The French? I think you mean the Americans. Unfortunately, American nuclear technology doesn't actually get used here -- the public has been told that they its bad for the environment.
I have an idea. How about letting the human species's immune system continue to adapt for the flu rather than short-circuiting continued adaptation the way we are in countless other areas by creating drugs that then eventually become ineffective as the diseases evolve while human immune systems devolve and put all that research time and money toward some of the infinite number of more pressing problems that need to be addressed now? We're the one species that's going to go down as not only having messed up the planet and ecosystems for all the other species, but also the one that actually largely put the most effort they possibly could into actually making themselves maladapted to the very planet they forced the most adaption of species for.
How about being able to do your work the same way on any computer any where? How about not having to carry a laptop everywhere just for simple crap like writing documents? How about being able to collaborate with other people on any computers anywhere anytime including the same time you are working on the same document yourself? How about not having to pay hundreds of dollars for freakin basic software that, realistically speaking, hasn't advanced remotely enough over at least the last decade to justify all the forced upgrading and incompatibilities. It's freakin text editing, spreadsheeting, and putting slideshows together people. Why would you pay hundersds of dollars for software that only works on one computer just to do this stuff?
You're right. There were four Democratic presidents. The Cold War was begun by the first one and didn't end until the first Republican after the last one. The Vietnam war was begun and extended by two of the other 3. And the last one had the lowest approval rating of any president in history other than the first one. If only we had listened to one of these presidents then there wouldn't be this CHinese diesel submarine.
To those of you who think that nuclear may be worse than coal power because of the nuclear "waste". Just checking: you are aware of the phenomenon called radioactive half-life right? If you keep a radioactive material isolated (for example, underground geological storage), it decays until it is no longer radioactive. The most radioactive constituants go inert in only a few days. The ones that take a long time are less radioactive in proportion to how much longer they take to decay. Meanwhile, your body itself is composed of radioactive materials like carbon40. Just living, you are constantly exposed to cosmic radiation, radon, etc. in levels that are very high relative to anything you'd be exposed to from open plutonium240 or any of the other nuclear wastes that take more than a few decades to decay.
You got that right. Everything can be blamed on the oil companies. This is a perfect example. There is obviously no single other explanation in the world for why we don't have more nuclear powerplants. It's obviously the oil companies. That oil company Halliburton especially, undoubtedly. They are behind so many things that it'd boggle the average intelligence person's mind if they were to attempt to grasp it. That's the oil companies's and their Masterminds's trick, in fact -- being behind so many evils that no one could ever believe it, so no one does. Except for a few of us. We're onto them. They may be masterminds but we know what the real story is. They're so powerful though that there is nothing that either you nor I nor any of the other small handful of people who realize it can do anything about it. It's risky enough just talking about it let alone doing something about it.
Each of those SUVs is a distinct model. The Matrix is a Corolla station wagon just with name and bodykit aimed at avoiding station wagon image -- same car in every respect but appearance. Likewise, the Solara is a coupe version of the Camry -- everything under the skin same car. The Avalon is Camry only with wheelbase extended a foot for more rear-pasenger legroom and a slightly larger displacement version of engine.
Toyota has 4 car platforms. Toyota has 6 SUV platforms + 2 truck platforms that are not shared with any of their SUVs. Toyota has more models of SUV and truck than any other car company.
Believe me I'm not confusing it with the Carnot efficiency. Yes, of course, everything in the world obeys the 3 laws of thermodynamics...
You are missing the point.
Talking about how much energy is lost in the transfer of electricity in and out of batteries is one of the least significant inefficiencies in the process of getting electricity in and out of EVs (you yourself tout it is being low). Comparing this efficiency to the overall efficiency of the electricity production process of a fuel cell while ignoring what the "thermodynamic efficiency" of the process which creates the electricity that goes in the battery-only cars is asinine and misleading.
Oh, and that movie about the EV1 was a crock of bullshit. Please be smart enough to get your information from more sources than propoganda movies and other people who don't know what they are talking about. The EV1 was just ahead of its time. The public dismissed it as weird and pointless, basically. Remember, even the 1st gen of Prius didn't sell worth a damn in this country for the first few years. And that was many years later when gas was much more expensive. GM spent and lost billions of dollars on it for two primary reasons. one was that battery technology had nearly completely stopped improving during the 90s right when it was expected to really start taking off (thus, the EV1 having to use lead-acid batteries and having 55mile range). The second was that even the people who had told GM they would buy one ended up buying SUVs instead -- people talk a lot more than they walk when it comes to really caring about the environment -- certainly they did when troops weren't dying "over oil" and gas was 1/3 the price it is now at least. Why do you think no other company has come out with an EV that was nearly as advanced? No the Tesla is not nearly as advanced -- it's a mechanical system car (a GM car, I might add -- the Lotus Elise/Opel Speedster) designed for an IC engine with the engine plucked out and some really good batteries put in along with a motor. Why do you think that now, even with gas 3 times as expensive, Toyota has more lines of SUVs than they do cars?
Why are you comparing batteries to fuel cells in "thermodynamic efficiency". Batteries do not have "thermodynamic efficiency". A battery is not an engine, it's a container of an electrical potential that was put there probably by burning coal. You do realize that's where something like 80% of grid power comes from right? The battery's analog in current automotive propulsion is the gas tank in your Honda or whatever.
Find out what the "thermodynamic efficiency" of the process of creating the electricity and then getting it into your lithium ion batteries, and then we can start making useful comparisons to other systems for automotive propulsion.
Also, talking about range as if the range of a fuel cell vehicle was directly comparable to the range of a simple/straight EV (ie no production of power on bard, only storage) has limited validity too -- hydrogen vehicles are able to refill their hydrogen tanks about as fast as current gas cars fill their's, if not faster. EV's on the other hand, need to sit at a charger for a minimum of a couple hours, and if battery longevity is desired, really need to charge over an entire night.
By the way, for those of you who don't know about it the Fuel Cell Equinox is extremely impressive. It's a mass produced, production fuel cell vehicle with the full interior room of a normal Equinox, that'll be driven by 1000 "owners" in the 3 major cities next year. It's been quite a wakeup call to the rest of the auto industry.
Hah, not only can we blame everything that's wrong in the world on Bush, but we can blame this Chinese sub on every Repblican in history. If only we'd listened to the only two Democrat presidents during the Cold War then not only would the Cold War be over, but there wouldn't be these Chinese subs.
What are the reasons (according to the news item submitter) the iPhone would be a miserable failure if not for Apple's usual getting away with murder tricking the consumer into buying inferior products? The fact that it doesn't have buttons, picture messaging and video? Is that supposed to be a joke?
The phone has way-faster-than-3G wi-fi instead of the difference in speed between Edge and 3G. As a bonus, it doesn't have practically half it's current battery life the way it would if were 3G. Fact: right now 3G phones universally have poor battery life.
No you are correct -- they should lock their entire business into using MS products and only be compatible with Windows users rather than just adhering to industry standards and being platform independent the way their successful competitors are.
Gee, I don't know. Maybe they could not produce a labyrinth of licensing contracts that makes it impossible to adhere to the basic standards of the system through which they are trying to deliver their product? I know, I'm crazy, even a heretic, but fuck it, that's my proposal.
The guy doesn't have a clue. He looks at Linux as BBC's nuisance.
In reality, the nuisance to everyone, BBC included, is that BBC has apparently ignored openly published industry standards. Adhere to the simple and straight-forward standards rather than locking self in to working with MS, and you're automatically compatible with viewers on [b]any[/b] operating system. Do that and you don't even have to think about that obnoxious OS created by hacker nobodies.
The article really isn't talking about replacing batteries with ultracapacitors at all. It's talking about supplementing batteries with them as a high current buffer. There aren't going to be any supercapacitor powered laptops. Only, maybe, battery [i]and[/i] supercapacitor powered ones. But really the idea is more add bit more rapid burst discharge/recharge than is possible with chemical betteries alone.
No need to take offense and tell me to google things! You are agreeing with me -- EVs are the ultimate future and we need nuclear power instead of coal. Fuel cells for the electricity will be even better.
That's great you have a Tesla, I'm just saying it's nothing like a mass production car -- it's a Lotus Elise/Opel Speedster with the drive-line swapped for electric and new bodywork. That's a terrific chassis and I hear the batteries are the newest and the propulsion system great too.
Perhaps you aren't aware that the first production fuel cell vehicle is going to be available to the public this coming January? Yes, diesels are the most efficient method right now and more people should be driving them. But this fuel cell Equinox is extremely impressive. Has the interior room of a normal small SUV, and of course the zero emmissions etc.
Also, the Tesla car is hardly anything remarkable. It costs $100,000 and is basically just a Lotus Elise/Opel Speedster with an electric drive-train retrofit. They're more like very expensive kit cars than a ture production EV. Oh, and you do know where electricity comes from, right? It mostly comes from burning coal -- much worse emissions than a modern automotive IC engine.
I agree that EVs are the ultimate future, but we need more nuclear powerplants and/or hydrogen fuel cells for them to truly be better for the environment.
Yes, of course the needle has to press down with "tracking weight". However, people get the wrong weight all the time and they use excessive weight for margin of safety. The vast majority of music being pressed to vinyl these days is dance music. If you've ever heard a dj playing vinyl? it sounds like crap compared to a dj playing wav files or redbook/audio cd -- it's because in order for the records to not skip they have to have weight that compresses the music.
Do you get that there is a certain little range of "tracking weight" and then there is having too much weight or too little weight? Do you need me to explain how having "tracking weight" too high results in compression?
I'm very surprised to hear compression brought out as an advantage for vinyl. In practice, compression is an ever-present concern in playing records -- in order for the needle to get enough contact, it has to be compressed using the weight of the record player arm. This physical compression of the stylus translates into (directly proportional) compression of the audio signal since the travel of the needle is reduced. Any warping or scratch on record and more compression is needed so it doesn't skip.
That is correct. It does not go so far as to tell you to switch from Firefox to IE7, it just tells you to get IE7 if you are on not on IE7, Firefox, or Opera.
Corvette? Just so you know, in the car racing world the Corvette is essentially considered easily the highest performing vehicle anywhere near its price range [eg common Corvettes Z51 not even Z06), up until now with the Ferrari 599 having just come out, was faster and got better lap times than any Ferrari]. I know what you meant though;)
Where do you get that people are quiting MySpace for Facebook? Do you care to support the basis of your opinion with any kind of facts, figures?
I think you are wrong -- I think they are both growing exponentially and that there's no significant greater shifting to Facebook from Myspace than there is of shifting from Facebook to Myspace.
I disagree. People care much less about how clunky the interface is etc than they do about where their friends are. Right now everyone (of the generation that is using these sites ie college students and younger, primarily) and their pet duck is on Facebook and/or MySpace.
These are social sites. They are useless without the people you socialize with being on them too. MySpace and Facebook, thus, have it very good for the future.
Slashdot Mirror
The French? I think you mean the Americans. Unfortunately, American nuclear technology doesn't actually get used here -- the public has been told that they its bad for the environment.
I have an idea. How about letting the human species's immune system continue to adapt for the flu rather than short-circuiting continued adaptation the way we are in countless other areas by creating drugs that then eventually become ineffective as the diseases evolve while human immune systems devolve and put all that research time and money toward some of the infinite number of more pressing problems that need to be addressed now? We're the one species that's going to go down as not only having messed up the planet and ecosystems for all the other species, but also the one that actually largely put the most effort they possibly could into actually making themselves maladapted to the very planet they forced the most adaption of species for.
How about being able to do your work the same way on any computer any where? How about not having to carry a laptop everywhere just for simple crap like writing documents? How about being able to collaborate with other people on any computers anywhere anytime including the same time you are working on the same document yourself? How about not having to pay hundreds of dollars for freakin basic software that, realistically speaking, hasn't advanced remotely enough over at least the last decade to justify all the forced upgrading and incompatibilities. It's freakin text editing, spreadsheeting, and putting slideshows together people. Why would you pay hundersds of dollars for software that only works on one computer just to do this stuff?
You're right. There were four Democratic presidents. The Cold War was begun by the first one and didn't end until the first Republican after the last one. The Vietnam war was begun and extended by two of the other 3. And the last one had the lowest approval rating of any president in history other than the first one. If only we had listened to one of these presidents then there wouldn't be this CHinese diesel submarine.
To those of you who think that nuclear may be worse than coal power because of the nuclear "waste". Just checking: you are aware of the phenomenon called radioactive half-life right? If you keep a radioactive material isolated (for example, underground geological storage), it decays until it is no longer radioactive. The most radioactive constituants go inert in only a few days. The ones that take a long time are less radioactive in proportion to how much longer they take to decay. Meanwhile, your body itself is composed of radioactive materials like carbon40. Just living, you are constantly exposed to cosmic radiation, radon, etc. in levels that are very high relative to anything you'd be exposed to from open plutonium240 or any of the other nuclear wastes that take more than a few decades to decay.
You got that right. Everything can be blamed on the oil companies. This is a perfect example. There is obviously no single other explanation in the world for why we don't have more nuclear powerplants. It's obviously the oil companies. That oil company Halliburton especially, undoubtedly. They are behind so many things that it'd boggle the average intelligence person's mind if they were to attempt to grasp it. That's the oil companies's and their Masterminds's trick, in fact -- being behind so many evils that no one could ever believe it, so no one does. Except for a few of us. We're onto them. They may be masterminds but we know what the real story is. They're so powerful though that there is nothing that either you nor I nor any of the other small handful of people who realize it can do anything about it. It's risky enough just talking about it let alone doing something about it.
Each of those SUVs is a distinct model. The Matrix is a Corolla station wagon just with name and bodykit aimed at avoiding station wagon image -- same car in every respect but appearance. Likewise, the Solara is a coupe version of the Camry -- everything under the skin same car. The Avalon is Camry only with wheelbase extended a foot for more rear-pasenger legroom and a slightly larger displacement version of engine.
Toyota has 4 car platforms. Toyota has 6 SUV platforms + 2 truck platforms that are not shared with any of their SUVs. Toyota has more models of SUV and truck than any other car company.
Believe me I'm not confusing it with the Carnot efficiency. Yes, of course, everything in the world obeys the 3 laws of thermodynamics...
You are missing the point.
Talking about how much energy is lost in the transfer of electricity in and out of batteries is one of the least significant inefficiencies in the process of getting electricity in and out of EVs (you yourself tout it is being low). Comparing this efficiency to the overall efficiency of the electricity production process of a fuel cell while ignoring what the "thermodynamic efficiency" of the process which creates the electricity that goes in the battery-only cars is asinine and misleading.
Oh, and that movie about the EV1 was a crock of bullshit. Please be smart enough to get your information from more sources than propoganda movies and other people who don't know what they are talking about. The EV1 was just ahead of its time. The public dismissed it as weird and pointless, basically. Remember, even the 1st gen of Prius didn't sell worth a damn in this country for the first few years. And that was many years later when gas was much more expensive. GM spent and lost billions of dollars on it for two primary reasons. one was that battery technology had nearly completely stopped improving during the 90s right when it was expected to really start taking off (thus, the EV1 having to use lead-acid batteries and having 55mile range). The second was that even the people who had told GM they would buy one ended up buying SUVs instead -- people talk a lot more than they walk when it comes to really caring about the environment -- certainly they did when troops weren't dying "over oil" and gas was 1/3 the price it is now at least. Why do you think no other company has come out with an EV that was nearly as advanced? No the Tesla is not nearly as advanced -- it's a mechanical system car (a GM car, I might add -- the Lotus Elise/Opel Speedster) designed for an IC engine with the engine plucked out and some really good batteries put in along with a motor. Why do you think that now, even with gas 3 times as expensive, Toyota has more lines of SUVs than they do cars?
Why are you comparing batteries to fuel cells in "thermodynamic efficiency". Batteries do not have "thermodynamic efficiency". A battery is not an engine, it's a container of an electrical potential that was put there probably by burning coal. You do realize that's where something like 80% of grid power comes from right? The battery's analog in current automotive propulsion is the gas tank in your Honda or whatever. Find out what the "thermodynamic efficiency" of the process of creating the electricity and then getting it into your lithium ion batteries, and then we can start making useful comparisons to other systems for automotive propulsion. Also, talking about range as if the range of a fuel cell vehicle was directly comparable to the range of a simple/straight EV (ie no production of power on bard, only storage) has limited validity too -- hydrogen vehicles are able to refill their hydrogen tanks about as fast as current gas cars fill their's, if not faster. EV's on the other hand, need to sit at a charger for a minimum of a couple hours, and if battery longevity is desired, really need to charge over an entire night. By the way, for those of you who don't know about it the Fuel Cell Equinox is extremely impressive. It's a mass produced, production fuel cell vehicle with the full interior room of a normal Equinox, that'll be driven by 1000 "owners" in the 3 major cities next year. It's been quite a wakeup call to the rest of the auto industry.
Hah, not only can we blame everything that's wrong in the world on Bush, but we can blame this Chinese sub on every Repblican in history. If only we'd listened to the only two Democrat presidents during the Cold War then not only would the Cold War be over, but there wouldn't be these Chinese subs.
What are the reasons (according to the news item submitter) the iPhone would be a miserable failure if not for Apple's usual getting away with murder tricking the consumer into buying inferior products? The fact that it doesn't have buttons, picture messaging and video? Is that supposed to be a joke?
The phone has way-faster-than-3G wi-fi instead of the difference in speed between Edge and 3G. As a bonus, it doesn't have practically half it's current battery life the way it would if were 3G. Fact: right now 3G phones universally have poor battery life.
No you are correct -- they should lock their entire business into using MS products and only be compatible with Windows users rather than just adhering to industry standards and being platform independent the way their successful competitors are.
Gee, I don't know. Maybe they could not produce a labyrinth of licensing contracts that makes it impossible to adhere to the basic standards of the system through which they are trying to deliver their product? I know, I'm crazy, even a heretic, but fuck it, that's my proposal.
The guy doesn't have a clue. He looks at Linux as BBC's nuisance. In reality, the nuisance to everyone, BBC included, is that BBC has apparently ignored openly published industry standards. Adhere to the simple and straight-forward standards rather than locking self in to working with MS, and you're automatically compatible with viewers on [b]any[/b] operating system. Do that and you don't even have to think about that obnoxious OS created by hacker nobodies.
The article really isn't talking about replacing batteries with ultracapacitors at all. It's talking about supplementing batteries with them as a high current buffer. There aren't going to be any supercapacitor powered laptops. Only, maybe, battery [i]and[/i] supercapacitor powered ones. But really the idea is more add bit more rapid burst discharge/recharge than is possible with chemical betteries alone.
Actually, hydrogen mostly comes from electrolysis... If you read the article I linked to, you would see what the plan is on getting hydrogen.
No need to take offense and tell me to google things! You are agreeing with me -- EVs are the ultimate future and we need nuclear power instead of coal. Fuel cells for the electricity will be even better.
That's great you have a Tesla, I'm just saying it's nothing like a mass production car -- it's a Lotus Elise/Opel Speedster with the drive-line swapped for electric and new bodywork. That's a terrific chassis and I hear the batteries are the newest and the propulsion system great too.
Here's the linkage: Chevy fuel cell Equinox
Perhaps you aren't aware that the first production fuel cell vehicle is going to be available to the public this coming January? Yes, diesels are the most efficient method right now and more people should be driving them. But this fuel cell Equinox is extremely impressive. Has the interior room of a normal small SUV, and of course the zero emmissions etc.
Also, the Tesla car is hardly anything remarkable. It costs $100,000 and is basically just a Lotus Elise/Opel Speedster with an electric drive-train retrofit. They're more like very expensive kit cars than a ture production EV. Oh, and you do know where electricity comes from, right? It mostly comes from burning coal -- much worse emissions than a modern automotive IC engine.
I agree that EVs are the ultimate future, but we need more nuclear powerplants and/or hydrogen fuel cells for them to truly be better for the environment.
Yes, of course the needle has to press down with "tracking weight". However, people get the wrong weight all the time and they use excessive weight for margin of safety. The vast majority of music being pressed to vinyl these days is dance music. If you've ever heard a dj playing vinyl? it sounds like crap compared to a dj playing wav files or redbook/audio cd -- it's because in order for the records to not skip they have to have weight that compresses the music.
Do you get that there is a certain little range of "tracking weight" and then there is having too much weight or too little weight? Do you need me to explain how having "tracking weight" too high results in compression?
I'm very surprised to hear compression brought out as an advantage for vinyl. In practice, compression is an ever-present concern in playing records -- in order for the needle to get enough contact, it has to be compressed using the weight of the record player arm. This physical compression of the stylus translates into (directly proportional) compression of the audio signal since the travel of the needle is reduced. Any warping or scratch on record and more compression is needed so it doesn't skip.
That is correct. It does not go so far as to tell you to switch from Firefox to IE7, it just tells you to get IE7 if you are on not on IE7, Firefox, or Opera.
Corvette? Just so you know, in the car racing world the Corvette is essentially considered easily the highest performing vehicle anywhere near its price range [eg common Corvettes Z51 not even Z06), up until now with the Ferrari 599 having just come out, was faster and got better lap times than any Ferrari]. I know what you meant though ;)
Where do you get that people are quiting MySpace for Facebook? Do you care to support the basis of your opinion with any kind of facts, figures?
I think you are wrong -- I think they are both growing exponentially and that there's no significant greater shifting to Facebook from Myspace than there is of shifting from Facebook to Myspace.
I disagree. People care much less about how clunky the interface is etc than they do about where their friends are. Right now everyone (of the generation that is using these sites ie college students and younger, primarily) and their pet duck is on Facebook and/or MySpace.
These are social sites. They are useless without the people you socialize with being on them too. MySpace and Facebook, thus, have it very good for the future.