You may have the impression that concrete is a modern material. It isn't.
The Romans used concrete extensively, there are a number of several hundred year old concrete buildings.
How long it lasts is down to the building design. Fundamentally, it has to be flexible and low cost to run. People pull down buildings because they become expensive to operate and difficult to use.
Makes more sense than fully electric/battery or a pure hydrogen fuel cell car.
You have the benefit of making use of the existing fuel infrastructure and storage isn't a problem, at the pump or in the car. It takes no longer to fill up/charge than it does at the moment for internal combustion powered vehicles.
It can be manufactured from biomass, fossil fuel or even directly from the CO2 in the air plus water if you're willing to put enough energy in.
Most of the reformers which can convert methanol can also convert existing fossil fuels as well, so you can fill up at any fuel station. Not that there aren't issues with using existing fossil fuels.
You get better efficiency out of solar/thermal panels, they generate heat and can generate electricity as well if you happen to have a stirling generator.
Thing is, they're much much easier and cheaper to make than photovoltaics. I know one guy who made solar/thermal panels out of some old central heating radiators which were being thrown away, painted them black, put them in a double glazed glass cabinet made out of an old greenhouse.
They're physically quite large compared to the commercially available panels but he gets about 2kW of heat out of them. The hot water they produce is far too hot to touch on a hot day and merely painfully hot on cloudy days (in the UK no less). He reckons they cost £45 all in for the paint, solder, copper piping and pump.
SCO must have it in their list of patents, presumably they've also mentioned which patent is being infringed in their lawsuit, isn't that publicly available information?
My regular mailbox has 0 spam mails. My spamprobe account has 756 spam mails.
If everyone simply filtered it out of the way and didn't read it, spam would go away. The only conclusion I can come to on this is that those who do receive spam are people who want to receive spam.
We've two sites, 2.5km apart with line of sight, right on the very very edge of the European legal limits for 802.11b wireless. Currently 2Mbps land line.
Or, how to take over the whole world without firing a shot.
First, you put in place agreements with the rest of the world to enforce each other's "intellectual property rights".
Then you let anybody in your country patent anything they damned well please, trivial, with prior art or not. Then the rest of the world is yours for the taking.
The US patent office has horribly debased it's credibility.
Has a much much higher efficiency for electricity production than photovoltaics. If you also combine heat and electricity production you have very some efficient systems. They are far more also viable in the UK where the current crop of photovoltaics are less so.
The solar thermal technologies are also significantly cheaper.
Stirling engines aren't used for automotive purposes, not because they are slow or can't generate power. If they are designed right, they can throw out high revs and plenty of power.
The problem is they are not very good where the load on the engine will be rapidly varying. They don't accelerate quickly. Like severe turbo lag.
I have several identities, here on Slashdot. This is but one. I have fans[1] who are foes of my other identities and vice versa. I have many accounts I use for different purposes on Usenet.
My "official" email address, the one I give to people who matter, never reaches google. It doesn't exist as far as usenet is concerned. You need more than just a pinch of salt if you're using Google to research individuals.
[1] Just how stupid is that? fans and foes... Ya gotta laugh.
We're putting a middle layer of login systems in this year, as a user environment and it's a toss up between Linux/Gnome on ix86 and Solaris/Gnome on sparc. There's not much in it in price. Other things will decide it.
People are not using solar panels not because they are ugly or have nowhere to put them. They are not using solar panels because they are very expensive for the amount of power they produce.
These on the other hand are 80+% efficient, cheaper than a photovoltaic array and work well in cloudy conditions: http://www.thermomax.co.uk/
Slashdot Mirror
The results so far? Phfft. More energy in than out.
Cos they're distributing Linux on a device, as far as I remember according to the GPL the person receiving the Linux system has the right to the code.
You may have the impression that concrete is a modern material. It isn't.
The Romans used concrete extensively, there are a number of several hundred year old concrete buildings.
How long it lasts is down to the building design. Fundamentally, it has to be flexible and low cost to run. People pull down buildings because they become expensive to operate and difficult to use.
Looks like I'll be putting Sun boxes in instead. And I don't particularly like Sun boxes.
Cheaper. Who would have thought.
With Sun support, I get hardware and software support. Still have to pay the hardware support with RH.
In my back pocket? No, in a capacitor or a battery. Neither of which store very much electricity.
Or you store the energy chemically as hydrogen or better as methanol.
Hydrogen and methanol are simply convenient storage mechanisms. Methanol being more convenient than Hydrogen.
Methanol: 17 MJ/l
H2 (2000psi): 1.8MJ/l
Which means you need large tanks for hydrogen and smaller tanks for methanol. Course, they still have to be bigger than petrol tanks.
Makes more sense than fully electric/battery or a pure hydrogen fuel cell car.
You have the benefit of making use of the existing fuel infrastructure and storage isn't a problem, at the pump or in the car. It takes no longer to fill up/charge than it does at the moment for internal combustion powered vehicles.
It can be manufactured from biomass, fossil fuel or even directly from the CO2 in the air plus water if you're willing to put enough energy in.
Most of the reformers which can convert methanol can also convert existing fossil fuels as well, so you can fill up at any fuel station. Not that there aren't issues with using existing fossil fuels.
Multiple medium duty boxes. It's cheaper.
You get better efficiency out of solar/thermal panels, they generate heat and can generate electricity as well if you happen to have a stirling generator.
Thing is, they're much much easier and cheaper to make than photovoltaics. I know one guy who made solar/thermal panels out of some old central heating radiators which were being thrown away, painted them black, put them in a double glazed glass cabinet made out of an old greenhouse.
They're physically quite large compared to the commercially available panels but he gets about 2kW of heat out of them. The hot water they produce is far too hot to touch on a hot day and merely painfully hot on cloudy days (in the UK no less). He reckons they cost £45 all in for the paint, solder, copper piping and pump.
SCO must have it in their list of patents, presumably they've also mentioned which patent is being infringed in their lawsuit, isn't that publicly available information?
My regular mailbox has 0 spam mails. My spamprobe account has 756 spam mails.
If everyone simply filtered it out of the way and didn't read it, spam would go away. The only conclusion I can come to on this is that those who do receive spam are people who want to receive spam.
We've two sites, 2.5km apart with line of sight, right on the very very edge of the European legal limits for 802.11b wireless. Currently 2Mbps land line.
This might be quite good if it's low cost.
I mean, you go ahead and feel free to argue with the mugger carrying the scalpel. I'll just hand over the card.
Or, how to take over the whole world without firing a shot.
First, you put in place agreements with the rest of the world to enforce each other's "intellectual property rights".
Then you let anybody in your country patent anything they damned well please, trivial, with prior art or not. Then the rest of the world is yours for the taking.
The US patent office has horribly debased it's credibility.
I reckon that human conciousness is similar to a swarm, or the flocking behavior of birds.
An emergent behaviour of seemingly simple interactions within the brain.
Has a much much higher efficiency for electricity production than photovoltaics. If you also combine heat and electricity production you have very some efficient systems. They are far more also viable in the UK where the current crop of photovoltaics are less so.
The solar thermal technologies are also significantly cheaper.
For various purposes at the low but useful power range. 1-20kW
o gy /Energy/Devices/Stirling_Engines/?tc=1
They are expensive still though.
Google lights the way:
http://directory.google.com/Top/Science/Technol
Ruggedise them add a tow-bar, optional trailer and market them to airports, train stations and the like for commuters to haul their bags around.
http://www.stirlingenergy.com/
Stirling engines aren't used for automotive purposes, not because they are slow or can't generate power. If they are designed right, they can throw out high revs and plenty of power.
The problem is they are not very good where the load on the engine will be rapidly varying. They don't accelerate quickly. Like severe turbo lag.
I have several identities, here on Slashdot. This is but one. I have fans[1] who are foes of my other identities and vice versa. I have many accounts I use for different purposes on Usenet.
My "official" email address, the one I give to people who matter, never reaches google. It doesn't exist as far as usenet is concerned. You need more than just a pinch of salt if you're using Google to research individuals.
[1] Just how stupid is that? fans and foes... Ya gotta laugh.
i MEAN DO WE REALLy need it?
dOES ANYONE ACTUALLY TYPE EVERYTHING IN CAPITALS THESE DAYS?
Not to mention it f*cks up command mode in vi.
NASA and the various other governmental space agencies shouldn't have a monopoly on the access to space.
Solaris 9, Gnome 2.
We're putting a middle layer of login systems in this year, as a user environment and it's a toss up between Linux/Gnome on ix86 and Solaris/Gnome on sparc. There's not much in it in price. Other things will decide it.
People are not using solar panels not because they are ugly or have nowhere to put them. They are not using solar panels because they are very expensive for the amount of power they produce.
These on the other hand are 80+% efficient, cheaper than a photovoltaic array and work well in cloudy conditions:
http://www.thermomax.co.uk/
Add a stirling engine for electricity generation.
You just can't see it.