.7 minutes of crude.

Gee, thanks mister! If the next several thousand people are so generous, I can buy a whole piece of candy!

I think that in a developed economy, 1% as much spent on R&D for alternative energy as on crude oil is laughably little. If one were to accept this 1% pittance as reasonable, however, then 14 M$ would be good for an hour and a half of R&D.

Its funny how something that really ought to make the news in the US, sometimes doesn't...

A few weeks ago the Canadian government announced that if the US government ever wants to renegotiate NAFTA, that the provisions in it that guarentee oil to the US are off the table (ie Canada will not resign unless those clauses are removed). For those of you who don't know just what NAFTA guarentee the US in terms of oil, under the treaty Canada can never limit oil exports to the US.

I know its always easy, and also encourage by the press and many politicians, to rag on the bad parts of treaties while totally ignoring the parts of it that benefit your side, but that doesn't make such a stance intelligent.

You think oil's expensive now? Where do you think its going to be in five years? How much worse do think it might be then if your largest supplier of oil decides to turn the tap down a little? Which would be worse for the US economy, competing with Mexico or $20/gal gas?

There is no plans to sell plutonium. It will be burned in reactors in Russia. We are buying uranium from Russia, however. http://www.nnsa.doe.gov/na-20/rus_plut_dis.shtml

>>> So, how is all the new demands for electricity going to be satisfied.

A lot more easily than you seem to think.

There are about 3T vehicle miles logged in the US each year. An electric car requires about 250Wh/mi, well-to-wheel. Using electricity to power the US's total yearly vehicle miles would require 250Wh/mi x 3Tmi = 750M MWh.

For comparison, the total amount of electricity generated in the US per year is 4,000M MWh, or 5-6 times as much. Converting every vehicle in the US to all-electric would add less than 20% to the electricity generation needs of the most car-happy country on earth.

For further comparison, note that the US used 115Mbbl of oil in 2006 to generate 41M MWh, meaning that existing generating facilities generate roughly 1M MWh per 3Mbbl. Accordingly, the 4,000Mbbl of gasoline and diesel the US consumes to run its vehicles for a year could be converted to 1,300M MWh, or nearly twice as much electricity as would be needed to run all-electric versions of those vehicles.

If getting enough electricity to run an all-electric fleet is the problem you're worried about, you simply haven't done the math.

>>> So, how is all the new demands for electricity going to be satisfied.

A lot more easily than you seem to think.

There are about 3T vehicle miles logged in the US each year. An electric car requires about 250Wh/mi, well-to-wheel. Using electricity to power the US's total yearly vehicle miles would require 250Wh/mi x 3Tmi = 750M MWh.

For comparison, the total amount of electricity generated in the US per year is 4,000M MWh, or 5-6 times as much. Converting every vehicle in the US to all-electric would add less than 20% to the electricity generation needs of the most car-happy country on earth.

For further comparison, note that the US used 115Mbbl of oil in 2006 to generate 41M MWh, meaning that existing generating facilities generate roughly 1M MWh per 3Mbbl. Accordingly, the 4,000Mbbl of gasoline and diesel the US consumes to run its vehicles for a year could be converted to 1,300M MWh, or nearly twice as much electricity as would be needed to run all-electric versions of those vehicles.

If getting enough electricity to run an all-electric fleet is the problem you're worried about, you simply haven't done the math.

>>> So, how is all the new demands for electricity going to be satisfied.

A lot more easily than you seem to think.

There are about 3T vehicle miles logged in the US each year. An electric car requires about 250Wh/mi, well-to-wheel. Using electricity to power the US's total yearly vehicle miles would require 250Wh/mi x 3Tmi = 750M MWh.

For comparison, the total amount of electricity generated in the US per year is 4,000M MWh, or 5-6 times as much. Converting every vehicle in the US to all-electric would add less than 20% to the electricity generation needs of the most car-happy country on earth.

For further comparison, note that the US used 115Mbbl of oil in 2006 to generate 41M MWh, meaning that existing generating facilities generate roughly 1M MWh per 3Mbbl. Accordingly, the 4,000Mbbl of gasoline and diesel the US consumes to run its vehicles for a year could be converted to 1,300M MWh, or nearly twice as much electricity as would be needed to run all-electric versions of those vehicles.

If getting enough electricity to run an all-electric fleet is the problem you're worried about, you simply haven't done the math.

>>> So, how is all the new demands for electricity going to be satisfied.

A lot more easily than you seem to think.

There are about 3T vehicle miles logged in the US each year. An electric car requires about 250Wh/mi, well-to-wheel. Using electricity to power the US's total yearly vehicle miles would require 250Wh/mi x 3Tmi = 750M MWh.

For comparison, the total amount of electricity generated in the US per year is 4,000M MWh, or 5-6 times as much. Converting every vehicle in the US to all-electric would add less than 20% to the electricity generation needs of the most car-happy country on earth.

For further comparison, note that the US used 115Mbbl of oil in 2006 to generate 41M MWh, meaning that existing generating facilities generate roughly 1M MWh per 3Mbbl. Accordingly, the 4,000Mbbl of gasoline and diesel the US consumes to run its vehicles for a year could be converted to 1,300M MWh, or nearly twice as much electricity as would be needed to run all-electric versions of those vehicles.

If getting enough electricity to run an all-electric fleet is the problem you're worried about, you simply haven't done the math.

Maybe they realize that the oil companies(and countries) can't do a whole lot about the price of oil.

I wonder how much Exxon and Shell make when we import a barrel of oil from Canada?

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html

Report on the Direct Detection and Study of Dark Matter

One does *not* currently try to break up generation into smaller parts for nuclear reactors...

For nuclear, the economics of initial construction and design requirements make much more sense to do huge reactors. A reactor has to have huge amounts of shielding for protection in case of mishap (it's mostly not for the regular reaction from the core). We're talking shells of concrete several feet thick. And steel too. It's cheaper the larger your volume/power ratio and such is.

None of the reactors listed here are below 1 MW of electric power.

I just looked up the 2008 median income tables published by the government:

http://www.usdoj.gov/ust/eo/bapcpa/20080201/bci_data/median_income_table.htm

Oregon beats both Ohio and Florida in median income for every category except Ohio barely eeks out a win in the family of four median income. (The new growth in Oregon is in single and couples without children or with one child and in Hispanics with two or more kids -- you can see that would drag down the family of four count.)

http://lungaction.org/reports/stateoftheair2007.html

Air quality indexes show Oregon beating the shit out of Ohio and beating Florida in ozone and a wash in particulates.

I'm not sure where you got your numbers ridiculing Oregon.

Plus, what's this about alternative fuels? Alternative generation mechanisms is important. Hydro is an alternative generation mechanism that requires no fuel.

Wind energy requires no fuel either. Ohio has 7 megawatts and Florida doesn't even make the list. Oregon has 885 megawatts of wind generation and it's not a very big wind state.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/oregon.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/florida.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/ohio.html

From looking at the electricity profiles, Oregon creams Florida and Ohio in every measure across the board.

So, in all those things you've criticized Oregon for, it turns out it's all a pack of delusions.

In 2002, Oregon, under Republican control of its legislature, was dead last in children going hungry. Since then, under Democratic leadership, it's now up to 30th instead of 50th due to a concerted effort to open up accessibility to food stamps. Corporations could have stepped in at any point and helped out, but it took the government to do that.

How are you going to respond to that?

I just looked up the 2008 median income tables published by the government:

http://www.usdoj.gov/ust/eo/bapcpa/20080201/bci_data/median_income_table.htm

Oregon beats both Ohio and Florida in median income for every category except Ohio barely eeks out a win in the family of four median income. (The new growth in Oregon is in single and couples without children or with one child and in Hispanics with two or more kids -- you can see that would drag down the family of four count.)

http://lungaction.org/reports/stateoftheair2007.html

Air quality indexes show Oregon beating the shit out of Ohio and beating Florida in ozone and a wash in particulates.

I'm not sure where you got your numbers ridiculing Oregon.

Plus, what's this about alternative fuels? Alternative generation mechanisms is important. Hydro is an alternative generation mechanism that requires no fuel.

Wind energy requires no fuel either. Ohio has 7 megawatts and Florida doesn't even make the list. Oregon has 885 megawatts of wind generation and it's not a very big wind state.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/oregon.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/florida.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/ohio.html

From looking at the electricity profiles, Oregon creams Florida and Ohio in every measure across the board.

So, in all those things you've criticized Oregon for, it turns out it's all a pack of delusions.

In 2002, Oregon, under Republican control of its legislature, was dead last in children going hungry. Since then, under Democratic leadership, it's now up to 30th instead of 50th due to a concerted effort to open up accessibility to food stamps. Corporations could have stepped in at any point and helped out, but it took the government to do that.

How are you going to respond to that?

I just looked up the 2008 median income tables published by the government:

http://www.usdoj.gov/ust/eo/bapcpa/20080201/bci_data/median_income_table.htm

Oregon beats both Ohio and Florida in median income for every category except Ohio barely eeks out a win in the family of four median income. (The new growth in Oregon is in single and couples without children or with one child and in Hispanics with two or more kids -- you can see that would drag down the family of four count.)

http://lungaction.org/reports/stateoftheair2007.html

Air quality indexes show Oregon beating the shit out of Ohio and beating Florida in ozone and a wash in particulates.

I'm not sure where you got your numbers ridiculing Oregon.

Plus, what's this about alternative fuels? Alternative generation mechanisms is important. Hydro is an alternative generation mechanism that requires no fuel.

Wind energy requires no fuel either. Ohio has 7 megawatts and Florida doesn't even make the list. Oregon has 885 megawatts of wind generation and it's not a very big wind state.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/oregon.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/florida.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/ohio.html

From looking at the electricity profiles, Oregon creams Florida and Ohio in every measure across the board.

So, in all those things you've criticized Oregon for, it turns out it's all a pack of delusions.

In 2002, Oregon, under Republican control of its legislature, was dead last in children going hungry. Since then, under Democratic leadership, it's now up to 30th instead of 50th due to a concerted effort to open up accessibility to food stamps. Corporations could have stepped in at any point and helped out, but it took the government to do that.

How are you going to respond to that?

Short answer: Quoting just one example from Astrophysics from DOE Report
Core collapse supernovae simulations with the spatial resolution required to properly model critical aspects of the explosion dynamics (e.g., the evolution of the stellar core magnetic fields and their role in generating the supernova) will require much higher resolution than today's terascale codes. These codes, in turn, will require exascale computing, particularly if a number of simulations are to be performed across the range of stellar progenitors and input physics. One such simulation is expected to take ~8 weeks, assuming 20% efficiency on an exaflops machine.

Long answer:
I would refer anyone interested to the "Modeling and Simulation at the Exascale for Energy and the Environment Town Hall Meetings Report"

Conclusion of Report:
The broad computational science community has a golden opportunity to accelerate the availability of usable exascale systems. To take full advantage of this opportunity to deliver exascale computing by 2017 will require an integrated program of investments in hardware and software research and development, (R&D). Also required will be a tight coupling to a selected set of science communities and the associated applied mathematics R&D. In some cases, such as astrophysics and climate, the communities are well on the way to exploiting petascale systems. In other cases, such as socioeconomics and multiscale biology, there is great opportunity for acceleration. Computational science and engineering opportunities in energy are wide and deep and have an enormous potential impact on advancing energy technology and fundamental science. If acceleration is to be achieved -- and there is every reason to both desire it and believe that it can be accomplished -- then every minute will count, and even modest investments early in the cycle (e.g., 2008 and 2009) could have dramatic benefit and will reduce uncertainties moving ahead.

Important applications(not an exhaustive list by any means) as gleaned from that Town Hall Meetings Report:

Energy
Energy research offers significant opportunities to exploit computing at the exascale, in order to advance our understanding of basic processes in areas such as combustion, which would naturally lead to a design capability for improving the efficient use of liquid fuels, whether from fossil sources or renewable sources. First-principles computational design and optimization of catalysts will become possible at the exascale, as will de novo design of biologically mediated pathways for energy conversion.

Access to exascale systems and the appropriate applications codes could have a dramatic impact on nuclear fission reactor design and optimization and would help accelerate understanding of key plasma physics phenomena in fusion science critical to getting the most from the U.S. investment in ITER.

Exascale systems should also enable a major paradigm shift in the use of large-scale optimization techniques to search for near-optimal solutions to engineering problems. Many energy and industrial problems are amenable to such an approach, in which many petascale instances of the problem are run simultaneously under the control of a global optimization procedure that can focus the search on parameters that produce an optimal outcome.

Environment
Three broad areas relating to the environment were discussed: climate modeling; integrated energy, economics, and environmental modeling; and multiscale biological modeling from molecules to ecosystems.

Climate modeling.
As the most mature of the three environmental application areas, climate modeling is expected to make good use of exascale systems. The impact of these systems will be threefold.

For reference, see The Onion reference, "... We're doing five blades". (Rough language. If you're at a school maybe NSFW). From February, 2004. For the record, the Gillette Fusion with five blades and two lubricating strips was introduced in early 2006.

Hilarious though:

Here's the report from Engineering. Someone put it in the bathroom: I want to wipe my a?? with it. They don't tell me what to invent--I tell them. And I'm telling them to stick two more blades in there. I don't care how. Make the blades so thin they're invisible. Put some on the handle. I don't care if they have to cram the fifth blade in perpendicular to the other four, just do it!

You're taking the "safety" part of "safety razor" too literally, grandma. Cut the strings and soar. Let's hit it. Let's roll. This is our chance to make razor history. Let's dream big. All you have to do is say that five blades can happen, and it will happen. If you aren't on board, then .... you. And if you're on the board, then .... you and your father. Hey, if I'm the only one who'll take risks, I'm sure as hell happy to hog all the glory when the five-blade razor becomes the shaving tool for the U.S. of "this is how we shave now" A.

People said we couldn't go to three. It'll cost a fortune to manufacture, they said. Well, we did it. Now some egghead in a lab is screaming "Five's crazy?" Well, perhaps he'd be more comfortable in the labs at Norelco, working on #### electrics. Rotary blades, my white #!

I'm a big AMD fan but three cores are barely better than two. Buy it anyway - AMD needs to live if the computer market is to be bearable at all in ten years. Via makes some interesting stuff too - and they're not afraid to cut the watts and make them small. You can do some very neat stuff with a low watt CPU on a small board.

It doesn't take a great deal of insight to see we're going to 8 cores per processor on the desktop sometime in the next few years. Dual 16 core processors will happen within ten if competition keeps the pressure up. Personally I don't care if every core is on a separate slab of silicon as long as they integrate in the package well. Yields are better that way I imagine. Somebody tell them to get the watts down. Electricity is mostly made from CO2 emissions:

PCs worldwide consume about 80 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity every year.

According to government data, only about 9% of the household electricity used in the United States is used for lighting. Most household electricity goes to refrigeration, water heating, air-conditioning, space heating, clothes drying, and so forth. That's why electricity usage spikes in the summer and in hot weather.

For that matter, only about 20% of our entire energy usage is represented by electricity, the rest being direct use of thermal energy (i.e. burning stuff like oil and gas) in factories, home heating furnaces, and in cars, trucks and railroad engines.

So overall the amount of our energy usage that goes to household lighting is 0.09 x 0.20 = about 2% of our total energy usage. If you manage to make lighting that is, say, 10 times more efficient than incandescent, then you will replace 2% with 0.2%, for a grand savings of 1.8%. Not impressive.

The researchers don't know, and sometimes don't even care, what the eventual applications of their discoveries might be.

Now we're all sons of bitches

• http://www.uic.com.au/nip28.htm
• http://www.uic.com.au/nip08.htm
• http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/french.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France
• http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_generation/gensum2.html

• http://www.uic.com.au/nip07.htm
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_new_nuclear_power_plants
• http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_generation/gensum2.html

• http://www.uic.com.au/nip28.htm
• http://www.uic.com.au/nip08.htm
• http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/french.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France
• http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_generation/gensum2.html

• http://www.uic.com.au/nip07.htm
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_new_nuclear_power_plants
• http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_generation/gensum2.html

Absolutely it could.

The United States does not get much oil from the Middle East. eia.doe.gov, I've typed it so many times, they got the numbers, go and read.

When the United States protects the free flow of oil at market prices, it is a gigantic gift to Japan and the ungrateful scum of Europe.

The US generated 787 billion KW/hours of nuclear power in 2006 out of 104 operating reactors according to a 2006 DOE report on their webpage and the NRC.

The high estimate on the NRC page places the total cost to decom all 104 at 38.7 billion; or 372 million each. The documentation available seems to suggest the NRC requires a report every 6 months on each reactor's decomission fund.

At that rate of generation, unless I misplaced a zero, it would cost half a cent per KW/h to provide for a decommission in 10 years.

DOE power chart
NRC 1999 report on decomissioning

I'm not surprised that biofuels actually make the situation worse. I've been saying that all along; our nation's approach to biofuels (particularly using corn) was a poorly thought out political move to cater to the corporate farm lobby. It was really convenient in that it allowed politicians to act "green" and look like they were moving away from supporting big bad Middle East oil (which is in large part financed by American companies under American-supported governments... that's a discussion for another day). Maybe this report will finally start convincing people that biofuels really, really aren't a proper solution to environmental problems. The only way to REALLY hit the root of the problem is to reduce consumption of stuff. I'm not going to pretend that's easy or even practical, but this talk about biofuels, alternative energy, etc. is just pussy-footing around the real issue that we as a species are consuming more than this planet can support.

It's also important to note that the VAST majority of our petroleum imports don't actually come from the Middle East! The DOE says so itself. Our top two petroleum importing countries are... Canada and Mexico!

Biofuels were never about being a real solution. It was always about political capital for politicians and special interests. Now we at least have more science to show how messed up biofuels really are.

It actually really surprises me that we haven't seen more public anger about the financial cost of the Iraq war. The relative drawbacks of the previous regime in Iraq against the situation that exists now, and from that the moral justification for invading, are debatable issues and it's somewhat understandable that there are people all along the spectrum from for to against.

I would have thought, however, that if you asked most Americans whether they would've preferred to invade Iraq or to have free petrol for a year with enough left over for a modestly sized fleet of building-crushing robots to placate any who still held fears about security I think I could guess what most people would choose.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/World_Oil_Transit_Chokepoints/Background.html the cuts are in the world's top 3 oil choke points?

Iran is a net exporter of crude oil and a net importer of refined motor gasoline. The USA is a net importer of crude oil and a net exporter of refined motor gasoline. Iran has no refineries. They subsidize the cost of gasoline based of the exports of oil. Gasoline is really really cheap in Iran. Some of the data is a little old that I found.. so things could be slightly different now. sources: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_exp_dc_NUS-Z00_mbblpd_a.htm http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_imp_dc_NUS-Z00_mbblpd_a.htm http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/03/AR2005070301042_2.html

Iran is a net exporter of crude oil and a net importer of refined motor gasoline. The USA is a net importer of crude oil and a net exporter of refined motor gasoline. Iran has no refineries. They subsidize the cost of gasoline based of the exports of oil. Gasoline is really really cheap in Iran. Some of the data is a little old that I found.. so things could be slightly different now. sources: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_exp_dc_NUS-Z00_mbblpd_a.htm http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_imp_dc_NUS-Z00_mbblpd_a.htm http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/03/AR2005070301042_2.html

Lets just look at one office building. A few years ago the average was 800 network devices in a single building, with the number steadily rising. A network device can be anything from a computer to a network printer. Even a VOIP phone system can count these days, as well as video conferencing equipment.

Just to keep TRACK of all this stuff everything will be segmented onto a number of virtual LANs. After all, many of these things DON'T need to be shared. Why should you be able to print something out on a corporation's printer when you can't even get into that part of the building? It's just a security risk.

It is a well known fact that the best way to secure a computer is to leave it unplugged from the Internet. Once you open that door you have a whole new set of problems. This is no different. To protect the network you are better of isolating it. However, Internet connections DO have their uses in business so you want to be able to put in a door.

This virtual doorway to the rest of the virtual world works just like a real door to the rest of the real world. The whole point is to create a chokepoint where security can make sure only the 'allowed traffic' gets through. By putting each one to an individual 'Net connection you are opening a whole mess of worms for no added benefit.

Real world analogy would be comparing the current network infrastructures to walled cities of the dark ages. The walls are great at keeping most annoyances away. The only thing you have to really worry about is those rare handful of people who will try to break in on their own with say a grappling hook to scale the wall and get in (read: 'hackers') or neighboring towns (read: other corporations, so corporate espionage). To deal with those you need other tools, such as your own personal army.

Continuing the analogy, if you take away the city walls (eg the LAN) the town becomes more a part of the world (WLAN) but now your guards and army (network admins and their teams) will be spending more time dealing with new problems created by it such as various forms of scavengers or bandits (hackers) that wouldn't of had the resources to deal the city walls if you had kept them.

Until you can prove conclusively that we are better off without LANs, you are going to have LANs. They are easier to maintain, familiar, and shield networks from a whole lot of potential problems that they wouldn't need to deal with so long as they are on a LAN.

gives far too much power to current and potential enemies.

Did you know that the US imports more oil from Canada than from Saudi Arabia? As per the DOE (in thousands of barrels).

Canada: Oct 2007 exports to the USA: 74,727
Venezuela: Oct 2007 exports to the USA: 43,015
Saudi Arabia: Oct 2007 exports to the USA: 43,394

I hope you do not count Canada as a "current or potential enemy".

And come to think of it: yes, Venezuela's president is not friendly to the USA, but in reality, how can he hurt the USA? Stop exports and hurt his own economy? Jack up the price of oil? He can't do it alone, and OPEC is not to blame, rather the US foreign policy is to blame there, with the invasion of Iraq hiking up oil prices rather than the promised lowering of it.

As for Saudi Arabia, they have been a US ally all along, despite the general feeling in the media. The rulers there are not popular because of that stance. Bin Laden himself opposed them, and that is why his citizenship was revoked, and then exiled first to Sudan and then to Afghanistan. The rest is history. So how are they a current or potential enemy?

I'm 23 and I remember it being $0.89 per gallon, according to the DOE the last time the US average price per gallon of regular unleaded was under a dollar was Feb, 1992. I was 8, so chances are if you're under 20 you probably wouldn't remember it being under a dollar.

I really would like to join the conspiracy crowd. However, much as I try, I just can't get there from here. Seems to happen a lot around here...

First, most classified matter I've seen is so because of where it's born. If I write a memo to my boss requesting a vacation using a classified machine, it's classified. I can get it declassified by requesting same and, after approval, it almost certainly would be. Why would I do that, though? Do you really want me wasting your tax dollars that way?

Second, if you were truly interested in what the government is doing, or spending money on, try reading the budget submissions from the related agencies and the funding bills. For instance, since you mentioned the Manhattan program, let's try DOE/NNSA. For this year's funding request see http://www.cfo.doe.gov/budget/08budget/Content/Volumes/Vol_1_NNSA.pdf. You're probably interested in the section that starts on page 53. The office of the President takes that and makes a budget submission -- See http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2008/pdf/appendix/doe.pdf. Then, for what they were authorized to spend and do, try http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c110:1:./temp/~c110HxtKyt:e379988:

You already knew all that, though, of course. No? What? Too much like work? Yes, it certainly is easier to whine than dig for those answers you claim you want.

The common thing I've noticed about conspiracy theories is that so much of our time is wasted on what's not available that the nagging issue of what *is* available will be reliably ignored. Let's justify this laziness by telling ourselves that this is what "they" want you to know. It just must not be true, right?

Lemmings. Gotta love 'em. Their life is so short :)

Except for Blue Gene (and that's a big exception, since the 2^17-CPU Blue Gene at LLNL pumps out about a billion processor hours a year on its own, and has had another 80,000 CPUs added recently) these CPUs are either 2.4GHz Opterons or 3GHz Core2s; those were and are the sweet spots for building big HPCs.

The list of projects is at

http://www.science.doe.gov/ascr/incite/2008INCITEFactsheets.pdf

They seem mostly to be about fire, in power stations, in supernovae or in fission reactors.

Some nice examples: 27Mhours on lattice quantum chromodynamics, 21Mhours to simulating thermonuclear burning in type-1B supernovas, 18Mhours to figuring out how biofuels burn, 17.5Mhours to determine from first quantum principles how the nickel-56 nucleus holds together, 16Mhours to simulating thermonuclear burning in type-2 supernovas, 12Mhours to attempting to design a carbamate hydrolase enzyme de-novo, 10Mhours to simulating lead-telluride / silver-antinomy-telluride thermoelectric materials, 4.5Mhours to optimise the design of the next-generation linear collider, 5M hours to figuring out why enormous temperature gradients persist in liquid-sodium-cooled fast-breeder reactors and a further 14Mhours to liquid-sodium reactor design in general, 4M hours to figuring out exactly how multiple burners in large power-station combustion chambers light one another, 3.5Mhours to trying to understand why it's so hard to hydrolyse cellulose, 3.5Mhours to understanding how flame fronts move in the complicated gas mixtures obtained from coal gasification, half a million hours for oceanic circulation, three quarters of a million hours for flow of dense suspensions, ten million hours on catalyst design.

And, for some reason, a million hours on porting Plan-9 to the Blue Gene system. I presume this allows you to crash and reboot the entire 200kcpu system enough to identify ten bugs. Also eight million CPU-hours to developing better HPC libraries.

I would be interested to know the amount of idle time there is on these supercomputers; a friend of mine from mersenneforum.org got a week on several hundred Opterons in France over Christmas, which was enough to do most of the work required to factorise a few numbers of fairly unreasonable size - sadly, there's a second step in the factorisation which requires an SMP machine, and the biggest SMP machine I have is an Intel Q6600, so completing the factorisation is taking three weeks on a single desktop in my back bedroom.

No it wouldn't. Nobody is building oil fired plants anymore except for peaking units. New plants are almost all exclusively coal (and hopefully nuclear) which will be plentiful for hundreds of years. And of the oil plants in commission, they make up a small percentage of energy generation. The only major energy dependence area for US electricity production is from natural gas imports almost exclusively from Canada being used in gas fired plants. There is no emergency in US electricity production due to resource scarcity. Generation capacity is different issue.

The total proven reserves in ANWR are about 10 billion barrels. Our daily consumption of petroleum is about 20,687,000 barrels/day. Doing the math, that means the entire ANWR reserve discovered so far would give us about 10.4 billion / 20 687 000 = 502.731184 days of petroleum.

<sarcasm>Yeah, real massive. </sarcasm>

Sure we may need better fuels then oil however here in the US we have massive reserves of it in Alaska where we cannot drill for oil there.

Not only that, diesel fuel contains between 18 and 30 percent more energy per gallon than gasoline http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/sources/non-renewable/diesel.html (even kids should know that...)

"Gee, so, given that coal powerplants in the USA alone produce 1.8 millon metric tons of CO2 per year, we would need 11 million of these devices installed in the US to make American coal power carbon neutral.

+ Correction: I messed up the calculation, the actual number is 240,000 units - but stil, a ridiculous quantity. "

US Coal/CO2 emissions on the order of 2 Billion metric tons of CO2 per year...
Ergo you're off by a factor of 1000x.. (on the low side)..

Let's assume 1.8 MMT of CO2 covers just one boiler.. (out of a thousand)..
240,000 ... 88 sq.. meter tracking arrays.. would need to be spaced at a ratio of at least 5 to 1, depending on latitude.

Math: 240,000 * 88(min foot array foot print ) * 6 (spacing) ==
126 M sq. meters per boiler.. or an area of 126 Sq Km.. per BOILER.

Some how I think the local residents would object to having 49 Sq miles per boiler covered with pipelines and large solar tracking towers. (For a US average X1000... 49,000 Sq miles .. or 126,000 sq km.)

Once you oxidized the resulting liquid fuel, one would still have the net effect of releasing GHG into the atmosphere. By all indications, Humanity needs to progress to a Carbon NEGATIVE economy. 390ppm ->350ppm. So this really isn't a long term solution.

======== Now for a real solution ===========

Meanwhile... once could accomplish most of the same effect by putting up 12,000 sq km. of 20% eff, PV solar trackers in some high desert regions (Space them out by x6) and DISPLACE ALL electric generation sources in the US..

Naturally.. we would keep generation capacity like Hydro, Wind, Biomass,. maybe some nuclear...etc..
I would also keep all the NG/combined cycle plants as backups (fueled by H2, stored in depleted NG fields.)
Using spare electricity generation to produce H2 via hybrid solar thermal/electrolysis SO2 cycle.
Note: The H2S04/SO2 process originally envisioned nuclear power supplying the thermal energy component, but desert solar thermal plants could easily substitute as the heat source, and the resulting SO2 gas stored underground awaiting excess electrical generation.

Wind energy production should also be expanded by 50x..
Spare electric power would be used in highly eff SO2 +2H20 electrolysis(0.6V) phase to produce H2SO4+H2 .

Modern EV's are roughly 10x more efficient than ICE vehicles, and could be used to manage grid demands on the renewable energy sources.

Note: Our society would experience a significant reduction in overall energy requirements (~30%), once the fossil fuel industry is displaced by high grade renewables.

According to Wikipedia, Morocco has a land mass of 446,550 km^2. 3% of that is 13,396 km^2. That's approximately the size of Montenegro (13,812 km^2). It's more than five times as big as Luxembourg. Of course, if you point out that you'll have to dedicate five Luxembourgs to power generation, it becomes much less appealing.

According to http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table64.xls , Europe has 803 gigawatts of installed generation capacity.

Going to http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/reactors/nuke1.html, and picking 5 reactors at random (Brunswick, Diablo Canyon*, Pilgrim, Surry, and Susquehanna), I see that 7.5 GW of generating capacity takes up 5,465 acres... or 22 square kilometers.

So, the land usage to supply all of Europe's electric usage (day and night) via nuclear power would be 2,354 km^2... potentially less, as it seems that it's possible to group reactors together to minimize land usage. That's less than one Luxembourg.

* Chosen less randomly than the others, since it had a cool-sounding name.

According to Wikipedia, Morocco has a land mass of 446,550 km^2. 3% of that is 13,396 km^2. That's approximately the size of Montenegro (13,812 km^2). It's more than five times as big as Luxembourg. Of course, if you point out that you'll have to dedicate five Luxembourgs to power generation, it becomes much less appealing.

According to http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table64.xls , Europe has 803 gigawatts of installed generation capacity.

Going to http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/reactors/nuke1.html, and picking 5 reactors at random (Brunswick, Diablo Canyon*, Pilgrim, Surry, and Susquehanna), I see that 7.5 GW of generating capacity takes up 5,465 acres... or 22 square kilometers.

So, the land usage to supply all of Europe's electric usage (day and night) via nuclear power would be 2,354 km^2... potentially less, as it seems that it's possible to group reactors together to minimize land usage. That's less than one Luxembourg.

* Chosen less randomly than the others, since it had a cool-sounding name.

>>> Very few people talk about the dangers of CLFs.They contain mercury

"Even if the mercury contained in a CFL was directly released into the atmosphere, an incandescent would still contribute 4.65 more milligrams of mercury into the environment over its lifetime."

4.65mg more = twice as much. Mind you, that's assuming coal-fired electricity. Only half of electricity in the US is coal-fired (link), making incandescent and trashed CFL bulbs turn out to be almost exactly equal in terms of mercury emissions. Many stores (such as Ikea) have free CFL recycling, though, so one would expect a substantial number of those CFL bulbs won't just be thrown in the trash, making CFL a net winner in terms of mercury emissions.

So your rant is simply ill-informed.

According to our friends at the U.S. govt, 70% of electricity comes from burning stuff. Coal, petroleum , natural gas, etc.
You are going to lose over 50% of the energy in the conversion process, and produce just as many hydrocarbons. In short, switching cars to electricity-engines does nothing for the environment.

I'd also imagine it'd be fairly difficult to get enough horsepower (torque * rpms) for comparable performance to a gasoline engine.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/sources/electricity.html

You're forgetting two very important things. In your math you're forgetting to amortize your capital costs. Basically you're assuming that you can get a 0% loan. In reality, paying for solar up-front, instead of coal as you need it, you need to tripple the cost of the solar, because of the interest you will have to pay over the 25-year life of that "loan".

Secondly, solar provides great energy during the middle of the day. However, most residential electrical demand happens in the early evening, when people get home from work and turn everything on. Most industrial users of electricity need a constant supply, around the clock. Commercial users need electricity throughout the day, with a spike in the late afternoon as air conditioning demand increases. Solar-electricity provides for some, but not all of these needs. Storing solar energy in batteries, thermal storage systems, or mechanical storage systems doubles or tripples the cost again.

Thus, even with $1/W panels, general-purpose solar power is still 8-10X the cost of coal.

I didn't read any other articles, but this one seemed sourced and made sensible arguments. Try these if you didn't like that one:

DOE - 2037

Michael Lynch - 20 to 30 years

Peter Odell of Erasmus University in the Netherlands - year 2035

It's real. Look at the '4S'. Of course, that's talking about a 10Mw unit, but it mentions 'larger and smaller units exist'.

It's been mentioned before as 'christmas tree sized'.