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Based on this : http://www.lunarpedia.org/index.php?title=Electrical_Conductors it would appear that neither of us are right (or the article is wrong). It states that Copper is both a better conductor in general, and a better conductor per unit of weight, than Sodium. Given the need for the special environmental needs of sodium, I can't see sodium being cheaper when construction/environment/maintenance costs are factored in.
Why, then do they use it? (For the record, my internship director, the one who told me the conductivity story, apparently also doesn't know.)
I think the point is that an interconnect allows us to better use the capacity that already exists (including existing wind and other renewables). That way you don't have to build new generating stations, and green generation stations we build in the future are more likely to be 100% utilized, since they can supply a larger region. The fact that we have time zones means that different parts of the country peak at different absolute times. And you have to build generation capacity to deal with the peaks, not the average.
You need superconducters because of the amount of current that will be transported. The loss across the wire increases with the square of the current ( p = (v)i or p = (i/r)i ). That's not a big problem when you're running a vacuum cleaner (although the wire will ususally get warm). It's a huge problem when you're talking about moving thousands of amps. The longer the wire, the more losses there are. In fact, it's common for the main conductors coming out of power plants to be made of pure sodium metal submerged in oil, due to the fact that sodium has a very, very high conductance at normal temperatures.
That's why electric companies sink so much money into transformers. You step up the electricity to high voltage / low current for transmission, then back to low voltage / high current for consumption.
It depends. Enron managed to game the system by taking certain power plants off line for "maintenace" at inopportune times, causing the various grids they were payed to connect to have to trade more energy across their lines. This was made infamous in the "Grandma eating dogfood" recording between a couple of Enron energy traders.
Except not really, since all three grids are perfectly capable of running independently.
You must be new here. Under the current system a single point of failure during peak-usage conditions has been shown to occasionally cascade into a region-wide failure. This has happened on both the east coast / midwest / canada, and in the west. I wonder if this new interconnect will allow even more of this behavior.
When I was an intern (1996) I worked in the power-forecasting department of a municipal power company. We used to estimate 4kW peak average per house, worst case. Obviously, every house occasionally pulls more, big houses pull more than small houses, etc, but at about 5pm on the hottest day of the summer, we could count on having a power usage of approximately 4kW * number of houses. So, roughly 1.25 million houses.
Not sure if it'd be more or less now. Houses and HVAC are more efficient, but people tend to use more power when they're active now.
This is why I come to slashdot! A technical article with the right units! 5 GW of electricity. Not 100,000 volts of electricity, not 50,000 Amps of electricity, but 5 GW. Now, that's useful!
Because some people need large storage with shock (drop) resistance. Also, magnetic and flash media can't match optical for ROM (manufactured image) applications.
Yeah, but the best ones I'm talking about are the ones that actually use the same machine they use for 1 hour film processing. It comes out on print as in "4x6 print" pages.
One question I ask people when they're looking for a printer is if they really need color. They typically say, "Of course! I print photos!" but the fact is you can run a few hundred digital prints from Wal Mart for what a single color Inkjet cartridge costs. The quality is better, the fade resistance is better, and most people don't get a few hundred prints from a cartridge. And, assuming you're going there anyway and you have a typical cheap inkjet, it's easier to send them to the photodepartment via their web site and pick them up when you go shopping than to print them at home.
I agree. I highly recommend the LaserJet 4M series. In 2001 for $190 bucks ($50 for the printer, $40 for shipping and $100 for a new extra-capacity toner Cartridge) I got a network-enabled printer that has worked for 8 years with no service except the occasional reloading of paper. I don't print a ton, but when I do, it just works.
On the other hand, if you liked your old printer so much, why don't you just look for another NEC on eBay or other second source?
I'm new to GPL; Do I misunderstand? You aren't required to release everything that links to GPL libraries, right? Just any changes you make to the libraries themselves? Couldn't you continue to keep your shareware source closed, even if you use a GPL library?
Fine. So your data rate is higher. But the fact is, a carrier pigeon is only half-duplex, whereas your network connection, though slower, is full-duplex. I bet your carrier-pigeon vendor didn't talk about that part, did he?
IU's Computer Science department is held in higher regard than Purdue's by many who attended neither. Engineering != Computer Science != Information Services.
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If you've had an article open for a while, do a refresh before you post your comment. That way you'll be able to see any comments posted since you opened the window, and avoid "redundant" moderation.
This is particularly important for articles further down the page.
Based on this : http://www.lunarpedia.org/index.php?title=Electrical_Conductors it would appear that neither of us are right (or the article is wrong). It states that Copper is both a better conductor in general, and a better conductor per unit of weight, than Sodium. Given the need for the special environmental needs of sodium, I can't see sodium being cheaper when construction/environment/maintenance costs are factored in.
Why, then do they use it? (For the record, my internship director, the one who told me the conductivity story, apparently also doesn't know.)
Now we can go back in time four times!
Great! Go back and post this as the first post, and you might avoid getting modded "redundant".
Whoops! The second equation should be p=(ir) i ... p= (i / r) i would imply that you get better results by using crappy wire. :-)
I think the point is that an interconnect allows us to better use the capacity that already exists (including existing wind and other renewables). That way you don't have to build new generating stations, and green generation stations we build in the future are more likely to be 100% utilized, since they can supply a larger region. The fact that we have time zones means that different parts of the country peak at different absolute times. And you have to build generation capacity to deal with the peaks, not the average.
You need superconducters because of the amount of current that will be transported. The loss across the wire increases with the square of the current ( p = (v)i or p = (i/r)i ). That's not a big problem when you're running a vacuum cleaner (although the wire will ususally get warm). It's a huge problem when you're talking about moving thousands of amps. The longer the wire, the more losses there are. In fact, it's common for the main conductors coming out of power plants to be made of pure sodium metal submerged in oil, due to the fact that sodium has a very, very high conductance at normal temperatures.
That's why electric companies sink so much money into transformers. You step up the electricity to high voltage / low current for transmission, then back to low voltage / high current for consumption.
It depends. Enron managed to game the system by taking certain power plants off line for "maintenace" at inopportune times, causing the various grids they were payed to connect to have to trade more energy across their lines. This was made infamous in the "Grandma eating dogfood" recording between a couple of Enron energy traders.
Except not really, since all three grids are perfectly capable of running independently.
You must be new here. Under the current system a single point of failure during peak-usage conditions has been shown to occasionally cascade into a region-wide failure. This has happened on both the east coast / midwest / canada, and in the west. I wonder if this new interconnect will allow even more of this behavior.
When I was an intern (1996) I worked in the power-forecasting department of a municipal power company. We used to estimate 4kW peak average per house, worst case. Obviously, every house occasionally pulls more, big houses pull more than small houses, etc, but at about 5pm on the hottest day of the summer, we could count on having a power usage of approximately 4kW * number of houses. So, roughly 1.25 million houses.
Not sure if it'd be more or less now. Houses and HVAC are more efficient, but people tend to use more power when they're active now.
This is why I come to slashdot! A technical article with the right units! 5 GW of electricity. Not 100,000 volts of electricity, not 50,000 Amps of electricity, but 5 GW. Now, that's useful!
Because some people need large storage with shock (drop) resistance. Also, magnetic and flash media can't match optical for ROM (manufactured image) applications.
Aw, crap. Now it's just a matter of time before someone asks the "How do I archive data forever" question. Again.
Yeah, but the best ones I'm talking about are the ones that actually use the same machine they use for 1 hour film processing. It comes out on print as in "4x6 print" pages.
See, but the thing is, when I charge a customer for something, they really like a receipt...
You aren't going to get many folks on Tom's with a lot of insight into non-proprietary drivers...
One question I ask people when they're looking for a printer is if they really need color. They typically say, "Of course! I print photos!" but the fact is you can run a few hundred digital prints from Wal Mart for what a single color Inkjet cartridge costs. The quality is better, the fade resistance is better, and most people don't get a few hundred prints from a cartridge. And, assuming you're going there anyway and you have a typical cheap inkjet, it's easier to send them to the photodepartment via their web site and pick them up when you go shopping than to print them at home.
I agree. I highly recommend the LaserJet 4M series. In 2001 for $190 bucks ($50 for the printer, $40 for shipping and $100 for a new extra-capacity toner Cartridge) I got a network-enabled printer that has worked for 8 years with no service except the occasional reloading of paper. I don't print a ton, but when I do, it just works.
On the other hand, if you liked your old printer so much, why don't you just look for another NEC on eBay or other second source?
Make a high-res print out on a big sheet of paper. Museums are pretty good at handling those...
"Homing Whales!" I like it! Now, all we have to do is fill them up with flash drives, and make some asinine data-rate comparrison with an ISP.
I'm new to GPL; Do I misunderstand? You aren't required to release everything that links to GPL libraries, right? Just any changes you make to the libraries themselves? Couldn't you continue to keep your shareware source closed, even if you use a GPL library?
Can someone explain why they didn't use more than 2.7TB of HDD space if HDD space is the limiting factor?
Yeah. Cause I've already finished looking at the first 3 billion numbers...
The rest was already full of pr0n. These guys don't get out much.
Well, kudos to you (er, him!) for keeping everyone's computers up to date!
Fine. So your data rate is higher. But the fact is, a carrier pigeon is only half-duplex, whereas your network connection, though slower, is full-duplex. I bet your carrier-pigeon vendor didn't talk about that part, did he?
IU's Computer Science department is held in higher regard than Purdue's by many who attended neither. Engineering != Computer Science != Information Services.