Just get a grid-tied PV system. Make more power in the summer to offset pulling power in during the winter. I understand about the economics of PV though, it's a big investment.
What I hate about nuclear power lobbying is the dishonesty about who pays for security and disposal in calculations about the economic efficiency of the power source.
Solar PV pays back its energy cost in 1.5-3 years according to this: http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/pv_basics.html. Solar Cell manufacturers warrant their systems to last 20-25 years with many older systems going 30+ years (as is the expectation for current systems being installed).
In the long run, if we build a electric power infrastructure that encourages decentralization, we encourage a free market for energy production. A market with barriers that individual citizens can enter ultimately gives us all more freedom and makes our society more resilient to disasters - man-made and natural.
But a web browser doesn't magically get more capability when it's accessing webmail. The user could just as easily click on a link on a random web page and download a word file containing a virus. Shutting off webmail doesn't change your actual level of protection. And if you have enough employees, the difference between webmail + random web browsing and just random web browsing can't be that significant -- or maybe it is. Are there any papers out that trying to actually characterize the difference?
What security risks are there in particular with webmail that are not present in general web access? I strongly suspect the answer is none, but I'd be curious to find out.
This particular company takes in billions from the U.S. Gov't - particularly in the area privatized logistics services for the armed forces. Would it not give any nation some pause to wonder if any portion of the basic operation of their armed forces comes from a company headquartered in another nation?
And I think we have reason to consider as risks both companies headquartered outside the U.S., but incorporated inside it as well as vice versa, the more common case of companies headquartered in the U.S. and incorporated in the Bahamas or elsewhere -- I think at the very least, the latter should be barred from paid political speech (lobbyists and donations) while the former should be put in much increased scrutiny.
There is a very simple way to correct your controller rotation that does not involve some kind of complex IR synchronization operation. If the controller seems to be close to level, and hasn't moved much in the last few seconds, then set the current rotation to level. Ta da, problem solved.
It doesn't solve the problem at all. What kind of gaming do you do where you'd want to stop providing inputs to the game every minute or so?
The motion sensors aren't the unique part of the Wii. Sony's controller has the equivalent motion sensors. The unique part of the Wii is the combination of the motion sensors with the IR bar tracking to give you a non-drifting reference.
By themselves, the motion sensors will get further and further off position. For example, if one turned right 90 degrees and then returned, the motion sensors by themselves would cause you to calculate a position not-quite matched up your original - and the more you move the more the reference will drift as measurement errors accumulate. With the IR bar, the reference can be corrected so the controller can stay oriented correctly vs the screen.
This is why Sony's controller is a very poor substitute for the Wii controller.
Well why corporate America is so silent on this issue?
Because our market based system isn't as good as delivering efficiency as proponents make it out to be. Making money != delivering value to society. Many times the corpoarat profit motive does deliver social value, and often more efficiently then other comparable systems, but its not equivalent and has many disconnects. (see U.S. heathcare for example)
For many many small companies going to Google hosted email/apps would be an improvement. Look at all the little service companies like mechanics and plumbers, etc. They really don't have any sensitive information in their emails. Most of them don't even have their own domain, and if they even have a local network, a fileserver crash is more likely than an internet connection being dropped.
I'm only exaggerating a little here, but no one really cares about the packaging format per se. They care that the can find, download, install, and run a package without hassles. Most formats take care of the mechanics of that process, but still need a community of people to track down and fix issues - mostly inter-package issues. Rpm and deb both have that kind of community behind them (both with sub-groups). If there is any technology to be improved here, it should be making package repositories better and reducing the workload of the supporting communities.
Have you thought about what your statement means? Whether or not you realize it, you are expecting a 20-to-30 percent annual return on your investment. Do you demand that kind performance from your other investments? Err... yes, yes, and yes. What kind of performance do you get from your investments? Actually I'm being a little of a smartass there - but in the last two years I've been playing direct stocks in a portion of my retirement accounts, my returns have been in the 28% range. Really what's driving my 3-5 year rule of thumb is that outside of 5 years, the probability that I move becomes much higher. So, the question becomes will the real estate market return my investment in the PV system. I've read some studies that lead me to believe it's a qualified yes, but it's still something of risk so the shorter the payback time is, the better margin I have on the resale risk.
At 5%, solar energy begins to make sense for the motivated. At 8% (a realistic current return in California) it's a no brainer -- you can roll it into your mortgage and be cashflow-positive immediately. Hmm, at 5% rate of return I'm paying an opportunity cost on the investment in addition to locking up the money for a long period of time. At 8% which I agree is reasonable estimate (especially at the rate electricity costs have been rising in CA) - IIRC the payback comes in 10-12 years?
At any rate, I am eagerly watching PV costs drop, waiting for a time that the ROI and risks feel right to me. I think I'm willing to take a little more risk in this than the average homeowner; however, I am careful because it is a significant capital layout.
On financial payback, I agree with you - I've been waiting for the financial payback of a PV system to fall under 3-5 years and have been running the numbers unsuccessfully once a year or so.
First, Solar PV cells seem to be net energy positive in relatively short order. This summary estimates 2-4 years with new technology coming online to make the energy payback about a year. http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy05osti/37322.pdf
This was one of the first hits to come up in searching google for "pv net energy".
Second, I find it laughable that you complain about large governmental solar subsidies without mentioning subsidies for storage of nuclear waste. Just look at the Yucca Mountain project http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/yucca/loux05.htm (And in this age of eternal terror, the government and nuclear industry are curiously silent about the additional cost of aedeqately protecting such waste sites for thousands of years...)
Sourceforge has hosted to Programming Language Examples Alike Cookbook project for a while now. It does something similar, filling out "Perl Cookbook" recipes for a fairly wide range of languages...
There is a huge difference. I would say WORRYING (and thus planning for the prevention of) intelligent threats is far smarter, as they are a longer term threat that much be planned for as opposed to truly random threats which must be dealt with as they arrive.
I think we should worry and invest just as much in "non-intelligent" long term risks. If the US invested as much attention and money into non-intelligent risks we would have saved more lives now than in preventions of possible loss of life from terrorism. The Iraq war has cost about about 300 Billion to date (heres a running counter), and that's not including known future costs such as supporting medical expenses of injured vets - overall, according to an estimate by Joseph Stiglitz, a nobel prize economist and Harvard's Linda Bilmes, it is estimated to be above 1 trillion and up to 2.66 trillion! If we had put that much attention and money into the highest causes of death in the US (say automotive safety and medical research), how many lives would we have saved vs possible terrorists threats prevented? And that's not even opening the discussion that it's possible that all the extra terrorism attention has actually increased the numbers of potential terrorists as well as the probabiltiy of successful terrorist attacks.
From this, I take from Bruce's comments that we need to take human tendencies into account and systematically and soberly quantify risks from all sources unnatural and natural.
I use a (usually) sophisticated biological neural network consisting of a multi-billion plus nodes with some primitive pre-determined wiring structures serving as a foundataion. Oh yes, and as preliminary step, I use dual-stage filters: spamassassin followed by crm114. Spamassassin seems to be fairly well behaved by not giving too many false positve spam indications, and CRM114 picks through the remainder false negatives to my satisfaction. I still end up picking through the spam folders, but its bulk and not too difficult to plow through many at a time once they initially sorted.
What about car insurance? What about interior decorating? What about groceries? Does In'n'Out Burger provide these? No, of course they don't. You have a bizarre obsession with employers providing health insurance -- but not car insurance, interior decorating, or groceries.
With our current economic system in the US, employers paying for health insurance is the encouraged societal route for health care. Employers can write off the cost of the benefit, not so to the same degree for an individual employee. Employers have better clout to negotiate with armies of health insurer beauracrats and lawyers. Again, its not as balanced for an individual employee. I would far prefer to select my own health insurance if there wasn't a tax penalty for me to do so, and if consumer protections for individual health consumers vs the insurance industry were stronger.
The other items you mention are bought and sold on markets where the balance between buyer and seller are much more balanced.
Because were were many cases of this before the civil rights revolution in the U.S. And, while hospitals are often subsidized, ambulance companies are often private.
Slashdot Mirror
Just get a grid-tied PV system. Make more power in the summer to offset pulling power in during the winter. I understand about the economics of PV though, it's a big investment.
What I hate about nuclear power lobbying is the dishonesty about who pays for security and disposal in calculations about the economic efficiency of the power source.
Solar PV pays back its energy cost in 1.5-3 years according to this: http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/pv_basics.html. Solar Cell manufacturers warrant their systems to last 20-25 years with many older systems going 30+ years (as is the expectation for current systems being installed).
In the long run, if we build a electric power infrastructure that encourages decentralization, we encourage a free market for energy production. A market with barriers that individual citizens can enter ultimately gives us all more freedom and makes our society more resilient to disasters - man-made and natural.
But a web browser doesn't magically get more capability when it's accessing webmail. The user could just as easily click on a link on a random web page and download a word file containing a virus. Shutting off webmail doesn't change your actual level of protection. And if you have enough employees, the difference between webmail + random web browsing and just random web browsing can't be that significant -- or maybe it is. Are there any papers out that trying to actually characterize the difference?
What security risks are there in particular with webmail that are not present in general web access? I strongly suspect the answer is none, but I'd be curious to find out.
This particular company takes in billions from the U.S. Gov't - particularly in the area privatized logistics services for the armed forces. Would it not give any nation some pause to wonder if any portion of the basic operation of their armed forces comes from a company headquartered in another nation?
And I think we have reason to consider as risks both companies headquartered outside the U.S., but incorporated inside it as well as vice versa, the more common case of companies headquartered in the U.S. and incorporated in the Bahamas or elsewhere -- I think at the very least, the latter should be barred from paid political speech (lobbyists and donations) while the former should be put in much increased scrutiny.
There is a very simple way to correct your controller rotation that does not involve some kind of complex IR synchronization operation. If the controller seems to be close to level, and hasn't moved much in the last few seconds, then set the current rotation to level. Ta da, problem solved.
It doesn't solve the problem at all. What kind of gaming do you do where you'd want to stop providing inputs to the game every minute or so?
The motion sensors aren't the unique part of the Wii. Sony's controller has the equivalent motion sensors. The unique part of the Wii is the combination of the motion sensors with the IR bar tracking to give you a non-drifting reference.
By themselves, the motion sensors will get further and further off position. For example, if one turned right 90 degrees and then returned, the motion sensors by themselves would cause you to calculate a position not-quite matched up your original - and the more you move the more the reference will drift as measurement errors accumulate. With the IR bar, the reference can be corrected so the controller can stay oriented correctly vs the screen.
This is why Sony's controller is a very poor substitute for the Wii controller.
Well why corporate America is so silent on this issue?
Because our market based system isn't as good as delivering efficiency as proponents make it out to be. Making money != delivering value to society. Many times the corpoarat profit motive does deliver social value, and often more efficiently then other comparable systems, but its not equivalent and has many disconnects. (see U.S. heathcare for example)
For many many small companies going to Google hosted email/apps would be an improvement. Look at all the little service companies like mechanics and plumbers, etc. They really don't have any sensitive information in their emails. Most of them don't even have their own domain, and if they even have a local network, a fileserver crash is more likely than an internet connection being dropped.
I'm only exaggerating a little here, but no one really cares about the packaging format per se. They care that the can find, download, install, and run a package without hassles. Most formats take care of the mechanics of that process, but still need a community of people to track down and fix issues - mostly inter-package issues. Rpm and deb both have that kind of community behind them (both with sub-groups). If there is any technology to be improved here, it should be making package repositories better and reducing the workload of the supporting communities.
You forgot Ed-209 -- if only they can fix the stairs problem.
Have you thought about what your statement means? Whether or not you realize it, you are expecting a 20-to-30 percent annual return on your investment. Do you demand that kind performance from your other investments?
Err... yes, yes, and yes. What kind of performance do you get from your investments? Actually I'm being a little of a smartass there - but in the last two years I've been playing direct stocks in a portion of my retirement accounts, my returns have been in the 28% range. Really what's driving my 3-5 year rule of thumb is that outside of 5 years, the probability that I move becomes much higher. So, the question becomes will the real estate market return my investment in the PV system. I've read some studies that lead me to believe it's a qualified yes, but it's still something of risk so the shorter the payback time is, the better margin I have on the resale risk.
At 5%, solar energy begins to make sense for the motivated. At 8% (a realistic current return in California) it's a no brainer -- you can roll it into your mortgage and be cashflow-positive immediately.
Hmm, at 5% rate of return I'm paying an opportunity cost on the investment in addition to locking up the money for a long period of time. At 8% which I agree is reasonable estimate (especially at the rate electricity costs have been rising in CA) - IIRC the payback comes in 10-12 years?
At any rate, I am eagerly watching PV costs drop, waiting for a time that the ROI and risks feel right to me. I think I'm willing to take a little more risk in this than the average homeowner; however, I am careful because it is a significant capital layout.
On financial payback, I agree with you - I've been waiting for the financial payback of a PV system to fall under 3-5 years and have been running the numbers unsuccessfully once a year or so.
First, Solar PV cells seem to be net energy positive in relatively short order. This summary estimates 2-4 years with new technology coming online to make the energy payback about a year. http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy05osti/37322.pdf
This was one of the first hits to come up in searching google for "pv net energy".
Second, I find it laughable that you complain about large governmental solar subsidies without mentioning subsidies for storage of nuclear waste. Just look at the Yucca Mountain project http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/yucca/loux05.htm (And in this age of eternal terror, the government and nuclear industry are curiously silent about the additional cost of aedeqately protecting such waste sites for thousands of years...)
Seriously, with a numeric majority of those polled saying they didn't have a positive experience with PayPal, just how hard can it be to top them?
For many people familiarity == convenience or haven't you been following this whole MS vs Linux thing.
Sourceforge has hosted to Programming Language Examples Alike Cookbook project for a while now. It does something similar, filling out "Perl Cookbook" recipes for a fairly wide range of languages...
http://pleac.sourceforge.net/
There is a huge difference. I would say WORRYING (and thus planning for the prevention of) intelligent threats is far smarter, as they are a longer term threat that much be planned for as opposed to truly random threats which must be dealt with as they arrive.
I think we should worry and invest just as much in "non-intelligent" long term risks. If the US invested as much attention and money into non-intelligent risks we would have saved more lives now than in preventions of possible loss of life from terrorism. The Iraq war has cost about about 300 Billion to date (heres a running counter), and that's not including known future costs such as supporting medical expenses of injured vets - overall, according to an estimate by Joseph Stiglitz, a nobel prize economist and Harvard's Linda Bilmes, it is estimated to be above 1 trillion and up to 2.66 trillion! If we had put that much attention and money into the highest causes of death in the US (say automotive safety and medical research), how many lives would we have saved vs possible terrorists threats prevented? And that's not even opening the discussion that it's possible that all the extra terrorism attention has actually increased the numbers of potential terrorists as well as the probabiltiy of successful terrorist attacks.
From this, I take from Bruce's comments that we need to take human tendencies into account and systematically and soberly quantify risks from all sources unnatural and natural.
I use a (usually) sophisticated biological neural network consisting of a multi-billion plus nodes with some primitive pre-determined wiring structures serving as a foundataion. Oh yes, and as preliminary step, I use dual-stage filters: spamassassin followed by crm114. Spamassassin seems to be fairly well behaved by not giving too many false positve spam indications, and CRM114 picks through the remainder false negatives to my satisfaction. I still end up picking through the spam folders, but its bulk and not too difficult to plow through many at a time once they initially sorted.
SGI is back from the dead and is now trying to feast on living companies. If that doesn't fit the halloween season I don't know what does.
I really don't feel that way about modern medicine, but dentistry on the other hand...
What about car insurance? What about interior decorating? What about groceries? Does In'n'Out Burger provide these? No, of course they don't. You have a bizarre obsession with employers providing health insurance -- but not car insurance, interior decorating, or groceries.
With our current economic system in the US, employers paying for health insurance is the encouraged societal route for health care. Employers can write off the cost of the benefit, not so to the same degree for an individual employee. Employers have better clout to negotiate with armies of health insurer beauracrats and lawyers. Again, its not as balanced for an individual employee. I would far prefer to select my own health insurance if there wasn't a tax penalty for me to do so, and if consumer protections for individual health consumers vs the insurance industry were stronger.
The other items you mention are bought and sold on markets where the balance between buyer and seller are much more balanced.
Employee owned company
The largest publicly traded one I know of offhand is SAIC (http://www.saic.com/empown/)
Soylent Rice is people!!!
The robot started 1499 feet from the mile mark :)
Because were were many cases of this before the civil rights revolution in the U.S. And, while hospitals are often subsidized, ambulance companies are often private.