This is why Checker Motors went under in the 80's - there is just no way to sell enough taxicabs in America to pay for the R&D costs, not to mention factory tooling.
Why would you buy a car to park in a garage for 8 hours during the day, when the single largest cost of a taxi (the driver) has just been removed. Call an automatic taxi and share the capital cost of the vehicle with all the other riders. It can be at your door in a couple of minutes.
Any car company which attempts to introduce an automatically guided car will go out of business (and put all the others out of business at around the same time), because they will simply be unable to sell millions of them to everyone. They'll sell a few high end vehicles to the wealthy, then the taxi companies will get involved and that'll be it. No reason to own a car.
so I gather they are converting the excess heat to electricity
No. AC heat is "low grade". That is it's a few degrees above ambient so it'd be wildly inefficient to try to generate electricity from it. Heat can be measured in Watts just as electricity can.
e.g. A typical 1gW nuclear power station will produce about 2gW of heat for each 1gW of electricity (35% efficiency or so). This is "waste" heat, though of course, it could be used to power adsorption chillers or used for industrial processes or domestic space and water heating, usually it's pumped directly into an ocean or river. Our power infrastructure is highly inefficient, about 60% at the best power stations. Of the approx 40% of total energy which does get turned into electricity, most of this is used for stuff like Air Conditioning, which is simply heat management. Refrigeration, which is heat management. Space heating, which is heat management.
We spend a lot of our time and money simply moving heat around (which is what they're doing in the article). This would be less of a problem if we were better at insulating things, there's actually no reason that the nearby houses should even need this heat, it's simply poor design.
Were you replying to another post? The bank mentioned was the FED, for simplicity, and I avoided the money multiplier, also for simplicity. The US government borrows all money into existence from the FED, and all money in existence has an associated debt. Those paper US dollars in your pocket are Federal Reserve Notes and even they have a debt attached. It doesn't matter that the money was deposited at another bank or loaned on through the fractional reserve system because there is always a larger debt than money, and the debt always requires "growth" to service the interest on the debt. If "growth" falters, it collapses.
Really? In what way can I create money? Can I print it (I thought people went to prison for that)? Can I dig it up? Where does my missing $5 come from? I mean exactly.
The $5 comes from work - you know, the means of selling goods and services to generate income.
Wow. Missed the pea, even though I pointed right at it. Amazing. And modded informative too.
No really. Where does the $5 which doesn't exist come from? I mean... It literally doesn't exist. How can I create $5 by working? Your average Joe in most countries aren't allowed to print money. You see, I could personally, by hand, build a skyscraper, but if there is no $5, it can't be worth $5.
What you're missing here is that somewhere, real value is produced.
No, I'm not missing that. What I'm pointing out is the nature of the money itself. That is; It's a pyramid scheme, it MUST grow or collapse. (Stagflation is no growth, but with inflation, in fact it's actually just inflation of a different part of the economy).
I could also print money, or use gold. I could print a billion dollars and there would be no pyramid scheme if it was illegal to borrow money into existence at interest.
The people sitting on a 10$ bill. Now imagine how well it works if everyone wants to sit on their 10$ bill.
Read a bit on Silvio Gesell.
Of course the government like everyone else like skimming something of the top, but for the most part they work hard to keep the financial system going.
Why on earth should the government need to work hard to keep the financial system going? Money is just a means of exchange.
The only time it's not a zero sum game is when it's growing... The instant you hit a limit, like lending to people who can't afford the houses they are buying, it collapses and you lose.
ok. Follow me here. This is real simple, but 300 million Americans keep missing it.
I need some money in order to facilitate a transaction... How do I create that money?
I go to a bank (the FED) and borrow $100 from them. The FED creates new money (credit) and loans it to me at 5%. (Did you see the pea in the shell game? It was right there. Cos millions keep missing it)
Right, so there is only $100 of credit in existence but now I owe them $105.
1 year later I'm a bit stuck because I've paid off most of the loan to the FED but that last $5 is a real bitch because it just doesn't exist. So what do I do?
I need some money, so I go to a bank (the FED) and borrow some more money from them. The FED creates that new money and loans it to me. Great! I can pay that $5 which didn't exist. But wait, I now need to pay off interest on the new load. lather, rinse, repeat.
That's money. The debt has to keep growing, or the system collapses. Growth. Growth. Must have growth. A Ponzi scheme of epic proportions. Hey, maybe you can talk some bums on the streets to take out some loans for a couple of McMansions. Then everything will be all right.
That's money. The government created it that way, and can change it as required. Don't you think they share some of the blame?
You have the oil industry being subsidised by half a trillion annually through the US military budget. You have the banks taking to the outright looting of the US treasury.
There are only weather forecasters. Climate science is not science, that would require testability and we don't have anything to test with. When weather forecasters start chucking millions of tonnes of sulphate aerosols (or whatever) into the atmosphere, then it will be science.
... if a ridiculously large amount of money shows up unexpectedly in your bank account, rushing out to spend it wildly before the mistake can be caught is not actually the smartest of the available options
The smartest thing to do is take it all out as cash, convert it into gold bars, then disappear.
Slashdot Mirror
This is why Checker Motors went under in the 80's - there is just no way to sell enough taxicabs in America to pay for the R&D costs, not to mention factory tooling.
Why would you buy a car to park in a garage for 8 hours during the day, when the single largest cost of a taxi (the driver) has just been removed. Call an automatic taxi and share the capital cost of the vehicle with all the other riders. It can be at your door in a couple of minutes.
Any car company which attempts to introduce an automatically guided car will go out of business (and put all the others out of business at around the same time), because they will simply be unable to sell millions of them to everyone. They'll sell a few high end vehicles to the wealthy, then the taxi companies will get involved and that'll be it. No reason to own a car.
so I gather they are converting the excess heat to electricity
No. AC heat is "low grade". That is it's a few degrees above ambient so it'd be wildly inefficient to try to generate electricity from it. Heat can be measured in Watts just as electricity can.
e.g.
A typical 1gW nuclear power station will produce about 2gW of heat for each 1gW of electricity (35% efficiency or so). This is "waste" heat, though of course, it could be used to power adsorption chillers or used for industrial processes or domestic space and water heating, usually it's pumped directly into an ocean or river. Our power infrastructure is highly inefficient, about 60% at the best power stations. Of the approx 40% of total energy which does get turned into electricity, most of this is used for stuff like Air Conditioning, which is simply heat management. Refrigeration, which is heat management. Space heating, which is heat management.
We spend a lot of our time and money simply moving heat around (which is what they're doing in the article). This would be less of a problem if we were better at insulating things, there's actually no reason that the nearby houses should even need this heat, it's simply poor design.
Problem solved.
Or maybe they could do what they do just now; pump it directly into the atmosphere.
I'm pretty sure the breeze blocks used to build most houses in the UK are largely made out of fly ash.
Just embed a RFID chip under the skin.
Were you replying to another post? The bank mentioned was the FED, for simplicity, and I avoided the money multiplier, also for simplicity. The US government borrows all money into existence from the FED, and all money in existence has an associated debt. Those paper US dollars in your pocket are Federal Reserve Notes and even they have a debt attached. It doesn't matter that the money was deposited at another bank or loaned on through the fractional reserve system because there is always a larger debt than money, and the debt always requires "growth" to service the interest on the debt. If "growth" falters, it collapses.
It's an epic Ponzi scheme.
People create money when they create value.
Really? In what way can I create money? Can I print it (I thought people went to prison for that)? Can I dig it up? Where does my missing $5 come from? I mean exactly.
The $5 comes from work - you know, the means of selling goods and services to generate income.
Wow. Missed the pea, even though I pointed right at it. Amazing. And modded informative too.
No really. Where does the $5 which doesn't exist come from? I mean... It literally doesn't exist. How can I create $5 by working? Your average Joe in most countries aren't allowed to print money. You see, I could personally, by hand, build a skyscraper, but if there is no $5, it can't be worth $5.
What you're missing here is that somewhere, real value is produced.
No, I'm not missing that. What I'm pointing out is the nature of the money itself. That is; It's a pyramid scheme, it MUST grow or collapse. (Stagflation is no growth, but with inflation, in fact it's actually just inflation of a different part of the economy).
I could also print money, or use gold. I could print a billion dollars and there would be no pyramid scheme if it was illegal to borrow money into existence at interest.
The people sitting on a 10$ bill. Now imagine how well it works if everyone wants to sit on their 10$ bill.
Read a bit on Silvio Gesell.
Of course the government like everyone else like skimming something of the top, but for the most part they work hard to keep the financial system going.
Why on earth should the government need to work hard to keep the financial system going? Money is just a means of exchange.
Um... Didn't you notice the last 2 years?
The only time it's not a zero sum game is when it's growing... The instant you hit a limit, like lending to people who can't afford the houses they are buying, it collapses and you lose.
ok. Follow me here. This is real simple, but 300 million Americans keep missing it.
I need some money in order to facilitate a transaction... How do I create that money?
I go to a bank (the FED) and borrow $100 from them. The FED creates new money (credit) and loans it to me at 5%. (Did you see the pea in the shell game? It was right there. Cos millions keep missing it)
Right, so there is only $100 of credit in existence but now I owe them $105.
1 year later I'm a bit stuck because I've paid off most of the loan to the FED but that last $5 is a real bitch because it just doesn't exist. So what do I do?
I need some money, so I go to a bank (the FED) and borrow some more money from them. The FED creates that new money and loans it to me. Great! I can pay that $5 which didn't exist. But wait, I now need to pay off interest on the new load. lather, rinse, repeat.
That's money. The debt has to keep growing, or the system collapses. Growth. Growth. Must have growth. A Ponzi scheme of epic proportions. Hey, maybe you can talk some bums on the streets to take out some loans for a couple of McMansions. Then everything will be all right.
That's money. The government created it that way, and can change it as required. Don't you think they share some of the blame?
And "growth" is simply credit (debt) creation. Which feeds back into the GDP figure.
There is no correlation between the various fiancial statistics and reality. Or hadn't you noticed...
Go and manually run anti virus software on every infected PC.
Only 8 billion? Oh come on. That's peanuts.
You have the oil industry being subsidised by half a trillion annually through the US military budget. You have the banks taking to the outright looting of the US treasury.
I mean... Wow.
specifically those involving evolution, from the title 'science'
Rubbish. Evolution is testable and has been tested.
Does the fact that nature arranged the circumstances detract from the validity of the test?
No, but until it was tested, it was religion, like "climate science".
But to suggest that climatology is not science because it can't be experimentally verified
No. It's not science until it can be tested. You say "climate science" is science? Prove it .
They can't show causation like experiments,
It's crystal ball gazing, not science.
It's a pc.
Didn't you know? Ask Timothy Geithner he'll tell you.
Or some rabbits or something.
Good lord, imagine expending money and energy to just keep grass short.
There are only weather forecasters. Climate science is not science, that would require testability and we don't have anything to test with. When weather forecasters start chucking millions of tonnes of sulphate aerosols (or whatever) into the atmosphere, then it will be science.
That was the suggestion.
That I can only assume the ultimate plan is to use it as a base for a robot.
Using NiMH batteries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solectria_Sunrise
http://www.sunrise-ev.com/
Everyone else is just re-inventing the wheel.
The best place of solar panels is on the roof of your house, charging up a battery bank you can use to charge the car when you park it.
How on earth do you expect them to keep track of you without sufficient bandwidth?
... if a ridiculously large amount of money shows up unexpectedly in your bank account, rushing out to spend it wildly before the mistake can be caught is not actually the smartest of the available options
The smartest thing to do is take it all out as cash, convert it into gold bars, then disappear.