Aluminium is also almost universally accepted by recyclers, including/especially soda cans. Still, the production of Aluminium scales a bit better than copper - it's the most abundant metal in the earth, and the third most common element.
If we did something to make electricity even cheaper, it'd be even cheaper to produce and take over more tasks from copper.
Idiot. I only mentioned that locking stuff up wasn't a good solution given the scale of the problem. In any case, many of the thieves target commercial buildings. Bigger AC units = more copper. It boils down to that when you're looking at people stealing stuff solely for it's metal content there's so many targets that you can't lock them all up.
The AC case? Just so happens that the owner ended up staying on his roof overnight and did shoot the thief. He ended up in court over that one. I try to avoid making suggestions that will likely have somebody end up in court over it, unless court is the better alternative. It generally isn't.
We need to approach the problem from multiple angles to solve it - or at least suppress it to reasonable levels.
Heh, check out my sig and you'll be able to see my thoughts on the matter.;)
The problem with that is two-fold. First, electrifying your copper pipes can be a pain - they tend to ground themselves, after all. Second, it'd be considered booby trapping, highly illegal.
Second would be manpower- presumably you have to work, making protecting your home when you're not there difficult, and you have to sleep, making protecting your business difficult.
It really sucks because they'll cause $100 of damage to steal $1 of scrap.
They DO have connectors today that can handle Al safely; they're just ~3 times the cost of regular copper ones, and you have to use a larger gauge wire, which currently reduces the economy to the point that copper is still cheaper. Though that probably changed during the spike, the spike didn't last long enough for engineering processes and supplies to change.
My circuit breaker panel is a good one, and it's rated for Al, and Al is being used fairly frequently for service lines.
It's probably overkill, 1. Overkill - many people only sell occasionally. 2. No PO Box? I live out in the boonies, I don't have house delivery - I get my mail by stopping off at the post office. 3. Many people, like my grandfather, only sell metal a couple times a year. 4. At least make it store hours so people can sell their cans back without taking time off. 5. Sounds good 6. Sounds like pawn shop rules - not necessarily a bad idea.
The goal, of course, isn't necessarily to entirely prevent the sale of stolen metals - but as you mention, add some hoops to slow it down/increase the odds of the perp getting caught.
How do you lock up power lines? How do you prevent(other than accidental electricution) thieves when they climb your 10' fence topped with barbed wire to get at the copper in the substation?
How effective are locks when they're breaking into unoccupied buildings to steal the copper wire and the very fixtures out of the house? Buildings under construction are popular targets.
How effectively can you lock up your Air conditioner? Thieves are ripping up rooftop units to get at the copper used in the piping.
Heck, I've even heard of the theives cutting catalytic converters off of cars in long term lots because there's valuable metals inside.
Just what I was thinking - how difficult would it be to develop the capacity to transfer sub-chunks, each sub-chunk capable of fitting in a single UDP packet?
I think I've noticed something at least a little like this with Azureus.
Using larger sections for overall data integrity checks(with checksums in the torrent file) is fine, all you need to impliment is the ability to request and recieve sub-sections.
Actually, looking things up, liquid CO2 is actually [i]less[/i] dense than water of the same temperature - so it'd tend to rise.
Not to mention that you also have natural turbulence to contend with - some of it would tend to rise up, get absorbed in the water, etc...
Finally, don't forget that you're going to need to expend energy to pump all that CO2 down there - cutting your efficiency.
A 'standard' coal plant is about the cheapest form of power we have. Certainly the cheapest nearly universally deployable one. A 'clean', non-CO2 capturing plant, costs around the same as a nuclear plant of the same capacity, still emits more pollution, and has vastly higher fuel costs in comparison to the nuke plant. A CO2 sequestering plant is shaping up to be substantially more expensive than a nuclear plant, several percentage points less efficient, meaning even more increased fuel costs.
Personally, I think the first thing we need to do is install solar water heaters in about 80% of the buildings south of the mason dixon line. Compared to most other 'green' technologies they're cheap, efficient, and effective.
The only problem there is the byproducts of nuclear power are nuclear weapons and Israel really doesn't want that to happen considering they'd probably be the target.
Incorrect. There are ways to run nuclear power plants without generating weapons material just as there are ways to make weapons grade material today without involving power plants.
So so far we have two "problems" that are solvable with technology we have TODAY but can't due to politics.
Agree with you here, and pretty much the rest of your post as well. The problems we have with starvation aren't industrial food production, and it isn't even transport, it's political.
Couldn't the safety margin be increased? i.e., if you have a tank rated for 2400 psi, you only fill it to 1200 psi?
Sure, but you just doubled the size and cost of the tank or halved the range of the vehicle. It's already uneconomical, they're looking for any way to cut costs.
Would that solve the hydrostatic testing?
Not really. At most you'd extend the testing period a bit. The whole reason behind testing is that testing is cheaper than just replacing.
It is feasible, however it's more economical to chemically bind the CO2 to something solid at room temperature, brick it, then throw it in a landfill, which is what they're doing now at some newer coal burning plants.
Do you happen to have a source on this? I'm unaware of any major coal plants that are performing sequestration at this time.
Anyways - the problem with this method is 'what do you use to absorb the CO2?', the production of most substances that do this involve the release of CO2. Things not being perfect, that doesn't generally work out.
Mining and such are also generally CO2 intense activities.
I don't mind being green - but I get a bit irked at some of the stupidity - many 'green' initiatives aren't so green under the surface.
We're not building nuclear power stations for one simple reason: We don't know what to do with the waste byproduct yet.
Arguably speaking, the nuclear waste is a whole heck of a lot easier because we're talking about a dozen or so orders magnitude less of it vs the amount of CO2 we produce any given year. Of course, I'm one of the ones that believes the problem is mostly political - the stuff remaining after reprocessing or running it through a breeder reactor lasts a lot less time. France has been reprocessing for years. And no, I don't buy any proliferation concerns - if anything all that waste sitting around increases concerns.
And when you're talking a couple thousand tons of high pressure or solid CO2, the hazards aren't any less - any leak can quickly displace the oxygen in the area and asphyxiate anybody/thing nearby.
I've told my representative the same, but she replied back with a form letter about how solar is the future, etc... etc.. etc.. Even a solar panel on the roof of my car would probably just run the radio and airconditioning fans...
Given current solar panel efficiencies, a roof panel won't even run your AC, it might be able to run your radio, assuming you don't have some crazy one, and keep the volume down.
I've looked at the sizes of solar panels, with the intent to maybe get one to keep my battery on a float charge.
It should be noted that the solar car competitions in australia are done with NASA grade panels that are twice as efficient as the normal 'best' - but ~100X the cost. They're still essentially ultralight sleds and average under 25mph in one of the sunniest areas of the world. For that matter, even if you cover the surface area of a 'practical' car with solar panels, even at 100% efficiency it won't be able to power the car's motion.
It comes down to we have all sorts of alternatives, but non-optimization is rife such as the current flex-fuel vehicles, there's availability and cost issues, etc...
Ethanol - closest to current infrastructure. Scalable, renewable with the right efforts. Corn lobby needs to be broken, major breakthroughs in cellulostic. Current gen engines mostly crippled by the 'need' to be able to run low octane gasoline as well. Substantial improvements could be made if they were willing to require premium. CNG - still a fossil fuel for the most part. Engines need more modifications to run on it. Fuel system substantially different, even less dense than ethanol. Hydrogen - Best energy fuel per Kg, just about the worst per M^3. Expensive to generate, especially from non hydrocarbon sources. Very hard to store at useful densities Battery Electric - We've been trying for a useful battery for over a hundred years. Everything else is more or less in place and economical. Compared to hydrogen or even CNG, we're talking renovation vs a complete overhaul.
Looks like some others are predicting 2 years. It's interesting to note that in January of 2007 the price per GB for a SSD was $10. It was 32GB. Today, it's $2 and change for 128GB. That's two doublings of capacity, and two halvings of price, in under two years.
Going by the.22 for a 2.5" drive vs the 2.2 for a SSD, I'd say the SSD is 4 'generations' behind laptop drives. Thing is, SSDs are currently undergoing 2-3 intinerations/generations per HD intineration. So a SSD will double in capacity per $ every six months or so while it takes 12-18 months for the same with a HD.
So, my figuring is that it'll take 2 years for SSDs to catch up to where HDs are 'now', but the HDs will advance, adding another year before they catch up for real.
For that matter, over a patched windows install + office, I'd rate my GP's usage as 'insignificant'. Less than a GB between both sets. Mother's side used a bit more, as my grandmother ended up getting one of those fancy computer controlled sewing machines.
Mom&Dad? Mostly pictures, some documents. Might be over a GB, might not.
So I see a situation where computers come with 40-80GB of flash, and people who actually use storage space and don't simply stream from Itunes or whatever movie equivalents pop up, will simply pay $100-200 and slap in a big HD for their needs.
As far as it goes - flash has already killed anything smaller than 1.8" drives, and are busily killing the 1.8" ones. 2.5" will last a couple years longer, I figure as I said earlier. Another couple doublings in size and halvings of price, along with trickle down performance improvements and you'll be looking at many, many people buying them. Heck, for notebook/laptop makers, build the SSD into the motherboard.
Then, once they've started making serious inroads into laptops, you'll see HD development start to lag(writing on the wall), and SSD/Flash development continue to accelerate. We're seeing it now, after years of languishing in BIOSes and special purpose applications, now flash is in cell phones, PDAs, MP3 players, cameras, etc... And development is booming. They get to within a stone's throw of HD's and now they're competing with them as well.
The start of it all - the digital camera and mp3 player. They drove the development of flash.
One thing to remember is people like my parents and grandparents. I use over a TB of HD space. My parents haven't even used over 50 yet, and my grandparents even less.
Due to the mechanical components of hard drives, they aren't going to get much cheaper, even/especially in bulk - some of the bottom end we see are the manufacturers putting their old drives on fire sale.
Once the manufacturers can get a 40-80GB HD for LESS than they can get a hd*, I predict they'll start switching. They're already on the poor side for GB per $.
The cheapest laptop HD on newegg is $50 for 80GB(.625). Lots of 320GB($70,.22), 500GB($110,.22). The cheapest 3.5" HD is $36 for 80GB(.45). $42 for 160GB(.26). A 1TB one runs $95(.095), so per GB it's a much better deal, delivering 4 times the GB per dollar over the 'cheap' 80GB. The cheapest SSD is $20 for 4GB(5). Not very efficient, not even very fast. Going up - $145 for 64GB(2.27). $278 for 128GB(2.17) Not much economy of scale gained, but that's to be expected. 32GB seems to be where the SSDs start flattening out($84,32GB,2.63) at the moment.
Going by this - I figure 3 years before you start seriously seeing SSDs replacing hard drives in laptops - and it'll start on the low ends for cost savings, and the high end for performance.
It'll be another 5-10 before they start doing the same to desktops. Still, I figure upgrading will become common again - fast flash for OS and programs, cheap big HD for most multimedia.
*As long as it can be expected to last long enough that they don't have to do warranty work, and performs at least as well.
Is $152 close enough? G.SKILL FM-25S2S-64GB 2.5" 64GB SATA II Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail
There's one available for $145, but it's write speed is 1/6th the slightly more expensive one, and it's read a quarter. Still MLC flash though, looking at the manufacturer's webpage. They have SLC - at 3.5 times the price. Reviews suggest the SLC is much, much faster. Advertised sequential writes/reads are a tad slower, but the random reads/writes aren't listed for the cheaper product.
To the cousin poster - would you propose that we do monthly-rotating daily backups of our small business server to spinning hard drives? Keep in mind that they need to be easily archivable and the cost of the media is more important than cost of the hardware.
Are you doing off site? How many gigs are you backing up? You might find that a raid NAS array, possibly off site to be cheaper than you think - and fully capable of keeping all your backups. Or price a dozen or so external HDs.
So, you're agreeing with me? They're the ultimate in high volume, cheap, slow storage.
And hard drives will rule the world for a while when it comes to on-line, random access, but not requiring especially low latency.
Still, I find it interesting. Right now, on Newegg, the largest HD you can get is 1.5TB for $140. For $278 you can get a 128GB SSD. Call it $2/GB.
It wasn't that long ago that the HD was ~$300, and the SSD, $3k for a 80GB one. Matter of fact, Newegg still lists a 64GB model for $825. Back in 2004, a 250GB HD cost $250. Anyways - we're looking now at SSDs being available that are 'only' 1/12 the size of the largest consumer HD available at this time, for about double the price. Go back around a year, and you're looking at 10X the price for 1/12th the capacity. We went from a 120X disadvantage to a 24X advantage. That's a massive catchup, relatively speaking.
Keeping with Newegg - you can get a 120GB 2.5" drive for ~$50. So it's 5X as expensive to get the SSD - but the SSD is shockproof in comparison, and is demonstratively faster. Go large on the HD? 500GB for $110. Around a 12X disadvantage. At this rate I'll predict that SSDs will replace hard drives in laptops around 2010-2012. Leaning towards 2010. Shortly after that it'll take the server market, at least for systems that lean towards reads. 2016 or so for standard desktops.
You know what this reminds me of? The Stainless Steel Rat series.
In A Stainless Steel Rat Is Born(1985) there's a chain of restaurants serving Porcuswine(a mix between a pig and a porcupine, as large as a cow). The important thing? It describes a system pretty much as you state - that upon order placement automated systems make a burger, fresh from frozen, using automated equipment. It's so automated the restaurants are unmanned - a cleaning service comes through every so often, and they restock the robotic kitchen around once a week - or as they're notified that it's running short on stuff.
If this is simply a system for automating 'throwing a bun & burger on the grill when the order comes in', I'm sure there's all sorts of automated systems that already do it.
Thing is - that 60 second delay from refrigerated meat patty to cooked* can both reduce waste and increase taste/freshness, improving their product and increasing savings in a time of increasing food and wage costs. Heck, you can have 'anticipated' cooking - where the patty & bun is started when the order is entered into the computer. You don't get cancels that often, and in a busy restaurant, the patty would be usable anyways - at this time McD's only has two different sized patties.
*It currently takes ~90 seconds from frozen patty to cooked patty. With a refrigerated one, you could do it even faster.
First, the site is not mine, though I do agree with most of it. Haven't actually been there for a while. Preaching to the choir type thing. Still, it's about the best I can do with the limited sig length I have access to. I'll fully admit that they're leading questions. Got a better site?
1. It'd also be nice if cars ran on butterfly farts, for example. Sad fact is, they're finding hidden gun factories in Britain now, and violent crime is at an all time high, exceeding that of the USA in some categories. British people certainly feel less safe than even paranoid americans. 2. There's plenty of ways. I cheer however a potential victim gets away from, or takes care of, his or her assaulter, whether it be a mugger after a wallet, or a rapist. Still, studies have shown that defense with a firearm is the method with the lowest injury rate to the victim. The highest is actually the 'passive opposition' some police departments recommended. It generally goes from lowest to highest Defense with firearm, other weapon, running away, no weapons, active cooperation, passive opposition. 3. Actually false. Most US burglars do not carry guns. They also spend, on average, three times the time casing a house to make sure it's unoccupied. The standard response to being confronted by a home owner with a firearm is to either run away or surrender. 4. Violent crime in England was far lower than the USA even when they didn't ban guns. Since the banning of them, their lead has shrunk to almost nothing. It's so bad they're trying to ban knives now. Target the behavior, the culture, the situations that lead to murder - not just one tool. 5. The decision to carry a firearm is a very personal choice. I don't recommend it to everyone. If it's your thing, go ahead, carry a rape whistle(a gun's louder), pepper spray(some can bull right through it), taser(civilian models have to be in touch range, and leave no lasting disability - the crook can be getting up while you're still turning around). There are reasons cops who carry less lethal devices still carry firearms. A knife requires you to get close up, as does an asp or other such instrument. They also require a more or less fit individual to wield effectively. My grandfather can shoot. He'd have a hard time wielding a knife or club. 6. Psychological - Criminals tend to go 'OMFG that can KILL me!'. Criminals tend to not challenge the gun - can result in fewer injuries all round.
Personally, I have a very simple solution that I believe would, within a few years, plunge the US murder rate to below that of Europe. First would be to legalize drugs - I'd also regulate them for purity and safety, and tax them to give the opposition a carrot(and fund treatment centers). Oops - there went 85% of most gang's income streams! Do the same with prostitution, and there goes another 5-10%. Makes slave trading less profitable - I certainly wouldn't stop enforcement against stuff like that. Retask a lot of the vice cops to illegal immigration and such. Fix the immigration system period so that only the [i]really[/i] bad ones need to sneak across - and treat them accordingly.
To be fair, you also need a cup, though that can be fashioned out of some of the plastic sheeting, though you'd normally prefer to keep that as part of the overhead.
It also uses no electricity, it should result in sterile water as long as the plastic sheet is clean on the underneath, and takes an order of magnitude less components.
I pretty much put the waterball as a yuppie green-toy and smug generator.
I figure that before that, you also still had substantial numbers of people with 'tough guts' that were used to the occasional dose of untreated water.
Given a nice clear stream, your average *healthy* adult will be able to drink just fine. They may or may not get the runs for a few days.
Getting back to the machine - I simply think that it's an overengineered special purpose device that's main purpose ends up being to increase the smug level of 'green' yuppies. Ultimately at this point it's a faux green item - the resources it consumes would provide far more potable water from other, more traditional, methods such as wells and distillers.
They really want a lot of water? Essentially energy free? Hook the secondary systems up to the home's AC unit.
Slashdot Mirror
Aluminium is also almost universally accepted by recyclers, including/especially soda cans. Still, the production of Aluminium scales a bit better than copper - it's the most abundant metal in the earth, and the third most common element.
If we did something to make electricity even cheaper, it'd be even cheaper to produce and take over more tasks from copper.
That's funny, my office does it. I had to prove where I lived to get the box. Of course, I live in a postage stamp sized town.
Handy for rebates and such that won't deliver to PO Boxes.
Idiot. I only mentioned that locking stuff up wasn't a good solution given the scale of the problem. In any case, many of the thieves target commercial buildings. Bigger AC units = more copper. It boils down to that when you're looking at people stealing stuff solely for it's metal content there's so many targets that you can't lock them all up.
The AC case? Just so happens that the owner ended up staying on his roof overnight and did shoot the thief. He ended up in court over that one. I try to avoid making suggestions that will likely have somebody end up in court over it, unless court is the better alternative. It generally isn't.
We need to approach the problem from multiple angles to solve it - or at least suppress it to reasonable levels.
Heh, check out my sig and you'll be able to see my thoughts on the matter. ;)
The problem with that is two-fold. First, electrifying your copper pipes can be a pain - they tend to ground themselves, after all. Second, it'd be considered booby trapping, highly illegal.
Second would be manpower- presumably you have to work, making protecting your home when you're not there difficult, and you have to sleep, making protecting your business difficult.
It really sucks because they'll cause $100 of damage to steal $1 of scrap.
They DO have connectors today that can handle Al safely; they're just ~3 times the cost of regular copper ones, and you have to use a larger gauge wire, which currently reduces the economy to the point that copper is still cheaper. Though that probably changed during the spike, the spike didn't last long enough for engineering processes and supplies to change.
My circuit breaker panel is a good one, and it's rated for Al, and Al is being used fairly frequently for service lines.
It's probably overkill,
1. Overkill - many people only sell occasionally.
2. No PO Box? I live out in the boonies, I don't have house delivery - I get my mail by stopping off at the post office.
3. Many people, like my grandfather, only sell metal a couple times a year.
4. At least make it store hours so people can sell their cans back without taking time off.
5. Sounds good
6. Sounds like pawn shop rules - not necessarily a bad idea.
The goal, of course, isn't necessarily to entirely prevent the sale of stolen metals - but as you mention, add some hoops to slow it down/increase the odds of the perp getting caught.
How do you lock up power lines? How do you prevent(other than accidental electricution) thieves when they climb your 10' fence topped with barbed wire to get at the copper in the substation?
How effective are locks when they're breaking into unoccupied buildings to steal the copper wire and the very fixtures out of the house? Buildings under construction are popular targets.
How effectively can you lock up your Air conditioner? Thieves are ripping up rooftop units to get at the copper used in the piping.
Heck, I've even heard of the theives cutting catalytic converters off of cars in long term lots because there's valuable metals inside.
Then adjust the laws so recyclers have to follow some of the same rules as the old standby of turning stolen goods into money - Pawn shops.
Fine them a few times so that stolen metal isn't so profitable and they'd stop buying, resulting in the theives stopping their stealing.
Just what I was thinking - how difficult would it be to develop the capacity to transfer sub-chunks, each sub-chunk capable of fitting in a single UDP packet?
I think I've noticed something at least a little like this with Azureus.
Using larger sections for overall data integrity checks(with checksums in the torrent file) is fine, all you need to impliment is the ability to request and recieve sub-sections.
Actually, looking things up, liquid CO2 is actually [i]less[/i] dense than water of the same temperature - so it'd tend to rise.
Not to mention that you also have natural turbulence to contend with - some of it would tend to rise up, get absorbed in the water, etc...
Finally, don't forget that you're going to need to expend energy to pump all that CO2 down there - cutting your efficiency.
A 'standard' coal plant is about the cheapest form of power we have. Certainly the cheapest nearly universally deployable one. A 'clean', non-CO2 capturing plant, costs around the same as a nuclear plant of the same capacity, still emits more pollution, and has vastly higher fuel costs in comparison to the nuke plant. A CO2 sequestering plant is shaping up to be substantially more expensive than a nuclear plant, several percentage points less efficient, meaning even more increased fuel costs.
Personally, I think the first thing we need to do is install solar water heaters in about 80% of the buildings south of the mason dixon line. Compared to most other 'green' technologies they're cheap, efficient, and effective.
The only problem there is the byproducts of nuclear power are nuclear weapons and Israel really doesn't want that to happen considering they'd probably be the target.
Incorrect. There are ways to run nuclear power plants without generating weapons material just as there are ways to make weapons grade material today without involving power plants.
So so far we have two "problems" that are solvable with technology we have TODAY but can't due to politics.
Agree with you here, and pretty much the rest of your post as well. The problems we have with starvation aren't industrial food production, and it isn't even transport, it's political.
Couldn't the safety margin be increased? i.e., if you have a tank rated for 2400 psi, you only fill it to 1200 psi?
Sure, but you just doubled the size and cost of the tank or halved the range of the vehicle. It's already uneconomical, they're looking for any way to cut costs.
Would that solve the hydrostatic testing?
Not really. At most you'd extend the testing period a bit. The whole reason behind testing is that testing is cheaper than just replacing.
It is feasible, however it's more economical to chemically bind the CO2 to something solid at room temperature, brick it, then throw it in a landfill, which is what they're doing now at some newer coal burning plants.
Do you happen to have a source on this? I'm unaware of any major coal plants that are performing sequestration at this time.
Anyways - the problem with this method is 'what do you use to absorb the CO2?', the production of most substances that do this involve the release of CO2. Things not being perfect, that doesn't generally work out.
Mining and such are also generally CO2 intense activities.
I don't mind being green - but I get a bit irked at some of the stupidity - many 'green' initiatives aren't so green under the surface.
We're not building nuclear power stations for one simple reason: We don't know what to do with the waste byproduct yet.
Arguably speaking, the nuclear waste is a whole heck of a lot easier because we're talking about a dozen or so orders magnitude less of it vs the amount of CO2 we produce any given year. Of course, I'm one of the ones that believes the problem is mostly political - the stuff remaining after reprocessing or running it through a breeder reactor lasts a lot less time. France has been reprocessing for years. And no, I don't buy any proliferation concerns - if anything all that waste sitting around increases concerns.
And when you're talking a couple thousand tons of high pressure or solid CO2, the hazards aren't any less - any leak can quickly displace the oxygen in the area and asphyxiate anybody/thing nearby.
I've told my representative the same, but she replied back with a form letter about how solar is the future, etc... etc.. etc.. Even a solar panel on the roof of my car would probably just run the radio and airconditioning fans...
Given current solar panel efficiencies, a roof panel won't even run your AC, it might be able to run your radio, assuming you don't have some crazy one, and keep the volume down.
I've looked at the sizes of solar panels, with the intent to maybe get one to keep my battery on a float charge.
It should be noted that the solar car competitions in australia are done with NASA grade panels that are twice as efficient as the normal 'best' - but ~100X the cost. They're still essentially ultralight sleds and average under 25mph in one of the sunniest areas of the world. For that matter, even if you cover the surface area of a 'practical' car with solar panels, even at 100% efficiency it won't be able to power the car's motion.
It comes down to we have all sorts of alternatives, but non-optimization is rife such as the current flex-fuel vehicles, there's availability and cost issues, etc...
Ethanol - closest to current infrastructure. Scalable, renewable with the right efforts. Corn lobby needs to be broken, major breakthroughs in cellulostic. Current gen engines mostly crippled by the 'need' to be able to run low octane gasoline as well. Substantial improvements could be made if they were willing to require premium.
CNG - still a fossil fuel for the most part. Engines need more modifications to run on it. Fuel system substantially different, even less dense than ethanol.
Hydrogen - Best energy fuel per Kg, just about the worst per M^3. Expensive to generate, especially from non hydrocarbon sources. Very hard to store at useful densities
Battery Electric - We've been trying for a useful battery for over a hundred years. Everything else is more or less in place and economical. Compared to hydrogen or even CNG, we're talking renovation vs a complete overhaul.
SSD Price War Begins
SSDs To Match High-end Hard Disk Prices By 2010?
Looks like some others are predicting 2 years. It's interesting to note that in January of 2007 the price per GB for a SSD was $10. It was 32GB. Today, it's $2 and change for 128GB. That's two doublings of capacity, and two halvings of price, in under two years.
Going by the .22 for a 2.5" drive vs the 2.2 for a SSD, I'd say the SSD is 4 'generations' behind laptop drives. Thing is, SSDs are currently undergoing 2-3 intinerations/generations per HD intineration. So a SSD will double in capacity per $ every six months or so while it takes 12-18 months for the same with a HD.
So, my figuring is that it'll take 2 years for SSDs to catch up to where HDs are 'now', but the HDs will advance, adding another year before they catch up for real.
50GB Smartass.
For that matter, over a patched windows install + office, I'd rate my GP's usage as 'insignificant'. Less than a GB between both sets. Mother's side used a bit more, as my grandmother ended up getting one of those fancy computer controlled sewing machines.
Mom&Dad? Mostly pictures, some documents. Might be over a GB, might not.
So I see a situation where computers come with 40-80GB of flash, and people who actually use storage space and don't simply stream from Itunes or whatever movie equivalents pop up, will simply pay $100-200 and slap in a big HD for their needs.
As far as it goes - flash has already killed anything smaller than 1.8" drives, and are busily killing the 1.8" ones. 2.5" will last a couple years longer, I figure as I said earlier. Another couple doublings in size and halvings of price, along with trickle down performance improvements and you'll be looking at many, many people buying them. Heck, for notebook/laptop makers, build the SSD into the motherboard.
Then, once they've started making serious inroads into laptops, you'll see HD development start to lag(writing on the wall), and SSD/Flash development continue to accelerate. We're seeing it now, after years of languishing in BIOSes and special purpose applications, now flash is in cell phones, PDAs, MP3 players, cameras, etc... And development is booming. They get to within a stone's throw of HD's and now they're competing with them as well.
The start of it all - the digital camera and mp3 player. They drove the development of flash.
One thing to remember is people like my parents and grandparents. I use over a TB of HD space. My parents haven't even used over 50 yet, and my grandparents even less.
Due to the mechanical components of hard drives, they aren't going to get much cheaper, even/especially in bulk - some of the bottom end we see are the manufacturers putting their old drives on fire sale.
Once the manufacturers can get a 40-80GB HD for LESS than they can get a hd*, I predict they'll start switching. They're already on the poor side for GB per $.
The cheapest laptop HD on newegg is $50 for 80GB(.625). Lots of 320GB($70,.22), 500GB($110,.22). The cheapest 3.5" HD is $36 for 80GB(.45). $42 for 160GB(.26). A 1TB one runs $95(.095), so per GB it's a much better deal, delivering 4 times the GB per dollar over the 'cheap' 80GB. The cheapest SSD is $20 for 4GB(5). Not very efficient, not even very fast. Going up - $145 for 64GB(2.27). $278 for 128GB(2.17) Not much economy of scale gained, but that's to be expected. 32GB seems to be where the SSDs start flattening out($84,32GB,2.63) at the moment.
Going by this - I figure 3 years before you start seriously seeing SSDs replacing hard drives in laptops - and it'll start on the low ends for cost savings, and the high end for performance.
It'll be another 5-10 before they start doing the same to desktops. Still, I figure upgrading will become common again - fast flash for OS and programs, cheap big HD for most multimedia.
*As long as it can be expected to last long enough that they don't have to do warranty work, and performs at least as well.
Is $152 close enough? G.SKILL FM-25S2S-64GB 2.5" 64GB SATA II Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail
There's one available for $145, but it's write speed is 1/6th the slightly more expensive one, and it's read a quarter. Still MLC flash though, looking at the manufacturer's webpage. They have SLC - at 3.5 times the price. Reviews suggest the SLC is much, much faster. Advertised sequential writes/reads are a tad slower, but the random reads/writes aren't listed for the cheaper product.
To the cousin poster - would you propose that we do monthly-rotating daily backups of our small business server to spinning hard drives? Keep in mind that they need to be easily archivable and the cost of the media is more important than cost of the hardware.
Are you doing off site? How many gigs are you backing up? You might find that a raid NAS array, possibly off site to be cheaper than you think - and fully capable of keeping all your backups. Or price a dozen or so external HDs.
So, you're agreeing with me? They're the ultimate in high volume, cheap, slow storage.
And hard drives will rule the world for a while when it comes to on-line, random access, but not requiring especially low latency.
Still, I find it interesting. Right now, on Newegg, the largest HD you can get is 1.5TB for $140. For $278 you can get a 128GB SSD. Call it $2/GB.
It wasn't that long ago that the HD was ~$300, and the SSD, $3k for a 80GB one. Matter of fact, Newegg still lists a 64GB model for $825. Back in 2004, a 250GB HD cost $250. Anyways - we're looking now at SSDs being available that are 'only' 1/12 the size of the largest consumer HD available at this time, for about double the price. Go back around a year, and you're looking at 10X the price for 1/12th the capacity. We went from a 120X disadvantage to a 24X advantage. That's a massive catchup, relatively speaking.
Keeping with Newegg - you can get a 120GB 2.5" drive for ~$50. So it's 5X as expensive to get the SSD - but the SSD is shockproof in comparison, and is demonstratively faster. Go large on the HD? 500GB for $110. Around a 12X disadvantage. At this rate I'll predict that SSDs will replace hard drives in laptops around 2010-2012. Leaning towards 2010. Shortly after that it'll take the server market, at least for systems that lean towards reads. 2016 or so for standard desktops.
You know what this reminds me of? The Stainless Steel Rat series.
In A Stainless Steel Rat Is Born(1985) there's a chain of restaurants serving Porcuswine(a mix between a pig and a porcupine, as large as a cow). The important thing? It describes a system pretty much as you state - that upon order placement automated systems make a burger, fresh from frozen, using automated equipment. It's so automated the restaurants are unmanned - a cleaning service comes through every so often, and they restock the robotic kitchen around once a week - or as they're notified that it's running short on stuff.
If this is simply a system for automating 'throwing a bun & burger on the grill when the order comes in', I'm sure there's all sorts of automated systems that already do it.
Thing is - that 60 second delay from refrigerated meat patty to cooked* can both reduce waste and increase taste/freshness, improving their product and increasing savings in a time of increasing food and wage costs. Heck, you can have 'anticipated' cooking - where the patty & bun is started when the order is entered into the computer. You don't get cancels that often, and in a busy restaurant, the patty would be usable anyways - at this time McD's only has two different sized patties.
*It currently takes ~90 seconds from frozen patty to cooked patty. With a refrigerated one, you could do it even faster.
First, the site is not mine, though I do agree with most of it. Haven't actually been there for a while. Preaching to the choir type thing. Still, it's about the best I can do with the limited sig length I have access to. I'll fully admit that they're leading questions. Got a better site?
1. It'd also be nice if cars ran on butterfly farts, for example. Sad fact is, they're finding hidden gun factories in Britain now, and violent crime is at an all time high, exceeding that of the USA in some categories. British people certainly feel less safe than even paranoid americans.
2. There's plenty of ways. I cheer however a potential victim gets away from, or takes care of, his or her assaulter, whether it be a mugger after a wallet, or a rapist. Still, studies have shown that defense with a firearm is the method with the lowest injury rate to the victim. The highest is actually the 'passive opposition' some police departments recommended. It generally goes from lowest to highest Defense with firearm, other weapon, running away, no weapons, active cooperation, passive opposition.
3. Actually false. Most US burglars do not carry guns. They also spend, on average, three times the time casing a house to make sure it's unoccupied. The standard response to being confronted by a home owner with a firearm is to either run away or surrender.
4. Violent crime in England was far lower than the USA even when they didn't ban guns. Since the banning of them, their lead has shrunk to almost nothing. It's so bad they're trying to ban knives now. Target the behavior, the culture, the situations that lead to murder - not just one tool.
5. The decision to carry a firearm is a very personal choice. I don't recommend it to everyone. If it's your thing, go ahead, carry a rape whistle(a gun's louder), pepper spray(some can bull right through it), taser(civilian models have to be in touch range, and leave no lasting disability - the crook can be getting up while you're still turning around). There are reasons cops who carry less lethal devices still carry firearms. A knife requires you to get close up, as does an asp or other such instrument. They also require a more or less fit individual to wield effectively. My grandfather can shoot. He'd have a hard time wielding a knife or club.
6. Psychological - Criminals tend to go 'OMFG that can KILL me!'. Criminals tend to not challenge the gun - can result in fewer injuries all round.
Personally, I have a very simple solution that I believe would, within a few years, plunge the US murder rate to below that of Europe. First would be to legalize drugs - I'd also regulate them for purity and safety, and tax them to give the opposition a carrot(and fund treatment centers). Oops - there went 85% of most gang's income streams! Do the same with prostitution, and there goes another 5-10%. Makes slave trading less profitable - I certainly wouldn't stop enforcement against stuff like that. Retask a lot of the vice cops to illegal immigration and such. Fix the immigration system period so that only the [i]really[/i] bad ones need to sneak across - and treat them accordingly.
They are all you need
To be fair, you also need a cup, though that can be fashioned out of some of the plastic sheeting, though you'd normally prefer to keep that as part of the overhead.
It also uses no electricity, it should result in sterile water as long as the plastic sheet is clean on the underneath, and takes an order of magnitude less components.
I pretty much put the waterball as a yuppie green-toy and smug generator.
I figure that before that, you also still had substantial numbers of people with 'tough guts' that were used to the occasional dose of untreated water.
Given a nice clear stream, your average *healthy* adult will be able to drink just fine. They may or may not get the runs for a few days.
Getting back to the machine - I simply think that it's an overengineered special purpose device that's main purpose ends up being to increase the smug level of 'green' yuppies. Ultimately at this point it's a faux green item - the resources it consumes would provide far more potable water from other, more traditional, methods such as wells and distillers.
They really want a lot of water? Essentially energy free? Hook the secondary systems up to the home's AC unit.