Slashdot Mirror
WiFi, Light Bulbs, And The FCC
JFMulder writes "According to Cringely, 802.11 WiFi wireless networking is going to get in lot of troubles when Fushion Lightning starts marketting low-power light blubs which causes interferences with Wifi signals. Read about it at I, Cringely. Supposedly the new kind of light bulb is a real electricity saver and can wreck havoc to wireless networks in a half a mile radius. So what would you prefer? Wireless networks or low cost light bulbs all around the country to save more and more on electricity?" Update: 06/13 03:52 GMT by M : Cringely confused the FHSS-or-DSSS 802.11 standard with the DSSS-only 802.11b standard, but the general warning about the potential for interference is certainly troubling.
When disposal is properly handled, nuclear gives the best energy per environmental impact per dollar.
Even with that, it doesn't have a huge lifetime (a few generations?) due to limited quantities of uranium.
And before you brush me aside over the disposal issue, think about the yearly environmental impact of improperly disposed motor oil and the like.
Face it, disposal of nuclear waste, even if it leaks, is hardly Chernobyl. How many bad radition leaks have there been? How may bad oil spills?
I'll be the first to embrace fusion when it gets here, but for now, the nuclear track record looks good enough for me.
I think Mauve has the most RAM. --PHB (Dilbert Comic)
How much oil and gas do people consume getting to and from work?
Wireless networks will further allow people to telecommute, reducing dependancy on oil. Sure, right now, most people are a few meters away from the access point, but creative people are building long-range networks using these things, within the boundaries of the current laws, using well-engineered antennas and low-power transmitters.
Look at those super-efficient flourescent bulbs that have been available for years. People just don't use them, probably because they cost more than the super-cheap incandescants that most people are used to.
On a personal level, I've spent a couple hundred dollars building my wireless network at home. Am I supposed to just toss that equipment into a landfill because my neighbor wants to save a few cents and feel that he is being 'green'?
What about the regulations that the FCC has on RF noise-emitting devices - don't they apply, even though the spectrum is free?
-- My Weblog.
Oh good grief. Wind? Solar? These things have been "up and coming" for YEARS and they have never been successful.
First, wind power generation requires massive farms of windmills. Not picturesque little ones here and there like in the Netherlands. We're talking tall stalky turbines covering hundreds of acres. Resistance to building wind farms on a proper scale has been nothing short of monumental. Furthermore, working on them is dangerous, and turbines have required frequent maintenance. Finally, the Greenies don't like them because they've been known to kill birds. This page includes a formula for generating power out of a wind turbine. If 100% efficiency is assumed, and assume a turbine that has blades 100 feet long operating in a 15 mile per hour wind, we find that this turbine will generate 519.5 kW. Plant Votgle, a nuclear power facility in Georgia, has a combined output of 2430 MW (2430 million watts). We'd need almost 4700 windmills to equal the power output of Plant Votgle.
Solar power. What happens when it is cloudy? Or Dark? I don't know anyone that would volunteer to only have electricity only on sunny days. Furthermore, it has the same scale problems as wind. According to this page, the average incident solar power density is 164 watts per square meter. At 100% efficiency, a solar plant would have a collector surface area of 14.82e6 square meters to equal Plant Votgle's power output (that's a square a little less than four kilometers on a side). A chart on this page says that efficiency for collectors used to heat water is between 60 and 80%, increasing our required collector size even more.
The energy density of solar or wind is not nearly high enough to replace fossil or nuclear fuels for electricity production on a large scale.