First off, the goal is not just electricity reduction, but also carbon output reduction. As the engineer at my local college observed, "The best way to save energy is to not burn it in the first place." A PassivHaus reaches for that goal but being virtually airtight, and not allowing the heat to escape.
In order to get people to switch, you have to make it make economical sense; not everybody is motivated to reduce carbon emissions, heck, the minority of the world is interested in reducing their own personal emissions; they're rather make nebulous 'others' do it. Even those that are are only willing pay varying amounts of economic penalties for doing it.
A PassivHaus doesn't need air conditioning either, since the mass of the house keeps the heat *outside* the building. It's somewhat similar to how a basement remains cool even when it's 90 degrees outside. All you need is a fan or ventitlation system to keep the inhabitants comfortable.
My house doesn't have AC at all. Hard to beat that. Oh, and if your measure of 'cool' is 90 degrees outside, what about when it's 110-120? Looking at the design, it looks almost like it has a heat pump, but I suppose it might be the tunnel type heat exchanger I read about one time. Essentially a great big air duct? Expensive, and limited depending on the area of install - it'd be problematic in Florida, for example. Or up in NY where my grandparents live - you go very deep you hit bedrock.
And you're wrong about the electric heating, because you confused the word "electric" with "reistance" heating.
No confusion; wouldn't YOU be interested in demand based pricing, even if you have a heat pump?
Oh, and NG is ~$12 per million BTU. There's 3412.3 BTU per kwh, assuming $.10 per kwh, that's $23.44 per million BTU. Twice as expensive, effectively. If you have a good heat pump in a good area for it, you might get the cost per MBTU down to $5.86, which would indeed be cheap, but then again some areas of California was charging $.20/kwh, which would put even the heat pump in competition with raw residential NG prices.
Plus, in my area the heat pump loses it's effectiveness for around 3 months a year - it's just too cold for them. So you end up falling back on a secondary heat system - whether that be direct resistance, NG, propane, wood, or whatever. I DO know about geothermal - I was quoted $30k when I asked. From two different sources. So no need to explain a heat pump - I know full well what they are.
Not correct. A 15 watt CFL with 0.5 power factors draws 100% more current than if you replaced it with a 15 watt resistance, incandescent bulb with PF==1. Put another way:
It draws more max current, but not evenly. As a result, there's more generation and transmission line losses because those losses scale with current, but the effect is actually limited. Especially since the power company itself will put in PFC equipment if it starts getting bad.
- the 15 watt flourescent burns 30 volt-amps - the 15 watt incandescent burns 15 volt-amps - therefore the incandescent burns less coal at the electric plant
More like 16 vs 15.5 if you start including line resistances and assume that the CFL has a particularly bad PF and no correction equipment(could be as little as some capaciters).
A 75 watt incandescent bulb measured 70 watts and 70 volt-amperes out of the inverter, which is what you would expect with a power factor of 1.0. The TriMetric meter measuring true power from the batteries measured 71.8 watts (volts times amps). The slightly higher wattage was due to inefficiency in converting 12 volt DC to 120 volt AC.
Then I lit a 25 watt CFL. It measured 25 watts and 52 volt-amperes out of the inverter, wh
Still, an online server solution where you pay your money and the documents are stored in several formats. ASCII/unicode text, rich text, gif, png, heck, even BMP for limited amounts of data. Part of the fee covers them keeping track of what formats they have and verifying readability occasionally. ASCII isn't going away anytime soon, and even if it doesn't, there's already plenty of converters to turn it into unicode.
I'd try to stay away from proprietary formats such as pdf, but pdf has some arguments for it being as it's a dominant format.
It seems to me the best investment would be a solution that requires NO heating. Like this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passivhaus - The government could have a program similar to what they are doing with old pollute-mobiles: Offer tax credits to "trade-in" your old inefficient house for a new passivhaus. If everyone converted, then residental power usage would drop somewhere around 75%. This image in particular shows how "leaky" an old home is compared to one of these newer homes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Passivhaus_thermogram_gedaemmt_ungedaemmt.png
I have a number of problems with this paragraph. - We're concerned about electricity usage, not energy usage(as much) -- Cooling, in the USA, is a bigger consumer of electricity than heating -- Most heating is via other sources, oil, natural gas, propane, even wood. Many electrical heating systems are already supply controlled. Heating a house via electricity is expensive, getting the kwh at ~half price is alluring. - Looked up the cost of a 'passivhaus' - 'up to' 14% more expensive from wikipedia. I just happened to be looking at building a new house. $140k. Building a Passivhaus would run me $19.6k, or around 20 years of heating/cooling bills. Some notes - I'm using the 14% figure because it's a manufactured house and the $140k doesn't include a heating/cooling system - which are only a few grand, depending, and 14% is quoted AFTER saving money by not installing one. BTW, said house already comes with R-50 roof and R-24 walls.
Basically, most people still use traditional heating/cooling systems because going with a moderate amount of efficiency is more economical than going extreme efficiency. We see it all the time with advertised 'green' houses - they're not 14% more expensive than a standard analog, they're 50-100% more expensive. Most go too far, attempting to use solar electric panels and such, but there are still issues. If the energy savings are going to take more than 40 years to emerge, is that really economical?
[quote]My own approach to energy savings, rather than use "smart" appliances, is simply to use the brain in my head. I turn-off the heat (or A/C) when I go to bed, heat my bathroom for my morning shower with a small portable, go off to work, and then turn the heat back-on when I get home. So instead of 24 hour heating (or cooling), I'm averaging just 5 hours a day.[/quote]
Well, given my climate(North Dakota) and the age of my house(twice as old as me), I can't just turn the heat off without risking freezing my pipes. So I installed a 'smart' appliance - a digital, programmable, thermostat. It turns the temperature down before I leave, and up before I get home. It works well. It helps that the house has had it's insulation upgraded several times. I could really stand to replace most of the windows, but I pay cash for that sort of stuff, and I haven't decided on whether I want to do it myself or pay somebody else.
On CFLs - as others have stated,.5 PFC means more waste, not that the device consumes 100% more power. Around 5% of electricity ends up as waste in the distribution system, a.5PF CFL might waste 10% instead. So instead of using an additional.75 watts in transmission, it'd use 1.5. Less if the utility has some PFC equipment of it's own in a nearby distribution point.
I don't know if the "quality of a casual snapshot" is the issue as much as "the quality of a casual snapshot taken by someone the star was trying hard not to be seen by".
Browsing through star's wikipedia shots, most don't look too bad, but aren't 'professional'.
If they want to better that 'quality', it'll take some effort. The limit is the promoter's/star's budget for that stuff.
David Weber(author) probably worries less about that sort of stuff than Brittany Spears or Madonna would.
Then do it during a set, and put in the contract that 1 suitable photo will be CC'd for Wiki. Maybe something like the worst 2 of the best 12. IE they need 10 good photos for some shoot, then they use the 'runners up' for wiki.
Thing is, somebody can likely walk into a Walmart picture studio and come out with an 'acceptable' photo for wikipedia. It's not like we're going for a resolution good for a poster.
Looking- Arnold Schwarzenegger's photo - 726x825 amateur? Steve Martin - 2,376x2448 - professional? Patrick Stewart - 600x813 amateur?
I COULD see Arnold or Patrick's agents wanting 'better' photos in place. Thing is, the agent is a professional and should have a budget. It shouldn't be more than a matter of going through their photo shots, finding a few suitable pictures, then negotiating with the photographers as necessary. If they're trying to save money, finding a few suitable shots from different photographers would help in negotiations. Heck, if they raise too much of a stink, find an up-and-coming photographer willing to do it for not too much.
They're trying to have their cake and eat it too. My symapthy is limited.
Most of the time, they want exclusive control of the image, and I charge them for that.
How would this be different than being paid to take a picture to be put into the CC license? In either case you're not making any more money off it, right?
Wouldn't it be better than Work For Hire photos, as you COULD put it in your portfolio? Heck, you could consider it an advertisement of your abilities, as your name remains associated with the picture.
Still, one photo, even at 15x the cost, is still doable for an actor with a publicist. They just have to care enough to spend the money.
I have to agree. My first thought was 'then the Celeb in question hires a photographer to take a representative photo to be released under that license, or buys the rights from the photographer in question for posting'.
It doesn't even have to be a particularly high resolution photo either.
Well, that's part of the update part of the energy grid upgrades... I didn't mention them, but they're part of the proposals. We're not looking at just running more interstate supply lines, we're looking at upgrading the whole grid.
With the proper updates, failure in one area would be more containable and you could pull backup power from more areas and shut down more non-essential services(like the mentioned electric cars and environmental control systems).
I think he's missing the biggest reason for these interconnect power lines.
You see, the vast majority of our electricity is generated from 'on demand' sources. IE excepted unanticipated breakdowns, you want power, you get power. You have the ability to schedule at least short down times around periods of lower demand. With wind, it's not the individual turbine you have to worry about, otherwise you'd simply overbuild the wind farm to take the relatively horrible If it wasn't for this, you could simply overbuild to correct for the relative capacity factor (90% for nuclear). If we go towards generating a significant fraction of our power from wind/solar, we won't have the option of just placing wind turbines/solar cells in optimal locations. But whole regions won't be producing power at the same time, or producing power when there's relatively little demand.
More energy storage systems that can avoid using electricity during high demand/low supply times like electric cars or electric fed water tank heating/cooling(IE you heat/cool the water, then use it to heat/cool the house/building) will help, but won't be enough.
Thus, there will be times when (for example) Nevada wind farms are under performing but North Dakota ones are operating at capacity. Right now, that power is likely to be wasted. With a massive interconnect system, Nevada can buy from Idaho, Idaho can buy from Montana, Montana from North Dakota.
In addition, the bigger effective size we can get our interconnected system, the more stable our power demand and supply will be. Rather then having a spike at 0500-0700 when people start getting up and making their coffee, the spike will start at 0500 East Coast time, ending 0700 Pacific, or 1100 Eastern, just in time for lunch to start. Much more even. Heck, East coast solar can supply early morning electricity for lighting to the West coast, and vice versa in the evening.
In a sufficiently large organization you should have enough areas.
For example, in my organization we keep the combos for other safes in safes with the same sensativity level because, well, drilling is slow and expensive. In different buildings, by preference.
Said combo comes with a list of who's allowed to pick it up, and is in a tamper evident container. Beyond that chain of command comes into play.
Keeping parts of the code in different safes would be even more secure.
Like that's a surprise? The dispute predates iTunes. If I remember right, the first round started back when Apple first started including sound capability on their computers.
Wiki lists the first lawsuit started in [i]1978[/i]. Again in 1986, then 1991, and 2003.
As password complexity/security goes up, so doesn't the rate of users writing down their passwords. And we can't prevent them from doing it.
At some point you have to find a balance - not too many users write their passwords down, it's still difficult to crack using a dictionary/brute force attack.
Well, to be fair, if you were the FIRST to make a ball bearing or cotton gin, you could actually patent the device. But then, if somebody manages to make a substantially different device that does the same job(like seperating cotton from the seeds), your patent is invalid.
You also had process patents - a method of making a unpatentable object(like ball bearings, which have been around for ages), but the patent would actually cover a specific and innovative setup of machines that make the ball bearings, making them cheaper/faster/better if you want to make any money off the patent.
I detest today's 'method' patents which mostly seem to consist of 'Doing X on the internet/web', where X is an old, well known business practice and they simply slap 'on the internet' and patent it. Brainstorming is the least expensive part of coming out with a innovative new product.
Something like patenting electric shopping carts - which is simply a digital equivalent to the shopping carts/ordering lists people used BEFORE computers were invented.
Look at making steel - varying the carbon content by a percent wouldn't be a patentable change. Submitting a new process for producing vanadium steel that specifies mixture percentages, elements/chemicals used, temperatures and timing, mixing methods, etc... That's worth a patent. That took [i]effort[/i] and produced a useful(if not necessarily economical) product.
I very much agree with requiring including the source code.
The fact remains that you could probably inhale 100% of the mercury vapor present in a CFL and STILL come out of it with lower mercury levels of people even a few decades our junior.
It's probably not Energy Star 3.0. The meter reads 0 watts when powered off, compared to a half watt for the CRT. Still, figure in watching TV for even 1 hour a day swamps the power draw while off. So yes, energy usage while on needs to be considered, especially since they've gotten the offline so good.
I mostly measured the power draw on a lark, it's better for the environment and my wallet at this point if I keep the TV for a good long while like I did with the CRT. 10 years for a TV isn't bad at all - especially considering I only had 1 TV, and other than curiosity the 32" has stayed unplugged since I got the LCD. I mostly got it because I wanted at least 36" to keep from sacrificing (effective)height while going to the widescreen form factor, and they happened to be selling the 42" for a price that made it cheaper than most 36" sets.
I was shocked at the power usage though, I thought CRTs were supposed to be big energy wasters compared to LCD - and here my 42" screen uses more juice per effective in^2 than the old 32". I was avoiding plasma because I KNOW it uses a lot more power - we have some screens at work used for status displays(I know, not good for them), and they're effective space heaters.
In your case, I'd probably check the ballasts - flourescent tubes have external ballasts, and they aren't all created equal. Second would be using a higher quality tube.
Mercury is out there already. People with all these paranoid procedures are just being political, it's a fad. The only time I ever worry about mercury is when I go fishing in the local cesspool.
I have to agree with this. Yes, mercury is poisonous and harmful. Yes, people went mad from exposure to it. Thing is, the hatters and gold workers who went crazy and died often worked with gallons of the stuff, bare handed.
A CFL contains ~4mg of mercury. Higher quality ones like Philips, contain ~2.5mg.
From wikipedia: "The typical "fever thermometer" contains between 0.5 to 3 g (.3 to 1.7 dr) of elemental mercury.[3] Swallowing this amount of mercury would, it is said, pose little danger but the inhaling of the vapour could lead to health problems.[4]"
So a mercury thermometer contains between 100 and 1200 times the mercury, and eating the mercury 'poses little danger'. Breathing the vapor increases update, but still...
Using tape to pick up the glass/plastic is a good idea. My parents sometimes did that trick with regular old glass. Did a good job, didn't tear the vacuum up.
Personally, I'd take the opportunity to buy a slightly better bulb - one with a coating of shatter resistant plastic or something.
The problem with these instructions is from officials being paranoid. Look at the instructions for a mercury thermometer break just below, it's a lot less paranoid for something like 10,000x the mercury.
who pays to clean up the pollution caused by the power plants that generate electric power for the bulbs?
It should be charged back to the power plants in question, and therefore be built into the cost of the electricity.
We're a lot further along that than we used to be 40 years ago, the plants capture a lot of the pollution rather than emitting it*. We're still not all the way.
As for the efficiency, I think that a 30% improvement is just enough to keep them available under the proposed bans, like what California proposed.
Can't find a link, but I remember the law requiring bulbs to be something like 30% more efficient, they weren't banning incandescents by name.
Of course, I also saw on a couple of the sites I checked that there was a proposal against CRT TVs. My old 32" CRT TV(Energy Star rated for it's time) takes less energy, as measured by a meter, both as a unit and per square inch of visible screen, than my new 42" LCD TV(also Energy Star).
*And make a bit of change selling the valuable commodities that would be pollution if just released
We have a non-optimal free market in college textbooks, much like how we have a non-optimal market for medical care.
My public schools would purchase a huge number of textbooks, then use them for a decade, especially for the subjects that don't change much. Math is a good example. The cost of a book, averaged over it's life, ended up being quite reasonable.
Once you get into the college market, you get the problem that the one specifying the textbook isn't the one buying it. You not only lose economy and bargaining power of scale, you lose your choice. Due to copyright, you can't have 'generic textbooks' that will have the information in the same spot. Well, you could, but you'd have to use out of copyright textbooks, and there isn't much money to make producing those. Add in that many professors get kickbacks for using somebody's textbook, if they don't write it themselves, and you have a nasty situation.
This can be handled somewhat by having some sort of ethics rules by the college - no kickbacks allowed; not allowed to get royalties on book sales for your own class(maybe even college). You still have the problem that even the better colleges still have problems because of the distortion by the rest of the market.
Textbooks cost money to write, especially if you want to do it properly. Everything should be vetted and sourced. Even something like a math textbook should be gone through three times making sure that all problems are of the correct difficulty level, and that the answers are correct. Depending on size, you might end up with a 2nd or 3rd edition making minor corrections.
I have no problem with a textbook costing $20-80, depending on the subject. A basic algebra book should be a lot cheaper than a full color modern history text, for example. Printing a large textbook isn't as cheap as a paperback, and even basic hardcovers cost more than $20, today. Digital editions should subtract that $20(or so).
Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see copyright free textbooks, but there's a limit on charity, people DO deserve to make a living. I just don't think they should make a living by gouging.
Rather than a big, durable system, why not some kind of cheap low-energy system?
The problem becomes one that, thus far the economies of scale work such that the huge, big, durable system ultimately has a lower cost per kwh delivered than the small system.
I've worked the math several times. I just can't make the make work out for a tower, and I live in an area where I'd have a good chance of being able to set one up, in an area that's good for wind. Still, once you have the grid connect...
I keep coming up with it'd be better to take the money(even considering subsidies), and put it into investments - I'd be able to more than pay for my electricity out of the interest alone.
I've heard of some tiny wind (?) energy generator developed for use in the Third World that costs next to nothing and produces a tiny but useful trickle of electricity. If you've got a bunch of those, it doesn't much matter if some break in a big storm.
One tiny generator doesn't cost much. But even if they only cost a couple grand each, each one produces so little power that a nuclear plant starts looking like the better deal in most situations.
Was thinking more about renting, but if they don't go completely overboard with the ads, it can still take a relatively long time to remove the ads compared to just suffering through them every so often.
I'm willing to bet that your DVD decrypter takes longer than just sitting through the ads one time. I'd rather just get a player that ignores those flags.
Anyways, the point would be that we have to discourage this sort of stuff, or they'll just keep getting more and more intrusive.
DVD decrypter, editing the film works for current, separate ads, but it doesn't work for product placement where the ads are actually incorporated into the actual show. Everybody drinking various coke brands with no sign of pepsi, perhaps.
I returned a DVD once for the 'excessive ads' - I actually timed it at 17 minutes, ALL set unskippable. And this in the USA where they don't want to let you return that stuff. I eventually complained enough, though.
Slashdot Mirror
But on the whole we'd get better translators out of it, so that would be good.
Personally, I keep coming back to the 'put a hit out on the spammers'.
Yes, I know it's illegal and hard to track down the spammers, but surely we can do something?
First off, the goal is not just electricity reduction, but also carbon output reduction. As the engineer at my local college observed, "The best way to save energy is to not burn it in the first place." A PassivHaus reaches for that goal but being virtually airtight, and not allowing the heat to escape.
In order to get people to switch, you have to make it make economical sense; not everybody is motivated to reduce carbon emissions, heck, the minority of the world is interested in reducing their own personal emissions; they're rather make nebulous 'others' do it. Even those that are are only willing pay varying amounts of economic penalties for doing it.
A PassivHaus doesn't need air conditioning either, since the mass of the house keeps the heat *outside* the building. It's somewhat similar to how a basement remains cool even when it's 90 degrees outside. All you need is a fan or ventitlation system to keep the inhabitants comfortable.
My house doesn't have AC at all. Hard to beat that. Oh, and if your measure of 'cool' is 90 degrees outside, what about when it's 110-120? Looking at the design, it looks almost like it has a heat pump, but I suppose it might be the tunnel type heat exchanger I read about one time. Essentially a great big air duct? Expensive, and limited depending on the area of install - it'd be problematic in Florida, for example. Or up in NY where my grandparents live - you go very deep you hit bedrock.
And you're wrong about the electric heating, because you confused the word "electric" with "reistance" heating.
No confusion; wouldn't YOU be interested in demand based pricing, even if you have a heat pump?
Oh, and NG is ~$12 per million BTU. There's 3412.3 BTU per kwh, assuming $.10 per kwh, that's $23.44 per million BTU. Twice as expensive, effectively. If you have a good heat pump in a good area for it, you might get the cost per MBTU down to $5.86, which would indeed be cheap, but then again some areas of California was charging $.20/kwh, which would put even the heat pump in competition with raw residential NG prices.
Plus, in my area the heat pump loses it's effectiveness for around 3 months a year - it's just too cold for them. So you end up falling back on a secondary heat system - whether that be direct resistance, NG, propane, wood, or whatever. I DO know about geothermal - I was quoted $30k when I asked. From two different sources. So no need to explain a heat pump - I know full well what they are.
Not correct. A 15 watt CFL with 0.5 power factors draws 100% more current than if you replaced it with a 15 watt resistance, incandescent bulb with PF==1. Put another way:
It draws more max current, but not evenly. As a result, there's more generation and transmission line losses because those losses scale with current, but the effect is actually limited. Especially since the power company itself will put in PFC equipment if it starts getting bad.
- the 15 watt flourescent burns 30 volt-amps
- the 15 watt incandescent burns 15 volt-amps
- therefore the incandescent burns less coal at the electric plant
More like 16 vs 15.5 if you start including line resistances and assume that the CFL has a particularly bad PF and no correction equipment(could be as little as some capaciters).
http://www.homepower.com/article/?file=HP96_pg128_Letters_1 -
A 75 watt incandescent bulb measured 70 watts and 70 volt-amperes out of the inverter, which is what you would expect with a power factor of 1.0. The TriMetric meter measuring true power from the batteries measured 71.8 watts (volts times amps). The slightly higher wattage was due to inefficiency in converting 12 volt DC to 120 volt AC.
Then I lit a 25 watt CFL. It measured 25 watts and 52 volt-amperes out of the inverter, wh
Slashdot might not be around in 70 years.
Still, an online server solution where you pay your money and the documents are stored in several formats. ASCII/unicode text, rich text, gif, png, heck, even BMP for limited amounts of data. Part of the fee covers them keeping track of what formats they have and verifying readability occasionally. ASCII isn't going away anytime soon, and even if it doesn't, there's already plenty of converters to turn it into unicode.
I'd try to stay away from proprietary formats such as pdf, but pdf has some arguments for it being as it's a dominant format.
It seems to me the best investment would be a solution that requires NO heating. Like this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passivhaus - The government could have a program similar to what they are doing with old pollute-mobiles: Offer tax credits to "trade-in" your old inefficient house for a new passivhaus. If everyone converted, then residental power usage would drop somewhere around 75%. This image in particular shows how "leaky" an old home is compared to one of these newer homes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Passivhaus_thermogram_gedaemmt_ungedaemmt.png
I have a number of problems with this paragraph.
- We're concerned about electricity usage, not energy usage(as much)
-- Cooling, in the USA, is a bigger consumer of electricity than heating
-- Most heating is via other sources, oil, natural gas, propane, even wood. Many electrical heating systems are already supply controlled. Heating a house via electricity is expensive, getting the kwh at ~half price is alluring.
- Looked up the cost of a 'passivhaus' - 'up to' 14% more expensive from wikipedia. I just happened to be looking at building a new house. $140k. Building a Passivhaus would run me $19.6k, or around 20 years of heating/cooling bills. Some notes - I'm using the 14% figure because it's a manufactured house and the $140k doesn't include a heating/cooling system - which are only a few grand, depending, and 14% is quoted AFTER saving money by not installing one. BTW, said house already comes with R-50 roof and R-24 walls.
Basically, most people still use traditional heating/cooling systems because going with a moderate amount of efficiency is more economical than going extreme efficiency. We see it all the time with advertised 'green' houses - they're not 14% more expensive than a standard analog, they're 50-100% more expensive. Most go too far, attempting to use solar electric panels and such, but there are still issues. If the energy savings are going to take more than 40 years to emerge, is that really economical?
[quote]My own approach to energy savings, rather than use "smart" appliances, is simply to use the brain in my head. I turn-off the heat (or A/C) when I go to bed, heat my bathroom for my morning shower with a small portable, go off to work, and then turn the heat back-on when I get home. So instead of 24 hour heating (or cooling), I'm averaging just 5 hours a day.[/quote]
Well, given my climate(North Dakota) and the age of my house(twice as old as me), I can't just turn the heat off without risking freezing my pipes. So I installed a 'smart' appliance - a digital, programmable, thermostat. It turns the temperature down before I leave, and up before I get home. It works well. It helps that the house has had it's insulation upgraded several times. I could really stand to replace most of the windows, but I pay cash for that sort of stuff, and I haven't decided on whether I want to do it myself or pay somebody else.
On CFLs - as others have stated, .5 PFC means more waste, not that the device consumes 100% more power. Around 5% of electricity ends up as waste in the distribution system, a .5PF CFL might waste 10% instead. So instead of using an additional .75 watts in transmission, it'd use 1.5. Less if the utility has some PFC equipment of it's own in a nearby distribution point.
I don't know if the "quality of a casual snapshot" is the issue as much as "the quality of a casual snapshot taken by someone the star was trying hard not to be seen by".
Browsing through star's wikipedia shots, most don't look too bad, but aren't 'professional'.
If they want to better that 'quality', it'll take some effort. The limit is the promoter's/star's budget for that stuff.
David Weber(author) probably worries less about that sort of stuff than Brittany Spears or Madonna would.
Then do it during a set, and put in the contract that 1 suitable photo will be CC'd for Wiki. Maybe something like the worst 2 of the best 12. IE they need 10 good photos for some shoot, then they use the 'runners up' for wiki.
Thing is, somebody can likely walk into a Walmart picture studio and come out with an 'acceptable' photo for wikipedia. It's not like we're going for a resolution good for a poster.
Looking-
Arnold Schwarzenegger's photo - 726x825 amateur?
Steve Martin - 2,376x2448 - professional?
Patrick Stewart - 600x813 amateur?
I COULD see Arnold or Patrick's agents wanting 'better' photos in place. Thing is, the agent is a professional and should have a budget. It shouldn't be more than a matter of going through their photo shots, finding a few suitable pictures, then negotiating with the photographers as necessary. If they're trying to save money, finding a few suitable shots from different photographers would help in negotiations. Heck, if they raise too much of a stink, find an up-and-coming photographer willing to do it for not too much.
They're trying to have their cake and eat it too. My symapthy is limited.
Most of the time, they want exclusive control of the image, and I charge them for that.
How would this be different than being paid to take a picture to be put into the CC license? In either case you're not making any more money off it, right?
Wouldn't it be better than Work For Hire photos, as you COULD put it in your portfolio? Heck, you could consider it an advertisement of your abilities, as your name remains associated with the picture.
Still, one photo, even at 15x the cost, is still doable for an actor with a publicist. They just have to care enough to spend the money.
I have to agree. My first thought was 'then the Celeb in question hires a photographer to take a representative photo to be released under that license, or buys the rights from the photographer in question for posting'.
It doesn't even have to be a particularly high resolution photo either.
From the language, tone, not to mention the multitudes of errors, I'd say he was joking or trolling.
Well, that's part of the update part of the energy grid upgrades... I didn't mention them, but they're part of the proposals. We're not looking at just running more interstate supply lines, we're looking at upgrading the whole grid.
With the proper updates, failure in one area would be more containable and you could pull backup power from more areas and shut down more non-essential services(like the mentioned electric cars and environmental control systems).
I think he's missing the biggest reason for these interconnect power lines.
You see, the vast majority of our electricity is generated from 'on demand' sources. IE excepted unanticipated breakdowns, you want power, you get power. You have the ability to schedule at least short down times around periods of lower demand. With wind, it's not the individual turbine you have to worry about, otherwise you'd simply overbuild the wind farm to take the relatively horrible If it wasn't for this, you could simply overbuild to correct for the relative capacity factor (90% for nuclear). If we go towards generating a significant fraction of our power from wind/solar, we won't have the option of just placing wind turbines/solar cells in optimal locations.
But whole regions won't be producing power at the same time, or producing power when there's relatively little demand.
More energy storage systems that can avoid using electricity during high demand/low supply times like electric cars or electric fed water tank heating/cooling(IE you heat/cool the water, then use it to heat/cool the house/building) will help, but won't be enough.
Thus, there will be times when (for example) Nevada wind farms are under performing but North Dakota ones are operating at capacity. Right now, that power is likely to be wasted. With a massive interconnect system, Nevada can buy from Idaho, Idaho can buy from Montana, Montana from North Dakota.
In addition, the bigger effective size we can get our interconnected system, the more stable our power demand and supply will be. Rather then having a spike at 0500-0700 when people start getting up and making their coffee, the spike will start at 0500 East Coast time, ending 0700 Pacific, or 1100 Eastern, just in time for lunch to start. Much more even. Heck, East coast solar can supply early morning electricity for lighting to the West coast, and vice versa in the evening.
In a sufficiently large organization you should have enough areas.
For example, in my organization we keep the combos for other safes in safes with the same sensativity level because, well, drilling is slow and expensive. In different buildings, by preference.
Said combo comes with a list of who's allowed to pick it up, and is in a tamper evident container. Beyond that chain of command comes into play.
Keeping parts of the code in different safes would be even more secure.
Like that's a surprise? The dispute predates iTunes. If I remember right, the first round started back when Apple first started including sound capability on their computers.
Wiki lists the first lawsuit started in [i]1978[/i]. Again in 1986, then 1991, and 2003.
I've argued with my work about this.
As password complexity/security goes up, so doesn't the rate of users writing down their passwords. And we can't prevent them from doing it.
At some point you have to find a balance - not too many users write their passwords down, it's still difficult to crack using a dictionary/brute force attack.
Well, to be fair, if you were the FIRST to make a ball bearing or cotton gin, you could actually patent the device. But then, if somebody manages to make a substantially different device that does the same job(like seperating cotton from the seeds), your patent is invalid.
You also had process patents - a method of making a unpatentable object(like ball bearings, which have been around for ages), but the patent would actually cover a specific and innovative setup of machines that make the ball bearings, making them cheaper/faster/better if you want to make any money off the patent.
I detest today's 'method' patents which mostly seem to consist of 'Doing X on the internet/web', where X is an old, well known business practice and they simply slap 'on the internet' and patent it. Brainstorming is the least expensive part of coming out with a innovative new product.
Something like patenting electric shopping carts - which is simply a digital equivalent to the shopping carts/ordering lists people used BEFORE computers were invented.
Look at making steel - varying the carbon content by a percent wouldn't be a patentable change. Submitting a new process for producing vanadium steel that specifies mixture percentages, elements/chemicals used, temperatures and timing, mixing methods, etc... That's worth a patent. That took [i]effort[/i] and produced a useful(if not necessarily economical) product.
I very much agree with requiring including the source code.
You know, I'd forgotten about the Mercurochrome!
The fact remains that you could probably inhale 100% of the mercury vapor present in a CFL and STILL come out of it with lower mercury levels of people even a few decades our junior.
It's probably not Energy Star 3.0. The meter reads 0 watts when powered off, compared to a half watt for the CRT. Still, figure in watching TV for even 1 hour a day swamps the power draw while off. So yes, energy usage while on needs to be considered, especially since they've gotten the offline so good.
I mostly measured the power draw on a lark, it's better for the environment and my wallet at this point if I keep the TV for a good long while like I did with the CRT. 10 years for a TV isn't bad at all - especially considering I only had 1 TV, and other than curiosity the 32" has stayed unplugged since I got the LCD. I mostly got it because I wanted at least 36" to keep from sacrificing (effective)height while going to the widescreen form factor, and they happened to be selling the 42" for a price that made it cheaper than most 36" sets.
I was shocked at the power usage though, I thought CRTs were supposed to be big energy wasters compared to LCD - and here my 42" screen uses more juice per effective in^2 than the old 32". I was avoiding plasma because I KNOW it uses a lot more power - we have some screens at work used for status displays(I know, not good for them), and they're effective space heaters.
In your case, I'd probably check the ballasts - flourescent tubes have external ballasts, and they aren't all created equal. Second would be using a higher quality tube.
If that still doesn't work, well, I'm stumped.
Mercury is out there already. People with all these paranoid procedures are just being political, it's a fad. The only time I ever worry about mercury is when I go fishing in the local cesspool.
I have to agree with this. Yes, mercury is poisonous and harmful. Yes, people went mad from exposure to it. Thing is, the hatters and gold workers who went crazy and died often worked with gallons of the stuff, bare handed.
A CFL contains ~4mg of mercury. Higher quality ones like Philips, contain ~2.5mg.
From wikipedia: "The typical "fever thermometer" contains between 0.5 to 3 g (.3 to 1.7 dr) of elemental mercury.[3] Swallowing this amount of mercury would, it is said, pose little danger but the inhaling of the vapour could lead to health problems.[4]"
So a mercury thermometer contains between 100 and 1200 times the mercury, and eating the mercury 'poses little danger'. Breathing the vapor increases update, but still...
Using tape to pick up the glass/plastic is a good idea. My parents sometimes did that trick with regular old glass. Did a good job, didn't tear the vacuum up.
Personally, I'd take the opportunity to buy a slightly better bulb - one with a coating of shatter resistant plastic or something.
a great way to spend the afternoon, huh?
The problem with these instructions is from officials being paranoid. Look at the instructions for a mercury thermometer break just below, it's a lot less paranoid for something like 10,000x the mercury.
http://www.epa.gov/hg/spills/
who pays to clean up the pollution caused by the power plants that generate electric power for the bulbs?
It should be charged back to the power plants in question, and therefore be built into the cost of the electricity.
We're a lot further along that than we used to be 40 years ago, the plants capture a lot of the pollution rather than emitting it*. We're still not all the way.
As for the efficiency, I think that a 30% improvement is just enough to keep them available under the proposed bans, like what California proposed.
Can't find a link, but I remember the law requiring bulbs to be something like 30% more efficient, they weren't banning incandescents by name.
Of course, I also saw on a couple of the sites I checked that there was a proposal against CRT TVs. My old 32" CRT TV(Energy Star rated for it's time) takes less energy, as measured by a meter, both as a unit and per square inch of visible screen, than my new 42" LCD TV(also Energy Star).
*And make a bit of change selling the valuable commodities that would be pollution if just released
We have a non-optimal free market in college textbooks, much like how we have a non-optimal market for medical care.
My public schools would purchase a huge number of textbooks, then use them for a decade, especially for the subjects that don't change much. Math is a good example. The cost of a book, averaged over it's life, ended up being quite reasonable.
Once you get into the college market, you get the problem that the one specifying the textbook isn't the one buying it. You not only lose economy and bargaining power of scale, you lose your choice. Due to copyright, you can't have 'generic textbooks' that will have the information in the same spot. Well, you could, but you'd have to use out of copyright textbooks, and there isn't much money to make producing those. Add in that many professors get kickbacks for using somebody's textbook, if they don't write it themselves, and you have a nasty situation.
This can be handled somewhat by having some sort of ethics rules by the college - no kickbacks allowed; not allowed to get royalties on book sales for your own class(maybe even college). You still have the problem that even the better colleges still have problems because of the distortion by the rest of the market.
Textbooks cost money to write, especially if you want to do it properly. Everything should be vetted and sourced. Even something like a math textbook should be gone through three times making sure that all problems are of the correct difficulty level, and that the answers are correct. Depending on size, you might end up with a 2nd or 3rd edition making minor corrections.
I have no problem with a textbook costing $20-80, depending on the subject. A basic algebra book should be a lot cheaper than a full color modern history text, for example. Printing a large textbook isn't as cheap as a paperback, and even basic hardcovers cost more than $20, today. Digital editions should subtract that $20(or so).
Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see copyright free textbooks, but there's a limit on charity, people DO deserve to make a living. I just don't think they should make a living by gouging.
Rather than a big, durable system, why not some kind of cheap low-energy system?
The problem becomes one that, thus far the economies of scale work such that the huge, big, durable system ultimately has a lower cost per kwh delivered than the small system.
I've worked the math several times. I just can't make the make work out for a tower, and I live in an area where I'd have a good chance of being able to set one up, in an area that's good for wind. Still, once you have the grid connect...
I keep coming up with it'd be better to take the money(even considering subsidies), and put it into investments - I'd be able to more than pay for my electricity out of the interest alone.
I've heard of some tiny wind (?) energy generator developed for use in the Third World that costs next to nothing and produces a tiny but useful trickle of electricity. If you've got a bunch of those, it doesn't much matter if some break in a big storm.
One tiny generator doesn't cost much. But even if they only cost a couple grand each, each one produces so little power that a nuclear plant starts looking like the better deal in most situations.
Was thinking more about renting, but if they don't go completely overboard with the ads, it can still take a relatively long time to remove the ads compared to just suffering through them every so often.
I'm willing to bet that your DVD decrypter takes longer than just sitting through the ads one time. I'd rather just get a player that ignores those flags.
Anyways, the point would be that we have to discourage this sort of stuff, or they'll just keep getting more and more intrusive.
DVD decrypter, editing the film works for current, separate ads, but it doesn't work for product placement where the ads are actually incorporated into the actual show. Everybody drinking various coke brands with no sign of pepsi, perhaps.
I returned a DVD once for the 'excessive ads' - I actually timed it at 17 minutes, ALL set unskippable. And this in the USA where they don't want to let you return that stuff. I eventually complained enough, though.