Large solar plants do NOT use photovoltaic cells... They are far far too inefficient. What, 10-15%? 20% for rare specially selected panels.
Large solar plants are 30%+ efficient which means solar thermal, NOT photovoltaic. Solar thermal systems grab up to 80% of the energy coming in from the sun, then there's the heat->electricity conversion inefficiencies which reduce the overall to around 30%, still significantly better than the best photovoltaic panels.
There are a number of technologies, but mirrors and heat exchangers are pretty much a common theme.
Phones have to last for several days or even a week always on and without recharge, have to be easy to carry and easy to make and receive calls.
PDAs have to be easy to use, powerful, flexible, colour, large screens. When you add these features to phones, you lose the easy to carry and battery lifetime features of phones.
All of the smartphones i've seen have made poor PDAs and poor phones.
The roof area is about 6m^2 which should be able to produce 400-500 watts on a sunny day.
The on-board compressor however is 5kW and takes 3 hours to charge the air tank. So estimate around 30-40 hours to fill up in summer, say 40 hours, that's 1/4 of a tank per day. The range is 300km, so if you're doing less than 75km (45miles)/day you're laughing.
Something nobody mentioned about it. It does 0-60 in 7 seconds, with passengers[1]... Doesn't go any faster than 60 though.
Yes, Slashdot can now generate electricity, in fact it's been theorised that the UK parliament and US congress and senate along with slashdot could supply significant portions of each countries power needs!
All the reviews I've seen for the Zaurus machines focus primarily on the hardware, which is nice, but it's telling.
Telling because the stock applications are shite. The wordprocessor is shite, the spreadsheet is shite, the power point presenter is shite, the agenda is shite, the media player is shite and the todo list is shite.
Oh, I have an SL-5500, and a Psion, so I know what could have been done with the hardware spec of the Zaurus and some half decent developers.
It gets a low D from me. Could have done a fuck of a lot better.
It's definitely the easy option and it's fine for smallish self contained sites, but when you try to run your entire business off it, it gets very expensive.
You end up with a big server or two for redundancy at each site with the associated support costs, your information is not globally addressable or available which means you have to have separate information repositories at the sites further increasing the support requirements and reducing the coherence of your business.
Basically, though not ideal, AFS is the best that's available at the moment.
If you're just a single site or a couple of sites, stick to NFS, AFS is a pain to set up on a small scale, it definitely likes to be a big world spanning architecture.
Different banks in the UK are allowed to produce their own notes. It's especially noticable in Scotland where there are 3 banks allowed to print their own notes and, yes, you can still get a 1 pound note.
As a Scot, sometimes this is a pain, the further south you travel the more difficult it becomes to spend Scottish notes. They are strictly speaking, not even legal tender, they are simply accepted on the basis that the banks issuing them are trusted.
http://www.scotbanks.org.uk/notes.htm
On the whole, people pick up new notes fairly quickly.
I understand how they end up not taxing out of state residents, as far as the tax people are concerned, it's the purchaser who's paying the tax and it's only being collected by the vendor.
However, this drives up the complexity of sales systems and increases taxation for the smaller number of people who do have to pay the tax.
Change the tax so it's the vendor who pays the taxation, wherever they are, after all, they are using the public services in their particular state.
Then the tax is paid anyway, being spread over a greater number of people, no loopholes, reduced taxation complexity, lower costs.
"Enterprising"? He's a loser, as are the rest of the losers who voluntarily sit in cages in traffic for hours every day.
Somewhere around 1% of the readers of this will know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm happy for the other 99% of sheep to sit where they are and keep out of my way as I thoroughly enjoy my commute.
We're using it to create a highly available, highly scalable, easy to manage, high performance service broker system.
User says I want service blah, service broker manages where to run the blah application. You can kill loads of machines and the service continues to exist on the network.
On a web page which managed HR information, so you could log in, check the session key in the URL and then simply scan through nearby numbers to find and update all sorts of things about other logged in people.
'Twas a highly expensive piece of software as well...
Just start using open source systems in small, unimportant and easily replaceable places, mail relays, dns servers, the occasional web site, a small file server here or there.
The business people will become used to the systems sitting there, working 24/7, no fuss. They'll become comfortable with the systems over time and making more use of them won't scare them. Then when you need to make more use, you can point to the existing systems you have running and to RedHat or SuSE's support line.
They're discovering that the more promiscuous systems are, the more ubiquitous they become. Until Linux came along, MS was the slut of the bunch, easy to acquire hardware, easy to get hold of software and cheap software, easy to use.
No longer the case. Linux is now the biggest slut and like IBM with MCA, in order to control the market, MS will have to try to lock people into their systems. It has absolutely no chance of success, but they'll try anyway.
Basically, it's over, they've lost, they may not understand that yet though.
Cos anyone with any real experience uses remote displays regularly.
We use it for engineers, for secretaries, for managers, for salesmen, for janitors even, but it seems that script kiddies like you don't use it.
BTW, You wanna know why xterminals are still used and why the X protocol is more important today than it's ever been before? Nothing to do with hardware costs these days. It's because 1 administrator can manage hundreds or thousands of desktops, with ease. Wanna know what the single largest set of costs in I.T. are? Support. Those dozens of wintel administrators needed to manage the big iron mainframes under every desk.
Slashdot Mirror
Large solar plants do NOT use photovoltaic cells... They are far far too inefficient. What, 10-15%? 20% for rare specially selected panels.
Large solar plants are 30%+ efficient which means solar thermal, NOT photovoltaic. Solar thermal systems grab up to 80% of the energy coming in from the sun, then there's the heat->electricity conversion inefficiencies which reduce the overall to around 30%, still significantly better than the best photovoltaic panels.
There are a number of technologies, but mirrors and heat exchangers are pretty much a common theme.
Not only hasn't he tried FreeVo or MythTV, but he obviously hasn't tried anything which actually works like Tivo or ReplayTV.
"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
I mean, it really stinks as a PDA, I've got one[1]. Better use the Symbian Epoc OS.
Oh, wait, that's exactly what they're doing...
http://www.symbian.com/
Except Motorola of course, but then, look at the other decisions the Motorola management have been making over the last decade.
[1] There is one single piece of software that makes the Zaurus worth using and that's freeware which doesn't come built in; IQNotes.
Phones have to last for several days or even a week always on and without recharge, have to be easy to carry and easy to make and receive calls.
PDAs have to be easy to use, powerful, flexible, colour, large screens. When you add these features to phones, you lose the easy to carry and battery lifetime features of phones.
All of the smartphones i've seen have made poor PDAs and poor phones.
I just let xmms handle the queueing of music, in a thing called a "play list".
However, for real geekiness, you should be using gridengine to queue and distribute your mp3s.
The roof area is about 6m^2 which should be able to produce 400-500 watts on a sunny day.
The on-board compressor however is 5kW and takes 3 hours to charge the air tank. So estimate around 30-40 hours to fill up in summer, say 40 hours, that's 1/4 of a tank per day. The range is 300km, so if you're doing less than 75km (45miles)/day you're laughing.
Something nobody mentioned about it. It does 0-60 in 7 seconds, with passengers[1]... Doesn't go any faster than 60 though.
[1] http://www.carstreet.com/fullstory.asp?code=334
http://www.lanl.gov/mst/engine/
All you need is hot air.
Yes, Slashdot can now generate electricity, in fact it's been theorised that the UK parliament and US congress and senate along with slashdot could supply significant portions of each countries power needs!
It looks like a normal, electrically powered compressor. I'd stick a solar panel on the roof and it could charge itself up while it sits idly parked.
Interestingly these machines would also be exempt from the £1250pa ($2000pa) London congestion charge.
Technical problems are trivial to overcome compared to market inertia...
All the reviews I've seen for the Zaurus machines focus primarily on the hardware, which is nice, but it's telling.
Telling because the stock applications are shite. The wordprocessor is shite, the spreadsheet is shite, the power point presenter is shite, the agenda is shite, the media player is shite and the todo list is shite.
Oh, I have an SL-5500, and a Psion, so I know what could have been done with the hardware spec of the Zaurus and some half decent developers.
It gets a low D from me. Could have done a fuck of a lot better.
Of this post being moderated funny:
4 80 053
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=42669&cid=4
http://www.three.co.uk/
Sun sell *Star Office*:
0 /
http://wwws.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/6.
It costs $50 per user. It's *based* on Open Office, which is freely available from another source.
Oh, and the moderators are utter fuckwits for the insightful moderation. Too many morons with moderation points.
Just because you're a customer doesn't stop you being an idiot.
It's definitely the easy option and it's fine for smallish self contained sites, but when you try to run your entire business off it, it gets very expensive.
You end up with a big server or two for redundancy at each site with the associated support costs, your information is not globally addressable or available which means you have to have separate information repositories at the sites further increasing the support requirements and reducing the coherence of your business.
Basically, though not ideal, AFS is the best that's available at the moment.
If you're just a single site or a couple of sites, stick to NFS, AFS is a pain to set up on a small scale, it definitely likes to be a big world spanning architecture.
Different banks in the UK are allowed to produce their own notes. It's especially noticable in Scotland where there are 3 banks allowed to print their own notes and, yes, you can still get a 1 pound note.
s h.htm
Example:
http://www.thebanknotestore.com/briti
As a Scot, sometimes this is a pain, the further south you travel the more difficult it becomes to spend Scottish notes. They are strictly speaking, not even legal tender, they are simply accepted on the basis that the banks issuing them are trusted.
http://www.scotbanks.org.uk/notes.htm
On the whole, people pick up new notes fairly quickly.
I understand how they end up not taxing out of state residents, as far as the tax people are concerned, it's the purchaser who's paying the tax and it's only being collected by the vendor.
However, this drives up the complexity of sales systems and increases taxation for the smaller number of people who do have to pay the tax.
Change the tax so it's the vendor who pays the taxation, wherever they are, after all, they are using the public services in their particular state.
Then the tax is paid anyway, being spread over a greater number of people, no loopholes, reduced taxation complexity, lower costs.
"Enterprising"? He's a loser, as are the rest of the losers who voluntarily sit in cages in traffic for hours every day.
Somewhere around 1% of the readers of this will know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm happy for the other 99% of sheep to sit where they are and keep out of my way as I thoroughly enjoy my commute.
We're using it to create a highly available, highly scalable, easy to manage, high performance service broker system.
User says I want service blah, service broker manages where to run the blah application. You can kill loads of machines and the service continues to exist on the network.
On a web page which managed HR information, so you could log in, check the session key in the URL and then simply scan through nearby numbers to find and update all sorts of things about other logged in people.
'Twas a highly expensive piece of software as well...
http://www.motorola.com/mediacenter/news/detail/0, 1958,2349_1920_23,00.html
Just start using open source systems in small, unimportant and easily replaceable places, mail relays, dns servers, the occasional web site, a small file server here or there.
The business people will become used to the systems sitting there, working 24/7, no fuss. They'll become comfortable with the systems over time and making more use of them won't scare them. Then when you need to make more use, you can point to the existing systems you have running and to RedHat or SuSE's support line.
It reminds me of MCA too.
They're discovering that the more promiscuous systems are, the more ubiquitous they become. Until Linux came along, MS was the slut of the bunch, easy to acquire hardware, easy to get hold of software and cheap software, easy to use.
No longer the case. Linux is now the biggest slut and like IBM with MCA, in order to control the market, MS will have to try to lock people into their systems. It has absolutely no chance of success, but they'll try anyway.
Basically, it's over, they've lost, they may not understand that yet though.
Cos anyone with any real experience uses remote displays regularly.
We use it for engineers, for secretaries, for managers, for salesmen, for janitors even, but it seems that script kiddies like you don't use it.
BTW, You wanna know why xterminals are still used and why the X protocol is more important today than it's ever been before? Nothing to do with hardware costs these days. It's because 1 administrator can manage hundreds or thousands of desktops, with ease. Wanna know what the single largest set of costs in I.T. are? Support. Those dozens of wintel administrators needed to manage the big iron mainframes under every desk.
Face it, you're a moron.
Buy from someone else.