If you take care of those devices, you can make a little back once you upgrade by selling them... Assuming you don't do the stupid thing and trade them in for new at 80% paid off.
It's amazing how much this country hates normal people that refuse to become breeders. Sprint is screwing us for not having the American-expected hateful two parents and two children. It is hate that drives corporations to screw us like this. Pure hate. Dealing with things like this every day as a nonbreeder just makes me want to die. Everyone that rules our lives hates us.
Nobody hates you for not having kids. You must be from the shallow end of the gene pool with an attitude like that. However, Please keep genes out of the pool going forward if you don't mind...
Now if they could actually get a usable signal into my house.... Come on guys, I live in the suburbs of a major city where we have houses packed in like cord wood. You really should have excellent coverage here...
Cleaner than Fossil fuels eh? In what way cleaner?
Natural Gas is clean, nearly squeaky clean actually. The worst part is getting the wells punched and the distribution pipes buried. After that, you are pretty much going to get CO2 and water as a byproduct of energy production.
OH... I'm guessing you mean CO2 emissions means it's dirty.... Which is a whole pack of lies and points to what I consider an unfair description "Clean Energy" in trying to advocate we not use fossil fuels. "Clean Energy" is more of a PR campaign than reality or even a possibility. Which, if you read between the lines on my posts here, is my actual point.
But we where discussing "Clean Energy" and I was making the point that there is no such thing, especially on an industrial scale....
Making and recycling batteries is a huge environmental mess.... Photovoltaic Solar is it's own kind of environmental nightmare as are other solar technologies (to a lesser degree). Wind is more of an environmental problem than most people imagine, with huge fiberglass assemblies we will eventually need to get rid of not to mention the impacts of building towers and the birds that die..
Nothing is 100% clean.... Some things are cleaner than others, but all have their issues.
You DO understand that battery recycling is a messy dangerous and toxic business right?
You are dealing with an input that is a mixture of corrosive electrolytes, metal parts and plastic which is not easily disassembled in a safe way. Once you manage to separate the stuff, you have to then refine the metals, neutralize the corrosive materials and deal with the huge amounts of industrial waste all this creates in a safe and environmentally responsible manner. It's not usually easy..
For instance, lead acid batteries are often recycled for two reasons. First, lead is expensive, second it is REALLY bad to dispose of bad lead acid batteries directly into land fills. Sulfuric acid and lead are both bad bad bad for the environment. The process goes something like this.. Pulverize batteries into itty bitty pieces in a big hammer mill..... Separate metal from plastic by dumping battery chips into a tank of water, lead sinks, plastic floats while the acid dissolves into the water. Treat the water to neutralize the acid being careful to capture any vapors to make sure they are not toxic and of neutral PH. Scrape the plastic off the top of the water and dispose of it, scrape the bottom of the tank to recover lead chips which are then refined in the normal way. Oh, and eventually you will want to change the water in that tank, which will need to be properly treated to remove as much lead as you can...All your employees will need to wear full protective gear including respirators and heavy gloves because it's REALLY dangerous in your factory. Remember all that hazards waste you will be creating will need to go someplace safe and not just buried in your back yard...
Someday, you will also want to shut down that factory too.. Trust me, even knowing in advance, it's a horrible mess to clean up something like this...
It's a similar problem when building new batteries from the recycled lead.. It's a little cleaner, but it still produces toxic wastes, fumes and is a danger to your employees and the local environment...
So... Why not just use regenerative breaking in a Hybrid solution and get the best of both? Oh wait, they already do that... Only the guy quoted in this article doesn't sell that kind of buss....
With how global infrastructure & battery tech these days, there is NO EXCUSE to doubt we will be 100% clean energy in a matter of a few years.
Define "Clean Energy" because if you mean 100% from wind, solar and other renewables, there is zero chance that's happening. Now if you allow for some kind of CO2 emission in your "clean energy" equation. We can do that if you allow CO2 emissions, but otherwise it isn't happening. We don't have the technology to do 100%.
BTW, Batteries are NOT the solution. They may help, but they won't solve the electric energy storage problem that 100% renewables presents the electrical power industry. They are not very efficient ways to store electrical energy, they are horribly dirty to manufacture and to get rid of when they wear out. So batteries are not "clean" either....
Distance squared always shows up in the bottom of the fraction ratio about how you get energy though any space. Even when you use energy beams, the ratio of power in to power out will ALWAYS have distance squared in the bottom of the fraction. I think the implications of this gets lost on folks who don't seem to fully understand the physical geometry of how this stuff works.
For instance, your beaming energy back from space collectors requires HUGE structures, both in space and on the ground. This is done to try and make the ratio of power in to power out as close to unity as they can, but this doesn't remove the distance squared term on the bottom. The geometry still is about surface area of the collector and the energy density you can deliver to that surface.
Phones are small devices and have very small surface areas. You don't have the ability to increase this surface area so you cannot take advantage of the same geometry as your space example.
No, they don't.... At least not at power levels that are 1. Usable to charge a cell phone and 2. Safe to operate around humans.
I have a toll tag that is powered by reverse backscatter RF energy that is beamed to it as I pass under the reader. The "charger" RF transmitter is usually running quite a bit of power and very tight beams. The tag takes quite some time to charge and responds with a quick squawk of my tag ID that takes very little power. It cannot operate continuously even when in the backscatter field, but chirps out little bursts of energy it's collected when it can. It's very low power transfer and has a LOT of power input.
Charging a couple of watt hours worth of cell phone battery is a whole different matter. Using reverse backscatter RF, you are going to need field strengths which are pretty high (actually dangerously high). Depending on the frequency, high field strengths can and do come with significant health and safety risks for humans. You will want to stay at lower frequencies for safety, but in order to focus that RF you will want higher frequencies to make the antenna structures smaller so they will fit in your house and car reasonably well. You cannot have both though by my estimation and as I think though what frequency a 3 - 5 inch cell phone sized antenna would be most efficient at receiving power, converting that into a frequency and consulting the FCC's data on RF exposure limits for that spectrum, it's not happening. You will either have to limit the transmitted power to nearly nothing and never be able to charge a phone, or you will risk blinding or killing humans who happen to come in contact with the charger. You will exceed RF exposure limits by a couple of orders of magnitude, or it won't charge anything like a cell phone.
Yea, I know... But technology can fix this... Not really, it's physics at this point. You won't charge a cell phone wirelessly that's more than a few inches away from the charger. Not going to happen under the physical laws the universe works under.
If you are claiming to be able to focus a beam on a phone as it moves around in space from some device tens of feet away, I'm going to say just one thing. VERY complex and expensive... Which is tantamount to saying impractical. Plus, if there is much spreading of that beam (and there always is spreading) you loose power density due to distance squared being on the bottom of your fraction again. It helps, but it doesn't fix the problem and it buys you the problem of having to focus the beam at some moving target.
On your car example. A few centimeters is NOT significant if the coils of wire are significantly larger than the distance.... The induction between the car that can carry a coil that's say 4+ feet long per side and matching coil in the floor (magnetically coupled) over a few centimeters or even a foot, is not what I'm talking about. Your phone is can have a coil that is maybe 5 inches by 3 inches and if you can keep that coil oriented correctly within an inch or so of another similar sized coil (charger) so you have magnetic coupling, you can get power across easy, but if you get more than a coil width away, magnetic coupling becomes insignificant. You have to be really close, but like I said, that's not what folks think of when you say wireless..
Like I said, the square of the distance is going to kill you...
Everybody needs to remember one critical fact here... Once you get a little distance away from the transmitter, the energy available will fall off according to a set formula based on simple geometry. That formula has the distance squared on the bottom of the fraction.
Why do I point this out? Because everybody needs to understand that "wireless" power distribution may be possible over short distances for small amounts of power, it quickly becomes impractical as the distance between the transmitter and receiver goes up because the available energy captured falls off in some ratio of the inverse of the distance squared. To put it another way, You will have to stay close to that charger, REALLY close or it's going to have to put out some seriously dangerous levels of power which will fry you if you get too close.
So, if wireless charging means you drop your phone on a pad or into some holder that then allows the coupling of a changing magnetic field and some coil of wire on the phone, you are getting what you expected. But if you think you can sit on your couch with the "charger" on some shelf across the room, or have the phone in your pocket changing while you drive down the road because the charger is built into the car, that's not going to happen.
Slashdot Mirror
"Is it worth doing?" is the question,
Technically, there is no reason this cannot be made to work. However, financially, it may not be workable.
If you take care of those devices, you can make a little back once you upgrade by selling them... Assuming you don't do the stupid thing and trade them in for new at 80% paid off.
The same logic applied to Government installed cameras.. Oh no, this only applies to "private" ones..
It's amazing how much this country hates normal people that refuse to become breeders. Sprint is screwing us for not having the American-expected hateful two parents and two children. It is hate that drives corporations to screw us like this. Pure hate. Dealing with things like this every day as a nonbreeder just makes me want to die. Everyone that rules our lives hates us.
Nobody hates you for not having kids. You must be from the shallow end of the gene pool with an attitude like that. However, Please keep genes out of the pool going forward if you don't mind...
Now if they could actually get a usable signal into my house.... Come on guys, I live in the suburbs of a major city where we have houses packed in like cord wood. You really should have excellent coverage here...
Yea, until somebody figures out that it's not that hard to fake an authoritative DNS server... Oh Wait.... Hasn't that been done?
Cleaner than Fossil fuels eh? In what way cleaner?
Natural Gas is clean, nearly squeaky clean actually. The worst part is getting the wells punched and the distribution pipes buried. After that, you are pretty much going to get CO2 and water as a byproduct of energy production.
OH... I'm guessing you mean CO2 emissions means it's dirty.... Which is a whole pack of lies and points to what I consider an unfair description "Clean Energy" in trying to advocate we not use fossil fuels. "Clean Energy" is more of a PR campaign than reality or even a possibility. Which, if you read between the lines on my posts here, is my actual point.
But we where discussing "Clean Energy" and I was making the point that there is no such thing, especially on an industrial scale....
Making and recycling batteries is a huge environmental mess.... Photovoltaic Solar is it's own kind of environmental nightmare as are other solar technologies (to a lesser degree). Wind is more of an environmental problem than most people imagine, with huge fiberglass assemblies we will eventually need to get rid of not to mention the impacts of building towers and the birds that die..
Nothing is 100% clean.... Some things are cleaner than others, but all have their issues.
You DO understand that battery recycling is a messy dangerous and toxic business right?
You are dealing with an input that is a mixture of corrosive electrolytes, metal parts and plastic which is not easily disassembled in a safe way. Once you manage to separate the stuff, you have to then refine the metals, neutralize the corrosive materials and deal with the huge amounts of industrial waste all this creates in a safe and environmentally responsible manner. It's not usually easy..
For instance, lead acid batteries are often recycled for two reasons. First, lead is expensive, second it is REALLY bad to dispose of bad lead acid batteries directly into land fills. Sulfuric acid and lead are both bad bad bad for the environment. The process goes something like this.. Pulverize batteries into itty bitty pieces in a big hammer mill..... Separate metal from plastic by dumping battery chips into a tank of water, lead sinks, plastic floats while the acid dissolves into the water. Treat the water to neutralize the acid being careful to capture any vapors to make sure they are not toxic and of neutral PH. Scrape the plastic off the top of the water and dispose of it, scrape the bottom of the tank to recover lead chips which are then refined in the normal way. Oh, and eventually you will want to change the water in that tank, which will need to be properly treated to remove as much lead as you can...All your employees will need to wear full protective gear including respirators and heavy gloves because it's REALLY dangerous in your factory. Remember all that hazards waste you will be creating will need to go someplace safe and not just buried in your back yard...
Someday, you will also want to shut down that factory too.. Trust me, even knowing in advance, it's a horrible mess to clean up something like this...
It's a similar problem when building new batteries from the recycled lead.. It's a little cleaner, but it still produces toxic wastes, fumes and is a danger to your employees and the local environment...
Batteries are *really* messy sir.
Ah yes, the power of color glossy ads and slick websites.. The advancement of technology..
Piles of fried smart cars which happened to drive in the same lane behind the buss...
No no.. You just buy THREE busses where ONE is all you need.. Two to be charging while the third is running it's route.
Oh, THAT's not cheaper you say? Whatever!
Boston has overhead wiring and runs electric busses too... Only their "convertible" busses just switch to diesel power when the wires end.
So... Why not just use regenerative breaking in a Hybrid solution and get the best of both? Oh wait, they already do that... Only the guy quoted in this article doesn't sell that kind of buss....
With how global infrastructure & battery tech these days, there is NO EXCUSE to doubt we will be 100% clean energy in a matter of a few years.
Define "Clean Energy" because if you mean 100% from wind, solar and other renewables, there is zero chance that's happening. Now if you allow for some kind of CO2 emission in your "clean energy" equation. We can do that if you allow CO2 emissions, but otherwise it isn't happening. We don't have the technology to do 100%.
BTW, Batteries are NOT the solution. They may help, but they won't solve the electric energy storage problem that 100% renewables presents the electrical power industry. They are not very efficient ways to store electrical energy, they are horribly dirty to manufacture and to get rid of when they wear out. So batteries are not "clean" either....
Barring absolutely needing the job not to be on the street, I would not work at such a place.
Not that I disagree, but I think I'd wait until they said something about physical attendance being part of my evaluation then you have two choices...
1. Stop working from your desk as much as possible and Start shopping your Resume and get a better job (my recommendation) or...
2. "Play" the attendance game by being there but do nothing until they start complaining, THEN, start shopping your resume...
Either way, mess with their data collection statistics in a way that helps the poor slobs you leave behind.
Space heaters are strictly verboten where I work.
I'm thinking a well placed piece of tape or two would do the trick. Use the metal duct tape..
Even more reason to work from home (remotely)
As if they cannot figure out how much you are actually on line at home.... Company laptop anyone?
Personally, I DON'T want to work from home. I'd get nothing done. I'm more productive in my office free from the munchkins distractions.
Please, no more "social media" apps for stuff that I own... PLEASE!
You are invading my anti-social safe space...I need my privacy...
My original thought was the same, but if you consider the geometry of the situation, it's only the square once you get past 1 wave length.
Distance squared always shows up in the bottom of the fraction ratio about how you get energy though any space. Even when you use energy beams, the ratio of power in to power out will ALWAYS have distance squared in the bottom of the fraction. I think the implications of this gets lost on folks who don't seem to fully understand the physical geometry of how this stuff works.
For instance, your beaming energy back from space collectors requires HUGE structures, both in space and on the ground. This is done to try and make the ratio of power in to power out as close to unity as they can, but this doesn't remove the distance squared term on the bottom. The geometry still is about surface area of the collector and the energy density you can deliver to that surface.
Phones are small devices and have very small surface areas. You don't have the ability to increase this surface area so you cannot take advantage of the same geometry as your space example.
If you put your phone on a pad to charge it, the distance is pretty small... Not a problem then.
No, they don't.... At least not at power levels that are 1. Usable to charge a cell phone and 2. Safe to operate around humans.
I have a toll tag that is powered by reverse backscatter RF energy that is beamed to it as I pass under the reader. The "charger" RF transmitter is usually running quite a bit of power and very tight beams. The tag takes quite some time to charge and responds with a quick squawk of my tag ID that takes very little power. It cannot operate continuously even when in the backscatter field, but chirps out little bursts of energy it's collected when it can. It's very low power transfer and has a LOT of power input.
Charging a couple of watt hours worth of cell phone battery is a whole different matter. Using reverse backscatter RF, you are going to need field strengths which are pretty high (actually dangerously high). Depending on the frequency, high field strengths can and do come with significant health and safety risks for humans. You will want to stay at lower frequencies for safety, but in order to focus that RF you will want higher frequencies to make the antenna structures smaller so they will fit in your house and car reasonably well. You cannot have both though by my estimation and as I think though what frequency a 3 - 5 inch cell phone sized antenna would be most efficient at receiving power, converting that into a frequency and consulting the FCC's data on RF exposure limits for that spectrum, it's not happening. You will either have to limit the transmitted power to nearly nothing and never be able to charge a phone, or you will risk blinding or killing humans who happen to come in contact with the charger. You will exceed RF exposure limits by a couple of orders of magnitude, or it won't charge anything like a cell phone.
Yea, I know... But technology can fix this... Not really, it's physics at this point. You won't charge a cell phone wirelessly that's more than a few inches away from the charger. Not going to happen under the physical laws the universe works under.
If you are claiming to be able to focus a beam on a phone as it moves around in space from some device tens of feet away, I'm going to say just one thing. VERY complex and expensive... Which is tantamount to saying impractical. Plus, if there is much spreading of that beam (and there always is spreading) you loose power density due to distance squared being on the bottom of your fraction again. It helps, but it doesn't fix the problem and it buys you the problem of having to focus the beam at some moving target.
On your car example. A few centimeters is NOT significant if the coils of wire are significantly larger than the distance.... The induction between the car that can carry a coil that's say 4+ feet long per side and matching coil in the floor (magnetically coupled) over a few centimeters or even a foot, is not what I'm talking about. Your phone is can have a coil that is maybe 5 inches by 3 inches and if you can keep that coil oriented correctly within an inch or so of another similar sized coil (charger) so you have magnetic coupling, you can get power across easy, but if you get more than a coil width away, magnetic coupling becomes insignificant. You have to be really close, but like I said, that's not what folks think of when you say wireless..
Like I said, the square of the distance is going to kill you...
Everybody needs to remember one critical fact here... Once you get a little distance away from the transmitter, the energy available will fall off according to a set formula based on simple geometry. That formula has the distance squared on the bottom of the fraction.
Why do I point this out? Because everybody needs to understand that "wireless" power distribution may be possible over short distances for small amounts of power, it quickly becomes impractical as the distance between the transmitter and receiver goes up because the available energy captured falls off in some ratio of the inverse of the distance squared. To put it another way, You will have to stay close to that charger, REALLY close or it's going to have to put out some seriously dangerous levels of power which will fry you if you get too close.
So, if wireless charging means you drop your phone on a pad or into some holder that then allows the coupling of a changing magnetic field and some coil of wire on the phone, you are getting what you expected. But if you think you can sit on your couch with the "charger" on some shelf across the room, or have the phone in your pocket changing while you drive down the road because the charger is built into the car, that's not going to happen.