Your expectations of solar cells are several orders of magnitude too high.
I'm doing some experimentations with a solar panel - the panel itself is about one metre long and just under half a metre wide. Pictures here: http://www.alioth.net/pics/SolarProject/SolarProje ct.html . The panel is made up of monocrystalline cells - the most efficient kind being manufactured in any quantity.
The panel is nominally 80 watts peak. That's 80 watts if the sun is shining with no atmospheric haze perpendicular to the panel - i.e. a 50 mile visibility day with the panel perfectly angled into the sun. Your car roof is probably only three times the size of this - so you'd be generating only 240 watts in the very best case. This amount of power is so trivial in the context of electric cars, it wouldn't even put a noticable charge on your car.
Worse than that, it's unlikely that you will be getting peak power out of the panels for more than 30 minutes a day even if you live in the desert. Even a very thin layer of cirrus cloud or just a poor visibility day cuts the power output of the panel by more than half. Even being 30 degrees off perpendicular to the sun cuts the output by more than half. On the brightest day, at 4pm, the panel only produces 30% of rated output unless you can tilt it directly into the sun. On a bright cloudy day (where there's still enough sunlight getting through to cast shadows) the panel produces less than 10% of rated power. On an overcast day with no sharp shadows being cast, the most I've seen the panel make is around 5% of rated power.
You might not have noticed, but oil companies no longer call themselves oil companies: they call themselves ENERGY companies. They aren't wedded to oil - they will deal with any kind of energy product.
It's also a sign that the oil is running out when the oil companies stop calling themselves oil companies, and start calling themselves energy companies.
A quick back of the envelope calculation - if you used domestic household electricity in the UK (which uses 240 volts for the normal supply at your socket), the power draw of just over 1 megawatt(!!!) would require a current of 4500 amps. In the United States, where the household supply is only 120 volts, it would require 9000 amps.
If you're supposedly intelligent, then it matters not one whit if the school offers classes or not. I'm hardly Albert Einstein in the intelligence stakes - my school offered no computing courses at all, yet I learned to code off my own back - all the way from assembly language to C. If the original poster is as intelligent as they claim, they will be able to learn things for themselves without needing to explicitly be taught.
No - not at all. That sort of thing would be a huge opportunity for, say, the BBC or USA Today (or any other competitor) who doesn't keep their information from being indexed and found.
Shneiderman's Eight Golden Rules for user interface design has been around for years (pre-dates Windows 3.x, in any case). Any UI designer should be conversant with these rules:
Am I the only one who doesn't want a "user experience"? If I'm getting an "experience", the damned user interface is getting in my way. I just want to get the job done, not have an "experience".
Every citizen of the former Soviet Union and every western nation, well - even every person alive now are enjoying the spoils of "winning the cold war". We all won.
If you don't think so, send me a private message and I'll send you a copy of "Threads" and "The War Game" so you can understand what it might have been like had we actually lost.
Unfortunately, it's unlikely any jet in US service will hit the civilian market: the military insists that the aircraft are destroyed (ones sent to museums have the spars and other structural parts cut with an ablative saw, and are heavily stripped).
The real irony is that at airshows in 50 years time, all the old jets flying will be Soviet jets. Very very few US jets will participate in cold war warbird displays; the only western jets will probably be the ones built by the UK (Hunters, Lightnings, Canberras, Buccaneers and that kind of thing).
The Met. Office's climate models show that although thermohaline circulation (i.e. the gulf stream effects of which you speak) will slow, it is exceedingly unlikely they will stop. The expected reduction of up to 30% is more than offset by the increase in global temperature - so countries in northern Europe will (in at least the next hundred years) likely still get warmer.
The UK climate in particular is much more strongly affected by the position of the jet stream. The reason why the UK has become markedly hotter since 1976 was that in the winter of 1975, the jet stream moved south. Prior to 1975, the jet stream would be over the UK in the summer (and as it does) would move north in the winter. This meant UK summers were typically characterised by Atlantic low pressure systems - meaning cool, cloudy and wet summers. When the jet stream moved north in the winter, this meant that the blocking high pressure systems would arrive, bringing in cold continental air - meaning frequent clear nights, hard frosts, and if there was any precipitation, snow.
When the jet stream moved south in the mid 1970s and onwards, this meant the jet stream was no longer bringing in the Atlantic lows in the summer - instead, the blocking highs that would normally miss the UK to the north would get parked right over the UK. This meant that in the summer, warm continental air and long term settled weather would arrive. In the winter, the jetstream in its more northerly position would now be over the UK, bringing the cloudy but mild Atlantic lows in during the winter instead - leading to much milder winters.
As for the build quality of the average British house, generally it is very good. A British house tends to last for several lifetimes. My house is typical of where I live. It is approximately 130 years old, and the walls are three foot thick solid stone. My Dad's house was built before the United States existed as a country, and is of similar construction. It's likely to still be standing long after my descendants are long dead. They do need maintenance, but they are generally extremely robust.
The people who are writing for the VAX platform are probably doing it because that's what they enjoy. It's not like there is a tradeoff - they are working on VAX and so not, say, working on feature du jour on i386 - because they have no interest on i386 (or other platforms) they wouldn't be working on it anyway.
The VAX is a well built older machine which was absolutely awesome in its day, and it's good to see that people still interested in the VAX are keeping at least one new operating system running on the machine.
Models run by the Met. Office show that the expected weakening in thermohaline circulation will be more than offset by the increased global temperature, making northern Europe slightly warmer at least over the next hundred or so years.
In the western world, hardly anyone dies quietly in their sleep - most of us die slowly and quite horribly, taking years to actually stop moving about.
This is what I don't understand in our risk-averse society - yeah, sure you might die doing [insert dangerous activity here], but you're probably going to have a slow, horribly drawn out death anyway. I'd rather spend my life living rather than waiting to die as most risk-averse people seem to do.
W3schools isn't really indicative of what the "normals" use though. According to w3schools, Linux is more popular than the Mac. However, according to BBC statistics (a site that pretty much the entire cross section of society uses), Linux has less than half of one percent share - unlike W3school's stat of around 3.5%.
eMusic - which is completely legitimate - plays for sure too on an iPod or any other MP3 player. This is because they sell unencrypted MP3 files. Magnatune - which is completely legitimate - plays for sure on any MP3 player too. This is because they sell unencrypted files in most formats (you choose the format when you download).
eMusic is the second largest legitimate download service, only second to iTMS. Some record labels are quite happy with DRM-less downloads.
I think you're missing the point. The laser will always be powered by electricity - but if you can manufacture the optical equivalent of a transistor (so that the laser merely becomes the power source - much like a battery, and the signalling is purely done with light) then you don't need to convert optical signals to electrical signals for switching.
You're thinking of those ancient, 25 to 30 year old normally aspirated Mercedes diesels if you think diesel cars stink. They don't. You can't tell them apart from gasoline cars now apart from a different sound. Ultra low sulfur diesel and pollution control equipment (plus electronic fuel injection) has cleaned up the diesel car.
Most people's daily drive is roughly the same however large the country they live in. To take an extreme example, I used to live in Houston, Texas. My commute was 5 miles each way. I drove about 8000 miles a year.
I now live in the Isle of Man - the *entire* island could fit inside the area of greater Houston. I drive around 12,000 miles a year - my commute is now 12 miles each way, and I do more longer journeys by car (up to 30 miles each way).
Thermodynamically less efficient? I beg to differ. Diesels have always been more thermodynamically efficient than petrol (gasoline) engines - even more so now with the most recent engines with refinements like common rail fuel injection.
The difference is you're not paying the highest possible price for your market. This is one reason why DVDs are region locked - DVDs are much cheaper in some countries than others, and people would just order their DVDs off the Internet instead of paying extra for the locally sold one. The sole reason for region locking is to force you to pay the highest price for the region you're in.
Both of those incidents could have happened either to a private or publically owned company - they all boil down to negligence of which there is plenty in both the private and public sector and it doesn't really make your argument one way or the other!
There essentially already is an RBL - most blog/forum spam comes from open proxies. Use any of the open proxy DNSBLs and you can cut down the amount of spam by an order of magnitude. I was forced to do this with a bulletin board recently.
Slashdot Mirror
Your expectations of solar cells are several orders of magnitude too high.
e ct.html . The panel is made up of monocrystalline cells - the most efficient kind being manufactured in any quantity.
I'm doing some experimentations with a solar panel - the panel itself is about one metre long and just under half a metre wide. Pictures here: http://www.alioth.net/pics/SolarProject/SolarProj
The panel is nominally 80 watts peak. That's 80 watts if the sun is shining with no atmospheric haze perpendicular to the panel - i.e. a 50 mile visibility day with the panel perfectly angled into the sun. Your car roof is probably only three times the size of this - so you'd be generating only 240 watts in the very best case. This amount of power is so trivial in the context of electric cars, it wouldn't even put a noticable charge on your car.
Worse than that, it's unlikely that you will be getting peak power out of the panels for more than 30 minutes a day even if you live in the desert. Even a very thin layer of cirrus cloud or just a poor visibility day cuts the power output of the panel by more than half. Even being 30 degrees off perpendicular to the sun cuts the output by more than half. On the brightest day, at 4pm, the panel only produces 30% of rated output unless you can tilt it directly into the sun. On a bright cloudy day (where there's still enough sunlight getting through to cast shadows) the panel produces less than 10% of rated power. On an overcast day with no sharp shadows being cast, the most I've seen the panel make is around 5% of rated power.
You might not have noticed, but oil companies no longer call themselves oil companies: they call themselves ENERGY companies. They aren't wedded to oil - they will deal with any kind of energy product.
It's also a sign that the oil is running out when the oil companies stop calling themselves oil companies, and start calling themselves energy companies.
A quick back of the envelope calculation - if you used domestic household electricity in the UK (which uses 240 volts for the normal supply at your socket), the power draw of just over 1 megawatt(!!!) would require a current of 4500 amps. In the United States, where the household supply is only 120 volts, it would require 9000 amps.
My house main breaker is only 40 amps.
If you're supposedly intelligent, then it matters not one whit if the school offers classes or not. I'm hardly Albert Einstein in the intelligence stakes - my school offered no computing courses at all, yet I learned to code off my own back - all the way from assembly language to C. If the original poster is as intelligent as they claim, they will be able to learn things for themselves without needing to explicitly be taught.
No - not at all. That sort of thing would be a huge opportunity for, say, the BBC or USA Today (or any other competitor) who doesn't keep their information from being indexed and found.
Shneiderman's Eight Golden Rules for user interface design has been around for years (pre-dates Windows 3.x, in any case). Any UI designer should be conversant with these rules:
i sino/rules.html
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/almstrum/cs370/elv
Am I the only one who doesn't want a "user experience"? If I'm getting an "experience", the damned user interface is getting in my way. I just want to get the job done, not have an "experience".
Every citizen of the former Soviet Union and every western nation, well - even every person alive now are enjoying the spoils of "winning the cold war". We all won.
If you don't think so, send me a private message and I'll send you a copy of "Threads" and "The War Game" so you can understand what it might have been like had we actually lost.
Unfortunately, it's unlikely any jet in US service will hit the civilian market: the military insists that the aircraft are destroyed (ones sent to museums have the spars and other structural parts cut with an ablative saw, and are heavily stripped).
The real irony is that at airshows in 50 years time, all the old jets flying will be Soviet jets. Very very few US jets will participate in cold war warbird displays; the only western jets will probably be the ones built by the UK (Hunters, Lightnings, Canberras, Buccaneers and that kind of thing).
The Met. Office's climate models show that although thermohaline circulation (i.e. the gulf stream effects of which you speak) will slow, it is exceedingly unlikely they will stop. The expected reduction of up to 30% is more than offset by the increase in global temperature - so countries in northern Europe will (in at least the next hundred years) likely still get warmer.
The UK climate in particular is much more strongly affected by the position of the jet stream. The reason why the UK has become markedly hotter since 1976 was that in the winter of 1975, the jet stream moved south. Prior to 1975, the jet stream would be over the UK in the summer (and as it does) would move north in the winter. This meant UK summers were typically characterised by Atlantic low pressure systems - meaning cool, cloudy and wet summers. When the jet stream moved north in the winter, this meant that the blocking high pressure systems would arrive, bringing in cold continental air - meaning frequent clear nights, hard frosts, and if there was any precipitation, snow.
When the jet stream moved south in the mid 1970s and onwards, this meant the jet stream was no longer bringing in the Atlantic lows in the summer - instead, the blocking highs that would normally miss the UK to the north would get parked right over the UK. This meant that in the summer, warm continental air and long term settled weather would arrive. In the winter, the jetstream in its more northerly position would now be over the UK, bringing the cloudy but mild Atlantic lows in during the winter instead - leading to much milder winters.
As for the build quality of the average British house, generally it is very good. A British house tends to last for several lifetimes. My house is typical of where I live. It is approximately 130 years old, and the walls are three foot thick solid stone. My Dad's house was built before the United States existed as a country, and is of similar construction. It's likely to still be standing long after my descendants are long dead. They do need maintenance, but they are generally extremely robust.
The people who are writing for the VAX platform are probably doing it because that's what they enjoy. It's not like there is a tradeoff - they are working on VAX and so not, say, working on feature du jour on i386 - because they have no interest on i386 (or other platforms) they wouldn't be working on it anyway.
The VAX is a well built older machine which was absolutely awesome in its day, and it's good to see that people still interested in the VAX are keeping at least one new operating system running on the machine.
Models run by the Met. Office show that the expected weakening in thermohaline circulation will be more than offset by the increased global temperature, making northern Europe slightly warmer at least over the next hundred or so years.
Most people don't use tobacco - they use a bong which cools the smoke too.
In the western world, hardly anyone dies quietly in their sleep - most of us die slowly and quite horribly, taking years to actually stop moving about.
This is what I don't understand in our risk-averse society - yeah, sure you might die doing [insert dangerous activity here], but you're probably going to have a slow, horribly drawn out death anyway. I'd rather spend my life living rather than waiting to die as most risk-averse people seem to do.
W3schools isn't really indicative of what the "normals" use though. According to w3schools, Linux is more popular than the Mac. However, according to BBC statistics (a site that pretty much the entire cross section of society uses), Linux has less than half of one percent share - unlike W3school's stat of around 3.5%.
My PowerBook came with a mini-DVI to VGA adapter for free.
I thought it meant "Eventually Mallocs All Core Storage"...
eMusic - which is completely legitimate - plays for sure too on an iPod or any other MP3 player. This is because they sell unencrypted MP3 files.
Magnatune - which is completely legitimate - plays for sure on any MP3 player too. This is because they sell unencrypted files in most formats (you choose the format when you download).
eMusic is the second largest legitimate download service, only second to iTMS. Some record labels are quite happy with DRM-less downloads.
I think you're missing the point. The laser will always be powered by electricity - but if you can manufacture the optical equivalent of a transistor (so that the laser merely becomes the power source - much like a battery, and the signalling is purely done with light) then you don't need to convert optical signals to electrical signals for switching.
You're thinking of those ancient, 25 to 30 year old normally aspirated Mercedes diesels if you think diesel cars stink. They don't. You can't tell them apart from gasoline cars now apart from a different sound. Ultra low sulfur diesel and pollution control equipment (plus electronic fuel injection) has cleaned up the diesel car.
What bizarre logic.
Most people's daily drive is roughly the same however large the country they live in. To take an extreme example, I used to live in Houston, Texas. My commute was 5 miles each way. I drove about 8000 miles a year.
I now live in the Isle of Man - the *entire* island could fit inside the area of greater Houston. I drive around 12,000 miles a year - my commute is now 12 miles each way, and I do more longer journeys by car (up to 30 miles each way).
Thermodynamically less efficient? I beg to differ. Diesels have always been more thermodynamically efficient than petrol (gasoline) engines - even more so now with the most recent engines with refinements like common rail fuel injection.
The difference is you're not paying the highest possible price for your market. This is one reason why DVDs are region locked - DVDs are much cheaper in some countries than others, and people would just order their DVDs off the Internet instead of paying extra for the locally sold one. The sole reason for region locking is to force you to pay the highest price for the region you're in.
Both of those incidents could have happened either to a private or publically owned company - they all boil down to negligence of which there is plenty in both the private and public sector and it doesn't really make your argument one way or the other!
There essentially already is an RBL - most blog/forum spam comes from open proxies. Use any of the open proxy DNSBLs and you can cut down the amount of spam by an order of magnitude. I was forced to do this with a bulletin board recently.
The trouble is, according to Spamhaus's statistics, the United States is the world's biggest spam sending country by volume.