This will guarantee year-round brownouts, blackouts, and other power problems. Of course, that means plenty of "repair work" for IT staff.
No, actually this will mean a much more even load on the grid, countering daily peak/off-peak demands, as the vast majority will be plugged in after work, after the end of the daily peak energy spike.
It will also raise the power draw in the winter, which is much lower than summer (thanks to air conditioners).
These two issues together, will make it much more profitable for current power plants (which can be nearer to maximum capacity for longer periods of time) and faster return on investment, because it's more economical to build/run more new power plants.
And before anyone starts ranting about more coal... California has all but outlawed new coal power plants. Natural gas is much more likely, as well as increased solar and wind production... California is the PERFECT area for large-scale utilization of both, hence Sterling Systems/Edison's plans to build or the largest solar power plant in the world in California.
it's a tiny fraction of the HP in a Prius' petrol engine (~75HP) - even when you don't take into account conversion inefficiencies & storage losses.
Quite the opposite. You NEED to take conversion efficiency into account.
Cars need so much horsepower specifically because engines do a poor job of covering the range of loads needed to directly drive wheels (as opposed to driving a generator). Use the batteries to service the peak loads, and a very small engine would be acceptable.
For specifics, let's see what AC propulsion has to say:
So, my aforementioned 2KW generator won't extend the trip indefinitely, but it will extend it by approximately 10% at non-stop freeway speeds, depending on the vehicle, and even further if you drive below 75MPH for any leg of your trip, or allow it to charge your car while stopped.
Keep in mind that the Tesla does not have to worry about lugging a heavy internal combustion engine around either.
An I.C.E. is not heavy... I have a 2KW generator that probably weighs 20 pounds. It's a large engine, plus alternator, radiator, transmission, axle, fan, etc., which causes so much weight.
Throw a single-piston electric generator in the trunk of your Tesla motors vehicle, and it will, at the very least, extend the range significantly. With a more expensive, higher power generator, you could drive indefinitely, without all the significant added weight of current-style (parallel) hybrids.
Everything he has to say was fully debunked by the movie. He has nothing more than the tired old "waiting list" spin to offer.
GM's EV1 -- Who Killed Common Sense?
He is a complete and total idiot, spouting lots of completely factually incorrect assumptions. He doesn't xplain his methodology for the cost of ownership numbers he makes up on the spot, yet he accuses the documentary of playing fast and loose with the facts?
Plenty of straw men, and more trolling in general.
Morally, the "government" belongs to all the people it governs, including illegal immigrants.
Illegal immigrants are physically in the territory being governed, but they aren't being governed themselves.
They do not fit within the legal system, and as such cannot be held civilly or crimially liable. Many other similar disparities exist, so I don't see how they can be considered "governed".
Those workers are hired for cultures where mechanization is not pratical at all, like some fruits that have to be hand-picked from the plants.
What is done by hand today, is automated tomorrow. There is NO job that can't be automated. It's just a question of current technology.
I'm sure there are several that can't be automated right now, but a great many would, if not for the cheap labor making investment in technology uneconomical. And the rest will be eventually.
And I believe that whoever hires a illegal immigrant should be punished, because it's all too easy to exploit someone who has fear to denounce abuse, because they are not citizens.
The biggest source of abuse is paying illegal workers far less than they would, if they were legal, knowing they can't just go and get a different, better paying job.
But, as long as those immigrants are legal, have their basic citizenships rights, pay taxes, I see no point in prohibiting them to do work that the other citizens don't want to do, because they are already too affluent to see that work as an interesting option.
There's no such thing as work "other citizens" don't want to do. There is only the issue of jobs people won't do for the wages offered. Once the illegal workers are offered citizenship, wages will have to go up, or the workers will simply go elsewhere.
It's not the government forcing farmers to modernize, it's the market.
Only as long as those higher salaries would not increase costs above price levels of imported agricultural goods. So, probably, not having those immigrants doing farming would mean that more food would be imported, and not that wages would be raised.
The USA already EXPORTS significant quantities of food for sale to 3rd world countries.
Cheap labor is hampering the development of the farming industry as a whole. In every other industry but farming, advances in technology result in significantly increased worker output, and higher wages for employees. It's only where labor is unskilled and dirt cheap that they can even possibly afford not to invest in developing machinery to do the job better and faster than humans can.
Your arguments aren't far off the ones used to justify the institution of slavery a century ago.
How can "we", the mass of individuals who own our houses, say "because we own our houses and we live here already, we have a right to say you can't rent or buy that house you want".
You can't be that stupid.
It's because "we" pay the taxes that support the country, that "we" can include or exclude anyone we choose. Just as you own your own house, the (current) citizens of this country collectively own it, and can decide to do whatever they want to do with it.
I'm not making an arguement about immigration, one way or another. Just that it's complete nonsense to claim that the government doesn't have the right to decide immigration policy.
the entire immigration debate (from the high-tech workers to strawberry pickers) is simply an effort to protect our lazy and/or stupid people at the expense of everyone else in the country and the world.
I don't know what part of the debate you believe is about protectionism...
Democrats want to legalize them, which would put everyone on even footing... That might lower salaries slight in the short-term.
Republicans (while they play the Xenophobic card and build quixotic fences) are also pushing for a "Guest Worker" program. That will have the same effect as the H1B visa system you've seen in action, but far, far worse.
We must have an influx of workers in the future to do things like run our shops, keep services running, etc.
Not really.
EVERY OTHER DEVELOPED COUNTRY IN THE WORLD is facing that prospect. I'm not inclined to believe the entire world economy is going to collapse just because our pyramid scheme of financing huge deficits to our children is no longer tenable. And if that is the case, we're just making things worse by taking away their citizens, their tax base.
It's more likely that our standard of living will just (finally) stop rising, and we'll have to make due with smaller houses, less travel, fewer/smaller cars, etc.
Look at France and Germany, they're already having to import workers. Which is why we're seeing more stories about ethnic conflict, racism, and the return of fascism.
In France (no idea about Germany), the issue is probably more the fault of their nearly-socialist labor system, not the birth rate.
You must buy really crappy power supplies. Buy something a little more reliable
I do. The system I'm typing on has an Enermax PSU in it. Still, I don't expect it to last even 2 years. I don't even have a remotely power hungry system...
No doubt I'm more demanding on computer hardware than most people, but that won't make one component fail more often than another.
They consist of thin platters spinning at very high rpm,
Platters really aren't thin. A piece of aluminum as think as most (desktop) hard disk platters would be strong enough to make into a countertop.
vulnerable to even one speck of dust.
It should be quite surprising, since there is absolutely no way a speck of dust can get inside a hard drive in the first place (unless you have a strange habbit of opening functioning units). The precision of solid-state computer chips means they're more susceptible to a spec of dust than a hard drive would be.
And if it was so easy to support ext2 on OSX then why is there no reliable support for Tiger.
As I said... *IF* somebody cares enough. Apparently, noone does.
Given that a lot of Mac users are also linux users, I don't see why there woudln't be widespread support
You're making a lot of assertions and speculation there. Most of which I don't happen to believe.
Even if your premise was true, there's no way I could possibly guess why nobody has felt the need to do it. And the fact that it doesn't exist certainly doesn't prove it's difficult, any more than it proves that no Linux users use OSX, that OSX has a lowsy driver model, that Ext2 is a filesystem that nobody wants, or any other possible reasons you could think up on the spot...
The advantage to the FAT filesystem is that it has been around forever with little changes.
No. You're proving your inexperience here ("the grass in always greener" syndrome?). There have been plenty of changes, besides the FAT12/16/32 changes, just in the recent past.
Multiple times I've created and formatted a partition with fdisk from Win98, only to find it creates something that Win95 can't read for some reason (I suspect it's boundry aligment, but I never really tried to track it down). Ditto for NT4 created (FAT16) partitions.
FAT has been a moving target the entire time it was actively in-use. It's only around Windows 2000, when NTFS was being heavily favored, that it seems Microsoft has stopped making incompatible changes to FAT... Now, instead, they're introducing other artifical limits like I've mentioned.
So, if you're a manufacturer of Flash memory, or similar, you can write your own ultra-compatible FAT implimentation for formatting your devices (or you could use the oldest version of DOS you can find) that will work on every version of Windows. But short of taking very careful steps like these, using FAT for archival purposes is a rather risky proposition. It's a mirror of the reasons you shouldn't depend on proprietary software for your backups... And unless you're writing your own FAT drivers for all your systems, you _are_ depending heavily on Microsoft's proprietary software for your archives.
Ext2, OTOH, is about as stable of a target as you can get. The old file-size limit of 2GBs is the only issue you might need to worry about, and your archives created by the lasted software should be readable by the earliest Ext2 implimentations.
Re:So let the flame wars begin!
on
The Birth of vi
·
· Score: 4, Funny
but why the hell do so few apps make use of the Function keys ?
They're used, just not for what you want...
I call them the "insert random garbage every time I reach too far" keys.
The time for dual-mode editors (where you have to press something before you can begin to type, and then press something else when you stop typing) is long since gone,
I agree. VI is rather user un-friendly and clumsy.
Unfortunately, there's no other options out there... {subliminal:emacs sucks}
When a fire is detected, automatically kill the power and douse the area with a fine mist of deionised water. It's very effective, generally doesn't damage equipment and (unlike halon) is safe for any people who are in the area and is environmentally friendly.
I'm melting... Melting... Oh what a world... what a world...
But the hoops you have to jump through to get it working on a non-linux platform are insane.
Downloading Explore2fs isn't all that difficult.
and to date there is no official support for the latest versions of OSX.
Official or not, with Darwin and Ext2 both being open source, it should be quite easy for anyone who cares enough to want to do it.
You don't want to rely on one or two individuals' works to support that filesystem 5 years from now if you need to get archival data back.
With any archival process... The currently available software is only of minor importance. The real issue is having specifications freely available.
Microsoft is already depreciating FAT32, making 32GB partitions the limit. I wouldn't be surprised if the version after Vista disables the creation of FAT32 partitions entirely, and future versions to stop reading FAT32 (forcing vendors to license NTFS).
I routinely archive my data onto an external hard drive: easy to update and mirror, but which file system provides the best combination of reliability, future-proofing, data recovery, and availability across multiple platforms (Linux, OS X, BeOS/Zeta and Windows, in my case)?
Ext2 fs mounted rw,sync. When just reading, or just writing, async can't possibly help performance. You're strictly limited by disk I/O. Async will, however, cause irrecoverable corruption if there's a system crash or power failure, which was a source of great frustration with Linux before the journaling filesystems came along.
Ext2 can be read by nearly even operating system out there, and doesn't have the numerous limitations of FAT32.
Which, incidentally, is the exact same answer I gave a few months ago, when the last guy wrote an Ask Slashdot to ask the exact same question...
Slashdot Mirror
Because the 50mpg hybrid is actually in development, while the 65mpg hybrid is a pure fantasy to try and boost falling stock prices.
No, actually this will mean a much more even load on the grid, countering daily peak/off-peak demands, as the vast majority will be plugged in after work, after the end of the daily peak energy spike.
It will also raise the power draw in the winter, which is much lower than summer (thanks to air conditioners).
These two issues together, will make it much more profitable for current power plants (which can be nearer to maximum capacity for longer periods of time) and faster return on investment, because it's more economical to build/run more new power plants.
And before anyone starts ranting about more coal... California has all but outlawed new coal power plants. Natural gas is much more likely, as well as increased solar and wind production... California is the PERFECT area for large-scale utilization of both, hence Sterling Systems/Edison's plans to build or the largest solar power plant in the world in California.
Either you don't have a pool, or you just don't pay attention.
Quite the opposite. You NEED to take conversion efficiency into account.
Cars need so much horsepower specifically because engines do a poor job of covering the range of loads needed to directly drive wheels (as opposed to driving a generator). Use the batteries to service the peak loads, and a very small engine would be acceptable.
For specifics, let's see what AC propulsion has to say:
"For efficient, small-to-medium
size EVs, RXT output of 15 to 25 kW is nec-essary to provide comfortable freeway cruising."
http://www.acpropulsion.com/PDF%20files/Low_Emiss
So, my aforementioned 2KW generator won't extend the trip indefinitely, but it will extend it by approximately 10% at non-stop freeway speeds, depending on the vehicle, and even further if you drive below 75MPH for any leg of your trip, or allow it to charge your car while stopped.
An I.C.E. is not heavy... I have a 2KW generator that probably weighs 20 pounds. It's a large engine, plus alternator, radiator, transmission, axle, fan, etc., which causes so much weight.
Throw a single-piston electric generator in the trunk of your Tesla motors vehicle, and it will, at the very least, extend the range significantly. With a more expensive, higher power generator, you could drive indefinitely, without all the significant added weight of current-style (parallel) hybrids.
Everything he has to say was fully debunked by the movie. He has nothing more than the tired old "waiting list" spin to offer.
He is a complete and total idiot, spouting lots of completely factually incorrect assumptions. He doesn't xplain his methodology for the cost of ownership numbers he makes up on the spot, yet he accuses the documentary of playing fast and loose with the facts?
Plenty of straw men, and more trolling in general.
Illegal immigrants are physically in the territory being governed, but they aren't being governed themselves.
They do not fit within the legal system, and as such cannot be held civilly or crimially liable. Many other similar disparities exist, so I don't see how they can be considered "governed".
You're saying the water in the pool isn't evaporating?
If so, it really wouldn't stay any cooler than the surrounding air for any decent period of time.
I found a good solution for canceling AOL by pure accident.
When giving them my billing info, I mistyped and left out one digit... My service was stopped 2 days later.
What is done by hand today, is automated tomorrow. There is NO job that can't be automated. It's just a question of current technology.
I'm sure there are several that can't be automated right now, but a great many would, if not for the cheap labor making investment in technology uneconomical. And the rest will be eventually.
The biggest source of abuse is paying illegal workers far less than they would, if they were legal, knowing they can't just go and get a different, better paying job.
There's no such thing as work "other citizens" don't want to do. There is only the issue of jobs people won't do for the wages offered. Once the illegal workers are offered citizenship, wages will have to go up, or the workers will simply go elsewhere.
It's not the government forcing farmers to modernize, it's the market.
The USA already EXPORTS significant quantities of food for sale to 3rd world countries.
Cheap labor is hampering the development of the farming industry as a whole. In every other industry but farming, advances in technology result in significantly increased worker output, and higher wages for employees. It's only where labor is unskilled and dirt cheap that they can even possibly afford not to invest in developing machinery to do the job better and faster than humans can.
Your arguments aren't far off the ones used to justify the institution of slavery a century ago.
All too often that initiative is dedicated towards the goal of being the best criminal around...
You can't be that stupid.
It's because "we" pay the taxes that support the country, that "we" can include or exclude anyone we choose. Just as you own your own house, the (current) citizens of this country collectively own it, and can decide to do whatever they want to do with it.
I'm not making an arguement about immigration, one way or another. Just that it's complete nonsense to claim that the government doesn't have the right to decide immigration policy.
You read it wrong. It says one quarter of one quarter (or 6.25%) are Indian immigrants.
It's quite likely Indian immigrants make up more than 6% of the population of Californa (as well as 90% of the doctors).
I don't know what part of the debate you believe is about protectionism...
Democrats want to legalize them, which would put everyone on even footing... That might lower salaries slight in the short-term.
Republicans (while they play the Xenophobic card and build quixotic fences) are also pushing for a "Guest Worker" program. That will have the same effect as the H1B visa system you've seen in action, but far, far worse.
Not really.
EVERY OTHER DEVELOPED COUNTRY IN THE WORLD is facing that prospect. I'm not inclined to believe the entire world economy is going to collapse just because our pyramid scheme of financing huge deficits to our children is no longer tenable. And if that is the case, we're just making things worse by taking away their citizens, their tax base.
It's more likely that our standard of living will just (finally) stop rising, and we'll have to make due with smaller houses, less travel, fewer/smaller cars, etc.
In France (no idea about Germany), the issue is probably more the fault of their nearly-socialist labor system, not the birth rate.
I do. The system I'm typing on has an Enermax PSU in it. Still, I don't expect it to last even 2 years. I don't even have a remotely power hungry system...
No doubt I'm more demanding on computer hardware than most people, but that won't make one component fail more often than another.
Platters really aren't thin. A piece of aluminum as think as most (desktop) hard disk platters would be strong enough to make into a countertop.
It should be quite surprising, since there is absolutely no way a speck of dust can get inside a hard drive in the first place (unless you have a strange habbit of opening functioning units). The precision of solid-state computer chips means they're more susceptible to a spec of dust than a hard drive would be.
As I said... *IF* somebody cares enough. Apparently, noone does.
You're making a lot of assertions and speculation there. Most of which I don't happen to believe.
Even if your premise was true, there's no way I could possibly guess why nobody has felt the need to do it. And the fact that it doesn't exist certainly doesn't prove it's difficult, any more than it proves that no Linux users use OSX, that OSX has a lowsy driver model, that Ext2 is a filesystem that nobody wants, or any other possible reasons you could think up on the spot...
No. You're proving your inexperience here ("the grass in always greener" syndrome?). There have been plenty of changes, besides the FAT12/16/32 changes, just in the recent past.
Multiple times I've created and formatted a partition with fdisk from Win98, only to find it creates something that Win95 can't read for some reason (I suspect it's boundry aligment, but I never really tried to track it down). Ditto for NT4 created (FAT16) partitions.
FAT has been a moving target the entire time it was actively in-use. It's only around Windows 2000, when NTFS was being heavily favored, that it seems Microsoft has stopped making incompatible changes to FAT... Now, instead, they're introducing other artifical limits like I've mentioned.
So, if you're a manufacturer of Flash memory, or similar, you can write your own ultra-compatible FAT implimentation for formatting your devices (or you could use the oldest version of DOS you can find) that will work on every version of Windows. But short of taking very careful steps like these, using FAT for archival purposes is a rather risky proposition. It's a mirror of the reasons you shouldn't depend on proprietary software for your backups... And unless you're writing your own FAT drivers for all your systems, you _are_ depending heavily on Microsoft's proprietary software for your archives.
Ext2, OTOH, is about as stable of a target as you can get. The old file-size limit of 2GBs is the only issue you might need to worry about, and your archives created by the lasted software should be readable by the earliest Ext2 implimentations.
They're used, just not for what you want...
I call them the "insert random garbage every time I reach too far" keys.
I agree. VI is rather user un-friendly and clumsy.
Unfortunately, there's no other options out there... {subliminal:emacs sucks}
Give this guy a hand. He invented the swamp cooler...
I'm melting... Melting... Oh what a world... what a world...
Downloading Explore2fs isn't all that difficult.
Official or not, with Darwin and Ext2 both being open source, it should be quite easy for anyone who cares enough to want to do it.
With any archival process... The currently available software is only of minor importance. The real issue is having specifications freely available.
Microsoft is already depreciating FAT32, making 32GB partitions the limit. I wouldn't be surprised if the version after Vista disables the creation of FAT32 partitions entirely, and future versions to stop reading FAT32 (forcing vendors to license NTFS).
Ext2 fs mounted rw,sync. When just reading, or just writing, async can't possibly help performance. You're strictly limited by disk I/O. Async will, however, cause irrecoverable corruption if there's a system crash or power failure, which was a source of great frustration with Linux before the journaling filesystems came along.
Ext2 can be read by nearly even operating system out there, and doesn't have the numerous limitations of FAT32.
Which, incidentally, is the exact same answer I gave a few months ago, when the last guy wrote an Ask Slashdot to ask the exact same question...
The moderators probably aren't expousing their own views when they mod-up Libertarian propoganda.
More likely, they're just not thinking critically, and falling for the trap as intended.