You Americans are nuts. Yes, the SH production line is at risk of being shutdown, but would a single 36 aircraft order keep the line running ?
The USA needs to be far more worried about loosing F35 exports, those are serious dough, hundreds of billions of US$ in exports. There's speculation Canada could give up on the F35 and replace it with the Gripen NG, it would be a serious downgrade, but at least the Gripen NG isn't plagued with enormous cost overruns, over weight issues, under performance, and other ultra serious issues given the price tag of the F35 ! The SH don't have those issues, but it's far from being a 5th generation aircraft.
I believe there are a lot of Boeing employees here that will blow everything out of proportion (for the average american that has nothing to do with the military industrial complex).
The Super Hornet was never the favorite of the Brazilian Air Force. Unlike other serious govts in the world, here we had the favorite of the Air Force and the favorite of the president. It was the favorite of the Air Force because:
- Lower cost both procurement and operational costs (I could joke there my Brazil don't have an air force, instead it has an air farce)
- better air to air performance (let's face it, Brazil hasn't had a single bomb dropped in a military operation since WWII, what we need is air defense, the Super Hornet excels at being a bomb truck, even US Army Hornet pilots have admitted the SH leaves something to be left desired against even a much older Mig29 in a dog fight)
- Generation 2 AESA radar with full technology transfer
- Full technology transfer on the aircraft itself
- Local manufacturing of most aircraft under license
- Prospect of a partnership in future Gripen upgrades, Embraer will be the Brazilian partner on this, they have a world class track record on military and civilian aircraft sales, which dwarfs SAAB experience with exporting aircraft
- You see, Boeing x Embraer would never be a really good partnership, Boeing is a competitor of Embraer in many markets (my forecast is Embratel will eventually produce a 737 sized aircraft, then they would become a full fledged competitor, but even the E-jets compete with 737 despite of the size difference)
- The only advantage the SH had was it could be used on our single aircraft carrier, that stays in port the vast majority of the time
The espionage scandal was just a good excuse to get back to basics and do the right thing. Buying the SH would have been a bad economic decision anyways. Brazil needs cheap military hardware, no F35's for us, ever. Even the SH would be too expensive in the long run (twin engine, part costs, fuel consumption)
Realize the Brazil is operating F-5E, Mirage 2000, subsonic AMX, all aircraft that are cheap to operate.
1 - He's a fraud, he will never get a worldwide patent, hence he'll never publish the detailed specs to his work. In this case, let him die an agonizing death, the least people talk about him the better.
2 - He's the real deal, and invisible powers are working really hard to slow him down as much as possible, as his work stands to destroy trillions in worldwide yearly revenues, killing him would actually be validation of his work, so they can't go that far, but instead play hardball with everyone in a position to help him substantially.
In my view only the Hot Cat can actually vindicate him, since it can produce enough electricity to power itself, providing for a closed loop system that only takes hydrogen in (plus a good size battery to start one up). And the hot cat is recent, it reportedly got to the point of being reliable in 2013.
I'm no Einstein, and no scientist, but I have had my share of extremely out of the box ideas in my lifetime, and have seen how people react to ideas that aren't in their box, so I tend to give them man some further leeway.
Now that NASA, US Navy SPAWAR and a few research institutions that have some independency and enough budget to do serious LENR research are on this, I believe the science foundation will move forward (at least on Deuterium - Paladium research) so one way or another LENR will be vindicated (someone getting a Noble prize) until 2030 for sure.
Back to topic, just consider what GM did to the EV1 (reportedly one of the big reasons Musk got into Tesla in first place). Do you think they destroyed those cars out of any logic other than powerful lobbies decided on killing the electric car on the spot ?
Just the fact that to date, LENR has never been raised as news on CNN and the bbc has a single article (from 2009) mentioning it. Just tried to search LENR on CNN search, and it changed to Learn, since there's zero articles with LENR !
If one is willing to look without being either a Scully or a Fox Mulder, one should still find plenty of proof there's serious forces trying to slow down technical advances on energy (except when it's way too expensive) as much as possible. Any quantum leaps are a big no no for those guys.
He wants the patent on this. So far he only got a local (Italian) patent. He pledged to publish his work in detail once he receives a worldwide patent.
Nobel prizes don't pay a billion in prizes.
But the following hypothetical scenario is possible: He knows he's a fraud, hence he'll never get a worldwide patent, so he uses that as an excuse to publish his technical details.
But if you follow my words clearly, I'm not saying he's the real deal. I'm just saying people attack him with such determination, they look similar to professional climate change deniers.
I just think there's nothing absolutely conclusive either way yet... In my view the positive news of 2013 just kept him alive. Even Fleishman & Pons experiments required continuous application of electric current in order to generate the anomalous heat. But the thermal output was at least a few times the input electricity. The 1MW reactor requires 200KW electricity input. It's not clear, but I believe those 200KW is mostly for startup of the reactor, since the demonstrations typically achieved 15x1 Thermal Output X Electricity Input Some comments floated that his device has managed to work with the power cut off sometimes for as long as 15 minutes. Called self sustain mode. But I'm not interested in discussing the nitty gritty here. I'll draw conclusions after his products are installed in multiple customer sites that are well published, and the customers declare the product is producing useful energy at costs similar to Mr. Rossi's statements, or if 2014 goes by, and no such statements come around. If 2014 goes by with no news for end customers, then my judgement is he's a fraud, and I wasted my time defending him here.
My goal with the discussion here is just to show any statements his work is a fraud could be biased, made by people who just don't want to give him a fair chance, people that want him to be a fraud, so they can continue to profit from major research grants into hot fusion (or profit from burning coal, natural gas and oil).
But I'm still waiting for proof he's a total scam. Also waiting to proof that his product is for real as well.
He did give his reactor a chance to be tested for what 48hrs by some very sharp scientists, the test results were published, they couldn't peek inside, but they could futz around with all external connections all they wanted. No hidden wires found, no weird electrical signal hiding the energy. And the reactor is too small for anything but a nuclear reaction.
That test being published even go into Forbes online. Are you telling me Andrea Rossi managed to fool even Forbes Magazine ?
Before that test, I was pending back to he's a fraud, now I just don't know.
Fleishman & Poons experiment also appears to be in direct conflict with currently accepted laws of physics, so I my books, it's the laws of physics that need revisiting, and until those can be reconciled, I believe we can't use the laws of physics to rule out the e-cat as a fraud.
In my view, he has one last year to deliver.
The way you attack Mr. Rossi, you do strike me as a cheerleader for the fusion guys that need Mr. Rossi to be a fraud. I believe there's bias everywhere, and I'm trying to be as middle ground as possible by pointing out all that the answers you provide to your own questions have been questioned by lots of people that have nothing to do with Mr. Rossi.
About the nuclear state regulators. Those people have a treatment of anything nuclear that would kill any kind of LENR devices.
They have no flexibility, either it's nuclear and will get treatment by the book, or it isn't. So he skirted it by saying it wasn't, that might have been the only way out.
His argument is there's no high energy neutrons, gamma or alpha particles, so he doesn't deserve that regulatory treatment.
As far as breeder reactors... I think govt funding needs to increase so that at least one national lab gets a chance to build an experimental working LFTR reactor, another one would be tasked with building a similar pebble bed reactor. This is sooo much more important than wasting money on nuclear hot fusion. I think govt should also give GE money to build one full scale IFR demonstrator to both produce electricity and burn water reactor waste, but GE needs to bear all responsibility over it (instead of one run of the mill nuclear power plant operator), and the money would be a loan earmarked for that specific project, once the reactor has burned x tons of water reactor waste, the loan would be paid off in exchange for services rendered (burning nuclear waste) and they could keep the electricity revenue.
There has been some very academical very well published experiments using Paladium + Deuterium that resulted in fairly high energy outputs like 100x more power than the original experiments. If you were really interested in the truth, you'd be far more interested in answers than in attacking Mr. Rossi.
But I'm still waiting for proof he's a total scam. Also waiting to proof that his product is for real as well.
He did give his reactor a chance to be tested for what 48hrs by some very sharp scientists, the test results were published, they couldn't peek inside, but they could futz around with all external connections all they wanted. No hidden wires found, no weird electrical signal hiding the energy. And the reactor is too small for anything but a nuclear reaction. Before that test, I was pending back to he's a fraud, now I just don't know.
Fleishman & Poons experiment also appears to be in direct conflict with currently accepted laws of physics, so I my books, it's the laws of physics that need revisiting, and until those can be reconciled, I believe we can't use the laws of physics to rule out the e-cat as a fraud.
In my view, he has one last year to deliver.
I have to warn you that I also see a bunch of very rabid people that probably has some seriously vested interest in the billions being wasted in my opinion on fusion and others employed by the dirty energy lobby that I see your testimony just as questionable as Mr. Rossi's work.
Hot fusion research is a scam. It's not a technical scam, but an economical/publicity scam. Major governments happily put money on this because they know it's zero threat to fossil fuel interests that are strong in power even in today's green Obama administration. Just look at it from a skeptical standpoint. All clean energies being invested on today are way too expensive. The only solution that would allow us to get rid of 90+% fossil fuels (with electric cars/busses) with proven, already in operation tech is nuclear fission. BTW, electric cars are great, my beef is with large scale solar photovoltaics / huge wind farm projects that are only economical with enormous subsidies (must produce electricity to compete with coal/natural gas at wholesale prices). Most wind farms produce less than 10% of maximum output about 50% of the time, since they require weather systems to go through to produce enough winds to generate much electricity.
Cold fusion that is the real threat, no wonder is has been ostracized for the last 25 yrs, because it could kill both the fossil fuel industry as well as centralized electricity production (aka, make the national electricity grid obsolete).
While Mr. Andrea Rossi's work is murky, easy to criticize, skip his stuff and just look at the number of times the Fleishman/Poons experiment has been successfully reproduced, and still the US DOE and other govt funding sources continue to consider Cold Fusion voodoo science.
And Mr Rossi isn't the only party claiming to having a product almost ready for the market. If he was the only one, the argument that he's the best con artist since Harry Houdini, but multiple independent companies claiming the same thing, it's time the american people made a Occupy the US DOE movement, demanding LENR/Cold Fusion research be put immediately on part with cold fusion research, taking 50% of funding away from hot fusion projects into cold fusion research.
I believe he's talking about cold fusion, aka LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reactions), not the hot fusion tech that has gobbled perhaps one trillion dollars worldwide (in today's dollars) since research on hot fusion started in the 1960s.
Considering LENR is considered voodoo science, essentially banned from using govt money in all countries that are large producers of fossil fuels (specially USA, UK, Canada and Australia), I'd say return on investment in LENR research is about one million times better than hot fusion research (still 20 to 50 years away from any practical applications).
Just search e-cat "andrea rossi", that's the forerunner in this tech. And Fleishman and Pons for the beginning of relevant story on this research area. PS: I'm trying really hard to avoid any splinter off topic subject here, so if you'd like to discuss this in slashdot, take one of the recent pages on LENR and start a new topic there.
Mr. Rossi already has systems in production, but it's a murky thing, arguably because those customers wish to remain anonymous (speculation it's military customers). And is taking pre-orders for 2014 delivery for 1MW LENR reactors for low temperature steam applications.
For an experienced Linux support guy, you have far less hell to go through supporting half a dozen Linux distros simultaneously than one windows version. Of course, that's just my not so humble opinion, you're entitled to yours. BTW, I support openSuSE/CentOS/debian/ubuntu/mysql/postgresql/Progress RDBMS/apache/php/python (and I'm probably forgetting to list a couple more things). The main factor is Linux is a sane environment.
If you must use electricity for heat, then please use an electric heater, and go CFL or LED, the waste heat from your lamp in the summer will waste far more electricity than it will save in colder times. AC Cooling is far more wasteful than heating.
If you absolutely must use electricity for heating, that's your unfortunate predicament, but the argument that somehow the waste heat from incandescent is useful, that's crap !
Nope. I agree with banning incandescent lightbulbs (pragmatic economic proposition) I have no fundamental stance against/pro govt. I applaud where they deserve it, but that doesn't mean all they do is good. So a large extent it's a essential evil. Can't get rid of it, can't outsource many parts of it to the private sector, must be kept in check at all times. Neither subscribe to the labor view (100% pro govt) nor the libertarian view (100% against it).
Besides, this has been in the works for a long time, whoever wanted to could have purchased a 5-10 yr supply of incandescents ahead of time (even now).
They're govt workers, that prefer to make country as a whole to spend an additional billion US$ / yr to save a dozen lives / yr, even if those deaths would be caused by stupidity on the part of those who died. (I can give you dozens of FAA mandates on the aviation industry that have that exact cost / benefit ratio, specially those that were shot down by aviation user groups, the FAA just keep on trying those again and again, it's not by chance we say: FAA, we're not happy until you're unhappy !) They don't care about the cost of things. Finally, it's not something that will happen every month with you, perhaps not once every year. Breaking a CF light. A very large portion of govt supplied safety recommendations range from stupid to unnecessary, many of those creating those recommendations aren't exactly the brightest of the crop, you know ! Somehow they need to justify their jobs.
The key is learning the non Windows way of thinking. Windows sys admins are way too command line adverse. Linux has everything you need, but you need to first unlearn a lot of bad habits you got from being a Windows sys admin. It's hard. I was lucky I learned UNIX before Windows 3.1 came out, and kept my skills on both sides until I finally gave up working with Windows about 12 yrs ago. I just about had it with all that crap that Microsoft kept doing again and again. Most tools you find absolutely essential with Windows you just don't need with Linux, because compared to Windows, Linux just works.
> Please price out an alternative deployment for 1,000 desktops and laptops that provides a level of desktop management equal to the one provided with the MS solution... I'll wait. When we made a cursory look into management suites for Large Linux deployments we found their cost to be a multiple of what we were paying MS ($100/desk per year for management suite v. $34/desk per year for the MS solution suite)...
The Linux solution is free, the real cost is retraining the SysAdmins (see the beginning of my post).
The real metric is total cost of ownership over 20 years or something like that. Once you factor all savings that will come for sure after the migration is done (while with Windows you'd be forced to keep upgrading at Microsoft's schedule), just that will result in huge savings. They will make major upgrades to their Linux environment when there's a solid technical reason to do so, not just because you're running ancient Windows version Microsoft won't patch anymore. Not to mention the hardware upgrades. A Linux system with 4GB of RAM, a modern CPU, a basic gigabit ethernet card, a single modern SATA HD can be a desktop, a workgroup server, and still be underused greatly. If they made the migration even at an equivalent cost of migration to the next windows version, they it was a GREAT benefit for them. I give 3rd level support for Linux, and every single customer that migrated users from Windows to Linux confirm that after that's done, they can focus on more important things than Windows troubles. Linux simply works in comparison, if you're still believing that Windows can be better, then you're just not interested in doing your homework. I have migrated databases from Windows Server to Linux (with the exact same hardware) that resulted in 500% performance gains. Windows is just that inefficient.
Only if you give freedom for users to use something different. Linux can be locked up even more tightly than Windows if the sysadmins want to. And with Linux you only need to reboot to replace the kernel, everything else can be fully replaced without a reboot ! Linux easily lives with multiple versions of the same shared library (Linux equivalent of a DLL) since forever, while in Windows this was know as DLL hell. I don't use Windows as anything but a casual user since 2002, so I don't even study on this anymore, but it used to be really hell. If two apps needed different versions of the same DLL, you were screwed !
Except they aren't really interested in maintaining any source code customization as proprietary. As I understand it, every single change to packages common to distros (specially OpenOffice) were submitted upstream. And who in their right mind in the Linux ecosystem wouldn't work really hard to accommodate Munich's changes to Linux to get them off Windows !
Once they get their hands on a newer distro with all their source level customization rolled in, it shouldn't be hard to reapply their high level customizations (install scripts, mandatory packages, Munich specific apps) to the older release of the same distro they started with.
As I understand it, Munich didn't just migrated to Linux. They did a lot of mapping and standardization of hardware in the process. As well as avoided some hefty Hardware upgrades. Linux desktop interface and apps can be snappy even with the hardware Munich had when they started the process. Without giving up on upgrading the kernel, the system libraries, even the GUI desktop (for instance choosing anything but KDE or GNOME even a brand new Linux will be much lighter than Windows Vista or anything that came after that). Try doing that with Windows 9 ! Windows pretty much force you to install and use.NET virtual machines for all sorts of mandatory things. Just that sucks up a lot of RAM and CPU time. Also anything that the Linux base software they selected didn't do they could actually hire a contract developer to fix/enhance and submit the change upstream, try that with Windows / Office ! Even if they spent one million euro to customize Linux / OpenOffice, it's still cheap divided by 15000 desktops, since there are no licensing costs. Just the hardware upgrade economies probably paid for those customizations (and will keep saving more and more on the long run). And Microsoft estimates stated they would have to hire almost a thousand people to get the whole thing done, while they actually did it with just their normal IT staff, except for the Linux / OpenOffice customizations. As I understand it, the internal IT staff is 28 people ! I read the article about two weeks ago, so pardon any mistakes.
Mercury contamination ? You're far more likely to get poisoning from heavy metals and radioactive materials contained in coal by living close to a coal power plant for 1 yr that you might get by destroying a couple CF bulbs every year in close distance over a lifetime. You know that coal contain lots of nasty chemicals that gets released into the air every day, don't you ? Don't you think the more we can prevent that release from happening, the better ?
The level of mercury in a CF light bulb is truly tiny. About 4 milligrams, or about 1/20000th of an ounce. That amount can only be of any hazard to kids or pregnant women, and even then, a very limited one.
This is one of those interesting arguments distilled by those who really want to frighten people, and try to paint Obama as the bad guy, pretending this mandate wasn't signed into law by Dubya !
I really don't understand this. It looks like the math is wrong. An incandescent light bulb that draws 60W is actually hot enough, It will burn my hand if I touch it for more than one or two seconds. A 17W compact fluorescent that is aparently BRIGHTER I can touch without issue for a long time. They actually seem to dissipate almost no heat (even 15W worth of heat would be noticeable, my ARM Chromebook uses less than that, and actually gets warm on its bottom). So, My impression is that CF lights are at least 3 times more efficient than incandescents ! Finally, here in Brazil he already went through the mandatory migration to incandescents, they cost about twice as much, and seem to use 1/4th the electricity (the least powerful lamp at 13W seems to be just as bright as a 60W incandescent), so unless you almost don't use the lamp, it's a great deal. Again, getting heat from electricity is a VERY STUPID idea. Forget about it. From the power plant to your outlet about 2/3 of the power is lost (50% at the power plant if has latest generation combined steam generator, the rest in the various transformers and transmission line losses), while you can burn heating oil, natural gas or just wood locally.
I don't like this practice. But if at least they have the balls to admit it, put in the law, and let everybody know that in France you're being watched, then I'm kind of ok with it. Not happy, grinning, but ok. At least they have the balls to be transparent. I wish the USA did the same, aka: "Complain all you want, but the NSA will continue to do it, if you don't want to be tracked at all, don't use the internet, don't use a cell phone, live a early 20th century live.
Yeah, but GPON is very sensitive to how the fiber is split. I order to achieve 20Km ranges, you must split the fiber no more than twice (perhaps two 1x8 levels). Anyhow, a serious deployment of GPON is likely to have the vast majority of customers within 3Km of each station. 10Km is a far more practical distance, even then only for very low customer density areas. A 20Km fiber run should cost far more than a small GPON ONU ! GPON range limits are defined by signal losses, the Km based range is a simplification for marketing purposes.
If you could receive the ADSL service (with the modem there) in a place with much better speed and install a pair of Ubiquiti Nano M5 (about US$ 100 for the pair), you could bypass the bad wiring. But Nano M5 requires line of sight, for that tiny distance, you can power through interference with very high levels of confidence. I use Nano M5 for 8000ft line of sight links, three driveways is what, 200-300 ft, so it should be piece of cake.
Ubiquiti M5 family of products, there's the plain Nano M5, the more powerful NanoBridge M5 and finally the Rocket M5 (plus a high gain antenna). Operation on links that long are very dependent on low levels of interference (specially other radios on the same frequency). Since this is an unlicensed frequency, if it works today, there zero assurance it will still be working a month from now, but being very cheap, it's usually a great cost x risk tradeoff.
This was true 3+ years ago. Splicing equipment price dropped about 80%. Today there's even mechanical splicing, regular splicing requires service vans to carry a generator to produce electrical juice to run the splice equipment, mechanical splice allows all equipment to fit in a handbag and requires no power. Consider my telco (a competitive nationwide carrier) has recently announced they're phasing out copper, new installs will be 100% fiber, and over time they will start migrating VDSL2 customers to fiber in areas that get fiber for new customers. I was co-founder of a small telco here in Brazil, and I'm still in this business, so I know a thing or two about this (not the nationwide telco I'm a customer of). And if the economics adds up in Brazil, you can be sure it will add in the US ! Same mix of large metro areas, separated by hundreds of miles of rural areas, and some metroplexes like Boston->Washington (Sao Paulo -> Rio de Janeiro). But I'm using VDSL2 / ADSL / 5GHz technology (fiber is used in less than 10% of my customers, but this was zero just 2 years ago).
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You Americans are nuts.
Yes, the SH production line is at risk of being shutdown, but would a single 36 aircraft order keep the line running ?
The USA needs to be far more worried about loosing F35 exports, those are serious dough, hundreds of billions of US$ in exports.
There's speculation Canada could give up on the F35 and replace it with the Gripen NG, it would be a serious downgrade, but at least the Gripen NG isn't plagued with enormous cost overruns, over weight issues, under performance, and other ultra serious issues given the price tag of the F35 !
The SH don't have those issues, but it's far from being a 5th generation aircraft.
I believe there are a lot of Boeing employees here that will blow everything out of proportion (for the average american that has nothing to do with the military industrial complex).
The Super Hornet was never the favorite of the Brazilian Air Force.
Unlike other serious govts in the world, here we had the favorite of the Air Force and the favorite of the president.
It was the favorite of the Air Force because:
- Lower cost both procurement and operational costs (I could joke there my Brazil don't have an air force, instead it has an air farce)
- better air to air performance (let's face it, Brazil hasn't had a single bomb dropped in a military operation since WWII, what we need is air defense, the Super Hornet excels at being a bomb truck, even US Army Hornet pilots have admitted the SH leaves something to be left desired against even a much older Mig29 in a dog fight)
- Generation 2 AESA radar with full technology transfer
- Full technology transfer on the aircraft itself
- Local manufacturing of most aircraft under license
- Prospect of a partnership in future Gripen upgrades, Embraer will be the Brazilian partner on this, they have a world class track record on military and civilian aircraft sales, which dwarfs SAAB experience with exporting aircraft
- You see, Boeing x Embraer would never be a really good partnership, Boeing is a competitor of Embraer in many markets (my forecast is Embratel will eventually produce a 737 sized aircraft, then they would become a full fledged competitor, but even the E-jets compete with 737 despite of the size difference)
- The only advantage the SH had was it could be used on our single aircraft carrier, that stays in port the vast majority of the time
The espionage scandal was just a good excuse to get back to basics and do the right thing.
Buying the SH would have been a bad economic decision anyways.
Brazil needs cheap military hardware, no F35's for us, ever. Even the SH would be too expensive in the long run (twin engine, part costs, fuel consumption)
Realize the Brazil is operating F-5E, Mirage 2000, subsonic AMX, all aircraft that are cheap to operate.
Let's just follow two possible scenarios:
1 - He's a fraud, he will never get a worldwide patent, hence he'll never publish the detailed specs to his work. In this case, let him die an agonizing death, the least people talk about him the better.
2 - He's the real deal, and invisible powers are working really hard to slow him down as much as possible, as his work stands to destroy trillions in worldwide yearly revenues, killing him would actually be validation of his work, so they can't go that far, but instead play hardball with everyone in a position to help him substantially.
In my view only the Hot Cat can actually vindicate him, since it can produce enough electricity to power itself, providing for a closed loop system that only takes hydrogen in (plus a good size battery to start one up). And the hot cat is recent, it reportedly got to the point of being reliable in 2013.
I'm no Einstein, and no scientist, but I have had my share of extremely out of the box ideas in my lifetime, and have seen how people react to ideas that aren't in their box, so I tend to give them man some further leeway.
Now that NASA, US Navy SPAWAR and a few research institutions that have some independency and enough budget to do serious LENR research are on this, I believe the science foundation will move forward (at least on Deuterium - Paladium research) so one way or another LENR will be vindicated (someone getting a Noble prize) until 2030 for sure.
Back to topic, just consider what GM did to the EV1 (reportedly one of the big reasons Musk got into Tesla in first place). Do you think they destroyed those cars out of any logic other than powerful lobbies decided on killing the electric car on the spot ?
Just the fact that to date, LENR has never been raised as news on CNN and the bbc has a single article (from 2009) mentioning it. Just tried to search LENR on CNN search, and it changed to Learn, since there's zero articles with LENR !
If one is willing to look without being either a Scully or a Fox Mulder, one should still find plenty of proof there's serious forces trying to slow down technical advances on energy (except when it's way too expensive) as much as possible. Any quantum leaps are a big no no for those guys.
He wants the patent on this.
So far he only got a local (Italian) patent.
He pledged to publish his work in detail once he receives a worldwide patent.
Nobel prizes don't pay a billion in prizes.
But the following hypothetical scenario is possible: He knows he's a fraud, hence he'll never get a worldwide patent, so he uses that as an excuse to publish his technical details.
But if you follow my words clearly, I'm not saying he's the real deal.
I'm just saying people attack him with such determination, they look similar to professional climate change deniers.
I just think there's nothing absolutely conclusive either way yet...
In my view the positive news of 2013 just kept him alive.
Even Fleishman & Pons experiments required continuous application of electric current in order to generate the anomalous heat. But the thermal output was at least a few times the input electricity.
The 1MW reactor requires 200KW electricity input.
It's not clear, but I believe those 200KW is mostly for startup of the reactor, since the demonstrations typically achieved 15x1 Thermal Output X Electricity Input
Some comments floated that his device has managed to work with the power cut off sometimes for as long as 15 minutes.
Called self sustain mode.
But I'm not interested in discussing the nitty gritty here.
I'll draw conclusions after his products are installed in multiple customer sites that are well published, and the customers declare the product is producing useful energy at costs similar to Mr. Rossi's statements, or if 2014 goes by, and no such statements come around. If 2014 goes by with no news for end customers, then my judgement is he's a fraud, and I wasted my time defending him here.
My goal with the discussion here is just to show any statements his work is a fraud could be biased, made by people who just don't want to give him a fair chance, people that want him to be a fraud, so they can continue to profit from major research grants into hot fusion (or profit from burning coal, natural gas and oil).
I used to be his cheerleader, not anymore.
But I'm still waiting for proof he's a total scam. Also waiting to proof that his product is for real as well.
He did give his reactor a chance to be tested for what 48hrs by some very sharp scientists, the test results were published, they couldn't peek inside, but they could futz around with all external connections all they wanted. No hidden wires found, no weird electrical signal hiding the energy. And the reactor is too small for anything but a nuclear reaction.
That test being published even go into Forbes online. Are you telling me Andrea Rossi managed to fool even Forbes Magazine ?
Before that test, I was pending back to he's a fraud, now I just don't know.
Fleishman & Poons experiment also appears to be in direct conflict with currently accepted laws of physics, so I my books, it's the laws of physics that need revisiting, and until those can be reconciled, I believe we can't use the laws of physics to rule out the e-cat as a fraud.
In my view, he has one last year to deliver.
The way you attack Mr. Rossi, you do strike me as a cheerleader for the fusion guys that need Mr. Rossi to be a fraud. I believe there's bias everywhere, and I'm trying to be as middle ground as possible by pointing out all that the answers you provide to your own questions have been questioned by lots of people that have nothing to do with Mr. Rossi.
About the nuclear state regulators. Those people have a treatment of anything nuclear that would kill any kind of LENR devices.
They have no flexibility, either it's nuclear and will get treatment by the book, or it isn't. So he skirted it by saying it wasn't, that might have been the only way out.
His argument is there's no high energy neutrons, gamma or alpha particles, so he doesn't deserve that regulatory treatment.
As far as breeder reactors... I think govt funding needs to increase so that at least one national lab gets a chance to build an experimental working LFTR reactor, another one would be tasked with building a similar pebble bed reactor. This is sooo much more important than wasting money on nuclear hot fusion. I think govt should also give GE money to build one full scale IFR demonstrator to both produce electricity and burn water reactor waste, but GE needs to bear all responsibility over it (instead of one run of the mill nuclear power plant operator), and the money would be a loan earmarked for that specific project, once the reactor has burned x tons of water reactor waste, the loan would be paid off in exchange for services rendered (burning nuclear waste) and they could keep the electricity revenue.
There has been some very academical very well published experiments using Paladium + Deuterium that resulted in fairly high energy outputs like 100x more power than the original experiments. If you were really interested in the truth, you'd be far more interested in answers than in attacking Mr. Rossi.
I used to be his cheerleader, not anymore.
But I'm still waiting for proof he's a total scam. Also waiting to proof that his product is for real as well.
He did give his reactor a chance to be tested for what 48hrs by some very sharp scientists, the test results were published, they couldn't peek inside, but they could futz around with all external connections all they wanted. No hidden wires found, no weird electrical signal hiding the energy. And the reactor is too small for anything but a nuclear reaction.
Before that test, I was pending back to he's a fraud, now I just don't know.
Fleishman & Poons experiment also appears to be in direct conflict with currently accepted laws of physics, so I my books, it's the laws of physics that need revisiting, and until those can be reconciled, I believe we can't use the laws of physics to rule out the e-cat as a fraud.
In my view, he has one last year to deliver.
I have to warn you that I also see a bunch of very rabid people that probably has some seriously vested interest in the billions being wasted in my opinion on fusion and others employed by the dirty energy lobby that I see your testimony just as questionable as Mr. Rossi's work.
Hot fusion research is a scam.
It's not a technical scam, but an economical/publicity scam.
Major governments happily put money on this because they know it's zero threat to fossil fuel interests that are strong in power even in today's green Obama administration. Just look at it from a skeptical standpoint. All clean energies being invested on today are way too expensive. The only solution that would allow us to get rid of 90+% fossil fuels (with electric cars/busses) with proven, already in operation tech is nuclear fission. BTW, electric cars are great, my beef is with large scale solar photovoltaics / huge wind farm projects that are only economical with enormous subsidies (must produce electricity to compete with coal/natural gas at wholesale prices). Most wind farms produce less than 10% of maximum output about 50% of the time, since they require weather systems to go through to produce enough winds to generate much electricity.
Cold fusion that is the real threat, no wonder is has been ostracized for the last 25 yrs, because it could kill both the fossil fuel industry as well as centralized electricity production (aka, make the national electricity grid obsolete).
While Mr. Andrea Rossi's work is murky, easy to criticize, skip his stuff and just look at the number of times the Fleishman/Poons experiment has been successfully reproduced, and still the US DOE and other govt funding sources continue to consider Cold Fusion voodoo science.
And Mr Rossi isn't the only party claiming to having a product almost ready for the market. If he was the only one, the argument that he's the best con artist since Harry Houdini, but multiple independent companies claiming the same thing, it's time the american people made a Occupy the US DOE movement, demanding LENR/Cold Fusion research be put immediately on part with cold fusion research, taking 50% of funding away from hot fusion projects into cold fusion research.
I believe he's talking about cold fusion, aka LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reactions), not the hot fusion tech that has gobbled perhaps one trillion dollars worldwide (in today's dollars) since research on hot fusion started in the 1960s.
Considering LENR is considered voodoo science, essentially banned from using govt money in all countries that are large producers of fossil fuels (specially USA, UK, Canada and Australia), I'd say return on investment in LENR research is about one million times better than hot fusion research (still 20 to 50 years away from any practical applications).
Just search e-cat "andrea rossi", that's the forerunner in this tech. And Fleishman and Pons for the beginning of relevant story on this research area.
PS: I'm trying really hard to avoid any splinter off topic subject here, so if you'd like to discuss this in slashdot, take one of the recent pages on LENR and start a new topic there.
Mr. Rossi already has systems in production, but it's a murky thing, arguably because those customers wish to remain anonymous (speculation it's military customers). And is taking pre-orders for 2014 delivery for 1MW LENR reactors for low temperature steam applications.
For an experienced Linux support guy, you have far less hell to go through supporting half a dozen Linux distros simultaneously than one windows version.
Of course, that's just my not so humble opinion, you're entitled to yours.
BTW, I support openSuSE/CentOS/debian/ubuntu/mysql/postgresql/Progress RDBMS/apache/php/python (and I'm probably forgetting to list a couple more things).
The main factor is Linux is a sane environment.
If you must use electricity for heat, then please use an electric heater, and go CFL or LED, the waste heat from your lamp in the summer will waste far more electricity than it will save in colder times. AC Cooling is far more wasteful than heating.
If you absolutely must use electricity for heating, that's your unfortunate predicament, but the argument that somehow the waste heat from incandescent is useful, that's crap !
Nope. I agree with banning incandescent lightbulbs (pragmatic economic proposition)
I have no fundamental stance against/pro govt. I applaud where they deserve it, but that doesn't mean all they do is good.
So a large extent it's a essential evil. Can't get rid of it, can't outsource many parts of it to the private sector, must be kept in check at all times. Neither subscribe to the labor view (100% pro govt) nor the libertarian view (100% against it).
Besides, this has been in the works for a long time, whoever wanted to could have purchased a 5-10 yr supply of incandescents ahead of time (even now).
They're govt workers, that prefer to make country as a whole to spend an additional billion US$ / yr to save a dozen lives / yr, even if those deaths would be caused by stupidity on the part of those who died. (I can give you dozens of FAA mandates on the aviation industry that have that exact cost / benefit ratio, specially those that were shot down by aviation user groups, the FAA just keep on trying those again and again, it's not by chance we say: FAA, we're not happy until you're unhappy !)
They don't care about the cost of things.
Finally, it's not something that will happen every month with you, perhaps not once every year. Breaking a CF light.
A very large portion of govt supplied safety recommendations range from stupid to unnecessary, many of those creating those recommendations aren't exactly the brightest of the crop, you know !
Somehow they need to justify their jobs.
The key is learning the non Windows way of thinking.
Windows sys admins are way too command line adverse.
Linux has everything you need, but you need to first unlearn a lot of bad habits you got from being a Windows sys admin.
It's hard.
I was lucky I learned UNIX before Windows 3.1 came out, and kept my skills on both sides until I finally gave up working with Windows about 12 yrs ago. I just about had it with all that crap that Microsoft kept doing again and again.
Most tools you find absolutely essential with Windows you just don't need with Linux, because compared to Windows, Linux just works.
> Please price out an alternative deployment for 1,000 desktops and laptops that provides a level of desktop management equal to the one provided with the MS solution... I'll wait. When we made a cursory look into management suites for Large Linux deployments we found their cost to be a multiple of what we were paying MS ($100/desk per year for management suite v. $34/desk per year for the MS solution suite)...
The Linux solution is free, the real cost is retraining the SysAdmins (see the beginning of my post).
The real metric is total cost of ownership over 20 years or something like that.
Once you factor all savings that will come for sure after the migration is done (while with Windows you'd be forced to keep upgrading at Microsoft's schedule), just that will result in huge savings. They will make major upgrades to their Linux environment when there's a solid technical reason to do so, not just because you're running ancient Windows version Microsoft won't patch anymore. Not to mention the hardware upgrades. A Linux system with 4GB of RAM, a modern CPU, a basic gigabit ethernet card, a single modern SATA HD can be a desktop, a workgroup server, and still be underused greatly.
If they made the migration even at an equivalent cost of migration to the next windows version, they it was a GREAT benefit for them.
I give 3rd level support for Linux, and every single customer that migrated users from Windows to Linux confirm that after that's done, they can focus on more important things than Windows troubles. Linux simply works in comparison, if you're still believing that Windows can be better, then you're just not interested in doing your homework.
I have migrated databases from Windows Server to Linux (with the exact same hardware) that resulted in 500% performance gains. Windows is just that inefficient.
Only if you give freedom for users to use something different.
Linux can be locked up even more tightly than Windows if the sysadmins want to.
And with Linux you only need to reboot to replace the kernel, everything else can be fully replaced without a reboot !
Linux easily lives with multiple versions of the same shared library (Linux equivalent of a DLL) since forever, while in Windows this was know as DLL hell. I don't use Windows as anything but a casual user since 2002, so I don't even study on this anymore, but it used to be really hell. If two apps needed different versions of the same DLL, you were screwed !
Except they aren't really interested in maintaining any source code customization as proprietary. As I understand it, every single change to packages common to distros (specially OpenOffice) were submitted upstream. And who in their right mind in the Linux ecosystem wouldn't work really hard to accommodate Munich's changes to Linux to get them off Windows !
Once they get their hands on a newer distro with all their source level customization rolled in, it shouldn't be hard to reapply their high level customizations (install scripts, mandatory packages, Munich specific apps) to the older release of the same distro they started with.
As I understand it, Munich didn't just migrated to Linux. .NET virtual machines for all sorts of mandatory things. Just that sucks up a lot of RAM and CPU time.
They did a lot of mapping and standardization of hardware in the process.
As well as avoided some hefty Hardware upgrades.
Linux desktop interface and apps can be snappy even with the hardware Munich had when they started the process. Without giving up on upgrading the kernel, the system libraries, even the GUI desktop (for instance choosing anything but KDE or GNOME even a brand new Linux will be much lighter than Windows Vista or anything that came after that).
Try doing that with Windows 9 !
Windows pretty much force you to install and use
Also anything that the Linux base software they selected didn't do they could actually hire a contract developer to fix/enhance and submit the change upstream, try that with Windows / Office ! Even if they spent one million euro to customize Linux / OpenOffice, it's still cheap divided by 15000 desktops, since there are no licensing costs. Just the hardware upgrade economies probably paid for those customizations (and will keep saving more and more on the long run).
And Microsoft estimates stated they would have to hire almost a thousand people to get the whole thing done, while they actually did it with just their normal IT staff, except for the Linux / OpenOffice customizations. As I understand it, the internal IT staff is 28 people !
I read the article about two weeks ago, so pardon any mistakes.
Mercury contamination ? You're far more likely to get poisoning from heavy metals and radioactive materials contained in coal by living close to a coal power plant for 1 yr that you might get by destroying a couple CF bulbs every year in close distance over a lifetime. You know that coal contain lots of nasty chemicals that gets released into the air every day, don't you ? Don't you think the more we can prevent that release from happening, the better ?
The level of mercury in a CF light bulb is truly tiny. About 4 milligrams, or about 1/20000th of an ounce. That amount can only be of any hazard to kids or pregnant women, and even then, a very limited one.
This is one of those interesting arguments distilled by those who really want to frighten people, and try to paint Obama as the bad guy, pretending this mandate wasn't signed into law by Dubya !
I really don't understand this.
It looks like the math is wrong.
An incandescent light bulb that draws 60W is actually hot enough, It will burn my hand if I touch it for more than one or two seconds.
A 17W compact fluorescent that is aparently BRIGHTER I can touch without issue for a long time. They actually seem to dissipate almost no heat (even 15W worth of heat would be noticeable, my ARM Chromebook uses less than that, and actually gets warm on its bottom).
So, My impression is that CF lights are at least 3 times more efficient than incandescents !
Finally, here in Brazil he already went through the mandatory migration to incandescents, they cost about twice as much, and seem to use 1/4th the electricity (the least powerful lamp at 13W seems to be just as bright as a 60W incandescent), so unless you almost don't use the lamp, it's a great deal.
Again, getting heat from electricity is a VERY STUPID idea. Forget about it. From the power plant to your outlet about 2/3 of the power is lost (50% at the power plant if has latest generation combined steam generator, the rest in the various transformers and transmission line losses), while you can burn heating oil, natural gas or just wood locally.
I don't like this practice.
But if at least they have the balls to admit it, put in the law, and let everybody know that in France you're being watched, then I'm kind of ok with it.
Not happy, grinning, but ok.
At least they have the balls to be transparent.
I wish the USA did the same, aka: "Complain all you want, but the NSA will continue to do it, if you don't want to be tracked at all, don't use the internet, don't use a cell phone, live a early 20th century live.
Yeah, but GPON is very sensitive to how the fiber is split. I order to achieve 20Km ranges, you must split the fiber no more than twice (perhaps two 1x8 levels).
Anyhow, a serious deployment of GPON is likely to have the vast majority of customers within 3Km of each station.
10Km is a far more practical distance, even then only for very low customer density areas.
A 20Km fiber run should cost far more than a small GPON ONU !
GPON range limits are defined by signal losses, the Km based range is a simplification for marketing purposes.
If you could receive the ADSL service (with the modem there) in a place with much better speed and install a pair of Ubiquiti Nano M5 (about US$ 100 for the pair), you could bypass the bad wiring.
But Nano M5 requires line of sight, for that tiny distance, you can power through interference with very high levels of confidence.
I use Nano M5 for 8000ft line of sight links, three driveways is what, 200-300 ft, so it should be piece of cake.
Ubiquiti M5 family of products, there's the plain Nano M5, the more powerful NanoBridge M5 and finally the Rocket M5 (plus a high gain antenna).
Operation on links that long are very dependent on low levels of interference (specially other radios on the same frequency). Since this is an unlicensed frequency, if it works today, there zero assurance it will still be working a month from now, but being very cheap, it's usually a great cost x risk tradeoff.
This was true 3+ years ago.
Splicing equipment price dropped about 80%.
Today there's even mechanical splicing, regular splicing requires service vans to carry a generator to produce electrical juice to run the splice equipment, mechanical splice allows all equipment to fit in a handbag and requires no power.
Consider my telco (a competitive nationwide carrier) has recently announced they're phasing out copper, new installs will be 100% fiber, and over time they will start migrating VDSL2 customers to fiber in areas that get fiber for new customers.
I was co-founder of a small telco here in Brazil, and I'm still in this business, so I know a thing or two about this (not the nationwide telco I'm a customer of).
And if the economics adds up in Brazil, you can be sure it will add in the US ! Same mix of large metro areas, separated by hundreds of miles of rural areas, and some metroplexes like Boston->Washington (Sao Paulo -> Rio de Janeiro).
But I'm using VDSL2 / ADSL / 5GHz technology (fiber is used in less than 10% of my customers, but this was zero just 2 years ago).