No kidding. Since when is 10% of a vehicle's energy lost through the suspension? I doubt it's even that high on 4WD trails, what with all the accel/decel/low speeds/etc burning power.
But if you just upload, say, a PDF via USB, will you actually be able to view it? I thought part of what their pay email service did was convert it to the right format.
My partner is considering getting a Kindle, and the DRM issue has bothered us. Is it really fairly simple to do? That'd make it a much easier choice.
Also, what about getting books/text onto the Kindle? Isn't it a fairly roundabout process? Aren't there fees? I'm hoping that it's streamlined with this version.
When will Slashdot book reviewers learn...
on
Managing Online Forums
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
That one specific example is worth a hundred vague statements? Remember the standard writing mantra: "Show, don't tell." Show us examples of cases he's dealt with, solutions that worked, solutions that failed, etc.
It actually can be a problem with the games themselves. Let me recount one example. I was once a coder for a free MMORPG. Nothing huge -- usually a couple hundred people online at any given point in time -- but still relevant. Just in the random course of looking through the code during my work, I encountered some *glaring*, as in "OMG, I can't believe these are in here" security holes. Example: there was no server validation. None, at all. If a packet had the server's IP, they automatically trusted it, and made all kinds of assumption's about the packet's size, direct-copied it into memory with that assumption, etc; if anyone was able to compromise or spoof the server's IP, every last user's computer connected to the game could have been compromised. The management refused to act on that one. In fact, there was only one issue I was able to get them to act on, and that only because I wrote a freaking exploit for it. It was due to them using popen for opening webbrowsers on URLs, and they weren't bothering to check for injection. My exploit was a bit of text that anyone could have said on a chat line or in person that would have caused the computers of anyone who clicked on the link to have their hard drives wiped (assuming adequate permissions). That's what it took to get them to patch security holes; I couldn't convince them to let me fix it until I wrote an exploit. Unbelievable. They operated for years with that timebomb just sitting around.
Mass. You can put an egg in a steel box, but it will still break when it hits the ground. Since this has no rear stability(one wheel) it will flip easier.
Error: Those big, massive SUVs? They roll over *easier* than small cars. And they have *lower* crush strengths, because crush strength is relative to how much weight you have bearing down on you. You left out a critical factor: how low the vehicle carries its mass. With the batteries mounted at the bottom, the Aptera keeps a low center of mass. Big, heavy SUVs carry their mass high up and are thus more likely to roll, wherein their big, heavy mass does its job to try and crush the passenger compartment.
The actual negative to "lighter" is that you decelerate more in an impact with heavier vehicles than they do. But this can be compensated with -- you guessed it -- extra strong materials for the safety cell (check) and a good crumple/deflection zone (check).
Why would they die? The thing is made of foam-core composites, like $100k+ supercars. A reporter nearly knocked his teeth out trying to damage one with a sledgehammer because the hammer kept bounding off. It has airbags, crumple zones, the works, and is in delta-configuration, which is just as stable as a four-wheeled vehicle (but with better response time). What's your problem with it?
its main offering will be a single 9-week course of study over the summer for 120 students, each of which will pay $25,000 for the privilege
Well, that should help them get rid of that surplus cash. It's really in the spirit of TED, though. How much are the tickets to get into the Technology, Entertainment, Design conference -- $4k? $6k? It's basically an event where you pay for the privilege of schmoozing with famous people, be they celebrities, scientists, politicians, etc.
Ever looked at how much of our electricity is generated from oil? A tiny percentage. Why? Because oil is very expensive per unit energy. It's always better to sell it and make your power another way. It'd probably be cheaper for them to sell their oil and import coal from halfway around the world than to burn the oil (certainly last summer it would have been; not so sure now).
That's not to say that Iran *doesn't* want to have nuclear weapons. But there's a completely rational explanation to not want to burn oil for power. If gold burned, would you suggest that gold-rich nations burn their gold for power?
To be fair, about 42% of new generating capacity that went onto the US grid last year was wind power. So even while it's a small share of our total, we're scaling up rapidly.
As a counterpoint to my own above point, though, that number is expected to fall significantly this year, as a combination of our horrible financing environment and delays in the production tax credit (it's quite small, but that little bit makes all the difference right now**) have postponed many projects.
To counter that counterpoint, it's expected to rise significantly again in subsequent years as the US government makes loans available and looks to establish a long-term framework rather than the boom-and-bust cycle of on-again, off-again production tax credits.
** - Wind subsidies are are a tiny percent of total national energy subsidies, despite how rapidly we're putting windpower onto the grid. The lion's share of renewable energy subsidies goes to ethanol. Nuclear power would be even worse off than wind if not for all of the breaks and government services provided for the industry.
Do we really have to turn this into a discussion of nuclear weapons? Can't we just accept this at face value -- a very difficult technical achievement made all the more impressive for occurring in a country that's under international sanctions designed to prevent, among other things, advancements in the field of rocketry?
Yes, nuclear missile technology is closely related to satellite launch technology. Yes, future iterations of this could potentially be adapted into payload delivery systems. Yes, Iran has been provocative in the past. But they're not doing offensive missile tests. They're not doing war games. They're not trying to be provocative here -- they launched a satellite, not a bomb. A satellite called Hope. This isn't a message to the world screaming, "Fear Us!". This is a message to the world asking, "Respect Us."
See, I don't get it. WHY would you name your servers this? If you smack your head or have a hard night drinking, would you know FOR SURE that ServerX is the file server or the database server? Would you code like that? At least make the names useful. Personally, I like MrDomainController, MrNameServer, MrFileServer, etc. Have a backup? Meet MsDomainController. Need yet another backup? JrDomainController? Need another one? No you don't. See, easy, unambiguous, useful.
A few problems with that.
1) I'm not an utter clutz and, believe it or not, I find that I get more done when *not* wasting my time drinking. Would I code like that? What, drunk? 2) Okay, so Ultron serves ssh, sftp, X/vnc/nomachine, icecast, nfs, sendmail/imap/pop3, http, and is a print server. What's a better name for it: MrSshSftpXVncNomachineIcecastNFSSendmailImapPop3HttpPrinter, or Ultron (a device in Star Control 2 whose proponents declared it capable of all manner of wondrous things, despite it being broken for most of the game) 3) Fwiffo and Spathi are laptops. What makes them easier to identify which is which: MrLaptop1 and MrLaptop2 or some actual *names*? It's a lot easier to mix up 1 and 2 than names.
Attention big, mean, hostile alien programmer accessing this server in an obvious attack posture: This is Spathi Captain Fwiffo. I know you are going to hack my system, so let's just get this over with right now. The coordinates of my file server, Spathiwa, are 241.6.36.87, and the ultra-secret root password, which is known only by me and several billion other Spathi, is `Huffi-Muffi-Guffi'
---
Q: Here's an argument I've been having....Spathi have shells or no? A: I think Spathi's didn't naturally have shells, but based on their desire for safety, they might adopt them as a fashion.
-- 1998 IRC chat with Toys for Bob
My main server (which used to break all the time) is named Ultron, while various other computers and printers on the network have names such as Zebranki, Greenish, and Spathi.
Yes, you can subsidize a hydrogen vehicle down to whatever price you want for PR. Want to see what hydrogen vehicles cost unsubsidized? $7,700 a month corresponds to about $500k purchase price. And that's not just a radical case; bulk fuel cells cost over $10/W, and one horsepower is about 750W, so that's about $7,500 per horsepower; I'll let you do the math. Just for the fuel cell stack. And then we get into efficiency -- or more appropriately, the complete lack of it in hydrogen-fuelled vehicles. A fuel-cell vehicle takes 2-4 times as much energy as an EV per mile travelled. A H2 ICE takes 3-6 times as much. Then there's hydrogen itself; it really is a nasty substance. Not toxic, but ozone depleting, metal-embrittling, explosive in almost any fuel-air mixture, readily undergoes deflagration-to-detonation transitions, burns clear, leaks through almost anything, incredibly non-dense (i.e., expensive to store), and on and on down the line. Then there's storage density, which now is barely better than li-ion (hasn't advanced nearly as fast as battery tech), and the filling time for hydrogen vehicles has actually been *increasing* as they try to up the storage density, to the point where it takes longer to fill one of the latest generation of hydrogen vehicles than it does to charge titanate batteries, and nearly as long as it takes to charge phosphates and spinels. Then there's longevity, freezing, moving part count, fuel purity, and on and on... read the link I provided; there's a lot more in there.
In short, hydrogen is the perfect answer if you can spend someone else's money and want to do three times as much environmental damage for no real benefit but increased complexity and risk.
Certainly the prices of EVs have to come down, but they will. It's all an issue of mass production. The tech is there, but the production infrastructure is not. When EVs are cheaper to purchase, their incredibly low fuelling costs and maintenance will win out. Easily.
Don't get me started on European MPGs. 1) Sometimes they're reported in Imperial gallons, and imperial gallons are bigger. But even when not using imperial gallons, 2) The really high figures are almost always diesels. Yes, diesels are more efficient, but part of that is simply due to the fact that a gallon of diesel contains almost 15% more energy than a gallon of gasoline. 3) The official mileage figures for European cars are measured on the NEDC (New European Drive Cycle), which gives about 15% higher mileage figures for the exact same car as the EPA drivecycle. And it's not like the NEDC is particularly unrealistic; it just is designed to represent typical European driving, which tends to be less fuel-consuming than typical American driving.
All of that said, European cars do tend to be a bit smaller and operate a bit more efficiently. Just not as extremely as the numbers would seem to indicate at first glance.
1) They say electricity and *heat*. Heat is almost certainly the bigger component here, as it goes away relatively quickly with distance and is often simply wasted as it's too expensive to ship.
2) 3.5M tonnes of CO2 per year may sound like a lot, but the UK emits 153M tons per year.
Heat is a *bonus*, but transmission is still efficient, and even when power has to be sent long distances and the heat is wasted, EVs are still more efficient than gasoline cars.
For everyday life, charge time is pretty much irrelevant. Charge time is only relevant on trips. And there are several different solutions for that.
1) Rapid charging. As you note, AltairNano packs can charge pretty much as fast as you can cool them. Individual cells have been charged in the lab to 80% in under a minute. The downsides of AltairNano is the price ($2/Wh, compared to $0.30-$0.40/Wh for traditional li-ion and, soon, LiP and spinels) and energy density (70Wh/kg compared to 100-110Wh/kg for LiP and spinels and 160-180Wh/kg for traditional li-ion). LiP and spinels can charge in 15-20 minutes.
2) Battery swapping: I'm not a big fan of it, but several entire countries are moving in that direction.
3) Internal range extenders (PHEVs/ER-EVs).
4) Range-extending trailers.
5) Rental or car-sharing for those relatively rare times you want a long trip.
6) Simply slowing down (for example, an Aptera equipped with the optional higher-power charger should be able to hop from RV park to RV park and spend nearly as much time driving as charging -- and when it's charging, you can eat, shop, sleep, use a laptop, or whatever the heck you want to do). And RV parks don't really have all that much current available compared to a typical charger, and even the higher power Aptera charger doesn't look likely to be able to use all of what they do offer.
In my view, #1 is an optimal solution, while #6 will only appeal to a certain type of individual (myself included, but I don't expect that to be a mainstream solution -- it's just a solution that's available today without any new infrastructure or vehicle hardware).
Gasoline car, when power is on, everyday use (99.5% of the time): Drive to the gas station once every week or so. Gasoline car, when the power is off (0.5% of the time): Drive to the gas station once every week or so.
Electric car, when the power is on, everyday use (99.5% of the time): Never drive to a charging station. Electric car, when the power is off (0.5% of the time): Drive to a charging station every day or two.
How, exactly, is the former better? It's only a better situation in that 0.5% of the time (actually, less) that the power is out. Why optimize for that sub-0.5% of the time instead of that 99.5% of the time?
I don't keep track of release locations on that list. I can tell you offhand that the GM Volt will be launched nationwide at the end of '10/early '11, and Aptera will be going nationwide 9 to 12 months after their initial launch (i.e., summer to fall of '10).
Slashdot Mirror
No kidding. Since when is 10% of a vehicle's energy lost through the suspension? I doubt it's even that high on 4WD trails, what with all the accel/decel/low speeds/etc burning power.
As always, XKCD has already covered this. ;)
But if you just upload, say, a PDF via USB, will you actually be able to view it? I thought part of what their pay email service did was convert it to the right format.
My partner is considering getting a Kindle, and the DRM issue has bothered us. Is it really fairly simple to do? That'd make it a much easier choice.
Also, what about getting books/text onto the Kindle? Isn't it a fairly roundabout process? Aren't there fees? I'm hoping that it's streamlined with this version.
That one specific example is worth a hundred vague statements? Remember the standard writing mantra: "Show, don't tell." Show us examples of cases he's dealt with, solutions that worked, solutions that failed, etc.
It actually can be a problem with the games themselves. Let me recount one example. I was once a coder for a free MMORPG. Nothing huge -- usually a couple hundred people online at any given point in time -- but still relevant. Just in the random course of looking through the code during my work, I encountered some *glaring*, as in "OMG, I can't believe these are in here" security holes. Example: there was no server validation. None, at all. If a packet had the server's IP, they automatically trusted it, and made all kinds of assumption's about the packet's size, direct-copied it into memory with that assumption, etc; if anyone was able to compromise or spoof the server's IP, every last user's computer connected to the game could have been compromised. The management refused to act on that one. In fact, there was only one issue I was able to get them to act on, and that only because I wrote a freaking exploit for it. It was due to them using popen for opening webbrowsers on URLs, and they weren't bothering to check for injection. My exploit was a bit of text that anyone could have said on a chat line or in person that would have caused the computers of anyone who clicked on the link to have their hard drives wiped (assuming adequate permissions). That's what it took to get them to patch security holes; I couldn't convince them to let me fix it until I wrote an exploit. Unbelievable. They operated for years with that timebomb just sitting around.
Mass.
You can put an egg in a steel box, but it will still break when it hits the ground. Since this has no rear stability(one wheel) it will flip easier.
Error: Those big, massive SUVs? They roll over *easier* than small cars. And they have *lower* crush strengths, because crush strength is relative to how much weight you have bearing down on you. You left out a critical factor: how low the vehicle carries its mass. With the batteries mounted at the bottom, the Aptera keeps a low center of mass. Big, heavy SUVs carry their mass high up and are thus more likely to roll, wherein their big, heavy mass does its job to try and crush the passenger compartment.
The actual negative to "lighter" is that you decelerate more in an impact with heavier vehicles than they do. But this can be compensated with -- you guessed it -- extra strong materials for the safety cell (check) and a good crumple/deflection zone (check).
Why would they die? The thing is made of foam-core composites, like $100k+ supercars. A reporter nearly knocked his teeth out trying to damage one with a sledgehammer because the hammer kept bounding off. It has airbags, crumple zones, the works, and is in delta-configuration, which is just as stable as a four-wheeled vehicle (but with better response time). What's your problem with it?
its main offering will be a single 9-week course of study over the summer for 120 students, each of which will pay $25,000 for the privilege
Well, that should help them get rid of that surplus cash. It's really in the spirit of TED, though. How much are the tickets to get into the Technology, Entertainment, Design conference -- $4k? $6k? It's basically an event where you pay for the privilege of schmoozing with famous people, be they celebrities, scientists, politicians, etc.
Still, some interesting news has come out of the conference (re. Aptera).
Ever looked at how much of our electricity is generated from oil? A tiny percentage. Why? Because oil is very expensive per unit energy. It's always better to sell it and make your power another way. It'd probably be cheaper for them to sell their oil and import coal from halfway around the world than to burn the oil (certainly last summer it would have been; not so sure now).
That's not to say that Iran *doesn't* want to have nuclear weapons. But there's a completely rational explanation to not want to burn oil for power. If gold burned, would you suggest that gold-rich nations burn their gold for power?
To be fair, about 42% of new generating capacity that went onto the US grid last year was wind power. So even while it's a small share of our total, we're scaling up rapidly.
As a counterpoint to my own above point, though, that number is expected to fall significantly this year, as a combination of our horrible financing environment and delays in the production tax credit (it's quite small, but that little bit makes all the difference right now**) have postponed many projects.
To counter that counterpoint, it's expected to rise significantly again in subsequent years as the US government makes loans available and looks to establish a long-term framework rather than the boom-and-bust cycle of on-again, off-again production tax credits.
** - Wind subsidies are are a tiny percent of total national energy subsidies, despite how rapidly we're putting windpower onto the grid. The lion's share of renewable energy subsidies goes to ethanol. Nuclear power would be even worse off than wind if not for all of the breaks and government services provided for the industry.
Do we really have to turn this into a discussion of nuclear weapons? Can't we just accept this at face value -- a very difficult technical achievement made all the more impressive for occurring in a country that's under international sanctions designed to prevent, among other things, advancements in the field of rocketry?
Yes, nuclear missile technology is closely related to satellite launch technology. Yes, future iterations of this could potentially be adapted into payload delivery systems. Yes, Iran has been provocative in the past. But they're not doing offensive missile tests. They're not doing war games. They're not trying to be provocative here -- they launched a satellite, not a bomb. A satellite called Hope. This isn't a message to the world screaming, "Fear Us!". This is a message to the world asking, "Respect Us."
See, I don't get it. WHY would you name your servers this? If you smack your head or have a hard night drinking, would you know FOR SURE that ServerX is the file server or the database server? Would you code like that? At least make the names useful. Personally, I like MrDomainController, MrNameServer, MrFileServer, etc. Have a backup? Meet MsDomainController. Need yet another backup? JrDomainController? Need another one? No you don't. See, easy, unambiguous, useful.
A few problems with that.
1) I'm not an utter clutz and, believe it or not, I find that I get more done when *not* wasting my time drinking. Would I code like that? What, drunk?
2) Okay, so Ultron serves ssh, sftp, X/vnc/nomachine, icecast, nfs, sendmail/imap/pop3, http, and is a print server. What's a better name for it: MrSshSftpXVncNomachineIcecastNFSSendmailImapPop3HttpPrinter, or Ultron (a device in Star Control 2 whose proponents declared it capable of all manner of wondrous things, despite it being broken for most of the game)
3) Fwiffo and Spathi are laptops. What makes them easier to identify which is which: MrLaptop1 and MrLaptop2 or some actual *names*? It's a lot easier to mix up 1 and 2 than names.
I can keep going if you like.
Surprise and terror! :)
Attention big, mean, hostile alien programmer accessing this server in an obvious attack posture:
This is Spathi Captain Fwiffo. I know you are going to hack my system, so let's just get this over with right now.
The coordinates of my file server, Spathiwa, are 241.6.36.87, and the ultra-secret root password, which is known only by me and several billion other Spathi, is `Huffi-Muffi-Guffi'
---
Q: Here's an argument I've been having....Spathi have shells or no?
A: I think Spathi's didn't naturally have shells, but based on their desire for safety, they might adopt them as a fashion.
-- 1998 IRC chat with Toys for Bob
Well, not sure about where you are, but around here, adnauseum is the mail server.
My main server (which used to break all the time) is named Ultron, while various other computers and printers on the network have names such as Zebranki, Greenish, and Spathi.
Yes, you can subsidize a hydrogen vehicle down to whatever price you want for PR. Want to see what hydrogen vehicles cost unsubsidized? $7,700 a month corresponds to about $500k purchase price. And that's not just a radical case; bulk fuel cells cost over $10/W, and one horsepower is about 750W, so that's about $7,500 per horsepower; I'll let you do the math. Just for the fuel cell stack. And then we get into efficiency -- or more appropriately, the complete lack of it in hydrogen-fuelled vehicles. A fuel-cell vehicle takes 2-4 times as much energy as an EV per mile travelled. A H2 ICE takes 3-6 times as much. Then there's hydrogen itself; it really is a nasty substance. Not toxic, but ozone depleting, metal-embrittling, explosive in almost any fuel-air mixture, readily undergoes deflagration-to-detonation transitions, burns clear, leaks through almost anything, incredibly non-dense (i.e., expensive to store), and on and on down the line. Then there's storage density, which now is barely better than li-ion (hasn't advanced nearly as fast as battery tech), and the filling time for hydrogen vehicles has actually been *increasing* as they try to up the storage density, to the point where it takes longer to fill one of the latest generation of hydrogen vehicles than it does to charge titanate batteries, and nearly as long as it takes to charge phosphates and spinels. Then there's longevity, freezing, moving part count, fuel purity, and on and on... read the link I provided; there's a lot more in there.
In short, hydrogen is the perfect answer if you can spend someone else's money and want to do three times as much environmental damage for no real benefit but increased complexity and risk.
Well, people pay attention to Sony.
Na naa na nana nana na na, Katamari Damacy...
Oh, god, not hydrogen again... do we really have to keep kicking this dead horse?
Certainly the prices of EVs have to come down, but they will. It's all an issue of mass production. The tech is there, but the production infrastructure is not. When EVs are cheaper to purchase, their incredibly low fuelling costs and maintenance will win out. Easily.
Don't get me started on European MPGs. 1) Sometimes they're reported in Imperial gallons, and imperial gallons are bigger. But even when not using imperial gallons, 2) The really high figures are almost always diesels. Yes, diesels are more efficient, but part of that is simply due to the fact that a gallon of diesel contains almost 15% more energy than a gallon of gasoline. 3) The official mileage figures for European cars are measured on the NEDC (New European Drive Cycle), which gives about 15% higher mileage figures for the exact same car as the EPA drivecycle. And it's not like the NEDC is particularly unrealistic; it just is designed to represent typical European driving, which tends to be less fuel-consuming than typical American driving.
All of that said, European cars do tend to be a bit smaller and operate a bit more efficiently. Just not as extremely as the numbers would seem to indicate at first glance.
1) They say electricity and *heat*. Heat is almost certainly the bigger component here, as it goes away relatively quickly with distance and is often simply wasted as it's too expensive to ship.
2) 3.5M tonnes of CO2 per year may sound like a lot, but the UK emits 153M tons per year.
Heat is a *bonus*, but transmission is still efficient, and even when power has to be sent long distances and the heat is wasted, EVs are still more efficient than gasoline cars.
For everyday life, charge time is pretty much irrelevant. Charge time is only relevant on trips. And there are several different solutions for that.
1) Rapid charging. As you note, AltairNano packs can charge pretty much as fast as you can cool them. Individual cells have been charged in the lab to 80% in under a minute. The downsides of AltairNano is the price ($2/Wh, compared to $0.30-$0.40/Wh for traditional li-ion and, soon, LiP and spinels) and energy density (70Wh/kg compared to 100-110Wh/kg for LiP and spinels and 160-180Wh/kg for traditional li-ion). LiP and spinels can charge in 15-20 minutes.
2) Battery swapping: I'm not a big fan of it, but several entire countries are moving in that direction.
3) Internal range extenders (PHEVs/ER-EVs).
4) Range-extending trailers.
5) Rental or car-sharing for those relatively rare times you want a long trip.
6) Simply slowing down (for example, an Aptera equipped with the optional higher-power charger should be able to hop from RV park to RV park and spend nearly as much time driving as charging -- and when it's charging, you can eat, shop, sleep, use a laptop, or whatever the heck you want to do). And RV parks don't really have all that much current available compared to a typical charger, and even the higher power Aptera charger doesn't look likely to be able to use all of what they do offer.
In my view, #1 is an optimal solution, while #6 will only appeal to a certain type of individual (myself included, but I don't expect that to be a mainstream solution -- it's just a solution that's available today without any new infrastructure or vehicle hardware).
False. Transmission is efficient -- in the US, an average of 92.8% efficiency.
Gasoline car, when power is on, everyday use (99.5% of the time): Drive to the gas station once every week or so.
Gasoline car, when the power is off (0.5% of the time): Drive to the gas station once every week or so.
Electric car, when the power is on, everyday use (99.5% of the time): Never drive to a charging station.
Electric car, when the power is off (0.5% of the time): Drive to a charging station every day or two.
How, exactly, is the former better? It's only a better situation in that 0.5% of the time (actually, less) that the power is out. Why optimize for that sub-0.5% of the time instead of that 99.5% of the time?
I don't keep track of release locations on that list. I can tell you offhand that the GM Volt will be launched nationwide at the end of '10/early '11, and Aptera will be going nationwide 9 to 12 months after their initial launch (i.e., summer to fall of '10).