What everyone seems to be waiting for is a cost-per-watt that is low enough so that ordinary people will decide to start buying them in large quantities without government subsidization.
You won't see it from FSLR, unfortunately. Their output is currently (no pun intended) earmarked for commercial ventures only, no retail/residential sales. Pity. Hope that changes.
I love COBOL. I have programmed in many languages throughout the years but I can do my best work in COBOL. I recently started working on it again after a 10 year hiatus and was amazed at the advances in the language.
The thing that you don't understand is that unless your college did not keep up with the compilers that were deployed, that COBOL is not "60's tech" any more. Yeah, it has its idiosyncracies but so do any other 3rd generation languages.
Show me a technology suppressed by the oil companies
Large format NiMH batteries.
Marketed as the Panasonic EV-95. Or rather, not marketed. You can't buy them. The only vehicles they are currently in now (no pun intended) are three hundred some-odd Toyota RAV4-EVs.
If they are ever sold for use to power traction motors in an electric vehicle, Cobasys will slap Panasonic with an injunction to stop. And you can't buy them at any price other than in very large quantities, and the only people who can buy such large quantities are automakers. Some would say "Not a scam" but the licensing of the technology to exclude certain forms of transportation is REAL.
Who's Cobasys? Just the joint venture between the inventor of the battery, ECD Ovonics, and -- wait for it -- Chevron.
Here are afewcitations and examples. Although things seem to be getting better, as they are being licensed in some hybrids now, and they may be expanded to more applications in the future...
Somehow I get uncomfortable seeing AI and nuclear power together in the same sentence. You've piqued my curiosity and I'll have to read the article, but I'm sure of one thing; a wind farm or a solar array won't require nearly the intelligence to maintain that a nuclear plant would, automated or not. I'm gonna put more of my bet on those technologies.
I assume, from the context of your comment, that when you say "a power plant in every home" that you meant "a nuclear power plant in every home."
I probably read many the same books that you did, and I'm far from being a tree-hugger; but I have toured a nuke (my uncle worked in one and gave us a tour way before 9-11 made that impossible) and I can tell you that scaling that down is going to present a difficult engineering challenge - among all the other hurdles that you have to clear.
If you remove the word nuclear (either explicit or implied) from your comment, I wholeheartedly agree.
I wonder if anyone has examined the cost of deploying solar cells in, for example, median strips of highways and in parking lots and on rooftops. Compare this against the cost of deploying even a garden variety "community nuke" and I'll bet that the cost is competitive, and without the concomitant risk of nuclear material exposure.
How about supplanting solar panels with wind turbines? These turbines could be deployed anywhere and - surprise surprise, are insensitive to impinging solar radiation. All they need is wind, and you can even get that while it's raining. (And sunny, too, so you get a double whammy from the wind and solar panels.)
We have to start thinking creatively, 'tis true. I believe that we can do this in a slightly safer fashion than nuclear power in localized areas - still utilizing them, of course, for major metropolitan areas where they make sense.
Ah, good. We can then get patent lawyers and lawyers in the room at the same time. Too bad we can't patent that as a cure for insomnia. Or can we? I'm so confused....
The patent office is tired of BS patents for ideas, and is telling inventors that it has to transform a Lumpy Object (to quote Tom Peters) or be part of a process that is inextricably tied to the operation of a machine (for example, a process to get an internal combustion engine to get 100MPG.)
Simply coming up with a software algorithm or something in the abstract won't be patentable. (And, IMO, shouldn't be patentable. But of course, it's easy for me to say that because I don't hold any patents, least of all a software patent.)
In addition there's a NASA initiative called COSMIC that I remember subscribing to Back In The Day. According to the links I've found, it looks like COSMIC still has some legs.
Come on. The OP wants to introduce his kids to sci-fi and you want to push Calvin and Hobbes? or DOONESBURY?
Not that there's anything intrinsically wrong with reading any of the comix you mention, but seriously. None of them even fit the genre (unless you count the Bloom County voyages of the "Enterpoop", that is.)
I would also make sure my kids took the philosophy of *some* of these particular comic strips with a large pinch of salt.
That can be changed as well [bringing tech support home.] And why should it? This isn't a sea-change in bringing work home to America, this is business looking for the cheapest way to do its job.
What you'll see is the pendulum swing further in the other direction; businesses who previously were more or less at equilibrium will now find themselves spending more labor dollars domestically (to offset the fewer logistics dollars that they'll spend to move work in process or finished goods around the planet.)
And they may just decide to redouble their efforts to migrate out even more non-transportable services. After all, tech support doesn't need to be loaded on a container in Bangalore and shipped across the ocean, a fiber cable works just fine thankyouverymuch. Why are we deluding ourselves to think that they won't economize even further by pushing knowledge work overseas, to compensate for the labor dollars that they are now having to pay for domestic production?
To bring this to a reductio ad absurdum, we could end up being an industrialized nation again, only this time with the lion's share of the knowledge work happening overseas.
Not saying it is GONNA happen that way, but I could see that as a logical conclusion.
Oh yay, heat from solar. Just what I want here in sunny Arizona on the first day of summer. Ah, grasshopper, heat can do much more than heat your house. Heat can flash a working fluid into a vapor and push against a turbine, which, when hooked to a generator, can provide electricity.
I have been toying with the use of solar energy for awhile - mostly because I'm so pissed off that we have all this free energy lying around and nothing useful we can do with it. I was always struck by the relative inefficiency and expense of pv solar systems when it seems to me that solar thermal systems can do so much better a job at providing work output. Plus, it's easier for a D-I-Yer to deal with solar thermal than it is to deal with solar PV.
There are people building systems like this right now. Here's an example of one of the companies and the equipment that is marketed. Note there are only four fluid connections: Working fluid in/out, cooling fluid in/out - plus the electrical connection.
Note: I have no connection to this firm, I only came across them in a Google search. I'm sure there are others.
In the event that you really don't know, the "whoosh" comment indicates that the parent post that you replied to was a joke, that flew by over your head, completely un-noticed.
If you let the IT folk articulate the business process, you're going to get the same exact thing. That's why we have business analysts whose job it is, ostensibly, to figure out what the business people want and translate it into a swiss army knife that's going to be wildly popular and successful.
To not involve educators in the requirements building phase of this was doomed to the same failure. The problem is that it is visible to more people, sad to say.
I knew that someone would take umbrage at this thread and my reply. No, you were completely correct.
I moderated a post that I thought said that the NZ member was part of the security council. In short, i screwed up, moderated a post informative that shouldn't have been, and simply replied in the thread to kill it. No reflection on YOUR reply, which was correct.
You have a 10 month old and you allow your husband to spend his time at home sitting in front of a computer?
I have a boy the same age. I feel scummy enough being away from him the 8 hours per day I spend at work.
Of course, it begs the question of whether his time at home is 'off time' or 'work time.' We could be talking about someone with a home office, or a salesperson with no fixed office, or a telecommuter here.
I'd cut the OP a little bit of slack. But that's just me.
Second this. Depending on what kind of data, you can run afoul of many many laws if the data becomes compromised. My wife's company has this issue with health care data, and HIPAA laws are so damned toothsome.
Have the consultant import the data on-site, and make sure that company assets are used to do this so that the data doesn't leave.
Slashdot Mirror
What everyone seems to be waiting for is a cost-per-watt that is low enough so that ordinary people will decide to start buying them in large quantities without government subsidization.
You won't see it from FSLR, unfortunately. Their output is currently (no pun intended) earmarked for commercial ventures only, no retail/residential sales. Pity. Hope that changes.
So, what's the secret to their secret?
FTFA: They ain't sayin'. They ain't talkin' to reporters. At all.
Wow, was that a huge "woosh" that went over their heads? Geez Louise.
I love COBOL. I have programmed in many languages throughout the years but I can do my best work in COBOL. I recently started working on it again after a 10 year hiatus and was amazed at the advances in the language.
The thing that you don't understand is that unless your college did not keep up with the compilers that were deployed, that COBOL is not "60's tech" any more. Yeah, it has its idiosyncracies but so do any other 3rd generation languages.
Look, ytte is written in Olde. It must bee fromm befor they invented Fpelling.
Large format NiMH batteries.
Marketed as the Panasonic EV-95. Or rather, not marketed. You can't buy them. The only vehicles they are currently in now (no pun intended) are three hundred some-odd Toyota RAV4-EVs.
If they are ever sold for use to power traction motors in an electric vehicle, Cobasys will slap Panasonic with an injunction to stop. And you can't buy them at any price other than in very large quantities, and the only people who can buy such large quantities are automakers. Some would say "Not a scam" but the licensing of the technology to exclude certain forms of transportation is REAL.
Who's Cobasys? Just the joint venture between the inventor of the battery, ECD Ovonics, and -- wait for it -- Chevron.
Here are a few citations and examples. Although things seem to be getting better, as they are being licensed in some hybrids now, and they may be expanded to more applications in the future...
Somehow I get uncomfortable seeing AI and nuclear power together in the same sentence. You've piqued my curiosity and I'll have to read the article, but I'm sure of one thing; a wind farm or a solar array won't require nearly the intelligence to maintain that a nuclear plant would, automated or not. I'm gonna put more of my bet on those technologies.
I assume, from the context of your comment, that when you say "a power plant in every home" that you meant "a nuclear power plant in every home."
I probably read many the same books that you did, and I'm far from being a tree-hugger; but I have toured a nuke (my uncle worked in one and gave us a tour way before 9-11 made that impossible) and I can tell you that scaling that down is going to present a difficult engineering challenge - among all the other hurdles that you have to clear.
If you remove the word nuclear (either explicit or implied) from your comment, I wholeheartedly agree.
I wonder if anyone has examined the cost of deploying solar cells in, for example, median strips of highways and in parking lots and on rooftops. Compare this against the cost of deploying even a garden variety "community nuke" and I'll bet that the cost is competitive, and without the concomitant risk of nuclear material exposure.
How about supplanting solar panels with wind turbines? These turbines could be deployed anywhere and - surprise surprise, are insensitive to impinging solar radiation. All they need is wind, and you can even get that while it's raining. (And sunny, too, so you get a double whammy from the wind and solar panels.)
We have to start thinking creatively, 'tis true. I believe that we can do this in a slightly safer fashion than nuclear power in localized areas - still utilizing them, of course, for major metropolitan areas where they make sense.
Ah, good. We can then get patent lawyers and lawyers in the room at the same time. Too bad we can't patent that as a cure for insomnia. Or can we? I'm so confused....
You don't need to be "in the know."
The patent office is tired of BS patents for ideas, and is telling inventors that it has to transform a Lumpy Object (to quote Tom Peters) or be part of a process that is inextricably tied to the operation of a machine (for example, a process to get an internal combustion engine to get 100MPG.)
Simply coming up with a software algorithm or something in the abstract won't be patentable.
(And, IMO, shouldn't be patentable. But of course, it's easy for me to say that because I don't hold any patents, least of all a software patent.)
Now, Grasshopper, THAT's a true demonstration of how Godwin's law works. :)
In addition there's a NASA initiative called COSMIC that I remember subscribing to Back In The Day. According to the links I've found, it looks like COSMIC still has some legs.
Yikes, I'm in trouble now. Who knows what Hobbes will do when Spiff gets dissed?
Come on. The OP wants to introduce his kids to sci-fi and you want to push Calvin and Hobbes? or DOONESBURY?
Not that there's anything intrinsically wrong with reading any of the comix you mention, but seriously. None of them even fit the genre (unless you count the Bloom County voyages of the "Enterpoop", that is.)
I would also make sure my kids took the philosophy of *some* of these particular comic strips with a large pinch of salt.
What you'll see is the pendulum swing further in the other direction; businesses who previously were more or less at equilibrium will now find themselves spending more labor dollars domestically (to offset the fewer logistics dollars that they'll spend to move work in process or finished goods around the planet.)
And they may just decide to redouble their efforts to migrate out even more non-transportable services. After all, tech support doesn't need to be loaded on a container in Bangalore and shipped across the ocean, a fiber cable works just fine thankyouverymuch. Why are we deluding ourselves to think that they won't economize even further by pushing knowledge work overseas, to compensate for the labor dollars that they are now having to pay for domestic production?
To bring this to a reductio ad absurdum, we could end up being an industrialized nation again, only this time with the lion's share of the knowledge work happening overseas.
Not saying it is GONNA happen that way, but I could see that as a logical conclusion.
I have been toying with the use of solar energy for awhile - mostly because I'm so pissed off that we have all this free energy lying around and nothing useful we can do with it. I was always struck by the relative inefficiency and expense of pv solar systems when it seems to me that solar thermal systems can do so much better a job at providing work output. Plus, it's easier for a D-I-Yer to deal with solar thermal than it is to deal with solar PV.
There are people building systems like this right now. Here's an example of one of the companies and the equipment that is marketed. Note there are only four fluid connections: Working fluid in/out, cooling fluid in/out - plus the electrical connection.
Note: I have no connection to this firm, I only came across them in a Google search. I'm sure there are others.
In the event that you really don't know, the "whoosh" comment indicates that the parent post that you replied to was a joke, that flew by over your head, completely un-noticed.
If you let the IT folk articulate the business process, you're going to get the same exact thing. That's why we have business analysts whose job it is, ostensibly, to figure out what the business people want and translate it into a swiss army knife that's going to be wildly popular and successful.
To not involve educators in the requirements building phase of this was doomed to the same failure. The problem is that it is visible to more people, sad to say.
I knew that someone would take umbrage at this thread and my reply. No, you were completely correct.
I moderated a post that I thought said that the NZ member was part of the security council. In short, i screwed up, moderated a post informative that shouldn't have been, and simply replied in the thread to kill it. No reflection on YOUR reply, which was correct.
Sorry about that.
You have a 10 month old and you allow your husband to spend his time at home sitting in front of a computer?
I have a boy the same age. I feel scummy enough being away from him the 8 hours per day I spend at work.
Of course, it begs the question of whether his time at home is 'off time' or 'work time.' We could be talking about someone with a home office, or a salesperson with no fixed office, or a telecommuter here.
I'd cut the OP a little bit of slack. But that's just me.
Replying to this to kill my 'informative' moderation, because this isn't right. The five permanent members of the UN Security Council are China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Not at all if I could avoid it, that's for sure.
Second this. Depending on what kind of data, you can run afoul of many many laws if the data becomes compromised. My wife's company has this issue with health care data, and HIPAA laws are so damned toothsome.
Have the consultant import the data on-site, and make sure that company assets are used to do this so that the data doesn't leave.
we would still be working off mainframes or worse
:) Either that or this hook is uncomfortable in me mouth.
Them's fightin' words.
You're not a true VitaMixer owner unless you've done the 2x4 trick. :)
For the uninitiated, early ads (not seen recent ones) claim that it will pulp a 2X4. And, by God, mine did.
I don't believe I'm losing mod points by answering this, but I only have a one word answer for you -
Vita-Mixer.