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10 Tech Concepts You Should Know for 2007
mattnyc99 writes "Popular Mechanics has a new list of wide-ranging technology terms it claims will be big in 2007. From PRAM to BAN and SmartPills to data clouds, it's a pretty nice summary of upcoming and in-the-works trends across the board (with a podcast embedded). Though these aren't technologies they expect to be in everyone's homes next year, they're sure this tech will be in the headlines. How do their predictions from a year ago stack up now?" From the article: "Printed Solar Panels - Tomorrow's solar panels may not need to be produced in high-vacuum conditions in billion-dollar fabrication facilities. If California-based Nanosolar has its way, plants will use a nanostructured "ink" to form semiconductors, which would be printed on flexible sheets. Nanosolar is currently building a plant that will print 430 megawatts' worth of solar cells annually--more than triple the current solar output of the entire country."
Even if they make theoretically impossible 100% efficient solar panel. That's not enough for me to buy a solar panel.
.. you can bet I'll be off grid. I don't care about efficiency, I only care about cost.
.. but if you think about it .. the sides of the square are only 3 meters wide versus the 1 meter wide sides of the 100% efficiency panels. That's not a huge land area to sacrifice.
However, if they can make a 5% efficient solar panel. I will buy it.
Why? It all comes down to cost. Solar power is too expensive for me. It takes over 5 years for a solar panel to pay for itself. Also, a solar panel only lasts (the efficiency declines over time) about 20 years. The capital cost is too high.
So companies should focus on reducing the per watt cost of solar panels. Not on improving the efficiency. If you can make solar panels for $5 per 100 watt panel
A 100% efficiency solar panel can take up 1 m^2 and generate a kilowatt, a 10% efficiency solar panel would need 10 m^2 to match that up
I should just ignore the ones for 2007.
damaged by dogma
This way your dealer doesn't need to stock a variety of substances. You pop a pill, when it goes in, it connects with your system, and figures out what you really need to feel good, and then provides it.
What exactly is the business model of giving people unlimited free storage? Hard disks cost money, bandwidth costs money, and most people block ads anyway, so where is the profit? I find it difficult to believe that a company can run a business like that, with the exception of those companies, like Google, who can run it at a loss and support that loss with some other line of revenue. I suppose the service would have some prestige points, but I really see no way to make money that way.
No. That just means you get your money back in five years. Investments compounding at 15% double their value in five years, not merely maintain it.
I just did a backup of my laptop. It took 6 single-layer DVDs, which were nearly full. At 20KB/s upstream, which is about what I get (and yes that's kilobytes not bits), that's a minimum of 17 days of continuous uploading, and that's assuming Comcast doesn't shut me down first.
Consumer bandwidth is the problem for those services, really.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=210156&cid=171 38018
I also have another one somewhere here on slashdot, but couldn't find it.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
There was an article in the WSJ a couple of years ago where a guy in TX had to move out into the country so he could put solar panels on a house.
Now, having a solar generating station out in the country would help me greatly.
Don't mod me down: I was joking!
So, while the US is facing terrorism that we fund ourselves via our addiction to foreign oil, the president is going on and on about switchgrass, and the entire world may be facing declining oil production while demand continues to increas, technologies that turn trash into power, cheaper solar pannels, and more secure passports will have a LOW impact? At the same time TV and file sharing over the internet, both problems we already have perfectly good solutions for (Cable, Satellite, movie rental stors, Netflicks, HTTP/FTP protocols) will have a HIGH impact? Something just doesn't add up.
I didn't see anything on the 2006 list that became a buzzword in 2006 - maybe they will in 2007, who knows.
I dunno, Ajax was on that list, and it became pretty big.
Derive Politics
>> Well, for the sake of argument, if you say that the solar panel is still worth what you originally paid for it 5 years ago
No. I don't think so.
"Well, for the sake of argument, if you say that the solar panel is still worth what you originally paid for it 5 years ago"
The problem is that it is now worth a small fraction of what it was worth when you bought it. Just like a car (which also has about a 20 year lifespan), it loses value quite rapidly as it becomes less efficient and closer to being a pile of junk that you have to pay to get rid of.
I assume from the title you think there's something wrong with the units used. They didn't say "430MW/year".
If you make a 43W cell, and you can make 10,000,000 of them in 12 months, then you can make 430MW worth of cells in a year. Units are ok, just a question of whether they have the technology and resources to achieve it.
-- All your bass are below two Hz