*head explodes*... and the other 6 classes would just be shit out of luck?
Well, if your head wasn't on such a hair trigger you would have noticed that my NEXT sentence was about providing power outlets.
Then you pay about $3000 a computer per year for them to handle everything for you.
There's a substantial difference between simply buying a computer and signing a service contract, that as you say, provides everything
Each computer might only cost $400(going back a few years), but then you have the $30k mail servers, domain controllers, etc... An 'everything' contract would presumably also include the computer support people. Add another $100k or so each for them. ($50k salary, another $50k to handle benefits, supervisors salary's and such, so on and so forth). Don't forget any software costs, maintenance, warranty, help desk, insurance, etc...
I deal with actual thin net clients at work; they can be had even cheaper than those C7 boxes, and probably use even less energy. They use a small amount of flash instead of a HD for the OS and connection stuff. They don't even have fans.
With proper software/remote systems on the back end, you don't even need 'roaming profiles', the backend handles the details of transferring clients and even sessions between servers.
Depending on settings you can even use thumbrives with the sessions. While clients are available with CD drives; ours deliberately don't.
Roaming profiles on a wireless network is a nightmare, too bandwidth intensive.
I'd probably go wired; might as well as long as you're already stringing power to the various locations.
Bandwidth starts getting very limited when you putting together 30+ computers to a room.
Still; I wasn't really thinking of Microsoft's version of roaming profiles, which are indeed very bandwidth intensive. I'm sure there's better out there. There's no actual need to transfer things like temp files and browser caches. Or even personal documents - use a network drive for the 'my documents' folder. Settings like desktop, email, and application and explorer favorites should be all that's needed.
1. When I was in school, classes were 50 minutes, I don't imagine this has changed much. 1 hour would be sufficient. Besides, especially with a large budget, you'd simply provide an outlet beside each desk., or even go to desks with the outlets in them.
2. Computers today are cheap enough to provide one to each student, even if it's only for a few classes.
3. Now this IS a concern for me - you can't just buy consumer level laptops, they'll take far too much abuse over the course of a year. This happened with a few of the ones that tried to issue laptops to the kids.
I'd be tempted to go with desktop units(cheaper, harder to steal), and roaming profiles. Maybe even thinnet clients. More expensive, but at least you keep the valuable pilferable equipment out of the classrooms.
Interesting, but even though I have TWO machines with 32bit OSes and 4 gigs of ram(and I have the modules to expand one to 6GB), meaning I'd be able to create a 1GIG ramdrive(due to 1Gig video card), and a 2.5 Gig in the other, I don't think that it'd be worth the $35.
Pile these up, given that this maxes out at 64GB(?) per port, I don't think that, for the capacity, spinning disks will beat this thing. At least without going to enterprise level stuff, but at that point there are enterprise level RAM disk emulators.
For DDR2, maybe, for fixed disk usage? Still pretty good compared to spinning disks or even flash.
Of course, RAM disks are not anywhere near new. I remember looking at one a while back that used plain old SDRAM. That's a bit hard to find today; it's often actually cheaper to get DDR2 today than DDR. In higher capacities as well.
Of course; this brings up the question of 'what's the use?' - Seriously, unless you have something weird going on, just install a 64 bit OS and put the extra memory directly into your system.
Looking at all those benchmarks; except for the most artificial disk-thrashers; benchmarks for all were within 1-10%. Lost looked to be less than 5% difference between max and min.
I'll hold off on blaming the judge at this point - it hasn't even gone to trial yet. I'd blame the school and the prosecuter's office at the moment. Possibly the police; depending on who's recommending charges be pressed.
Also, as a situation that's reached national attention, the judge would be better off burying it, otherwise he'll be known as the judge who added girls who took pictures of themselves as teens to the sex offender list.
by pointing at small technicalities to discredit the big picture
Wasn't trying to use a small technicality, and I don't view it as small. I truly believe that it's basically impossible to assign a mpg rating to a pure electric vehicle with any sort of accuracy or relevance. I mean, there's so many different methods it's not even funny. Are you going to use kwh at the charger? Coming out of the battery? Energy equivalance? Price equivalence? Energy equivalence isn't that great - It says nothing really about how much the car will cost you to charge up for your driving over a month or a year. Price equivalence is also bad because it'll fluctuate wildly depending upon the local cost for electricity and gasoline. I'm of the opinion they should just post 'estimated mileage per kwh' and be done with it. That way I can figure out how much driving around with the electric will cost me.
The same happened when you implied that Solar ought not be used instead of current methods because we cannot be sure it is the cleanest and cheapest source of power in existence.
Strawman. I NEVER said solar shouldn't be used because we can't be sure it's cleanest. I outright stated that each source of power has it's own costs, benefits, and quirks. I've also been working firmly in the 'here and now', not the future. Right now, the only problem I have with solar is that it's too expensive. Same problem with electric vehicles - batteries are too expensive for their capacity, limiting the range or affordability of EVs.
You opted for a turd over the diamond because the diamond was not of complete purity.
I can burn the turd for a whole heck of a lot more power than I can the diamond, and for a lot cheaper too.
What you've missed in all this is that once the system is paid for, that which comes afterward for the rest of the lifetime of the panel is harnessed at no cost.
Attend an accounting/investment class. Pay attention to the term 'cost of capital'. Hint: When I could take the money a solar system would cost, dump it into a money market account and make enough money to more than pay my electric bills; the panels aren't a good investment.
In that case, competition can easily keep companies from trying to pull huge profits because consumers simply won't pay.
Be sure to let me know when I can buy new panels at ~ $1/watt max capacity. Last time I checked, they're around $5/watt. $2/watt complete system would be reason for me to pull out the spreadsheets again.
That energy can be used to produce more panels similar to the concept of compounding interest
Given that a good part of what's needed to make solar panels is heat, not electricity, we'd be able to save quite a bit of money using solar thermal panels if we're going to do that. You're still ignoring the cost of materials and labor, though.
You can't suck oil out of the ground at no cost, and as I said before if you take into account the costs of UNDOING combustion, well.... the costs of that energy system are much higher.
Didn't I mention that extracting and refining oil has cost? Undoing combustion is fairly easy, but we aren't doing it significantly yet for fuel, it's not currently figured into the cost equation other than it not being a renewable resource because of it. Economic biofuel is one of the things I strongly support research for. Using Algae in the desert sounds very promising for biodiesel/gasoline. Ethanol from corn, not so much.
I honestly think once energy becomes so available that there is no dire need, the world will find peace that has not been seen in millenia.
I'd go for education, personally. African nations get plenty of energy - but they often don't know what to do with it. You also need the infrastructure to use that energy, but I'll agree that once you have energy, there isn't much you can't do with it.
here are NOT ten thousand times more cars on the road, which is why we've seen a net drop in air pollution.
you might keep your car up and running well, others don't. Don't forget, this isn't arbitrarily removing cars; it's simply a bribe for people to replace their older ones. While your '87 might be cleaner than a '70s version, it's still dirtier than a '96.
I wasn't so much talking the increase from the '70s, more the increase from the '80s on, which has been substantial, and where substituting newer cars can help.
I understand technicalities, but I'm talking about reality, where you make mental effort to at least correlate and understand the concept that the author is attempted to present (such as using the common factor between combustion force and watts... joules) . Or go even further and attempt to calculate and account for those factors. But, based on your surface attack via technicality, sure I'm wrong...
And you can proceed to insult me. I'm fully aware that internal combustion engines hover around 30% efficiency. I'm fully aware that a good power plant can get over 60% efficiency. With LiIon batteries, the charge/discharge efficiency for a electric car is around 90%. Transmission lines, while they do lose power, again, are around 90%..9*.9*.6= 48.6% power, IE it shits all over the efficiency of gasoline engines, because we haven't even started on the energy demands it takes to extract, refine, and transport the gasoline.
My friend's father built an electric porche from a kit car in ~1995 for about $15k. It still runs today, and has about a 250 mile range.
I'd love to see this vehicle, the listing of expenses, etc...
As for your very WRONG statements about solar panels,
I was pointing towards economic payback, not energy payback. The problem with what you were doing, looking only at energy payback, was that you end up ignoring all the other expenses involved with solar panels, that end up making them, while practical from an engineering standpoint; not so much from an economical one. I'm sorry I didn't phrase that well enough for your reading comprehension level.
Read the article, you will be enlightened.
Reads... Sees nothing really new, all energy payback, not economic.
Don't you realize that solar panels are at least a BETTER source than coal and natural gas?
Being raised by accountants skewed me a bit. What I realize is that solar panels are a DIFFERENT source of power than coal & NG. Each with their own costs, benefits, and usage patterns. For example, Coal, NG, propane, etc... All beat solar panels in storage, demand usage, cost per unit of heat energy, etc... Doesn't mean that I wouldn't go with solar panels given the right circumstances; it just means that I'll consider all the circumstances before making my decision. For example, I'd be rather cold right now if I were trying to heat my home with solar panels at the moment. However, I'll throw you a bone by acknowledging that I do dislike coal power; I see it as far too polluting. I'd prefer nuclear; where the waste is at least kept safely locked away(and with reuse and recycling and such, doesn't actually have to hang around for that long).
I figure I'll be seriously looking at installing solar panels on my house when 90% of those south of the Mason-Dixon line have installed them. They get a LOT more solar power per m^2, and more evenly on average.
Now they're offering a bounty for you to get rid of it and replace it with a better one.
How many '60s or '70s are still on the road? How many MORE cars are on the road? A '90s or '00s car HAS to be far cleaner to just MATCH the amount of pollution from previous years just due to the additional number of cars on the road.
I knew there was a reason I put three XXX in the mpg indicator. Looking up the others, they seem to be mostly diesels, probably using UK gallons.
60 mpg in a small diesel is easily doable; I'd love one for my daily commute; but many families will turn their nose up at one - the price tag is such that they can get a SUV for around the same price.
At this point I think the car companies are more skittish about bringing diesel cars to the USA than the consumers. Even then, with the current price differential for diesel they'll have to gain a LOT of mpg to be worth it. We need to get a few of those next-gen refineries in place to cheaply produce the low-sulfur stuff.
1. Technically speaking, mpg isn't a valid measurement for an electric car. Kwh/mile would be a better measure. 2. Can you build an electric car with ~300 miles of range for less than $50k? 3. The coal industry would LOVE practical electric cars; they provide a good chunk of the electricity that would be used to power them.
Even the solar panels from the 90s put out more energy than it costs to produce them and recycle them into new panels, within their lifetime. That is a net positive of relatively 'free energy'.
At California's retail rates, and including all the subsidies, maybe. Up in my area? Not so much. Don't forget that a good part of California's electricity rates go towards subsidizing those panels. Germany's even worse.
I'd love for this stuff to be more practical, but believe that more development is needed.
The question isn't so much whether solar panels can pay for themselves over their lifespan as to whether they're the cheapest, cleanest source of power.
but their "top" car must be able to get at least 60mpg (instead of the current U.S. peak of 40mpg). That way those of us who care about the environment, when we finally decide to buy a new car, will have the option of a 60mpg or better vehicle.
Ever consider that you can't generally get something for nothing? IE the costs of making a mass market 60mpg car would make it either so expensive or feature sparse that they can't make their development costs back from it?
We're still stuck with physics, thus it's not like we can just legislate a XXX mpg car into existence.
That way those of us who care about the environment, when we finally decide to buy a new car, will have the option of a 60mpg or better vehicle.
Ah yes, the ecoleaner 2010. 60mpg, comes standard with 2 speaker radio, 3 star crash rating, carbon fiber construction, no AC, limited heat, all yours for only $50k!
if you have a car which gets 20 MPG and you spend $30000 on buying a fuel-efficient car it will not only take you something like 15 years to reach the break even point but it will take even more years to pay off the energy expended on making your new car.
That's only if you look at it in a mpg way. Personally, I've seen the reviews for how much non-CO2 pollution various older cars make. In many cases, this program can result in substantially cleaner skies - older cars, especially if they're out of tune, can produce hundreds of times the pollution of a new car - even for the exact same mpg!
I'd call it a sop to multiple things - reduce pollution, increase fleet mileage, help out the auto companies, etc...
I can see where they're coming from, essentially, even as I'm wondering if it's worth the thousands paid per car.
I'll add there is no media market for objective reviews.
I'd argue that YES, there IS a media market for objective reviews.
It's simple enough. Let's say I buy X product because of glowing reviews from Magazine A. X SUCKS DONKEY BALLS. Ergo, I never trust reviews from Magazine A again, and don't buy it anymore. Eventually, Magazine A has no real subscribers, depending on 'pretty front cover' buyers, going out of business if they keep it up.
So magazines, at the least, are stuck between keeping their ad-buyers and subscribers happy. Their ad-buyers want nice reviews, the subscribers want accurate ones. So you end up with some magazines where all the subscribers mentally subtract one star from all the reviews. 5 Stars means 'good', 4 'meh', 3 'sucks'. 2 or less and 'maker didn't pay the vig and it still sucks'.
Please, don't mention consumer reports. That's a single, non-specific source.
Sure, it's a single source, but other than it reviews pretty much everything, how isn't it specific?
BTW, your idea is pretty much what consumer reports does, they just do it in a big lab rather than having a single reviewer buy a single product. CR gets enough stuff to do head to head trials and scientific methods in there.
It'd be nice if we had something better. If I want something like that locally I have to go to a locally owned small shop; not bad except for the prices and limited selection.
Our Bestbuy is only just over a year old, I don't buy computer stuff there, mostly movies. I was just commenting that BB HAS improved it's selection a tad.
Well, a 220v breaker is really attached to one leg of the 220 coming into the house.
220 comes into the house on 2 wires. US systems utilize a 'split phase' system. 220 into the house. Essentially all 110V circuits in the house are in two big circuits in series with each other, balanced by the house ground.
You usually have two hot leads, and one goes on each side of your breaker panel. You'll notice that any 220 breakers are only on one side. If you had two 110v lines in different phases, they'd need to be on both sides.
Ever notice how 220 breakers are twice as wide as 110 breakers? The side doesn't matter, going up and down, every other slot is the opposite hot. Breakers Power bus inside panel, breakers plug in on center line.
A - A |--- |
B - B | ---| A + A = 0V
A - A |--- | A + B = 220V
B - B | ---| A or B + N = 110V
A - A |--- |
B - B | ---|
Since both hots on a residential 220v are coming from the same bus, splitting it at the breaker box,
Seriously, speaking as a guy who replaced multiple fuse boxes with a circuit breaker panel and has installed multiple outlets, I strongly suggest you don't do any electrical work. At least until you read much more into the subject.
1. Residential 220V comes in on TWO wires, transferred to 2 rails inside the panel, as illustrated by the little diagram above. 2. The only 'split' in the breaker box would be the neutral/ground, it doesn't touch the rails. At least not without going through a circuit.
little junction in your living room makes exactly the same electrical potential. Well, except for the fact that the bus can pass much more power, and two heavy leads can carry much more current.
Little junction? Are you referring to a sub-panel? You're not getting 220V out of a 110V socket without a transformer or rewiring. A 220V sub panel will be fed with 4 wires; 2 hots, neutral, and ground. Ground and neutral, while ultimately coming from the same ground, isn't to be joined except at the main panel for safety. I've never had something that could be called a 'junction' in a living room.
You're right about heavier leads carrying more power, but a 12 Gauge wire can safely carry 20 amps, whether it's 110V or 220V. Outside of certain pieces of professional level shop equipment, you don't have many devices in that range. Most residential 220V circuits start at 30A and 10 gauge wire.
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*head explodes* ... and the other 6 classes would just be shit out of luck?
Well, if your head wasn't on such a hair trigger you would have noticed that my NEXT sentence was about providing power outlets.
Then you pay about $3000 a computer per year for them to handle everything for you.
There's a substantial difference between simply buying a computer and signing a service contract, that as you say, provides everything
Each computer might only cost $400(going back a few years), but then you have the $30k mail servers, domain controllers, etc... An 'everything' contract would presumably also include the computer support people. Add another $100k or so each for them. ($50k salary, another $50k to handle benefits, supervisors salary's and such, so on and so forth). Don't forget any software costs, maintenance, warranty, help desk, insurance, etc...
I deal with actual thin net clients at work; they can be had even cheaper than those C7 boxes, and probably use even less energy. They use a small amount of flash instead of a HD for the OS and connection stuff. They don't even have fans.
With proper software/remote systems on the back end, you don't even need 'roaming profiles', the backend handles the details of transferring clients and even sessions between servers.
Depending on settings you can even use thumbrives with the sessions. While clients are available with CD drives; ours deliberately don't.
Roaming profiles on a wireless network is a nightmare, too bandwidth intensive.
I'd probably go wired; might as well as long as you're already stringing power to the various locations.
Bandwidth starts getting very limited when you putting together 30+ computers to a room.
Still; I wasn't really thinking of Microsoft's version of roaming profiles, which are indeed very bandwidth intensive. I'm sure there's better out there. There's no actual need to transfer things like temp files and browser caches. Or even personal documents - use a network drive for the 'my documents' folder. Settings like desktop, email, and application and explorer favorites should be all that's needed.
1. When I was in school, classes were 50 minutes, I don't imagine this has changed much. 1 hour would be sufficient. Besides, especially with a large budget, you'd simply provide an outlet beside each desk., or even go to desks with the outlets in them.
2. Computers today are cheap enough to provide one to each student, even if it's only for a few classes.
3. Now this IS a concern for me - you can't just buy consumer level laptops, they'll take far too much abuse over the course of a year. This happened with a few of the ones that tried to issue laptops to the kids.
I'd be tempted to go with desktop units(cheaper, harder to steal), and roaming profiles. Maybe even thinnet clients. More expensive, but at least you keep the valuable pilferable equipment out of the classrooms.
Where are you going to get a laptop with the external SATA ports to use this device?
Hmm... Here you go:
http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-Lenovo-Thinkpad-X200-Laptop-64GB-SSD-BT-12-1-P8400_W0QQitemZ300287618088QQcmdZViewItem ;)
Interesting, but even though I have TWO machines with 32bit OSes and 4 gigs of ram(and I have the modules to expand one to 6GB), meaning I'd be able to create a 1GIG ramdrive(due to 1Gig video card), and a 2.5 Gig in the other, I don't think that it'd be worth the $35.
Pile these up, given that this maxes out at 64GB(?) per port, I don't think that, for the capacity, spinning disks will beat this thing. At least without going to enterprise level stuff, but at that point there are enterprise level RAM disk emulators.
Between any proper UPS and the battery these things have, even then you're unlikely to lose information.
Still, doesn't compiling normally involve more reads than writes? Because in that case, a Flash SSD would be cheaper and just as effective.
As another noted, Amiga could do this as well. For that matter, DOS could as well.
16 bit machines couldn't address much, so had to do some tricks.
That is pretty mediocre.
For DDR2, maybe, for fixed disk usage? Still pretty good compared to spinning disks or even flash.
Of course, RAM disks are not anywhere near new. I remember looking at one a while back that used plain old SDRAM. That's a bit hard to find today; it's often actually cheaper to get DDR2 today than DDR. In higher capacities as well.
Of course; this brings up the question of 'what's the use?' - Seriously, unless you have something weird going on, just install a 64 bit OS and put the extra memory directly into your system.
Looking at all those benchmarks; except for the most artificial disk-thrashers; benchmarks for all were within 1-10%. Lost looked to be less than 5% difference between max and min.
I'll hold off on blaming the judge at this point - it hasn't even gone to trial yet. I'd blame the school and the prosecuter's office at the moment. Possibly the police; depending on who's recommending charges be pressed.
Also, as a situation that's reached national attention, the judge would be better off burying it, otherwise he'll be known as the judge who added girls who took pictures of themselves as teens to the sex offender list.
by pointing at small technicalities to discredit the big picture
Wasn't trying to use a small technicality, and I don't view it as small. I truly believe that it's basically impossible to assign a mpg rating to a pure electric vehicle with any sort of accuracy or relevance. I mean, there's so many different methods it's not even funny. Are you going to use kwh at the charger? Coming out of the battery? Energy equivalance? Price equivalence? Energy equivalence isn't that great - It says nothing really about how much the car will cost you to charge up for your driving over a month or a year. Price equivalence is also bad because it'll fluctuate wildly depending upon the local cost for electricity and gasoline. I'm of the opinion they should just post 'estimated mileage per kwh' and be done with it. That way I can figure out how much driving around with the electric will cost me.
The same happened when you implied that Solar ought not be used instead of current methods because we cannot be sure it is the cleanest and cheapest source of power in existence.
Strawman. I NEVER said solar shouldn't be used because we can't be sure it's cleanest. I outright stated that each source of power has it's own costs, benefits, and quirks. I've also been working firmly in the 'here and now', not the future. Right now, the only problem I have with solar is that it's too expensive. Same problem with electric vehicles - batteries are too expensive for their capacity, limiting the range or affordability of EVs.
You opted for a turd over the diamond because the diamond was not of complete purity.
I can burn the turd for a whole heck of a lot more power than I can the diamond, and for a lot cheaper too.
What you've missed in all this is that once the system is paid for, that which comes afterward for the rest of the lifetime of the panel is harnessed at no cost.
Attend an accounting/investment class. Pay attention to the term 'cost of capital'. Hint: When I could take the money a solar system would cost, dump it into a money market account and make enough money to more than pay my electric bills; the panels aren't a good investment.
In that case, competition can easily keep companies from trying to pull huge profits because consumers simply won't pay.
Be sure to let me know when I can buy new panels at ~ $1/watt max capacity. Last time I checked, they're around $5/watt. $2/watt complete system would be reason for me to pull out the spreadsheets again.
That energy can be used to produce more panels similar to the concept of compounding interest
Given that a good part of what's needed to make solar panels is heat, not electricity, we'd be able to save quite a bit of money using solar thermal panels if we're going to do that. You're still ignoring the cost of materials and labor, though.
You can't suck oil out of the ground at no cost, and as I said before if you take into account the costs of UNDOING combustion, well.... the costs of that energy system are much higher.
Didn't I mention that extracting and refining oil has cost? Undoing combustion is fairly easy, but we aren't doing it significantly yet for fuel, it's not currently figured into the cost equation other than it not being a renewable resource because of it. Economic biofuel is one of the things I strongly support research for. Using Algae in the desert sounds very promising for biodiesel/gasoline. Ethanol from corn, not so much.
I honestly think once energy becomes so available that there is no dire need, the world will find peace that has not been seen in millenia.
I'd go for education, personally. African nations get plenty of energy - but they often don't know what to do with it. You also need the infrastructure to use that energy, but I'll agree that once you have energy, there isn't much you can't do with it.
here are NOT ten thousand times more cars on the road, which is why we've seen a net drop in air pollution.
you might keep your car up and running well, others don't. Don't forget, this isn't arbitrarily removing cars; it's simply a bribe for people to replace their older ones. While your '87 might be cleaner than a '70s version, it's still dirtier than a '96.
I wasn't so much talking the increase from the '70s, more the increase from the '80s on, which has been substantial, and where substituting newer cars can help.
I understand technicalities, but I'm talking about reality, where you make mental effort to at least correlate and understand the concept that the author is attempted to present (such as using the common factor between combustion force and watts... joules) . Or go even further and attempt to calculate and account for those factors. But, based on your surface attack via technicality, sure I'm wrong...
And you can proceed to insult me. I'm fully aware that internal combustion engines hover around 30% efficiency. I'm fully aware that a good power plant can get over 60% efficiency. With LiIon batteries, the charge/discharge efficiency for a electric car is around 90%. Transmission lines, while they do lose power, again, are around 90%. .9*.9*.6= 48.6% power, IE it shits all over the efficiency of gasoline engines, because we haven't even started on the energy demands it takes to extract, refine, and transport the gasoline.
My friend's father built an electric porche from a kit car in ~1995 for about $15k. It still runs today, and has about a 250 mile range.
I'd love to see this vehicle, the listing of expenses, etc...
As for your very WRONG statements about solar panels,
I was pointing towards economic payback, not energy payback. The problem with what you were doing, looking only at energy payback, was that you end up ignoring all the other expenses involved with solar panels, that end up making them, while practical from an engineering standpoint; not so much from an economical one. I'm sorry I didn't phrase that well enough for your reading comprehension level.
Read the article, you will be enlightened.
Reads... Sees nothing really new, all energy payback, not economic.
Don't you realize that solar panels are at least a BETTER source than coal and natural gas?
Being raised by accountants skewed me a bit. What I realize is that solar panels are a DIFFERENT source of power than coal & NG. Each with their own costs, benefits, and usage patterns. For example, Coal, NG, propane, etc... All beat solar panels in storage, demand usage, cost per unit of heat energy, etc... Doesn't mean that I wouldn't go with solar panels given the right circumstances; it just means that I'll consider all the circumstances before making my decision. For example, I'd be rather cold right now if I were trying to heat my home with solar panels at the moment. However, I'll throw you a bone by acknowledging that I do dislike coal power; I see it as far too polluting. I'd prefer nuclear; where the waste is at least kept safely locked away(and with reuse and recycling and such, doesn't actually have to hang around for that long).
I figure I'll be seriously looking at installing solar panels on my house when 90% of those south of the Mason-Dixon line have installed them. They get a LOT more solar power per m^2, and more evenly on average.
Now they're offering a bounty for you to get rid of it and replace it with a better one.
How many '60s or '70s are still on the road? How many MORE cars are on the road? A '90s or '00s car HAS to be far cleaner to just MATCH the amount of pollution from previous years just due to the additional number of cars on the road.
Links?
I knew there was a reason I put three XXX in the mpg indicator. Looking up the others, they seem to be mostly diesels, probably using UK gallons.
60 mpg in a small diesel is easily doable; I'd love one for my daily commute; but many families will turn their nose up at one - the price tag is such that they can get a SUV for around the same price.
At this point I think the car companies are more skittish about bringing diesel cars to the USA than the consumers. Even then, with the current price differential for diesel they'll have to gain a LOT of mpg to be worth it. We need to get a few of those next-gen refineries in place to cheaply produce the low-sulfur stuff.
Electrical cars can do much more than 60mpg.
1. Technically speaking, mpg isn't a valid measurement for an electric car. Kwh/mile would be a better measure.
2. Can you build an electric car with ~300 miles of range for less than $50k?
3. The coal industry would LOVE practical electric cars; they provide a good chunk of the electricity that would be used to power them.
Even the solar panels from the 90s put out more energy than it costs to produce them and recycle them into new panels, within their lifetime. That is a net positive of relatively 'free energy'.
At California's retail rates, and including all the subsidies, maybe. Up in my area? Not so much. Don't forget that a good part of California's electricity rates go towards subsidizing those panels. Germany's even worse.
I'd love for this stuff to be more practical, but believe that more development is needed.
The question isn't so much whether solar panels can pay for themselves over their lifespan as to whether they're the cheapest, cleanest source of power.
It is better for the environment to keep older cars operational than to waste energy/resources building new ones.
Except that many of the older ones pollute 10-100X as much as a new one, per mile or per gallon, due to less efficient pollution control measures.
Sorta like how many mopeds pollute more per mile than a brand new SUV.
At some point, 'reuse' doesn't make sense any longer. It's time to recycle.
but their "top" car must be able to get at least 60mpg (instead of the current U.S. peak of 40mpg). That way those of us who care about the environment, when we finally decide to buy a new car, will have the option of a 60mpg or better vehicle.
Ever consider that you can't generally get something for nothing? IE the costs of making a mass market 60mpg car would make it either so expensive or feature sparse that they can't make their development costs back from it?
We're still stuck with physics, thus it's not like we can just legislate a XXX mpg car into existence.
That way those of us who care about the environment, when we finally decide to buy a new car, will have the option of a 60mpg or better vehicle.
Ah yes, the ecoleaner 2010. 60mpg, comes standard with 2 speaker radio, 3 star crash rating, carbon fiber construction, no AC, limited heat, all yours for only $50k!
if you have a car which gets 20 MPG and you spend $30000 on buying a fuel-efficient car it will not only take you something like 15 years to reach the break even point but it will take even more years to pay off the energy expended on making your new car.
That's only if you look at it in a mpg way. Personally, I've seen the reviews for how much non-CO2 pollution various older cars make. In many cases, this program can result in substantially cleaner skies - older cars, especially if they're out of tune, can produce hundreds of times the pollution of a new car - even for the exact same mpg!
I'd call it a sop to multiple things - reduce pollution, increase fleet mileage, help out the auto companies, etc...
I can see where they're coming from, essentially, even as I'm wondering if it's worth the thousands paid per car.
I think that counts as 'not offering all models in California'.
I'll add there is no media market for objective reviews.
I'd argue that YES, there IS a media market for objective reviews.
It's simple enough. Let's say I buy X product because of glowing reviews from Magazine A. X SUCKS DONKEY BALLS. Ergo, I never trust reviews from Magazine A again, and don't buy it anymore. Eventually, Magazine A has no real subscribers, depending on 'pretty front cover' buyers, going out of business if they keep it up.
So magazines, at the least, are stuck between keeping their ad-buyers and subscribers happy. Their ad-buyers want nice reviews, the subscribers want accurate ones. So you end up with some magazines where all the subscribers mentally subtract one star from all the reviews. 5 Stars means 'good', 4 'meh', 3 'sucks'. 2 or less and 'maker didn't pay the vig and it still sucks'.
Please, don't mention consumer reports. That's a single, non-specific source.
Sure, it's a single source, but other than it reviews pretty much everything, how isn't it specific?
BTW, your idea is pretty much what consumer reports does, they just do it in a big lab rather than having a single reviewer buy a single product. CR gets enough stuff to do head to head trials and scientific methods in there.
It'd be nice if we had something better. If I want something like that locally I have to go to a locally owned small shop; not bad except for the prices and limited selection.
Our Bestbuy is only just over a year old, I don't buy computer stuff there, mostly movies. I was just commenting that BB HAS improved it's selection a tad.
Well, a 220v breaker is really attached to one leg of the 220 coming into the house.
220 comes into the house on 2 wires. US systems utilize a 'split phase' system. 220 into the house. Essentially all 110V circuits in the house are in two big circuits in series with each other, balanced by the house ground.
You usually have two hot leads, and one goes on each side of your breaker panel. You'll notice that any 220 breakers are only on one side. If you had two 110v lines in different phases, they'd need to be on both sides.
Ever notice how 220 breakers are twice as wide as 110 breakers? The side doesn't matter, going up and down, every other slot is the opposite hot.
Breakers Power bus inside panel, breakers plug in on center line.
A - A |--- |
B - B | ---| A + A = 0V
A - A |--- | A + B = 220V
B - B | ---| A or B + N = 110V
A - A |--- |
B - B | ---|
Since both hots on a residential 220v are coming from the same bus, splitting it at the breaker box,
Seriously, speaking as a guy who replaced multiple fuse boxes with a circuit breaker panel and has installed multiple outlets, I strongly suggest you don't do any electrical work. At least until you read much more into the subject.
1. Residential 220V comes in on TWO wires, transferred to 2 rails inside the panel, as illustrated by the little diagram above.
2. The only 'split' in the breaker box would be the neutral/ground, it doesn't touch the rails. At least not without going through a circuit.
little junction in your living room makes exactly the same electrical potential. Well, except for the fact that the bus can pass much more power, and two heavy leads can carry much more current.
Little junction? Are you referring to a sub-panel? You're not getting 220V out of a 110V socket without a transformer or rewiring. A 220V sub panel will be fed with 4 wires; 2 hots, neutral, and ground. Ground and neutral, while ultimately coming from the same ground, isn't to be joined except at the main panel for safety. I've never had something that could be called a 'junction' in a living room.
You're right about heavier leads carrying more power, but a 12 Gauge wire can safely carry 20 amps, whether it's 110V or 220V. Outside of certain pieces of professional level shop equipment, you don't have many devices in that range. Most residential 220V circuits start at 30A and 10 gauge wire.
That's why you get the good stuff out of syringes, which you can reseal quite well.