If you ask me, as time progresses solar power will go down in price (as it has been in the past and future $/watt advances are still in the labs around the world), so compared to current off-the-grid prices, solar power will become more and more a viable alternative.
Even if solar is too expensive now, I am convinced that will not always be the case.
And citizenre is basically banking on their customers not realizing that and thinking they are getting a good deal by signing a crazy long 25-year contract.
"Probably if you default on the loan, you are now responsible for their early termination fee, which I'm sure is roughly the cost of the equipment, plus a small profit."
You make an interesting point. Given that the equipment is installed on the roof, the company will need an easement, which may just include the ability to put a lien on the property when the homeowner defaults...
That would put people who sign up for this into a position where, basically, not paying the utility bill can lead to foreclosure and you're kicked out... With your local power company you will, at worst, be cut off...
Risky for the homeowner, so probably not a bad deal for citizenre...
It all comes down to this: Either the homeowner gets a good deal on energy and citizenre goes bust (still leaving the homeowner in the cold), or solar power get cheap enough to make it work, at which point you'll be able to choose between at least a dozen companies competing for the right to offer you a deal like that, likely at even better prices because of the increased competition...
Anyway, IMHO that is based on absolutely nothing but is still my personal opinion, any company whose name ends in 're' is suspected of being a scam if you ask me...
"am an open source developer, and have been so for many years, and being quite frank here, you're talking out of your arse. Four hours is not enough time to write anything of significance, and code *must* be tested, or the other people who take it to use have to do your testing and fixing for you before improving it and adding their own stuff."
That's just bullshit. In many cases it takes MUCH less than four hours to make good code that is ready for release to the 'Open Source community'. If you think you should wait, test, delay, then you're not taking advantage of everything the community has to offer you.
If you're waiting with the 'release' of code you intend to be Open Source, you're just hurting yourself by limiting your 'team' and your 'fans' to just yourself until the time you decide is 'release time'. Your 'team' and your 'fans' can be of tremendous help even in early stages of your code. Of course you're not required to release early, but you'd miss out on a lot of outside help if you did.
A lot of projects have their raw development repositories online, being in cvs, svn, git, mercurial, trac, etc, and a lot of the code being committed to the on-line repositories of those Open Source projects has seen much less testing than 'four hours', and yet is released to the public and such direct access is very much appreciated by the 'team' and the 'fans' of the project.
In fact, many projects also have mailing lists in which people sometimes post code that isn't tested at all: The code is posted for the purpose of discussion (request for comment). Sometimes that 'code' isn't even intended to even be compilable, but is still tremendously helpful to start the process of involving 'the team' to think about a certain issue.
And a lot of those projects are very successful Open Source projects.
People who just keep it all to their selves before talking to 'the team', they would very often be very disappointed that what they spent so much time on developing something: Using the wrong way to do it (according to 'the team'), or there already is another much simpler/better way to accomplish the same thing, or somebody else has been doing the same development and 'released' just one half-day earlier...
"I would be highly suspicious of code written to completion in four hours. Code must be planned, written, thoroughly tested, then released."
That would make you highly suspicious of Open Source... In Open Source, it's 'release early, release often', because the testing is done by your enthousiast users and yourself in parallel, and your users may actually turn out to be codevelopers to boot...
If you would have released it, then maybe somebody else would have maybe taken it and integrated it into the gimp or sth. Or maybe not because it may not be ready/right for that...
But not releasing it just guarantees that, well, nobody sees it...
"They steal the computing power and bandwidth from victims (virus infected machines) to set up botnets, and then leverage the stolen resources for their marketing business."
Which brings us to the real cause of the spam problem. The receiving end is the victim, not the cause. The problem is the large amount of easily infected windos machines with mass-email sending capabilities.
"Convince the Kernel developers to plan and stick with a stable ABI so that drivers can be developed and fixed instead of wasting resources trying to "maintain" them against a moving target."
If a changing 'ABI' were the reason it's broken, then there would be a kernel version that is guaranteed to not have the problem, now wouldn't it?
Linux kernel modules don't have a ABI because kernel modules are not an 'A' (application) and the interface to the open source kernel is in source code format not binary format for a very specific and well understood reason...
All 'Stable Kernel ABI' arguments that I heard sound as much bogus as the 'Microkernels are better' arguments.
You get a whole kernel for free and complain that it changes because it is continously being improved?
Just make your modules as free as the kernel and get them included with the kernel, then you won't have to make the changes, the kernel devs will do it for you.
If _one_ dies? You use disks without Raid5 or Raid01 anywhere except maybe on a laptop?
I even use raid1 and raid5 at home.
Re:Aliens, ghosts, and gods never leave evidence .
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UFOs In the News
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· Score: 1
Funny;-) I didn't know that one;))
Re:Aliens, ghosts, and gods never leave evidence .
on
UFOs In the News
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· Score: 1
I did recognize it, it's a great quote. I replied because you reversed it wrt the original quote: 'adv. tech looks like magic' versus 'magic is advanced tech', while not all magic has to be advanced tech (for example, it can be a trick of perception (hold the card up your sleeve where nobody sees it)). Magic could be advanced tech, but not necessarily so.
Re:Profit Yaweh Can Summon UFO's On Command
on
UFOs In the News
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· Score: 1
Curious, but it was a sunny day and it was near an airforce base, so it might as well have been a helicopter or airplane with a surface that reflects the sun for certain angles. Just a speck in the sky doth not make an ufo if you ask me.
But it is funny.
Re:Aliens, ghosts, and gods never leave evidence .
on
UFOs In the News
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· Score: 2
Of course, assuming that magic is merely level of technology that is far beyond our understanding Almost: Arthur C Clarke said it back in 1961 like this in Clarke's third law:
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Power is the measure of work per second and work is the measure of force over displacement. Torque is a measure of work, thrust is a measure of force. Both can be used to calculate the power of an engine and because the thrust of a jet engine is combined with a high velocity, that results in a lot of work per second, hence a lot of power.
That paragraph above seems lost on most diesel cylinder block fans. no torque does not mean no power, it's just silly to think that it does.
"Firstly, planes don't need torque, they only need thrust. Jet engines are great for generating thrust, not so good at torque."
Agreed except that jet turbines don't have an propulsion axle to measure torque on, so torque is not a measurable factor for jet turbines. Torque is not measurable for the propulsion strength of jet turbines (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torque).
How now having a torque measure makes the jet engine any less useful is a mystery. Some applications need torque, others thrust.
"Second (which derives from the first) planes need speed, not really power. "
Sorry, but planes need a lot of power: for speed you need power. Power is not the same thing as torque. Jet turbines have a thrust measure but also power measure (the 12k horsepowers for the ones in the truck).
"Why are they powering huge cargo vessels with huge diesel engines instead of turbines if they're so great?"
Because for pushing large ships through the ocean big cylinders are more efficient... The fact that jet turbines aren't up to that task doesn't make them not useful, they're just not useful for that particular task. Why is it that 'diesel people' think that there is nothing in this world except applications that need torque without caring about the weight of the engine.
Sure, in a ship the diesel cylinder block seems unbeatable, and it's pretty neat in vehicles, but for speeds over about 200MPH or if it needs to be lifted into the air, it's not so holy anymore.
There is actually an underwater jet turbine design (the pursuit marine drive) that claims to be very efficient for propulsion of boats, but its just a research thing and hasn't scaled much yet (the company that designed it sell much smaller versions for other applications) (http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3321 and http://www.pursuitdynamics.co.uk/)
"Fuel efficiency is secondary for jet airplanes,the primary concern is the ability to travel at over 600mph."
Tell that to boeing and each airliner, who make/choose airplane and engine designs where fuel efficiency is the most important factor. The 500-600Mph cruising speed is a minimum requirement, but given that requirement the jet engine is the most efficient engine (so far).
"Propellor(Turboprop) planes are still more fuel efficient than jets, "
The turboprop is more like the jet engine than the cylinder block: A turboprop engine is not a pistoon and cylinder block, it is actually a turbine engine too just like the jet engine, but then with the propellor connected to the turbine.
I seems there is some kind of religion for which the diesel cylinder block is holy and anything else is blasphemy and/or inferior, even if it is an engine that runs on diesel, and suggesting that it's better than the cylinder block in any way is blasphemy because there is nothing that a diesel cylinder block can't do best.
Oh well, there are also people who claim that a Harley is the most reliable motorcycle you can buy...
"I'll grant it to the first replier that says the engine in the article is 7780 horses per cylinder times 14 cylinders," (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=214476&cid=17 426264)
"Hip-hop/rap isn't exactly something to be proud of, just like a ghetto isn't exactly a place you'd want to visit as a tourist."
Neither is the guillotine, fascism, or the reason why the church of england was started, but generating pride is not a requirement for culture. Besides, many hiphop fans will disagree with you and find that you don't know enough about hiphop to make such a comment...
"You're comparing a show truck to a production engine intended for serious commercial use. Fuel efficiency is of great concern."
I think the show truck is a serioudl commercial use truck too: I don't think the people running it do it for charity and they must take running it very serious because it can be very dangerous to drive on the ground at such high speeds...
I guess they say the diesel engine with cylinders is the most efficient way to burn fuel (which I doubt because it can't be ideal because it loses energy through heat), but that doesn't count the weight into the equation. If a cylinder block always beats a jet engine in fuel efficiency, those 'jet' airliners would have a different name.
Slashdot Mirror
If you ask me, as time progresses solar power will go down in price (as it has been in the past and future $/watt advances are still in the labs around the world), so compared to current off-the-grid prices, solar power will become more and more a viable alternative.
Even if solar is too expensive now, I am convinced that will not always be the case.
And citizenre is basically banking on their customers not realizing that and thinking they are getting a good deal by signing a crazy long 25-year contract.
"Probably if you default on the loan, you are now responsible for their early termination fee, which I'm sure is roughly the cost of the equipment, plus a small profit."
You make an interesting point. Given that the equipment is installed on the roof, the company will need an easement, which may just include the ability to put a lien on the property when the homeowner defaults...
That would put people who sign up for this into a position where, basically, not paying the utility bill can lead to foreclosure and you're kicked out... With your local power company you will, at worst, be cut off...
Risky for the homeowner, so probably not a bad deal for citizenre...
It all comes down to this: Either the homeowner gets a good deal on energy and citizenre goes bust (still leaving the homeowner in the cold), or solar power get cheap enough to make it work, at which point you'll be able to choose between at least a dozen companies competing for the right to offer you a deal like that, likely at even better prices because of the increased competition...
Anyway, IMHO that is based on absolutely nothing but is still my personal opinion, any company whose name ends in 're' is suspected of being a scam if you ask me...
32 steps? I always do 'sudo dh_make', then 'sudo debuild' and I end up with .debs that I can 'dpkg -i' and 'dpkg --purge'...
Thanks for the laugh ;)
Yawn? You're the one who said 'I did that already' but has absolutely nothing to show for it, while iPhotoMEASURE is cashing in $99 a pop.
Perhaps you should go back to sleep.
"am an open source developer, and have been so for many years, and being quite frank here, you're talking out of your arse.
Four hours is not enough time to write anything of significance, and code *must* be tested, or the other people who take it to use have to do your testing and fixing for you before improving it and adding their own stuff."
That's just bullshit. In many cases it takes MUCH less than four hours to make good code that is ready for release to the 'Open Source community'. If you think you should wait, test, delay, then you're not taking advantage of everything the community has to offer you.
If you're waiting with the 'release' of code you intend to be Open Source, you're just hurting yourself by limiting your 'team' and your 'fans' to just yourself until the time you decide is 'release time'. Your 'team' and your 'fans' can be of tremendous help even in early stages of your code. Of course you're not required to release early, but you'd miss out on a lot of outside help if you did.
A lot of projects have their raw development repositories online, being in cvs, svn, git, mercurial, trac, etc, and a lot of the code being committed to the on-line repositories of those Open Source projects has seen much less testing than 'four hours', and yet is released to the public and such direct access is very much appreciated by the 'team' and the 'fans' of the project.
In fact, many projects also have mailing lists in which people sometimes post code that isn't tested at all: The code is posted for the purpose of discussion (request for comment). Sometimes that 'code' isn't even intended to even be compilable, but is still tremendously helpful to start the process of involving 'the team' to think about a certain issue.
And a lot of those projects are very successful Open Source projects.
People who just keep it all to their selves before talking to 'the team', they would very often be very disappointed that what they spent so much time on developing something: Using the wrong way to do it (according to 'the team'), or there already is another much simpler/better way to accomplish the same thing, or somebody else has been doing the same development and 'released' just one half-day earlier...
"I would be highly suspicious of code written to completion in four hours. Code must be planned, written, thoroughly tested, then released."
That would make you highly suspicious of Open Source... In Open Source, it's 'release early, release often', because the testing is done by your enthousiast users and yourself in parallel, and your users may actually turn out to be codevelopers to boot...
If you would have released it, then maybe somebody else would have maybe taken it and integrated it into the gimp or sth. Or maybe not because it may not be ready/right for that...
But not releasing it just guarantees that, well, nobody sees it...
"They steal the computing power and bandwidth from victims (virus infected machines) to set up botnets, and then leverage the stolen resources for their marketing business."
Which brings us to the real cause of the spam problem. The receiving end is the victim, not the cause. The problem is the large amount of easily infected windos machines with mass-email sending capabilities.
Umm, yes. Wide and Double-Wide?
Sigh... Go ahead make a microkernel OS with a binary interface to drivers.
"Convince the Kernel developers to plan and stick with a stable ABI so that drivers can be developed and fixed instead of wasting resources trying to "maintain" them against a moving target."
If a changing 'ABI' were the reason it's broken, then there would be a kernel version that is guaranteed to not have the problem, now wouldn't it?
Linux kernel modules don't have a ABI because kernel modules are not an 'A' (application) and the interface to the open source kernel is in source code format not binary format for a very specific and well understood reason...
All 'Stable Kernel ABI' arguments that I heard sound as much bogus as the 'Microkernels are better' arguments.
"I've found quite a few ones with source (even in the kernel source) that make things crash."
;-)... But what's keeping you from reporting/fixing it?
Hmm, you must be much "luckier" than most people
And how should I go about fixing the binary ATI driver that makes my laptop crash on suspend/resume (the workarounds found with google don't work)?
"I would say that the huge benifit of binary drivers (wouldn't you like a linux with good hardware support?)"
Good? For Linux, the drivers without source are usually the crappy ones that make things crash.
You get a whole kernel for free and complain that it changes because it is continously being improved?
Just make your modules as free as the kernel and get them included with the kernel, then you won't have to make the changes, the kernel devs will do it for you.
"And if one dies, you're pretty much fucked."
If _one_ dies? You use disks without Raid5 or Raid01 anywhere except maybe on a laptop?
I even use raid1 and raid5 at home.
Funny ;-) I didn't know that one ;))
I did recognize it, it's a great quote. I replied because you reversed it wrt the original quote: 'adv. tech looks like magic' versus 'magic is advanced tech', while not all magic has to be advanced tech (for example, it can be a trick of perception (hold the card up your sleeve where nobody sees it)). Magic could be advanced tech, but not necessarily so.
Curious, but it was a sunny day and it was near an airforce base, so it might as well have been a helicopter or airplane with a surface that reflects the sun for certain angles. Just a speck in the sky doth not make an ufo if you ask me.
But it is funny.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Arthur_C._Cl
Power is the measure of work per second and work is the measure of force over displacement. Torque is a measure of work, thrust is a measure of force. Both can be used to calculate the power of an engine and because the thrust of a jet engine is combined with a high velocity, that results in a lot of work per second, hence a lot of power.
That paragraph above seems lost on most diesel cylinder block fans. no torque does not mean no power, it's just silly to think that it does.
"Firstly, planes don't need torque, they only need thrust. Jet engines are great for generating thrust, not so good at torque."
Agreed except that jet turbines don't have an propulsion axle to measure torque on, so torque is not a measurable factor for jet turbines. Torque is not measurable for the propulsion strength of jet turbines (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torque).
How now having a torque measure makes the jet engine any less useful is a mystery. Some applications need torque, others thrust.
"Second (which derives from the first) planes need speed, not really power. "
Sorry, but planes need a lot of power: for speed you need power. Power is not the same thing as torque. Jet turbines have a thrust measure but also power measure (the 12k horsepowers for the ones in the truck).
"Why are they powering huge cargo vessels with huge diesel engines instead of turbines if they're so great?"
Because for pushing large ships through the ocean big cylinders are more efficient... The fact that jet turbines aren't up to that task doesn't make them not useful, they're just not useful for that particular task. Why is it that 'diesel people' think that there is nothing in this world except applications that need torque without caring about the weight of the engine.
Sure, in a ship the diesel cylinder block seems unbeatable, and it's pretty neat in vehicles, but for speeds over about 200MPH or if it needs to be lifted into the air, it's not so holy anymore.
There is actually an underwater jet turbine design (the pursuit marine drive) that claims to be very efficient for propulsion of boats, but its just a research thing and hasn't scaled much yet (the company that designed it sell much smaller versions for other applications) (http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3321 and http://www.pursuitdynamics.co.uk/)
"Fuel efficiency is secondary for jet airplanes,the primary concern is the ability to travel at over 600mph."
Tell that to boeing and each airliner, who make/choose airplane and engine designs where fuel efficiency is the most important factor. The 500-600Mph cruising speed is a minimum requirement, but given that requirement the jet engine is the most efficient engine (so far).
"Propellor(Turboprop) planes are still more fuel efficient than jets, "
The turboprop is more like the jet engine than the cylinder block: A turboprop engine is not a pistoon and cylinder block, it is actually a turbine engine too just like the jet engine, but then with the propellor connected to the turbine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turboprop
I seems there is some kind of religion for which the diesel cylinder block is holy and anything else is blasphemy and/or inferior, even if it is an engine that runs on diesel, and suggesting that it's better than the cylinder block in any way is blasphemy because there is nothing that a diesel cylinder block can't do best.
Oh well, there are also people who claim that a Harley is the most reliable motorcycle you can buy...
As promised
7 426264)
"I'll grant it to the first replier that says the engine in the article is 7780 horses per cylinder times 14 cylinders," (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=214476&cid=1
You Are Absolutely Right.
Oh, don't touch the holy torque with engine people or they will blow a gasket and start calling names...
"Hip-hop/rap isn't exactly something to be proud of, just like a ghetto isn't exactly a place you'd want to visit as a tourist."
Neither is the guillotine, fascism, or the reason why the church of england was started, but generating pride is not a requirement for culture. Besides, many hiphop fans will disagree with you and find that you don't know enough about hiphop to make such a comment...
"You're comparing a show truck to a production engine intended for serious commercial use. Fuel efficiency is of great concern."
I think the show truck is a serioudl commercial use truck too: I don't think the people running it do it for charity and they must take running it very serious because it can be very dangerous to drive on the ground at such high speeds...
I guess they say the diesel engine with cylinders is the most efficient way to burn fuel (which I doubt because it can't be ideal because it loses energy through heat), but that doesn't count the weight into the equation. If a cylinder block always beats a jet engine in fuel efficiency, those 'jet' airliners would have a different name.