Well if it is aliens, its good to know their ships can crash just like all of ours. Helps to see that they aren't perfect, regardless of any advanced technology or 'magic' they could do.
What makes you think it crashed, and they didn't just park it there, planning on returning to it later after they've finished eating our brains?
My guess is that it's lost cargo that fell off of a ship. There are a number of Swedish and Finnish port cities along the Gulf of Bothnia. Luleå, for example, ships 7 million tons of cargo a year - much of it iron ore from mining. The object in question is probably some large piece of mining equipment.
10,000 shipping containers are lost into the sea across the globe each year. It's not unreasonable that some poorly secured piece of cargo slid off the deck of a cargo vessel, known only to the cargo company and their insurance company.
No offense, but it sounds like you witnessed 5 fucking idiots tailgating. What if it was a kid instead of a deer?
I think there's no debate that people are terrible drivers (40,000 people die in auto accidents annually in the USA), but I don't see this technology making the roads any safer - it still relies on the human to recognize the threat and decide to brake.
Since the deer in this particular case walked (or rather ran) away without a scratch, if it were a kid instead of a deer, then I'd guess that the same thing would have happened, except that some parent would have some explaining to do to say why their child was in the middle of a rural interstate highway.
Because thought isn't instantaneous, and there is bound to be a delay from when your mind starts the "move a muscle" signal and when that signal actually travels down your spine and to the muscles.
Muscle position signals travel around 100m/sec, so should take only around 20 msec to travel from the brain to the feet. These scientists are claiming to save 130msec from the reaction time, so they aren't just detecting muscle motion nerve impulses.
You propose this as a reason for not adopting this technology, but it looks like it could just as easily apply to cars in general.
No, I'm saying that the risk-reward benefit doesn't seem to be there. One intended panic stop can erase the benefit of a dozen cars having a slightly reduced stopping distance.
There's an obvious risk-reward benefit for driving - car assisted mobility is extremely valuable.
Your mind does not go through the process of applying the brakes without your actually doing so. It's not like your muscles have minds of their own and think "oh, that silly brain! he's just messing with me!" Your conscious mind may consider sending the signals, but the signals are not actually sent - if they are, then your muscles would move.
Your brain either sends the signal to the muscles or it does not. That's the signal they should be looking for.
Then why do they say that it reads "intentions"? If all they were doing is keying off muscle movement they wouldn't need to read brain waves, they'd just use sensors on the muscles.
From TFA:
Lead investigator Benjamin Blankertz added: "It's quite easily explained by the fact that we can tap the driver's intention at the source of the build up of intention in the brain.
"It's a longer process, from the very first upcoming cognitive processes and intention building, until finally the muscles start the movement."
Yes, and if people would always stop at stop signs, and always yield right of way, and never drive too fast for conditions, and not drive while impaired, and not drive while distracted and do everything else a driver should do, driving would be much much safer for everyone. Of course, in the real world, people don't drive like that.
Calling this technology unsafe because of a few bad drivers is like calling airbags unsafe because of a few airbag fatalities.
A few bad drivers? Have you ever driven on a freeway in the USA? Near any large city? Imagine what would happen if you suddenly jammed on the brakes in heavy traffic -- that's what would happen in a false alarm from this system.
I can tell you what happens because I've witnessed a 5 car accident caused by a deer on the road and one driver panic stopped, got rear ended and ended up in the neighboring lane were he got t-boned - one driver ended up going to the hospital. The deer was fine. Fortunately I was on the other side of the road and wasn't involved.
I didn't say (or even think) that it was triggered off mentally thinking the word stop - that wouldn't work anyway since I rarely tell myself to "stop" when I see a road hazard.
But as I said: or I see someone across the street about to get hit by a car and I think "That car's going to hit him, he better STOP! And my mind goes through the thought process of applying the brakes even though I don't do so
If I see someone about to get crunched by a car I may involuntarily cringe and mentally imagine stopping, maybe even clenching my leg muscles, thus triggering the system despite having no intention to stop.
Why trigger off the brain signal corresponding to the word "stop"? Perhaps they can trigger it off the brain signal that tells your foot to move left and push. My (admittedly limited) understanding of the brain is that it's easier to pick up on motor control signals than thoughts anyway. Added bonus - parents teaching their kids to drive could wear the sensors too, so that now when you slam on the imaginary passenger-side brake, the car actually stops!
I didn't say (or even think) that it was triggered off mentally thinking the word stop - that wouldn't work anyway since I rarely tell myself to "stop" when I see a road hazard.
But as I said: or I see someone across the street about to get hit by a car and I think "That car's going to hit him, he better STOP! And my mind goes through the thought process of applying the brakes even though I don't do so
If I see someone about to get crunched by a car I may involuntarily cringe and mentally imagine stopping, thus triggering the system despite having no intention to stop.
But an unexpected panic stop at 65mph with a 40 ton 18 wheeler right behind you could be fatal - even if he has this magic thought-control system, the laws of physics guarantee that your small car will stop faster than his heavy truck.
If the trucker driver isn't tailgating (driving on a road too close to the vehicle in front, at a distance which does not guarantee that stopping to avoid collision is possible), it won't be a problem.
Yes, and if people would always stop at stop signs, and always yield right of way, and never drive too fast for conditions, and not drive while impaired, and not drive while distracted and do everything else a driver should do, driving would be much much safer for everyone.
Of course, in the real world, people don't drive like that.
Seems like way too much potential for false alarm - what happens when I'm driving along and thinking "Crap, I forgot to STOP for milk" or I see someone across the street about to get hit by a car and I think "That car's going to hit him, he better STOP! And my mind goes through the thought process of applying the brakes even though I don't do so"
I bet they can get nearly the same result by using motion sensors to detect the motion of the driver's foot off the gas pedal and over to the brakes - as soon as it sees the driver let up on the gas, it can prime the brakes and get ready for a panic stop based on the driver's next move - maybe instead of saving 12 feet of stopping distance they can only save 6 feet, but in a panic stop from 65mph, 6 feet (or even 12 feet) is rarely the different between a safe stop and an injury collision.
But an unexpected panic stop at 65mph with a 40 ton 18 wheeler right behind you could be fatal - even if he has this magic thought-control system, the laws of physics guarantee that your small car will stop faster than his heavy truck.
Or 0.5% of their $18B annual budget. But the $96M expenditures for KSC will be spread out over 30 years, so it's more like.02% of their annual budget. (though they estimate the agency-wide cleanup costs to be $1B, presumably also in a 30 year period.)
They form viscous toxic goo that will take $1 billion in cleanup costs agencywide over many decades, and could bog down funding for next-generation spacecraft. NASA estimates it will spend $96 million in the next 30 years at Kennedy Space Center, including $6 million this year. The Air Force says it will take another $50 million to get the rest of its cleanups at Cape Canaveral under way by 2017.
Some regulation *is* necessary. I don't think we need the FDA issuing 10-page edicts on what constitutes Swiss cheese.
But without some definition of what "swiss cheese" is, how do you know that what you are buying is really "swiss cheese" and isn't some Mexican Asadero cheese with holes poked into it?
Exactly! If this same information was given about medications it would pass the HIPAA test. There really is nothing to see here.
Are you sure? HIPAA says:
Protected health information (PHI) under HIPAA includes any individually identifiable health information. Identifiable refers not only to data that is explicitly linked to a particular individual (that's identified information). It also includes health information with data items which reasonably could be expected to allow individual identification.
And since this database effectively turns a MAC address into a street address plotted on a map, if you had a paper with a prescription with their home access point's MAC address, I think that would be protected under HIPAA, just like if it had their home address rather than MAC address.
All the full article really says is that someone could tie a MAC address to a location. So? Knowing your MAC address gives me almost no information about you -- nothing personally identifiable, anyways, unless I have an unrelated method of attaching your MAC to you personally (such as having physical access to your phone...). So the information is entirely useless for someone trying to invade your privacy, unless there's something I'm missing (that wasn't included in the article).
Or, if I know my ex-gf's phone's or home access point's MAC address, I could find out where she moved when she told me to leave her alone and stopped answering my phone calls and emails. Makes it easier to pay her a surprise visit and convince her to take me back. Once she sees that I tracked her down and followed her halfway across the country to sit at her doorstep and wait for her to come home, she'll be bound to want me back. Fortunately, the MAC was captured from her phone while she was at work and at he gym, so I can always meet her in one of those places if she spots me at her house.
For every dad that had a true Hifi system 30 years ago, there were a dozen dads that had a crap stereo. It's the same today, the dads that care about audio will go into their audio retailer and listen to various systems to find the one that sounds the best.The rest of us that don't need the ultimate in sound reproduction will just buy whatever is on sale at Best Buy and has the right inputs for our other A/V equipment.
There are still companies that focus on sound (NAD comes to mind), but you have to pay a premium and to be honest, most people with a stereo in their livingroom aren't going to notice a difference between a $200 Sony and a $2000 NAD receiver with $2000 speakers.
Very misleading that the cover photo from the gizmag article has nothing to do with the report, or even with the Internet. It's a photo of earth taken from space:
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=1438
The caption on the photo is:
Akamai's State of the Internet report provides a global snapshot of global Internet use
And the photo does appear to be a snapshot of the globe, so it doesn't seem all that misleading. I think it's fair to say that where the light appears in their photo is where the internet users are. What if they had included a hand drawn caricature of the globe? Would that also be misleading?
I have often wondered if I could fill my carry on with some really dense material, enough so that I can lift it but would exceed their weight limit for carry on and still have all the stuff I need for my trip as they never seem to check that.
I don't understand why you'd want to do that? To force them to gate check it? On most full flights I've been on lately, they gate-check any carryons for free because they don't want delays while people try to shove too many bags into overstuffed overhead bins.
If you just want to make your bag heavy, bring some empty collapsible water bladders like you'd use for hiking then fill them after you're past security - 6 gallons of water will give you about 50 lbs of weight.
Nothing is worse than the idiot who is trying to stuff their oversize duffel bag in the overhead compartment and not break things. Since my carry on has hard sides I put mine in the same compartment as theirs and make it fit, usually I don't stop until I hear something break.
Gee and my pet peeve is when I put my modestly sized soft-sided carry-on into the overhead bin, and then someone comes in with a hardsided bag and tries to shove it into the already full bin, crushing my bag and any fragile contents I've carefully packed int he middle of my clothes. (like that bag of pretzels that now becomes pretzel dust)
The thing I hate most about the hard-sided luggage is that it uses the same space whether it's half full or completely full, taking up more room than it needs to. Plus, when you get several of them side-by-side in a bin, you often end up with 6" of unusable space to the sides because they aren't sized to fit perfectly into the compartment. And when one is too big to slide longways, there's no hope of getting the door closed, you have to turn it around sideways, taking up twice the room. When a softsided bag is slightly too long, you can just scrunch it up a a bit and get the door to close (of course, crushing your pretzels)
The difference is that locomotives have huge inertial mass, so they require massive power to get moving. Once moving, they require significantly less power to stay in motion, courtesy of the laws of motion. Therefore, electric-hybrid makes sense: batteries provide the initial power, so you can build a smaller diesel than you would otherwise need..
I don't think diesel-electric locomotives use any battery power to power the drive wheels. The advantage of the electric motor is that it generates high torque at low-speed to get the locomotive started, with no change in gear ratio needed as it picks up speed. The diesel engine driving the generator gets to run at its optimal speed regardless of how fast the locomotive is going.
Are there really people who think "Ooh, blockbuster, now there's a name I know and DON'T associate with bad selection, higher than reasonable prices, and terrible service! Sign me up!"
Because for many many people, they equate the name Blockbuster with the convenient video store where they've rented movies for years. Not everyone is a moviephile that things Blockbuster's mainstream movie selection is lacking.
Financial modelling at the rate they're getting--which will be above market rates for electricity, via government subsidies/mandates that a certain percentage of power generation be green. It's still good, but their financial modelling won't reflect true cost.
Are energy prices expected to reduce in the long term? I'm happy to have part of my electrical rates subsidize projects like this if it means that 15 years from now when gas costs $12/gallon and I'm fueling my electric car, projects like these have helped keep electrical rates reasonable. Nuclear doesn't appear to be cost effective when all costs are considered, fossil fuel prices will increase as they become harder to extract and global demand increases.
It's much cheaper to start testing out these kinds of projects now and pay them artificially high power rates than to wait until the power is already high and then start testing alternatives.
I'm kind of annoyed when people say "empty desert." The problem with this is a desert isn't empty and the animals that do live there need more area to hunt out edible plants and other creatures than more rain prone climates.
Don't get the idea that I'm some cactus hugger, it's just I live in the arizona desert and people think it's all sand when there is quiet an abundant variety of life that can only be found in an area that's already relatively small.
Just to put this into perspective:
They don't mention how much ground area this system takes, but the radius of the greenhouse looks close to the height of the tower, so let's say it's 3000 ft, so total ground coverage is close to one square mile.
The Sonoran desert encompases around 120,000 sq mi (including the parts in Mexico and California).
California uses around 35GW peak power, so you'd need to build 175 of these 200MW plants to supply power to all of California, so these power plants would consume around 1.5% of the total Sonoran desert land area to supply all of California's power needs. This ignores land area needed for access roads and power lines.
How long does Apple continue supporting OS releases? (I have heard it's shorter than MS, but I'm actually pretty ignorant...)
Longer than the average Linux distro (which in most cases is a couple of months if that).
Ubuntu releases are supported for 18 months. Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support) releases are supported for 3 years on the desktop, and 5 years on the server.
I have not heard any reason why a currently working installation of OS X would suddenly stop working altogether just because the owner did not upgrade. Windows people have seen this before; there are plenty of people still running Windows XP even though two newer version of the same have been released since.
Apple doesn't seem to announce end-of-support dates for their operating systems (at least they don't make it easy to find), but many IT departments aren't allowed to run unsupported software because they have a regulatory requirement to keep the software up to date with security patches.
So sure, Keeping Leopard or Snow Leopard is a short-term fix, but they are only going to be a viable solution for as long as Apple continues supporting them.
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Well if it is aliens, its good to know their ships can crash just like all of ours. Helps to see that they aren't perfect, regardless of any advanced technology or 'magic' they could do.
What makes you think it crashed, and they didn't just park it there, planning on returning to it later after they've finished eating our brains?
My guess is that it's lost cargo that fell off of a ship. There are a number of Swedish and Finnish port cities along the Gulf of Bothnia. Luleå, for example, ships 7 million tons of cargo a year - much of it iron ore from mining. The object in question is probably some large piece of mining equipment.
10,000 shipping containers are lost into the sea across the globe each year. It's not unreasonable that some poorly secured piece of cargo slid off the deck of a cargo vessel, known only to the cargo company and their insurance company.
No offense, but it sounds like you witnessed 5 fucking idiots tailgating. What if it was a kid instead of a deer?
I think there's no debate that people are terrible drivers (40,000 people die in auto accidents annually in the USA), but I don't see this technology making the roads any safer - it still relies on the human to recognize the threat and decide to brake.
Since the deer in this particular case walked (or rather ran) away without a scratch, if it were a kid instead of a deer, then I'd guess that the same thing would have happened, except that some parent would have some explaining to do to say why their child was in the middle of a rural interstate highway.
Because thought isn't instantaneous, and there is bound to be a delay from when your mind starts the "move a muscle" signal and when that signal actually travels down your spine and to the muscles.
Muscle position signals travel around 100m/sec, so should take only around 20 msec to travel from the brain to the feet. These scientists are claiming to save 130msec from the reaction time, so they aren't just detecting muscle motion nerve impulses.
You propose this as a reason for not adopting this technology, but it looks like it could just as easily apply to cars in general.
No, I'm saying that the risk-reward benefit doesn't seem to be there. One intended panic stop can erase the benefit of a dozen cars having a slightly reduced stopping distance.
There's an obvious risk-reward benefit for driving - car assisted mobility is extremely valuable.
Your mind does not go through the process of applying the brakes without your actually doing so. It's not like your muscles have minds of their own and think "oh, that silly brain! he's just messing with me!" Your conscious mind may consider sending the signals, but the signals are not actually sent - if they are, then your muscles would move.
Your brain either sends the signal to the muscles or it does not. That's the signal they should be looking for.
Then why do they say that it reads "intentions"? If all they were doing is keying off muscle movement they wouldn't need to read brain waves, they'd just use sensors on the muscles.
From TFA:
Lead investigator Benjamin Blankertz added: "It's quite easily explained by the fact that we can tap the driver's intention at the source of the build up of intention in the brain.
"It's a longer process, from the very first upcoming cognitive processes and intention building, until finally the muscles start the movement."
Calling this technology unsafe because of a few bad drivers is like calling airbags unsafe because of a few airbag fatalities.
A few bad drivers? Have you ever driven on a freeway in the USA? Near any large city? Imagine what would happen if you suddenly jammed on the brakes in heavy traffic -- that's what would happen in a false alarm from this system.
I can tell you what happens because I've witnessed a 5 car accident caused by a deer on the road and one driver panic stopped, got rear ended and ended up in the neighboring lane were he got t-boned - one driver ended up going to the hospital. The deer was fine. Fortunately I was on the other side of the road and wasn't involved.
Did you even read my post?
I didn't say (or even think) that it was triggered off mentally thinking the word stop - that wouldn't work anyway since I rarely tell myself to "stop" when I see a road hazard.
But as I said: or I see someone across the street about to get hit by a car and I think "That car's going to hit him, he better STOP! And my mind goes through the thought process of applying the brakes even though I don't do so
If I see someone about to get crunched by a car I may involuntarily cringe and mentally imagine stopping, maybe even clenching my leg muscles, thus triggering the system despite having no intention to stop.
Why trigger off the brain signal corresponding to the word "stop"? Perhaps they can trigger it off the brain signal that tells your foot to move left and push. My (admittedly limited) understanding of the brain is that it's easier to pick up on motor control signals than thoughts anyway. Added bonus - parents teaching their kids to drive could wear the sensors too, so that now when you slam on the imaginary passenger-side brake, the car actually stops!
I didn't say (or even think) that it was triggered off mentally thinking the word stop - that wouldn't work anyway since I rarely tell myself to "stop" when I see a road hazard.
But as I said: or I see someone across the street about to get hit by a car and I think "That car's going to hit him, he better STOP! And my mind goes through the thought process of applying the brakes even though I don't do so
If I see someone about to get crunched by a car I may involuntarily cringe and mentally imagine stopping, thus triggering the system despite having no intention to stop.
If the trucker driver isn't tailgating (driving on a road too close to the vehicle in front, at a distance which does not guarantee that stopping to avoid collision is possible), it won't be a problem.
Yes, and if people would always stop at stop signs, and always yield right of way, and never drive too fast for conditions, and not drive while impaired, and not drive while distracted and do everything else a driver should do, driving would be much much safer for everyone.
Of course, in the real world, people don't drive like that.
Seems like way too much potential for false alarm - what happens when I'm driving along and thinking "Crap, I forgot to STOP for milk" or I see someone across the street about to get hit by a car and I think "That car's going to hit him, he better STOP! And my mind goes through the thought process of applying the brakes even though I don't do so"
I bet they can get nearly the same result by using motion sensors to detect the motion of the driver's foot off the gas pedal and over to the brakes - as soon as it sees the driver let up on the gas, it can prime the brakes and get ready for a panic stop based on the driver's next move - maybe instead of saving 12 feet of stopping distance they can only save 6 feet, but in a panic stop from 65mph, 6 feet (or even 12 feet) is rarely the different between a safe stop and an injury collision.
But an unexpected panic stop at 65mph with a 40 ton 18 wheeler right behind you could be fatal - even if he has this magic thought-control system, the laws of physics guarantee that your small car will stop faster than his heavy truck.
Or 0.5% of their $18B annual budget. But the $96M expenditures for KSC will be spread out over 30 years, so it's more like .02% of their annual budget. (though they estimate the agency-wide cleanup costs to be $1B, presumably also in a 30 year period.)
They form viscous toxic goo that will take $1 billion in cleanup costs agencywide over many decades, and could bog down funding for next-generation spacecraft.
NASA estimates it will spend $96 million in the next 30 years at Kennedy Space Center, including $6 million this year. The Air Force says it will take another $50 million to get the rest of its cleanups at Cape Canaveral under way by 2017.
Some regulation *is* necessary. I don't think we need the FDA issuing 10-page edicts on what constitutes Swiss cheese.
But without some definition of what "swiss cheese" is, how do you know that what you are buying is really "swiss cheese" and isn't some Mexican Asadero cheese with holes poked into it?
Exactly! If this same information was given about medications it would pass the HIPAA test. There really is nothing to see here.
Are you sure? HIPAA says:
Protected health information (PHI) under HIPAA includes any individually identifiable health information. Identifiable refers not only to data that is explicitly linked to a particular individual (that's identified information). It also includes health information with data items which reasonably could be expected to allow individual identification.
And since this database effectively turns a MAC address into a street address plotted on a map, if you had a paper with a prescription with their home access point's MAC address, I think that would be protected under HIPAA, just like if it had their home address rather than MAC address.
All the full article really says is that someone could tie a MAC address to a location. So? Knowing your MAC address gives me almost no information about you -- nothing personally identifiable, anyways, unless I have an unrelated method of attaching your MAC to you personally (such as having physical access to your phone...). So the information is entirely useless for someone trying to invade your privacy, unless there's something I'm missing (that wasn't included in the article).
Or, if I know my ex-gf's phone's or home access point's MAC address, I could find out where she moved when she told me to leave her alone and stopped answering my phone calls and emails. Makes it easier to pay her a surprise visit and convince her to take me back. Once she sees that I tracked her down and followed her halfway across the country to sit at her doorstep and wait for her to come home, she'll be bound to want me back. Fortunately, the MAC was captured from her phone while she was at work and at he gym, so I can always meet her in one of those places if she spots me at her house.
My dad had (and still has) one of these cabinet stereos (except his has an 8-track player on top plugged into the "AUX" input):
http://www.antiqueradios.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=122551
My TV speakers sound better than this stereo.
For every dad that had a true Hifi system 30 years ago, there were a dozen dads that had a crap stereo. It's the same today, the dads that care about audio will go into their audio retailer and listen to various systems to find the one that sounds the best.The rest of us that don't need the ultimate in sound reproduction will just buy whatever is on sale at Best Buy and has the right inputs for our other A/V equipment.
There are still companies that focus on sound (NAD comes to mind), but you have to pay a premium and to be honest, most people with a stereo in their livingroom aren't going to notice a difference between a $200 Sony and a $2000 NAD receiver with $2000 speakers.
Very misleading that the cover photo from the gizmag article has nothing to do with the report, or even with the Internet. It's a photo of earth taken from space:
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=1438
The caption on the photo is:
Akamai's State of the Internet report provides a global snapshot of global Internet use
And the photo does appear to be a snapshot of the globe, so it doesn't seem all that misleading. I think it's fair to say that where the light appears in their photo is where the internet users are. What if they had included a hand drawn caricature of the globe? Would that also be misleading?
I have often wondered if I could fill my carry on with some really dense material, enough so that I can lift it but would exceed their weight limit for carry on and still have all the stuff I need for my trip as they never seem to check that.
I don't understand why you'd want to do that? To force them to gate check it? On most full flights I've been on lately, they gate-check any carryons for free because they don't want delays while people try to shove too many bags into overstuffed overhead bins.
If you just want to make your bag heavy, bring some empty collapsible water bladders like you'd use for hiking then fill them after you're past security - 6 gallons of water will give you about 50 lbs of weight.
Nothing is worse than the idiot who is trying to stuff their oversize duffel bag in the overhead compartment and not break things. Since my carry on has hard sides I put mine in the same compartment as theirs and make it fit, usually I don't stop until I hear something break.
Gee and my pet peeve is when I put my modestly sized soft-sided carry-on into the overhead bin, and then someone comes in with a hardsided bag and tries to shove it into the already full bin, crushing my bag and any fragile contents I've carefully packed int he middle of my clothes. (like that bag of pretzels that now becomes pretzel dust)
The thing I hate most about the hard-sided luggage is that it uses the same space whether it's half full or completely full, taking up more room than it needs to. Plus, when you get several of them side-by-side in a bin, you often end up with 6" of unusable space to the sides because they aren't sized to fit perfectly into the compartment. And when one is too big to slide longways, there's no hope of getting the door closed, you have to turn it around sideways, taking up twice the room. When a softsided bag is slightly too long, you can just scrunch it up a a bit and get the door to close (of course, crushing your pretzels)
The difference is that locomotives have huge inertial mass, so they require massive power to get moving. Once moving, they require significantly less power to stay in motion, courtesy of the laws of motion. Therefore, electric-hybrid makes sense: batteries provide the initial power, so you can build a smaller diesel than you would otherwise need. .
I don't think diesel-electric locomotives use any battery power to power the drive wheels. The advantage of the electric motor is that it generates high torque at low-speed to get the locomotive started, with no change in gear ratio needed as it picks up speed. The diesel engine driving the generator gets to run at its optimal speed regardless of how fast the locomotive is going.
Are there really people who think "Ooh, blockbuster, now there's a name I know and DON'T associate with bad selection, higher than reasonable prices, and terrible service! Sign me up!"
Because for many many people, they equate the name Blockbuster with the convenient video store where they've rented movies for years. Not everyone is a moviephile that things Blockbuster's mainstream movie selection is lacking.
Financial modelling at the rate they're getting--which will be above market rates for electricity, via government subsidies/mandates that a certain percentage of power generation be green. It's still good, but their financial modelling won't reflect true cost.
Are energy prices expected to reduce in the long term? I'm happy to have part of my electrical rates subsidize projects like this if it means that 15 years from now when gas costs $12/gallon and I'm fueling my electric car, projects like these have helped keep electrical rates reasonable. Nuclear doesn't appear to be cost effective when all costs are considered, fossil fuel prices will increase as they become harder to extract and global demand increases.
It's much cheaper to start testing out these kinds of projects now and pay them artificially high power rates than to wait until the power is already high and then start testing alternatives.
I'm kind of annoyed when people say "empty desert." The problem with this is a desert isn't empty and the animals that do live there need more area to hunt out edible plants and other creatures than more rain prone climates.
Don't get the idea that I'm some cactus hugger, it's just I live in the arizona desert and people think it's all sand when there is quiet an abundant variety of life that can only be found in an area that's already relatively small.
Just to put this into perspective:
They don't mention how much ground area this system takes, but the radius of the greenhouse looks close to the height of the tower, so let's say it's 3000 ft, so total ground coverage is close to one square mile.
The Sonoran desert encompases around 120,000 sq mi (including the parts in Mexico and California).
California uses around 35GW peak power, so you'd need to build 175 of these 200MW plants to supply power to all of California, so these power plants would consume around 1.5% of the total Sonoran desert land area to supply all of California's power needs. This ignores land area needed for access roads and power lines.
How long does Apple continue supporting OS releases? (I have heard it's shorter than MS, but I'm actually pretty ignorant...)
Longer than the average Linux distro (which in most cases is a couple of months if that).
Ubuntu releases are supported for 18 months. Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support) releases are supported for 3 years on the desktop, and 5 years on the server.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases
I have not heard any reason why a currently working installation of OS X would suddenly stop working altogether just because the owner did not upgrade. Windows people have seen this before; there are plenty of people still running Windows XP even though two newer version of the same have been released since.
Apple doesn't seem to announce end-of-support dates for their operating systems (at least they don't make it easy to find), but many IT departments aren't allowed to run unsupported software because they have a regulatory requirement to keep the software up to date with security patches.
So sure, Keeping Leopard or Snow Leopard is a short-term fix, but they are only going to be a viable solution for as long as Apple continues supporting them.