Lots of small solar and wind generators all over the nation. Every block should have one.
You mean like this one? The city of Riverside, CA installed solar panels over 140 new parking spaces at the La Sierra Metrolink station. So not only do commuters parked at the station get some shade, the solar panels power up to 100 nearby homes during the day.
With all the flat-topped commercial buildings and uncovered public parking in California, it's a wonder this isn't done all over. As a side effect, terrorists would have to carpet-bomb California to knock out significant production in that scenario.
(Which, in fact, they don't do. Neither of my parents can get mail to their homes. My father was randomly assigned a box in a group 3 blocks away, with an address that bears no resemblance beyond city and zip to his street address, despite having a reasonably new house right off a public road. My mother was in fact obligated to pay for a mailbox in a town several miles, she doesn't get free delivery of any sort. And don't get me started on delivery to apartments, where the doors are a few paces apart and would be the easiest door-to-door delivery route the carriers would ever have...)
In the rural communities where I live, no business or residence can get mail delivered. Everyone has PO Boxes, and must pick up their own mail. Guess how I know that you can't get most mail-in rebates to a PO Box?
(OT: I managed to hurt my hand with an old Atari 2600 joystick. Don't ask)
Hmm.... on the Atari 800, it was Decathlon, Track & Field and Summer Games, where you had to hammer the joystick back and forth to play. I knew when Epyx brought out their own joysticks that it was a conspiracy. "Thrash your generic Atari joystick playing Summer Games? The new Epyx 500XJ is guaranteed for a million clicks!"
The government concerns itself with the actual well-being of the citizens of the U.S.
No, the government concerns itself with the actual well-being of the population of the U.S., individual citizens be damned. Remember, in some cases, it even concerns itself with the well-being of corporations, to the detriment of its citizens.
Yeah, except my home is in the "high coverage" area on Nextel's site, and I get zero signal. It even lists my town specifically as covered, even though there isn't coverage for 15 miles in any direction.
Find people who live around you and ask them who they use and who they prefer. People who live around me carry AT&T, or they carry nothing at all, because AT&T is the only carrier in my area with coverage.
...why not an R/C airplane? They're a lot easier to learn to fly, they can be built to almost any size and speed, and they're cheaper to build. Granted you're not going to get stop action, but you can go slowly (or quickly) enough to follow the pack.
Radio Shack sends their dead rechargeables out to RBRC for recycling. RBRC will take any NiCD, NiMH or LiIon battery or battery pack (and lead-acid batteries up to 2 pounds.) Beats putting cadmium into the environment.
I bought 4 NiMH batteries with the included charger from the camera section at Walmart. Four 1,800mAh batteries and the charger cost about $10.00. I use these batteries exclusively in my GPS. When my batteries die (after four months of heavy use), I swap the pair of batteries back in the charger and charge then for 16 hours@100mAh. I then unplug the charger and leave them in the charger in the closet. When I'm ready to swap them back out, they've always been still fully charged. Very convenient and cheap.
Actually, at freeway speeds, frontal area, coefficient of drag and rolling resistance are the three main factors that determine range. Since the Tango has half the frontal area of most cars and a fairly aerodynamic shape, that seems quite reasonable.
With the Yellow Top batteries, this is possible. However, a production car would probably use Gel Cell or AGM (Absorbed Glass Mat) batteries which do not leak sulfuric acid when punctured or cut in half or what have you.
IIRC, Yellow Tops are spiral-wound AGM batteries. The acid is absorbed into the glass mat, so in a collision, it will generally stay put. In any event, fire crews carry materials to neutralize acid (after all, every car in America has at least one lead-acid battery on board, usually flooded). The battery box is also completely separate from the passenger compartment, and is not vented to the passenger compartment in any way.
Couldn't they put in a motor that's a little less beefy and knock the price down a few thou? Wouldn't that improve its range and make it safer?
Nope. Electric motors are highly efficient across the powerband, so there's almost no range penalty by having more power on tap.
Plus, to save cost and space, they excluded a transmission. The second motor costs less than a transmission, has only one moving part, and allows the Tango to accelerate up hills without the need for a transmission.
That's why it's important to pick a media that's popularly used and not proprietary, so if the technology becomes non-existent in 10 years (HP DLT/LTO, for instance) you might still be able to get drives for it.
Not necessarily.
I used to back up my Atari stuff onto 90K single-sided floppies. When I got my DSDD drive, my 30 disks fit onto 8 double-sided double-density disks, plus another 10 for new stuff I had accumulated. The SSSD disks were left in the box as my "old backups."
When I switched to the PC and a 1.2MB drive, I used 1.2MB disks to back up my hard drive, and then transferred (painfully, via a terminal emulator program) all my data from my Atari to the hard drive, where it too was backed up onto 1.2MB disks. The SSSD disks went in the trash, and I kept my DSDD disks as my "old backup."
Along came QIC-80 tapes. Shortly before I retired my 1.2MB floppy drive, I transferred all my 1.2MB disks, as well as my hard drive backup, to two QIC-80 tapes. The 1.2MB drive and disks became my "old backup", and my DSDD disks went in the trash.
To make a long story short (too late!), my (eventually) 20 QIC-80 tapes fit on three CD-ROM's and my 100 CD-ROM's fit on 10 DVD-R's. Every time I get "new technology", I transfer the stuff from my old technology, then keep the old technology in a box as the "backup of last resort."
First, any company that is in financial trouble can simply sue IBM over something stupid, and IBM will write them a check (settle) or buy them out.
Second, if IBM settles, it will be taken by their userbase as an admission of guilt, even if "no guilt is admitted" in the settlement. Companies will look elsewhere, since they don't know what other tiny companies will creep out of the woodwork and send them threatening letters for using IBM software.
Most of the music you can buy from iTMS is already on the P2P networks. Given the choice between some Spyware-laden P2P software trying to hit 20 different hosts until one lets me download, then finding the song mangled or cut short, all the while having the RIAA breathing down my neck, and simply paying 99 cents for a high-quality copy, I'll gladly pay the 99 cents.
And the people still treat the environment like crap. I remember going to a beautiful Shinto shrine waterfall type place up in the mountains near Hakone - and seeing coke/coffee cans, cigarette butts and chip packets all along the way. Depressing. Shimoda "white sand" beach is depressing too - the nearest thing to a beach you can get withina few hours of Tokyo, and it's covered in litter. The Japanese have many fine qualities, but being environmentally aware/eco friendly isn't one of them unfortunately.
That's the cool thing about Geocaching. Establish a geocache just off the end of the trail. Put a disposable camera in the cache, and put notes in the description on the website asking cachers to bring a small grocery bag, fill it up with litter on the way to the site and take a picture of themselves with their bag of litter when they find the site. (Make it the 'theme' of that site.) You will find that the vast majority will carry out a bag of litter with them.
If the powers that be get angry, you have a camera full of photos of cachers and the litter they carried out.
Not all caches have to be in sensitive areas or in parks. One of my favorites was a "microcache" in Tracy, CA--basically an Altoids tin with magnets glued to the bottom and a rubber band to hold it closed. It was stuck to the inside top front panel of a newspaper box offering free realty ads. It was challenging to find, it was in an urban setting, and if the box was taken away, you're only out an Altoids tin, golf pencil and logbook.
Every day, someone builds a shorter wavelength blue laser, and someone else builds a better compression algorithm, or even a better copy-prevention scheme. How long until the DVD format is revamped or replaced? Will the new players play the old discs?
Probably not, but before you retire that DVD player, you can transfer all 6000 DVD's to 25 blue-laser-media-of-the-day discs and rest assured that the quality didn't degrade during the transition. Then run another backup onto your favorite-magnetic-media-of-the-day for a second copy, and for good measure, don't throw the DVD's away until the blue-laser-media-of-the-day gets usurped by an ever NEWER technology. Then throw away the DVD's and use the blue-laser copy as your last chance backup.
True, but once it's on computer media, it's treated like any other long term backup. Have at least one off-site backup (remember, he said _important_ video, which I take to mean irreplaceable home movies.) Long before 10 years is up, media will be available with far more capacity, so copy to the new media when it becomes affordable, and repeat with every generation of new media. Hell, keep copies on DVD for everyday viewing, then buy a DLT drive and put the backups on tapes.
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You mean like this one? The city of Riverside, CA installed solar panels over 140 new parking spaces at the La Sierra Metrolink station. So not only do commuters parked at the station get some shade, the solar panels power up to 100 nearby homes during the day.
With all the flat-topped commercial buildings and uncovered public parking in California, it's a wonder this isn't done all over. As a side effect, terrorists would have to carpet-bomb California to knock out significant production in that scenario.
-Bill Gates
In the rural communities where I live, no business or residence can get mail delivered. Everyone has PO Boxes, and must pick up their own mail. Guess how I know that you can't get most mail-in rebates to a PO Box?
...a Beowulf-class cluster of those!
Hmm.... on the Atari 800, it was Decathlon, Track & Field and Summer Games, where you had to hammer the joystick back and forth to play. I knew when Epyx brought out their own joysticks that it was a conspiracy. "Thrash your generic Atari joystick playing Summer Games? The new Epyx 500XJ is guaranteed for a million clicks!"
No, the government concerns itself with the actual well-being of the population of the U.S., individual citizens be damned. Remember, in some cases, it even concerns itself with the well-being of corporations, to the detriment of its citizens.
Simpsons did it! Simpsons did it!
Find people who live around you and ask them who they use and who they prefer. People who live around me carry AT&T, or they carry nothing at all, because AT&T is the only carrier in my area with coverage.
Be on the lookout for the Cat Detector Van from the Ministry of Housinge.
...why not an R/C airplane? They're a lot easier to learn to fly, they can be built to almost any size and speed, and they're cheaper to build. Granted you're not going to get stop action, but you can go slowly (or quickly) enough to follow the pack.
Actually, I created a throwaway address specifically for use with an online petition. If you sign one, expect spam--lots of spam.
Radio Shack sends their dead rechargeables out to RBRC for recycling. RBRC will take any NiCD, NiMH or LiIon battery or battery pack (and lead-acid batteries up to 2 pounds.) Beats putting cadmium into the environment.
I bought 4 NiMH batteries with the included charger from the camera section at Walmart. Four 1,800mAh batteries and the charger cost about $10.00. I use these batteries exclusively in my GPS. When my batteries die (after four months of heavy use), I swap the pair of batteries back in the charger and charge then for 16 hours@100mAh. I then unplug the charger and leave them in the charger in the closet. When I'm ready to swap them back out, they've always been still fully charged. Very convenient and cheap.
Actually, at freeway speeds, frontal area, coefficient of drag and rolling resistance are the three main factors that determine range. Since the Tango has half the frontal area of most cars and a fairly aerodynamic shape, that seems quite reasonable.
IIRC, Yellow Tops are spiral-wound AGM batteries. The acid is absorbed into the glass mat, so in a collision, it will generally stay put. In any event, fire crews carry materials to neutralize acid (after all, every car in America has at least one lead-acid battery on board, usually flooded). The battery box is also completely separate from the passenger compartment, and is not vented to the passenger compartment in any way.
Nope. Electric motors are highly efficient across the powerband, so there's almost no range penalty by having more power on tap.
Plus, to save cost and space, they excluded a transmission. The second motor costs less than a transmission, has only one moving part, and allows the Tango to accelerate up hills without the need for a transmission.
Not necessarily.
I used to back up my Atari stuff onto 90K single-sided floppies. When I got my DSDD drive, my 30 disks fit onto 8 double-sided double-density disks, plus another 10 for new stuff I had accumulated. The SSSD disks were left in the box as my "old backups."
When I switched to the PC and a 1.2MB drive, I used 1.2MB disks to back up my hard drive, and then transferred (painfully, via a terminal emulator program) all my data from my Atari to the hard drive, where it too was backed up onto 1.2MB disks. The SSSD disks went in the trash, and I kept my DSDD disks as my "old backup."
Along came QIC-80 tapes. Shortly before I retired my 1.2MB floppy drive, I transferred all my 1.2MB disks, as well as my hard drive backup, to two QIC-80 tapes. The 1.2MB drive and disks became my "old backup", and my DSDD disks went in the trash.
To make a long story short (too late!), my (eventually) 20 QIC-80 tapes fit on three CD-ROM's and my 100 CD-ROM's fit on 10 DVD-R's. Every time I get "new technology", I transfer the stuff from my old technology, then keep the old technology in a box as the "backup of last resort."
First, any company that is in financial trouble can simply sue IBM over something stupid, and IBM will write them a check (settle) or buy them out.
Second, if IBM settles, it will be taken by their userbase as an admission of guilt, even if "no guilt is admitted" in the settlement. Companies will look elsewhere, since they don't know what other tiny companies will creep out of the woodwork and send them threatening letters for using IBM software.
Most of the music you can buy from iTMS is already on the P2P networks. Given the choice between some Spyware-laden P2P software trying to hit 20 different hosts until one lets me download, then finding the song mangled or cut short, all the while having the RIAA breathing down my neck, and simply paying 99 cents for a high-quality copy, I'll gladly pay the 99 cents.
That's the cool thing about Geocaching. Establish a geocache just off the end of the trail. Put a disposable camera in the cache, and put notes in the description on the website asking cachers to bring a small grocery bag, fill it up with litter on the way to the site and take a picture of themselves with their bag of litter when they find the site. (Make it the 'theme' of that site.) You will find that the vast majority will carry out a bag of litter with them.
If the powers that be get angry, you have a camera full of photos of cachers and the litter they carried out.
Tim
Tim
Sweet! Is it a recognized language? Enough to, say, qualify me as bilingual? Time to apply for that raise!
Probably not, but before you retire that DVD player, you can transfer all 6000 DVD's to 25 blue-laser-media-of-the-day discs and rest assured that the quality didn't degrade during the transition. Then run another backup onto your favorite-magnetic-media-of-the-day for a second copy, and for good measure, don't throw the DVD's away until the blue-laser-media-of-the-day gets usurped by an ever NEWER technology. Then throw away the DVD's and use the blue-laser copy as your last chance backup.
True, but once it's on computer media, it's treated like any other long term backup. Have at least one off-site backup (remember, he said _important_ video, which I take to mean irreplaceable home movies.) Long before 10 years is up, media will be available with far more capacity, so copy to the new media when it becomes affordable, and repeat with every generation of new media. Hell, keep copies on DVD for everyday viewing, then buy a DLT drive and put the backups on tapes.