Solar insolation on the moon is not dramatically higher than on Earth - around 1400 W/m^2 versus around 1000 W/m^2 on Earth. Granted, a Lunar solar station wouldn't be affected by weather, but Earth based receivers will suffer from efficiency loss during bad weather.
Could they achieve the same result by building a bit larger system on earth, but without the hundreds (or thousands?) of rocket launches it would take to get the materials to the moon to get the thing started?
Besides, who wants to see a big black ribbon around the moon?
If it weren't for anti-child-labor laws and minimum-wage laws, a lot of the farm work attracting illegal immigrants could be done by the children of Americans. This is part of California's problem.
You so rarely hear the argument *for* child labor. If we got rid of the child labor laws and minimum wage laws we could also bring back a lot of the manufacturing work that we send to Chinese children.
Is that a good thing?
And "alternative sexual lifestyles" covers more ground than just homosexual couples: single parent families, and the irresponsible parents who are (in growing and unreported numbers) abandoning their children. Children need to be taught how to support themselves and nurture their own future children, rather than feel good about whatever they do and feel indignant about those who do support themselves
That's the first I've heard of procreation called an "alternative sexual lifestyle".
I just answered your "so what" question, why do you keep asking it? The answer is: Politics. What part of that don't you understand? The politics of allocating a limited public resource means that it's not a simple supply and demand problem that you learned about in Econ 101 where you just raise the price and the market will work it out - it's a problem of balancing who "needs" it more (which sometimes mean who's willing to pay the politician more or offer him more votes).
You look even with mechanical controls. You don't feel for how the temperature knob is set, you glance at it first. That glance tells you the current setting, plus enough location information so that you can reach for the control "blindly". It's not the looking that's the problem. The problem is the duration that your eyes are not on the road while finding the control and making the adjustment. What you do not want is to require continual visual feedback while adjusting the controls. With this system you do not need visual feedback, but it is there in a format that is glanceable, even peripherally visible, if you want it.
You look at your car controls? I don't even look at the radio when I change stations or input sources - I know where the buttons are (and I bought this particular radio since it had buttons for common features). So I just reach out and use the controls without looking.
I really don't think I'm unusual in this -- do people normally have to look at their common car controls to use them? I still have to look for the less commonly used controls like seat heat and cruise control, but for the controls I use every day, muscle memory takes over and I just reach out and use them.
CA is suffering a lack of water because billions of gallons of fresh water have been dumped into the ocean in order to supposedly "save" an insignificant fish.
Latino immigrants vote Dem to get gov handouts which keep Dems in power. Dems in power cater to extremists in their own party resulting in CA's drought and CA's brainwashing of kindergarteners with the radical politics of alternative sexual lifestyles. CA is in bad shape now, but it is going to be one truly f***ed up place in 20 years.
You must be a farmer -- "screw the insignificant fish because I want to grow crops in the desert". Since the largest employer of Latino immigrants is agriculture, you'd think that if dems were giving latinos what they want, they'd give the farmers more water.
If you think CA is brainwashing kids with radical politics of alternative sexual lifestyles, you really ought to look around, it turns our that homosexuals have always been living among us, but are just now feeling comfortable coming out. When an NFL player comes out as gay and 85% of NFL players say they have no problem with gay teammates, then you know that it's not just some fringe group.
Some would say CA is suffering a lack of water because we're exporting billions of gallons of water overseas (indirectly, through Ag exports, which only accounts for about 5% of the economy)
Did the usage reports really result in a 5% drop in water usage, or is it the fact that for the past 4 months, you can't watch the news without hearing all about the drought conditions and how people have to stop flushing their toilets so much. Meanwhile, residential use accounts for only 10 - 15% of California's water use, so even if everyone cut their use by 20%, it really wouldn't solve the problem.
Why not find a way to supply the water people need? Why shouldn't everyone who is willing to pay the transportation costs be able to use as much water as they want?
Because politics. Farmers want 80% of California's water.
So you put four fingers on the pad, take a quick glance at the bar graph along the side of the display, and say "Sorry pal. We're at 90% of full temperature now, and I am not permitted to breach that reserve except in times of war, or with my wife's permission.".
I'm not sure that looking at the display really solves the problem of having to look at the display while driving.
when the guy in the back seat says he's cold, I just want to make the car a bit warmer,
Here's what you do. Put four fingers on the touchscreen and drag up. Done. You don't have to look at the screen.
That would be great if I just wanted to blindly turn up the heat without knowing where it's set now, but if it's already turned up most of the way, I don't want to turn it up any more.. and I don't want to touch the screen with the appropriate amount of fingers (whoops, hit a bump and tapped with another finger, now it wants to change the radio station), and then wait for the computer to say "Temperature currently set to 78 degrees".
How do you adjust the temperature without looking at the screen to see where it is now, and where you want it to go? How do you change the air direction from front defroster to foot vents without looking at the screen?
Audio or haptic feedback. The same as you do when you use a knob without looking.
However, in the other car, for some reason the designers chose to use a physical knob with a lighted dot [images-amazon.com] to show where the knob is pointed, so you still have to look at it to see what setting it's on.
Why do you care what setting it is on? Either you want it cooler or warmer, and you turn the knob in the appropriate direction by about how much you think you need to. Swiping gestures are no different in this respect.
I care because when my wife in the backseat says she's cold, as soon as I touch the knob I know that it's turned up 3/4 of the way and if I make it any warmer, the car is going to be too warm. I don't want to touch the touch screen, wait for the computer to say "Currently set to 78 degrees" before making the gesture. With a knob I can determine the current setting and adjust it before the computer could even say "Currently".
Auditory feedback gives you much more information than inferring something from knob position.
But I don't want more information - I don't care if the temperature is set at 72 degrees or 74 degrees, I just want to now that the knob is straight up and down now, so it's in the middle setting, and so if I turn it a bit to the right, it'll make it a bit warmer - and I can make that adjustment faster than the computer can read out the current temperature. For this same reason, I don't like digital temperature readouts on climate control systems - when the guy in the back seat says he's cold, I just want to make the car a bit warmer, I don't want to watch the display while I push the button to make it 4.3 degrees warmer.
A touch screen you have to look at is a massive downgrade and far more dangerous.
The point of this is that you don't need to look at it.
How do you adjust the temperature without looking at the screen to see where it is now, and where you want it to go? How do you change the air direction from front defroster to foot vents without looking at the screen?
For something with immediate feedback like radio volume, this would work well, but maybe other things require some feedback -- a physical knob can give you immediate feedback through its position. In my car, I know that when the temperature control knob is straight up and down that it's in the middle setting, and I turn it 90 degrees left or right to make it wamer or cooler.
However, in the other car, for some reason the designers chose to use a physical knob with a lighted dot to show where the knob is pointed, so you still have to look at it to see what setting it's on.
One of these 42 billion candela light systems should do the trick - pictures from every normal camera will be so overexposed that pictures will be useless.
Just illuminate the inside of the bus with one of those light systems, and put a lens from welder's goggles over your own cameras.
You'll probably need to tow a 300KW generator behind the bus to power the lighting system. And tell the driver to always keep the air conditioning on high so you don't accidentally broil your guests.
Seriously? Have none of you heard of a stag party? I'm guessing this bus has a pole in the middle, too. These things are not uncommon, and they all have the same rule/concern: no cameras.
If the rule is "no cameras", then problem solved, just enforce the rule when people get on the bus - put a big locked bin at the front and they can drop their cameras/phones off as they enter the bus.
My internet price (from Comcast and acquired entities) has remained steady at $43 for probably 20 years now, while my download speeds have increased from 1.5Mbps to (today) 57Mbps over the same timeframe. Factoring in inflation and speed increases over that timeframe, my cost per throughput has steadily and dramatically dropped.
The article is FUD.
I think the issue for cord cutters us data caps. If the cable company had a steady 250gb cap then you went from 450 hours of full speed downloads to 15 hours of full speed downloading. So even as bandwidth has improved, your ability to use it has not. Just like how the cellular companies tout their fantastic super fast downloads to make you think you are getting better service but if you actually use that high speed data, you can hit your monthly data cap within a few minutes of downloading.
Please, one of the big ones needs to be our knight in shining armor and make an Android phone without all the Google tie-ins. Make your own app-store that doesn't require a login or GUID from users, only from authors. Make a map and navigation app based on OSM. Include offline calendar and to-do lists, with optional syncing to a computer or an open source online service. Resist the urge to replace Google's apps with your own proprietary apps. Just make a phone worth buying.
You mean a Kindle?
Or you can just buy a phone that has good Cynogenmod support and stick with the F-Droid open source app repository.
"they have also argued that because their trademark “Color Run” is in my photos they are entitled to them"
Just wait until Apple or Coca-Cola hears about this. They'll suddenly own so many movies in which their logo appears they won't know what to do with them.
Hmm...so if someone takes a picture of a 17 year old topless girl at a Color Run race that shows the Color Run logo, does Color Run own that photo, and are they the ones facing child pornography charges?
The NSA, the "experts" in computer security, doesn't use hardware access tokens? Everyone knows that passwords can be compromised (and a PKI certificate adds little since an attacker could copy the cert).
Though I guess since the NSA already hacked RSA, they knew they couldn't trust RSA tokens.
At the Toronto Linux Users Group I heard a story about how the parking meters used to crash because some setting would randomly kill processes when Linux was running low on memory.
That's probably the Out of Memory handler in Linux. It's not exactly random, the OOM handler ranks processes by "badness" and prefers to kill off newer processes that are using a lot of memory before going to older, long running processes.
There's a sysctl.conf setting that will tell the kernel to panic and reboot in an OOM condition instead of trying to kill off enough processes to continue running, which is probably would be better for an unattended parking meter.
Mr. Moderator, brothers and sisters, friends and enemies: I just can’t believe everyone in here is a friend, and I don’t want to leave anybody out. The question tonight, as I understand it, is “The Slashdot Revolt, and Where Do We Go From Here?” or "What Next?” In my little humble way of understanding it, it points toward either the
I really like the articles at Arstechnica, but I hate their non-threaded comment forum so it's hard to have discussions. If they'd just provide a "sort by thread" option, I'd be there instead of here.
Again, you would rent the generator for the few times that you need to make a long trip.
Or, instead of renting a 1200 pound, $15,000 generator for your $70,000 car, you could just rent an entire $30,000 gasoline powered car when you want to make a long trip.
"I've seen other estimates of around 3 - 3.5 KWh/mile for the Tesla"
Your decimal is in the wrong place. Actual power consumption of a Tesla S at interstate speeds is 0.28 - 0.36 kWh/mile (the higher number typical for driving at ~75 MPH with outdoor temps in the single digits, the lower number for spring/fall at ~75 MPH). Source: first hand experience with 14,200 miles driven to date and an overall average consumption of 0.304 kWh/mile mixed city/hwy.
Yeah, sorry, I inverted my statment, I meant 3 - 3.5 miles/KWh. But it still works out to around 20KWh for 60 miles.
Using your figure of 0.28 KWh/mile, you'd need a generator to provide around 21KW to power the electric motor.
This is an idea I've always thought would be nice. You could even hook up an electric generator on the trailer for easy refueling. I wonder what size of generator you'd need to continuously charge the batteries? It may sound like a step backwards to be using gas to power an electric car, but if you're only using it for long trips a couple times a year, that's still a huge savings to the environment.
It's not hard to estimate -- if a 70KWh battery has a 300 mile range at 60mph, that' s 4.3 miles/KWh, or 14KWh to drive 60 miles, so driving 60mph, you'd need a 14KW generator to power the car. Not huge, but not exactly tiny... here's a 15KW generator trailer.
I've seen other estimates of around 3 - 3.5 KWh/mile for the Tesla, so you might need a 20KW generator.
A Tesla battery pack with a 300 mile range weighs 1200 lbs, so it's reasonable to suggest that an extra battery to provide an additional 300 miles of range will weigh about the same. Though he didn't include the weight of the trailer to haul the battery, so probably needs to add a few hundred pounds to the estimate.
Slashdot Mirror
Solar insolation on the moon is not dramatically higher than on Earth - around 1400 W/m^2 versus around 1000 W/m^2 on Earth. Granted, a Lunar solar station wouldn't be affected by weather, but Earth based receivers will suffer from efficiency loss during bad weather.
Could they achieve the same result by building a bit larger system on earth, but without the hundreds (or thousands?) of rocket launches it would take to get the materials to the moon to get the thing started?
Besides, who wants to see a big black ribbon around the moon?
If it weren't for anti-child-labor laws and minimum-wage laws, a lot of the farm work attracting illegal immigrants could be done by the children of Americans. This is part of California's problem.
You so rarely hear the argument *for* child labor. If we got rid of the child labor laws and minimum wage laws we could also bring back a lot of the manufacturing work that we send to Chinese children.
Is that a good thing?
And "alternative sexual lifestyles" covers more ground than just homosexual couples: single parent families, and the irresponsible parents who are (in growing and unreported numbers) abandoning their children. Children need to be taught how to support themselves and nurture their own future children, rather than feel good about whatever they do and feel indignant about those who do support themselves
That's the first I've heard of procreation called an "alternative sexual lifestyle".
Lots of people want lots of things. So what?
Lots of people want lots of things. So what?
I just answered your "so what" question, why do you keep asking it? The answer is: Politics. What part of that don't you understand? The politics of allocating a limited public resource means that it's not a simple supply and demand problem that you learned about in Econ 101 where you just raise the price and the market will work it out - it's a problem of balancing who "needs" it more (which sometimes mean who's willing to pay the politician more or offer him more votes).
You look even with mechanical controls. You don't feel for how the temperature knob is set, you glance at it first. That glance tells you the current setting, plus enough location information so that you can reach for the control "blindly". It's not the looking that's the problem. The problem is the duration that your eyes are not on the road while finding the control and making the adjustment. What you do not want is to require continual visual feedback while adjusting the controls. With this system you do not need visual feedback, but it is there in a format that is glanceable, even peripherally visible, if you want it.
You look at your car controls? I don't even look at the radio when I change stations or input sources - I know where the buttons are (and I bought this particular radio since it had buttons for common features). So I just reach out and use the controls without looking.
I really don't think I'm unusual in this -- do people normally have to look at their common car controls to use them? I still have to look for the less commonly used controls like seat heat and cruise control, but for the controls I use every day, muscle memory takes over and I just reach out and use them.
CA is suffering a lack of water because billions of gallons of fresh water have been dumped into the ocean in order to supposedly "save" an insignificant fish.
Latino immigrants vote Dem to get gov handouts which keep Dems in power. Dems in power cater to extremists in their own party resulting in CA's drought and CA's brainwashing of kindergarteners with the radical politics of alternative sexual lifestyles. CA is in bad shape now, but it is going to be one truly f***ed up place in 20 years.
You must be a farmer -- "screw the insignificant fish because I want to grow crops in the desert". Since the largest employer of Latino immigrants is agriculture, you'd think that if dems were giving latinos what they want, they'd give the farmers more water.
If you think CA is brainwashing kids with radical politics of alternative sexual lifestyles, you really ought to look around, it turns our that homosexuals have always been living among us, but are just now feeling comfortable coming out. When an NFL player comes out as gay and 85% of NFL players say they have no problem with gay teammates, then you know that it's not just some fringe group.
Some would say CA is suffering a lack of water because we're exporting billions of gallons of water overseas (indirectly, through Ag exports, which only accounts for about 5% of the economy)
Did the usage reports really result in a 5% drop in water usage, or is it the fact that for the past 4 months, you can't watch the news without hearing all about the drought conditions and how people have to stop flushing their toilets so much. Meanwhile, residential use accounts for only 10 - 15% of California's water use, so even if everyone cut their use by 20%, it really wouldn't solve the problem.
Why not find a way to supply the water people need? Why shouldn't everyone who is willing to pay the transportation costs be able to use as much water as they want?
Because politics. Farmers want 80% of California's water.
So you put four fingers on the pad, take a quick glance at the bar graph along the side of the display, and say "Sorry pal. We're at 90% of full temperature now, and I am not permitted to breach that reserve except in times of war, or with my wife's permission.".
I'm not sure that looking at the display really solves the problem of having to look at the display while driving.
when the guy in the back seat says he's cold, I just want to make the car a bit warmer,
Here's what you do. Put four fingers on the touchscreen and drag up. Done. You don't have to look at the screen.
That would be great if I just wanted to blindly turn up the heat without knowing where it's set now, but if it's already turned up most of the way, I don't want to turn it up any more.. and I don't want to touch the screen with the appropriate amount of fingers (whoops, hit a bump and tapped with another finger, now it wants to change the radio station), and then wait for the computer to say "Temperature currently set to 78 degrees".
Audio or haptic feedback. The same as you do when you use a knob without looking.
Why do you care what setting it is on? Either you want it cooler or warmer, and you turn the knob in the appropriate direction by about how much you think you need to. Swiping gestures are no different in this respect.
I care because when my wife in the backseat says she's cold, as soon as I touch the knob I know that it's turned up 3/4 of the way and if I make it any warmer, the car is going to be too warm. I don't want to touch the touch screen, wait for the computer to say "Currently set to 78 degrees" before making the gesture. With a knob I can determine the current setting and adjust it before the computer could even say "Currently".
Auditory feedback gives you much more information than inferring something from knob position.
But I don't want more information - I don't care if the temperature is set at 72 degrees or 74 degrees, I just want to now that the knob is straight up and down now, so it's in the middle setting, and so if I turn it a bit to the right, it'll make it a bit warmer - and I can make that adjustment faster than the computer can read out the current temperature. For this same reason, I don't like digital temperature readouts on climate control systems - when the guy in the back seat says he's cold, I just want to make the car a bit warmer, I don't want to watch the display while I push the button to make it 4.3 degrees warmer.
The point of this is that you don't need to look at it.
How do you adjust the temperature without looking at the screen to see where it is now, and where you want it to go? How do you change the air direction from front defroster to foot vents without looking at the screen?
For something with immediate feedback like radio volume, this would work well, but maybe other things require some feedback -- a physical knob can give you immediate feedback through its position. In my car, I know that when the temperature control knob is straight up and down that it's in the middle setting, and I turn it 90 degrees left or right to make it wamer or cooler.
However, in the other car, for some reason the designers chose to use a physical knob with a lighted dot to show where the knob is pointed, so you still have to look at it to see what setting it's on.
One of these 42 billion candela light systems should do the trick - pictures from every normal camera will be so overexposed that pictures will be useless.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
Just illuminate the inside of the bus with one of those light systems, and put a lens from welder's goggles over your own cameras.
You'll probably need to tow a 300KW generator behind the bus to power the lighting system. And tell the driver to always keep the air conditioning on high so you don't accidentally broil your guests.
Seriously? Have none of you heard of a stag party? I'm guessing this bus has a pole in the middle, too. These things are not uncommon, and they all have the same rule/concern: no cameras.
If the rule is "no cameras", then problem solved, just enforce the rule when people get on the bus - put a big locked bin at the front and they can drop their cameras/phones off as they enter the bus.
This!!
My internet price (from Comcast and acquired entities) has remained steady at $43 for probably 20 years now, while my download speeds have increased from 1.5Mbps to (today) 57Mbps over the same timeframe. Factoring in inflation and speed increases over that timeframe, my cost per throughput has steadily and dramatically dropped.
The article is FUD.
I think the issue for cord cutters us data caps. If the cable company had a steady 250gb cap then you went from 450 hours of full speed downloads to 15 hours of full speed downloading. So even as bandwidth has improved, your ability to use it has not. Just like how the cellular companies tout their fantastic super fast downloads to make you think you are getting better service but if you actually use that high speed data, you can hit your monthly data cap within a few minutes of downloading.
Please, one of the big ones needs to be our knight in shining armor and make an Android phone without all the Google tie-ins. Make your own app-store that doesn't require a login or GUID from users, only from authors. Make a map and navigation app based on OSM. Include offline calendar and to-do lists, with optional syncing to a computer or an open source online service. Resist the urge to replace Google's apps with your own proprietary apps. Just make a phone worth buying.
You mean a Kindle?
Or you can just buy a phone that has good Cynogenmod support and stick with the F-Droid open source app repository.
"they have also argued that because their trademark “Color Run” is in my photos they are entitled to them"
Just wait until Apple or Coca-Cola hears about this. They'll suddenly own so many movies in which their logo appears they won't know what to do with them.
Hmm...so if someone takes a picture of a 17 year old topless girl at a Color Run race that shows the Color Run logo, does Color Run own that photo, and are they the ones facing child pornography charges?
What is the secret code for "Fuck beta"?
I believe the Slashdot-approved secret code would be "Shpx orgn".
The NSA, the "experts" in computer security, doesn't use hardware access tokens? Everyone knows that passwords can be compromised (and a PKI certificate adds little since an attacker could copy the cert).
Though I guess since the NSA already hacked RSA, they knew they couldn't trust RSA tokens.
At the Toronto Linux Users Group I heard a story about how the parking meters used to crash because some setting would randomly kill processes when Linux was running low on memory.
That's probably the Out of Memory handler in Linux. It's not exactly random, the OOM handler ranks processes by "badness" and prefers to kill off newer processes that are using a lot of memory before going to older, long running processes.
There's a sysctl.conf setting that will tell the kernel to panic and reboot in an OOM condition instead of trying to kill off enough processes to continue running, which is probably would be better for an unattended parking meter.
Mr. Moderator, brothers and sisters, friends and enemies: I just can’t believe everyone in here is a friend, and I don’t want to leave anybody out. The question tonight, as I understand it, is “The Slashdot Revolt, and Where Do We Go From Here?” or "What Next?” In my little humble way of understanding it, it points toward either the
I really like the articles at Arstechnica, but I hate their non-threaded comment forum so it's hard to have discussions. If they'd just provide a "sort by thread" option, I'd be there instead of here.
Again, you would rent the generator for the few times that you need to make a long trip.
Or, instead of renting a 1200 pound, $15,000 generator for your $70,000 car, you could just rent an entire $30,000 gasoline powered car when you want to make a long trip.
"I've seen other estimates of around 3 - 3.5 KWh/mile for the Tesla"
Your decimal is in the wrong place. Actual power consumption of a Tesla S at interstate speeds is 0.28 - 0.36 kWh/mile (the higher number typical for driving at ~75 MPH with outdoor temps in the single digits, the lower number for spring/fall at ~75 MPH). Source: first hand experience with 14,200 miles driven to date and an overall average consumption of 0.304 kWh/mile mixed city/hwy.
Yeah, sorry, I inverted my statment, I meant 3 - 3.5 miles/KWh. But it still works out to around 20KWh for 60 miles.
Using your figure of 0.28 KWh/mile, you'd need a generator to provide around 21KW to power the electric motor.
This is an idea I've always thought would be nice. You could even hook up an electric generator on the trailer for easy refueling. I wonder what size of generator you'd need to continuously charge the batteries? It may sound like a step backwards to be using gas to power an electric car, but if you're only using it for long trips a couple times a year, that's still a huge savings to the environment.
It's not hard to estimate -- if a 70KWh battery has a 300 mile range at 60mph, that' s 4.3 miles/KWh, or 14KWh to drive 60 miles, so driving 60mph, you'd need a 14KW generator to power the car. Not huge, but not exactly tiny... here's a 15KW generator trailer.
I've seen other estimates of around 3 - 3.5 KWh/mile for the Tesla, so you might need a 20KW generator.
You've calculated that precisely, have you?
A Tesla battery pack with a 300 mile range weighs 1200 lbs, so it's reasonable to suggest that an extra battery to provide an additional 300 miles of range will weigh about the same. Though he didn't include the weight of the trailer to haul the battery, so probably needs to add a few hundred pounds to the estimate.