I think you misunderstood the point of the statement in that article.
It's referencing using solid state as a cache, and how even though solid state memory costs 10x as much, when used for caching duty, it can increase the performance of the disk array by 100%. This would be in line with the numbers alot of sites are getting from intel's new hard disk SSD caching tech.
Just a side comment, but when they sell you a car, don't they tax you for the roads through gasoline? Isn't that 'charging for it's use'?
You can use a cellphone off network for zero charge. You'd have the equivalent of an iPod touch. Cellphones are devices that need a network to run, much like cars need roads to run, and thus you pay seperate charges for the roads and for the device itself.
There are countless other examples. You buy a TV, then pay to use cable. You buy a heater, then pay for fuel.
While you may make the counter example that, in these cases, it's not the device manufacturer charging you to use the device, the fact of the matter is that it isn't apple charging you to use the device either. It's AT&T and Verizon who are. Apple merely supplies the device to use on their network, and verizon charges you to use it. Seems pretty reasonable to me..
Don't wars of conquest usually require the 'conquerer' to initiate the invasion? If I remember correctly the US and international community forced Israel to abducate much of their gained territory even though the other arab countries initiated hostilities.
The issue of 'Apartheid' against the palestinians is a very complicated issue. If Israel allows them Israeli citizenship, they won't take it. The average palestinian probably doesn't want to be an israeli citizen because of what it entails. This is what created the situation in the first place. They didn't want to be Israeli, and when the original war in 1948 began they were expelled as they were on the 'other side' of the israeli arab conflict. You can't annex them, and yet they are non citizens living in your country who are not beyond using terrorism to further their cause. Were you Israel, what would you do?
This means that they have to have their own country. However, Israel has called for the Palestinians, before agreeing to getting their own country, crack down on terrorism. And very few Palestinians are welcome to that idea.
The other factor to consider, and this is just what i've heard from people on the Israeli side of the argument, is that alot of the land in israel was purchased by Jews when they got to Israel, before the creation of the state of Israel. Israel worked very hard to make the land productive, by draining swamps and doing alot of land reconstruction projects.
Alot of the Palestinians originally had homes in Israel, then when the other arab countries attacked Israel, they first warned the palestinians in Israel to flee the country, so they could be safe from the war and come back when the country was in arab hands. Many were also expelled because of the afforementioned issue of sides. However, when they did flee the country on the other countries advice, many of the people were refused (by the governments after being beaten by Israel) citizenship in the countries they fled to. The land, abandoned by the Palestinians,was taken by the Israelis. Now landless and homeless, they were up shit creek and it's created this high tension situation. This isn't something that Israel can fix with a snap of their fingers. Can't give them a country unless they stop blowing your citizens up, but they don't want to live in a country surounded by Israel.
In Japan with mandatory national health insurance the cost of a tooth extraction is about $50 and cavaties/cleaning is about $20. You can get a cavity filled for the cost of like a six pack of tallboys.
With current tech, for better or for worse (hackers), if I understand the tech correctly, if the train is hijacked, since the motors are under the control of the network as well as the train operator, they'll be able to do something about the hijacking, making it significantly less dangerous than even hijacking a bus.
My apoligies. I mistook you for one of those 'Trains are for shmucks with no freedom' drive till you die types. Sorry my comment was misguided.
But I still think that doubling the speed is a huge thing, because it will finally allow the train to out-race the airplanes on THAT route, which i'm familiar with. And, as such, shouldn't be dismissed as an incremental upgrade.
I should rephrase then. I don't know of many transportation methods that can get you in the door of your departure station and out the door of your destination station traveling 300 miles from downtown to downtown in an hour and a half. (Disclaimer, I live in Japan) This is part of why the shinkansen is so succesfull. Note that I realize my previous analogy is maglev to planes, and this is shinkansen to planes. So this is a seperate discussion.
But the reason why the shinkansen has been succesfull is that generally airports aren't built downtown. They're built far away, where the noise pollution and traffic would be undesirable to put smack dab in the middle of town.
however, in Japan, trainstations are generally as close as possible to the heart of town, and as such, you can merely enter the station, buy your ticket in five minutes, board in another 5, be on your way, and at your destination be out in five minutes.
However the same process takes nearly an hour (counting both departure and arrival) in a best case scenario with an airplane. Thus, for shorthaul flights the planes don't make any more sense than a train. And Japan is shorthaul travel centric due to the size of the country. Going from the northern most island (Hokkaido) to the southern most island (kyuushuu), airplanes make total sense. But if you're just hopping a flight from Tokyo to Osaka, which is ALMOST possible to do in a straight line, there's just no point in bothering with aircraft because, even WITH the costs and journey times being similar, people generally dislike airports, you generally have to pay for parking at the airport (where as rail stations are close enough that bicycle access is highly practical) and there are many many more places to get into the rail network. I live pretty far from downtown in my area but I can technically start a rail journey to Tokyo with a ten minute bike ride to the local train station, on a complete whim. (The last part is important, I feel that air travel is less flexible than rail, I rarley if ever have a problem getting a ticket with 0 advanced notice unless it's newyears.)
Having a working maglev line between Tokyo and Osaka may tip the scales enough that even if it is slightly more expensive than the shinkansen (and I can guarantee you it will be), it will STILL be the fastest way to get between the two points, thus probably gobbling up most of the passengers that would have otherwise flown. That's probably why this line is being constructed. I think the Tokyo Osaka route is one of the most heavily traveled non local train routes in the world, so there's probably enough traffic to make it pay.
As opposed to being groped or scanned, and then stuck in a 1 foot by 1 foot seat on an aluminum can that can fall out of the sky? Or be stuck going about 5x slower than said tin can in a car? o.o
I don't know of any transportation method in the world other than maglev that can get you from the downtown area of one city, 300 miles away, to the down town area of another city in 70 minutes. Much less one that could acomplish that while not requiring security scans or invasive groping, and a scan of your luggage, or heck, any luggage weight limits whatsoever.
Actually, according to the local news, food exceeding regulatory radiation limits has been detected in alot of neighboring prefectures, and had to be destroyed. This extends all the way to products like green tea.
In addition, alot of the livestock inside fukushima prefecture might have to be destroyed because the local grass also exceeded safe limits, (plants can concentrate cesium because of it's similarity to potassium) and you don't want an animal concentrating already iffy levels of radiation inside it's tissues and milk. (This is probably more of a concern with iodine than cesium.)
There IS cause for concern, I would not so quickly dismiss people who are concerned about the safety of their food. While you may think it's a not a cause for concern, small amounts of radioactivity have been discovered in breast milk in places as far away as Tokyo. Would you, if you were a father, want to risk nucleotide ingestion by your baby? While the levels are small, there is a certain psychological component. Iodine will be gone quickly, but while cesium is expelled quickly, it is a long term threat, environmentally speaking, as it can accumulate in water sources.
It's very simple. This is what did in the JR before they were privatized.
Option #1, is what tends to happen is that bribery and such result in the building of lines that will not eventually be profitable. Bribery can result in train services to areas without sufficient population density to maintain the trains and tracks that run it.
Option #2, is that they're building faster than they're acquiring revenue from the areas that they service, resulting in a giant debt bubble who's interest can actually end up surpassing fares on the lines that they build before they can get the ridership they need. People don't all just come flocking to a line all at once, changes to lifestyles and knowledge of the convenience of the line need to happen before the line becomes saturated.
These two, independently or combined, can result in ugly situations.
If Japan, which has a higher population density than China in a lot of areas, can have a rail company fail, then China can definatley suffer the same fate.
I suppose that the construction of the interstate should have also been dropped in favor of individual private corporate entities constructing it and charging tolls to make their money back?
Ditto for rural electrification. The companies should do what's profitable for them, not rely on the government to prop them up! Rural electrification was merely propping up the electric companies too, right? Probably the same for rural telephone access. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_electrification#United_States)
The point i'm trying to make, is that ALL of these projects, at their outsets, was "centralized planning or rent-seeking under a government unlawfully propping up its supporters with taxpayer money". "free-market competition under the same legal regime of equality under the law, absent political bribery and ransom" would have eschewed putting together a committee to study rural electrification, resulting in a massive delay in getting power to the boonies, which would've delayed dairy refrigeration, irrigation, etc. The government had to step in and offer loans (which probably cost taxpayers money) in order to spur development.
Sometimes government funding is necessary to carry out projects which corporations won't take up because they are short sighted or oblivious to anything but profits. We all used public infrastructure that are the result of centralized planning, or supported with tax payers money. Why do you have the right to say that we should draw a line at energy research? I suppose you say we should ax Nasa too, because it's rent seeking under a government?
Aerodynamic drag increases at the square of the speed.
Thus, it's reasonable to assume that the Tesla's fuel consumption was tested at 70MPH... and they drove it at 120MPH.. that alot of the energy was going to overcoming heightened aerodynamic drag. Case in point, at ~240MPH on topgear, the bugatti veyron only had enough fuel for 15 minutes a that speed.
And yet Topgear did not go around parading that the veyron at top speed only had a 'range' of 60 miles..
If you want premium quality Chinese made components, a lot of Chinese audiophile class equipment, like dark voice headphone amplifiers, are of exceptional quality. Massive transformers, point to point wiring, and the housings to match.
China is excellent on quality when doing high margin stuff, because they can afford to use extremely labor intensive techniques and still be cost competitive due to their lower salaries. However, what most of the west demands, and what causes all of these problems with Chinese manufacturing (labor discontent, mistakes) is an overworked, underpaid worker cranking products out as fast as they can. Japan started cranking out GOOD stuff when their technological expertise rose to the point where they could rise out of contract and low margin manufacturing into high tech, domestically designed products.
Because when you move 20 million products, saving a buck a product (which could otherwise go towards, you know, giving the Chinese worker a living wage, instead of having them living in a dorm and skipping breakfast because they can't afford it) can save you 20 million bucks. CHINA is not the problem. The corporate-consumer complex demanding that Chinese product manufacturers make AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE to pad their own pockets, is the problem. And if a particular Chinese manufacturer doesn't want to pay his workers horrible wages and make them work 25 hours of overtime a week (which causes mistakes to happen) to keep things rolling, then another Chinese manufacturer will step in to fill the void. If not that,maybe a Vietnamese one.
In summary, China isn't at fault for the poor quality of it's products, the corporations that demand the low price of manufacturing (which leaves very little room for quality checks and healthy, happy, alert workers) are responsible for the poor quality of their products. This quality level is maintained at JUST a high enough point that people don't bail from the product line in droves, so they're locked into buying low quality products which break often and create more opportunity for the manufacturer to sell additional products. High quality products don't tend to produce repeat purchases. If it aint broke don't fix it.
Because they're probably cheap and don't require the display grunt to drive a larger one. If they can sell for $300 it'll be difficult for the iPad to compete in the 'Entry tablet market'. And it makes it easier for tablets to compete with netbooks.
Here's a bizarre idea. Build a 10mw nuclear reactor that can be embedded underground and have concrete poured over it. Nuclear reactors of that size SHOULD be shippable by truck.
Then set it up. If the electrical power for these bases is largely coming from generators, to run the air conditioning and what not, by my rough guestimates this should save about 600 gallons of JP8 per hour. Even if such a reactor costs 50 million to build, and one gets blown up in transit over there, it saves $250,000 an hour. Which means it would pay for itself in about 10 days. Deploy these une masse to provide all of the electrical power you need to bases. Maybe ship in some excess reactors and use catalysts and hydrolysis to make artificial JP8.
Then, when you retreat from the war theater, leave it for the natives by hooking it up to their electrical grid. A small contribution, sure, but enough to power 10,000 homes.
I imagine were those furnaces to have their own electrical power plants, wouldn't it be more economical to just use the heat directly from the fuel to melt the steel? Or do they do cogen and use electric power to heat the steel along with the exhaust of the power plant?
I would've thought that building a power plant solely for electrical power, to power an electric furnace for a heating application would seem like it'd be a colossal waste.
TNT is about 4.6mj/kilogram, and gasoline is about 48.
The reason why you might assume that TNT has more energy density than gasoline is because it explodes violently. However, the trick that allows TNT to explode violently is that it carries all of the oxygen it needs for the reaction, inside it's chemical structure.
If you added together the oxygen required to burn a certain quantity of gasoline, gasoline only contains roughly double the energy of TNT, versus 10x.
Regardless,the fact that TNT has much lower energy density than gasoline is one of the primary reasons why we do not use it to fuel our cars. It's valued for the speed at which the energy is released, and it's detonation versus deflagration.(Detonation releases the energy in materials through compression in a shock wave, and is supersonic, versus deflagration, which releases the energy in materials by heating them up, a subsonic process)
Generally speaking what I think the common number for driving an electric car is 200wh/mile.
Given that the volt has a 40 mile range on an 8kwh usable battery pack i'm basing my numbers off that.
Now, given those figures, 375 miles = 75kwh. To recharge to full, in 6 minutes, you'd need roughly 750kw. Thusly, you're drawing about 3/4 of a megawatt.
Pretty much the only way to achieve this would be with another battery pack, or flywheel storage, or a hydrogen based internal combustion, or SOME way of locally generating power at the site, unless you can get 4 industrial 3 phase power connections. It's entirely likely that this might feed straight off the grid, as many industrial customers use significantly more than 750kw. It'd just have to make sure that the power plant is well aware of the energy usage patterns of the charging station.
On the upside, I read at another site (http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=22467) that this battery should be able to endure about 2,500 recharges. Which would put it's range at probably more than the life of the car. Maybe 300,000 miles or so.
Since I imagine that they're using a battery, that is reasonably close to the leaf's cost profile, then this will probably cost about $20,000/pack. Which would probably put the finished vehicle at maybe $45,000. That's somewhat reasonable, given that over the life of the $45,000 vehicle, which will probably make it to 250,000 miles or so due to the more durable nature of electronic propulsion versus internal combustion engine propulsion, it might be a reasonably affordable proposition for those wanting to make an 'ecological statement' and a long lived commuter car. It might end up costing less in maintenance over it's lifespan than a normal internal combustion car, as well, making it even somewhat of a value proposition.
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I think you misunderstood the point of the statement in that article.
It's referencing using solid state as a cache, and how even though solid state memory costs 10x as much, when used for caching duty, it can increase the performance of the disk array by 100%. This would be in line with the numbers alot of sites are getting from intel's new hard disk SSD caching tech.
Just a side comment, but when they sell you a car, don't they tax you for the roads through gasoline? Isn't that 'charging for it's use'?
You can use a cellphone off network for zero charge. You'd have the equivalent of an iPod touch. Cellphones are devices that need a network to run, much like cars need roads to run, and thus you pay seperate charges for the roads and for the device itself.
There are countless other examples. You buy a TV, then pay to use cable. You buy a heater, then pay for fuel.
While you may make the counter example that, in these cases, it's not the device manufacturer charging you to use the device, the fact of the matter is that it isn't apple charging you to use the device either. It's AT&T and Verizon who are. Apple merely supplies the device to use on their network, and verizon charges you to use it. Seems pretty reasonable to me..
Don't wars of conquest usually require the 'conquerer' to initiate the invasion? If I remember correctly the US and international community forced Israel to abducate much of their gained territory even though the other arab countries initiated hostilities.
The issue of 'Apartheid' against the palestinians is a very complicated issue. If Israel allows them Israeli citizenship, they won't take it. The average palestinian probably doesn't want to be an israeli citizen because of what it entails. This is what created the situation in the first place. They didn't want to be Israeli, and when the original war in 1948 began they were expelled as they were on the 'other side' of the israeli arab conflict. You can't annex them, and yet they are non citizens living in your country who are not beyond using terrorism to further their cause. Were you Israel, what would you do?
This means that they have to have their own country. However, Israel has called for the Palestinians, before agreeing to getting their own country, crack down on terrorism. And very few Palestinians are welcome to that idea.
The other factor to consider, and this is just what i've heard from people on the Israeli side of the argument, is that alot of the land in israel was purchased by Jews when they got to Israel, before the creation of the state of Israel. Israel worked very hard to make the land productive, by draining swamps and doing alot of land reconstruction projects.
Alot of the Palestinians originally had homes in Israel, then when the other arab countries attacked Israel, they first warned the palestinians in Israel to flee the country, so they could be safe from the war and come back when the country was in arab hands. Many were also expelled because of the afforementioned issue of sides. However, when they did flee the country on the other countries advice, many of the people were refused (by the governments after being beaten by Israel) citizenship in the countries they fled to. The land, abandoned by the Palestinians,was taken by the Israelis. Now landless and homeless, they were up shit creek and it's created this high tension situation. This isn't something that Israel can fix with a snap of their fingers. Can't give them a country unless they stop blowing your citizens up, but they don't want to live in a country surounded by Israel.
In Japan with mandatory national health insurance the cost of a tooth extraction is about $50 and cavaties/cleaning is about $20. You can get a cavity filled for the cost of like a six pack of tallboys.
With current tech, for better or for worse (hackers), if I understand the tech correctly, if the train is hijacked, since the motors are under the control of the network as well as the train operator, they'll be able to do something about the hijacking, making it significantly less dangerous than even hijacking a bus.
My apoligies. I mistook you for one of those 'Trains are for shmucks with no freedom' drive till you die types. Sorry my comment was misguided.
But I still think that doubling the speed is a huge thing, because it will finally allow the train to out-race the airplanes on THAT route, which i'm familiar with. And, as such, shouldn't be dismissed as an incremental upgrade.
I should rephrase then. I don't know of many transportation methods that can get you in the door of your departure station and out the door of your destination station traveling 300 miles from downtown to downtown in an hour and a half.
(Disclaimer, I live in Japan)
This is part of why the shinkansen is so succesfull. Note that I realize my previous analogy is maglev to planes, and this is shinkansen to planes. So this is a seperate discussion.
But the reason why the shinkansen has been succesfull is that generally airports aren't built downtown. They're built far away, where the noise pollution and traffic would be undesirable to put smack dab in the middle of town.
however, in Japan, trainstations are generally as close as possible to the heart of town, and as such, you can merely enter the station, buy your ticket in five minutes, board in another 5, be on your way, and at your destination be out in five minutes.
However the same process takes nearly an hour (counting both departure and arrival) in a best case scenario with an airplane. Thus, for shorthaul flights the planes don't make any more sense than a train. And Japan is shorthaul travel centric due to the size of the country. Going from the northern most island (Hokkaido) to the southern most island (kyuushuu), airplanes make total sense. But if you're just hopping a flight from Tokyo to Osaka, which is ALMOST possible to do in a straight line, there's just no point in bothering with aircraft because, even WITH the costs and journey times being similar, people generally dislike airports, you generally have to pay for parking at the airport (where as rail stations are close enough that bicycle access is highly practical) and there are many many more places to get into the rail network. I live pretty far from downtown in my area but I can technically start a rail journey to Tokyo with a ten minute bike ride to the local train station, on a complete whim. (The last part is important, I feel that air travel is less flexible than rail, I rarley if ever have a problem getting a ticket with 0 advanced notice unless it's newyears.)
Having a working maglev line between Tokyo and Osaka may tip the scales enough that even if it is slightly more expensive than the shinkansen (and I can guarantee you it will be), it will STILL be the fastest way to get between the two points, thus probably gobbling up most of the passengers that would have otherwise flown. That's probably why this line is being constructed. I think the Tokyo Osaka route is one of the most heavily traveled non local train routes in the world, so there's probably enough traffic to make it pay.
As opposed to being groped or scanned, and then stuck in a 1 foot by 1 foot seat on an aluminum can that can fall out of the sky? Or be stuck going about 5x slower than said tin can in a car? o.o
I don't know of any transportation method in the world other than maglev that can get you from the downtown area of one city, 300 miles away, to the down town area of another city in 70 minutes. Much less one that could acomplish that while not requiring security scans or invasive groping, and a scan of your luggage, or heck, any luggage weight limits whatsoever.
I could just see it now.
The crystal latice questions the electron about it's excercise.
Electron: I'm in shape, round is a shape.
Actually, according to the local news, food exceeding regulatory radiation limits has been detected in alot of neighboring prefectures, and had to be destroyed. This extends all the way to products like green tea.
In addition, alot of the livestock inside fukushima prefecture might have to be destroyed because the local grass also exceeded safe limits, (plants can concentrate cesium because of it's similarity to potassium) and you don't want an animal concentrating already iffy levels of radiation inside it's tissues and milk. (This is probably more of a concern with iodine than cesium.)
There IS cause for concern, I would not so quickly dismiss people who are concerned about the safety of their food. While you may think it's a not a cause for concern, small amounts of radioactivity have been discovered in breast milk in places as far away as Tokyo. Would you, if you were a father, want to risk nucleotide ingestion by your baby? While the levels are small, there is a certain psychological component. Iodine will be gone quickly, but while cesium is expelled quickly, it is a long term threat, environmentally speaking, as it can accumulate in water sources.
maybe 60 minutes if it includes say motherboard and hard dick replacement
I didn't know computers had phalluses...
It's very simple. This is what did in the JR before they were privatized.
Option #1, is what tends to happen is that bribery and such result in the building of lines that will not eventually be profitable. Bribery can result in train services to areas without sufficient population density to maintain the trains and tracks that run it.
Option #2, is that they're building faster than they're acquiring revenue from the areas that they service, resulting in a giant debt bubble who's interest can actually end up surpassing fares on the lines that they build before they can get the ridership they need. People don't all just come flocking to a line all at once, changes to lifestyles and knowledge of the convenience of the line need to happen before the line becomes saturated.
These two, independently or combined, can result in ugly situations.
If Japan, which has a higher population density than China in a lot of areas, can have a rail company fail, then China can definatley suffer the same fate.
I suppose that the construction of the interstate should have also been dropped in favor of individual private corporate entities constructing it and charging tolls to make their money back?
Ditto for the railroads, (why should the government have given bonds to the railroad companies when they should've been able to do it themselves)?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Transcontinental_Railroad
Ditto for rural electrification. The companies should do what's profitable for them, not rely on the government to prop them up! Rural electrification was merely propping up the electric companies too, right? Probably the same for rural telephone access.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_electrification#United_States)
The point i'm trying to make, is that ALL of these projects, at their outsets, was "centralized planning or rent-seeking under a government unlawfully propping up its supporters with taxpayer money". "free-market competition under the same legal regime of equality under the law, absent political bribery and ransom" would have eschewed putting together a committee to study rural electrification, resulting in a massive delay in getting power to the boonies, which would've delayed dairy refrigeration, irrigation, etc. The government had to step in and offer loans (which probably cost taxpayers money) in order to spur development.
Sometimes government funding is necessary to carry out projects which corporations won't take up because they are short sighted or oblivious to anything but profits. We all used public infrastructure that are the result of centralized planning, or supported with tax payers money. Why do you have the right to say that we should draw a line at energy research? I suppose you say we should ax Nasa too, because it's rent seeking under a government?
Aerodynamic drag increases at the square of the speed.
Thus, it's reasonable to assume that the Tesla's fuel consumption was tested at 70MPH... and they drove it at 120MPH.. that alot of the energy was going to overcoming heightened aerodynamic drag. Case in point, at ~240MPH on topgear, the bugatti veyron only had enough fuel for 15 minutes a that speed.
And yet Topgear did not go around parading that the veyron at top speed only had a 'range' of 60 miles..
If you want premium quality Chinese made components, a lot of Chinese audiophile class equipment, like dark voice headphone amplifiers, are of exceptional quality. Massive transformers, point to point wiring, and the housings to match.
China is excellent on quality when doing high margin stuff, because they can afford to use extremely labor intensive techniques and still be cost competitive due to their lower salaries. However, what most of the west demands, and what causes all of these problems with Chinese manufacturing (labor discontent, mistakes) is an overworked, underpaid worker cranking products out as fast as they can. Japan started cranking out GOOD stuff when their technological expertise rose to the point where they could rise out of contract and low margin manufacturing into high tech, domestically designed products.
Because when you move 20 million products, saving a buck a product (which could otherwise go towards, you know, giving the Chinese worker a living wage, instead of having them living in a dorm and skipping breakfast because they can't afford it) can save you 20 million bucks. CHINA is not the problem. The corporate-consumer complex demanding that Chinese product manufacturers make AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE to pad their own pockets, is the problem. And if a particular Chinese manufacturer doesn't want to pay his workers horrible wages and make them work 25 hours of overtime a week (which causes mistakes to happen) to keep things rolling, then another Chinese manufacturer will step in to fill the void. If not that ,maybe a Vietnamese one.
In summary, China isn't at fault for the poor quality of it's products, the corporations that demand the low price of manufacturing (which leaves very little room for quality checks and healthy, happy, alert workers) are responsible for the poor quality of their products. This quality level is maintained at JUST a high enough point that people don't bail from the product line in droves, so they're locked into buying low quality products which break often and create more opportunity for the manufacturer to sell additional products. High quality products don't tend to produce repeat purchases. If it aint broke don't fix it.
Does ANYONE else find the mental image of someone swiping their iPad or waving it over a contact to buy a bag of doritos ludicrous?
Because they're probably cheap and don't require the display grunt to drive a larger one. If they can sell for $300 it'll be difficult for the iPad to compete in the 'Entry tablet market'. And it makes it easier for tablets to compete with netbooks.
And in Chinese and Japanese, it's known as 'Sugar pee disease'
You missed Pakistan. ;)
Here's a bizarre idea. Build a 10mw nuclear reactor that can be embedded underground and have concrete poured over it. Nuclear reactors of that size SHOULD be shippable by truck.
Then set it up. If the electrical power for these bases is largely coming from generators, to run the air conditioning and what not, by my rough guestimates this should save about 600 gallons of JP8 per hour. Even if such a reactor costs 50 million to build, and one gets blown up in transit over there, it saves $250,000 an hour. Which means it would pay for itself in about 10 days. Deploy these une masse to provide all of the electrical power you need to bases. Maybe ship in some excess reactors and use catalysts and hydrolysis to make artificial JP8.
Then, when you retreat from the war theater, leave it for the natives by hooking it up to their electrical grid. A small contribution, sure, but enough to power 10,000 homes.
I imagine were those furnaces to have their own electrical power plants, wouldn't it be more economical to just use the heat directly from the fuel to melt the steel? Or do they do cogen and use electric power to heat the steel along with the exhaust of the power plant?
I would've thought that building a power plant solely for electrical power, to power an electric furnace for a heating application would seem like it'd be a colossal waste.
That's not as nasty as the 100+MW some arc furnaces in steel mills eat up. :/
According to the energy density wikipedia article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density
TNT is about 4.6mj/kilogram, and gasoline is about 48.
The reason why you might assume that TNT has more energy density than gasoline is because it explodes violently. However, the trick that allows TNT to explode violently is that it carries all of the oxygen it needs for the reaction, inside it's chemical structure.
If you added together the oxygen required to burn a certain quantity of gasoline, gasoline only contains roughly double the energy of TNT, versus 10x.
Regardless ,the fact that TNT has much lower energy density than gasoline is one of the primary reasons why we do not use it to fuel our cars. It's valued for the speed at which the energy is released, and it's detonation versus deflagration.(Detonation releases the energy in materials through compression in a shock wave, and is supersonic, versus deflagration, which releases the energy in materials by heating them up, a subsonic process)
Generally speaking what I think the common number for driving an electric car is 200wh/mile.
Given that the volt has a 40 mile range on an 8kwh usable battery pack i'm basing my numbers off that.
Now, given those figures, 375 miles = 75kwh. To recharge to full, in 6 minutes, you'd need roughly 750kw. Thusly, you're drawing about 3/4 of a megawatt.
Pretty much the only way to achieve this would be with another battery pack, or flywheel storage, or a hydrogen based internal combustion, or SOME way of locally generating power at the site, unless you can get 4 industrial 3 phase power connections. It's entirely likely that this might feed straight off the grid, as many industrial customers use significantly more than 750kw. It'd just have to make sure that the power plant is well aware of the energy usage patterns of the charging station.
On the upside, I read at another site (http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=22467) that this battery should be able to endure about 2,500 recharges. Which would put it's range at probably more than the life of the car. Maybe 300,000 miles or so.
Since I imagine that they're using a battery, that is reasonably close to the leaf's cost profile, then this will probably cost about $20,000/pack. Which would probably put the finished vehicle at maybe $45,000. That's somewhat reasonable, given that over the life of the $45,000 vehicle, which will probably make it to 250,000 miles or so due to the more durable nature of electronic propulsion versus internal combustion engine propulsion, it might be a reasonably affordable proposition for those wanting to make an 'ecological statement' and a long lived commuter car. It might end up costing less in maintenance over it's lifespan than a normal internal combustion car, as well, making it even somewhat of a value proposition.