Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Domains

Domain: metro-region.org

Stories and comments across the archive that link to metro-region.org.

Comments · 8

  1. Re:How does it come out? by dave1g · · Score: 1 · on Hydrogen Stored in Safe High Density Pellets

    TDP cheats, the energy used to remove the water is actually the same energy used to break down the organic molecules. TDP requires water. The water is heated for pressure to break down the organics, it is then quickly depressurised causing it to boil off rapidly. Instant dry! :-)

    It is laughable to say that the body has pulled out most of the caloric value, the body cant process any fiber, and is no where near 100% efficient in using the energy inside sugars, fats, and protiens. Also the sewage wouldn't produce "net" oil. But it does.

    Also on the trash front, yes it is possible to put a bound on the ammount of oil produceable by TDP. It is directly proportional to the world's output of garbage, sewage, and other waste products. I'll give a rough estimate below.

    And yes TDP will if nothing else be a better way to take care of waste reclamation problems. however I think you grossly misunderestimate the amount of waste the world produces.

    a quick google produces

    http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/newton/askasci/1993/ environ/ENV005.HTM/

    "Your first question on the average number of pounds of trash produced by Illinois residents has a rather shocking answer. My sources say that we produce about five pounds of trash per person per day. While this may not seem too extreme, consider that the people of India produce only 1/2 pound of trash per person per day, 10 times less"

    and here

    http://www.metro-region.org/article.cfm?articleid= 5579/
    "Each individual generates about 1.5 tons of solid waste per year - about 4.5 pounds per person, per day. If we continue this pattern, we will have each created 90,000 pounds of trash in our lifetimes.
    Environmental Protection Agency, "Resource Conservation Challenge: Reducing Waste and Recovering Energy," EPA 530-F-02-033, 2002"

    So lets assume the world average is 1 lb per person per day. assuming America is the highest and india is on the lowend. (and we will not consider the industrial waste products which are actually many many times more massive than the indvidual waste so this is a VERY lowball estimate)

    6 billion people * 1 lb * 365 day / year = 2,190,000,000,000 ~ 2.1 billion lbs of waste per year (i dont believe this even includes sewage)

    Assuming we used TDP to convert it all to oil at the sewage rate of 26% we get 569,400,000,000 ~ 500 billion lbs of oil per year.

    http://www.simetric.co.uk/si_materials.htm/

    Oil, petroleum (881 kg) / (cubic meters)

    google calculator...

    (881 kg) / (cubic meters) = 7.35230135 pound / US gallon

    500 billion / (7.35230135 pound / US gallon) = 68 Billion gallons per year ... / 42 gallons per barrel = ~ 1.6 billion barrels of oil per year

    1.6 billion / 365 = ~ 4,383,561 barrels of oil per day ...

    The world pumps ~ 30 - 40 million barrels of oil per day. (OPEC is at 25ish so I estimated)

    TDP can provide 10% of the World oil production. And as we get onto the other side of the Hubbert peak, that percentage will grow higher and higher.

    -----------------

    Does this solve the complete energy problem? No.

    Is it a big step? Yes.

    Will purposefully created fuels(biodiesel) be part of the equation also? Yes, but rememebr with TDP we can reclaim some of the waste at each cycle.

    Will TDP provide better, more sustainable ways to clean sewage & provide drinking water, dispose of trash, and keep more energy in the loop? YES

    Man that took way too long....

  2. A lot of the data is already available for free by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on CT High Court Rules GIS Data Can Be Kept Secret [UPDATED]

    Portland on-line mapping sites, paid for by your taxes. 1. PortlandMaps http://www.portlandmaps.com/ 2. MetroMap http://topaz.metro-region.org/metromap/metromap.cf m It's all property-based, not person-based. The only way to link the data to an individual is to know the specific characteristics of the land parcels they own beforehand (e.g., tax lot ID or street address)

  3. Re:Occam's Razor by Baloo+Ursidae · · Score: 1 · on Metered HTTP Proxy?
    I don't think so. There are a lot simpler carrots and sticks available, in order of decreasing importance to the average teenage girl:

    Not just girls, these are pretty gender neutral.

    1) Telephone privs - no cell phone for you

    Fine, I'll just go put on my raincoat, hop on my bike and ride to one of this city's many phone booths with a closing door when I need the phone. They stay warm year round, are sheltered and have a light. (I have done this, and I had friends that stashed a 25-pound portable computer they got out of the classifieds for $20 and an acoustic coupler and knew the location of the closest phone booths with doors and electrical outlets).

    2) Grounding - no hanging out at the mall for you

    Eh, Lloyd Center is the world's fifth largest mall and there's still only three hours worth of interesting stuff over there, and it only changes once every three months save for the overpriced Regal Cinema. Fortunately, we never had the Valley Girl phenomenon, so the mall is still the refuge of the old and the bored save for the Christmas season.

    3) Allowance - no buying the latest MTV-hyped fad product for you

    Please. This is Oregon. The first state to pass the Bottle Bill and a progressive enough croud that public trashcans are usually sorted with the trash in the bin and the refundable bottles and cans on or around the trash can (even when there is no refundable can bin on the side of the trash bin!). If I want cash bad enough and can't get a job, I'll raid 10 or 12 bus stops on a major route.

    4) Television privs - no watching MTV-hyped commercials-as-content for you

    No big loss there.

    5) Driving privs - no freedom to move about for you

    Like traffic moves in this city. Yeah, bicycles aren't allowed to pass on the right when there isn't a shoulder or open lane, and it's illegal to ride on the sidewalks. No big deal: I've already got a biannually updated, regional-government published map of the region, complete and already annoted for nasty intersections, best routes with fewest cars, which streets have bicycle lanes, and which street and highways are closed to motor vehicles entirely. We already have open-and-safe-for-bicycle shoulders on the freeways, and where the freeways are closed to bikes, the state insists on building a bypass route closed to motor vehicles paralelling the motor route. Want to take my lights so I can't ride at night? Fine, I'll stick to the routes I know have streetlamps and lots of cops. You're paying the ticket for no lights after dark.

    6) Food - no bulemia practice for you

    Eh, bulemia's not my thing, and my father's cooking sucks enough that I sustained myself on what I could scrape by on California's shitty 2.5 cent per can refund rate six weeks out of the summer for four years when I had to go to LA to see the bastard. See above about collecting cans, but multiply the number of bus stops by about 5, and add more hobos and the hazards of digging through LA garbage because Californians don't sort out the recyclables reflexively like they should.

    Long story short, anybody to do as well as I did Scouting is going to be innovative and handy enough to it themselves.

  4. Wireless Park In Portland by dailywireless · · Score: -1, Redundant · on The Wireless City

    Yesterday I submitted A Plan For A Wireless Park in Portland. Portland is re-designing its Waterfront Park.

    They liked it! I got an immediate response from the people in charge who said they'd CC the wireless ideas to everyone in the department and include it in their newsletter.

    I like the idea of interactive, engaging and site-specific applications. The Dialtone Symphony (.ram) is wholly produced through the choreographed ringing of people's own cell phones. Here are some other ideas:

    The Public Review Draft of Portland's Waterfront Park Master Plan is available on-line.

    The Morrison Bridge, in the center of Waterfront Park, has phone line access. An Orinoco 2500 ($1000) could drive Wi-Fi repeaters on the north end (near Saturday Market) and the south end, (near the Alexis Hotel), providing blanket coverage. The repeaters could be camouflaged as animals or Oregon historic figures. Waterfront Park also has a direct shot to the Council Crest tower where Winfield Wireless has a wireless ISP.

    Rent out Segway Scooters with built-in Pocket PCs. Your GPS position would trigger Oregon Historical Society's Narrated Neighborhood Tours, Portland Visitor's Association's Self-Guided Tours, Portland Metro Maps or Lewis and Clark Maps. Wireless cameras could be helpful for the police, too.

    Jacksonville Florida's free wireless hot spots provide tourist information as well as internet access. Multi-lingual kiosks, incorporating webtablets with language translation are available now. Text to speech can be output in a variety of languages. And it sounds good. Human voice samples are now incorporated into text to speech. Choose a language, respond by voice.

    Don't give up! Put some wireless ideas together and send it to your Parks Department.

    Dreams DO come true!

  5. Wireless Park In Portland by dailywireless · · Score: 5, Informative · on The Wireless City
    Portland, Oregon, is planning a re-designed Waterfront Park. Yesterday I sent them A Wireless Park Vision. They liked it!

    Interactive, engaging and site-specific applications are a click away. The Dialtone Symphony (.ram) is wholly produced through the choreographed ringing of people's own cell phones. Here are some other ideas:

    The Public Review Draft of Portland's Waterfront Park Master Plan is available on-line.

    The Morrison Bridge, in the center of Waterfront Park, has phone line access. An Orinoco 2500 ($1000) could drive Wi-Fi repeaters on the north end (near Saturday Market) and the south end, (near the Alexis Hotel), providing blanket coverage. The repeaters could be camouflaged as animals or Oregon historic figures. Waterfront Park also has a direct shot to the Council Crest tower where Winfield Wireless has a wireless ISP.

    Rent out Segway Scooters with built-in Pocket PCs. Your GPS position would trigger Oregon Historical Society's Narrated Neighborhood Tours, Portland Visitor's Association's Self-Guided Tours, Portland Metro Maps or Lewis and Clark Maps. Wireless cameras could be helpful for the police, too.

    Jacksonville Florida's free wireless hot spots provide tourist information as well as internet access. Multi-lingual kiosks, incorporating webtablets with language translation are available now. Text to speech can be output in a variety of languages. And it sounds good. Human voice samples are now incorporated into text to speech. Choose a language, respond by voice.

    Parks have not caught up with the wireless society. Let's make it happen!

  6. Re:land use restrictions == unafordable housing by Baloo+Ursidae · · Score: 1 · on What Makes a City Appealing to High-Tech Workers?
    Uuh, no. Portland has very affordable housing, it's just crammed together. Part of the point is to defeat people from coming to Portland to spread out. We like having landscape, ourselves, so in the 1980s, we created an urban growth boundary. Right now, the urban growth boundary isn't scheduled to be changed again until 2040. The idea here is to allow growth, but keep the city livable and eliminate the Californian factor.

    Seems to be working, housing prices have remained stable while 2000 was the first year to see a population decline in Oregon. Congrats to Metro Regional Government on controlling growth.

  7. Three words... by Baloo+Ursidae · · Score: 1 · on What Makes a City Appealing to High-Tech Workers?
    ...Urban Growth Boundary.

    Designed specifically to keep a city geographically small to keep public transit effective, reduce the need for future roads (which actually encourages more traffic instead of handling existing load), and prevent urban sprawl. It also has the added side benefit of keeping people from moving here, because you can't go move to the middle of nowhere and drive in without buying a farm in the mountains or commuting from Vancouver/southwest Washington. (Oregon's full, we don't want you.)

    Chicago also has an urban growth boundary, but Illinois isn't exactly strict about enforcing it, however.

  8. micros by Baloo+Ursidae · · Score: 1 · on Unix Based Point-of-Sale Systems?
    When I worked for Metro Regional Government at the Oregon Zoo, I discovered that micros makes flat panel touch screen POS terms (the black panel barely identifiable in the poor maretroid picture) using some form of embedded X for the UI. Worked on the user end of those every day for about a year before I got a job in tech support...

    --