I AM an american, and all things aside, I don't really have a problem with a proper national ID system.
All this paranoia about IDs and numbers and such, I have to ask:
1. How many people over the age of 16 or so DON'T have a driver's license or state issued ID card? Heck, even students are getting them today in the form of school IDs. I was issued one in HS, never used it other than to get discounts at a few stores that had discounts for students. I had one for college. I have one for my job.
The problem with using the SSN is that it was never designed to be an ID. There just aren't safeguards on it. By law it WASN'T to be used for all the stuff we use it for today. We'd be better off issuing seperate ID numbers for stuff like credit reports - consisting of the two digit state abbreviation then a set of characters determined by the state. Put it on the ID card. Then, for non-face transactions, have a PIN in place to prove it's yours. To reset the PIN, you'd have to go to the appropriate office that would verify your identity.
people aren't willing to accept the economic and aesthetic costs of providing those services at the level of reliability you and the author are demanding.
I have to agree.
I've stated before 'Every 9 of reliability increases the cost 10 fold'. Now, this is only the vaguest estimate, with vast numbers of variables, unseen incidents, competency, etc...
Take a car that's 90% reliable. It'd be used, of course, and probably cost you only $100-500. You can get a car that's 99% reliable for $1-5k. 99.9% reliability would be getting into needing a new car(or newer used), costing $10-40k. This, of course, discounts getting a lemon.
Now, when it comes to phone service it's reliability comes from that stuff has been done for so long that the extra reliability doesn't actually cost 10X, plus the base '90%' is so cheap that upping it to 99.9% isn't very expensive.
I think that the most relevant scenario is where you're one of a half dozen 'good' candidates where they're bothering to perform more extensive checks. You're still at the stage where any little thing can cost you the job(though it's still not guarenteed).
Still, showing up dead is less scary than the private investigation company I've heard about - they work a lot like the credit institutions, but for more general background information. Previous addresses, criminal records, even travel sometimes.
The really scary part is that per contractual terms, you're not to SEE your own information, thus having no opportunity to correct incorrect information. From what I've heard, they're also about as accurate as credit reports would be with no checking for accuracy. Even if you DO get the report, you'd be hard pressed to get them to correct it, and be looking at a complex (and expensive) legal case to sue them.
One guy managed to get his record in violation of the contractual terms - to find out that he was misidentified as a felon because he'd become cross-linked with a criminal with a similar(but not the same) last names, and a flight risk because he has a passport and flown to a different country(it was a business trip). He figured that this probably cost him at least one job, as he works in a security conscious field, and many companies use the service, perhaps without realizing it's inherent inaccuracy, or perhaps not caring. Easier to just throw out 10% of the good apples with the bad, after all, you only need one.
Along those lines I figure that the science types REALLY pulled the wool over the creationist types by 'allowing' the theory part to be put into the wording.
Simply use the scientific definition of theory - IE an explanation that fits known facts. Evolution is currently a core theory for the present state of life - but life is a dirty, messy affair that makes Einstein's theory of gravity simple.
Theory DOESN'T mean that it's untrue, false, etc... Simply that it's not 100% proven yet.
Because such a company is smart enough to charge just below what it would cost to do such a move.
Think about it. Even if it only costs 1 cent per check to avoid the scanning, there are billions of checks written each year. The number might be dropping, but the forced $1B purchase would still be far cheaper than switching back.
Though if this is a true submarine patent I think that they should lose it and get nothing but lawyer bills for their trouble.
Of course, I think that about submarine patents in general.
Of course, my personal thoughts on a submarine patent is one from a company with no product using that patent that doesn't attempt to enforce the patent until it becomes at least some level of industry standard practice.
Good point. I should have said battery tech, not energy storage.
Though current flywheel systems are only suitable for non-mobile larger applications at this time.
There are a number of energy storage systems in use on the power grid today, it's just that most of them take advantage of various geographical features to make their installation far cheaper than it would be if you were simply picking a more or less random piece of more or less flat land.
Seriously, at least in the USA 'efficient' and 'government' doesn't go together. Perhaps unfortunately.
On the point of public transport powered by right now theoretical/prototype stage tidal/oceanic power, the only thing I can think of would be that it'd be electric, thus electric rail, leading me to think that a PRT system would be your best bet, at least for near universal coverage. You'd still have vehicles and roads for special purposes. Though heck, I can picture ATV type ambulances and firetrucks, as if you get it universal enough, you might stop maintaining PAVED roads. Removing much of the pavement in cities would help mitigate much of the heat zone effect today's cities currently have.
Don't get me wrong, I'd LOVE to see PRT go into a city, starting with the 'downtown' and spreading to common areas - like fringe malls. I'm just saying that it wouldn't be FREE. Somebody, most likely a LOT of somebodies, would end up paying for it. It might be a better solution than cars, but I'm not going to pretend that anything is without cost.
As for healthcare, I think that a better solution to many of our current problems would be an ending of the subsidies that encourage corn syrup as the near-universal sweetener, combined with a return to healthcare insurance purchased by individuals where the individual, on average, pays* for his or her own healthcare until it reaches the critical level of their deductible. That would actually simplify billing, reducing many costs.
Of course, the way I picture it, I'd have it be something like this: Individual pays for the first thousand or so of their healthcare. Then the insurance company picks it up, until the cost of the healthcare exceeds certain caps - something like $100k in five years or so, at which point the person would be considered disabled** and the government would pick up the tab.
For the 'universal' system, IE those that fail to qualify for more coverage under government plans due to poverty or disability or whatever, I'd deliberately keep it cheap and sucky, with the idea that people get the idea that they SHOULD have coverage. With a large deductible the insurance shouldn't cost much anyways.
Compared to Canada, healthcare is not hard to obtain in the USA, it's just too expensive because of red tape.
*price preferably negotiated beforehand for any services **Yes, even if they can work, I'm sure a different term could be used, like 'critical healthcare requirements'.
If you graph out by weight, lead acid is still far cheaper per kwh of storage than any other technology. Nickel's rise in cost doesn't help.
For a land installation, you don't care about weight as much as cost. Pounds saved can justify the extra expense in mobile applications such as electric vehicles. Then again, the even lighter weight for LiIon batteries combined with their dropping costs are putting pressure on NiMH.
Though I think that NiMH becomes superior to Lead acid at a closer price point due to improved discharge performance and longevity compared to even deep cycle lead acid.
As you note, there are some tidal stations already - but the current technology in use for them requires some very specific conditions that are incompatible with good ports - which is the core of most large cities on the coast. So there is a lack of good installation sites - the correct tidal range, a place close enough with demand for the power, no overriding environmental concerns, etc...
Other solutions have to go out in the water, be very large and survive wild weather.
Thus the 'not perfected yet'. Given the GP's talking about powering entire coastlines with oceanic power, I was picturing essentially open-field tidal power - the ability to economically emplace systems pretty much anywhere along the coastlines.
Now, I don't see 1 system being universal by any means, so various systems would have to be considered, depending upon actual conditions like weather, average tidal heights, water depth, etc...
By 'perfected' I was talking about 'ready for widespread commercial use'. In the context of my reply, this would be the ability to put in enough oceanic power stations to power both coastlines, including some rather large cities, at a realistic cost and without disrupting currents, shipping, fish*, causing pollution, etc...
I'll admit that you're right about the possibilities of using various other sources of energy in the ocean, I used 'tidal power' as the most commonly proposed and relatively speaking, the most developed.
Yes, there are a _few_ tidal power stations - but at this point they all utilize rather rare geographical features like a bay to reduce costs. The problem with those systems is that it can't be an active bay, or at least a very active bay - the techniques for the systems I've seen end up being a sort of dam across the mouth of the bay - not conductive if it's a shipping port.
Conspiracy theories aside - remember, if solar/wind/tidal was REALLY more economical than the 'dirty' alternatives, the greedy energy barons would be moving to it left and right. Instead, it consistently needs massive subsidies for construction to proceed.
*Going by oil rigs(fish LOVE them), shouldn't be a problem, but still needs to be considered.
As others have noted - the pyramids are a static structure, and in a more or less dry climate to boot. Expecting mechanical devices to operate in the sea over a similar time period is crazy.
Power generation through water has been working for ages, and it's not a difficult concept to get right.
Sure, in the form of dams and such. I mentioned TIDAL power though, and while the concept is easy, as others have noted, dumping any mechanical objects into the sea poses huge obstacles in the form of corrosion from salt water and spray.
But if you built it right, it could last for generations without need for fuel, and drive light rail systems day and night without significant investment of human effort.
Generations without need for fuel, maybe. Maintenance? No way. It's like the current generation of home-brew electric cars. The depreciation and aging of the batteries actually exceed the cost of electricity to power the vehicle over the life of the batteries. Matter of fact, it's often HIGHER than the raw cost of gasoline for a relatively fuel efficient vehicle.
Computing power has proven to be really easy. Battery cost and capabilities not so much. Material science, not so much. Matter of fact, most things have proven to be more difficult than was anticipated in the past EXCEPT for computing and farming.
You bring up a fact that just struck me as odd. Why aren't we doing something to store electricity?
Actually, we're doing quite a bit, and behind the scenes, have been for years.
Look at lithium ion batteries. Those are relatively new, but still too expensive. There's been work on higher density high efficiency flywheels. There's ideas with compressed air and underground caverns. Heck, hydroelectric dams were a traditional source of power moderation. Sure, a dam can only produce so many kwh depending on the level of rainfall and collection behind the dam, but it can release water to power turbines as necessary. Though that's been limited far more today by the requirements to keep level rivers downstream, water for fish to spawn and such.
By at least some measures, hydroelectric dams are one of the MOST environmentally damaging methods to generate power - maybe not in air quality, but in generating artificial lakes and changing rivers.
And it all comes down to cost - tidal power hasn't become common because, like many others have stated, the sea presents some rather severe maintenance and sealing issues. Ships regularly have to be hauled in to be refurbished, repainted, sacrificial anodes replaced, etc... So it costs more. Same with solar power, even wind power is only going in in most areas due to relatively massive subsidies.
Even storage methods aren't perfect - you put power in, but only get out 90% of what went in, if you're lucky. So a 10 cent kwh becomes a 11 cent kwh, before you consider the costs of building the power storage system. Which generally isn't cheap.
There's no reason we couldn't have transportation systems that run off local ocean driven power generation for all our costal cities
Quite a few reasons actually, for one tidal power generation systems haven't been perfected yet.
and make local personal transportation free of charge and free of pollution.
Free of pollution? Maybe so, but certainly NOT free of charge - you'd end up paying for it somehow, whether it's a per ride charge or a subscription service or out of your taxes depends, but just like 'free' healthcare in nations with nationalized healthcare services, you still end up paying for it.
Resources have pretty much always been in 'short supply', it's just that as we gain methods to extract more resources, so doesn't our desires to do stuff to exploit them.
Imagine the packs of feral, unemployed lawyers roaming the streets attacking innocents. Step 1: Open a limited hunting season Step 2: Open a general hunting season Step 3: General bounty Step 4: Hire professional hunters for extreme or dangerous areas.
Personally, given the urban nature of feral lawyers I'd propose at least an initial hunting season be limited to experienced bow hunters.
Working in a data center in ND, we had the AC fail - in the middle of winter. It was hilarious to see all the doors open (we had no windows), complete with fans - it was STILL hot in that room when it was -30 out.
I'm not 100% sure, but in wintertime the cooling systems operate in a different mode - basically just running water(with antifreeze in it) outside to cool off before heading back to the air handlers.
I can see lots of places going geothermal, but at least further north it might not be worth it - a heatpump gets VERY efficient when you're trying to dump heat into freezing weather. The loss of performance in summer might not outweigh the additional costs.
From my reading, geothermal installations normally depend at least on somewhat balanced heat sinking/drawing - you draw heat out in the winter, dump it in in the summer. For a 100% cooling solution, you'd probably need to increase the length/amount of the runs, increasing costs.
Then again, maybe a combined system - dump heat underground in the summer, then outside in cooler periods. For a massive installation it might be worth it. Or at least set it up so that the heat gets dumped into other buildings or areas that normally need heating.
The fact that the kid gave him $10 and not the $100 noted on the sales receipt would not change what the drawer is supposed to total at the end of his shift.
The problem is that even discounting that we have fully operational shuttles and aren't building any more, that they STILL cost more per pound of cargo launched into orbit than straight rocket systems.
That's why I support retiring them as soon as possible. There are many explanations as to why the shuttle is the way it is, from military distorting the demand requirements, wanting to do too much, design compromises to reduce initial construction/development costs, etc...
I'm sure that there are technologies in the shuttle that WOULD be very useful to the Chinese, though. There's the life support systems, power systems, etc...
The protocol also needs to be capable of handling machines appearing and disappearing randomly.
No doubt, that's part of why I specified such massive redundancy.
You'd need something like a trackerless bittorrent filesystem with an SNMP agent.
Good point. We should have enough knowledge now to have each computer act as a part of the tracking system - added complexity, but not necessarily a bad thing.
Don't forget that at those sizes, a.45 is nearly 30% larger in diameter, and has far more mass. A 9mm will normally have a 124 grain bullet with a velocity of 1150 ft/s, 364 foot-pounds of energy. A.45 can be shooting 230 grain rounds at 900ft/s for 414 ft-lbs of energy.
Despite all this, I think that when it comes down to the army, it's mostly because of ammunition selection. Troops are issued non-expanding FMJ ammunition, which leads to 9mm over penetrating and under performing. The 1911, chambered in.45 was designed for FMJ ammunition from the outset. The larger and slower.45 round will use more of it's energy in a body, causing more damage. A 9mm HP will out stop a.45FMJ - but US soldiers are forbidden expanding ammunition. A.45HP will stop more often than a.45FMJ, but the difference is nowhere near as large as the difference between a 9mm HP & FMJ.
As for the rifle comment, I have to agree. Consider the 'poodle-shooter', the.223/5.56 round our military uses in most of it's rifles. 1300 ft-pds of energy in a 60-70 grain bullet traveling at over 3k ft/s. Sufficient velocity that the round will often fragment when it strikes a target.
Besides, with hard disks these days being as cheap as they are, why not just buy another one if you do need more space? Do you even need more space? Or is this just trying to salvage something you can't really use in order to create a solution for a problem that doesn't really exist?
Let's say 50GB, on average, is free on each computer. We want some fairly hefty redundancy, so let's knock it down to 10GB of storage per machine.
Spanned across 1000 work machines - that's 10 Terabytes of storage, with 4X or so redundancy.
As long as you don't go replacing huge numbers of machines at once, of course.
As a bonus, assuming that each client machine has some software to allow it to 'serve' the files directly - you've just decentralized your file sharing. Having that 10GB pipe in your data center is no longer as crucial, the central server simply tells the machine off the requestor's own switch to serve it.
I'm not going to say that it's ultimately useful, or that the benefits would outweigh the risks, but it IS an interesting proposal.
And, as you know there's a place that'll buy them for $4, why haven't you picked them up?
With an electric or even a hybrid, though, you're talking about many times the battery power/weight of today's car batteries, that already aren't very light.
We're talking weights and sizes sufficient to make a crane a very possible need.
What's wrong with the censorship on slashdot? I mean, it only takes a moment to find all the -1 comments, and people who don't want to read comments about goatsx and worse don't generally have to because mods promptly slam them down to -1.
There's a world of difference between the government, for an example, banning a piece of literature, and a privately owned forum deciding to have a system of censorship on it's forum to keep the noise down.
If you don't like Slashdot's rules, you're free to go elsewhere. If a book company refuses to print your books, you can always go somewhere else or even buy your own printing press if you're dedicated enough.
Just because the government is forbidden from preventing you from saying your piece doesn't mean that it or anybody else has to provide you a soapbox if they don't want to.
Remember, Karma has a cap and once you reach it, you can lose a few points and still stay excellent - so my karma stays at 'excellent' desipite the occasional downmod. And some of my posts have been the subjects of mod-wars(lots of ups and downs).
So I'll stay at excellent as long as my upmods equal my downmods. Which is generally quite easy as I try for reasonable discourse.
Sure - you might get funny a lot(which doesn't count), but as long as you aren't being labled as a troll/flamebait more than you get other mods, you'll stay there as well.
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I AM an american, and all things aside, I don't really have a problem with a proper national ID system.
All this paranoia about IDs and numbers and such, I have to ask:
1. How many people over the age of 16 or so DON'T have a driver's license or state issued ID card? Heck, even students are getting them today in the form of school IDs. I was issued one in HS, never used it other than to get discounts at a few stores that had discounts for students. I had one for college. I have one for my job.
The problem with using the SSN is that it was never designed to be an ID. There just aren't safeguards on it. By law it WASN'T to be used for all the stuff we use it for today. We'd be better off issuing seperate ID numbers for stuff like credit reports - consisting of the two digit state abbreviation then a set of characters determined by the state. Put it on the ID card. Then, for non-face transactions, have a PIN in place to prove it's yours. To reset the PIN, you'd have to go to the appropriate office that would verify your identity.
people aren't willing to accept the economic and aesthetic costs of providing those services at the level of reliability you and the author are demanding.
I have to agree.
I've stated before 'Every 9 of reliability increases the cost 10 fold'. Now, this is only the vaguest estimate, with vast numbers of variables, unseen incidents, competency, etc...
Take a car that's 90% reliable. It'd be used, of course, and probably cost you only $100-500. You can get a car that's 99% reliable for $1-5k. 99.9% reliability would be getting into needing a new car(or newer used), costing $10-40k. This, of course, discounts getting a lemon.
Now, when it comes to phone service it's reliability comes from that stuff has been done for so long that the extra reliability doesn't actually cost 10X, plus the base '90%' is so cheap that upping it to 99.9% isn't very expensive.
I think that the most relevant scenario is where you're one of a half dozen 'good' candidates where they're bothering to perform more extensive checks. You're still at the stage where any little thing can cost you the job(though it's still not guarenteed).
Still, showing up dead is less scary than the private investigation company I've heard about - they work a lot like the credit institutions, but for more general background information. Previous addresses, criminal records, even travel sometimes.
The really scary part is that per contractual terms, you're not to SEE your own information, thus having no opportunity to correct incorrect information. From what I've heard, they're also about as accurate as credit reports would be with no checking for accuracy. Even if you DO get the report, you'd be hard pressed to get them to correct it, and be looking at a complex (and expensive) legal case to sue them.
One guy managed to get his record in violation of the contractual terms - to find out that he was misidentified as a felon because he'd become cross-linked with a criminal with a similar(but not the same) last names, and a flight risk because he has a passport and flown to a different country(it was a business trip). He figured that this probably cost him at least one job, as he works in a security conscious field, and many companies use the service, perhaps without realizing it's inherent inaccuracy, or perhaps not caring. Easier to just throw out 10% of the good apples with the bad, after all, you only need one.
Along those lines I figure that the science types REALLY pulled the wool over the creationist types by 'allowing' the theory part to be put into the wording.
Simply use the scientific definition of theory - IE an explanation that fits known facts. Evolution is currently a core theory for the present state of life - but life is a dirty, messy affair that makes Einstein's theory of gravity simple.
Theory DOESN'T mean that it's untrue, false, etc... Simply that it's not 100% proven yet.
Because such a company is smart enough to charge just below what it would cost to do such a move.
Think about it. Even if it only costs 1 cent per check to avoid the scanning, there are billions of checks written each year. The number might be dropping, but the forced $1B purchase would still be far cheaper than switching back.
Though if this is a true submarine patent I think that they should lose it and get nothing but lawyer bills for their trouble.
Of course, I think that about submarine patents in general.
Of course, my personal thoughts on a submarine patent is one from a company with no product using that patent that doesn't attempt to enforce the patent until it becomes at least some level of industry standard practice.
Good point. I should have said battery tech, not energy storage.
Though current flywheel systems are only suitable for non-mobile larger applications at this time.
There are a number of energy storage systems in use on the power grid today, it's just that most of them take advantage of various geographical features to make their installation far cheaper than it would be if you were simply picking a more or less random piece of more or less flat land.
when a government is working efficiently
;)
Ah, when hell freezes over and pigs fly, right?
Seriously, at least in the USA 'efficient' and 'government' doesn't go together. Perhaps unfortunately.
On the point of public transport powered by right now theoretical/prototype stage tidal/oceanic power, the only thing I can think of would be that it'd be electric, thus electric rail, leading me to think that a PRT system would be your best bet, at least for near universal coverage. You'd still have vehicles and roads for special purposes. Though heck, I can picture ATV type ambulances and firetrucks, as if you get it universal enough, you might stop maintaining PAVED roads. Removing much of the pavement in cities would help mitigate much of the heat zone effect today's cities currently have.
Don't get me wrong, I'd LOVE to see PRT go into a city, starting with the 'downtown' and spreading to common areas - like fringe malls. I'm just saying that it wouldn't be FREE. Somebody, most likely a LOT of somebodies, would end up paying for it. It might be a better solution than cars, but I'm not going to pretend that anything is without cost.
As for healthcare, I think that a better solution to many of our current problems would be an ending of the subsidies that encourage corn syrup as the near-universal sweetener, combined with a return to healthcare insurance purchased by individuals where the individual, on average, pays* for his or her own healthcare until it reaches the critical level of their deductible. That would actually simplify billing, reducing many costs.
Of course, the way I picture it, I'd have it be something like this: Individual pays for the first thousand or so of their healthcare. Then the insurance company picks it up, until the cost of the healthcare exceeds certain caps - something like $100k in five years or so, at which point the person would be considered disabled** and the government would pick up the tab.
For the 'universal' system, IE those that fail to qualify for more coverage under government plans due to poverty or disability or whatever, I'd deliberately keep it cheap and sucky, with the idea that people get the idea that they SHOULD have coverage. With a large deductible the insurance shouldn't cost much anyways.
Compared to Canada, healthcare is not hard to obtain in the USA, it's just too expensive because of red tape.
*price preferably negotiated beforehand for any services
**Yes, even if they can work, I'm sure a different term could be used, like 'critical healthcare requirements'.
If you graph out by weight, lead acid is still far cheaper per kwh of storage than any other technology. Nickel's rise in cost doesn't help.
For a land installation, you don't care about weight as much as cost. Pounds saved can justify the extra expense in mobile applications such as electric vehicles. Then again, the even lighter weight for LiIon batteries combined with their dropping costs are putting pressure on NiMH.
Though I think that NiMH becomes superior to Lead acid at a closer price point due to improved discharge performance and longevity compared to even deep cycle lead acid.
As you note, there are some tidal stations already - but the current technology in use for them requires some very specific conditions that are incompatible with good ports - which is the core of most large cities on the coast. So there is a lack of good installation sites - the correct tidal range, a place close enough with demand for the power, no overriding environmental concerns, etc...
Other solutions have to go out in the water, be very large and survive wild weather.
Thus the 'not perfected yet'. Given the GP's talking about powering entire coastlines with oceanic power, I was picturing essentially open-field tidal power - the ability to economically emplace systems pretty much anywhere along the coastlines.
Now, I don't see 1 system being universal by any means, so various systems would have to be considered, depending upon actual conditions like weather, average tidal heights, water depth, etc...
By 'perfected' I was talking about 'ready for widespread commercial use'. In the context of my reply, this would be the ability to put in enough oceanic power stations to power both coastlines, including some rather large cities, at a realistic cost and without disrupting currents, shipping, fish*, causing pollution, etc...
I'll admit that you're right about the possibilities of using various other sources of energy in the ocean, I used 'tidal power' as the most commonly proposed and relatively speaking, the most developed.
Yes, there are a _few_ tidal power stations - but at this point they all utilize rather rare geographical features like a bay to reduce costs. The problem with those systems is that it can't be an active bay, or at least a very active bay - the techniques for the systems I've seen end up being a sort of dam across the mouth of the bay - not conductive if it's a shipping port.
Conspiracy theories aside - remember, if solar/wind/tidal was REALLY more economical than the 'dirty' alternatives, the greedy energy barons would be moving to it left and right. Instead, it consistently needs massive subsidies for construction to proceed.
*Going by oil rigs(fish LOVE them), shouldn't be a problem, but still needs to be considered.
As others have noted - the pyramids are a static structure, and in a more or less dry climate to boot. Expecting mechanical devices to operate in the sea over a similar time period is crazy.
Power generation through water has been working for ages, and it's not a difficult concept to get right.
Sure, in the form of dams and such. I mentioned TIDAL power though, and while the concept is easy, as others have noted, dumping any mechanical objects into the sea poses huge obstacles in the form of corrosion from salt water and spray.
But if you built it right, it could last for generations without need for fuel, and drive light rail systems day and night without significant investment of human effort.
Generations without need for fuel, maybe. Maintenance? No way. It's like the current generation of home-brew electric cars. The depreciation and aging of the batteries actually exceed the cost of electricity to power the vehicle over the life of the batteries. Matter of fact, it's often HIGHER than the raw cost of gasoline for a relatively fuel efficient vehicle.
Computing power has proven to be really easy. Battery cost and capabilities not so much. Material science, not so much. Matter of fact, most things have proven to be more difficult than was anticipated in the past EXCEPT for computing and farming.
You bring up a fact that just struck me as odd. Why aren't we doing something to store electricity?
Actually, we're doing quite a bit, and behind the scenes, have been for years.
Look at lithium ion batteries. Those are relatively new, but still too expensive. There's been work on higher density high efficiency flywheels. There's ideas with compressed air and underground caverns. Heck, hydroelectric dams were a traditional source of power moderation. Sure, a dam can only produce so many kwh depending on the level of rainfall and collection behind the dam, but it can release water to power turbines as necessary. Though that's been limited far more today by the requirements to keep level rivers downstream, water for fish to spawn and such.
By at least some measures, hydroelectric dams are one of the MOST environmentally damaging methods to generate power - maybe not in air quality, but in generating artificial lakes and changing rivers.
And it all comes down to cost - tidal power hasn't become common because, like many others have stated, the sea presents some rather severe maintenance and sealing issues. Ships regularly have to be hauled in to be refurbished, repainted, sacrificial anodes replaced, etc... So it costs more. Same with solar power, even wind power is only going in in most areas due to relatively massive subsidies.
Even storage methods aren't perfect - you put power in, but only get out 90% of what went in, if you're lucky. So a 10 cent kwh becomes a 11 cent kwh, before you consider the costs of building the power storage system. Which generally isn't cheap.
There's no reason we couldn't have transportation systems that run off local ocean driven power generation for all our costal cities
Quite a few reasons actually, for one tidal power generation systems haven't been perfected yet.
and make local personal transportation free of charge and free of pollution.
Free of pollution? Maybe so, but certainly NOT free of charge - you'd end up paying for it somehow, whether it's a per ride charge or a subscription service or out of your taxes depends, but just like 'free' healthcare in nations with nationalized healthcare services, you still end up paying for it.
Resources have pretty much always been in 'short supply', it's just that as we gain methods to extract more resources, so doesn't our desires to do stuff to exploit them.
Imagine the packs of feral, unemployed lawyers roaming the streets attacking innocents.
Step 1: Open a limited hunting season
Step 2: Open a general hunting season
Step 3: General bounty
Step 4: Hire professional hunters for extreme or dangerous areas.
Personally, given the urban nature of feral lawyers I'd propose at least an initial hunting season be limited to experienced bow hunters.
Working in a data center in ND, we had the AC fail - in the middle of winter. It was hilarious to see all the doors open (we had no windows), complete with fans - it was STILL hot in that room when it was -30 out.
I'm not 100% sure, but in wintertime the cooling systems operate in a different mode - basically just running water(with antifreeze in it) outside to cool off before heading back to the air handlers.
I can see lots of places going geothermal, but at least further north it might not be worth it - a heatpump gets VERY efficient when you're trying to dump heat into freezing weather. The loss of performance in summer might not outweigh the additional costs.
From my reading, geothermal installations normally depend at least on somewhat balanced heat sinking/drawing - you draw heat out in the winter, dump it in in the summer. For a 100% cooling solution, you'd probably need to increase the length/amount of the runs, increasing costs.
Then again, maybe a combined system - dump heat underground in the summer, then outside in cooler periods. For a massive installation it might be worth it. Or at least set it up so that the heat gets dumped into other buildings or areas that normally need heating.
Wouldn't work with a cash transaction.
The fact that the kid gave him $10 and not the $100 noted on the sales receipt would not change what the drawer is supposed to total at the end of his shift.
X+10 = X + 100 -90.
The problem is that even discounting that we have fully operational shuttles and aren't building any more, that they STILL cost more per pound of cargo launched into orbit than straight rocket systems.
That's why I support retiring them as soon as possible. There are many explanations as to why the shuttle is the way it is, from military distorting the demand requirements, wanting to do too much, design compromises to reduce initial construction/development costs, etc...
I'm sure that there are technologies in the shuttle that WOULD be very useful to the Chinese, though. There's the life support systems, power systems, etc...
The protocol also needs to be capable of handling machines appearing and disappearing randomly.
No doubt, that's part of why I specified such massive redundancy.
You'd need something like a trackerless bittorrent filesystem with an SNMP agent.
Good point. We should have enough knowledge now to have each computer act as a part of the tracking system - added complexity, but not necessarily a bad thing.
Don't forget that at those sizes, a .45 is nearly 30% larger in diameter, and has far more mass. A 9mm will normally have a 124 grain bullet with a velocity of 1150 ft/s, 364 foot-pounds of energy. A .45 can be shooting 230 grain rounds at 900ft/s for 414 ft-lbs of energy.
.45 was designed for FMJ ammunition from the outset. The larger and slower .45 round will use more of it's energy in a body, causing more damage. A 9mm HP will out stop a .45FMJ - but US soldiers are forbidden expanding ammunition. A .45HP will stop more often than a .45FMJ, but the difference is nowhere near as large as the difference between a 9mm HP & FMJ.
.223/5.56 round our military uses in most of it's rifles. 1300 ft-pds of energy in a 60-70 grain bullet traveling at over 3k ft/s. Sufficient velocity that the round will often fragment when it strikes a target.
Despite all this, I think that when it comes down to the army, it's mostly because of ammunition selection. Troops are issued non-expanding FMJ ammunition, which leads to 9mm over penetrating and under performing. The 1911, chambered in
As for the rifle comment, I have to agree. Consider the 'poodle-shooter', the
Nahhh...
Remember, pistol rounds are pistol rounds, and rifle rounds are rifle rounds.
Next time he should test it with pretty much any centerfire rifle.
Besides, with hard disks these days being as cheap as they are, why not just buy another one if you do need more space? Do you even need more space? Or is this just trying to salvage something you can't really use in order to create a solution for a problem that doesn't really exist?
Let's say 50GB, on average, is free on each computer. We want some fairly hefty redundancy, so let's knock it down to 10GB of storage per machine.
Spanned across 1000 work machines - that's 10 Terabytes of storage, with 4X or so redundancy.
As long as you don't go replacing huge numbers of machines at once, of course.
As a bonus, assuming that each client machine has some software to allow it to 'serve' the files directly - you've just decentralized your file sharing. Having that 10GB pipe in your data center is no longer as crucial, the central server simply tells the machine off the requestor's own switch to serve it.
I'm not going to say that it's ultimately useful, or that the benefits would outweigh the risks, but it IS an interesting proposal.
Not around here they aren't.
And, as you know there's a place that'll buy them for $4, why haven't you picked them up?
With an electric or even a hybrid, though, you're talking about many times the battery power/weight of today's car batteries, that already aren't very light.
We're talking weights and sizes sufficient to make a crane a very possible need.
The attempt to legitimise your censorship
What's wrong with the censorship on slashdot? I mean, it only takes a moment to find all the -1 comments, and people who don't want to read comments about goatsx and worse don't generally have to because mods promptly slam them down to -1.
There's a world of difference between the government, for an example, banning a piece of literature, and a privately owned forum deciding to have a system of censorship on it's forum to keep the noise down.
If you don't like Slashdot's rules, you're free to go elsewhere. If a book company refuses to print your books, you can always go somewhere else or even buy your own printing press if you're dedicated enough.
Just because the government is forbidden from preventing you from saying your piece doesn't mean that it or anybody else has to provide you a soapbox if they don't want to.
Remember, Karma has a cap and once you reach it, you can lose a few points and still stay excellent - so my karma stays at 'excellent' desipite the occasional downmod. And some of my posts have been the subjects of mod-wars(lots of ups and downs).
So I'll stay at excellent as long as my upmods equal my downmods. Which is generally quite easy as I try for reasonable discourse.
Sure - you might get funny a lot(which doesn't count), but as long as you aren't being labled as a troll/flamebait more than you get other mods, you'll stay there as well.
Presumably they keep the F & F candies in the factories for breeding purposes. You only need so many studs.