Oh, that's true enough, and there are even solar subsidies here. My point was that the fact that you can get a return on your investment thanks to subsidies really has no bearing on whether or not the solar panel will produce more power over its lifetime than it took to make it.
In fairness, they only pay for themselves in Germany because of huge subsidies, which they are now not doing anymore. I remember talking to a French friend who was thinking of putting up solar panels. In the US, it didn't make sense because my rates are ~$0.11/kWh. In France he was looking at getting reimbursed at something like $0.30/kWh which changes things enormously, and IIRC in Germany they were being assured similar rates (paid by all electricity users). The Germans have recently reduced their subsidies.
In many locations it seems solar panels will more than recoup their initial energy costs, but you should look at actual costs not the cost to the end purchaser if they are being subsidized. (It may well still be worth doing in order to spur the development of the industry.)
My toilet flushes so little water that it will clog with more than 2 pieces of toilet paper - I end up flushing more water than the old school toilet tanks.
You need to get a Toto. Specifically the Toto Drake CST744S. I'm never buying any other toilet again. That thing would work in a truck stop...
A $10M subsidy to both increase energy efficiency and keep reasonably high tech jobs in the US? It could potentially be a good deal overall for the country.
In my experience CFLs last no longer than incandescents.
Seriously? I have an early Ikea CFL in my basement which is ~10 years old; I may replace it sometime just because the new bulbs have a better light color. I have only had to replace a couple of CFLs (well, maybe 5) which died in use; I used to have to replace incandescents much more frequently.
I have had bad luck with early LEDs, however; apart from the fact that their light was too blue for my wife to tolerate, they seemed to die way too quick. I'd give this one another try though, since they seem to have worked on the color issue & hopefully the quality will be better.
Are you married? (I know, this is/.) Every LED I have tried out in my house has been rejected by my wife; right now I have one outside and that's it. The light quality has been so inconsistent that I've stuck with good quality CFLs which are now really better than incandescents IMHO. A decent LED will be a good thing.
This article doesn't mention it, but part of the increased cost is the fact that the parts are made in CA & they are assembled in WI. So you're going to pay more for them compared to the same thing from China. And these seem pretty advanced, so you may not be able to buy an equivalent yet. Certainly, if I see them subsidized, I'll pick up a few.
(you do change the cooling setting of your fridge in winter, don't you?)
I've never actually heard of anyone doing this, and it doesn't really make sense to me; the inside of my house is roughly the same temp (within 15 dgrees F) in summer and winter, and regardless I want my frozen stuff frozen & my yogurt & milk at the right temperature.
I allow the power company to shut my AC off on the hottest days to even out consumption, but I don't see them changing my fridge.
The Olympics is certainly going to cause some problems for commuters in London. As the poster above noted, this seems like more of a situation where if you can't get home/are worried that you won't be able to get back in tomorrow due to the overload on the transportation network you could crash in one of these things. The other thing, of course, is that the company might be installing them just to get this kind of "look how much we care about your data" type of publicity...
If you search for "Bad ESN" on ebay you'll see tons being sold; I imagine that lots of them are Verizon being flashed to Sprint, or vice versa as you say. The numbers to me seem high enough that it's worth shutting down.
I have used http://www.hideipvpn.com/ every so often, and they've been fine for my uses. They're about $6/month, more for extra stuff I don't need. I have watched BBC/Channel 4 video streams over it in the US and they have been ok, so I imagine that Netflix would work in Europe.
I think a fair price of a Leaf today would be about $10-12K - not $35K as it appears to be.
According to this: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/04/04/business/the-cost-of-higher-fuel-economy.html?ref=energy-environment a Leaf is ~$28k vs ~$18k for a comparable car from the same mfg (Versa). The Leaf will take ~9 years to pay for the difference in gas savings. So $10-12k is a bit low I'd say. Really, the Prius, at 49 mpg & $23k seems like the sensible choice today. Even if you were choosing between it & the Fiesta, you'd break even in about 13 years, and the Prius is nicer & will have a higher resale value if you sell it before that point.
You don't even need a gps - when you go to edit a map on the OSM website, you'll have the option (on by default for me) to see a satellite image underneath. If you know the area, it's pretty easy to use that as a guide for drawing the roads & stuff.
You are limited to 10 cached areas, which might not be enough if you're traveling a lot. It's handy though, I use it when I know I'll be in an area & might not have data.
Try Navfree: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.navfree.android.OSM.ALL There's also a Navfree USA, which you can play with. They store the maps locally, and you can download just the states/countries you want. I have two issues with it - the address search is pretty bad (but if you have data I think it uses Google or something to help) and around me the maps, even the latest ones, are pretty out of date - they don't seem to actually be grabbing new OSM data when they release a map update in my state at least. But it's free, and it wouldn't hurt to throw it on your droid while you're in Germany.
This might be great in the US of A but I am far from impressed.
I think OSM actually started in the UK; it certainly seems to be further along there than in the US. But the tools are pretty easy; you should try fixing your neighborhood streets and see if you like it. I did, and there are some little details which most map data won't have which I added (little paths, stuff like that). It's open, it needs people to actually put in the data. In the UK & US, you can get Navfree (uses OSM maps) for ios & Android; I sometimes check it when I'm driving around & if I notice something wrong, I fix it later. Their maps are old; often the fix is already up on the website, but sometimes not. I think it's going to be really useable in a couple more years, right now it's more of a hobby thing.
I bought one a year or so ago on ebay; cost me $25. Not really "available" in that the sense that you could register it through any registrar, but available in that I could easily get it. There are lots of them on ebay all the time, they seem to start at $25 for a.com.
I find that unless there's actually something cool which you really need to see in action to understand, I'm much happier reading than watching something. So if you're doing an interview, provide a transcript.
From TFA: "Although macrophages also attacked blood cells expressing CD47 when mice were given the antibody, the researchers found that the decrease in blood cells was short-lived; the animals turned up production of new blood cells to replace those they lost from the treatment"
All of mine have always been 25 - and I use it quite a lot when going through some small towns where they will nail you for just a few miles over (they're on the way to the beach & make their money off the tourists passing through). I set it indicating 26 or as near as I can, which given the built in inaccuracy of the speedo probably gets me to 24-25mph. I don't bother with it for most normal city driving though.
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Oh, that's true enough, and there are even solar subsidies here. My point was that the fact that you can get a return on your investment thanks to subsidies really has no bearing on whether or not the solar panel will produce more power over its lifetime than it took to make it.
In fairness, they only pay for themselves in Germany because of huge subsidies, which they are now not doing anymore.
I remember talking to a French friend who was thinking of putting up solar panels. In the US, it didn't make sense because my rates are ~$0.11/kWh. In France he was looking at getting reimbursed at something like $0.30/kWh which changes things enormously, and IIRC in Germany they were being assured similar rates (paid by all electricity users). The Germans have recently reduced their subsidies.
In many locations it seems solar panels will more than recoup their initial energy costs, but you should look at actual costs not the cost to the end purchaser if they are being subsidized. (It may well still be worth doing in order to spur the development of the industry.)
it just took me a minute to find the spell check option.
F7 still works fine in 2010...
My toilet flushes so little water that it will clog with more than 2 pieces of toilet paper - I end up flushing more water than the old school toilet tanks.
You need to get a Toto. Specifically the Toto Drake CST744S. I'm never buying any other toilet again. That thing would work in a truck stop...
A $10M subsidy to both increase energy efficiency and keep reasonably high tech jobs in the US? It could potentially be a good deal overall for the country.
In my experience CFLs last no longer than incandescents.
Seriously? I have an early Ikea CFL in my basement which is ~10 years old; I may replace it sometime just because the new bulbs have a better light color. I have only had to replace a couple of CFLs (well, maybe 5) which died in use; I used to have to replace incandescents much more frequently.
I have had bad luck with early LEDs, however; apart from the fact that their light was too blue for my wife to tolerate, they seemed to die way too quick. I'd give this one another try though, since they seem to have worked on the color issue & hopefully the quality will be better.
Are you married? (I know, this is /.) Every LED I have tried out in my house has been rejected by my wife; right now I have one outside and that's it. The light quality has been so inconsistent that I've stuck with good quality CFLs which are now really better than incandescents IMHO. A decent LED will be a good thing.
This article doesn't mention it, but part of the increased cost is the fact that the parts are made in CA & they are assembled in WI. So you're going to pay more for them compared to the same thing from China. And these seem pretty advanced, so you may not be able to buy an equivalent yet. Certainly, if I see them subsidized, I'll pick up a few.
(you do change the cooling setting of your fridge in winter, don't you?)
I've never actually heard of anyone doing this, and it doesn't really make sense to me; the inside of my house is roughly the same temp (within 15 dgrees F) in summer and winter, and regardless I want my frozen stuff frozen & my yogurt & milk at the right temperature.
I allow the power company to shut my AC off on the hottest days to even out consumption, but I don't see them changing my fridge.
This isn't for Olympic staffers, just a data center company in London.
The Olympics is certainly going to cause some problems for commuters in London. As the poster above noted, this seems like more of a situation where if you can't get home/are worried that you won't be able to get back in tomorrow due to the overload on the transportation network you could crash in one of these things. The other thing, of course, is that the company might be installing them just to get this kind of "look how much we care about your data" type of publicity...
If you search for "Bad ESN" on ebay you'll see tons being sold; I imagine that lots of them are Verizon being flashed to Sprint, or vice versa as you say. The numbers to me seem high enough that it's worth shutting down.
I have used http://www.hideipvpn.com/ every so often, and they've been fine for my uses. They're about $6/month, more for extra stuff I don't need. I have watched BBC/Channel 4 video streams over it in the US and they have been ok, so I imagine that Netflix would work in Europe.
I think a fair price of a Leaf today would be about $10-12K - not $35K as it appears to be.
According to this:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/04/04/business/the-cost-of-higher-fuel-economy.html?ref=energy-environment
a Leaf is ~$28k vs ~$18k for a comparable car from the same mfg (Versa). The Leaf will take ~9 years to pay for the difference in gas savings. So $10-12k is a bit low I'd say.
Really, the Prius, at 49 mpg & $23k seems like the sensible choice today. Even if you were choosing between it & the Fiesta, you'd break even in about 13 years, and the Prius is nicer & will have a higher resale value if you sell it before that point.
Corrected already. Well done /.!
Panspermia, not pansermia.
You don't even need a gps - when you go to edit a map on the OSM website, you'll have the option (on by default for me) to see a satellite image underneath. If you know the area, it's pretty easy to use that as a guide for drawing the roads & stuff.
You are limited to 10 cached areas, which might not be enough if you're traveling a lot. It's handy though, I use it when I know I'll be in an area & might not have data.
Try Navfree:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.navfree.android.OSM.ALL
There's also a Navfree USA, which you can play with. They store the maps locally, and you can download just the states/countries you want. I have two issues with it - the address search is pretty bad (but if you have data I think it uses Google or something to help) and around me the maps, even the latest ones, are pretty out of date - they don't seem to actually be grabbing new OSM data when they release a map update in my state at least. But it's free, and it wouldn't hurt to throw it on your droid while you're in Germany.
This might be great in the US of A but I am far from impressed.
I think OSM actually started in the UK; it certainly seems to be further along there than in the US. But the tools are pretty easy; you should try fixing your neighborhood streets and see if you like it. I did, and there are some little details which most map data won't have which I added (little paths, stuff like that). It's open, it needs people to actually put in the data.
In the UK & US, you can get Navfree (uses OSM maps) for ios & Android; I sometimes check it when I'm driving around & if I notice something wrong, I fix it later. Their maps are old; often the fix is already up on the website, but sometimes not. I think it's going to be really useable in a couple more years, right now it's more of a hobby thing.
I bought one a year or so ago on ebay; cost me $25. Not really "available" in that the sense that you could register it through any registrar, but available in that I could easily get it. There are lots of them on ebay all the time, they seem to start at $25 for a .com.
I find that unless there's actually something cool which you really need to see in action to understand, I'm much happier reading than watching something. So if you're doing an interview, provide a transcript.
Yeah, I have an Obi110 & use their international calling too. It's not perfect, but it's pretty good and for the cost it's great.
From TFA:
"Although macrophages also attacked blood cells expressing CD47 when mice were given the antibody, the researchers found that the decrease in blood cells was short-lived; the animals turned up production of new blood cells to replace those they lost from the treatment"
All of mine have always been 25 - and I use it quite a lot when going through some small towns where they will nail you for just a few miles over (they're on the way to the beach & make their money off the tourists passing through). I set it indicating 26 or as near as I can, which given the built in inaccuracy of the speedo probably gets me to 24-25mph. I don't bother with it for most normal city driving though.