That much is perfectly fine, but why should a customer who decreases his electricity consumption by, say, 5 kWh per day by means of installing solar batteries be treated differently than a customer who decreases his electricity consumption by 5 kWh per day by means of buying more energy-saving home appliances?
Simplest answer I have is 'Backfeeding'. While not a problem at the moment, people who install power generation at their residence while remaining connected to the grid generally sells power to the utility(at retail rates!) during the day, then draw from the grid during the night.
What does this mean? If everybody just installs power-saving appliances the power company avoids having to upgrade their transmission lines and such as the market expands(other than extending their runs). With solar installs, they still need 100% of the capacity per house they needed before, plus now they have to worry about power flowing the opposite way.
As long as you don't have so many people install solar that power flows in reverse through switching yards it's not that big of a deal, but if I remember right you'd only need about 20% of homes on a segment to have solar installed to start doing just that during the day.
Now, power during the day tends to be more expensive power, but you're still looking at transmission losses - the solar home might produce 10kwh in excess during the day, but only 9kwh of that makes it to the consumer*(who's only charged for 9kwh), but the producer is getting credit for 10kwh, meaning the company has to pay to produce 12kwh to get 10kwh to the producer's house when it needs it at night.
There's many possible solutions: Charge a static connection fee based on maximum amps/watts needed, implement time of use charging, and/or pay a lower production rate for power fed onto the grid than what you charge the account for power consumed. (IE the power company buys power for $.09, sells for $.10).
*Losses probably aren't that high at the moment, I'm thinking about the future when at least some of the power needs to make it all the way to a business district to be used.
Unless you are at the end of the line the line must be maintained if you are there or not, in order to reach the next customer, so that is not a cost to keep you connected.
This sort of thinking has the cost of the line be $0 every customer but the last one, who's charged millions. Not all that practical. It's much easier to look at the cost of the line* and divide by the number of customers. I'd say it's more fair as well. If you really want, consider that you're paying for the run from your neighbor up the line to yourself. Your down-line neighbor picks up his share, etc...
The next step is to consider the base cost of a line with theoretical zero capacity, and charge each customer that ($10 or so), while building in a standard rate into the cost for building the line with the necessary power capacity(1k amps, 2k amps, etc...), including all associated equipment like transformers, switching stations, etc... Add another $10 or so into the fee above for billing, support, and other paperwork, and you have the general situation for most power billing in the USA.
I also like how they make out '4 tons' like it's a big deal - that's 9k pounds, yes, but a plain old passenger van starts out at 7k pounds, for one that only seats 8. 8.6k for one that seats 15.
After that, well, realize that batteries and bling add weight, and this has a lot of both.
there's also the option of rewilding them, letting them roam where they once did.
You want them shipped to Europe? I'm sure the French/Italians would love that. They'd eat them.
Fact is, most of these horses are so bred to work with humanity, and be cared for by humanity, that without humanity's help on average their lives would be exceptionally short and nasty.
How exactly does 2 Billion "protect" everyone from an EMP weapon? Have we found something as good a what we currently use, but won't break? Old Vacuum tubes are a nice protection against a system that could go down, but you never want it to go down.
You install shielding and protection components. A component you can't design to be resistant to an EMP, like maybe a CPU, you shield - stick it in a grounded metal box. You switch to fiber-optic for signal lines, and you put surge suppression/breakers on any metallic lines entering the shelter.
On things like generators, you can provide limited protection simply by over-specifying specific components. Wires/insulation rated to higher voltage, in addition to some breaker components to ensure that longer wires don't transmit even higher voltage to the components.
Actually, "client" workloads (personal computers) aren't very parallel so the requests are served sequentially. As such, this won't help too much.
Most client machines don't have multiple drives mirrored either. I was thinking purely in a server setting when I made the comments, though I'll admit that I didn't specify.
A HD with two head systems still wouldn't match an SSD for random reads, but it'd be much better than one. Depending on the use it's seeing, it could even employ different algorithms depending on the use mode it's seeing to help speed things along. In addition, more cache might help it during a large sequential read, allowing the heads to leapfrog each other better. Like I said - engineering and programming nightmare, but an interesting thought experiment.
By the way, if I remember correctly multiple requests on flight were implemented on SATA standard for client drives, 10 years ago or so on (SCSI had them for quite a while). I'm not sure Windows XP uses these queues.
You're talking about how the system queues multiple data(read/write) requests with the drive, and the drive possibly delivering them out of order(because it's using an optimized path to collect all the data), right?
I assumed that capability from the start. The REAL trick to the system is that to date it's one read head per platter, thus one device serving all the data. With two head systems, the question comes up of how you optimally assign said demands between the two head systems to most efficiently move the data.
This is actually a very interesting proposal. While I imagine the engineering and programming would be a relative nightmare*, it would provide a number of options for hard drives.
While it wouldn't double performance in most cases, especially not sequential operations, for random operations it'd be almost as good as two drives. Maybe better if the access is typically really random and one head can 'field' mostly the outer disc calls while the other catches the inner disk ones.
*Just look at the difference between programming a single thread application and multi-threading!
One thing that isn't obvious though is that it's a 30Hz monitor. All the 60Hz ones, as far as I can tell, are still in $1000+ territory.
I should probably have put some disclaimers in my post about affordability and suitability. I'm not a refresh snob but I can't help but think that 30Hz is a bit slow for gaming, perhaps even video watching.
You can't even (afforadably) get computer monitors with more than 1080p resolution, and bigger than 27 inches, but about 5 years ago I got a 1920x1200 28 inch monitor for $250
You can still get them, newegg *very* occasionally puts a 1200 on sale.
I figure it'll be another 2-4 years before the new '4k' televisions start trickling down to computer monitors. That will be nice.
I'm going to agree with Sarten-X - turning in a wide circle shouldn't get anybody dizzy.
Also, with my lawn mower I have a turning radius that I can maintain without lifting the wheels at all. So at least the first few loops I wouldn't need pressure at all.
It also depends on how you define 'most efficient'. If the extra effort of pushing down a bit is outweighed by the time saved, it may we worth it.
On trick I've used in the past is to not turn the mower around - after clearing around the fence a bit, after pushing forward you pull the mower back.
I've come to the conclusion that it's likely a scaling problem. IE once we can do continuous fusion(or at least pulse/'diesel' fusion fast enough for steady power), it'll be a matter that the energy costs will scale by the square, but power production will scale by the cube.
Going by the size of ITER, considering that many research nuclear reactors had generators hooked up to them but ITER has no provision to ever produce electricity, ITER isn't big enough.
We may be looking at needing something crazy like a 10GW facility before it makes sense. (not an expert)
Personally, I'd almost rather put the money(and a lot of money from other sources, such as the F-35 program) to start building new fission plants - stop the majority of our CO2/power plant pollution.
Do the research necessary to develop liquid thorium to remove that restraint. Put solar panels on buildings south of the Mason-Dixon line where they'll do the most good, solar water heaters, etc...
Employing all the people it'd take to do this would help solve our employment problem for a long time, and it actually benefits the country.
You missed the point - Survival after a 100mph crash isn't really unusual(though a lot of people die in them). It's the ability to walk away after the crash with no serious injuries that's unusual.
Oh, and going by the results of the crush test(broke the test machine), it doesn't need the additional protection a roll cage would provide.
The car shipped with a shield, it's just that it turned out some events could pierce said shield so they reinforced it.
Some of this stuff is learning experience on the differences between a petrol vehicle and a battery-electric. They only gained minimal knowledge from the industry's history of protecting the gasoline tank.
Since the 1970's, cars have been run on ethanol; but until recently (post 2000 or so), you had to choose either gasoline or ethanol and buy a car based on this choice.
Any citation on this? From what I remember they were always flex, even if sometimes you might have to manually adjust something.
And where would the biodiesel come from? Algae for fuel is something I hadn't heard before, I'll look into it. One promissing source of fuel is the digestion of celulose, this is what I'm hoping for.
Algae, of course. You use a strain that's high in lipids(fats) that converts to biodiesel through various processes, and the carbohydrates can be turned into ethanol and butanol, which is closer to gasoline than Ethanol, so has a number of advantages as a fuel(you don't have to modify the engine is a big one). You use the remaining bits as fertilizer to grow more algea or even plants/crops.
The point is that the actor was scammed into appearing in a movie they would not have done had the producers been honest about their intentions.
That was step 1, where antifoidulus mentioned the film and rahvin112 posted that an actress had successfully sued over it. Step 2 I replied to that mentioning(in a round-about way) that the actor(and scientists) likely could suffer damages from it(especially if they don't undertake damage control like suing).
Combine the two of 1 - act, and 2 - damages, and you have a lawsuit.
If you're going to force it to be binary that way, it's more political. I was thinking of it more as it's progressive in a 'science is good!' type way.
I know that if I was the lawyer for Mulgrew I'd be pointing out the same thing. Star Trek might not be 'good science', but it's at least progressive in it's views(on science). Actors in it are expected to know at least a little.
However, areas that pay $7/gallon are typically paying most of that money in taxes, so unless the country in question is willing is to forgo at least some proportion of that revenue...
You do realize that what they're producing here is artificial jet fuel, right?
Yes. I mistyped. I've seen lots of estimates for the cost of artificial/biologically sourced fuels where the low end is competitive with current fossil fuels. I also know that the last time the Navy sourced biofuel for testing purposes it worked out to around $30/gallon, but that was for a relatively small scale test.
It's all about the economics of scale at this point - I figure that the moment a biofuel producer(or non-fossil artificial creator) can *beat* fossil fuels it'll be a gold rush to produce enough facilities.
However, these processes don't really transition us away from fossil fuels or at least not into something besides a hydrocarbon fuel, whether produced artificially as in this case or refined from naturally occurring crude oil that we've pumped out of the ground.
As long as we get away from fossil fuels to something renewable or at least able to last more than a couple centuries without screwing up our environment I'm good.
This process doesn't, which is why I ended up putting 'biofuel' in there, because this wouldn't scale up short of building a few hundred nuclear plants, or a ridiculous number of solar panels/wind turbines and such.
Jet Fuel created on site to the carrier for $6/gallon would probably save the USN money.
Gasoline equivalent produced 'on site' at the gas station for $3/gallon using fresh water* would allow the station to undercut other stations in most areas.
It also depends on the price assumed for feedstocks - are they figuring on a cost for the electricity needed?
*Because nothing in the process says that it NEEDS salt water to work, just that it can use salt water. Logically speaking it should work at least as well using fresh.
Interesting. $3/gallon would be commercially viable right now.
It's just another data point that causes me to thing that our transition away from liquid fossil fuels is likely to be rather precipitous, faster than the transition away from leaded gasoline(which is barely within my memory).
All it takes is the first commercial project producing bio-fuel to start making money, then development work will drop the price of biofuel even as the cost of extracting fossil fuel will continue to rise.
You're just getting pedantic here. The only way to avoid the 14% tax is to arrange for your housing to be 'locked in' for a period in excess of 30 days.
Get a hotel to be away from the kids or because you're bug-bombing the house you're paying the tax.
On that note, in some states 'extended stay' hotels can rebate you the tax if you stay there over the set period.
As long as they sign a lease in excess of 30 days, yes. In Florida it's 6 months due to the massive numbers of snowbirds that come down for 3-4 months a year.
And they just consider the occasional resident being hit with the tax a cost of doing business. So long as the resident doesn't get hit with them too often...
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That much is perfectly fine, but why should a customer who decreases his electricity consumption by, say, 5 kWh per day by means of installing solar batteries be treated differently than a customer who decreases his electricity consumption by 5 kWh per day by means of buying more energy-saving home appliances?
Simplest answer I have is 'Backfeeding'. While not a problem at the moment, people who install power generation at their residence while remaining connected to the grid generally sells power to the utility(at retail rates!) during the day, then draw from the grid during the night.
What does this mean? If everybody just installs power-saving appliances the power company avoids having to upgrade their transmission lines and such as the market expands(other than extending their runs). With solar installs, they still need 100% of the capacity per house they needed before, plus now they have to worry about power flowing the opposite way.
As long as you don't have so many people install solar that power flows in reverse through switching yards it's not that big of a deal, but if I remember right you'd only need about 20% of homes on a segment to have solar installed to start doing just that during the day.
Now, power during the day tends to be more expensive power, but you're still looking at transmission losses - the solar home might produce 10kwh in excess during the day, but only 9kwh of that makes it to the consumer*(who's only charged for 9kwh), but the producer is getting credit for 10kwh, meaning the company has to pay to produce 12kwh to get 10kwh to the producer's house when it needs it at night.
There's many possible solutions: Charge a static connection fee based on maximum amps/watts needed, implement time of use charging, and/or pay a lower production rate for power fed onto the grid than what you charge the account for power consumed. (IE the power company buys power for $.09, sells for $.10).
*Losses probably aren't that high at the moment, I'm thinking about the future when at least some of the power needs to make it all the way to a business district to be used.
Unless you are at the end of the line the line must be maintained if you are there or not, in order to reach the next customer, so that is not a cost to keep you connected.
This sort of thinking has the cost of the line be $0 every customer but the last one, who's charged millions. Not all that practical. It's much easier to look at the cost of the line* and divide by the number of customers. I'd say it's more fair as well. If you really want, consider that you're paying for the run from your neighbor up the line to yourself. Your down-line neighbor picks up his share, etc...
The next step is to consider the base cost of a line with theoretical zero capacity, and charge each customer that ($10 or so), while building in a standard rate into the cost for building the line with the necessary power capacity(1k amps, 2k amps, etc...), including all associated equipment like transformers, switching stations, etc...
Add another $10 or so into the fee above for billing, support, and other paperwork, and you have the general situation for most power billing in the USA.
*Well, really the network.
I also like how they make out '4 tons' like it's a big deal - that's 9k pounds, yes, but a plain old passenger van starts out at 7k pounds, for one that only seats 8. 8.6k for one that seats 15.
After that, well, realize that batteries and bling add weight, and this has a lot of both.
there's also the option of rewilding them, letting them roam where they once did.
You want them shipped to Europe? I'm sure the French/Italians would love that. They'd eat them.
Fact is, most of these horses are so bred to work with humanity, and be cared for by humanity, that without humanity's help on average their lives would be exceptionally short and nasty.
How exactly does 2 Billion "protect" everyone from an EMP weapon? Have we found something as good a what we currently use, but won't break? Old Vacuum tubes are a nice protection against a system that could go down, but you never want it to go down.
You install shielding and protection components. A component you can't design to be resistant to an EMP, like maybe a CPU, you shield - stick it in a grounded metal box. You switch to fiber-optic for signal lines, and you put surge suppression/breakers on any metallic lines entering the shelter.
On things like generators, you can provide limited protection simply by over-specifying specific components. Wires/insulation rated to higher voltage, in addition to some breaker components to ensure that longer wires don't transmit even higher voltage to the components.
Actually, "client" workloads (personal computers) aren't very parallel so the requests are served sequentially. As such, this won't help too much.
Most client machines don't have multiple drives mirrored either. I was thinking purely in a server setting when I made the comments, though I'll admit that I didn't specify.
A HD with two head systems still wouldn't match an SSD for random reads, but it'd be much better than one. Depending on the use it's seeing, it could even employ different algorithms depending on the use mode it's seeing to help speed things along. In addition, more cache might help it during a large sequential read, allowing the heads to leapfrog each other better. Like I said - engineering and programming nightmare, but an interesting thought experiment.
By the way, if I remember correctly multiple requests on flight were implemented on SATA standard for client drives, 10 years ago or so on (SCSI had them for quite a while). I'm not sure Windows XP uses these queues.
You're talking about how the system queues multiple data(read/write) requests with the drive, and the drive possibly delivering them out of order(because it's using an optimized path to collect all the data), right?
I assumed that capability from the start. The REAL trick to the system is that to date it's one read head per platter, thus one device serving all the data. With two head systems, the question comes up of how you optimally assign said demands between the two head systems to most efficiently move the data.
This is actually a very interesting proposal. While I imagine the engineering and programming would be a relative nightmare*, it would provide a number of options for hard drives.
While it wouldn't double performance in most cases, especially not sequential operations, for random operations it'd be almost as good as two drives. Maybe better if the access is typically really random and one head can 'field' mostly the outer disc calls while the other catches the inner disk ones.
*Just look at the difference between programming a single thread application and multi-threading!
One thing that isn't obvious though is that it's a 30Hz monitor. All the 60Hz ones, as far as I can tell, are still in $1000+ territory.
I should probably have put some disclaimers in my post about affordability and suitability. I'm not a refresh snob but I can't help but think that 30Hz is a bit slow for gaming, perhaps even video watching.
You can't even (afforadably) get computer monitors with more than 1080p resolution, and bigger than 27 inches, but about 5 years ago I got a 1920x1200 28 inch monitor for $250
You can still get them, newegg *very* occasionally puts a 1200 on sale.
I figure it'll be another 2-4 years before the new '4k' televisions start trickling down to computer monitors. That will be nice.
I'm going to agree with Sarten-X - turning in a wide circle shouldn't get anybody dizzy.
Also, with my lawn mower I have a turning radius that I can maintain without lifting the wheels at all. So at least the first few loops I wouldn't need pressure at all.
It also depends on how you define 'most efficient'. If the extra effort of pushing down a bit is outweighed by the time saved, it may we worth it.
On trick I've used in the past is to not turn the mower around - after clearing around the fence a bit, after pushing forward you pull the mower back.
I've come to the conclusion that it's likely a scaling problem. IE once we can do continuous fusion(or at least pulse/'diesel' fusion fast enough for steady power), it'll be a matter that the energy costs will scale by the square, but power production will scale by the cube.
Going by the size of ITER, considering that many research nuclear reactors had generators hooked up to them but ITER has no provision to ever produce electricity, ITER isn't big enough.
We may be looking at needing something crazy like a 10GW facility before it makes sense.
(not an expert)
Personally, I'd almost rather put the money(and a lot of money from other sources, such as the F-35 program) to start building new fission plants - stop the majority of our CO2/power plant pollution.
Do the research necessary to develop liquid thorium to remove that restraint. Put solar panels on buildings south of the Mason-Dixon line where they'll do the most good, solar water heaters, etc...
Employing all the people it'd take to do this would help solve our employment problem for a long time, and it actually benefits the country.
You missed the point - Survival after a 100mph crash isn't really unusual(though a lot of people die in them). It's the ability to walk away after the crash with no serious injuries that's unusual.
Oh, and going by the results of the crush test(broke the test machine), it doesn't need the additional protection a roll cage would provide.
The car shipped with a shield, it's just that it turned out some events could pierce said shield so they reinforced it.
Some of this stuff is learning experience on the differences between a petrol vehicle and a battery-electric. They only gained minimal knowledge from the industry's history of protecting the gasoline tank.
Since the 1970's, cars have been run on ethanol; but until recently (post 2000 or so), you had to choose either gasoline or ethanol and buy a car based on this choice.
Any citation on this? From what I remember they were always flex, even if sometimes you might have to manually adjust something.
And where would the biodiesel come from? Algae for fuel is something I hadn't heard before, I'll look into it. One promissing source of fuel is the digestion of celulose, this is what I'm hoping for.
Algae, of course. You use a strain that's high in lipids(fats) that converts to biodiesel through various processes, and the carbohydrates can be turned into ethanol and butanol, which is closer to gasoline than Ethanol, so has a number of advantages as a fuel(you don't have to modify the engine is a big one). You use the remaining bits as fertilizer to grow more algea or even plants/crops.
I knew that about half of them were capable of it, the actual amounts of ethanol has varied over the years depending on how the supplies worked out.
Unfortunately the capability to produce ethanol from sugar cane is limited due to the climate it needs to grow. Which is why the USA tried corn.
Personally, I hold higher long-term hopes for algae and biodiesel.
The point is that the actor was scammed into appearing in a movie they would not have done had the producers been honest about their intentions.
That was step 1, where antifoidulus mentioned the film and rahvin112 posted that an actress had successfully sued over it. Step 2 I replied to that mentioning(in a round-about way) that the actor(and scientists) likely could suffer damages from it(especially if they don't undertake damage control like suing).
Combine the two of 1 - act, and 2 - damages, and you have a lawsuit.
If you're going to force it to be binary that way, it's more political. I was thinking of it more as it's progressive in a 'science is good!' type way.
I get that reference! I remember reading it back in high school.
"Harrison Bergeron", by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
I know that if I was the lawyer for Mulgrew I'd be pointing out the same thing. Star Trek might not be 'good science', but it's at least progressive in it's views(on science). Actors in it are expected to know at least a little.
However, areas that pay $7/gallon are typically paying most of that money in taxes, so unless the country in question is willing is to forgo at least some proportion of that revenue...
You do realize that what they're producing here is artificial jet fuel, right?
Yes. I mistyped. I've seen lots of estimates for the cost of artificial/biologically sourced fuels where the low end is competitive with current fossil fuels. I also know that the last time the Navy sourced biofuel for testing purposes it worked out to around $30/gallon, but that was for a relatively small scale test.
It's all about the economics of scale at this point - I figure that the moment a biofuel producer(or non-fossil artificial creator) can *beat* fossil fuels it'll be a gold rush to produce enough facilities.
However, these processes don't really transition us away from fossil fuels or at least not into something besides a hydrocarbon fuel, whether produced artificially as in this case or refined from naturally occurring crude oil that we've pumped out of the ground.
As long as we get away from fossil fuels to something renewable or at least able to last more than a couple centuries without screwing up our environment I'm good.
This process doesn't, which is why I ended up putting 'biofuel' in there, because this wouldn't scale up short of building a few hundred nuclear plants, or a ridiculous number of solar panels/wind turbines and such.
Jet Fuel created on site to the carrier for $6/gallon would probably save the USN money.
Gasoline equivalent produced 'on site' at the gas station for $3/gallon using fresh water* would allow the station to undercut other stations in most areas.
It also depends on the price assumed for feedstocks - are they figuring on a cost for the electricity needed?
*Because nothing in the process says that it NEEDS salt water to work, just that it can use salt water. Logically speaking it should work at least as well using fresh.
Interesting. $3/gallon would be commercially viable right now.
It's just another data point that causes me to thing that our transition away from liquid fossil fuels is likely to be rather precipitous, faster than the transition away from leaded gasoline(which is barely within my memory).
All it takes is the first commercial project producing bio-fuel to start making money, then development work will drop the price of biofuel even as the cost of extracting fossil fuel will continue to rise.
You're just getting pedantic here. The only way to avoid the 14% tax is to arrange for your housing to be 'locked in' for a period in excess of 30 days.
Get a hotel to be away from the kids or because you're bug-bombing the house you're paying the tax.
On that note, in some states 'extended stay' hotels can rebate you the tax if you stay there over the set period.
Are residents exempt from the 14% hotel tax?
As long as they sign a lease in excess of 30 days, yes. In Florida it's 6 months due to the massive numbers of snowbirds that come down for 3-4 months a year.
And they just consider the occasional resident being hit with the tax a cost of doing business. So long as the resident doesn't get hit with them too often...