Don't you mean there are cheaper methods of heating than resistive heating?
Yes, a natural gas furnace is about 4 times cheaper. It makes a lot more sense to burn the gas and capture all heat directly, rather than having it burned at the power plant, converted to electricity (at significant losses), transport it across the country (with even more losses), and then convert the electricity back to heat.
So then you fetch the time but it takes time for the signal to get to you, so the time is out of date by the time you get it
Not a particularly hard problem. Take the round trip time, and divide by two. That should get you within a few ms. If you have special needs for better performance, get a cheap GPS unit and attach it to a local server.
LEDs are so much more efficient, and so much longer lasting that they are quite capable of phasing out incandescent lamps without regulatory help.
The first generation of LED lamps were pretty crappy, with very low levels of light output. The regulatory push likely helped to get manufacturers to spend more money on research, knowing that there would be a guaranteed market for brighter LED lamps.
No, CFL is just one of the options. The choice is between CFL, LED and halogen. And LED is clearly starting to take over the CFL market after just a few years.
My point was that it still consumes coal. The best types of coal in the US (anthracite and bituminous) have already peaked. A coal plant may be running for 75 years, but it's not guaranteed that in 75 years, the production of coal can still keep up with demand.
The fact that 2 of them died without warning is disappointing. I would rather have a shorter life time, but a clear indication that the drive is going to die.
I have natural gas pumped into my house. If I cut the gas line, it could easily explode and destroy the house.
People pump gasoline in their cars using an open hose that carries 1 megajoule per second.
Since accidents are sufficiently rare, this is typically not considered a big deal. With a well designed battery, you'd probably have much smaller rates of accidents.
The reason for the extra Arctic warming has several reasons. One being that the air is dry, which means that increasing CO2 blocks a larger portion of IR. Secondly, the reduced sea ice area exposes more dark water to the sun.
For comparison, the Braidwood Nuclear Generation Facility (2 reactors, 2,242 MW total output). With its cooling pond, it sits on a site 7x the size of a solar concentration site and outputs roughly 22x the power
So, nuclear is only 3x as efficient ? Are you sure that calculation is correct ?
Or sodium-sulfur batteries. They work pretty well, and the materials are cheap and abundant. In Canada, they have huge sulfur mountains they get from cleaning up the tar sands. They'll probably pay you to take the sulfur.
All in all, for a planet that's 4,500,000,000 years old, we have about ~45 years of decent climate data.
The age of the Earth is totally irrelevant in this discussion. What you need to look at is the time constant of the relevant physical phenomena. Suppose an evil alien race injects a ray into our sun that makes it 10% weaker. How long do you think it takes for us to notice clear effects ?
And when they did this with the BBC Computer it gave a big boost to Acorn Computers, which probably helped them getting into developing the ARM CPU. And ARM has repaid that initial BBC investment many times over.
Why does not anybody in the solar industry step up and support nuclear energy as the logical replacement for coal to fill all of the known gaps in solar power?
Why can't the nuclear industry take care of their own stuff ?
You can't loan out bitcoins multiple times. You can, however, make a paper bitcoin certificate and loan that out. The trick is convincing people that this bitcoin certificate is actually worth something.
The idea is to refine those and launch them to a useful orbit for much less cost than trying to throw them out of Earth's gravity well
You mean, much higher cost. When you add all the expenses of building a factory on the moon that can turn raw rocks into useful structures (not just dirty iron bars), and you divide that over the amount of stuff we would like to have in orbit, the cost is going to be several orders of magnitude more than just launching from the Earth.
Maybe all their reasons are BS right now, but with people putting a lot of $ into it someone will figure something out.
The problem is that it requires insane amounts of money for possibly very little reward. At the same time, there are much more useful projects that we could work on. Finding (and implementing) a good replacement for fossil fuels is a good one.
Slashdot Mirror
waiting for a good price point
This looks good enough for me:
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/cata...
Don't you mean there are cheaper methods of heating than resistive heating?
Yes, a natural gas furnace is about 4 times cheaper. It makes a lot more sense to burn the gas and capture all heat directly, rather than having it burned at the power plant, converted to electricity (at significant losses), transport it across the country (with even more losses), and then convert the electricity back to heat.
So then you fetch the time but it takes time for the signal to get to you, so the time is out of date by the time you get it
Not a particularly hard problem. Take the round trip time, and divide by two. That should get you within a few ms. If you have special needs for better performance, get a cheap GPS unit and attach it to a local server.
LEDs are so much more efficient, and so much longer lasting that they are quite capable of phasing out incandescent lamps without regulatory help.
The first generation of LED lamps were pretty crappy, with very low levels of light output. The regulatory push likely helped to get manufacturers to spend more money on research, knowing that there would be a guaranteed market for brighter LED lamps.
CFL were forced on us by legislation
No, CFL is just one of the options. The choice is between CFL, LED and halogen. And LED is clearly starting to take over the CFL market after just a few years.
Oh you can run a coal plant 24 hrs/day
My point was that it still consumes coal. The best types of coal in the US (anthracite and bituminous) have already peaked. A coal plant may be running for 75 years, but it's not guaranteed that in 75 years, the production of coal can still keep up with demand.
The fact that 2 of them died without warning is disappointing. I would rather have a shorter life time, but a clear indication that the drive is going to die.
I have natural gas pumped into my house. If I cut the gas line, it could easily explode and destroy the house.
People pump gasoline in their cars using an open hose that carries 1 megajoule per second.
Since accidents are sufficiently rare, this is typically not considered a big deal. With a well designed battery, you'd probably have much smaller rates of accidents.
It's because the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the globe. This makes the jet stream wavier, and that causes localized cold weather:
http://www.weather.com/science...
The reason for the extra Arctic warming has several reasons. One being that the air is dry, which means that increasing CO2 blocks a larger portion of IR. Secondly, the reduced sea ice area exposes more dark water to the sun.
For comparison, the Braidwood Nuclear Generation Facility (2 reactors, 2,242 MW total output). With its cooling pond, it sits on a site 7x the size of a solar concentration site and outputs roughly 22x the power
So, nuclear is only 3x as efficient ? Are you sure that calculation is correct ?
Or sodium-sulfur batteries. They work pretty well, and the materials are cheap and abundant. In Canada, they have huge sulfur mountains they get from cleaning up the tar sands. They'll probably pay you to take the sulfur.
All in all, for a planet that's 4,500,000,000 years old, we have about ~45 years of decent climate data.
The age of the Earth is totally irrelevant in this discussion. What you need to look at is the time constant of the relevant physical phenomena. Suppose an evil alien race injects a ray into our sun that makes it 10% weaker. How long do you think it takes for us to notice clear effects ?
It seems like an awful lot of printing for that.
Sure, but what other manufacturing technique is faster while not being overly expensive ?
It's useful if you want to learn how a transmission works and how it is assembled.
And when they did this with the BBC Computer it gave a big boost to Acorn Computers, which probably helped them getting into developing the ARM CPU. And ARM has repaid that initial BBC investment many times over.
Coal plants have no trouble lasting two to three times solar installations
Too bad that doesn't apply to the coal itself.
Why does not anybody in the solar industry step up and support nuclear energy as the logical replacement for coal to fill all of the known gaps in solar power?
Why can't the nuclear industry take care of their own stuff ?
You can't loan out bitcoins multiple times. You can, however, make a paper bitcoin certificate and loan that out. The trick is convincing people that this bitcoin certificate is actually worth something.
Do you really expect people do the smartest thing?
If you call genocide smart, yes.
I make plated slots in Eagle by drawing a regular pad, and then drawing the slot in the milling layer.
working Free and Open CPU designs already exist.
Now we just need 5x5 mm programmable devices with SRAM, Flash, ADC/DAC, that can run off a single voltage, and cost less than a dollar.
The idea is to refine those and launch them to a useful orbit for much less cost than trying to throw them out of Earth's gravity well
You mean, much higher cost. When you add all the expenses of building a factory on the moon that can turn raw rocks into useful structures (not just dirty iron bars), and you divide that over the amount of stuff we would like to have in orbit, the cost is going to be several orders of magnitude more than just launching from the Earth.
A 'trusted' low-speed CPU in FPGA might still have its uses.
You can do that, but it won't come close to a hard CPU in terms of performance, price and capabilities.
There is no reason Software Engineers should be making for than 50k a year.
Yes there is. It's called demand and supply.
Maybe all their reasons are BS right now, but with people putting a lot of $ into it someone will figure something out.
The problem is that it requires insane amounts of money for possibly very little reward. At the same time, there are much more useful projects that we could work on. Finding (and implementing) a good replacement for fossil fuels is a good one.