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Solar Cells — Made In a Pizza Oven
stylemessiah writes "The winner of several Eureka Science Awards in Australia is a crafty chick who devised a way to create solar cells cheaply using a pizza oven, nail polish and an inkjet printer. This was developed to address the high cost of cells and in particular for the world's poorest regions. She wanted to give the ~2 billion people around the world who don't have electricity the gift of light and cheap energy. This could have profound (and a good profound) implications for education and health in those in the poorest regions in the world. And it all started with her parents giving her a solar energy kit when she was 10..."
I guess the submitter was also Australian.
Second post?
Last time I checked, they had already figured out how to produce low-cost solar cells. They're already shipping. The tech mentioned in the article may take 5 years to fully commercialize.
How many solar cells do you need to power a pizza oven, anyway?
MacGyver would have done it with just the nail polish.
Heaven forbid anyone seek financial benefit for their innovations...
She wants to help the poor people of the world.
So, she found a process that uses cheap, easily accessible parts that would allow people in poor countries to help themselves.
And she patented it. So she can commercialize it.
Fuck off and die, bitch.
Just because you patent it that doesn't mean you have to charge an arm and a leg for it. Some people simply get a patent so others can't steal their idea. Say some gready corp who says hey this is cheap and effective and we can make a fortune even if we up the cost 5000% or more.
She's a PhD student -- she probably didn't have any choice in the matter, as the patent is probably held by the university.
now we just need to figure out how to get every poor country an abundance of pizza ovens, nail polish and inkjet printers
Aaaaaughhhhhh!
Condescend much?
That's perfectly fine, actually, just as long as you don't claim to be doing everything for the sake of the poorest people on the planet. That's a contradiction.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Why use a lame term like that? Women are just as smart as men and when they do something brilliant they are recognized as something special because they happen to be a woman. So we have to do something like call them "Chick" to degrade them.... Well, that's how I feel anyway. Flame away! And yes, I'm male.
The term 'feminazis' is sexist and demeaning. We demand to be called pro-female Fascists. From hereon in anyone who utters that degrading neologism will be executed without trial by way of snoo-snoo.
Pig.
Just so nobody gets the idea that this woman could be a scientist with an important breakthrough, let's refer to her as a "chick" from now on. Or maybe a "babe." In fact, why not emulate Don Imus and call her a "goggle-eyed ho"?
C'mon, Taco. Join the fucking twenty-first century.
I piss off bigots.
Well, fair enough, but she can stop playing the "For the good of all mankind" card, which is probably what caused her to win at least one of the awards.
-- All your booze are belong to us.
Well, she is pretty hot. I'd tap that solar energy if you know what I mean.
That's impressive. Though there seem to be scant details on efficiency and cost comparisons (I'm assuming this is more environmentally friendly to make as well as much cheaper).
Of course, it would of been more impressive if full details were diclosed online for people to take advantage of.
Is it possible to have your patent cake and eat it? The woman is clearly a brilliant engineer and deserves full credit for her work, she also states a worthwhile desire to help people across the world. So is it possible for her to obtain full commercial protection for her invention and then release all the details free for non-commercial use and reduced license fees for the third world? This would be ideal.
After all, no technology is going to change the lifestyles of poor people if they cannot afford to buy/license it.
On the other hand it would be unfair if she learned the Trevor Bayliss lesson the hard way - really clever little gadget swamped by low cost clones from asia from which he gained not a penny. As always I guess the big winners were the lawyers.
Even if she is a Sheila!
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why. -- Hunter S. Thompson
When asked to describe the process she says "To pattern the cell we spray on something like nail polish and then inkjet print a kind of nail polish remover which lets us etch certain parts of the wafer. This creates a metallisation pattern so we can deposit aluminium on the back surface of the solar cell and create our metal contacts to both the P and N-type silicon simultaneously using a very cheap, low temperature pizza oven! And hey presto we've created a simple, low-cost solar cell without having to use expensive high tech equipment or high temperature processes!"
(from here)
will be executed without trial by way of snoo-snoo.
You Promise?
You call a girl that developed a new process to manufacture colar cells "A crafty chick"? Higly respectful.
Wouldn't that make her idea thinking INSIDE the square though? Don't brag about how much of a humanitarian you are if you are just in it for the money.
Here's another photo minus the huge goggles.
"The winner of several Eureka Science Awards in Australia is a crafty chick who devised a way to create solar cells cheaply using a pizza oven, nail polish and an inkjet printer."
Afforable but uses an Inkjet Printer? You almost fooled me there. With the cost of ink being what it is, it'll be cheaper to just go out and buy a solar cell.
headline:
female: "crafty chick turns out clever "invention", wants to "help people" - awwww!"
hypothetical:
male: "a thrifty, socially motivated boy genius has turned industry on its head with an astounding demonstration of scientific innovation and prowess beyond his years."
I wish I could spend mod points to send an electric shock to especially bad posters.
My Photography - http://ian-x.com
The Deathlings (comic) - http://thedeathlings.com
Now all poor people without electricity can simply print their own solar cells on their inkjet printers!
Nominee video of Nicole Kuepper
Vodcast of People's Choice awards ceremony (Look for ep 26, 2008)
"Einstein argued that [...] God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer." ~ Brooks
If you do a little digging, you find there is far less to this story than you might think.
All the lady did is develop a simple way of printing electrical contacts onto the silicon surface.
That's a mighty small part of the overall cell's cost. It's not going to bring cell prices down so the "2 billion" can afford them. heck, the top 2 billion can't afford them.
In most Australian Universities the postgraduate student owns the IP. I can't find the equivalent for UNSW, but here is the University of Sydney's policy (a close competitor to UNSW). It is quite clear that by default postgraduate students own their results.
First quote:
"I love working with passionate people who want to help address climate change and poverty"
Second quote:
"it could take five years to commercialise the patented technology"
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
for a lot cheaper. All I need is a bunch of guys with shovels, and a boat, and we can give the world's poor good old coal. It's our environmental priorities, which we choose, that make energy more expensive. If we all could tolerate soot filled cities, like London in 1880, we could have dirt cheap heat and light and electricity just by burning coal and sometimes making steam with it for power.
The point is, when people make announcements like this, its not to give poor people the most energy, it is rather to give them energy that is fundamentally more expensive, but to lower that window as much as possible.
So let's not say that we are giving the poor the "cheapest energy possible", because, that's not what we're doing.
This is my sig.
Why? Let's say she didn't patent it, just released it to public domain. At the moment, the cells she has can be made inexpensively, out of cheap components. What happens when GreedyDeepPockets Corp decides to get into the business? It drives the cost UP, for everyone (for the raw materials at least). Now, let's say she does have a patent. She can decide who can produce it. Maybe she makes license terms that say for the first 5 years it can only be used to provide electricity for people who don't currently have it. Try not to get your panties in a knot every time you see the word 'patent'.
We can't have just anybody making power. We have to have giant solar collectors behind big fences and huge farms of giant windmills with wires, miles and miles of wires and big towers and meters to track and charge money for power...
Why does she hate America so much to think that people actually want to generate their own power? America wants monopolistic power companies to build and provide expensive, unreliable power systems to developing nations.
Universities used to be about learning and donating knowledge that would benefit mankind back to the creative commons.
Now, Universities are having to survive in a cut-throat commercial environment. In the UK, they do this by gouging international students on fees for their education, but also by having teams of commercialisation droids hovering over post-docs and PhD students, waiting to make money out of their ideas.
It's particularly sad because the vast majority of PhD students I meet are not commercially minded at all. They just want to do good science. These are the people who don't realise that the IP agreement they're signing means that the University now owns their thoughts, dreams and lives.
HOW she makes a solar cell from pizza oven and inkjet printer? the most basic in science is show how to do to anyone (with time and resources, off course) try too and see if works or not.
Or maybe is "hard-vaporware" (hardware + vapor)
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
"She wanted to give the @2 billion people around the world who dont have electricity the gift of light and cheap energy."
What does "@2 billion" mean? "At two billion?" Maybe "~2 billion?"
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I suspect that would have implications for your karma.
My sig sucks.
What I don't see is any mention of whether she is printing onto silicon wafers. If its silicon wafers, then this is just a PR opportunity by a university. Presumably her patent application will become visible in another year and we'll be able to tell.
Otherwise this would be a great DIY thing.
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
Why? Let's say she didn't patent it, just released it to public domain. At the moment, the cells she has can be made inexpensively, out of cheap components. What happens when GreedyDeepPockets Corp decides to get into the business? It drives the cost UP, for everyone (for the raw materials at least).
Right. The big evil corporation is going to make these things at 10 times the price. Hmm... how will they get people to buy when the people could just make their own. I know... they're going to corner the market on pizza ovens and nail polish.
Now, let's say she does have a patent. She can decide who can produce it. Maybe she makes license terms that say for the first 5 years it can only be used to provide electricity for people who don't currently have it.
Right. That's going to get those big businesses to make the things and sell them for dirt, to people who have nothing but dirt.
Try not to get your panties in a knot every time you see the word 'patent'.
There are three utilities for a patent.
Using it to set up a monopolistic business and pricing the device higher than Cost+ReasonableProfit.
Selling it to an existing business so they can do so.
Patent trolling, supporting a leisurely lifestyle by placing a perpetual tax on those who would like to bring these devices to the citizenry of the world without continuing to productively participate in society.
This is an assault on the worlds poor. Plain and simple. The sort of thing you see in a world that is based on the rule of law, rather than the willing co-operation of free men and women. It's scummy, all the more so because it's being presented as the antithesis of what it actually is.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Now that clearly illustrates that purchase of solar energy kits should be outlawed or at least limited in a similar fashion as distribution of chemical kits, etc.
You know, think of the children ... what if they harm themselves with a high voltage they may generated with such kits?
Or what if some terrorist got hold of 'em?
...
You know, I'm kidding. But still such course of action (i.e. banning such kit) may still happen for millions of reasons "our" (and "their") representatives can come up with.
hany
Anyone who knows anything about solar power is that it is girly girly energy like this article proves. Poor people are poor because they probably deserve it or did something wrong. Solar cells won't ever be good enough for anything other than kids lab kits, and besides what happens if the sun goes out, where will your new age hippy solar cells be then. Nuclear is so much better than solar because it works in the dark and even when it rains. So what if it blows up from time to time, nuclear accidents are overrated anyway, and are probably good for the environment because it scares people away so the forest can re-grow.
There is no reason why we all can't have safe little nuclear power plants in our backyard, today.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
An advocate of green technology, she gives talks about solar energy to the public, has held miniature solar car races to teach indigenous children about renewable energy, and was a delegate at the 2020 Youth Summit in Canberra in April.
Did I miss a few years? The brownies I ate last night were good, but I didnt think they were THAT good!
This is why they are dangerous. Kids might grow up and invent something.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Oh look! A girl did something cute with science!
Never mind that it isn't useful.
It's a cute trick to manufacture low quality solar cells with improvised materials and tools, but it's not a new trick.
If it was a guy, they'd be treating this like the tinkertoy computer, or any other show-off joke project.
It's like what happened with James Washington Carver, the Man Who Invented Peanut Butter. He didn't invent peanut butter (that was around before him). He claimed to have invented hundreds of peanut products, but didn't actually document any manufacturing process for them. He promoted peanut oil as a quack remedy. He wrote some decent pamphlets on the known fertilizing properties of legumes (such as peanut plants), and some questionable ones on the industrial value of the peanut.
Dude wasn't a real inventor of anything useful or a productive research scientist. The only things he got right were the things he simply heard from other people and repeated, and he mixed those together with his own bad ideas, so he spread misinformation as well as information.
But he was black, so a myth grew around him. All of the progressives of the day, and of the following days, liked to have a "black Edison" to talk about. So they imagined themselves one, and to hell with the facts!
Let's look at the keywords here: female, student, renewable, sustainable, cottage industry, clean energy, developing country, global warming.
It's a feel-good fluff story. People are believing in it because they want to, and that's how a science project (in the gradeschool sense) gets treated as a breakthrough.
She deserves her pat on the head, but no, she doesn't deserve to be taken seriously.
Actually, if you take into account the social, human, and environmental costs of coal production, you really can't call coal cheap.
the coal industry has taken a toll on Appalachia and its people.
There are three utilities for a patent.
Using it to set up a monopolistic business and pricing the device higher than Cost+ReasonableProfit.
Selling it to an existing business so they can do so.
Patent trolling, supporting a leisurely lifestyle by placing a perpetual tax on those who would like to bring these devices to the citizenry of the world without continuing to productively participate in society.
Four: Keeping a big, greedy, monopolistic company (or patent troll) from patenting the design first, thus forcing everyone to pay.
Not every patent-holder is evil, and not every company that sells something is trying to rob you. Only most of them.
Seriously, if death by snoo-snoo is the punishment... well, I've never used the word 'feminazi' before, but I may have to start.
Do we get to select our own executioner? Anything else would be inhumane!
This is an assault on the worlds poor. Plain and simple. The sort of thing you see in a world that is based on the rule of law, rather than the willing co-operation of free men and women. It's scummy, all the more so because it's being presented as the antithesis of what it actually is.
I actually agree. It reminds me of the OLPC project. WHY do ONLY the poor kids(people) of the world deserve cheap things? On what planet does this make sense? Shouldn't an innovation like this be made available to everyone as equally as possible?
My own kids can only be considered 'poor' if I quit my job. This does not mean that they automagically get solar cells and laptops at birth. What, exactly, is the source of the disconnect?
I guess this is what I'd like someone to explain: Why do the poor somehow deserve better than the non-poor? Whatever happened to the notion of 'same'?
What she invented was a way to create the contacts of the solar cells - basically by coating EXISTING SILICON SOLAR CELLS with aluminium and blocking the deposition or etch process with a polymer, partially removed by an organic solvent. She used cheap machinery to do that - which does not mean that it is the cheapest process. Printing a book on an offset press is cheaper than printing it with an inkjet printer (and this is a fairly good analogy).
Which does not mean it is a small feat, since it reduces the cost of that part of the fab. Unfortunately, the big cost is the silicon itself. Most labs try to go to thin-film cells, or non-silicon based cells, to reduce the basic material cost.
Information on the patent
Information on the "applicant" (owner?): NewSouth Innovations Pty
J'aime mieux les méchants que les imbéciles, parce qu'ils se reposent. -- Alexandre Dumas
Slashdot male:
She's pulling on every string that makes a pointless science project get reported in the news as a world-changing innovation:
clean energy - anti-poverty - anti-big-business - women in science - student
This will come to nothing. This process does not make solar cells more cheaply than established processes. It does not make better solar cells. It's just cute because it's improvised.
Got Paranoia?
A patent helps her to be able to control her vision.
What if she was to license some big corporation and use the proceeds to fund her own humanitarian projects?
You have no clue what she will do with that patent. Also, you should also consider that most places bind employees, students, and professors to allow the company/university to patent discoveries. It could very easily be that for her to not cooperate in the patent process could make her legally liable for damages to the university where she is a student.
I know that everywhere I have either been a graduate student or been employed, there have been contracts regarding patentable ideas and how they are handled, what cooperation is required, and how royalties (if any) will be divided.
You need to give this gal a break until you actually see her do something evil. The fact that she has a patent probably only means she fulfilled her legal obligation to the university.
Four: Keeping a big, greedy, monopolistic company (or patent troll) from patenting the design first, thus forcing everyone to pay.
That is bullshit. If you want to prevent someone from patenting your creation after the fact, you release it wide and far without encumbrance. The fact that you have publicly released prior art prevents them from getting a patent, or overturns that patent should it pass through the patent office. Patents do not protect citizens from patents. Your argument is utter nonsense.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
The article divulges almost nothing about the process or its documentation - with one exception.
It is patented.
But alas, we can be certain that it was patented passionately by people who only want to help address climate change and poverty.
Is it time to flush yet?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You're literally just jealous because she's already done more than you will ever be capable of doing. You're trying to hide that jealousy, and failing badly.
What neologism? Feminazi? What's wrong with feminazi?
I'd like to get a Silicon Diavolo with garlic and Mozzarella please.
Everywhere that I know has contracts in place regarding the patenting of patentable ideas. You are legally bound to inform the IP people of any discoveries and they decide if it is worthy of a patent.
The patent, while in her name, will be owned and under the control of the university. She will get get some cut of the royalties, but will have little to no say in how the university licenses the patent or to whom.
Settle down on the condemnations until you know that she was not obligated to help the university pursue the patent to add to the university's portfolio of IP. Most likely she has zero control over how the patent is licensed.
Get back in the kitchen and cook me a solar cell!
It would be nice if the article told us how it works ... if she has a way to get past transparent conductive oxide layers I would certainly be interested in hearing about it. Zinc Oxide deposition onto glass substrates is used for the black currant solar cell.
I like how that technique is being heralded by a company named Mansolar....
Well - reading the fucking article again, I did notice this ...
"While it could take five years to commercialise the patented technology"
Am I being an asshole for pointing out the irony of wanting to commercialize DIY solar cell technology?
""I love working with passionate people who want to help address climate change and poverty by thinking and experimenting outside the square," she said."
That reminds me of an episode of Pinky and the Brain. Something about Brain wanting to take over the world for the good of all man kind, and chanting kumbaya with a bunch of hippies... :-)
And are they talking about an electric pizza oven or a brick oven pizza oven? I imagine one would be depositing carbon all over the place ... which could help in some cases. The black currant technique requires a layer of graphite to be applied for the anode I think...
Your resident /. manarchist,
afxgrin
These are the people who don't realise that the IP agreement they're signing means that the University now owns their thoughts, dreams and lives.
I'm a postgrad student at an Australian university. One uni pressured me to assign my IP rights to them for spurious reasons involving the fact that my research was partly sponsored by an industry partner. This included granting the uni the right to withhold my research from publication! The only guarantee for me was that my PhD thesis would be "published" - even if that meant it would remain "behind the counter" at the library and hence not publicly available for (I think) two years. WTF!?
I tried to re-negotiate the terms so that the uni granted me a non-exclusive perpetual licence to my own research so that I could, for instance, work on it as a postdoc or maybe write a book down the track. No dice.
Then they tried to make it a condition of my scholarship. Fortunately, I'd already started so there was little they could do when I just refused to sign.
For other reasons, I left that uni and went to another one in the same city. Not a problem there.
Unbelievable. Still, at some level you have to admire the pure gall of it.
Your notion has the right basis in equality, but your thought process is skewed. If a project involves centralized production and distribution, then allocating shipments to people who already live comfortably (and probably already have a similarly-capable substitute product) deprives the poorer groups from receiving as many shipments. In the case of the OLPC project, the poor get the computer first because for them, it allows them first time access to a software platform and the internet. For you, on the other hand, an OLPC laptop would just sit in your bathroom and display pr0n.
It's related to the reason why donating to the rich just doesn't carry the same karma as donating to the poor.
How is this a troll?
"Chick" is sexist language. How sexist, and how much anyone should care are up for debate.
Remod parent.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
People who talk this way have never seriously been involved with any effort "for the good of all mankind".
Oddly enough, I have been; several times in fact.
One thing that happens when you get serious about doing something on any kind of scale is you discover that money is really, really important, even though that's not what you're out to get. People working full time on saving the world still have to eat, still have to support their families. And it's really not fair to expect them to live like monks, although many do make financial sacrifices.
When you really get serious about saving the world, you end up with things like budgets, income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow projections, all of which have to be managed very nearly exactly the same way as in a business. The only distinction is that anything that generates profit and isn't illegal is fair game in a business. A non-profit is always about having the greatest long term impact, an end which often entails a variety of profit maximizing decisions, but which is superior to the profit maximizing goal.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It would be easier to admire the gall if they weren't picking on people who are (a) often young and a bit naive (b) usually pretty skint (c) trying to forward the cause of human knowledge.
Professors are often complicit, too, which is appalling since they must know what it was like to be a postgrad. It's like the prefect system - you spend your younger years getting bullied and picked on and then you feel it's your right to to the same to the next generation.
Maybe PhD students should unionise. At the moment, it's pretty clear that nobody is looking out for them.
now that's geek food!
Universities used to be about learning and donating knowledge that would benefit mankind back to the creative commons.
That's when universities were reasonably well funded and were left to do academic work.
These days, research groups are measured by commercial relevance and how much money they bring in. Professors even end up having to subsidize teaching from research grants.
I don't know where all the money is going in the UK, but in the US, it's pretty simple: it's primarily going to the military, agricultural and other subsidies, and prisons.
> She wanted to give the @2 billion people around the world who dont have electricity the gift of light and cheap energy.
Screw that, I'm building a new set of roof tiles and giving myself the gift of light and cheap energy :D
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
Would you like anchovies with that?
One uni pressured me to assign my IP rights to them for spurious reasons involving the fact that my research was partly sponsored by an industry partner.
What's "spurious" about it? If it's true that the company paid for lab equipment and (part of) your salary, why shouldn't they own the results?
In the case of the OLPC project, the poor get the computer first because for them, it allows them first time access to a software platform and the internet. For you, on the other hand, an OLPC laptop would just sit in your bathroom and display pr0n.
How the hell does that work?
You're assuming that poor people would not likewise consume porn, were it available? Based on WHAT, exactly?
Likewise, you're assuming that non-poor would get NO educational value from such a device?
Beyond a weird sense of reverse-prejudice, what on earth is backing this assumption up?
Rather than Cost+Reasonable profit, the major factor is that a bigger company would just build it, once the idea is out.
For small time inventors and startups, patent is a godsend.
Patents are what keeps the small time entrepreneurs rolling. Please do not forget that.
rajmohan_h@yahoo.com
Except that if greedy corp did 'steal her idea' all they could then do is manufacture their solar cells cheaper, and hopefully then spend the difference on selling their cells more cheaply (they do this you know, something about competing with other manufacturers)
They couldn't apply for a patent as she could demonstrate prior-art, so all her patent does is ensure she doesn't get her wish of cheaper solar cells.
Where is the HOWTO?
As thePig said, patents are a good way to prevent a large company from putting your small company out of business. Most people interested in doing good for their community (or the world) can't make enough money from their product to out-produce a massive corporation; if they want to keep making money, they have to have a tool to prevent big businesses from immediately competing.
Sure... if you release it for free they can't patent it, but they can sure offer your widget at a lower price... right up until you've gone under, at which point they can -- and will -- raise the price again. Show me some proof that things can't work as I say, and I'll accept your argument. Until then, just keep telling me it's bullshit, and I'll keep thinking you're wrong.
Female is also sexist, as it is a term applied to a single sex. As it dude, man, woman, lady.
0xB315AA8D852DCD3F3DCA578FD2E0BF88
Getting a patent is EXPENSIVE. I seriously doubt that whatever company she's working for is going to give this back to the world for the betterment of mankind.
It also means spic, wop, kike, dago, polack, beaner, honky and raghead. It's pejorative, and anybody who thinks otherwise has his head up his ass.
The only people who may use it safely are those who choose to use it of themselves.
I piss off bigots.
Except that in the mean time the company that got the patent is in litigation and costing lots of people lots of money. It is true that ultimately the patent will be overturned, but how much will innocent people have to pay until that happens. I agree that patents are generally an encumbrance to innovation but we should at least wait to see what is done with this one before passing judgment.
All points of time and space are connected.
In other words... Patent trolls... So much for saving the poor...
Chick is a diminutive. You're never really speaking up to someone saying "chick" anymore than you are with "pal" or "kid" or usually "you."
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Could this process be adapted for home printing of semiconductors? Cheap open source electronics any one...? I'd love to be able to download new toys from sourceforge and then just print them out.
There have been some indications from posters here that such is not the case in Australia.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Sure... if you release it for free they can't patent it, but they can sure offer your widget at a lower price... right up until you've gone under, at which point they can -- and will -- raise the price again. Show me some proof that things can't work as I say, and I'll accept your argument. Until then, just keep telling me it's bullshit, and I'll keep thinking you're wrong.
It doesn't work that way with drugs, now does it? You still see Ibuprofen, Acetiminaphen, Acetylsalicylic Acid on the shelves, right? At prices FAR below Advil, Tylenol and Aspirin. If you were right, even in principle, these generic drugs would not be available, and yet they are. You're ignoring reality and spouting bullshit to support your predetermined position, most likely because either you too would like leverage over the vast number of us some day, or you already have it.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Don't ask me where I came up with "James".
Slab Hardchest!
Of a 2.6 trillion dollar + budget, agricultural subsidies amount to about 25 billion, prisons get about 41 billion.
I won't argue the 500+ billion that is going to the military, but education is getting about 80 billion a year.
have you been reading Any of the news items posted here about patents, patent trolls and how much it costs to fund a lawsuit? A troll could easily patent this, and then tie up the case in court for years, and who would have the money/time/energy to fight them for it? Besides, the point has already been made that the University is probably the patent-holder, or at least joint holder. They get more prestige from holding the patent and letting poor countries use it for next to nothing than just making it public domain. Plus their graduates/staff can make good money teaching the developing nations they're targeting how to use it. And if you want to get Really nasty, they could withhold the patent from horrible nations whose human rights records aren't up to snuff, as a way to force political change. But that's pretty unlikely.
I suppose calling males 'guys' or 'dudes' is also sexist, then?
Seriously, some people are way over-fucking-sensitive. Probably not yourself.. but the people that decide on what's "politically correct" should be sent to mental asylums, or perhaps become antagonists in a Jane Austen theatre production.
which is totally what she said
Rather than Cost+Reasonable profit, the major factor is that a bigger company would just build it, once the idea is out.
For small time inventors and startups, patent is a godsend.
Patents are what keeps the small time entrepreneurs rolling. Please do not forget that.
Right. Here I thought this was about helping the worlds poor. It's about helping some chick in Australia build a successful business on their back.
She's a real Samaritan, this one...
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
How is this a troll?
"Chick" is sexist. You're supposed to spell it "chyck."
Yeah... Now karma is measured in amps.
She could still be... it's hard to do good when you're legally enjoined from distribuing the product you made. Or when you can't make enough on sales to rich people to sell to the poor at a massive discount.
There's nothing that says making a profit and helping people are mutually exclusive. For instance: if she starts selling them at a hefty markup (but still cheaper than her competition) in the US and Europe, she can give them away in poorer countries and call it a charitable donation. At least in the US, she'd get a big tax write-off, the rich would get relatively low cost solar panels, and people who can't afford to spend anything on them still get them. Everyone benefits. The urge to make money has caused a lot of trouble, but it's also done a lot of good. She's not going to be able to give many of these away if she's paying for manufacturing by flipping burgers at a fast food joint.
[laugh] Cue "Oh, that doesn't bother me at all" posturing.
So... most of those were, at one point, under patent. Once the patent protection ends, other drug companies can come in and duplicate the formula. That's the way the patent system is SUPPOSED to work. The fact is, it does work right sometimes. But the fact that it sometimes works right doesn't mean it always will. And the companies that are manufacturing the generics aren't the ones who developed them, which pretty much means your example has nothing to do with the matter at hand.
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is spongy, and bruised
Not applicable; all you have to do to prevent that scenario is publish the design, not patent it. Any form of publication would serve as prior art.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Screw the patent, put the solar-pizza-recipe out on a blog today! She will make millions in speaking engagements... but alas, she has to patent to tenure. Put the design out today!, maybe you will get the Nobel Prize. Wouldn't that be nice! Think!!! or, like all these slashdot "maybe someday this will cure cancer" articles, these headlines are just about raising venture capital. but alas, she has to stall all the other 10yr olds while she gets a patent lawyer. This is crap.
What's "spurious" about it? If it's true that the company paid for lab equipment and (part of) your salary, why shouldn't they own the results?
Right, four things you need to understand: 1) University wanted to own the IP. 2) Industry partner did not want the IP and had no knowledge of or interest in the audacious move. 3) Industry partner provided a modest amount of cash - a quarter of the value of the scholarship (thank you Australian taxpayers). 4) There was no lab equipment or other expenses.
No dumbass, you're maybe thinking of "dyck"
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
I think your whole argument is so 20th century.
If I remember correctly when Banting and best invented insulin they patented it only to sell it for one dollar as they agreed that that everyone should have access to it, rich or poor.
From wiki:
"Banting, Best and Collip subsequently shared the patent for insulin, which they sold to the University of Toronto for one dollar."
Damn Canadian socialized medicine again turning people into commies! Its the American way to let the market dictate that drug companies and Insurance companies can choose who lives and who dies. For is the market not America's real God?
Also while I am bashing, the aid that America traditionally sends to the poor people (to feel all fuzzy inside and look good) in the world is grain that is fantastically subsidized and paid for by the government, which they then dump on poor countries. Who already cannot feed their people, now cannot afford to create or maintain their own agriculture industry while all the subsidized free grain is being dumped on them. Negative feedback cycle repeat. I am no economist but this feedback (no pun intended) loop doesn't seem to be helping all that much. Perhaps it does some initial good in the short term, but it does nothing to help create a sustainable future, and perhaps that was never the intent. For poor countries under the boot, make great shoes.
Let's just hope people don't start making solar cells in their pizza ovens, then celebrate their success with pizza made in those ovens. I don't think the dopants used are good for one's health.
Yes, I'm sympathetic to that view, but it's important to recognise that sometimes the universities are trying to protect wider interests too.
In the course of various meetings with the university's "IP managers", it was explained to me that some students waltz in, do a tiny piece of a very large project involving dozens of researchers, then waltz out with a doctorate and some crucial (albeit small) IP.
Apparently, they could - in principle - then hold the entire project to ransom. These IP assignment agreements are an attempt to stop that.
It was suggested this is more of a problem in commercially hot lab-based areas like biotech - nothing at all like my research project.
From what I can gather, some people in those fields are getting PhDs as a reward for doing a three year stint as a lowly-paid lab tech and feel entitled to try it on. Personally, I reckon the answer is to actually hire lab techs and tighten up the requirements for individual contributions in doctorates.
And then there's the increased health-care expenditures and other such costs conveniently hidden by current economic systems.
It's not "hidden". It's that, given a choice, most people don't actually care enough about the environment to want to pay for it. Greens say that "oh, the real costs of the environment aren't captured, its a fallacy of capitalism because people don't feel they need it..", but, people don't need $100 shoes anyway, but they buy them. Similarly, if you had a car that was built 100% Green by American labor in perfect work conditions, with zero accidents, people would still choose the car that was $2000 less that was built in a sweat shop with a limb removal rate of %20 in a polluted smogville, if they could get it.
All this talk about trying to adequately "capture the costs" of the environment is really more along the lines of trying to compel people to pay them.
This is my sig.
Sure... if you release it for free they can't patent it, but they can sure offer your widget at a lower price... right up until you've gone under, at which point they can -- and will -- raise the price again. Show me some proof that things can't work as I say, and I'll accept your argument. Until then, just keep telling me it's bullshit, and I'll keep thinking you're wrong.
You asked that I refute this specific assertion. I did so. Now you're floundering about trying to redefine your objection, because you never really intended to accept anything. The fact that Acetiminaphen was under patent long ago is irrelevant to the fact that it is not under patent, and is plentiful and cheap. Acetylsalicylic Acid was never patented, has been on the market since the 1800s, and is also plentiful and cheap.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
What neologism? Feminazi? What's wrong with feminazi?
It's a Rush Limbaugh word and using it here usually gets you karma-raped.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
In theory, your argument should be completely correct. In practice, however, it's dead wrong. Most patent offices do at least some searching of prior art before granting a patent -- but their primary (often nearly only) source of prior art is prior patents and patent applications.
That being the case, applying for a patent with no intent of ever enforcing it really can be a useful way to help ensure against anybody else obtaining a patent on it.
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
too bad my hairy bagel would scare them both off.
No. To be accurate, the idea of adjusting for externalities is an attempt to compel those who directly get the benefits, to pay for them, rather than spreading the burden onto governments, the populace at large, etc., etc.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Given the laws of supply and demand.... the price of coal is not goint to be 1880s levels
The real price of coal is probably lower because in the 1880s they were still using thousands of miners shovels and now they just blast the top off the mountain off, use a giant tractor to dump the stuff into a freight train a mile long, and whole working of the mine to delivery probably takes less 1000 people per trainload of coal. I mean, in the 1880s, they still were rolling out airbrakes for trains and even then the locomotives required a separate fireman and a guy in the caboose and so on. Now it can just be one guy driving the whole train.
This is my sig.
If it's patented there is a patent application somewhere that describes how you do it.
So where is the patent?
He definitely didn't invent peanut butter, or crop rotation. Whether he had any significant effect on the popularization of crop rotation or peanut products is highly questionable.
Crop rotation, and the scramble to make use of its by-products, were in a general upswing in the American South during Carver's career. His agricultural bulletins (the "pamphlets" I mentioned earlier) echoed the recommendations of agricultural bulletins from other authors a few years before his. He was going with the flow.
He ran a lab, after a fashion, but he never bothered to keep a notebook. He claimed to have invented all sorts of things, but he almost never shared the formulas. He took out a total of 3 patents in his life, on products using peanuts to make substitutes for existing products (a cosmetic product and two types of woodstain), and started companies to commercialize them. All failed miserably.
He did try to cash in on his "scientific research", but his products were pathetic and he didn't succeed. Despite this, he claimed to be uninterested in money, like an ugly girl proud of her virginity.
Carver was a celebrity and a rather dishonest self-promoter. He held a symbolic role as the Black Edison, and he played it to the fullest. If he hadn't been a black man, nobody would remember him at all.
He was charming, and a good public speaker. He showed remarkable initiative in all his life. He was a groundbreaking African American academic. He was an enthusiast and passionate promoter of the latest agricultural technology. He achieved fame, the friendship of powerful men, and important posts. These are all admirable things.
But he did no scientific research of note. He made no useful inventions. Whenever he went against the orthodoxy, he erred. His only successes were in the subjective realms of academia and social life.
George Washington Carver might be considered a great man, but he was no great scientist, and no great inventor.
That's the most interesting part for most of /.
I'm only here for the picture!
The other biggies are welfare and health care. If you combine Social Security and medicare, the vast majority is going to welfare and health care.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
I keep forgetting, is this the year of Linux on the desktop, cheap solar power or Duke Nukem Forever?
Can we possibly consider options like driving smaller cars and switching to high efficiency bulbs before we go back to good ole London town.....
I know it's fun to watch pigeons coughing up blood but sadly so do people when it gets bad.
It's a good point, but, think of the children! :-) If we didn't have as many old people, social security and medicare payments would be a lot lower. I mean, if we all died at 65 because of air quality, we could have nearly a trillion dollars a year -extra- that we could spend on our schools and benefit our children over the elderly.
This is my sig.
To "commercialise" a technology may also simply mean "make it ready for large-scale production", where large scale is anything practically usable, big enough to get a couple dozen watts out of.
I can imagine that no matter what the tech will remain too hard for the average diy slump dweller - maybe not the baking, but the wiring and installing involved plus the basic understanding of what you're doing. Nothing wrong with that, great opportunity for many people to set up their own solar-cell baking business.
What stroke me much more was the "patented" part. That does not match with the ubiquitous production they envision. Unless the patents come with a default free license, and they are applied for just to prevent other companies lock up the technology.
Very light on details, the article - the prizes this girl won and seminars etc she attended got more attention than the actual product.
Maybe not being an a-hole, but history shows that if something is truly DIY, the patent system doesn't impose a barrier to doing it yourself, just to doing it and selling it. See the history of the cotton gin for what I'm talking about.
I suspect that they see the business as making the varnish/dye/ink being used, and kits, which does make sense if selling that is economical, and in a few decades the original patent expires, though I'm sure there will be updates.
-Peter
== Just my opinion(s)
"Bah, don't these people know that there are STARVING PEOPLE in Africa? Why don't they send the money directly over as FOOD instead of giving them ?" WAH WAH WAH!!
No. To be accurate, the idea of adjusting for externalities is an attempt to compel those who directly get the benefits, to pay for them
No, because, without the conversion of a resource into a product such as energy or goods, then the community suffers. If there is no coal plant, you have perfect air, but you freeze to death in winter, can't see at night... you know, live in the stone ages. So, I have a coal plant, belching filth out into the air. I deliver the benefit of electricity. I light the streets and homes and bring heat and people like that and they pay for it.
Now, some people who get that electricity don't care that I dump soot into the air, in fact, most don't. But a few do... and so, they actually go and press to regulate my plant to benefit themselves, and in doing so pass a product (cleaner electricity), to everyone else, that no one wants.
This is my sig.
You just don't get it, if your a conservative male that sings the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and invents an environment saving patented technology that take 5 years to commercialize your a scum of the Earth fat cat capitalist pig lackey of the big oil companies and the military-industrial complex; but if your a liberal female that sings the "Kumbaya" and invents an environment saving patented technology that take 5 years to commercialize your the savior of the Planet.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Here are more details:
A typical photovoltaic cell is made of a thin boron doped P-type (P for positive) silicon wafer with positively charged 'holes' (missing electrons). [...] Metal contact is made to both the P and N-type silicon allowing electrons to flow out of the N-type silicon [...]
Unfortunately photovoltaic cells are expensive to produce, as you traditionally need access to elaborate, clean' manufacturing plants [...]
Nicole has spent the last two years researching an alternative manufacturing process [...] Using Inkjet printing, aluminium spray and a pizza oven, Nicole has created metal contacts to both the negative and positive sections of a solar cell
"[...] we spray on something like nail polish and then inkjet print a kind of nail polish remover which lets us etch certain parts of the wafer. This creates a metallisation pattern so we can deposit aluminium on the back surface of the solar cell and create our metal contacts to both the P and N-type silicon simultaneously using a very cheap, low temperature pizza oven!
from http://www.amonline.net.au/eureka/index.cfm?objectid=A4D69CF1-9890-B67D-2409EF3BFCD8F038&DISPLAYENTRY=true
I assumed that producing ultra-pure silicon wafers was the most expensive part about making solar cells, but I guess this would also help.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
One of the ladies at work calls everybody dude, so I started calling her dudette, she started giving me "The Look"; luckily I've been married for a while so I have some resistance to "The Look" built up over the years.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
From hereon in anyone who utters that degrading neologism will be executed without trial by way of snoo-snoo.
I never thought it would end this way. But I always really hoped.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Clearly everyone should give everything away for free.
Except you, you should definitely be paid for every little thing you do, emirite?
There's a wonderful world here outside the confines of your ass. Just pop your head out and stay for a chat.
Some very good points. I don't want to diminish them, but... I can't help but think that if she had accompanied this press release with some documentation and a how-to, the rest of the world could start making inroads with alternate energy tomorrow, not whenever the lawyers finally work out everybody's cut of the loot and a marketing/distribution plan is put in place.
Talk about ending with a bang...
You did no such thing. A single instance when things *didn't* happen as he described (which is what you provided [or tried to anyway]) does not constitute proof that things *can't* happen that way (which is what he asked for).
Parent admits to have listened to Rush Limbaugh! Cue karma-rape on 3, 2, 1...
... black currant solar cell.
I knew these berries stored sunlight as chemical energy, but I did not know the technology existed to extract electricity directly from them.
From TFA: "Ms Kuepper is a PhD student and lecturer in the school of photovoltaic and renewable energy engineering at the University of NSW."
Well said.
Well, she could have patented it to protect the idea from other people stealing it, beating her to market and exploiting the worlds poor with cheap knock offs.
There's a good response to this a few replies up. And a few more before that.
Basically, you're correct in theory. The difference between theory and practice is that, in theory, there is no difference.
The patent office, in the USA, at least, is notoriously bad at noticing prior art that hasn't been patented. Therefore, refusing to patent your invention, for whatever reason, means there's a chance someone else WILL patent it, and you'll have to fight them in court or give up. Sure, you'll win, but can you really afford the fight?
Acetylsalicylic Acid was never patented, has been on the market since the 1800s, and is also plentiful and cheap.
From the wikipedia article on the history of aspirin: "Hoffmann was named on the US Patent as the inventor, which Sneader did not mention. Eichengrün, who left Bayer in 1908, had multiple opportunities to claim the priority and had never before 1949 done it; he neither claimed nor received any percentage of the profit from aspirin sales."
So, apparently aspirin was patented... at least in the US (assuming the article is accurate, of course). Might have only been the process for making it, though...
I think the point may have been more that you are much more likely to already have a computer to view porn and if you don't it's by choice... the poor person might be lucky to have a stuck together playboy they found in the trash. So instead of giving you two computers to watch porn when you can already watch porn on one, now you and your third world buddy can jack off together on webcam while watching porn! EVERYBODY WINS!
Funny... I was under the impression that the patent office is also notoriously bad at noticing prior art that HAS been patented.
1. Patent idea.
2. People violate patent and/or patent the same idea.
3. Sue.
4. Profit!
1. Publish idea.
2. Someone patents your idea.
3. Sue.
4. Profit!
Hmm, not much difference really...
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Looks like this could be the patent: http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=AU2006317517&F=0.
around 1982 I actually obtained a science-fair-like kit from some big-name old corporation - let's say Bell or GE. it contained silicon wafers, paint-on dopant material and a tiny ceramic widget that screwed into a light socket (diffusion furnace). it was already hard to scrape up info on how to get the kit, and they probably stopped distributing them for liability reasons. iirc, I had to supply my own hydrofluoric acid that was part of the metalization step. I can't remember whether the cells I made actually worked ;)
....how's that Asperger's Syndrome working for you?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
If the inventor had been male and the summary had called him a "dude", would you be calling it "typical Slashdot misandrany"?
No, because you're a hypocrite trying to feed a persecution complex.
The basic idea is that those who have should help those who have not. California gives limited free heath insurance to poor pregnant mothers and young children. Why? The idea is that the cost (people chip in on their taxes, more if you are richer) is less than than the benefit (better heath for pregnant women and young children). Extending this, if you have a product (AIDS medicine, solar cells, etc.) that, when priced at the optimum for maximal revenue, could only be afforded if the purchaser was not poor, then that product is denied to a large portion of the world's population. Thus, people want multiple tiered pricing (say, selling at cost to developing countries), so that those with less money can still raise their standard of living. This allows poor people to get the product while still allowing enough revenue to the company producing the product that they produce the product.
As an aside, this is at least part of what DVD region coding was supposed to accomplish. Sell it for what the market will bear, and have several mutually exclusive markets so they can be sold more cheaply and to more people in markets with less income.
All that said, I do not think that this argument can be turned into "the poor somehow deserve better than the non-poor". Rather, it is that everyone deserves it, and multi-tiered pricing is a ways to allow more people to have it than otherwise. I acknowledge that there are severe problems with this model, but in some cases it is less problematic than the single-priced model.
Amps are the wrong kind of unit. Joules might work.
...are they free?
Or look at this another way..
She's not going to be in College forever..
Having a patented invention on her resume is going to help get her in the door at the research labs she want's to work in.
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
Well... yes, it's not very good at that, either. But they're probably more likely to notice if the paperwork went through their office then if it was published in a trade journal for a trade they know nothing and care less about.
By cooking a copper plate you can cause a layer of cuprous oxide to form on one side of the plate. If you take a 2nd copper plate and put them in a saline solution, you can measure 50 or so uA in sunlight.
So, maybe she found a replacement for the liquid saline solution or uses the fingernail polish to seal a sandwiched material soaked in saline.
If interested, search using "solar cell copper cuprous" and you'll find a good list of references to this.
One big problem here for using these for lighting solutions is the fact that when there is light to generate the electricity, they don't need the light. What is needed is a combination DIY solar cell which is also a battery. Do that and have it store even just 100 or 200 mAh of energy and with an LED, you could possibly light up millions of dark homes around the world. IMO
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
It may not be sexist, but it isn't especially respectful (remember "the Indian guy").
seeing the patent listing I had forgot about the mention of the inkjet printer. She definitely is not doing the cooked copper/cuprous oxide method of building a solar cell.
I'm not sure how many "dark" places are also going to have electricity for computers and inkjet printers yet still need this to make solar cells. I guess we'll see what happens with the patent and if DIYers can and will create these for others to use.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
if she calls you dude, you should call her "my lady friend"
Rah!!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Yo, dude, you are the people who decide what's "politically correct". The term is mostly used to refer to other people treating folks with respect. You may not wish to treat them with the same respect (hey, they may not deserve it). But "politically correct" has become a catchphrase that is sportier than "I call a spade a spade", and means even less.
Sorry to come down on you like that, it is a pet peeve of mine
"[...] we spray on something like nail polish and then inkjet print a kind of nail polish remover which lets us etch certain parts of the wafer. This creates a metallisation pattern so we can deposit aluminium on the back surface of the solar cell and create our metal contacts to both the P and N-type silicon simultaneously using a very cheap, low temperature pizza oven!
AHHAHAhhahahahaaaaaa.
I know what's going on. The above is "dumbed down" for the reporter, who has reported it "faithfully" - and now everyone is assuming she *actually* used nail polish, an inkjet printer, and a pizza oven. She didn't use ANY of those. She used a full blow IC Fab - the above sounds exactly like a regular old wafer etch step, just with metal instead of silicon and an "inket LIKE" application of the photoresist before the acid etch!
Ahhahhahahahaa. (wipes tear) You Loosers.
People working full time on saving the world still have to eat
Except that she has already grossed at least 216000$ from this invention. Thats 65653.495440729483282674772036474 Big Macs(tm) in NYC.
Looks like most slash-dotters don't understand why PV are not going to be powering the grid any time soon. If you really want to understand, I advise going to http://www.tinaja.com/ and search on PV.
In the mean time - this struck me as being on the same level of wasting recourses as the failed pig-iron production of the communist era. Some things don't do well on the small scale (small is often not at all beautiful if you have any hope of being practical).
The very best in PV are tying to get to $1/watt (not there). The reality is they will not be practical unless they can reach $0.10/watt. This magnitude of improvement has fundamentals to overcome.
...and a whimper.
Well, for a trivial example, wheels are not patented; anybody can make them, and mega corps can make them extremely cheaply. The original inventors of the wheel probably is not well compensated at all, but there is enough mega corps who make wheels to ensure that prices is low. Things don't get problematic as long as there is more then one mega corp. And for something easy to make, it would be hard for any mega corp to lock any other mega corp out.
I never thought that regurgitating a Limbaughism could get me humped to death.
Pig demands snoo-snoo, you insensitive feminazi!
Why are you here? Don't you have a Muslim Genocide prayer circle jerk to attend?
I love the way the editor manages to, not only call the promising young scientist a "chick", but also fail to mention her name (which is Nicole Kuepper, by the way).
The research was sponsored by an enormously rich Chinese bloke (supposedly the richest on mainland China). He did his PhD at the same Strine Uni, but had trouble getting commercial support in Australia so went back to China to make a fortune making photovoltaic cells cheaper. I'd guess that he will get a share of the patent and probably the uni will, too.
I do agree with treating people with respect, regardless of age, gender, race, whatever. I just don't agree with morons trying to claim something is offensive when in actual fact it isn't. Several people completely ignored the topic of TFA and jumped on the use of the word "chick", which I didn't even notice. I wouldn't mind being referred to as a "dude", and I doubt this Australian woman would be upset at being referred to as a crafty chick (though of course I don't know her, maybe she's a raging feminist who opposes any perceived subversive attempt to put down the female of the species). Aussies are a pretty laid back bunch. Personally I think that if no offense was meant, then it shouldn't be an issue. Obviously some words have a really bad history behind them, like the "n word", but I expect that one day even that word won't be that offensive any more, since it is becoming quite common in hip hop culture and is actually kinda cool now (leading to white people calling each other nukka or whatever). Some people will then try to tell those that use the word that they have no self respect or whatever, but it's up to them if they want to use it. If I could take any of the words that used to be used on me when I was bullied as a kid, and turn them around I doubt that would be a sign of low self-esteem, that would show that I was secure enough in myself to shrug off the negative intent of others.
Anyway that's just a pet peeve of mine ;) I don't like people trying to say what is politically correct and what isn't. A few months ago someone jumped on me for using the word 'oriental' then explained why. I mean how much more pathetic can you get than being upset at someone calling another person someone who "comes from the east"? Should all us people in the UK make our maps center on the pacific just to make sure we aren't causing offense to others by putting ourselves at the center of the map? On our map, they are from the east. I wouldn't mind being called a westerner or northerner or southerner by people from areas to the east, south or north :/ Political correctness does my head in - I had no idea anyone found the word 'oriental' offensive until this year I don't think. I still find it pretty incredulous.
I love asian culture btw, I feel I have to point out that I am not a racist :p Hopefully I'm not bigoted in any other ways either. My brother is gay, and while at first I found it weird, I got used to it. It is pretty natural to be scared of things that are 'different' or unknown, but education cures that.
which is totally what she said
... is a wood-fired silicon wafer manufactory, to go with it. Oh, and nail polish.
So, the ideal target market is probably a third-world Italian-derived family with a backyard silicon fab and a teenage daughter.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Go to the patent app to see it for yourself.
... never got around to telling her she's hot, my experience indicates that if one actually wants an answer to a tech question, telling someone something she already knows doesn't work well.
For practical details like whether she used a Canon IP3/4/5000 based on ease of refilling cartridges with whatever floats her boat... let's hope Ms. Kuepper writes the article for Make I just wrote her to suggest she write.
Getting the patent info and her e-mail address only took a few minutes of digging via google. Though I'll admit I
Besides, given that I mentioned slashdot, it's likely as not she'll show up on this discussion somewhere to tell us WTF she actually did.
Tech Public Policy stuff
I live in Australia, if she whinges about being called a chick she'll be laughed at. Most don't particularly care, but I also live in the North where we aren't so sensitive as to cry over petty things like that. I'd suspect calling a girl a sheila would piss them off far more.(It's only used here as a laugh at yanks)
If your neighbours roof is flying past your window, you know it's cyclone season.
to give the ~2 billion people around the world who don't have electricity the gift of light and cheap energy."...while "it could take five years to commercialise the patented technology"
I failed to see how the two words patented and cheap could come together nicely.
Solar and Silicon Cells in an Oven has been done before-- it was published in a Amateur Scientist column in Scientific American that I read in high-school.
So was there any useful info in the article? I'm sure there was a very cheap system for solar cell manufacture starting up in Wales, i think the company was US based but probably got some tax breaks for siting in Wales, G24i or some name like that?. The G24i cells were only about 10% efficient, I seem to remember hearing normal silicon based cell are around 25%, expensive galium arsenic cells 40%? (all those figures are probably wrong). Important things you normally never see in any article, How does it work, cost comparisons, efficiency, manufacturing methods. All that is normally said in an article is the equivalent of a fart in the wind. I have absolutely no real knowledge of solar energy, but as far as my high school science tells me, probably the best way to efficiently harness energy from the sun is via the biotech route. I would think some enterprising genetic engineer could splice some n345 rna codon for chlorophyll with the Alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) zymurgation codon, culture it into a trifid type plant that directly synthesizes either ethanol or hydrogen gas. Far more efficient than the losses involved in charging batteries and much easier to store and transport, Fuel cells can then be used for electricity production or IC engines for motion. Oh yes, the photo was very poor, she should have been shown wearing a bikini (she is a chick and it is summer, oh wait she's from Australia ) Just my penny's worth of thought, you of course may have other ideas?
Soundproofing Acoustics noise
University wanted to own the IP.
Did they pay you a scholarship? Then it's theirs. Whether they are obligated to make it public domain or have the right to license it is between them and their funders. In no case is there a reason why you should own the IP when you're working at a university. Some universities may be nice about it and let you have it, but there is certainly neither a moral nor a legal reason for that.
There was no lab equipment or other expenses.
There was a building, a bunch of professors, network connections, and all that, wasn't there?
I fail to see your point. Are you saying that because more money goes to what you call "education" than "prisons", universities are well-funded? That's a ridiculous way of looking at it.
There is little justification for agricultural subsidies, so that's $25 billion too much.
There are clearly far too many prisons and prisoners in the US compared with other nations, so the prison budget should be a fraction of whatever it is. Furthermore, you're apparently just looking at the federal budget.
I don't know where you get your education numbers from, but it looks like you are using something like the budget of the US Department of Education. I have no idea why you think that has anything to do with university budgets.
In different words, you numbers are bogus, and your analysis is bogus, too.
This is all fine and dandy, but I'd much rather have a pizza over powered by solar cells. =)
You Sir are the "loser"!
Don't we use 'first to file' here in Australia?
If so then you'd be stupid not to patent it even if you are going to then give it away for free.
oh no it was on a cheesey AM Talk Radio station and one of the dental amaglams was leaky and rectified the signal and fed it directly into my auditory nerves! I did do it on purpose!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Any hint about the technology?
I don't know who this Indian guy is :p I agree it's pretty informal, but tabloid or near-tabloid reporting like that of some slashdot editors/submitters isn't usually very formal either!
which is totally what she said
Yep, one of my friends is Australian so I have a small amount of cultural experience (I suppose seeing a few episodes of Round the Twist, Neighbours and Home and Away could count too, eh? heh). He used to work here, and only ever said "Sheila" when having a bit of banter with one of the other guys here and doing exagerrated accents etc. The other guy was a bit of a bigoted bastard sometimes actually, made me cringe on occasion.
"Crafty chick" is just too good a phrase to pass up when reporting on a case like this, especially as it involves home crafting!
which is totally what she said
If she's just being metaphorical, she's talking about major reductions in the complexity and energy costs.
If she's speaking literally, she's talking about major reductions in facilities costs, as well. (What clean room?)
Also, she seems to be inferring significant materials cost reductions.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
I, too, R'd TFA in the hopes of finding out how it works. I'm sure if it's already a patented technology, elaborating on the details couldn't hurt, and I'm really interested in just how they work and how efficient they are per square meter, compared to current conventional solar cells.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
Yeah, agreed, silicon is the pricey bit, and theres something of a shortage worldwide as well.
On the cynical side, not sure what the big deal is here, TFA doesn't give the efficiency numbers, but I'm guessing since she's using an etching method she can't get to the level of effiency the labs do through nanodeposition and 3d fractal crap, so she's probably in the 10-15% range.
In which case the cells are in the range of gratzel cells, which have been printable and low cost for years: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/04/13/solarcells_tec.html
Hell, you can even buy kits to build them at home, http://www.solaronix.com/technology/assembly/ and they use a hot air blower for the sintering, The raw materials are cheaper too
So if the point of this is to let people build their own cells at home, it's obsolete, as gratzel cells are a better, simpler option.
Now this can give me inspiration to build my Dilthium batteries. If only I can find some Lithium to use in the experiment. Then I need to find some anti-matter for the reaction.
How is this a troll?
"Chick" is sexist language. How sexist, and how much anyone should care are up for debate.
Yeah don't you guys have manners? Everyone knows Broads hate it when you call them Chicks.
http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?wo=2007059578&IA=AU2006001773&DISPLAY=DESC
Yes, of course. Your options are Tubgirl or goatse, or both.
testing out my trending skills
I don't know who this Indian guy is :p I agree it's pretty informal, but tabloid or near-tabloid reporting like that of some slashdot editors/submitters isn't usually very formal either!
I looked it up and actually, it was The indian math guy.
She's winning awards and she hasn't even made a prototype!!
So long as they give her some cash. She's in it for the money and this is yet another example of hyped vapoware.
She has no product, no prototype, nothing.
fuck maybe I should make up an idea and not have to prove it too. Global warming idiots..