Even if you aren't actively pushing energy back into the grid, you still have the option of pulling energy from the grid (say, on cloudy days or at night if you don't have sufficient battery capacity). Either way, you're using it and should help pay for the maintenance of it.
The company will already have a method of doing this, typically either a fixed fee or the first X Joules per month cost more than any you use after that. A hookup which will allow you to "pull" at X watts will allow you to "push" at the same power.
If I generate excess energy this month, and if my state requires the electric company to pay me for my energy, then I get a small check and/or credit toward next month's bill. Looking at that credit, I see that the electric company is paying me about half of what they charge me for electricity. Which means, of course, that they are making a profit by redistributing my electricity.
It also means that unless you generate quite a bit more than you need you are still going to end up owing them money. Maybe if you installed solar/wind on a property which was unoccupied most of the time...
I don't think anyone is arguing that. What his point was is that, how do you calculate this fee.
A fairly simple situation would be a fixed amount per month for the connection (possibly related to the capacity of the connection, you can't deliver several kA down a cable suitable for a couple of hundred amps) plus x per Joule (or 3.6Mj) you "consume" minus y per Joule for any you put into the grid.
All this comes down to is that they're afraid that being green is catching on (especially with the economy being shit and giving another reason to save) and between having to pay people for extra energy and general use going down, they're afraid their profits are going to disappear.
There profits would go down if people simply used less electricity. Anyway if people are generating their own they need buy less from generating companies.
Some energy companies have lower daily standing charges and higher charges per megajoule. As far as I can tell from the article, the fee described is just an increase to the daily standing charge to cover the cost of engineering the grid to work with more customers who tie their solar panels to the grid.
Assuming they have to do any such work. It's not like cables care which "direction" power is flowing in them.
The system is also broken in that there is absolutely no place in it for rehabilitation. The effort to show voters that the administration is "doing something" about such offenders represents the wooliest of short-term thinking.
Another big problem is that there will be people who are dangerous who are not on such lists at all. Even including those who have been found guilty of crimes. If the idea is to "protect the children" it appears daft not to have the details of convicted child murders available. It wouldn't be too big a suprise if there were convicted child sex offenders (especially women) who were omitted from such lists through some technicality or other.
There is no place in the system for acceptance that once the offender has taken his punishment, he should be able to start again.
Which would be hard to square with parts of the US where "convicted felons" are forbidden to vote even after supposedly serving their sentence.
Wow! Your first link makes the "Breeder Reactor" sound just so wonderful.
Unfortunately you omitted to mention that it still produces a waste that is beyond lethal for 25,000 years.
Producing hazardous waste is not unique to nuclear power generation. A more relevent issue is that a breeder reactor is still going to involve neutron irradiation of the reactor structure, which is the most obvious limitation on the life of a reactor.
I don't understand why we *allow* Nuclear power operators to get into such a situation? If anyone wants a license to build a new plant (and this should have been instituted decades ago), why don't we estimate the decomissioning costs, demand like 40 percent up-front as part of the investment to even *get started*, and then every year it's in operation, have part of the revenue go to the 'clean-up fund'? That way, if the company goes under after 30 or 40 years, we've *already got the money* (or at least, a significant part of it). If the plant changes ownership, the obligation 'travels' with the title, so that the new owners keep paying into the fund?
It would probably be a good idea for such a scheme to exist for any power plant, chemical plant, mine, etc.
Now if you want to wipe the power plant from the site completely, that will cost you hundreds of millions of dollars, and the article talks about that. Simply shutting it down and maintaining the fuel safely won't cost nearly as much.
The third option being to maintain the nuclear bit and remove the power plant bit...
The navy likes their nuclear boats because, despite the startup cost, they are cheaper to operate. There is no refueling while under way and indeed on some craft, no refueling ever.
The only limit for a nuclear powered sub tends to be how much food can be carried on board. The only "refueling" required is for the crew. No doubt there is quite a bit of work going into robot subs...
The nuclear stockpile in the reactor is sufficient for the operational lifetime of the vessel.
Even if there is a need to refuel it is so infrequent that it could easily be done as part of a refit.
Here's where I found my face on an ad on slashdot in late may. Using liknesses for commercial purposes requires a model release and this is actionable. Anybody feel like doing a class action?
Wouldn't a DMCA takedown notice be easier and quicker:)
Flip this around - you own a small bar, should you have the right to refuse entry to people who are likely to cause violence? It's your property, right? And in order to verify identity, shouldn't you be able to request that the person supply some ID?
"Identity" isn't much help in knowing if someone is likely to cause violence. Recognising them as a "trouble maker" from a previous visit or even "gut instinct" is a better guide. Having them produce a document which tells you which type of cars they can drive is probably at best a waste of time, especially since they wouldn't be that good a customer if they intended driving away from your bar...
Originally the police were all about this how it would help them track down gangs and the clubs were all about how this would help them fend off repeat trouble makers.
If there are repeat troublemakers at the same club then maybe the bouncers need better training. Also clubs (and police) can work together to ensure that trouble makers can be identified by people working in clubs (and hopefully put where they belong). Without hassling every customer.
I can't speak for other jurisdictions, but this barwatch program in BC was enacted in response to a rash of nightclub shootings in recent years in which gang members got into fights with other patrons or were killed in targeted hits in which innocent bystanders were wounded or killed. The ID scan is to identify persons known to police in a database and refuse them services or entrance to the premises.
All that would be likely to happen would be that black market gun dealers would also provide fake ID documents.
If they're looking at IP tables on who a person is connected to, and they find that someones grabbing ALOT of files from alot of different locations, the normal person would suspect that person for P2P tranfering music, movies, etc etc.
Are they even checking this closely?
However if I happen to be gaming while checking my email and my friend posts me a funny vid - well you get the idea.
Even if the ISP could identify that this was P2P to even stand a chance in a real court they'd have to be able to tie this to the specific accusation being made.
Do you have any particular evidence that "It's quite likely however the people that have been disconnected were doing something wrong"?
I didn't think so. Does it matter if they could prove that they weren't doing something wrong? The article says otherwise.
Proving a negative is rather difficult. Hence when it comes to a real court the onus of proof is on the accuser and the accused is able to critically examine anything perported to be evidence.
You are, basically, judging people to be "guilty of SOMETHING" on the basis that somebody or other accused them and a corporation punished them.
Whereas in the real world mistaken and even malicious accusations are made all the time. The former especially where there is an over relience on machines to gather "evidence". Indeed it's be shown that methods used with the likes of bittorrent can easily generate false positives with respect to IP addresses. Over a year ago the University of Washington managed to show how bogus IP addresses could show up.
This only refutes creationism, not ID. Creationism is the bible version. ID is basically that there was a creation (by unknown means, a creator, could be a computer program) , and then the laws of nature follow.
Depending on how you define "laws of nature" this interpretation does not exclude evolution by natural selection or any other scientific theory.
Old adaptations are pretty common--take the Osage-Orange, for example. Nothing eats it, nothings disperses the seeds anymore; the creatures that probably fed on it and spread the seeds went extinct long ago (giant ground sloths, etc). It would have likely gone extinct too, but we humans planted the tree for windbreaks and for useful wood.
Quite a few domesticated species might well go extinct if humans wern't around. Others would be likely to evolve back into something similar to whatever they were pre domestication.
Agreed. I originally thought the post was about trees that were CONTINUING to evolve. But simply having old adaptations is pretty uninteresting.... nay, normal. Especially for trees, which repopulate very slowly compared to say, fruitflies.
Thus 500 years is likely to equate to very few tree generations. Especially if mature trees of this species typically live for several centuries.
"California Continues To Push For Violent Game Legislation".... For a minute I envisioned legislators proposing duels or gladiatorial combat as a new form of government.
It might make the public more interested in politics:)
California has no other problems right now...
Oh right, I forgot the contemporary approach to politics. If you have real problems you don't solve them, you distract your people by making up problems where there are none.
Just as well California isn't a nation state. Otherwise they'd probably have started at least one war by now...
Pick-up artists don't bother trying to appear rich; they've just figured out how to signal high status.
Just because they are able to do this does not imply they have conciously figured out how to do so. It's also hardly unknown for both men and women to attract the "wrong kind". If they had "figured out how to signal..." this wouldn't happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Even if you aren't actively pushing energy back into the grid, you still have the option of pulling energy from the grid (say, on cloudy days or at night if you don't have sufficient battery capacity). Either way, you're using it and should help pay for the maintenance of it.
The company will already have a method of doing this, typically either a fixed fee or the first X Joules per month cost more than any you use after that. A hookup which will allow you to "pull" at X watts will allow you to "push" at the same power.
If I generate excess energy this month, and if my state requires the electric company to pay me for my energy, then I get a small check and/or credit toward next month's bill. Looking at that credit, I see that the electric company is paying me about half of what they charge me for electricity. Which means, of course, that they are making a profit by redistributing my electricity.
It also means that unless you generate quite a bit more than you need you are still going to end up owing them money. Maybe if you installed solar/wind on a property which was unoccupied most of the time...
I don't think anyone is arguing that. What his point was is that, how do you calculate this fee.
A fairly simple situation would be a fixed amount per month for the connection (possibly related to the capacity of the connection, you can't deliver several kA down a cable suitable for a couple of hundred amps) plus x per Joule (or 3.6Mj) you "consume" minus y per Joule for any you put into the grid.
All this comes down to is that they're afraid that being green is catching on (especially with the economy being shit and giving another reason to save) and between having to pay people for extra energy and general use going down, they're afraid their profits are going to disappear.
There profits would go down if people simply used less electricity. Anyway if people are generating their own they need buy less from generating companies.
Some energy companies have lower daily standing charges and higher charges per megajoule. As far as I can tell from the article, the fee described is just an increase to the daily standing charge to cover the cost of engineering the grid to work with more customers who tie their solar panels to the grid.
Assuming they have to do any such work. It's not like cables care which "direction" power is flowing in them.
The system is also broken in that there is absolutely no place in it for rehabilitation. The effort to show voters that the administration is "doing something" about such offenders represents the wooliest of short-term thinking.
Another big problem is that there will be people who are dangerous who are not on such lists at all. Even including those who have been found guilty of crimes. If the idea is to "protect the children" it appears daft not to have the details of convicted child murders available. It wouldn't be too big a suprise if there were convicted child sex offenders (especially women) who were omitted from such lists through some technicality or other.
There is no place in the system for acceptance that once the offender has taken his punishment, he should be able to start again.
Which would be hard to square with parts of the US where "convicted felons" are forbidden to vote even after supposedly serving their sentence.
Wow! Your first link makes the "Breeder Reactor" sound just so wonderful. Unfortunately you omitted to mention that it still produces a waste that is beyond lethal for 25,000 years.
Producing hazardous waste is not unique to nuclear power generation. A more relevent issue is that a breeder reactor is still going to involve neutron irradiation of the reactor structure, which is the most obvious limitation on the life of a reactor.
I think you are leaving out the hazards of mining the uranium, which is probably the most dangerous part of nuclear power production.
Mining anything is far from safe. How does this compare with mining coal?
I don't understand why we *allow* Nuclear power operators to get into such a situation? If anyone wants a license to build a new plant (and this should have been instituted decades ago), why don't we estimate the decomissioning costs, demand like 40 percent up-front as part of the investment to even *get started*, and then every year it's in operation, have part of the revenue go to the 'clean-up fund'? That way, if the company goes under after 30 or 40 years, we've *already got the money* (or at least, a significant part of it). If the plant changes ownership, the obligation 'travels' with the title, so that the new owners keep paying into the fund?
It would probably be a good idea for such a scheme to exist for any power plant, chemical plant, mine, etc.
Kicking the ball 60 years down the road just means that the responsible corporate entity will be long gone.
As will also be the case for most of the short lived isotopes in both the spent fuel and the irradiated parts of the structure.
Now if you want to wipe the power plant from the site completely, that will cost you hundreds of millions of dollars, and the article talks about that. Simply shutting it down and maintaining the fuel safely won't cost nearly as much.
The third option being to maintain the nuclear bit and remove the power plant bit...
The navy likes their nuclear boats because, despite the startup cost, they are cheaper to operate. There is no refueling while under way and indeed on some craft, no refueling ever.
The only limit for a nuclear powered sub tends to be how much food can be carried on board. The only "refueling" required is for the crew. No doubt there is quite a bit of work going into robot subs...
The nuclear stockpile in the reactor is sufficient for the operational lifetime of the vessel.
Even if there is a need to refuel it is so infrequent that it could easily be done as part of a refit.
Here's where I found my face on an ad on slashdot in late may. Using liknesses for commercial purposes requires a model release and this is actionable. Anybody feel like doing a class action?
:)
Wouldn't a DMCA takedown notice be easier and quicker
I don't know how it is in Canada, but in the United States you only need to show your drivers license if you are physically inside a car.
And presumably in the driver's seat and on a public road. Or can a "passenger license" be required as well?
If you're just walking down a street, a cop cannot make you show your drivers license, because you're not driving.
A pedestrian isn't required to have one, either on their person or even at all...
Flip this around - you own a small bar, should you have the right to refuse entry to people who are likely to cause violence? It's your property, right? And in order to verify identity, shouldn't you be able to request that the person supply some ID?
"Identity" isn't much help in knowing if someone is likely to cause violence. Recognising them as a "trouble maker" from a previous visit or even "gut instinct" is a better guide. Having them produce a document which tells you which type of cars they can drive is probably at best a waste of time, especially since they wouldn't be that good a customer if they intended driving away from your bar...
Originally the police were all about this how it would help them track down gangs and the clubs were all about how this would help them fend off repeat trouble makers.
If there are repeat troublemakers at the same club then maybe the bouncers need better training. Also clubs (and police) can work together to ensure that trouble makers can be identified by people working in clubs (and hopefully put where they belong). Without hassling every customer.
I can't speak for other jurisdictions, but this barwatch program in BC was enacted in response to a rash of nightclub shootings in recent years in which gang members got into fights with other patrons or were killed in targeted hits in which innocent bystanders were wounded or killed. The ID scan is to identify persons known to police in a database and refuse them services or entrance to the premises.
All that would be likely to happen would be that black market gun dealers would also provide fake ID documents.
If they're looking at IP tables on who a person is connected to, and they find that someones grabbing ALOT of files from alot of different locations, the normal person would suspect that person for P2P tranfering music, movies, etc etc.
Are they even checking this closely?
However if I happen to be gaming while checking my email and my friend posts me a funny vid - well you get the idea.
Even if the ISP could identify that this was P2P to even stand a chance in a real court they'd have to be able to tie this to the specific accusation being made.
Do you have any particular evidence that "It's quite likely however the people that have been disconnected were doing something wrong"?
I didn't think so. Does it matter if they could prove that they weren't doing something wrong? The article says otherwise.
Proving a negative is rather difficult. Hence when it comes to a real court the onus of proof is on the accuser and the accused is able to critically examine anything perported to be evidence.
You are, basically, judging people to be "guilty of SOMETHING" on the basis that somebody or other accused them and a corporation punished them.
Whereas in the real world mistaken and even malicious accusations are made all the time. The former especially where there is an over relience on machines to gather "evidence". Indeed it's be shown that methods used with the likes of bittorrent can easily generate false positives with respect to IP addresses. Over a year ago the University of Washington managed to show how bogus IP addresses could show up.
This only refutes creationism, not ID. Creationism is the bible version. ID is basically that there was a creation (by unknown means, a creator, could be a computer program) , and then the laws of nature follow.
Depending on how you define "laws of nature" this interpretation does not exclude evolution by natural selection or any other scientific theory.
Old adaptations are pretty common--take the Osage-Orange, for example. Nothing eats it, nothings disperses the seeds anymore; the creatures that probably fed on it and spread the seeds went extinct long ago (giant ground sloths, etc). It would have likely gone extinct too, but we humans planted the tree for windbreaks and for useful wood.
Quite a few domesticated species might well go extinct if humans wern't around. Others would be likely to evolve back into something similar to whatever they were pre domestication.
Agreed. I originally thought the post was about trees that were CONTINUING to evolve. But simply having old adaptations is pretty uninteresting.... nay, normal. Especially for trees, which repopulate very slowly compared to say, fruitflies.
Thus 500 years is likely to equate to very few tree generations. Especially if mature trees of this species typically live for several centuries.
"California Continues To Push For Violent Game Legislation".... For a minute I envisioned legislators proposing duels or gladiatorial combat as a new form of government.
:)
It might make the public more interested in politics
If the kids cannot separate reality from fantasy that has more to do with the kid and less to do with the video game.
It isn't only "kids" who have this problem. It isn't unknown for actors to get "love" and "hate" mail because of characters they play.
California has no other problems right now...
Oh right, I forgot the contemporary approach to politics. If you have real problems you don't solve them, you distract your people by making up problems where there are none.
Just as well California isn't a nation state. Otherwise they'd probably have started at least one war by now...
Pick-up artists don't bother trying to appear rich; they've just figured out how to signal high status.
Just because they are able to do this does not imply they have conciously figured out how to do so. It's also hardly unknown for both men and women to attract the "wrong kind". If they had "figured out how to signal..." this wouldn't happen.