From the article: "The Smithsonian’s federal funds—about 70 percent of its resources—are restricted to safeguarding collections, research and the costs associated with operating and maintaining the museums. But exhibitions, public programs and the recent digitization of the collection have largely been privately funded."
In that context, online crowdfunding is completely in line with the Smithsonian's standard operations. Furthermore, people donating know exactly what their donations are going towards, instead of a check that just goes into the Smithsonian general fund.
Or you could just wait until all those leased EVs go to the used market in 1-3 years and skip 50% of the depreciation completely.
I just bought a Nissan-certified 2013 Leaf SV with 10,000 miles for $14k. The model and features on it would have made it ~$35k MSRP new, and I still have the vast majority of Nissan's warranty available to me.
The Nissan Leaf warranty covers the Li-ion batteries for 96 months/100,000 miles; and covers against gradual capacity loss for 60 months/60,000 miles. The battery technology in EVs is the same as those in hybrid cars that have been on the roads for over a decade. These fears of over the degradation of the battery are unfounded. EVs are not over-sized cell phones.
I would rather compete with the Chinese in a space race than the terrestrial/aquatic competitions we spend outrageous amounts of money on every 2 years. At least space research has beneficial spin-off technologies.
In the U.S., the vast majority of electricity still comes from Coal. As much as I inherently love the idea of a totally-electric car (actually, a true fuel-cell car would be even nicer!), I just can't get past the fact that everyone in the U.S., at least, has to be (conveniently) overlooking the reality of where the electricity comes from. As long as the answer to that is "Fossil Fuels" (and particularly, coal), then we are doing nothing but trading one smoke-plume for another. And worse yet, losing overall efficiency in the process. Please someone who understands the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics better than I, tell me how I am wrong.
Fossil-fuel internal combustion engines in commercial vehicles are very inefficient. Electric power plants are very efficient. The dirtiest coal-burning power plant is many times more efficient (and emits less carbon per unit of energy) than the most efficient fossil-fuel powered commercial car. Therefore, an electric car using electricity derived from a coal power plant is still more efficient or "green" than a regular commercial fossil-fuel car. The equation gets even better when you consider our electric grid's power is on average only 39% derived from coal, and shrinking.
There's always sampling yourself then, regardless of what the O/G comany or their engineer does. It's not a huge cost if that's what you need for peace of mind. If anything is awry showing them your data would get their full attention really quick.
People should be sampling their wells regularly anyway, regardless of surrounding drilling activity. Honestly, if there was a gas station, dry cleaner, or industrial park nearby or uphill from my house, that would concern me more than contamination from fracking. There are even a lot of naturally-occuring metals (arsenic, barium, berylium are some of the more common ones) which can foul water and require a home filtration/treatment system
My concern was not that the potential polluter would use a non-accredited lab, but that he wouldn't do any testing at all: just discard the samples and claim that there was no problem. I suppose I could deal with that possibility by demanding the analysis paperwork, but if I get stonewalled on my request, I have to have the testing done myself anyway. It seems simpler to just do it myself from the beginning. Am I being too distrustful?
I think that's a little too distrustful, because ultimately the O/G company wants evidence that is 100% acceptable to a court of law. Anything, including inaction, which can't stand up to legal scrutiny isn't worth a dime to them. If there was any question about a sample collected, or question whether or not they should sample at all, they would probably err on the side of resampling/sampling just to legally cover their ass. Besides, the cost to sample a homeowners well for an O/G company is so cheap it's not worth the risk not to do it. If I had to guess at costs for sampling, lab analysis, and a letter report back to the home owner, it's probably less than $500 per household well. That's pocket-change to them...honestly.
FWIW, I am an environmental consultant, a geologist, I live in Pennsylvania, I do not work for any oil and gas companies, so I have no conflict of interest (you'll have to trust me there), but I am interested in the subject and have done quite a bit of my own research.
Companies don't frack when the natural gas can contaminate the ground water, because they can get the natural gas cheaper with conventional means. They frack when there's impermeable rock above the natural gas, which normally keeps the gas away from the aquifer.
This is an incorrect understanding of fracking and geology in general. "Impenetrable rock" above the shale is irrelevant, because fracking anything other than the gas-bearing shale formation would be a huge waste of time/money. In gas-bearing shale formations the gas is locked up in the matrix of the shale and cannot easily flow into a gas well. The fracking targets the gas-bearing shale formation to artificially increase the inter-connections so that gas can flow within and out of the formation. Or another way to think of is by surface area...a well in an unfractured formation only has the exposed surface area immediately around the well borehole to gather gas from, but when you fracture the surrounding rock the effective surface area of exposed rock is exponentially increased by cumulative surface area of the fractures.
As far as the 99% potable water goes, are you willing to drink a glass of anything that's 99% pure water? You're sure that about two grams of contaminant can do no harm?
Again this is a misunderstanding of reality. Frack water is 99% potable water and clean sand, the remaining 1% is are lubricants and biocides, many of which are actually food-grade, so in reality much less than 1% is anything that could be considered a "hazardous chemical". Immediately after a well is fracked the vast majority of the injected water flows back out of the well, so a fraction of that 1% is actually left in the ground. Mind you this is into a GAS formation that was unfit for human consumption before any fracking.
If that's not enough, consider also that shale gas formations are typically between 2,000 to 14,000 feet below ground, and drinking water wells are typically 50 to 500 feet deep. Fracking is powerfull, but it's not powerful to open up fractures through, literally, miles through solid rock, So, the fraction of a fraction of "hazardous chemicals" remaining in the ground after a frack would have to travel vertically thousands of feet of rock while resisting dispersion/dilution with the surrounding water to reach a well. Assuming the gas well is properly constructed and the frack wastes are properly handled it's basically impossible for frack water make it's way to a drinking well.
Before you call me a shill for the evil energy companies, there are issues with fracking we should be concerned about, but the public concern is currently misguided. We should be concerned about how the recovered contaminated frack water is being handled and disposed. We should be concerned that gas wells are properly constructed and sealed. Those are real problems, but, thankfully, can be solved with the correct regulations, oversight, and strict penalties. The problem is the public hysteria is directed at the wrong issues, and it's making it harder to address the real ones.
Groundwater in NATURAL GAS formations was contaminated by mother nature millions of years before fracking. In the case of Marcellus Shale there's also naturally radioactive rock just above the Marcellus Shale. No one is drinking water sourced from anywhere near a gas formation. So, the idea that frack fluids, which are 99% clean sand and potable water mind you, are contaminating that groundwater is fundamentally flawed.
You seem to have have fewer misconceptions than I thought at first. I'm glad you sample your well, it's alarming to me how many people do not. Personally, I think sampling your well water regularly not only protects yourself, but possibly the entire community around you.... but I digress...
Your concern that polluter would not pay for an accredited lab is probably unfounded though. The cost of analysis for an accredited vs non-accredited lab is not that much, but more importantly if a case were to go to court, any non-accredited laboratory sample results would immediately be tossed out of evidence without a second chance. That's about the easiest thing any environmental attorney can do in a case. A deep-pocketed O/G company isn't going to skimp a few bucks on analysis for a non-accredited lab with so much potential risk about.
That being said things can go wrong when sampling wells and mistakes can happen, but it's relatively rare. Independent verification or duplicate sampling is always a good idea. Obviously it costs more and would be out of the homeowner's pocket, but if you're willing to do it definitely puts you a stronger position to demand more action if something is awry.
I'm not an apologist for the oil industry and I wouldn't want to have any of these wells near my place but I did grow up in it. It seems to me extremely more likely that the issue isn't the process of fracking but...2) some other source of contamination completely unrelated to drilling which given their measurement of the concentration at parts per trillion seems likely..
If you read the rebuttal article that the Slashdot summary calls "beltway inside mouthpieces" that's exactly what it is. The rebuttal might be unnecessarily combative, but the points it makes are still valid.
The original slashdot summary is terrible. No wonder that the resulting "discussion" is equally terrible. There's a scant few posts in here that say anything intelligent with regards to science on the subject, but they are drowned out by the noise.
...I wouldn't want the potential polluter to use his "in house" water testing facility, which might be biased. If my tester shows there is a problem, I'll send part of the sample to the potential polluter for verification, but if they balk because their numbers don't agree with the numbers from my chosen lab (which I will provide) it's lawsuit time.
I'm an environmental consultant and you have a few wrong ideas here. FWIW, I don't personally work for any O/G companies.
1) There is a specific process to collect an accurate sample from a well. It's not terribly complicated and anyone with enough sense to follow a basic cookbook recipe can do it, but unfortunately companies can't trust all homeowners to follow those directions, so understandably they hire contractors to do the sampling for them.
2) Samples are not analyzed by an "in-house" lab. Any sample intended to hold any weight in court will be analyzed by an independent lab certified for the compounds they report. To obtain their certification, labs have to empirically prove they meet analytical standards set by the state, and/or National Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Program (NELAP, which has the same standards as the USEPA).
3) There is a very detailed discoverable paper trail built in to every single analysis an accredited lab performs. If a lab was caught tampering with results to favor a client they would lose their certification instantly, and with it ALL of the work for ALL clients, not just the O/G client, would cease immediately...lights-out, go home, call the bankruptcy lawyers, Go To Jail, Do Not Collect $200. I can't stress enough that the risks for laboratories are simply too high.
Anyone can independently sample their own water of course. Honestly, more homeowners with wells probably should be sampling their water, regardless of whether there's any drilling in your area.
It's not mentioned in the article, but even if initial prices are too high to attract most home-owners, it could still be an attractive option for businesses with solar systems, they would just have to scale it up for their purposes. Particularly since many electric power companies are not reimbursing private solar power producers as well as they used to.
...I'd love to be able to charge up the battery supply for my house overnight at cheap rates, then run off the battery the rest of the time.
Batteries are not 100% efficient at storing and transmitting their charge, so you might not find much if any savings in your electric bill with overnight charging. If there is savings, then you have factor in how long it will take for that to give you a return on the investment and any long-term maintenance costs.
Funny, but completely misses the point. The real news here is that mobile data speeds are going to start competing with traditional wired home ISPs in the near future. Verizon has already stated they are not laying any more [expensive] new fiber cables to focus on their mobile services. You can read between the lines. As for pricing, the market will figure that out for sure. Consider this very real possibility: what if a mobile provider had a 5G [or next-gen] cell tower in a suburban area and offered everyone within range to combine their home ISP and mobile phone data into one competively priced package? I think many people would jump on that.
Still think I'm full of it? Consider this... my parents live in a very rural area and do not have access to cable or DSL lines, but they get their home internet through a "Wi-Fi" tower ISP located on a hill couple miles from their house. It's not as fast as DSL or cable, but it's big improvement over dial-up they had used prior. That sort of technology is only going to improve.
...And microwave lasers (aka masers - a technology that predates lasers considerably) actually make incredible sense for beaming the power back to Earth, since the atmosphere is extremely transparent to microwaves. Of course even a tightly focused maser will spread out after 36,000km, so you'll need massive receiving antennas on Earth covering many square kilometers, especially if you want to avoid cooking everything in the airspace alive...
So, if beaming this energy back to the earth in microwaves will cook everything in the airspace between the transmitter and collector, how does this help combat global warming? There is water in the atmosphere afterall that I presume would be warmed by micro waves passing through it, much like a glass of water in a kitchen microwave. Has anyone calculated those residual heat effects of beaming lasers/microwaves through our atmosphere? My gut says there would be excess heat transmitted directly into our atmosphere derived from converted sun rays that would have normally bounced harmlessly off the Earth's atmosphere or even missed the planet entirely. I'd love for my gut to be proven wrong though if someone has that data.
You missed his point. Microwaves create heat when they hit water, which can be demonstrated by any kitchen microwave. There is water in the atmosphere. Therefore, beaming microwaves through a water-rich atmosphere can create heat.
Attracting users and app developers go hand-in-hand and clearly Microsoft's slow start in mobile markets has crippled their ability to compete in the current standard phone market. They need something that sets their product apart from iOS and Android, and I agree that HoloLens could be that something. Add a more seamless integration of Windows mobile units and desktop and some competitve pricing for units and Microsoft could become attractive again. In particular for businesses who are largely wedded to Windows already and only support iOS/Android/Blackberry mobile systems because they have to. I'm not ready to say this will usher in another Microsoft hey-day like the late 90's, but I agree it's very foolish to count them out.
That's a funny post, but it misses the real point, which is speeds like that over mobile networks can compete with traditional land-based ISP speeds. These are some of the first hints at a massive shift in how consumers will access the internet and ISPs will operate in the not-so-distant future. Last month Verizon quietly announced that they weren't going to lay any more fiber optic cable and are selling some fiber networks to third parties because their wireless networks were much more profitable, which is probably true, but it's only part of the story. If you consider various reports like this about the potential for 5G you can read between the lines of Verizon's statement; they know the future of home internet is very likely going to be wireless and want to be ready. (Reference: http://tech.slashdot.org/story... )
Which really is ironic, because over the past 5 years or so I have streamed many many more songs through Pandora [and Slacker/Milk Music] than I have listened to songs on standard radio. I'm 34 years old, so I'm sure younger demographics are streaming more than me. I've even attended some concerts and bought a couple old fashioned CDs because of new things I heard streaming. It would make more sense for artists and studios to pay Pandora.
That said, I wouldn't want to turn the tables here because I think it would just lead to the same old studios/artists with the biggest pockets controlling what music is available for streaming, just like standard radio.
Nothing, no creature in nature or multinational juggernaut stays at the top forever... talking to you dinosaurs, US Steel and General Motors.
If you look in the right places you'll find a few dinosaurs still walking around and competing at the top... Jim Beam (1795), Colgate (1806), DuPont (1802), Barclays bank (1690; and seventh largest bank in the world today), Caterpillar Inc. (1925, quite young really, but would have been hanging out with your GM example). Many of the major oil companies trace their roots back to or even before the Standard Oil monopoly was dissolved in 1911. Japan, Germany, and England have companies that are over over 1000 years old still running today in some form or another.
Slashdot Mirror
From the article:
"The Smithsonian’s federal funds—about 70 percent of its resources—are restricted to safeguarding collections, research and the costs associated with operating and maintaining the museums. But exhibitions, public programs and the recent digitization of the collection have largely been privately funded."
In that context, online crowdfunding is completely in line with the Smithsonian's standard operations. Furthermore, people donating know exactly what their donations are going towards, instead of a check that just goes into the Smithsonian general fund.
Or you could just wait until all those leased EVs go to the used market in 1-3 years and skip 50% of the depreciation completely.
I just bought a Nissan-certified 2013 Leaf SV with 10,000 miles for $14k. The model and features on it would have made it ~$35k MSRP new, and I still have the vast majority of Nissan's warranty available to me.
The Nissan Leaf warranty covers the Li-ion batteries for 96 months/100,000 miles; and covers against gradual capacity loss for 60 months/60,000 miles. The battery technology in EVs is the same as those in hybrid cars that have been on the roads for over a decade. These fears of over the degradation of the battery are unfounded. EVs are not over-sized cell phones.
I would rather compete with the Chinese in a space race than the terrestrial/aquatic competitions we spend outrageous amounts of money on every 2 years. At least space research has beneficial spin-off technologies.
Astonishingly, not everyone was ever a geophysics undergraduate.
It's not news, regardless of anyone's ignorance.
I don't know the first thing about programming in C++; but I don't pick up C++ for Dummies and call it news.
No self-respecting drug addict would use franken-morphine!
In the U.S., the vast majority of electricity still comes from Coal.
As much as I inherently love the idea of a totally-electric car (actually, a true fuel-cell car would be even nicer!), I just can't get past the fact that everyone in the U.S., at least, has to be (conveniently) overlooking the reality of where the electricity comes from.
As long as the answer to that is "Fossil Fuels" (and particularly, coal), then we are doing nothing but trading one smoke-plume for another.
And worse yet, losing overall efficiency in the process.
Please someone who understands the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics better than I, tell me how I am wrong.
Fossil-fuel internal combustion engines in commercial vehicles are very inefficient. Electric power plants are very efficient. The dirtiest coal-burning power plant is many times more efficient (and emits less carbon per unit of energy) than the most efficient fossil-fuel powered commercial car. Therefore, an electric car using electricity derived from a coal power plant is still more efficient or "green" than a regular commercial fossil-fuel car. The equation gets even better when you consider our electric grid's power is on average only 39% derived from coal, and shrinking.
There's always sampling yourself then, regardless of what the O/G comany or their engineer does. It's not a huge cost if that's what you need for peace of mind. If anything is awry showing them your data would get their full attention really quick.
People should be sampling their wells regularly anyway, regardless of surrounding drilling activity. Honestly, if there was a gas station, dry cleaner, or industrial park nearby or uphill from my house, that would concern me more than contamination from fracking. There are even a lot of naturally-occuring metals (arsenic, barium, berylium are some of the more common ones) which can foul water and require a home filtration/treatment system
My concern was not that the potential polluter would use a non-accredited lab, but that he wouldn't do any testing at all: just discard the samples and claim that there was no problem. I suppose I could deal with that possibility by demanding the analysis paperwork, but if I get stonewalled on my request, I have to have the testing done myself anyway. It seems simpler to just do it myself from the beginning. Am I being too distrustful?
I think that's a little too distrustful, because ultimately the O/G company wants evidence that is 100% acceptable to a court of law. Anything, including inaction, which can't stand up to legal scrutiny isn't worth a dime to them. If there was any question about a sample collected, or question whether or not they should sample at all, they would probably err on the side of resampling/sampling just to legally cover their ass. Besides, the cost to sample a homeowners well for an O/G company is so cheap it's not worth the risk not to do it. If I had to guess at costs for sampling, lab analysis, and a letter report back to the home owner, it's probably less than $500 per household well. That's pocket-change to them...honestly.
FWIW, I am an environmental consultant, a geologist, I live in Pennsylvania, I do not work for any oil and gas companies, so I have no conflict of interest (you'll have to trust me there), but I am interested in the subject and have done quite a bit of my own research.
Companies don't frack when the natural gas can contaminate the ground water, because they can get the natural gas cheaper with conventional means. They frack when there's impermeable rock above the natural gas, which normally keeps the gas away from the aquifer.
This is an incorrect understanding of fracking and geology in general. "Impenetrable rock" above the shale is irrelevant, because fracking anything other than the gas-bearing shale formation would be a huge waste of time/money. In gas-bearing shale formations the gas is locked up in the matrix of the shale and cannot easily flow into a gas well. The fracking targets the gas-bearing shale formation to artificially increase the inter-connections so that gas can flow within and out of the formation. Or another way to think of is by surface area...a well in an unfractured formation only has the exposed surface area immediately around the well borehole to gather gas from, but when you fracture the surrounding rock the effective surface area of exposed rock is exponentially increased by cumulative surface area of the fractures.
As far as the 99% potable water goes, are you willing to drink a glass of anything that's 99% pure water? You're sure that about two grams of contaminant can do no harm?
Again this is a misunderstanding of reality. Frack water is 99% potable water and clean sand, the remaining 1% is are lubricants and biocides, many of which are actually food-grade, so in reality much less than 1% is anything that could be considered a "hazardous chemical". Immediately after a well is fracked the vast majority of the injected water flows back out of the well, so a fraction of that 1% is actually left in the ground. Mind you this is into a GAS formation that was unfit for human consumption before any fracking.
If that's not enough, consider also that shale gas formations are typically between 2,000 to 14,000 feet below ground, and drinking water wells are typically 50 to 500 feet deep. Fracking is powerfull, but it's not powerful to open up fractures through, literally, miles through solid rock, So, the fraction of a fraction of "hazardous chemicals" remaining in the ground after a frack would have to travel vertically thousands of feet of rock while resisting dispersion/dilution with the surrounding water to reach a well. Assuming the gas well is properly constructed and the frack wastes are properly handled it's basically impossible for frack water make it's way to a drinking well.
Before you call me a shill for the evil energy companies, there are issues with fracking we should be concerned about, but the public concern is currently misguided. We should be concerned about how the recovered contaminated frack water is being handled and disposed. We should be concerned that gas wells are properly constructed and sealed. Those are real problems, but, thankfully, can be solved with the correct regulations, oversight, and strict penalties. The problem is the public hysteria is directed at the wrong issues, and it's making it harder to address the real ones.
Groundwater in NATURAL GAS formations was contaminated by mother nature millions of years before fracking. In the case of Marcellus Shale there's also naturally radioactive rock just above the Marcellus Shale. No one is drinking water sourced from anywhere near a gas formation. So, the idea that frack fluids, which are 99% clean sand and potable water mind you, are contaminating that groundwater is fundamentally flawed.
You seem to have have fewer misconceptions than I thought at first. I'm glad you sample your well, it's alarming to me how many people do not. Personally, I think sampling your well water regularly not only protects yourself, but possibly the entire community around you.... but I digress...
Your concern that polluter would not pay for an accredited lab is probably unfounded though. The cost of analysis for an accredited vs non-accredited lab is not that much, but more importantly if a case were to go to court, any non-accredited laboratory sample results would immediately be tossed out of evidence without a second chance. That's about the easiest thing any environmental attorney can do in a case. A deep-pocketed O/G company isn't going to skimp a few bucks on analysis for a non-accredited lab with so much potential risk about.
That being said things can go wrong when sampling wells and mistakes can happen, but it's relatively rare. Independent verification or duplicate sampling is always a good idea. Obviously it costs more and would be out of the homeowner's pocket, but if you're willing to do it definitely puts you a stronger position to demand more action if something is awry.
I'm not an apologist for the oil industry and I wouldn't want to have any of these wells near my place but I did grow up in it. It seems to me extremely more likely that the issue isn't the process of fracking but ...2) some other source of contamination completely unrelated to drilling which given their measurement of the concentration at parts per trillion seems likely..
If you read the rebuttal article that the Slashdot summary calls "beltway inside mouthpieces" that's exactly what it is. The rebuttal might be unnecessarily combative, but the points it makes are still valid.
The original slashdot summary is terrible. No wonder that the resulting "discussion" is equally terrible. There's a scant few posts in here that say anything intelligent with regards to science on the subject, but they are drowned out by the noise.
...I wouldn't want the potential polluter to use his "in house" water testing facility, which might be biased. If my tester shows there is a problem, I'll send part of the sample to the potential polluter for verification, but if they balk because their numbers don't agree with the numbers from my chosen lab (which I will provide) it's lawsuit time.
I'm an environmental consultant and you have a few wrong ideas here. FWIW, I don't personally work for any O/G companies.
1) There is a specific process to collect an accurate sample from a well. It's not terribly complicated and anyone with enough sense to follow a basic cookbook recipe can do it, but unfortunately companies can't trust all homeowners to follow those directions, so understandably they hire contractors to do the sampling for them.
2) Samples are not analyzed by an "in-house" lab. Any sample intended to hold any weight in court will be analyzed by an independent lab certified for the compounds they report. To obtain their certification, labs have to empirically prove they meet analytical standards set by the state, and/or National Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Program (NELAP, which has the same standards as the USEPA).
3) There is a very detailed discoverable paper trail built in to every single analysis an accredited lab performs. If a lab was caught tampering with results to favor a client they would lose their certification instantly, and with it ALL of the work for ALL clients, not just the O/G client, would cease immediately...lights-out, go home, call the bankruptcy lawyers, Go To Jail, Do Not Collect $200. I can't stress enough that the risks for laboratories are simply too high.
Anyone can independently sample their own water of course. Honestly, more homeowners with wells probably should be sampling their water, regardless of whether there's any drilling in your area.
If you had a structural geology class in the last 15 years there's a good chance you spent many hours with the Bree Creek Quadrangle exercises.
It's not mentioned in the article, but even if initial prices are too high to attract most home-owners, it could still be an attractive option for businesses with solar systems, they would just have to scale it up for their purposes. Particularly since many electric power companies are not reimbursing private solar power producers as well as they used to.
...I'd love to be able to charge up the battery supply for my house overnight at cheap rates, then run off the battery the rest of the time.
Batteries are not 100% efficient at storing and transmitting their charge, so you might not find much if any savings in your electric bill with overnight charging. If there is savings, then you have factor in how long it will take for that to give you a return on the investment and any long-term maintenance costs.
Funny, but completely misses the point. The real news here is that mobile data speeds are going to start competing with traditional wired home ISPs in the near future. Verizon has already stated they are not laying any more [expensive] new fiber cables to focus on their mobile services. You can read between the lines. As for pricing, the market will figure that out for sure. Consider this very real possibility: what if a mobile provider had a 5G [or next-gen] cell tower in a suburban area and offered everyone within range to combine their home ISP and mobile phone data into one competively priced package? I think many people would jump on that.
Still think I'm full of it? Consider this... my parents live in a very rural area and do not have access to cable or DSL lines, but they get their home internet through a "Wi-Fi" tower ISP located on a hill couple miles from their house. It's not as fast as DSL or cable, but it's big improvement over dial-up they had used prior. That sort of technology is only going to improve.
...And microwave lasers (aka masers - a technology that predates lasers considerably) actually make incredible sense for beaming the power back to Earth, since the atmosphere is extremely transparent to microwaves. Of course even a tightly focused maser will spread out after 36,000km, so you'll need massive receiving antennas on Earth covering many square kilometers, especially if you want to avoid cooking everything in the airspace alive...
So, if beaming this energy back to the earth in microwaves will cook everything in the airspace between the transmitter and collector, how does this help combat global warming? There is water in the atmosphere afterall that I presume would be warmed by micro waves passing through it, much like a glass of water in a kitchen microwave. Has anyone calculated those residual heat effects of beaming lasers/microwaves through our atmosphere? My gut says there would be excess heat transmitted directly into our atmosphere derived from converted sun rays that would have normally bounced harmlessly off the Earth's atmosphere or even missed the planet entirely. I'd love for my gut to be proven wrong though if someone has that data.
You missed his point. Microwaves create heat when they hit water, which can be demonstrated by any kitchen microwave. There is water in the atmosphere. Therefore, beaming microwaves through a water-rich atmosphere can create heat.
Attracting users and app developers go hand-in-hand and clearly Microsoft's slow start in mobile markets has crippled their ability to compete in the current standard phone market. They need something that sets their product apart from iOS and Android, and I agree that HoloLens could be that something. Add a more seamless integration of Windows mobile units and desktop and some competitve pricing for units and Microsoft could become attractive again. In particular for businesses who are largely wedded to Windows already and only support iOS/Android/Blackberry mobile systems because they have to. I'm not ready to say this will usher in another Microsoft hey-day like the late 90's, but I agree it's very foolish to count them out.
That's a funny post, but it misses the real point, which is speeds like that over mobile networks can compete with traditional land-based ISP speeds. These are some of the first hints at a massive shift in how consumers will access the internet and ISPs will operate in the not-so-distant future. Last month Verizon quietly announced that they weren't going to lay any more fiber optic cable and are selling some fiber networks to third parties because their wireless networks were much more profitable, which is probably true, but it's only part of the story. If you consider various reports like this about the potential for 5G you can read between the lines of Verizon's statement; they know the future of home internet is very likely going to be wireless and want to be ready.
(Reference: http://tech.slashdot.org/story... )
Most radio stations are paid to play songs not the other way around:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
Which really is ironic, because over the past 5 years or so I have streamed many many more songs through Pandora [and Slacker/Milk Music] than I have listened to songs on standard radio. I'm 34 years old, so I'm sure younger demographics are streaming more than me. I've even attended some concerts and bought a couple old fashioned CDs because of new things I heard streaming. It would make more sense for artists and studios to pay Pandora.
That said, I wouldn't want to turn the tables here because I think it would just lead to the same old studios/artists with the biggest pockets controlling what music is available for streaming, just like standard radio.
Nothing, no creature in nature or multinational juggernaut stays at the top forever... talking to you dinosaurs, US Steel and General Motors.
If you look in the right places you'll find a few dinosaurs still walking around and competing at the top... Jim Beam (1795), Colgate (1806), DuPont (1802), Barclays bank (1690; and seventh largest bank in the world today), Caterpillar Inc. (1925, quite young really, but would have been hanging out with your GM example). Many of the major oil companies trace their roots back to or even before the Standard Oil monopoly was dissolved in 1911. Japan, Germany, and England have companies that are over over 1000 years old still running today in some form or another.