But somehow, no matter what hits a nuclear plant (be it an earthquake or an asteroid), its still a nuclear disaster.
There's no "somehow" about it. If radioactivity escapes from the plant and causes health problems (or evacuations to avoid health problems) then it is a nuclear disaster because of the problems caused by the escaped nuclear material.
If an earthquake damages a nuclear plant but no radioactivity is released, it is not called a nuclear disaster because it isn't one.
The NRC should approve some more thorium reactors if it doesn't want to be buying technology off China 10-20 years down the line.
And what's so bad about buying them from China? They'll be cheaper that way, and any catastrophic design flaws can be worked out on the other side of the globe rather than here...
Still, it's nearing the price point where I'd be interested if it weren't for one critical point. I live in a condo and park in the parking lot outside.
C'mon, how hard is it to run an extension cord from your parking spot to your neighbor's patio outlet?;^)
Once they start raising an equivalent tax on the electricity to power your car to pay for roads, etc. it becomes far more expensive
And when do you expect that will happen? I don't think anyone will bother until electric cars are common enough to provide a significant tax base, which realistically means not for another 10 to 20 years. So unless you are planning to keep your new Tesla running for decades, it's not an issue for you.
And of course if you are a proper greenie and get a big solar array along with your electric car, then you won't get taxed much on the electricity because you won't have bought the electricity, you'll have made it yourself.
gas is actually an easy way to transport energy quite efficiently...
Very true. It's so efficient that it even makes sense to transport it all the way from Saudi Arabia. But being the best thing since sliced bread won't make help you much when there's no longer enough of it to go around.
Given that the Tesla is being marketed as a luxury sedan, is an Impala the proper model to compare it to? It might be more appropriate to compare it to a BMW or Mercedes or similar.
Henry Ford did it the other way around. [...]"You could afford a Ford."
That method worked for Henry Ford because the only competition at the time was very expensive hand-built automobiles that most people couldn't afford. Since Ford's mass-produced products were the only game in town for the non-rich, of course that's what everybody bought.
If today's electric car manufacturer wants to compete in the low-end market, OTOH, he has to compete with $15,000 Hyundais and Civics that work great. Not easy to do when you don't have the economies of scale that the traditional car makers enjoy.
This is highly a matter of preference. I feel that 25fps is just flat out unplayable and anything under 60 is distracting and annoying.
It's partially a matter of what you are accustomed to. I remember playing Arcticfox on a 386/EGA at about 4FPS and thinking it was awesome, because compared to the other games available at the time it was.
Other than helping to improve EV adoption by making it more convenient, why would we want such a system?
Convenience is the only reason. You have to admit, having your car automatically charge itself without you ever having even to think about it would be pretty cool.
The downside is the inefficiency, of course. Maybe someone clever will come up with a way to boost the efficiency to the point where it's no longer an issue -- or maybe they won't, and frugal-minded people will plug their car in, instead. Either way is okay with me.
We are still at least a decade away from economically sensible solar and wind (for individual homes, at least).
That all depends on how you define "economically sensible", which itself depends on what the alternatives are.
Where I live (in Pasadena, Southern California) the price of residential grid power is 15.5 cents per kWh. Our solar array (which is owned by a third party who we purchase power from), OTOH, provides us with power for 9.5 cents per kWh. So for us, solar power is already the cheaper option.
Granted, the 9.5c/kWh price was made possible by government subsidies, but if there had been no subsidies and we had to factor in the full cost of the system, our price for solar would have been between 15 and 20 cents per kWh... still in the ballpark of our grid power, and that was a year ago -- since then the price of solar panels has dropped considerable, and is likely to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. Grid power, in the meantime, continues to get more expensive.
So a more likely conclusion would be that either solar power is already economically sensible (for those with access to enough sun and roof space, anyway), or it will become so in the next couple of years.
1) it should blow itself AND THE CARGO up if it goes down anyplace EXCEPT where it is supposed to land.
That would rather depend on what the cargo is, don't you think? Certainly any passengers on board wouldn't be happy with your arrangement.
2) we should be working on beaming energy. With that approach, we could provide energy into a FOB without sending loads of fuel.
Beamed energy requires a line of sight, which means it won't work over the horizon or through a mountain.
On the other hand, the military already does use "beamed energy" from the sun to cut down on its fuel usage. When fuel costs $400 per gallon, the cost-benefit decision for running your camp off solar panels gets really easy to make.
How could the drone not know that the signal was coming from a ground based transmitter? The signal should have been greatly muted by the skin of the radar evading drone. I think it is very suspicious that they even knew that the drone was there in the first place. Something is horribly wrong here.
Here's a more likely explanation: Something on the drone malfunctioned, causing it to lose power and glide to the ground. Iranians found it on the ground shortly thereafter, took it to their favorite gymnasium, and came up with a story that makes them look good.
Poverty provides an education of its own? I was pretty poor in my starving school years, certainly made be a tougher person. Debatable if it made me any better or worse, but tougher, yeah.
Yes, poverty educates you as to the value of having an income and being able to eat and sleep indoors, as opposed to spending a year following your bliss (which is a luxury reserved for those who have some other means of support they can fall back on when they aren't earning an income).
I think he was really cool guy too. Too bad because I was planning on visiting North Korea and now these news kinda ruin my trip. Interesting to see what happens next year there tho, maybe it's still worth the trip.
Any sufficiently advanced idiocy is indistinguishable from trolling. (and vice versa)
Seriously, where will it be installed at? Will it be licensed to American companies (where we have paid for this R&D), or will it go to China?
Well, there are two options: They'll either manufacture it in China, or they'll restrict manufacture to the US, and the resulting product will sit unsold on the shelf while everyone buys the cheaper Chinese-made panels instead.
America, or even states, could require that all new homes and buildings under 4 stories, have 50% or possibly 100% of their HVAC (heating and AC required) come from on-site AE. This would actually encourage several things:
Don't forget
4) Republicans would scream about this being part of the imminent arrival of the (Orwellian Socialist Nightmare / Nanny State / Muslim Antichrist / Boogie Monster) and demand (and probably get) the immediate repeal of the law to preserve Our Freedoms (tm).
Keep in mind that people have dual-core brains, so if they parallelize their tasks properly they can work as many as 48 hours in a day. (I don't recommend overclocking though, speed kills)
Not necessarily so with languages, since one of the things that makes a language useful is compatibility with libraries of existing code that do the things you want to get done.
The more languages that are out there, the smaller the probability that the library you want to use is written in a language you can easily call it from.
There's a reason why English keeps getting more popular while smaller (and arguably better) languages fade into obscurity.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not so sure I would have wanted to work on a project with a couple of dozen programmers all working on a giant Python programmer.
Actually, that sounds like it would be pretty awesome, if only because once we finished we could use him to intimidate Stroustroup.
But somehow, no matter what hits a nuclear plant (be it an earthquake or an asteroid), its still a nuclear disaster.
There's no "somehow" about it. If radioactivity escapes from the plant and causes health problems (or evacuations to avoid health problems) then it is a nuclear disaster because of the problems caused by the escaped nuclear material.
If an earthquake damages a nuclear plant but no radioactivity is released, it is not called a nuclear disaster because it isn't one.
The NRC should approve some more thorium reactors if it doesn't want to be buying technology off China 10-20 years down the line.
And what's so bad about buying them from China? They'll be cheaper that way, and any catastrophic design flaws can be worked out on the other side of the globe rather than here...
Still, it's nearing the price point where I'd be interested if it weren't for one critical point. I live in a condo and park in the parking lot outside.
C'mon, how hard is it to run an extension cord from your parking spot to your neighbor's patio outlet? ;^)
Which one gets you more (or any) girls? the Porsche or the Tesla?
Don't forget to specify what kind of girls you are looking to attract. They aren't 100% fungible.
Once they start raising an equivalent tax on the electricity to power your car to pay for roads, etc. it becomes far more expensive
And when do you expect that will happen? I don't think anyone will bother until electric cars are common enough to provide a significant tax base, which realistically means not for another 10 to 20 years. So unless you are planning to keep your new Tesla running for decades, it's not an issue for you.
And of course if you are a proper greenie and get a big solar array along with your electric car, then you won't get taxed much on the electricity because you won't have bought the electricity, you'll have made it yourself.
gas is actually an easy way to transport energy quite efficiently...
Very true. It's so efficient that it even makes sense to transport it all the way from Saudi Arabia. But being the best thing since sliced bread won't make help you much when there's no longer enough of it to go around.
The net saving is probably going to be just about balanced by the hugely expensive battery you'll wear out.
The battery's expensive now, but its replacement (8 years from now) won't be so expensive. Tech marches on...
Until we really change electricity generation in the US, EVs in the US are generally just shifting emissions around.
Ah, the old shell game.
"Let's move away from coal!"
"It wouldn't help anyway, all our cars run on gas"
"Okay, let's move to electric cars!"
"It wouldn't help anyway, all our electricity comes from coal"
When there are two problems to solve, the proper response is solve them both.
$50k Tesla car vs $25k Chevy Impala(30 mpg).
Given that the Tesla is being marketed as a luxury sedan, is an Impala the proper model to compare it to? It might be more appropriate to compare it to a BMW or Mercedes or similar.
Henry Ford did it the other way around. [...]"You could afford a Ford."
That method worked for Henry Ford because the only competition at the time was very expensive hand-built automobiles that most people couldn't afford. Since Ford's mass-produced products were the only game in town for the non-rich, of course that's what everybody bought.
If today's electric car manufacturer wants to compete in the low-end market, OTOH, he has to compete with $15,000 Hyundais and Civics that work great. Not easy to do when you don't have the economies of scale that the traditional car makers enjoy.
This is highly a matter of preference. I feel that 25fps is just flat out unplayable and anything under 60 is distracting and annoying.
It's partially a matter of what you are accustomed to. I remember playing Arcticfox on a 386/EGA at about 4FPS and thinking it was awesome, because compared to the other games available at the time it was.
Other than helping to improve EV adoption by making it more convenient, why would we want such a system?
Convenience is the only reason. You have to admit, having your car automatically charge itself without you ever having even to think about it would be pretty cool.
The downside is the inefficiency, of course. Maybe someone clever will come up with a way to boost the efficiency to the point where it's no longer an issue -- or maybe they won't, and frugal-minded people will plug their car in, instead. Either way is okay with me.
We are still at least a decade away from economically sensible solar and wind (for individual homes, at least).
That all depends on how you define "economically sensible", which itself depends on what the alternatives are.
Where I live (in Pasadena, Southern California) the price of residential grid power is 15.5 cents per kWh. Our solar array (which is owned by a third party who we purchase power from), OTOH, provides us with power for 9.5 cents per kWh. So for us, solar power is already the cheaper option.
Granted, the 9.5c/kWh price was made possible by government subsidies, but if there had been no subsidies and we had to factor in the full cost of the system, our price for solar would have been between 15 and 20 cents per kWh... still in the ballpark of our grid power, and that was a year ago -- since then the price of solar panels has dropped considerable, and is likely to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. Grid power, in the meantime, continues to get more expensive.
So a more likely conclusion would be that either solar power is already economically sensible (for those with access to enough sun and roof space, anyway), or it will become so in the next couple of years.
1) it should blow itself AND THE CARGO up if it goes down anyplace EXCEPT where it is supposed to land.
That would rather depend on what the cargo is, don't you think? Certainly any passengers on board wouldn't be happy with your arrangement.
2) we should be working on beaming energy. With that approach, we could provide energy into a FOB without sending loads of fuel.
Beamed energy requires a line of sight, which means it won't work over the horizon or through a mountain.
On the other hand, the military already does use "beamed energy" from the sun to cut down on its fuel usage. When fuel costs $400 per gallon, the cost-benefit decision for running your camp off solar panels gets really easy to make.
If we have a robo-chopper big enough to carry all that.....why not just put guns on the robo-chopper and send it in?
Send it in to do what, exactly?
How could the drone not know that the signal was coming from a ground based transmitter? The signal should have been greatly muted by the skin of the radar evading drone. I think it is very suspicious that they even knew that the drone was there in the first place. Something is horribly wrong here.
Here's a more likely explanation: Something on the drone malfunctioned, causing it to lose power and glide to the ground. Iranians found it on the ground shortly thereafter, took it to their favorite gymnasium, and came up with a story that makes them look good.
Poverty provides an education of its own? I was pretty poor in my starving school years, certainly made be a tougher person. Debatable if it made me any better or worse, but tougher, yeah.
Yes, poverty educates you as to the value of having an income and being able to eat and sleep indoors, as opposed to spending a year following your bliss (which is a luxury reserved for those who have some other means of support they can fall back on when they aren't earning an income).
I think he was really cool guy too. Too bad because I was planning on visiting North Korea and now these news kinda ruin my trip. Interesting to see what happens next year there tho, maybe it's still worth the trip.
Any sufficiently advanced idiocy is indistinguishable from trolling. (and vice versa)
Seriously, where will it be installed at? Will it be licensed to American companies (where we have paid for this R&D), or will it go to China?
Well, there are two options: They'll either manufacture it in China, or they'll restrict manufacture to the US, and the resulting product will sit unsold on the shelf while everyone buys the cheaper Chinese-made panels instead.
America, or even states, could require that all new homes and buildings under 4 stories, have 50% or possibly 100% of their HVAC (heating and AC required) come from on-site AE. This would actually encourage several things:
Don't forget
4) Republicans would scream about this being part of the imminent arrival of the (Orwellian Socialist Nightmare / Nanny State / Muslim Antichrist / Boogie Monster) and demand (and probably get) the immediate repeal of the law to preserve Our Freedoms (tm).
Could you imagine the headline if it had exploded in Iranian airspace?
Sure. It would probably read something like this.
Does this mean Iran had one or more airplanes flying over the drone? Interesting, interesting.
If they were able to do that, then I think the drone's "stealth capabilities" are a bit exaggerated.
Just think what would be possible if the megalomaniacs weren't hogging all the money.
We'd finally find out what happens when the meek inherit the Earth?
Keep in mind that people have dual-core brains, so if they parallelize their tasks properly they can work as many as 48 hours in a day. (I don't recommend overclocking though, speed kills)
Seriously, choices are always better.
Not necessarily so with languages, since one of the things that makes a language useful is compatibility with libraries of existing code that do the things you want to get done.
The more languages that are out there, the smaller the probability that the library you want to use is written in a language you can easily call it from.
There's a reason why English keeps getting more popular while smaller (and arguably better) languages fade into obscurity.