Those 60:40 negative mods, and the 18 replies that insistently fail to understand either racism or terrorism, are the clear evidence that we're not going to see the end of either racism or terrorism any time soon.
Even in a Slashdot discussion, people will not think about how attacking one person as an arbitrary representative of their entire large group is a political act, and how violence used to intimidate a group for political effect is terrorism. Refusing to think about it is how we keep it.
I just showed you the numbers. Republicans opposed civil rights. Democrats, led by LBJ, pushed it through. Southerners were worse in each party, but Southern Republicans were the worst of all.
I don't have a puppy. I just have zero tolerance for lying Republicans like you. Who would be proud not only to oppose civil rights (and lie about it, as Republicans love to do today despite the facts), but who spent the 1960s getting Nixon into the White House. That's a lot worse than kicking my puppy. That's kicking my country. But I guess you Republicans can't understand something like that - not when you can fantasize about kicking a puppy instead.
Well, you're basically right. Except about the DEET. I never use stuff that can cause seizures in anyone, if I can help it, because it might not cause a seizure in me, but who knows what other crap I barely notice - at the time - it does do to me.
I use this stuff I got in the Yucatan that the Mayans have used for thousands of years, which totally works, and which doesn't even smell bad.
Yeah, Slashdot's "moderation" system is so easily gamed that an army of rightwing trollMods routinely suppress plenty of my posts, and surely lots of others. A tiny minority can manipulate the discourse so the majority of people can't communicate facts to each other, no matter how well cited or argued. Which is of course perfect Republican territory.
But there's so much truth against them now that some gets through. They're fighting a losing battle, and digging their hole to discredibility hell deeper, instead of finding a new game. So I think enough people are getting the message, despite a "lost generation" of hopeless hardcore rightwingers who won't quit until we pry their keyboards from their cold, dead hands.
I can't make racist people stay away from restaurants. Calling them terrorists is a bit of a stretch too.
I know that this story is supposed to be humor. And that person asking for remedies to racism is clearly asking the wrong person.
But a standalone fact is that racism is indeed terrorism. When you call a Black person "nigger", you are referring to a long history of abuse, often lethal (and worse) of Black people. You are saying it to terrorize them. Not just personally, but as part of a whole group of people that you are trying to intimidate. That's an instance of using threats for political effects: suppressing Black people by singling one out as a representative of all Black people, then attacking them as that representative.
It is indeed terrorism. It's not at all the scale of crashing planefuls of people into giant office towers, or beheading someone in a widely distributed video. But it is indeed terrorism. And repeated thousands of times a day, for hundreds of years, that kind of terrorism has a very large scale effect.
If copyright suppresses _The Watchmen_ movie, I expect I'll still get to download it via torrent, and watch it on my giant TV.
Sure, not nearly as good as watching it on a truly giant movie screen in NYC, but a lot truer to the story, acted out in real life.
And an excellent lesson in how copyright that's older than the original 14 year limit is not Constitutional, because it violates the "limited times" term that is an actual compromise for commerce. The unlimited copyright is hurting commerce, but enforcing the kind of arbitrary monopoly that Fox loves to death.
Like I said in another post in this thread, of course Apple should ensure that not a single Nano catches fire. It's the part where you ban them from all airplanes in the meantime that is an irrational reaction to the actual risk.
Everything is indeed always about cost:benefit*risk ratios. The benefit of reducing the negligible risk to airplanes is so small, yet the cost is so high, that it's not worth doing. That doesn't mean that the cost of fixing the defect is also too high - it just means that being disproportionately sensitive to the vanishingly small risk to planes is irrational.
Except that the chances of a nano bursting into flames in a cargo hold are... so close to zero, that not a single case has occured.
Maybe it's not airplanes that make you paranoid. Your.sig is "Go die in a fire - DaveV1.0 (203135) - My new best friend". Maybe you're just a pyrophobe. Which makes you an unreliable judge of fire risk.
Except that the % chance increasing from "practically zero" to "nearly zero", such that not a single instance has happened on a plane, means that you're exaggerating the risk into a real risk, when it is not. Meanwhile, banning them from planes has substantial cost.
So you're indulging substantial cost to eliminate a negligible risk. Not sensible.
Yes, Apple should fix this problem. Not a single iPod should explode, of course. For the person whose explodes, the risk is then 100%, and the cost is unacceptable. But in the meantime, banning them on airplanes is an arbitrary, high cost measure with practically no benefit to make up for it. Thinking it does is a measure of fear, not safety.
Like almost every other "airline safety measure" installed since 9/11/2001. Paranoia, simulated security, waste of time, distraction.
If we were sane enough to reform the music biz, we could legalize drugs and prostitution, which would make them cheap enough that even music biz weasels could afford them again. Which would drain the bribery and extortion out of that biz, too. Which, I suppose, in the end all hurts the cops on the take the most.
And that's how we know that music royalties are the foundation of our police state.
Japan has seen 14 such incidents so far, two in recent days. iminplaya adds, "I like that. Only a 'tiny percentage'... Is anybody beginning to understand why I would prefer that these devices not be allowed on airplanes?"
Yes, now I understand that you can be easily frightened into irrationally giving up reasonably safe conveniences just so long as someone says "airplane" near you.
Record labels have quite a lot to do with concert attendance and merchandise sales, especially considering that the music and videos they invest in producing for distribution are the primary promotion for it. As they have already moved into the concert and merchandise business, that's a good move as they finally change their business model to cope with converting the music into "only" promotion - which is the biggest part of the music business, that the fans can do to cut costs and improve effectiveness. In fact, since labels are already doing all this, all they have to change is stop fighting music "piracy", and just let it all go, which will increase all their other business. They always sucked at selling the music, anyway, and were always better at selling some physical product.
Blah blah blah Warner consultant blah blah blah mandatory payments to Warner blah blah society cannot otherwise survive blah blah blah here's my invoice.
If record corps just used free distribution of music to promote the live concerts, T-shirts and other physical transactions they can actually control, and licensed hits to cross-promote other merchandise like in commercials, they'd have an excellent business model. Without the arbitrary overhead and guaranteed profits (despite terrible business work, and mostly terrible "art").
Just admit that the record contract and sales model was a ripoff from the start that could last only a century, and harness the power of fans directly promoting the products they can sell. And stop insulting us with claims that "what's good for Warner is good for America".
That's already staked out in the treaties. And threat of war isn't going to stop the Chinese, Russians or some other corporate types grab it.
By the rights that every country now claims their own Earth territory, the US has by far the strongest claim to Moon territory. Having reached it, planted the flag, and indeed traveled on the ground all over it.
We've also got a lot more efficient storage/discharge systems than plants do. Fuelcells are moving from 50% towards their 83% efficiency. Cracking H2O was already about 50% efficient before last month's announcement of a 90%+ efficient cobalt O2 catalyst that's really cheap. Making the overall efficiency about 70-75%. When someone replaces the platinum catalyst for the H2 half with something similar, we'll have something like 80% efficiency for storing PV output and discharging it. Thermoelectric materials will make much of the extra 20% wasted as heat into electric, for overall storage cycle efficiency of perhaps over 90%.
There are applications for biomass and photosynthesis where PV isn't practical. Like where we've already got plants growing, using their natural deployment/recycling without any extra energy input. But for industry, PV is much more efficient.
So to be sued for having music files on my computer is an insult. It's a slap in the face. This experience has left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wanted to swear off music.
And so that's why she took the money, instead of settling her right to do what she wanted with her music.
And for those saying the case was dragging on too long for her to pay her lawyers, just realize that the RIAA settles only for less than it would pay in fines and fees, and only when it's going to lose. So if she and her lawyer had hung on through a trial, they'd have gotten more money. Which is all that the lawyers care about, and their businesses are designed for them to wait - and they have to do it if their client wants to go through with it. So Barker is the one who sold out her principles for a little temporary safety and an early paycheck.
No, I'd cancel these stupid, expensive wars, and their embezzled Pentagon and CIA budgets. I'd make the Pentagon budget about $250B a year, and reorg the CIA to track and bust actual terrorists, including getting the evidence on their state sponsors (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, etc) for $15B a year. I'd give the EPA $100B, and NASA $150-200B. I'd also tax corporations and rich people their fair share, which is a higher rate after their first $100K. I'd charge nonrenewable energy corps windfall taxes of up to half their excessive profits, and force them to give up Federal leases they're not exploiting or raise the rent on them.
By the time I was done, I'd be reducing the deficits by hundreds of $billions a year, and investing heavily in America's space, energy and environmental industries. I'd have our economic shit in order, and be nearly a decade ahead of the game by the time I had to hand it over to my successor.
It's not at all far-fetched or inefficient. If you're going to say so, back it up.
What's far-fetched and inefficient is changing our entire industrial chemistry. And so is using nukes, which require a huge global industrial system, pose extreme security risks, and make states, including the US, dependent on foreign countries. Launching nuke reactors in space where there's vast energy flying around all the time is far-fetched and inefficient.
Oh, and try throwing your perfectly wrong, baseless contradictions up there with at least a userID. The combo of being perfectly wrong and imperfectly anonymous is irritating at best.
The theoretical maximum photosynthetic efficiency is only 11%. Plants only manage ~30% of 11%, not of 100%. If you're shooting for 50% of 11%, 5.5%, that's not so great. 15m^2 gets a max 1KW at solar noon; most of the US gets about 350W averaged across day/night/weather/seasons. So 15m^2 receives 5.2KW, but your ideal photosynthesis is going to get 262.5W. Since the average American home consumes 2KW average, and peaks at about 5KW, you're going to need 20 of those rooftops. Which is about 2-3x as big as the average NYC home, most of which are stacked atop each other in multiple storeys. NYC's average storey height of about 11 storeys means you're delivering only about 3% of the necessary energy, consuming every square centimeter of roof - which also house machinery and patios that conflict with photosynthesis. Even in other cities, where most energy consumers live, you're talking about maybe only 10-20% of their energy consumption.
And then consider that the infrastructure for biological photosynthesis, like water, enclosures, probably heating and cooling during extreme seasons, perhaps other nutrients, is also complex and expensive. Once installed, PV lasts for over 30 years with minimal maintenance. Biological photosynthesis is going to have a lot of its small raw efficiency eaten by supporting it. And if (nonbiological) photosynthetic materials are made, they're going to have the same manufacturing, deployment, maintenance and recycling energy requirements as cheap, stable silicon.
The really interesting advance will be cheap polymer PV with the high efficiency of GaAs PV at high concentrations, from even cheaper mirrors. Once those last 10 years (replacing just the cheap PV material every decade, not the rest of the infrastructure) in 10x sunlight at over 30% efficiency, their total lifecycle energy budget will overwhelm photosynthesis, and provide ample energy for our growth.
If I were going to be president six months from now, I'd make sure that we returned to the Moon, in force. I'd spend what it takes to put a permanent solar power base there, lasering back to a network of satellites and delivering cheap, clean power around the world. Once the base was staffed and ample power generated, I'd start mining the rare minerals that are going to run out on Earth within the next 20-100 years. I'd give contractors who are majority American owned, and use majority American subcontractors, the highest priority for taking part in the project, and aim at creating a space launch industry as dominated by commercial carriers as are airliners, while keeping a reliable government capacity operating, just like in air travel.
The US would start to look admirable around the entire world again. Except in the boardrooms and war rooms of our worst enemies, who are using our foreign oil dependence to enslave us and the world, who'd hate us as we put them out of business.
It took only 7 years for the US to go from subsonic jets to landing on the Moon, with a nation engaged in the Cold War, a hot war in Vietnam, a much lower economic productivity, a much smaller pool of engineers, much more primitive technology, and no proven example of going to the Moon to reassure us. Even before exploiting the Moon's resources industrially, we've already benefited hugely from the scientific, engineering, industrial and patriotic rewards of the visionary investment. We could return to the Moon, and lead the world out of so many problems we've helped create and are most threatened by.
The 45% efficient GaAs PV cells are mostly mirrors, which concentrate lots of area onto the active PV receptor, which is most efficient at very high insolation. So while the GaAs chip might be 10x the cost of cheap silicon chips of the same area, the GaAs chip gets 10x the area for only the nominal extra cost of the 10 mirrors, at 2.5x the efficiency. So the cost per watt is under 1/2.
The newest electrolysis processes replace platinum with a cobalt catalyst (for at least the O2 production, and therefore probably the H2 as a result). Which has jumped the efficiency of the O2 production towards 95%, for extremely cheap production. Once the H2 is definitely improved with a similarly cheap process, we can probably get 90%+ cracking efficiency, powered by 50%+ efficient mirror-concentrated PV. The mirrors are cheap, so that PV itself probably costs 1/2 or less what 20% efficient silicon PV costs.
H2 produced at 500W:m^2 for half the cost of current solar cells is pretty damn cheap.
H2 stored in the car needs a lot more equipment for storage + conversion than electricity needs.
And the amounts stored in the car aren't "miniscule". We already have plugin hybrids which store power in batteries, enough to be competitive with "tankfuls" of gasoline.
No one's talking here about PV directly on cars, which are much too small for a few kilowatts max to drive the 50-80KW we're used to releasing when we drive. That's for experimental solar vehicle competitions, which compete with bicycles, not cars.
Solar energy at 1% efficiency means consuming 20x the real estate of solar energy at 20% efficiency, or 50x the real estate of 50% efficiency. Each human, on average, currently consumes the solar energy that falls on 62 square meters, at 20% efficiency. That's about the size of their apartment's roof. Expanding their solar energy footprint to require their entire street's rooftops per person is bad scaling.
Oh, and using H2 to fuel anything isn't "zero carbon": the H2 has to come from somewhere, which will almost certainly require carbon compounds to be burned, and probably released into the air. Though PV of course doesn't burn anything, and requires only silicon and some metal elements, so PV could eventually be actually zero carbon, and even drive the cracking of water into H2 and O2. A process that is already jumping from 50% to 73% efficient as of this month, and perhaps heading to over 90% efficiency.
So stop the annoying sighing. When you're wrong, it only makes you look foolish.
The 45% efficient GaAs PV cells are mostly mirrors, which concentrate lots of area onto the active PV receptor, which is most efficient at very high insolation. So while the GaAs chip might be 10x the cost of cheap silicon chips of the same area, the GaAs chip gets 10x the area for only the nominal extra cost of the 10 mirrors, at 2.5x the efficiency. So the cost per watt is under 1/2.
PV is a lot cheaper to maintain and service over a 30 year lifetime than solar thermal. And it is a lot cheaper for smaller installations, like on every home's rooftop.
Slashdot Mirror
Moderation -1
60% Overrated
30% Insightful
10% Interesting
Those 60:40 negative mods, and the 18 replies that insistently fail to understand either racism or terrorism, are the clear evidence that we're not going to see the end of either racism or terrorism any time soon.
Even in a Slashdot discussion, people will not think about how attacking one person as an arbitrary representative of their entire large group is a political act, and how violence used to intimidate a group for political effect is terrorism. Refusing to think about it is how we keep it.
I just showed you the numbers. Republicans opposed civil rights. Democrats, led by LBJ, pushed it through. Southerners were worse in each party, but Southern Republicans were the worst of all.
I don't have a puppy. I just have zero tolerance for lying Republicans like you. Who would be proud not only to oppose civil rights (and lie about it, as Republicans love to do today despite the facts), but who spent the 1960s getting Nixon into the White House. That's a lot worse than kicking my puppy. That's kicking my country. But I guess you Republicans can't understand something like that - not when you can fantasize about kicking a puppy instead.
Well, you're basically right. Except about the DEET. I never use stuff that can cause seizures in anyone, if I can help it, because it might not cause a seizure in me, but who knows what other crap I barely notice - at the time - it does do to me.
I use this stuff I got in the Yucatan that the Mayans have used for thousands of years, which totally works, and which doesn't even smell bad.
Yeah, Slashdot's "moderation" system is so easily gamed that an army of rightwing trollMods routinely suppress plenty of my posts, and surely lots of others. A tiny minority can manipulate the discourse so the majority of people can't communicate facts to each other, no matter how well cited or argued. Which is of course perfect Republican territory.
But there's so much truth against them now that some gets through. They're fighting a losing battle, and digging their hole to discredibility hell deeper, instead of finding a new game. So I think enough people are getting the message, despite a "lost generation" of hopeless hardcore rightwingers who won't quit until we pry their keyboards from their cold, dead hands.
I know that this story is supposed to be humor. And that person asking for remedies to racism is clearly asking the wrong person.
But a standalone fact is that racism is indeed terrorism. When you call a Black person "nigger", you are referring to a long history of abuse, often lethal (and worse) of Black people. You are saying it to terrorize them. Not just personally, but as part of a whole group of people that you are trying to intimidate. That's an instance of using threats for political effects: suppressing Black people by singling one out as a representative of all Black people, then attacking them as that representative.
It is indeed terrorism. It's not at all the scale of crashing planefuls of people into giant office towers, or beheading someone in a widely distributed video. But it is indeed terrorism. And repeated thousands of times a day, for hundreds of years, that kind of terrorism has a very large scale effect.
That's no joke.
If copyright suppresses _The Watchmen_ movie, I expect I'll still get to download it via torrent, and watch it on my giant TV.
Sure, not nearly as good as watching it on a truly giant movie screen in NYC, but a lot truer to the story, acted out in real life.
And an excellent lesson in how copyright that's older than the original 14 year limit is not Constitutional, because it violates the "limited times" term that is an actual compromise for commerce. The unlimited copyright is hurting commerce, but enforcing the kind of arbitrary monopoly that Fox loves to death.
Like I said in another post in this thread, of course Apple should ensure that not a single Nano catches fire. It's the part where you ban them from all airplanes in the meantime that is an irrational reaction to the actual risk.
Everything is indeed always about cost:benefit*risk ratios. The benefit of reducing the negligible risk to airplanes is so small, yet the cost is so high, that it's not worth doing. That doesn't mean that the cost of fixing the defect is also too high - it just means that being disproportionately sensitive to the vanishingly small risk to planes is irrational.
Except that the chances of a nano bursting into flames in a cargo hold are... so close to zero, that not a single case has occured.
Maybe it's not airplanes that make you paranoid. Your .sig is "Go die in a fire - DaveV1.0 (203135) - My new best friend". Maybe you're just a pyrophobe. Which makes you an unreliable judge of fire risk.
Except that the % chance increasing from "practically zero" to "nearly zero", such that not a single instance has happened on a plane, means that you're exaggerating the risk into a real risk, when it is not. Meanwhile, banning them from planes has substantial cost.
So you're indulging substantial cost to eliminate a negligible risk. Not sensible.
Yes, Apple should fix this problem. Not a single iPod should explode, of course. For the person whose explodes, the risk is then 100%, and the cost is unacceptable. But in the meantime, banning them on airplanes is an arbitrary, high cost measure with practically no benefit to make up for it. Thinking it does is a measure of fear, not safety.
Like almost every other "airline safety measure" installed since 9/11/2001. Paranoia, simulated security, waste of time, distraction.
If we were sane enough to reform the music biz, we could legalize drugs and prostitution, which would make them cheap enough that even music biz weasels could afford them again. Which would drain the bribery and extortion out of that biz, too. Which, I suppose, in the end all hurts the cops on the take the most.
And that's how we know that music royalties are the foundation of our police state.
So now it seems that Linux's nonintegrated multiple clipboards and their UIs (Ctrl-c, and select/middle-click) are a security feature, not a bug.
Yes, now I understand that you can be easily frightened into irrationally giving up reasonably safe conveniences just so long as someone says "airplane" near you.
Record labels have quite a lot to do with concert attendance and merchandise sales, especially considering that the music and videos they invest in producing for distribution are the primary promotion for it. As they have already moved into the concert and merchandise business, that's a good move as they finally change their business model to cope with converting the music into "only" promotion - which is the biggest part of the music business, that the fans can do to cut costs and improve effectiveness. In fact, since labels are already doing all this, all they have to change is stop fighting music "piracy", and just let it all go, which will increase all their other business. They always sucked at selling the music, anyway, and were always better at selling some physical product.
Blah blah blah Warner consultant blah blah blah mandatory payments to Warner blah blah society cannot otherwise survive blah blah blah here's my invoice.
If record corps just used free distribution of music to promote the live concerts, T-shirts and other physical transactions they can actually control, and licensed hits to cross-promote other merchandise like in commercials, they'd have an excellent business model. Without the arbitrary overhead and guaranteed profits (despite terrible business work, and mostly terrible "art").
Just admit that the record contract and sales model was a ripoff from the start that could last only a century, and harness the power of fans directly promoting the products they can sell. And stop insulting us with claims that "what's good for Warner is good for America".
That's already staked out in the treaties. And threat of war isn't going to stop the Chinese, Russians or some other corporate types grab it.
By the rights that every country now claims their own Earth territory, the US has by far the strongest claim to Moon territory. Having reached it, planted the flag, and indeed traveled on the ground all over it.
We've also got a lot more efficient storage/discharge systems than plants do. Fuelcells are moving from 50% towards their 83% efficiency. Cracking H2O was already about 50% efficient before last month's announcement of a 90%+ efficient cobalt O2 catalyst that's really cheap. Making the overall efficiency about 70-75%. When someone replaces the platinum catalyst for the H2 half with something similar, we'll have something like 80% efficiency for storing PV output and discharging it. Thermoelectric materials will make much of the extra 20% wasted as heat into electric, for overall storage cycle efficiency of perhaps over 90%.
There are applications for biomass and photosynthesis where PV isn't practical. Like where we've already got plants growing, using their natural deployment/recycling without any extra energy input. But for industry, PV is much more efficient.
And so that's why she took the money, instead of settling her right to do what she wanted with her music.
And for those saying the case was dragging on too long for her to pay her lawyers, just realize that the RIAA settles only for less than it would pay in fines and fees, and only when it's going to lose. So if she and her lawyer had hung on through a trial, they'd have gotten more money. Which is all that the lawyers care about, and their businesses are designed for them to wait - and they have to do it if their client wants to go through with it. So Barker is the one who sold out her principles for a little temporary safety and an early paycheck.
No, I'd cancel these stupid, expensive wars, and their embezzled Pentagon and CIA budgets. I'd make the Pentagon budget about $250B a year, and reorg the CIA to track and bust actual terrorists, including getting the evidence on their state sponsors (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, etc) for $15B a year. I'd give the EPA $100B, and NASA $150-200B. I'd also tax corporations and rich people their fair share, which is a higher rate after their first $100K. I'd charge nonrenewable energy corps windfall taxes of up to half their excessive profits, and force them to give up Federal leases they're not exploiting or raise the rent on them.
By the time I was done, I'd be reducing the deficits by hundreds of $billions a year, and investing heavily in America's space, energy and environmental industries. I'd have our economic shit in order, and be nearly a decade ahead of the game by the time I had to hand it over to my successor.
It's not at all far-fetched or inefficient. If you're going to say so, back it up.
What's far-fetched and inefficient is changing our entire industrial chemistry. And so is using nukes, which require a huge global industrial system, pose extreme security risks, and make states, including the US, dependent on foreign countries. Launching nuke reactors in space where there's vast energy flying around all the time is far-fetched and inefficient.
Oh, and try throwing your perfectly wrong, baseless contradictions up there with at least a userID. The combo of being perfectly wrong and imperfectly anonymous is irritating at best.
The theoretical maximum photosynthetic efficiency is only 11%. Plants only manage ~30% of 11%, not of 100%. If you're shooting for 50% of 11%, 5.5%, that's not so great. 15m^2 gets a max 1KW at solar noon; most of the US gets about 350W averaged across day/night/weather/seasons. So 15m^2 receives 5.2KW, but your ideal photosynthesis is going to get 262.5W. Since the average American home consumes 2KW average, and peaks at about 5KW, you're going to need 20 of those rooftops. Which is about 2-3x as big as the average NYC home, most of which are stacked atop each other in multiple storeys. NYC's average storey height of about 11 storeys means you're delivering only about 3% of the necessary energy, consuming every square centimeter of roof - which also house machinery and patios that conflict with photosynthesis. Even in other cities, where most energy consumers live, you're talking about maybe only 10-20% of their energy consumption.
And then consider that the infrastructure for biological photosynthesis, like water, enclosures, probably heating and cooling during extreme seasons, perhaps other nutrients, is also complex and expensive. Once installed, PV lasts for over 30 years with minimal maintenance. Biological photosynthesis is going to have a lot of its small raw efficiency eaten by supporting it. And if (nonbiological) photosynthetic materials are made, they're going to have the same manufacturing, deployment, maintenance and recycling energy requirements as cheap, stable silicon.
The really interesting advance will be cheap polymer PV with the high efficiency of GaAs PV at high concentrations, from even cheaper mirrors. Once those last 10 years (replacing just the cheap PV material every decade, not the rest of the infrastructure) in 10x sunlight at over 30% efficiency, their total lifecycle energy budget will overwhelm photosynthesis, and provide ample energy for our growth.
If I were going to be president six months from now, I'd make sure that we returned to the Moon, in force. I'd spend what it takes to put a permanent solar power base there, lasering back to a network of satellites and delivering cheap, clean power around the world. Once the base was staffed and ample power generated, I'd start mining the rare minerals that are going to run out on Earth within the next 20-100 years. I'd give contractors who are majority American owned, and use majority American subcontractors, the highest priority for taking part in the project, and aim at creating a space launch industry as dominated by commercial carriers as are airliners, while keeping a reliable government capacity operating, just like in air travel.
The US would start to look admirable around the entire world again. Except in the boardrooms and war rooms of our worst enemies, who are using our foreign oil dependence to enslave us and the world, who'd hate us as we put them out of business.
It took only 7 years for the US to go from subsonic jets to landing on the Moon, with a nation engaged in the Cold War, a hot war in Vietnam, a much lower economic productivity, a much smaller pool of engineers, much more primitive technology, and no proven example of going to the Moon to reassure us. Even before exploiting the Moon's resources industrially, we've already benefited hugely from the scientific, engineering, industrial and patriotic rewards of the visionary investment. We could return to the Moon, and lead the world out of so many problems we've helped create and are most threatened by.
The 45% efficient GaAs PV cells are mostly mirrors, which concentrate lots of area onto the active PV receptor, which is most efficient at very high insolation. So while the GaAs chip might be 10x the cost of cheap silicon chips of the same area, the GaAs chip gets 10x the area for only the nominal extra cost of the 10 mirrors, at 2.5x the efficiency. So the cost per watt is under 1/2.
The newest electrolysis processes replace platinum with a cobalt catalyst (for at least the O2 production, and therefore probably the H2 as a result). Which has jumped the efficiency of the O2 production towards 95%, for extremely cheap production. Once the H2 is definitely improved with a similarly cheap process, we can probably get 90%+ cracking efficiency, powered by 50%+ efficient mirror-concentrated PV. The mirrors are cheap, so that PV itself probably costs 1/2 or less what 20% efficient silicon PV costs.
H2 produced at 500W:m^2 for half the cost of current solar cells is pretty damn cheap.
H2 stored in the car needs a lot more equipment for storage + conversion than electricity needs.
And the amounts stored in the car aren't "miniscule". We already have plugin hybrids which store power in batteries, enough to be competitive with "tankfuls" of gasoline.
No one's talking here about PV directly on cars, which are much too small for a few kilowatts max to drive the 50-80KW we're used to releasing when we drive. That's for experimental solar vehicle competitions, which compete with bicycles, not cars.
Solar energy at 1% efficiency means consuming 20x the real estate of solar energy at 20% efficiency, or 50x the real estate of 50% efficiency. Each human, on average, currently consumes the solar energy that falls on 62 square meters, at 20% efficiency. That's about the size of their apartment's roof. Expanding their solar energy footprint to require their entire street's rooftops per person is bad scaling.
Oh, and using H2 to fuel anything isn't "zero carbon": the H2 has to come from somewhere, which will almost certainly require carbon compounds to be burned, and probably released into the air. Though PV of course doesn't burn anything, and requires only silicon and some metal elements, so PV could eventually be actually zero carbon, and even drive the cracking of water into H2 and O2. A process that is already jumping from 50% to 73% efficient as of this month, and perhaps heading to over 90% efficiency.
So stop the annoying sighing. When you're wrong, it only makes you look foolish.
The 45% efficient GaAs PV cells are mostly mirrors, which concentrate lots of area onto the active PV receptor, which is most efficient at very high insolation. So while the GaAs chip might be 10x the cost of cheap silicon chips of the same area, the GaAs chip gets 10x the area for only the nominal extra cost of the 10 mirrors, at 2.5x the efficiency. So the cost per watt is under 1/2.
PV is a lot cheaper to maintain and service over a 30 year lifetime than solar thermal. And it is a lot cheaper for smaller installations, like on every home's rooftop.