Solar panels still generate power when it is cloudy and raining...of course not 100%, so you do need to 'over buy' a little bit if you want 100% off grid year round coverage, but it isn't like having to double or triple the amount of panels and storage you need.
Fact: Solar panels work just fine in ambient light and will produce significant energy in the fog or on overcast days. In fact, solar panels are actually more efficient at cooler temperatures than hot ones. Although this might seem counter-intuitive, consider that solar panels on a rooftop in cool, foggy San Francisco produce only one percent less electricity than one in nearby Sacramento, where it’s sunny and hot. Consider too that Germany leads the world in residential solar right now, and doesn’t have a sunny climate. Here’s some more info on how solar works in fog.
I'm assuming that renewables are only temporarily going to be more expensive. Cost of solar panels, etc.. has been steadily dropping. Once energy plants recoup some of their initial infrastructure costs, they can probably lower the price down to just maintenance costs, which I assume aren't going to be much higher than a traditional plant.
And then combine that with setups like free solar panels for your roof (http://www.solarcity.com/) and a Tesla PowerWall battery (http://www.teslamotors.com/powerwall) which can charge up when electricity is cheap (if the sun is shining or the rates are low), then power your house with that free/low rate energy during peak times... and I'm pretty sure that the future is going to be friendly for consumers.
It is no wonder that every business involved in energy production (Oil companies, coal companies, established energy providers, etc..) are pushing so hard against renewable adoption. Because the end game is probably a lot less profit for them.
If this is the same design I saw on a Discovery show years ago, the Bering Straight part, the bridge, would have a road surface, a level for 1-2 sets of train tracks, and several oil/gas type pipelines below that.
But that aside, roads are here to stay. And as batteries/fuel cells get better, combined with more and more decentralized energy generation, mpg is going to be a largely irrelevant statistic.
These Anonymous Coward's and others that constantly post in these climate threads with blatant misinformation, outright lies, etc.. I've decided must just be industry schills.
How can someone in 2015 still disbelieve the scientific evidence? Either some ideology is causing them to be willfully ignorant of the facts, or they have an agenda that isn't related to the truth.
If they allow free and open source apps, just like Debian's repos (apt-get install vlc, for instance), I can see a huge positive side to the new MS store model. If the only thing in the store is closed software for sale, that sucks.
I think it's the very goal of Microsoft to blur the line between "desktop" and "mobile".
I don't think we need to speculate about that at all. It is very clearly their intention to have a more unified experience between mobile and desktop. Like the new windows 10 start menu, if you click on the A,B,C,etc.. leader headers under 'all programs', it switches to the A-Z pad that you see in Windows phone when you swipe left.
Or we should not care, like we never cared in the past. Before the internet, I think every kid on the planet found a stash of porn mags at some point. If mom/dad found out the kid had looked at them, they were punished or talked to in whatever way those parents deemed appropriate. Law enforcement and/or government laws were never involved.
I suppose the difference with magazines was they were 'behind the counter', so it seemed like we were "protecting" kids from them. I suppose this politician is just calling for the same thing: some sort of digital "store counter / store clerk" to regulate access to porn. Basically security theater.
I upgraded to 10 a few days ago and WoW ran fine at first. But last night, it wouldn't launch from the battle.net client. I ended up having to stop the agent.exe and battle.net processes, then delete the program cache data in c:\programdata for both battlenet and wow, two different folders. Re-installed battle.net, then it launched.
You wrote a long post about Obama that makes it seem like he is an outlier when it comes to failure to uphold campaign promises. You do know that every single president in history has made a ton of promises while campaigning that were later dropped or not accomplished once elected, right? That isn't excusing any president, it is just a statement of fact.
I think sjbe and bobbied are both correct. bobbied is correct that, technically, according to the laws on the books, the trial will be legal and fair. sjbe is more generally correct in pointing out that our current laws themselves are not designed to handle this particular situation, so, according to the laws on the book taken together with Snowden's statements, he is clearly guilty. A trial would just be going through the motions on the road to a guilty verdict, which is not fair in the sense that he would have zero percent chance of being found not guilty.
Not enough german soldiers defected/rebelled to hurt the Nazi war machine. If free will among german soldiers didn't stop the holocaust, I"m not sure it is a relevant issue. What more would your commanders need to do (beyond the concentrations camps) before human will would kick in and rebel?
Your question is better addressed by deciding how much individual destructive force a person should be allowed to own. And we already make that decision about types of guns, explosives, etc.. I don't see any difference when it comes to robots.
Do you really expect the free market to magically solve global issues where the problem domain exists in the tens to hundreds of years rather than the next fiscal quarter? Why would it?
People of that ideological framework conveniently ignore periods of time when the Federal Government had very little power. And ignore examples around the world right now where government is ineffective. So yes, they really do expect the free market forces to magically preserve 'the commons'.
I'd be happier if the results were less skewed by billions of dollars of legal bribery (AKA campaign funding), but we've decided that we're okay with that, unfortunately.
5-4 Supreme court justices are OK with that. But polls show that the majority are not OK with that. http://crooksandliars.com/2015/06/ny-timescbs-poll-concurs-americans-hate http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/17/AR2010021701151.html
Over the years I've become a one issue voter: getting the influence of money out of politics.
I don't disagree with you about the external costs, but I've never been able to work out why the approximate external costs of an industry isn't directly charged to that industry as a licensing fee or additional tax charge.
Lobbying has led to almost all wealthy industries being able to capitalize profit while socializing the external cost. See oil/coal/gas, Wall Street, etc..
If 'big money' wasn't such an influence on Congress, I suspect we would have made companies pay for damage they do a long time ago.
Business casual doesn't even require suits. A shirt or even a polo shirt is fine. All it requires is basically that you don't look like a hobo.
It usually requires slightly nicer slacks / khakis, and slightly nicer shoes than hiking/running/tennis shoes. Most people, if given a choice, would rather just wear some worn in sneakers, jeans, and a t-shirt or polo.
Business casual dress codes result in most people having two entirely different wardrobes.
That is life and reality, and passing a law doesn't change that.
Well of course it can't change everything, but it can weed out some of the blatant over the top discrimination, as well as provide a legal recourse for people that were discriminated against.
People like being around people who are like them, this is largely true everywhere on the planet.
Of course. That is why instilling a sense of the value of diversity is an important ongoing effort in education and most progressive workplaces. There are biological and historical forces that shape our mental tendencies. But since humans are generally better than animals, we actively work to suppress our detrimental tendencies, like racism, sexism, ageism, etc..
Throwing your hands up and saying "hey, this is just how people naturally feel about stuff, you can't change it" is a big cop out.
Econometric studies estimate that Apollo returned five to seven dollars to the United States' economy for every dollar invested in it. These returns came in the form of new industries, new products, new processes and new jobs.
Unless you have any evidence suggesting otherwise, you should re-evaluate your assumptions.
How are you going to get those spinoff benefits and discoveries without actually doing work in space, and just sitting around here and funding social programs? You're not. The Apollo program yielded enormous economic benefits for the US due to the new technologies created; those would not have happened if we just increased teacher pay.
I'm not saying social programs and teacher pay increases shouldn't be done, but if you want actual advancement in technology, you have to actually do things which require that advancement. You can't just wait until all social problems are cured. That isn't going to happen for generations.
Well, we shouldn't have to be pitting teacher pay/social programs/etc.. against space exploration anyway (first off, teacher pay isn't in the same money bucket as NASA, they do not compete). Not when the sum total of all social programs, minus the core programs that no one will ever seriously think about getting rid of (social security, medicare), are peanuts compared to the Defense budget.
Slashdot Mirror
See also a worse case scenario: Super foggy san fran http://pureenergies.com/us/blog/do-solar-panels-work-in-fog/
Solar panels still generate power when it is cloudy and raining...of course not 100%, so you do need to 'over buy' a little bit if you want 100% off grid year round coverage, but it isn't like having to double or triple the amount of panels and storage you need.
http://pureenergies.com/us/home-solar/solar-basics/solar-myths/
Fact: Solar panels work just fine in ambient light and will produce significant energy in the fog or on overcast days. In fact, solar panels are actually more efficient at cooler temperatures than hot ones. Although this might seem counter-intuitive, consider that solar panels on a rooftop in cool, foggy San Francisco produce only one percent less electricity than one in nearby Sacramento, where it’s sunny and hot. Consider too that Germany leads the world in residential solar right now, and doesn’t have a sunny climate. Here’s some more info on how solar works in fog.
I'm assuming that renewables are only temporarily going to be more expensive. Cost of solar panels, etc.. has been steadily dropping. Once energy plants recoup some of their initial infrastructure costs, they can probably lower the price down to just maintenance costs, which I assume aren't going to be much higher than a traditional plant.
And then combine that with setups like free solar panels for your roof (http://www.solarcity.com/) and a Tesla PowerWall battery (http://www.teslamotors.com/powerwall) which can charge up when electricity is cheap (if the sun is shining or the rates are low), then power your house with that free/low rate energy during peak times... and I'm pretty sure that the future is going to be friendly for consumers.
It is no wonder that every business involved in energy production (Oil companies, coal companies, established energy providers, etc..) are pushing so hard against renewable adoption. Because the end game is probably a lot less profit for them.
I'm not sure you can call them identical...
They are all identical when it comes to not rocking the fundamental power structures in the world. Military industrial complex, Wall Street, etc..
Probably a combination of a smarter grid and home storage like http://www.teslamotors.com/powerwall
If this is the same design I saw on a Discovery show years ago, the Bering Straight part, the bridge, would have a road surface, a level for 1-2 sets of train tracks, and several oil/gas type pipelines below that.
But that aside, roads are here to stay. And as batteries/fuel cells get better, combined with more and more decentralized energy generation, mpg is going to be a largely irrelevant statistic.
These Anonymous Coward's and others that constantly post in these climate threads with blatant misinformation, outright lies, etc.. I've decided must just be industry schills.
How can someone in 2015 still disbelieve the scientific evidence? Either some ideology is causing them to be willfully ignorant of the facts, or they have an agenda that isn't related to the truth.
If they allow free and open source apps, just like Debian's repos (apt-get install vlc, for instance), I can see a huge positive side to the new MS store model. If the only thing in the store is closed software for sale, that sucks.
I think it's the very goal of Microsoft to blur the line between "desktop" and "mobile".
I don't think we need to speculate about that at all. It is very clearly their intention to have a more unified experience between mobile and desktop. Like the new windows 10 start menu, if you click on the A,B,C,etc.. leader headers under 'all programs', it switches to the A-Z pad that you see in Windows phone when you swipe left.
Or we should not care, like we never cared in the past. Before the internet, I think every kid on the planet found a stash of porn mags at some point. If mom/dad found out the kid had looked at them, they were punished or talked to in whatever way those parents deemed appropriate. Law enforcement and/or government laws were never involved.
I suppose the difference with magazines was they were 'behind the counter', so it seemed like we were "protecting" kids from them. I suppose this politician is just calling for the same thing: some sort of digital "store counter / store clerk" to regulate access to porn. Basically security theater.
I upgraded to 10 a few days ago and WoW ran fine at first. But last night, it wouldn't launch from the battle.net client. I ended up having to stop the agent.exe and battle.net processes, then delete the program cache data in c:\programdata for both battlenet and wow, two different folders. Re-installed battle.net, then it launched.
You wrote a long post about Obama that makes it seem like he is an outlier when it comes to failure to uphold campaign promises. You do know that every single president in history has made a ton of promises while campaigning that were later dropped or not accomplished once elected, right? That isn't excusing any president, it is just a statement of fact.
I think sjbe and bobbied are both correct. bobbied is correct that, technically, according to the laws on the books, the trial will be legal and fair. sjbe is more generally correct in pointing out that our current laws themselves are not designed to handle this particular situation, so, according to the laws on the book taken together with Snowden's statements, he is clearly guilty. A trial would just be going through the motions on the road to a guilty verdict, which is not fair in the sense that he would have zero percent chance of being found not guilty.
Not enough german soldiers defected/rebelled to hurt the Nazi war machine. If free will among german soldiers didn't stop the holocaust, I"m not sure it is a relevant issue. What more would your commanders need to do (beyond the concentrations camps) before human will would kick in and rebel?
Your question is better addressed by deciding how much individual destructive force a person should be allowed to own. And we already make that decision about types of guns, explosives, etc.. I don't see any difference when it comes to robots.
Do you really expect the free market to magically solve global issues where the problem domain exists in the tens to hundreds of years rather than the next fiscal quarter? Why would it?
People of that ideological framework conveniently ignore periods of time when the Federal Government had very little power. And ignore examples around the world right now where government is ineffective. So yes, they really do expect the free market forces to magically preserve 'the commons'.
I'd be happier if the results were less skewed by billions of dollars of legal bribery (AKA campaign funding), but we've decided that we're okay with that, unfortunately.
5-4 Supreme court justices are OK with that. But polls show that the majority are not OK with that.
http://crooksandliars.com/2015/06/ny-timescbs-poll-concurs-americans-hate
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/17/AR2010021701151.html
Over the years I've become a one issue voter: getting the influence of money out of politics.
External health costs? Do you have any idea how many highly toxic chemicals are used, in quantity, to turn polysilicon into a working solar cell? *
And are those toxic chemicals burned or vented directly into the air in huge smoke stacks like coal/oil?
I don't disagree with you about the external costs, but I've never been able to work out why the approximate external costs of an industry isn't directly charged to that industry as a licensing fee or additional tax charge.
Lobbying has led to almost all wealthy industries being able to capitalize profit while socializing the external cost. See oil/coal/gas, Wall Street, etc..
If 'big money' wasn't such an influence on Congress, I suspect we would have made companies pay for damage they do a long time ago.
Business casual doesn't even require suits. A shirt or even a polo shirt is fine.
All it requires is basically that you don't look like a hobo.
It usually requires slightly nicer slacks / khakis, and slightly nicer shoes than hiking/running/tennis shoes. Most people, if given a choice, would rather just wear some worn in sneakers, jeans, and a t-shirt or polo.
Business casual dress codes result in most people having two entirely different wardrobes.
I am looking at this:
http://www.aasa.org/uploadedFiles/Policy_and_Advocacy/files/SchoolBudgetBriefFINAL.pdf
Percent distribution of revenues for public elementary and secondary education 2006-07.
Federal was 8.5%, local and state made up the rest.
Graph 7 shows another chart by state. The highest that comes from the Fed is 18% and the lowest is 4.5%.
Am I missing something?
That is life and reality, and passing a law doesn't change that.
Well of course it can't change everything, but it can weed out some of the blatant over the top discrimination, as well as provide a legal recourse for people that were discriminated against.
People like being around people who are like them, this is largely true everywhere on the planet.
Of course. That is why instilling a sense of the value of diversity is an important ongoing effort in education and most progressive workplaces. There are biological and historical forces that shape our mental tendencies. But since humans are generally better than animals, we actively work to suppress our detrimental tendencies, like racism, sexism, ageism, etc..
Throwing your hands up and saying "hey, this is just how people naturally feel about stuff, you can't change it" is a big cop out.
Fox db, is that short for FoxPro? That brings back memories. I think that may have been my first programming language hehe.
http://files.seds.org/pub/spacecraft/APOLLO/Apollo.benefits
Econometric studies estimate that Apollo returned five to
seven dollars to the United States' economy for every dollar
invested in it. These returns came in the form of new
industries, new products, new processes and new jobs.
Unless you have any evidence suggesting otherwise, you should re-evaluate your assumptions.
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2525898/app-development/nasa-s-apollo-technology-has-changed-history.html
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2009/07/forty-years-after-apollo-11-moon-landing-consumers-reap-benefits-of-giant-technological-leaps/index.htm
https://spinoff.nasa.gov/apollo.htm
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/80660main_ApolloFS.pdf
https://www.nationalpriorities.org/cost-of/
800,000 lifetimes. 1.6 trillion dollars and counting.
How are you going to get those spinoff benefits and discoveries without actually doing work in space, and just sitting around here and funding social programs? You're not. The Apollo program yielded enormous economic benefits for the US due to the new technologies created; those would not have happened if we just increased teacher pay.
I'm not saying social programs and teacher pay increases shouldn't be done, but if you want actual advancement in technology, you have to actually do things which require that advancement. You can't just wait until all social problems are cured. That isn't going to happen for generations.
Well, we shouldn't have to be pitting teacher pay/social programs/etc.. against space exploration anyway (first off, teacher pay isn't in the same money bucket as NASA, they do not compete). Not when the sum total of all social programs, minus the core programs that no one will ever seriously think about getting rid of (social security, medicare), are peanuts compared to the Defense budget.