The change was to make it follow the written specification, a bug fix. The reporter is saying that the bug fix wasn't, because he figures the old behavior is better.
I have no idea which way it should work, but the ticket has the submitter expressing one opinion and Peter expressing another opinion. Not long ago, I submitted a fix for a bug in an open source project. It was obviously bug, the documentation said it worked one way, the code did the opposite. I fixed it to work according to the documentation. What is was doing instead was clearly wrong. Suprisingly, the other three developers thought otherwise, and they explained why. So far, there's no evidence that anyone other than the submitter is unhappy with the fix / change.
So far, we know that Peter caused the change, Peter knows that, and Peter knows how to put it back. Peter isn't sure that it's broken since it now follows the written spec. Ideally, we'd like Peter to fix it, but for that we need to convince Peter that the new behavior is wrong and it SHOULD be reverted. If he chooses to, it will take many seconds to revert the change.
What I'd do next is find the written documentation of the behavior in earlier versions, in Windows, and OSX. YOU said they all work the other way, but the spec says otherwise. So prove your case by linking to written documentation. When you post the links, mention "the principle of least surprise", a term meaning that users should not be surprised by the behavior of the software.
Also, right now ONE person on the planet has said they don't like the new behavior. If EVERYONE in a large group is having a problem with it, a few could post saying so. I'm sure there are forums and such related to accessibility, so ask around. Find out for sure, are other people reall having great difficulty with it? If so, will they post in the ticket?
Then mail Peter and request that he look at it. You could ask how much would be a fair contribution for his time spent looking into it. (Answer - about $20 - $50).
If Peter doesn't respond, email the project maintainer, mentioning that Peter seems to be unavailable and asking that the maintainer look at it.
If those two options fail, that single-line change is so small that any Linux programmer could compile a copy for you with it reverted. It would only take a minutes. Two years from now, if an important update comes out, someone could easily do the same with the new version. Obviously that's less desireable than getting the upstream source fixed, but it fixes YOUR problem.
TFA acknowledges that the bill is pretty much a big list of things the government will not be allowed to do, aka smaller government.
The summary is largely a lie (shocking, I know). The article takes issue with the fact that among all of the restrictions it puts on the government, it also repeats one phrase in existing law as it adds more restrictions to that phrase.
Current law is that the intelligence agency can get [spy on foreign persons] if they have a "reasonable and articulable suspicion". This bill says that even with "reasonable and articulable suspicion", it still must follow fourth amendment guidelines, must not be triggered by aything protected by the first amendment, must not include the contents of any communication (only metadata), etc. The author of TFA is making a big deal about the fact that the bill mentions "reasonable and articulable suspicion", but that's ALREADY current law. This bill adds restrictions to such inquiries.
Wiki has polysyllabic words, though, which I suspect you may have trouble with, so let me explain it real simple for you:
Go out in the garage and turn your big sister's bike upside down, so the handlebars are on the ground. Turn the pedal as fast as you can. Put your hand on the tire. You'll notice the tire is moving real fast.
You've just experienced the velocity of a spinning object.
Try the same experiment with daddy's bike. You'll have to push the pedal much harder to get it going real fast because the wheel on daddy's bike is bigger and heavier. It's hard to make a big, heavy thing go fast. You have to work harder to turn the pedal fast. Scientists measure that hard work and say the big, heavy wheel has more "energy".
Now go play with your toys and let the grown-ups talk.
Often, the vulnerability will be in a Java or Flash applet and the exploit will be via JavaScript. A vulnerable applet just sits there being vulnerable until a bad guy takes control of it via script. That's why this setting exists:
1. Open Internet Explorer.
2. Click the Tools menu and then click Internet Options.
3. Click the Security tab, click the Internet icon and then click Custom Level.
4. Scroll down to the Scripting section. Under Active scripting, select the Enable option. Then, under Scripting of Java applets, select Enable. Click OK.
5. Surf for 20 twenty minutes.
6. Restore from backup because you've probably been pownd.
That's true. Forcing users to change the password upon first login does create one problem though. Some users are accustomed to referring back to the initial email or their notes to find the password. Those users keep trying to use the default password after the first time. The system I'm responsible for is set up that way and the help desk LOVES getting all of those calls.
I should see about changing that. It was set that way when I started this job.
Thanks. I think you're missing a critical factor, though. Consider two bicycle wheels, both turning at 1 RPM. Both weigh 100 lbs.
One wheel is 1 foot in diameter, so its rim is going 1 foot per second. 1fps^2 * mass = energy. The other wheel is 10 feet in diameter, so its rim is going 10 fps. 10 fps^2 * mass = energy.
Probably the diameter of one flywheel will be no more than twice the size of the other. When squared, that results in FOUR times as much energy just by increasing the circumfrance, right? Then 100X as much by the increase in speed. So 400 times as much energy if they are the same weight.
One squared is one. Ten squared is one hundred. Same weight, same speed, but 100 times as much energy.
> they might figure out a way to pay employees a bit more
That's an interesting question. I looked it up and they do in fact pay their wage workers a bit more than other fast food places. Not a lot more, but a bit more.
I compared them to the #1 fast food chicken (KFC) and the #1 fast food (McDonald's).
I'm no expert, but I think two flywheels would reduce the problems and three could almost eliminate it. I believe flywheels have effects along two different axes.
> Should private beliefs be enough to prevent someone from heading a project they helped found?"
Public actions aren't private beliefs. Hugo Chavez, Fred Phelps, or Jane Fonda would be very bad choices as business leaders because they come with a ton of bad PR. A month or so ago Slashdot had story about a small group of Apple shareholders proposing that the company not "waste" money on inefficient attempts to be^H^H appear "green". Over 97% of the shareholders rejected the proposal, preferring to reduce profits by spending money on some solar-electric crap. If the owners want Apple to be a tree-hugging company, they should be able to do that - they are the owners, it's their money. For that reason, they would take that into account in a CEO. That's fine, they are paying the CEO, and should be able to hire one who believes in the mission. The mission, at least at Apple, isn't just about money, it's also about politics.
As another example, Chik-Fil-A's mission is about really good chicken, yes, but it's also about creating a wholesome environment for the employees. For example, all Chik-Fil-A employees have Sunday off to spend with their families. That hurts "the bottom line", but Chik-Fil-A believes the real bottom line is something more important than money. Therefore, to accomplish their mission, they wouldn't put Gene Simmons or Lady gaga on their board of directors.
This flywheel is spinning at 60,000 RPM. Energy = mass * velocity^2 if I remember correctly, so this flywheel has a like million times as much energy and therefore potential danger.
Engineers please feel free to correct me, or actually do the math.
It occurs to that this is basically a larger copy of the "friction motor" that was used in toy cars. The ones you'd spin up by rolling them on the floor , then you let go and they speed away. If you ever played with those, you know that the spinning flywheel has WAY more than enough rotational energy than required to accelerate its own mass. Those aren't going nearly 60,000 RPM either. (I think, I've never measured their flywheel speed.)
It briefly stores energy from braking and uses it to accelerate a moment later. If you don't hit the brakes, it does nothing. If you hit the brakes and stay at a low speed for five minutes, it does nothing.
When it works is when you stop (which stores energy), then go (which uses the stored energy). In other words "stop and go" traffic is EXACTLY what this is designed for.
Thanks for checking the current prices and doing the math. It looks like my guesstimate was off by exactly an order of magnitude. At $20K, you're looking at $583 per month in battery costs to keep them fresh (3 year life) or $333 per month in batteries if you're okay using them after they've become less effective and reliable (5 years).
I could handle $5.83 in battery replacement costs (plus $5.12 in government mandated recycling fees), so if and when costs drop by 99%, that'll work. You have much more faith in that than I do. Since the 1800s, we've advanced from lead acid (240 wh/$) to lithium and NiMh (390 wh/$), a 62% improvement in 150 years.
That's sound reasoning, but you got the facts backwards. Rockstar aka Spherix is Microsoft, Apple, and a few other companies. The big tech companies looked at the patents and BOUGHT THEM through their patent-trolling joint venture, Rockstar.
I wish I had mod points. Since Microsoft and friends own Rockstar, and Rockstar owns Spherix, really it's Apple, Microsoft, etc. patent trolling via two shell companies.
I already said more than once that batteries HAVE been getting better. I also said cars are possibly the best candidate for solar electric BECAUSE THEY ALREADY HAVE BATTERIES. For powering homes and businesses? Have you compared the power draw of an air conditioner, a hair dryer, and other everyday items vs. even the best batteries?
You can do that math if you want, but something like $200,000 of batteries would power your home for a day. Those $200,000 batteries will then die in 3-5 years and need to be replaced. Since I'm not going to spend $70,000 / year on batteries, yes I'm ignoring that possibility. If and when batteries get to be thousands of times better, we can talk about that.
Since I couldn't reliably remember the _exact_ numbers for Germany I checked another source before posting. I was thinking about 5% of electricity, 1% of energy. Double checking, the report said slightly lower than that. The most reliable report was 3% of electricity in 2011.
> you're still loking at a 4% reduction in total energy generated from other sources.
Yes! Well, 4% of ELECTRICITY, 1% of ENERGY. As it turns out, hydro can provide 5% or so, as can geothermal, and wind about the same. So combined that's a 10%-20% reduction, which is great. A 10%-20% reduction is very significant, and it's real.
Knowing that solar, hyro, geo, and wind can cover 10%-20%, we then have to select stable, reliable sources for the other 80%-90%. I say stable because wind and solar both are available sometimes, so you need another source to use when it's cloudy, or not windy, or too windy. That doesn't mean you don't use wind on the windy days, of course. If you don't have to burn as much natural gas on the windy days, that's great. Between hydro, geo, wind, and solar, I rank their usefulness roughly as follows:
1. Hydroelectric 2. Wind 3. Geothermal (great in California, where plate tectonics makes it available). 4. Non-electric solar (solar heating etc.) 65. Solar electric.
The "6" in "65" is not a typo - wind and hydro are so much more reasonable than solar electric that the list needs a big space between them.
> But even at 4% you're confusing two concepts - 4% of total power generation is very different than 4% of noon-time power usage.
Clearly my wording was unclear. Germany gets 4% of their electricity (1% of their power) from solar. My point is that they can not, in this solar system, expand that to 80% by building twenty times as many solar farms. They can get 4%, but it's a _specific_ 4%. You can't use solar power in the morning when people are getting ready for work, or at dinner time, or all night long, no_matter_how_many_panels_you_buy.
> They've also received investment from Bill Gates, and while I'm not a big fan, he does tend to be a pretty canny investor
The Google founders and their friends are similarly not stupid, and they lost half a billion to yet another solar electric "get investors, then go declare bankruptcy while the top execs flee with the cash" scheme. Barak Obama, while not the smartest president, isn't stupid, yet he's well known for dropping billions on "just around the corner" solar companies that keep folding. It's a well-refined pitch that's been run since the 1890s, so they've had time to refine the pitch to work on even intelligent marks.
I really enjoy talking to you. It's great to talk to someone who is reasonably well informed, thinks things through, argues intelligently, but argues the other side of an question from what I believe to be correct.
Nuclear is also definitely an option, it can theoretically be done safely, we just need to work out economic incentive structures that don't encourage dangerous cost-cutting at every opportunity. Sealed modular reactors offer some interesting potential in that direction
That's an interesting and important point. We know that nuclear CAN be safer than the alternatives, history proves that. It's important that the structural environment promotes safety. (For anyone reading this who hasn't studied it, death and injury rates for nuclear are far below any other major energy source).
solar electric is a sick joke
How so?... there are some really interesting options on the horizon, and some like Aquion are almost to market.
There certainly are people pitching what sound like really interesting ideas. That's true today and it was true in the 1990s, the 1980s, the 1970s, the 1960s, and the 1950s. The same crowd has been promising that practical solar electric is "just around the corner" for over sixty years. I don't believe them anymore. At this point, I'll believe it when I see it. It might happen. Unfortunately, the big problem for solar is that the earth spins, meaning significant solar is available for about six hours per day. Solar will work a lot better when the earth stops spinning. On the other hand, electric cars _already_ require batteries, so if solar makes sense for any major use, it's for cars.
If solar panels were about eight times more efficient, cars could have solar panels on the roof which charge the battery during the sunny part of the day. That would be awesome. Unfortunately, if they were eight times more efficient, that would be 160% efficiency. Perpetual motion only requires 100%. This tells us that solar panels on cars may work shortly after perpetual motion works. That's not the only similarity between solar electric and perpetual motion.
And there are already nations getting a major portion of their total power from it (Germany gets ~40% I think)
Just under 1% of their total power (DOE), by doubling the cost of electricity to pay for huge subsidies. The "40%?" probably came to mind because they are getting about 4% of their ELECTRICITY from solar. Of course you're correct to look at "total power", not "electricity", because everyone switched from gas cars to electric cars, you'd need ten times as much electricity. It gets worse - they get a very specific 4% from solar - the 4% that occurs around noon, at certain locations. Since the earth spins, solar is simply impossible to get most of the time. That sucks, because otherwise solar would be great.
and in the US southwest it's already cheap enough that with electricity at $0.11/kWh a grid-tied solar installation will pay for itself in [doesn't matter] (~10 without subsidies), and then provide free power for another decade or two.
Thank you for acknowledging that making your neighbor pay for it via subsidies doesn't make it more cost-effective. In the context of providing for our nation's energy needs, we can't all subsidize each other, so your 10 year figure is the one that matters. Along with the subsidies for installing solar, grid-tied also has significant subsidies on what the power company is forced to pay the person who has the solar.
The problem, again, is the peaky nature of solar - it provides power for a few hours on sunny days, only. In some areas of California, they have to shunt power to the ground on sunny afternoons, throwing the power away. The power company is spending a little bit of money to get rid of that extra power, while being forced to pay full retail price for it. Of course you've got various tax c
Your post is remarkably accurate, for someone who thinks electric cars are the future. As you correctly point out, it assumes some incredible new battery technology. Such a thing could happen one day. Today's batteries are certainly better than the ni-cads of 30 years ago. They aren't that much more recycable, though.
As you said, there's also the huge question of where this electricity comes from. Since we don't have any more 100 mile stretches of mountain wilderness we want to destroy, we can't build a significant number of new hydroelectric plants. Solar is good for heating, but solar electric is a sick joke, so to get a huge amount of zero carbon electricity, that means nuclear. MAYBE we can get that done now that famous environmentalists, including the founder of Greenpeace, are saying it's definitely the way to go. The problems standing in the way of nuclear are political problems, not technical problems, and those political roadblocks are getting a lot smaller.
Of course all of that is "maybe some day". Maybe some day we can have cars that run on unicorn farts, as they say.
Someone told you a whopper of a lie. Let's think this through.
6kWh costs about 60 cents. Until the recent price hike, through the 1980s and 1990s, the retail price of gas was about $1, including tax of 38 cents. Net of 38 cents tax, the gas stations got 62 cents.
Essentially, someone told you that for twenty years all of the gas stations, the refineries, the drlling companies, the pipelines, etc. were all giving the gas away for free - you were ONLY paying for the tax the electricity required to refine it. Wow, those oil companies sure are generous, giving us all trillions of dollars worth of gas for free and getting nothing out of it, just losing trillions of dollars year after year.
It was a response to saying MORE federal taxes are a good thing. More federal taxes do not result in more libraries.
Libraries, police, firefighters, most roads... virtually all of the things pro-tax people put forth as good things paid for by taxes are mostly paid for with the ~ 8% local and state taxes. The feds take four times as much of your money and it doesn't go toward any of those things. Federal taxes do, however, pay for the NSA, billion-dollar bombers, and handouts to campaign contributors.
Slashdot Mirror
The change was to make it follow the written specification, a bug fix. The reporter is saying that the bug fix wasn't, because he figures the old behavior is better.
I have no idea which way it should work, but the ticket has the submitter expressing one opinion and Peter expressing another opinion. Not long ago, I submitted a fix for a bug in an open source project. It was obviously bug, the documentation said it worked one way, the code did the opposite. I fixed it to work according to the documentation. What is was doing instead was clearly wrong. Suprisingly, the other three developers thought otherwise, and they explained why. So far, there's no evidence that anyone other than the submitter is unhappy with the fix / change.
So far, we know that Peter caused the change, Peter knows that, and Peter knows how to put it back. Peter isn't sure that it's broken since it now follows the written spec. Ideally, we'd like Peter to fix it, but for that we need to convince Peter that the new behavior is wrong and it SHOULD be reverted. If he chooses to, it will take many seconds to revert the change.
What I'd do next is find the written documentation of the behavior in earlier versions, in Windows, and OSX. YOU said they all work the other way, but the spec says otherwise. So prove your case by linking to written documentation. When you post the links, mention "the principle of least surprise", a term meaning that users should not be surprised by the behavior of the software.
Also, right now ONE person on the planet has said they don't like the new behavior. If EVERYONE in a large group is having a problem with it, a few could post saying so. I'm sure there are forums and such related to accessibility, so ask around. Find out for sure, are other people reall having great difficulty with it? If so, will they post in the ticket?
Then mail Peter and request that he look at it. You could ask how much would be a fair contribution for his time spent looking into it. (Answer - about $20 - $50).
If Peter doesn't respond, email the project maintainer, mentioning that Peter seems to be unavailable and asking that the maintainer look at it.
If those two options fail, that single-line change is so small that any Linux programmer could compile a copy for you with it reverted. It would only take a minutes. Two years from now, if an important update comes out, someone could easily do the same with the new version. Obviously that's less desireable than getting the upstream source fixed, but it fixes YOUR problem.
TFA acknowledges that the bill is pretty much a big list of things the government will not be allowed to do, aka smaller government.
The summary is largely a lie (shocking, I know). The article takes issue with the fact that among all of the restrictions it puts on the government, it also repeats one phrase in existing law as it adds more restrictions to that phrase.
Current law is that the intelligence agency can get [spy on foreign persons] if they have a "reasonable and articulable suspicion". This bill says that even with "reasonable and articulable suspicion", it still must follow fourth amendment guidelines, must not be triggered by aything protected by the first amendment, must not include the contents of any communication (only metadata), etc. The author of TFA is making a big deal about the fact that the bill mentions "reasonable and articulable suspicion", but that's ALREADY current law. This bill adds restrictions to such inquiries.
http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=angul...
Wiki has polysyllabic words, though, which I suspect you may have trouble with, so let me explain it real simple for you:
Go out in the garage and turn your big sister's bike upside down, so the handlebars are on the ground.
Turn the pedal as fast as you can.
Put your hand on the tire.
You'll notice the tire is moving real fast.
You've just experienced the velocity of a spinning object.
Try the same experiment with daddy's bike.
You'll have to push the pedal much harder to get it going real fast because the wheel on daddy's bike is bigger and heavier.
It's hard to make a big, heavy thing go fast. You have to work harder to turn the pedal fast.
Scientists measure that hard work and say the big, heavy wheel has more "energy".
Now go play with your toys and let the grown-ups talk.
Often, the vulnerability will be in a Java or Flash applet and the exploit will be via JavaScript. A vulnerable applet just sits there being vulnerable until a bad guy takes control of it via script. That's why this setting exists:
1. Open Internet Explorer.
2. Click the Tools menu and then click Internet Options.
3. Click the Security tab, click the Internet icon and then click Custom Level.
4. Scroll down to the Scripting section. Under Active scripting, select the Enable option. Then, under Scripting of Java applets, select Enable. Click OK.
5. Surf for 20 twenty minutes.
6. Restore from backup because you've probably been pownd.
That's true. Forcing users to change the password upon first login does create one problem though. Some users are accustomed to referring back to the initial email or their notes to find the password. Those users keep trying to use the default password after the first time. The system I'm responsible for is set up that way and the help desk LOVES getting all of those calls.
I should see about changing that. It was set that way when I started this job.
Thanks. I think you're missing a critical factor, though.
Consider two bicycle wheels, both turning at 1 RPM. Both weigh 100 lbs.
One wheel is 1 foot in diameter, so its rim is going 1 foot per second. 1fps^2 * mass = energy.
The other wheel is 10 feet in diameter, so its rim is going 10 fps. 10 fps^2 * mass = energy.
Probably the diameter of one flywheel will be no more than twice the size of the other. When squared, that results in FOUR times as much energy just by increasing the circumfrance, right? Then 100X as much by the increase in speed. So 400 times as much energy if they are the same weight.
One squared is one. Ten squared is one hundred.
Same weight, same speed, but 100 times as much energy.
> they might figure out a way to pay employees a bit more
That's an interesting question. I looked it up and they do in fact pay their wage workers a bit more than other fast food places. Not a lot more, but a bit more.
I compared them to the #1 fast food chicken (KFC) and the #1 fast food (McDonald's).
I'm no expert, but I think two flywheels would reduce the problems and three could almost eliminate it. I believe flywheels have effects along two different axes.
> Should private beliefs be enough to prevent someone from heading a project they helped found?"
Public actions aren't private beliefs. Hugo Chavez, Fred Phelps, or Jane Fonda would be very bad choices as business leaders because they come with a ton of bad PR. A month or so ago Slashdot had story about a small group of Apple shareholders proposing that the company not "waste" money on inefficient attempts to be^H^H appear "green". Over 97% of the shareholders rejected the proposal, preferring to reduce profits by spending money on some solar-electric crap. If the owners want Apple to be a tree-hugging company, they should be able to do that - they are the owners, it's their money. For that reason, they would take that into account in a CEO. That's fine, they are paying the CEO, and should be able to hire one who believes in the mission. The mission, at least at Apple, isn't just about money, it's also about politics.
As another example, Chik-Fil-A's mission is about really good chicken, yes, but it's also about creating a wholesome environment for the employees. For example, all Chik-Fil-A employees have Sunday off to spend with their families. That hurts "the bottom line", but Chik-Fil-A believes the real bottom line is something more important than money. Therefore, to accomplish their mission, they wouldn't put Gene Simmons or Lady gaga on their board of directors.
This flywheel is spinning at 60,000 RPM.
Energy = mass * velocity^2 if I remember correctly, so this flywheel has a like million times as much energy and therefore potential danger.
Engineers please feel free to correct me, or actually do the math.
It occurs to that this is basically a larger copy of the "friction motor" that was used in toy cars. The ones you'd spin up by rolling them on the floor , then you let go and they speed away. If you ever played with those, you know that the spinning flywheel has WAY more than enough rotational energy than required to accelerate its own mass. Those aren't going nearly 60,000 RPM either. (I think, I've never measured their flywheel speed.)
It would seem to me that at 60,000 RPM, the rotational momentum is so much higher than the linear momentum that 1) and 2) aren't really a problem.
3 and 4, on the other hand, could be a problem.
It briefly stores energy from braking and uses it to accelerate a moment later. If you don't hit the brakes, it does nothing. If you hit the brakes and stay at a low speed for five minutes, it does nothing.
When it works is when you stop (which stores energy), then go (which uses the stored energy). In other words "stop and go" traffic is EXACTLY what this is designed for.
My interpretation is that they used a) as b), which should be fine if the salt was actually salty. I think they did:
default_password = crypt(username+salt)
That would be fine if they used real salt (random), but instead they used Mrs. Dash salt substitute.
Thanks for checking the current prices and doing the math. It looks like my guesstimate was off by exactly an order of magnitude. At $20K, you're looking at $583 per month in battery costs to keep them fresh (3 year life) or $333 per month in batteries if you're okay using them after they've become less effective and reliable (5 years).
I could handle $5.83 in battery replacement costs (plus $5.12 in government mandated recycling fees), so if and when costs drop by 99%, that'll work. You have much more faith in that than I do. Since the 1800s, we've advanced from lead acid (240 wh/$) to lithium and NiMh (390 wh/$), a 62% improvement in 150 years.
That's sound reasoning, but you got the facts backwards. Rockstar aka Spherix is Microsoft, Apple, and a few other companies. The big tech companies looked at the patents and BOUGHT THEM through their patent-trolling joint venture, Rockstar.
I think it would have been really interesting to see what happened if the republicans had responded:
Sounds great. Let's do even better - let's set minimum wage at $100 / hour.
Then let OBAMA explain why that would result in almost everyone losing their jobs, why higher minimum wage means fewer jobs.
I wish I had mod points. Since Microsoft and friends own Rockstar, and Rockstar owns Spherix, really it's Apple, Microsoft, etc. patent trolling via two shell companies.
I already said more than once that batteries HAVE been getting better. I also said cars are possibly the best candidate for solar electric BECAUSE THEY ALREADY HAVE BATTERIES. For powering homes and businesses? Have you compared the power draw of an air conditioner, a hair dryer, and other everyday items vs. even the best batteries?
You can do that math if you want, but something like $200,000 of batteries would power your home for a day. Those $200,000 batteries will then die in 3-5 years and need to be replaced. Since I'm not going to spend $70,000 / year on batteries, yes I'm ignoring that possibility. If and when batteries get to be thousands of times better, we can talk about that.
Since I couldn't reliably remember the _exact_ numbers for Germany I checked another source before posting. I was thinking about 5% of electricity, 1% of energy. Double checking, the report said slightly lower than that. The most reliable report was 3% of electricity in 2011.
> you're still loking at a 4% reduction in total energy generated from other sources.
Yes! Well, 4% of ELECTRICITY, 1% of ENERGY. As it turns out, hydro can provide 5% or so, as can geothermal, and wind about the same. So combined that's a 10%-20% reduction, which is great. A 10%-20% reduction is very significant, and it's real.
Knowing that solar, hyro, geo, and wind can cover 10%-20%, we then have to select stable, reliable sources for the other 80%-90%. I say stable because wind and solar both are available sometimes, so you need another source to use when it's cloudy, or not windy, or too windy. That doesn't mean you don't use wind on the windy days, of course. If you don't have to burn as much natural gas on the windy days, that's great. Between hydro, geo, wind, and solar, I rank their usefulness roughly as follows:
1. Hydroelectric
2. Wind
3. Geothermal (great in California, where plate tectonics makes it available).
4. Non-electric solar (solar heating etc.)
65. Solar electric.
The "6" in "65" is not a typo - wind and hydro are so much more reasonable than solar electric that the list needs a big space between them.
> But even at 4% you're confusing two concepts - 4% of total power generation is very different than 4% of noon-time power usage.
Clearly my wording was unclear. Germany gets 4% of their electricity (1% of their power) from solar.
My point is that they can not, in this solar system, expand that to 80% by building twenty times as many solar farms.
They can get 4%, but it's a _specific_ 4%. You can't use solar power in the morning when people are getting ready for work, or at dinner time, or all night long, no_matter_how_many_panels_you_buy.
> They've also received investment from Bill Gates, and while I'm not a big fan, he does tend to be a pretty canny investor
The Google founders and their friends are similarly not stupid, and they lost half a billion to yet another solar electric "get investors, then go declare bankruptcy while the top execs flee with the cash" scheme. Barak Obama, while not the smartest president, isn't stupid, yet he's well known for dropping billions on "just around the corner" solar companies that keep folding. It's a well-refined pitch that's been run since the 1890s, so they've had time to refine the pitch to work on even intelligent marks.
I really enjoy talking to you. It's great to talk to someone who is reasonably well informed, thinks things through, argues intelligently, but argues the other side of an question from what I believe to be correct.
Nuclear is also definitely an option, it can theoretically be done safely, we just need to work out economic incentive structures that don't encourage dangerous cost-cutting at every opportunity. Sealed modular reactors offer some interesting potential in that direction
That's an interesting and important point. We know that nuclear CAN be safer than the alternatives, history proves that. It's important that the structural environment promotes safety.
(For anyone reading this who hasn't studied it, death and injury rates for nuclear are far below any other major energy source).
solar electric is a sick joke
How so? ... there are some really interesting options on the horizon, and some like Aquion are almost to market.
There certainly are people pitching what sound like really interesting ideas. That's true today and it was true in the 1990s, the 1980s, the 1970s, the 1960s, and the 1950s. The same crowd has been promising that practical solar electric is "just around the corner" for over sixty years. I don't believe them anymore. At this point, I'll believe it when I see it. It might happen. Unfortunately, the big problem for solar is that the earth spins, meaning significant solar is available for about six hours per day. Solar will work a lot better when the earth stops spinning. On the other hand, electric cars _already_ require batteries, so if solar makes sense for any major use, it's for cars.
If solar panels were about eight times more efficient, cars could have solar panels on the roof which charge the battery during the sunny part of the day. That would be awesome. Unfortunately, if they were eight times more efficient, that would be 160% efficiency. Perpetual motion only requires 100%. This tells us that solar panels on cars may work shortly after perpetual motion works. That's not the only similarity between solar electric and perpetual motion.
And there are already nations getting a major portion of their total power from it (Germany gets ~40% I think)
Just under 1% of their total power (DOE), by doubling the cost of electricity to pay for huge subsidies.
The "40%?" probably came to mind because they are getting about 4% of their ELECTRICITY from solar.
Of course you're correct to look at "total power", not "electricity", because everyone switched from gas cars to electric cars, you'd need ten times as much electricity. It gets worse - they get a very specific 4% from solar - the 4% that occurs around noon, at certain locations. Since the earth spins, solar is simply impossible to get most of the time. That sucks, because otherwise solar would be great.
and in the US southwest it's already cheap enough that with electricity at $0.11/kWh a grid-tied solar installation will pay for itself in [doesn't matter] (~10 without subsidies), and then provide free power for another decade or two.
Thank you for acknowledging that making your neighbor pay for it via subsidies doesn't make it more cost-effective. In the context of providing for our nation's energy needs, we can't all subsidize each other, so your 10 year figure is the one that matters. Along with the subsidies for installing solar, grid-tied also has significant subsidies on what the power company is forced to pay the person who has the solar.
The problem, again, is the peaky nature of solar - it provides power for a few hours on sunny days, only. In some areas of California, they have to shunt power to the ground on sunny afternoons, throwing the power away. The power company is spending a little bit of money to get rid of that extra power, while being forced to pay full retail price for it. Of course you've got various tax c
Your post is remarkably accurate, for someone who thinks electric cars are the future. As you correctly point out, it assumes some incredible new battery technology. Such a thing could happen one day. Today's batteries are certainly better than the ni-cads of 30 years ago. They aren't that much more recycable, though.
As you said, there's also the huge question of where this electricity comes from. Since we don't have any more 100 mile stretches of mountain wilderness we want to destroy, we can't build a significant number of new hydroelectric plants. Solar is good for heating, but solar electric is a sick joke, so to get a huge amount of zero carbon electricity, that means nuclear. MAYBE we can get that done now that famous environmentalists, including the founder of Greenpeace, are saying it's definitely the way to go. The problems standing in the way of nuclear are political problems, not technical problems, and those political roadblocks are getting a lot smaller.
Of course all of that is "maybe some day". Maybe some day we can have cars that run on unicorn farts, as they say.
Someone told you a whopper of a lie. Let's think this through.
6kWh costs about 60 cents.
Until the recent price hike, through the 1980s and 1990s, the retail price of gas was about $1, including tax of 38 cents.
Net of 38 cents tax, the gas stations got 62 cents.
Essentially, someone told you that for twenty years all of the gas stations, the refineries, the drlling companies, the pipelines, etc. were all giving the gas away for free - you were ONLY paying for the tax the electricity required to refine it. Wow, those oil companies sure are generous, giving us all trillions of dollars worth of gas for free and getting nothing out of it, just losing trillions of dollars year after year.
It was a response to saying MORE federal taxes are a good thing. More federal taxes do not result in more libraries.
Libraries, police, firefighters, most roads ... virtually all of the things pro-tax people put forth as good things paid for by taxes are mostly paid for with the ~ 8% local and state taxes. The feds take four times as much of your money and it doesn't go toward any of those things. Federal taxes do, however, pay for the NSA, billion-dollar bombers, and handouts to campaign contributors.