> But how much of an improvement will they be over fluorescent lights, which we already have at an affordable price?
They are "all solid state" and should not have any of the start-up issues that CFL's have, which will hopefully help both usability AND reliability. And if you've used CFL's on any scale, you'll certainly know that the quality/reliability of these products is miserable bordering on pathetic. I'm currently quite convinced that my switch to CFLs has cost more energy (and money) in terms of replacing failing bulbs than it has saved in electricity. The performance is so poor that I've gone to writing the date on the base an saving every receipt and package.
Your experiences are a valid point, almost like "security through obscurity" to put it in Slashdot lingo.
However, you will find the situation changes quickly if an officer of the law decides to take an interest in you. You will argue back that you would have deserved an identity check for (speeding, weaving, gesturing). I might agree, or I might argue that you have been fully indoctrinated. Either way, realize that you can be stopped and your "papers" checked at an officer's whim - he will allege a traffic violation which you may or may not have committed. You have legally waived your rights to privacy in exchange for the "privilege" of traveling on the road.
Believe it or not we now have a DUI law like this in Arizona - one need not actually be legally intoxicated, only perceived by an officer to be impaired to "earn" arrest, mandatory prison time, fines, loss of license, etc. This is probably a useful law enforcement tool in certain situations, but is also begging for abuse. Hope I never run into it - but ones rights should rest on more than hope.
It all works as long as we trust the system... age and experience have drastically eroded that trust for me.
This is an interesting spin on a complex problem, and smacks of a bitter "told you so" vendetta.
At a glance it looks like MS forgot to consider the heat dissipation of their GPU, or grossly underestimated it. YES, this could be a symptom of design inexperience (ASIC or system). Is it possible/likely that a third party chip could tape out over spec on power dissipation ? You bet. It still shouldn't have mattered much if somebody had NOTICED the power consumption while testing out the chip and compensated with more heat dissipation hardware.
Even with the chip-level issue unnoticed and given the high failure rates posted all over the web, it would seem that even a small amount (by industry standards) of system-level testing should have identified this problem.
Of course, such testing (and any redesign) takes time and everyone was in a rush to release their latest console...
So you've got to wonder if this is a more general problem of a software company well accustomed to shipping buggy (famously under-tested / under-developed) products moving into the hardware arena than a specific choice of chip designer X vs Y vs in-house,etc.
Would buy an Aptera today if were available, oh and in my state. Doubt my old clunker is going to hold on long enough for any other realistic plug-in hybrid to hit the road. Just gonna have to buy one of those huge SUV's for sale real cheap. Blah.
When I was in school ( oh so long ago ), we were told that America was better than the Soviet Union because we were free.
"The Soviets don't let you travel without paperwork - we would never do that because we are a free nation." "The Soviets tell everyone that the restrictions are 'for their protection', but it is a lie." "The Soviets distort the news which is reported to the people."
Fast forward 25 years... and here we are: Being shaken down for "papers" and "inspected" by the powers that be when we travel (air, auto, borders) or sign up to do an honest day's work. All while living under an administration which distorts information as a matter of policy, supporting war with lies.
Not only that but we are losing out economically to a nation which is officially Communist.
So what did we win in the "cold war", exactly ?
I'd move away, but that would be allowing them to win. Lets make THEM move away and get on with the business of restoring our nation !
Wrote all of my high school papers on one of these back in the 80's. It was a TANK: heavy, nothing could hurt it, always worked, ports for everything (at that time). Almost wish I had one today...
Everything related to the grid will require engineering documentation and adherence to all kinds of standards and safety requirements. Best bet would be to use generated power for small appliances, etc. This will still reduce your usage from the power company but will cut down on the red tape + risk of disaster due to hardware failure.
It's getting harder and harder to tell the difference between subterfuge and sheer incompetence.
This is the central theme of W's administration. Here is a question for us to ponder: Which is worse? Are you not criminally responsible for your actions because you are incompetence ?
Here in America we insist on sending EVERYONE to school, even if they don't want to be there for whatever cultural, sociological or economic reasons. Overlay sub-standard schools in impoverished areas. Of course the average scores will reflect this. The shame in it is not that everyone can't graduate a top-rate scientist/engr - it is that some intrinsically capable and motivated students will never get the education needed to realize their potential.
When you look at the domestic pool of talent available for science and engineering it is first rate - but for sure it does not include every single person who graduates from the system.
There are multiple parties which benefit from pushing agendas blasting the US educational system including:
1) businesses attempting to justify getting cheap talent elsewhere (H1 and outsourcing) 2) teachers wanting more pay (probably justifiably so) 3) civil rights groups decrying the inequitable system (regional variability in quality of education is disgusting in the US)
For certain, concentration of wealth in the US works against motivation of domestic talent and pushes cost (salaries) up , reducing cost-effectiveness of hiring US talent. However, it is a joke when companies claim there are not capable folks in the country - they just don't want to pay the going rate. There are countless smart and hungry people around the world - US firms know this all too well.
All you have to do is look at the tricks that are pulled in order to hire H1 employees - load up job descriptions with bizarre and irrelevant requirements, publish the ads in VERY OBSCURE places with extremely short hiring windows, advertise non-competitive salaries all so they can easily claim that nobody in the US applied for the job - the tactics speak for themselves.
All you have to do is make people afraid to buy your product for fear of getting sued, they are probably only going to buy at a serious discount.
In all seriousness, most icons which are perpetually in the public eye are protected from such restrictions - including the faces of famous people. Why would a car which can be commonly seen driving down the street be any different. Something tells me a decent lawyer could tear some serious holes in this case.
Your numbers are close, except you have to consider that the "real world" efficiency will be around 2/3 of the peak rating. (depends on angle, location, weather, dust, temperature etc) One unfortunate effect (with silicon cells anyway) is that temperature reduces output, so the brightest/hottest times of the year see the lowest efficiency.
You can benchmark it by rolling it all into effective hrs of sun a day (total kWh / peak rating). Here in Arizona, I've been getting the equivalent 5-6 hrs of sun per day out of my array, about 15-18 kwH per day for a 3kW peak rating.
For sure, usable life is an important part of the cost/benefit and energy balance calculation.
However, I've seen energy payback quoted anywhere from 1-3 years for conventional silicon photo-voltaic solar panels including the glass and metal packaging. As they are supposed to have a life > 20 years I'm not sure your second statement is correct. Do you have a source ?
Let's suppose the RIAA were successful in hammering thru all of these restrictions, despite our (US) tradition of fair use and unquestionable ownership of the items we purchase.
They have to realize that their universe of limits on product use essentially reduce intrinsic value. Why would I pay $15 - $20 for a CD I'm barely allowed to use ? Maybe $2 or at most $5, probably less !
This campaign makes no business sense. Pretend they are losing 20% of their sales to piracy. If they squash piracy but de-value their product by 50%, they are still behind by 30% + the unit cost of making CDs.
Rumor has it there will be no new version for PalmOS, despite the "download version 2.0 on your palm Treo 700p here" link on the site. But, you know, rumors are rumors and maybe somebody just screwed up the web site...
Absolutely, this completely moots the rumored Palm Linux phone unless they can completely wow everyone with innovation. And they haven't done that in, well, hmmm, I guess about 10 years.
Keep in mind too, that the gate dielectric is usually thinned with each generation, increasing the capacitance per area. A typical corresponding reduction of operating voltage (so-called constant field scaling) with each generation contributes to the CV^2 reduction when going to smaller dimensions.
Of course, the new high-K dielectrics may shift the curve as they give even more capacitance per unit area for a given thickness while possibly allowing higher voltage.
And, all of the modern dynamic VDD-scaling features blur things even more, but the basic concepts still hold.
Argh, if sbackup would just clean up after itself, life would be much better... (Still doesn't remove old backups correctly in "logorithmic purge" mode)
There is no way that bulbs containing glass, plastic and semiconductors take LESS greenhouse gas to manufacture.
If your RTFA, it only talks about the greenhouse gas used to POWER the bulb.
And, to continue my cynical rant, I've been extremely dissappointed with the lifetime of these bulbs now deployed across my house. I'd say that 30% have failed after 2 years, significantly less than the advertised 10 year life. It doesn't seem to matter which brand I try either !
Really meant to float a what I would expect as a "typical" comment from an uninformed bystander rather than make a racial statement.
It is understandable that the interpretation would be otherwise, and for that I apologize to any offended - Islamic, Baha'i or other. (No apology to those Islamists out there plotting my destruction.)
This kid is a tool, you can tell 10 seconds into the video when he starts into the "Patriot Act" and "dont touch me" crap. In my opinion, he stole from the basketball playbook and DREW A FOUL. He wanted the attention, and these idiots played right into it.
All they had to do is cuff him (maybe 1 TASER shock required) and drag him out. If he resisted, they could have let him scream on the library floor for 20 minutes, then see who had any sympathy for him. Maybe the youtube video would've been "Islamist a-hole annoying everyone in the library". Probably, you would never have heard about it again.
P.S. I'm no fan of our current knee jerk "Patriot Act" either, but this is a pathetic way to protest.
Slashdot Mirror
> But how much of an improvement will they be over fluorescent lights, which we already have at an affordable price?
They are "all solid state" and should not have any of the start-up issues that CFL's have, which will hopefully help both usability AND reliability.
And if you've used CFL's on any scale, you'll certainly know that the quality/reliability of these products is miserable bordering on pathetic. I'm currently quite convinced that my switch to CFLs has cost more energy (and money) in terms of replacing failing bulbs than it has saved in electricity. The performance is so poor that I've gone to writing the date on the base an saving every receipt and package.
Its very likely that any modern flash drive has error correction built in, if that is what you mean by "fault-tolerance".
Your experiences are a valid point, almost like "security through obscurity" to put it in Slashdot lingo.
... age and experience have drastically eroded that trust for me.
However, you will find the situation changes quickly if an officer of the law decides to take an interest in you.
You will argue back that you would have deserved an identity check for (speeding, weaving, gesturing).
I might agree, or I might argue that you have been fully indoctrinated.
Either way, realize that you can be stopped and your "papers" checked at an officer's whim - he will allege a traffic violation which you may or may not have committed.
You have legally waived your rights to privacy in exchange for the "privilege" of traveling on the road.
Believe it or not we now have a DUI law like this in Arizona - one need not actually be legally intoxicated, only perceived by an officer to be impaired to "earn" arrest, mandatory prison time, fines, loss of license, etc.
This is probably a useful law enforcement tool in certain situations, but is also begging for abuse.
Hope I never run into it - but ones rights should rest on more than hope.
It all works as long as we trust the system
This is an interesting spin on a complex problem, and smacks of a bitter "told you so" vendetta.
,etc.
At a glance it looks like MS forgot to consider the heat dissipation of their GPU, or grossly underestimated it.
YES, this could be a symptom of design inexperience (ASIC or system).
Is it possible/likely that a third party chip could tape out over spec on power dissipation ? You bet.
It still shouldn't have mattered much if somebody had NOTICED the power consumption while testing out the chip and compensated with more heat dissipation hardware.
Even with the chip-level issue unnoticed and given the high failure rates posted all over the web, it would seem that even a small amount (by industry standards) of system-level testing should have identified this problem.
Of course, such testing (and any redesign) takes time and everyone was in a rush to release their latest console...
So you've got to wonder if this is a more general problem of a software company well accustomed to shipping buggy (famously under-tested / under-developed) products moving into the hardware arena than a specific choice of chip designer X vs Y vs in-house
Would buy an Aptera today if were available, oh and in my state.
Doubt my old clunker is going to hold on long enough for any other realistic plug-in hybrid to hit the road.
Just gonna have to buy one of those huge SUV's for sale real cheap.
Blah.
When I was in school ( oh so long ago ), we were told that America was better than the Soviet Union because we were free.
... and here we are:
"The Soviets don't let you travel without paperwork - we would never do that because we are a free nation."
"The Soviets tell everyone that the restrictions are 'for their protection', but it is a lie."
"The Soviets distort the news which is reported to the people."
Fast forward 25 years
Being shaken down for "papers" and "inspected" by the powers that be when we travel (air, auto, borders) or sign up to do an honest day's work.
All while living under an administration which distorts information as a matter of policy, supporting war with lies.
Not only that but we are losing out economically to a nation which is officially Communist.
So what did we win in the "cold war", exactly ?
I'd move away, but that would be allowing them to win.
Lets make THEM move away and get on with the business of restoring our nation !
Wrote all of my high school papers on one of these back in the 80's.
It was a TANK: heavy, nothing could hurt it, always worked, ports for everything (at that time).
Almost wish I had one today...
Everything related to the grid will require engineering documentation and adherence to all kinds of standards and safety requirements. Best bet would be to use generated power for small appliances, etc. This will still reduce your usage from the power company but will cut down on the red tape + risk of disaster due to hardware failure.
This is the central theme of W's administration.
Here is a question for us to ponder: Which is worse?
Are you not criminally responsible for your actions because you are incompetence ?
Can't agree more !
Here in America we insist on sending EVERYONE to school, even if they don't want to be there for whatever cultural, sociological or economic reasons. Overlay sub-standard schools in impoverished areas. Of course the average scores will reflect this. The shame in it is not that everyone can't graduate a top-rate scientist/engr - it is that some intrinsically capable and motivated students will never get the education needed to realize their potential.
When you look at the domestic pool of talent available for science and engineering it is first rate - but for sure it does not include every single person who graduates from the system.
There are multiple parties which benefit from pushing agendas blasting the US educational system
including:
1) businesses attempting to justify getting cheap talent elsewhere (H1 and outsourcing)
2) teachers wanting more pay (probably justifiably so)
3) civil rights groups decrying the inequitable system (regional variability in quality of education is disgusting in the US)
For certain, concentration of wealth in the US works against motivation of domestic talent and pushes cost (salaries) up , reducing cost-effectiveness of hiring US talent. However, it is a joke when companies claim there are not capable folks in the country - they just don't want to pay the going rate.
There are countless smart and hungry people around the world - US firms know this all too well.
All you have to do is look at the tricks that are pulled in order to hire H1 employees - load up job descriptions with bizarre and irrelevant requirements, publish the ads in VERY OBSCURE places with extremely short hiring windows, advertise non-competitive salaries all so they can easily claim that nobody in the US applied for the job - the tactics speak for themselves.
All you have to do is make people afraid to buy your product for fear of getting sued, they are probably only going to buy at a serious discount.
In all seriousness, most icons which are perpetually in the public eye are protected from such restrictions - including the faces of famous people. Why would a car which can be commonly seen driving down the street be any different. Something tells me a decent lawyer could tear some serious holes in this case.
Your numbers are close, except you have to consider that the "real world" efficiency will be around 2/3 of the peak rating. (depends on angle, location, weather, dust, temperature etc) One unfortunate effect (with silicon cells anyway) is that temperature reduces output, so the brightest/hottest times of the year see the lowest efficiency.
You can benchmark it by rolling it all into effective hrs of sun a day (total kWh / peak rating).
Here in Arizona, I've been getting the equivalent 5-6 hrs of sun per day out of my array,
about 15-18 kwH per day for a 3kW peak rating.
For sure, usable life is an important part of the cost/benefit and energy balance calculation.
However, I've seen energy payback quoted anywhere from 1-3 years for conventional silicon photo-voltaic solar panels including the glass and metal packaging. As they are supposed to have a life > 20 years I'm not sure your second statement is correct. Do you have a source ?
Turn off the TV, I wanna check my email ! (?)
This is neither news nor for nerds !
Let's suppose the RIAA were successful in hammering thru all of these restrictions,
despite our (US) tradition of fair use and unquestionable ownership of the items we purchase.
They have to realize that their universe of limits on product use essentially reduce intrinsic value.
Why would I pay $15 - $20 for a CD I'm barely allowed to use ? Maybe $2 or at most $5, probably less !
This campaign makes no business sense. Pretend they are losing 20% of their sales to piracy.
If they squash piracy but de-value their product by 50%, they are still behind by 30% + the unit cost of making CDs.
Then again it doesn't seem too bad - you can't take a crap in a hospital for less than $1000 these days.
Rumor has it there will be no new version for PalmOS, despite the "download version 2.0 on your palm Treo 700p here" link on the site. But, you know, rumors are rumors and maybe somebody just screwed up the web site...
Absolutely, this completely moots the rumored Palm Linux phone unless they can completely wow everyone with innovation. And they haven't done that in, well, hmmm, I guess about 10 years.
So do they just get on the cattle car ?
Keep in mind too, that the gate dielectric is usually thinned with each generation, increasing the capacitance per area. A typical corresponding reduction of operating voltage (so-called constant field scaling) with each generation contributes to the CV^2 reduction when going to smaller dimensions.
Of course, the new high-K dielectrics may shift the curve as they give even more capacitance per unit area for a given thickness while possibly allowing higher voltage.
And, all of the modern dynamic VDD-scaling features blur things even more, but the basic concepts still hold.
Argh, if sbackup would just clean up after itself, life would be much better...
(Still doesn't remove old backups correctly in "logorithmic purge" mode)
Yeah, this one seems quite clear also, except maybe the cooling pond - http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Phoenix,+A Z&ie=UTF8&z=14&ll=33.390603,-112.858601&spn=0.0426 4,0.087118&t=h&om=1 ( Palo Verde near Phoenix,AZ)
There is no way that bulbs containing glass, plastic and semiconductors take LESS greenhouse gas to manufacture.
If your RTFA, it only talks about the greenhouse gas used to POWER the bulb.
And, to continue my cynical rant, I've been extremely dissappointed with the lifetime of these bulbs now deployed across my house. I'd say that 30% have failed after 2 years, significantly less than the advertised 10 year life. It doesn't seem to matter which brand I try either !
Indeed he is Baha'i - You are correct.
Really meant to float a what I would expect as a "typical" comment from an uninformed bystander rather than make a racial statement.
It is understandable that the interpretation would be otherwise, and for that I apologize to any offended - Islamic, Baha'i or other.
(No apology to those Islamists out there plotting my destruction.)
This kid is a tool, you can tell 10 seconds into the video when he starts into the "Patriot Act" and "dont touch me" crap.
In my opinion, he stole from the basketball playbook and DREW A FOUL.
He wanted the attention, and these idiots played right into it.
All they had to do is cuff him (maybe 1 TASER shock required) and drag him out.
If he resisted, they could have let him scream on the library floor for 20 minutes,
then see who had any sympathy for him.
Maybe the youtube video would've been "Islamist a-hole annoying everyone in the library".
Probably, you would never have heard about it again.
P.S. I'm no fan of our current knee jerk "Patriot Act" either, but this is a pathetic way to protest.