Re:Do not confuse products and engineering prototy
on
The End of the Oil Age
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· Score: 1
Just count me as someone who's seen enough engineering prototypes that foundered when scaled up to real, usable technologies. This has been the story of the battery powered electric car to a T.
To wit: The prototype has an extremely light chasis, and probably won't make side or front impact safety standards. Add more weight. How about air bags? Add more weight. What happens to the batteries in a collision? (This is a problem the fuel cell boys are going to have to face as well). Safety devices will probably add more weight. Now we need Air Conditioning. And heat, since we don't get that for free from the engine. Weight is increasing by the second, and the energy density of the batteries isn't.
This also doesn't answer the long term costs of battery replacement and life. I was glad to see that they were using a battery that lacks a memory effect, but the LiIon batteries in my laptop are still classified as hazardous waste. The point of an electric car is to lower the environmental impact.
Finally, what powers a toy for the rich won't work for long haul trucking. You don't build an 18-wheeler lighter to accomodate batteries. That defeats the point of having a big truck to begin with.
Until there is some major revolution in battery technology, (hopefully one that doesn't use toxic metals in the mix) I don't see batteries as a useful replacement for the internal combustion engine.
Re:Do not say it is impossible to the person doing
on
The End of the Oil Age
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· Score: 1
From the article you quote:
But even if AC Propulsion claims the vehicle has efficiency equivalent to 70 mpg (and zero emissions), the tzero is, to a certain extent, an exercise in automotive fantasy. Its Spartan interior looks like a science project, in which most of the controls apart from the CD player are gadgets to monitor the battery and tiny 110-lb. motor. Drivers get an analog current meter, voltmeter, altimeter, and battery-voltage display with LED lights that measures temperature and charging limits.
Remember, though, this is more of an experiment than a traditionally appointed car. The tzero does not come with air-conditioning. And to lower its top and windows, you detach them and store them in the trunk. Talk about alternative energy expenditures.
Fuel cell cars are as heavy as normal vehicles, with the standard amenities. Put all of that back into your wundercar and it performs as poorly as all battery driven vehicles. Not to mention that the price will go up from the already ridiculous $200,000.
Batteries just don't cut it, and there are zero developments on the horizon that can improve them in the ways needed for vehicular use. Fuel cells are almost there. Pure electric cars running on batteries aren't going to work in a country as spread out as the US. Heck, the laptop vendors are moving in the direction of methane fuel cells because they realize that the physics of batteries just can't be pushed much further and they need more power now.
A fuel cell is more efficient at storing energy than a battery and can produce higher currents. That's why the Apollo Command Module required fuel cells. A battery load to sustain them for two weeks would have been (and still is) impractical. The Lunar Module could get away with using batteries, because it had a shorter useful lifespan. Originally, they planned to use fuel cells in it as well, but they ran into teething problems and decided to concentrate on the command module cells only, since they were mission critical.
Not to mention that a fuel cell powered vehicle is essentially an electric car, but with a battery that doesn't contain crap like nickel or cadmium or other heavy metals.
Yes, because stuff never broke before. The real change is in automated manufacturing processes that put together devices that are cheaper to replace than repair. Printed circuits and robot-soldered connections are not easy to repair. Thus the slow death of the TV and electronics repair shopes.
The mean uptime on tube based radios and televisions sucked. It was pretty simple to figure out what tube was blown and head down to the hardware store for a replacement, however. A Pentium 4 processor built out of vacuum tubes would have a few heat dissipation and reliability issues, I think
My point was that Uranium mining ain't all that bad, comparitively. Particularly since you don't need to remove as much material to generate the same amount of power. That's what bothers me about the discussion of nuclear power. We discuss waste problems and costs forever and never talk about acquisition costs. In terms of environmental damage, coal is about the worst form of energy generation there is.
Mountaintop removal may be better than a traditional strip mine (which I have also visited. Benefits of starting out college as a geology, not a CS major), but it is still bad news. Furthermore, let us remember that the current administration is busy making all of that "proper engineering" optional. My guess is that the mining companies aren't going to spend squat once they're not forced to. They have a long history of doing just that.
Have you visited a modern coal mining operation? I have personal experience with both. One hint that a modern coal mine is in the area is the fact that the river disappears. They rip the tops off of mountains and fill the valleys with the overburden. It's quite impressive until you think about what is happening to the surrounding environment. Moonscape doesn't begin to describe it.
As far as the heavy metal runoff from uranium mining, it is no worse than that at any other heavy metal mine. Or a gold mine for that matter.
SCSI RAID arrays don't plug into ATA controllers. Microsoft's installer thought my IBM controller was a generic Adaptec and installed the wrong drivers. As soon as 2k got rid of the BIOS and moved to its internal routines it went blotto. Then the recovery console refused to load the old drivers or the latest one downloaded from IBM. I ended up doing a bare metal recovery of the system disk. I think there might have been another way, but I'm real confident in my backups, so it was the path of least resistance. If we were just a little bigger, we could afford a second staging server to test patches on before rolling them out, but we're not big enough to afford two identical servers.
Needless to say, we stayed on SP2 until SP4 was out for a few months. I now basically dread any major upgrades of that server.
You're lucky. Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 mis-detected the RAID controller in my primary server and left the OS unbootable. It was tricky getting it back, too. I guess that's what I get for buying hardware from a tiny company in Armonk, NY. SP3 also played hob with MS-SQL Server, as I recall.
Let's just say that I approached Service Pack 4 with a great deal of apprehension. I've had good luck with workstation upgrades, but my server experience is decidely mixed.
Give it up. If we are going to rehearse all of the various political crimes committed over the history of a nation as reasons for non-action, then no European nation should be involved in any action, whether it be trade or military, outside of their borders. It should take a few more centuries to pay off the karmic burdens of colonialism and institutionalized genocide.
No one's past is clean. It's what we do with our present that counts. "But so and so did such and such first!" is a playground level of argument.
Battle not with monsters lest you become one. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
The hate you spew makes you no better than the man you condemn, despite the fact that he is demonstrably the worst President we've had since Nixon. The solution of the radical is always to kill what they fear, never realizing that eventually the guillotine will claim them as well.
PS: You still haven't explained how death threats are "civilized."
Every day that goes by is another day that Lay gets closer to getting off scot-free. The longer the investigation, the greater the cost, and the greater the incentive to just end it, because "nobody cares anymore."
Actually, I think McBride is too small a fish for the SEC to get their panties in a knot over. Couple that with the fact that he's fighting those "Linux hippies" that the *IAA are so incensed with, and I bet nothing happens under the current administration.
Look, I didn't vote him, and I won't be voting for him next time around (barring Ralph Nader getting the Democratic nomination), but you still haven't explained how death threats are "civilized." By making such threats don't you also make yourself a criminal and a terrorist? Or did you not really mean it, which merely makes you a liar?
then the SEC will have to get involved in order to send a message to the rest of the corporate world that this sort of thing cannot be tolerated.
What planet are you from, and what color is the sky there? All Darl and company need to do is make sure their contributions to the major political parties are up to date.
Patents can be selectively enforced. If I were to come up with a patented technology I could easily say that I grant a license to everyone to use it, unless you are employee or customer of Microsoft. For those individuals a revokable, non-transferable license of $1B per copy is required. I can do that for 20 years from the date of filing.
Actually, Guinness brewed in Ireland and the UK is slightly less alcoholic than its North American cousin. Both Eire and the Queen tax beer on its alcohol content and brewing it a bit weaker helps to hold down the price. In America we just tax the hell out of it regardless, so we get a stronger beer.
I've heard that the Jamaican Guinness is stronger yet, but I don't know if that's true. At any rate, I prefer Bell's Expedition Stout, when I can get my grubby mitts on it. That's rarer now that everyone I know in Ann Arbor has moved to DC.
But this isn't a warranty voiding (which I believe has been held to be illegal by a court for inkjet printers). It's an agreement by Lexmark to sell you a cartridge at a lower price, provided that you return it without refilling it. Sounds like a simple contract issue to me. If you want to refill, you have to pay full price for the initial cartridge.
Here's the flaw I see in it: incompetent people have been shown [apa.org] to be less capable not only of judging their own performance, but also of judging the performance of others.
In my mind, this finding doesn't just invalidate the "comptetent advisors" theory, it also neatly answers the original poster's question as well. In a universal sufferage system, the incompetent are allowed to vote and they far outnumber the competent people and end up choosing a weaker candidate.
The problem of course, is extending the sufferage only to the competent. There's no good test to find these individuals, so we're sort of stuck with what we have. As Churchill once remarked: "Democracy is the worst form of government known to man, with the exception of all of the others."
Are you going to sue the contractor when your house is broken into?
If he installed a lock with bad tumblers, found out about it, and then failed to warn me and provide a repair? Yep, he gets sued. How is my analogy different from what MS is accused of?
I wonder why the software industry is so terrified of warranties and other guarantees of quality. Doesn't anybody stand behind their work anymore?
It's very simple: Software is in a unique environment where just about anything can happen.
Hammers and screwdrivers are also in the same type of environment, so software is hardly as unique as you seem to think it is. We can define negligent conduct by tool manufacturers, so it seems to me that we can also define negligence for software manufacturers. We also can define what an acceptable defect rate is and force manufacturers to correct defective problems.
This, of course, leaves open the question of whether or not Microsoft's conduct is actually negligent, in the legal sense. I'm not sure that it is.
I agree with most of what you said, with the exception of comm satellites ever being superior to fiber links. The latency problem is pretty bad on those things and that's why we continue to string new cable to anyplace that has significant traffic. It's a loooong way out GSO and back.
Still wouldn't pay for the engine development, I'm afraid. Unless someone starts to loft private space stations, an engine the size of the F-1 just isn't commercially viable. Smaller engines might be, however. You can cluster the smaller engines to lift space station sized loads and use fewer of them on smaller rockets for commercial satellites. Which is a better use of your tax dollars?
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To wit: The prototype has an extremely light chasis, and probably won't make side or front impact safety standards. Add more weight. How about air bags? Add more weight. What happens to the batteries in a collision? (This is a problem the fuel cell boys are going to have to face as well). Safety devices will probably add more weight. Now we need Air Conditioning. And heat, since we don't get that for free from the engine. Weight is increasing by the second, and the energy density of the batteries isn't.
This also doesn't answer the long term costs of battery replacement and life. I was glad to see that they were using a battery that lacks a memory effect, but the LiIon batteries in my laptop are still classified as hazardous waste. The point of an electric car is to lower the environmental impact.
Finally, what powers a toy for the rich won't work for long haul trucking. You don't build an 18-wheeler lighter to accomodate batteries. That defeats the point of having a big truck to begin with.
Until there is some major revolution in battery technology, (hopefully one that doesn't use toxic metals in the mix) I don't see batteries as a useful replacement for the internal combustion engine.
Fuel cell cars are as heavy as normal vehicles, with the standard amenities. Put all of that back into your wundercar and it performs as poorly as all battery driven vehicles. Not to mention that the price will go up from the already ridiculous $200,000.
Batteries just don't cut it, and there are zero developments on the horizon that can improve them in the ways needed for vehicular use. Fuel cells are almost there. Pure electric cars running on batteries aren't going to work in a country as spread out as the US. Heck, the laptop vendors are moving in the direction of methane fuel cells because they realize that the physics of batteries just can't be pushed much further and they need more power now.
How about a toxic battery replacement center? Fuel cells are better batteries than batteries, evironmentally speaking.
Not to mention that a fuel cell powered vehicle is essentially an electric car, but with a battery that doesn't contain crap like nickel or cadmium or other heavy metals.
The mean uptime on tube based radios and televisions sucked. It was pretty simple to figure out what tube was blown and head down to the hardware store for a replacement, however. A Pentium 4 processor built out of vacuum tubes would have a few heat dissipation and reliability issues, I think
Mountaintop removal may be better than a traditional strip mine (which I have also visited. Benefits of starting out college as a geology, not a CS major), but it is still bad news. Furthermore, let us remember that the current administration is busy making all of that "proper engineering" optional. My guess is that the mining companies aren't going to spend squat once they're not forced to. They have a long history of doing just that.
As far as the heavy metal runoff from uranium mining, it is no worse than that at any other heavy metal mine. Or a gold mine for that matter.
Needless to say, we stayed on SP2 until SP4 was out for a few months. I now basically dread any major upgrades of that server.
No more so than coal mining, or iron mining, or ... Resource extraction is rarely eco-friendly.
However, you need orders of magnitude less uranium than you do coal. Which is more polluting?
Let's just say that I approached Service Pack 4 with a great deal of apprehension. I've had good luck with workstation upgrades, but my server experience is decidely mixed.
No one's past is clean. It's what we do with our present that counts. "But so and so did such and such first!" is a playground level of argument.
The hate you spew makes you no better than the man you condemn, despite the fact that he is demonstrably the worst President we've had since Nixon. The solution of the radical is always to kill what they fear, never realizing that eventually the guillotine will claim them as well.
PS: You still haven't explained how death threats are "civilized."
Actually, I think McBride is too small a fish for the SEC to get their panties in a knot over. Couple that with the fact that he's fighting those "Linux hippies" that the *IAA are so incensed with, and I bet nothing happens under the current administration.
Look, I didn't vote him, and I won't be voting for him next time around (barring Ralph Nader getting the Democratic nomination), but you still haven't explained how death threats are "civilized." By making such threats don't you also make yourself a criminal and a terrorist? Or did you not really mean it, which merely makes you a liar?
Death threats are civilized behaviour? I guess I must be a barbarian then. That's OK, I really dig the horned helmet.
What planet are you from, and what color is the sky there? All Darl and company need to do is make sure their contributions to the major political parties are up to date.
Is Ken Lay in jail yet? How about Bernie Ebbers?
Patents can be selectively enforced. If I were to come up with a patented technology I could easily say that I grant a license to everyone to use it, unless you are employee or customer of Microsoft. For those individuals a revokable, non-transferable license of $1B per copy is required. I can do that for 20 years from the date of filing.
I've heard that the Jamaican Guinness is stronger yet, but I don't know if that's true. At any rate, I prefer Bell's Expedition Stout, when I can get my grubby mitts on it. That's rarer now that everyone I know in Ann Arbor has moved to DC.
But this isn't a warranty voiding (which I believe has been held to be illegal by a court for inkjet printers). It's an agreement by Lexmark to sell you a cartridge at a lower price, provided that you return it without refilling it. Sounds like a simple contract issue to me. If you want to refill, you have to pay full price for the initial cartridge.
In my mind, this finding doesn't just invalidate the "comptetent advisors" theory, it also neatly answers the original poster's question as well. In a universal sufferage system, the incompetent are allowed to vote and they far outnumber the competent people and end up choosing a weaker candidate.
The problem of course, is extending the sufferage only to the competent. There's no good test to find these individuals, so we're sort of stuck with what we have. As Churchill once remarked: "Democracy is the worst form of government known to man, with the exception of all of the others."
If he installed a lock with bad tumblers, found out about it, and then failed to warn me and provide a repair? Yep, he gets sued. How is my analogy different from what MS is accused of?
I wonder why the software industry is so terrified of warranties and other guarantees of quality. Doesn't anybody stand behind their work anymore?
Hammers and screwdrivers are also in the same type of environment, so software is hardly as unique as you seem to think it is. We can define negligent conduct by tool manufacturers, so it seems to me that we can also define negligence for software manufacturers. We also can define what an acceptable defect rate is and force manufacturers to correct defective problems.
This, of course, leaves open the question of whether or not Microsoft's conduct is actually negligent, in the legal sense. I'm not sure that it is.
I agree with most of what you said, with the exception of comm satellites ever being superior to fiber links. The latency problem is pretty bad on those things and that's why we continue to string new cable to anyplace that has significant traffic. It's a loooong way out GSO and back.
Still wouldn't pay for the engine development, I'm afraid. Unless someone starts to loft private space stations, an engine the size of the F-1 just isn't commercially viable. Smaller engines might be, however. You can cluster the smaller engines to lift space station sized loads and use fewer of them on smaller rockets for commercial satellites. Which is a better use of your tax dollars?