Is it just me or do a lot of these "crackpot" new age energy ideas end up converting water to some useless form? Like this one for instance.
Is that why they're demonized? Not because they don't work, but because they could prove disastrous if implemented on a large-scale?
Maybe I'm missing the amounts involved, but the idea of permanantly trading water for energy sounds like it could be a bad one if carried to its logical conclusion.
The world economy could *not* handle unlimited cheap energy. Just as it could not handle unlimited cheap food. We are well on our way to a "service" economy, and there are very vested interests that want to see it happen.
Not all "services" can be economically automated, even with unlimited cheap energy. Without centralized control of life's necessities (energy, food, housing, etc.) there would be no incentive for anyone to participate in the "service" economy. Without limits on those necessities, there would be no centralized control.
It would even be difficult to get people to work on automating any "services" that are truly necessary. Unnecessary services, (the type that the ultra-wealthy enjoy), would simply disappear. No more waiters, chefs, strip clubs, massages, nurses, plastic surgeons. Anything that couldn't be automated, or people wouldn't do for free, simply wouldn't get done.
Even though the living standards of most people would go up, the living standards of the extremely wealthy would go down. Not by much, but they would go down.
Of course, I don't believe all of this to be true. But it's what a majority of those in wealth and power believe. And until they are either convinced otherwise or deposed, they will fight to maintain their illusions.
You've either got an employee to pay or you've replaced cows getting stolen with automated machinery getting stolen. Not to mention now you have energy costs of cutting hay and pumping water. And on top of all that a rustler can still break into your barn and cart away your cows.
Even then, a barn cheaper than anklets? I don't see that...
That's a good idea. I would actually pay for that.
Lets say I've got a herd of cows in a remote location. I setup a few webcams. I put tracking anklets on the cows. If a tracker shows a cow leaving the fenceline, or malfunctions, or is tampered with, the webcams come on. Some random person on the internet gets the task of "count the cows, identify any people". In fact, two people get that task, for redundancy. They can pan and zoom and get a bonus for finding trouble. The whole thing could be run by a security company. If there's somebody stealing my cows, the security company can call the cops.
I'm just going to chime in here to tell you you're wrong. You can check out "What is the difference between Satanism and devil-worship?" in the Church of Satan FAQ if you don't believe me. Or you can read The Satanic Bible for yourself.
If you've ever been involved in local government you'd know it's mostly a sad joke, lots of people with no real ability or authority who like to go on power trips.
Consequently, most of the real work is done by national organizations that write "blueprint" laws that are just copied and adopted verbatim in each jurisdiction. It makes the local politicians' jobs easier, and the results usually look more professional. Building codes have been done that way since the dawn of time. Apparently curricula requirements are too. I wouldn't be surprised if most local laws had their own pet national "standards" organization of lobbyists and busybodies writing drafts and placing them in the hands of local "lawmakers" nowadays.
Of course there are good and bad sides to this arrangement. On the good side, it gives completely incompetent officials the ability to conduct some semblance of government. On the bad side, it gives completely incompetent officials the ability to conduct government. Truly awful policies promulgated by a small group of people that might have only affected a small jurisdiction before, can now affect the entire country as they are mindlessly adopted everywhere. And people are more likely to follow laws enacted by "local" politicians, because they cling to a belief that local politicians are somehow less corrupt and more aligned with their communities interests.
As the supreme court is busy wishing for a return to state and local governments as autonomous, "experimental" units, a nationwide army of lobbyists is working to substitute federally legislated standards or diverse local laws with unofficial "government by interest groups". This whole ID debate is a perfect example of the kind of pressure there is to homogenize local governments.
In case an independent-minded politician gets into office somewhere and doesn't agree with this arrangement, he is easily shouted down by other officials as being against "standards" with trite arguments about globalization, national interests, and citizens' welfare. At most, issuance of an AP article demonizing the local official for daring to create local policy instead of falling in line with national lobbyists' agendas is usually enough to create a storm of dipshits writing letters from other states and posting their opinions on internet message groups about what they think should happen in whatever jurisdiction is at question. Calls for "democracy" and "listening to the public" drown out any reasonable attempts at determining the views or best interests of the local constituents.
You're right. Prices are high because of the risk that there won't be any oil at all within ten years. Production may never peak. It may just end.
I wouldn't put it past anyone involved to do everything possible to keep consumers hooked on oil until the last minute. If oil peaks, and everyone knows it has peaked, bye-bye oil companies. The shit will hit the fan. People like you will be screaming for the heads of oil executives. Government regulators will step in to ensure the price of oil stays artificially low. Americans will never have an incentive to switch to renewables.
If, on the other hand, they can convince you that everything is fine, that, in fact production is increasing, until *wham* it's too late. If they can keep squeezing higher production rates out of the same fields, without there actually being any new oil, then the end of oil will just come sooner. When it does come, you'll be too busy building windmills to be able to retaliate and they will have sold every last drop of oil without even the threat of competition from renewable energy. If they can raise prices at the same time, then, what is this step again, oh yeah, profit!
BTW, I agree with you completely about the war and other waste/corruption.
I'm actually of the opinion that the market is better off with high oil prices. The US should be investing massively in renewables to offset foreign oil anyways. And we should be stockpiling what oil we have. If that means dealing with greedy oil companies, so be it. If that means government regulation to *increase* the cost of oil, so be it. Europe has been doing it for years. No one there is shocked when gas prices go up to even the cost of electricity, which is all $2.70/gallon really is anyways.
(Unless, of course, somebody can come up with something really radical, like a cheap, 99% efficient solar cell based on a very high-temperature superconductor or something. Hell, even 50% would be great!)
Don't get too hung up on efficiency. Even 10% would be great, as long as it didn't cost much more than corn. Remember, whatever it is, we have to have enough of it to cover thousands of square miles of the Earth.
In the long run, yes. But some people do it as a stepping stone to a full renewable energy system. That way they don't have to purchase batteries or inverters to get some immediate benefit.
I've recently come to the conclusion that I would require twenty-eight 10 ft diameter windmills to provide heat for my two-bedroom house in the central US for the coldest month of the year. Just looking at parts alone, even at the (ridiculously low) price of $500 each, that's 14 grand in equipment. I can put together a decent sized solar heating array for half of that.
But there are other factors as well, while a small windfarm would require an acre at minimum, it produces electricity year-round. A solar array would only produce heat, which is a bit less useful. As mentioned, the solar array is at its worst when you need it most. Wind is usually at its best. And, finally, a tracking array can be just as complicated as a windmill, and require even more maintenance.
But really there's no point in arguing over which form of renewable energy is better. Few will build enough to displace even their current uses. We can use all the new sources of power we can find.
That's incorrect. Methanol has about half the volumetric energy density of gasoline and less than half the gravimetric energy density.
and it's cheaper to produce
Not many things are cheaper to produce than gasoline. Coal, perhaps, and certain grasses. Methanol is made from natural gas, so, even if it's cheaper, it won't be for long.
Christ, no one cares. Can we please stop bringing this up on every hydrogen story?
Where do you get the dinosaurs to make your oil/coal? That's just about how stupid your question is.
I plan on getting hydrogen from windmills in my backyard. I plan on getting the copper for the windmills from a mine in Mexico. I plan on getting the magnets for the windmills from China. I plan for the water for the hydrogen to fall from the sky periodically.
You can get yours out of the little plugs in your wall for all I care.
But in this case the nougat pralines aren't even made by the person who sold you the box, and you have to accept a contract to eat them. Who are you contracting with? Dell? Best Buy? Are they agents of Microsoft? Have they accepted the contract for you and resold it? How can they bind you in a contract with a third party that isn't (usually) even revealed until after the sale is complete? See how this quickly becomes an exercise in stupidity?
As much as I'd like to think "ploy", they probably are onto something.
If you think about automobiles, for instance, the most efficient configuration seems to be a combination of small passenger cars and large semi-trucks. The shuttle was basically an SUV: high maintenance, high cost, low gas mileage and range, and not big enough for truly heavy lifting. It was popular because it fit into the American one-size-fits-all independent mentality.
But the shuttle was also part of a natural evolution. We started out driving a Pinto. We had newfound freedom, but little useful to do with it. To take the next step required a vehicle capable of doing some serious work. But we couldn't afford to go from a Pinto to a Mack Truck. That would've been too expensive, and risky. Instead, we got a Suburban, and used it as a daily-driver, as well as for some backyard projects. The insurance was less than having two autos. There was some maintenance, but we could do it ourselves, without an expensive mechanic.
Now, though, we can afford both the Mercedes and the F-350 flatbed. We have a legitimate use for each. Eventually, we may need the equivalent of a subway car, and a Greyhound bus, and a bullet train. But even here on Earth we have lots of different ways to get around, each optimized for a specific task. We shouldn't be surprised that space is no different.
That's because you were sexist, and probably got a hard-on making women do menial work wearing stupid outfits.
Got to wonder how much of it is a true advancement and how much is simply replacing a minimum wage job with technology?
It's both. They're equivalent.
At what point does replacing a ten grand a year employee with a 100 grand machine become impractical?
This has been answered already. Had you gotten past a 3rd grade education "in the old days" you would be able to do the simple arithmetic required. Had you reached college you might even be able to correct for interest and inflation.
Farm jobs actually don't fall under minimum wage laws or more to the point they have a seperate lower wage.
And this is a good thing?
I have to wonder if humans aren't more efficent than machines at certain jobs?
Haven't found one yet. And that certainly isn't the case here.
A machine breaks down you repair it or buy another one. With minimum wage labor you hire another one.
It costs less to build a machine than it does a person. Much less.
By simply creating technology to replace workers are we really improving things?
You keep repeating this as though you actually believe you're onto something. You're not.
You can call it survival of the fittest but that doesn't stop out of work people from breaking into your car or house to feed their families.
No one's calling it survival of the fittest. As for out of work people, you should probably make sure they get a share of the robotic milkings so they don't have to steal your car. (PS, this is the closest you came in your entire post to making a valid point. Bravo.)
Isn't food production a factory enough at this stage?
Not until there's a food factory in every backyard.
Personally I buy free range for a reason.
I have a feeling that reason is that you're out of touch with reality.
And I suppose you're hard at work on a catalyst for obtaining milk from grass? You're not? A microbe or something at least? (Surely microbes have fewer rights than cows) Are you planning on giving up your share of dairy products to offset the cows you want to "free"?
Regardless, I'm more concerned with the freedom of the humans that have to milk the cows to survive than that of the cows. Face it, life sucks. It's not quite dog-eat-dog, but for now it's man-eat-cow, and it will never be less than man-eat-plant. I fail to see the ethical dilemma people like you see in living.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it just me or do a lot of these "crackpot" new age energy ideas end up converting water to some useless form? Like this one for instance.
Is that why they're demonized? Not because they don't work, but because they could prove disastrous if implemented on a large-scale?
Maybe I'm missing the amounts involved, but the idea of permanantly trading water for energy sounds like it could be a bad one if carried to its logical conclusion.
The world economy could *not* handle unlimited cheap energy. Just as it could not handle unlimited cheap food. We are well on our way to a "service" economy, and there are very vested interests that want to see it happen.
Not all "services" can be economically automated, even with unlimited cheap energy. Without centralized control of life's necessities (energy, food, housing, etc.) there would be no incentive for anyone to participate in the "service" economy. Without limits on those necessities, there would be no centralized control.
It would even be difficult to get people to work on automating any "services" that are truly necessary. Unnecessary services, (the type that the ultra-wealthy enjoy), would simply disappear. No more waiters, chefs, strip clubs, massages, nurses, plastic surgeons. Anything that couldn't be automated, or people wouldn't do for free, simply wouldn't get done.
Even though the living standards of most people would go up, the living standards of the extremely wealthy would go down. Not by much, but they would go down.
Of course, I don't believe all of this to be true. But it's what a majority of those in wealth and power believe. And until they are either convinced otherwise or deposed, they will fight to maintain their illusions.
Mepis, Knoppix, Linspire, Mandriva, Lycoris
Debian is desktop-neutral, but there is a decent percentage of KDE users. And there is Kubuntu.
Then how do the cows eat?
You've either got an employee to pay or you've replaced cows getting stolen with automated machinery getting stolen. Not to mention now you have energy costs of cutting hay and pumping water. And on top of all that a rustler can still break into your barn and cart away your cows.
Even then, a barn cheaper than anklets? I don't see that...
That's a good idea. I would actually pay for that.
Lets say I've got a herd of cows in a remote location. I setup a few webcams. I put tracking anklets on the cows. If a tracker shows a cow leaving the fenceline, or malfunctions, or is tampered with, the webcams come on. Some random person on the internet gets the task of "count the cows, identify any people". In fact, two people get that task, for redundancy. They can pan and zoom and get a bonus for finding trouble. The whole thing could be run by a security company. If there's somebody stealing my cows, the security company can call the cops.
That would be worth a reasonable monthly fee.
matches my lifestyle
older $5,000 diesel convertible
Good luck. The type of people who bought diesels in the past didn't buy convertibles.
nVidia has been doing this for a while now. In fact, there are finally getting to be interesting implementations like GNU software radio on GPUs:
An Implementation of a FIR Filter on a GPU
In Linux, having a command-line option, the "hard way", is what saves time in deployment.
Apt, for instance. Or kickstart. Even RPM lets me install software and manage machines remotely in a way I couldn't do with your "easy way".
Ugggh...
I'm just going to chime in here to tell you you're wrong. You can check out "What is the difference between Satanism and devil-worship?" in the Church of Satan FAQ if you don't believe me. Or you can read The Satanic Bible for yourself.
If you've ever been involved in local government you'd know it's mostly a sad joke, lots of people with no real ability or authority who like to go on power trips.
Consequently, most of the real work is done by national organizations that write "blueprint" laws that are just copied and adopted verbatim in each jurisdiction. It makes the local politicians' jobs easier, and the results usually look more professional. Building codes have been done that way since the dawn of time. Apparently curricula requirements are too. I wouldn't be surprised if most local laws had their own pet national "standards" organization of lobbyists and busybodies writing drafts and placing them in the hands of local "lawmakers" nowadays.
Of course there are good and bad sides to this arrangement. On the good side, it gives completely incompetent officials the ability to conduct some semblance of government. On the bad side, it gives completely incompetent officials the ability to conduct government. Truly awful policies promulgated by a small group of people that might have only affected a small jurisdiction before, can now affect the entire country as they are mindlessly adopted everywhere. And people are more likely to follow laws enacted by "local" politicians, because they cling to a belief that local politicians are somehow less corrupt and more aligned with their communities interests.
As the supreme court is busy wishing for a return to state and local governments as autonomous, "experimental" units, a nationwide army of lobbyists is working to substitute federally legislated standards or diverse local laws with unofficial "government by interest groups". This whole ID debate is a perfect example of the kind of pressure there is to homogenize local governments.
In case an independent-minded politician gets into office somewhere and doesn't agree with this arrangement, he is easily shouted down by other officials as being against "standards" with trite arguments about globalization, national interests, and citizens' welfare. At most, issuance of an AP article demonizing the local official for daring to create local policy instead of falling in line with national lobbyists' agendas is usually enough to create a storm of dipshits writing letters from other states and posting their opinions on internet message groups about what they think should happen in whatever jurisdiction is at question. Calls for "democracy" and "listening to the public" drown out any reasonable attempts at determining the views or best interests of the local constituents.
DOE built thousands of water wells during the cold war? Were they looking for uranium or something?
You're right. Prices are high because of the risk that there won't be any oil at all within ten years. Production may never peak. It may just end.
I wouldn't put it past anyone involved to do everything possible to keep consumers hooked on oil until the last minute. If oil peaks, and everyone knows it has peaked, bye-bye oil companies. The shit will hit the fan. People like you will be screaming for the heads of oil executives. Government regulators will step in to ensure the price of oil stays artificially low. Americans will never have an incentive to switch to renewables.
If, on the other hand, they can convince you that everything is fine, that, in fact production is increasing, until *wham* it's too late. If they can keep squeezing higher production rates out of the same fields, without there actually being any new oil, then the end of oil will just come sooner. When it does come, you'll be too busy building windmills to be able to retaliate and they will have sold every last drop of oil without even the threat of competition from renewable energy. If they can raise prices at the same time, then, what is this step again, oh yeah, profit!
BTW, I agree with you completely about the war and other waste/corruption.
I'm actually of the opinion that the market is better off with high oil prices. The US should be investing massively in renewables to offset foreign oil anyways. And we should be stockpiling what oil we have. If that means dealing with greedy oil companies, so be it. If that means government regulation to *increase* the cost of oil, so be it. Europe has been doing it for years. No one there is shocked when gas prices go up to even the cost of electricity, which is all $2.70/gallon really is anyways.
(Unless, of course, somebody can come up with something really radical, like a cheap, 99% efficient solar cell based on a very high-temperature superconductor or something. Hell, even 50% would be great!)
Don't get too hung up on efficiency. Even 10% would be great, as long as it didn't cost much more than corn. Remember, whatever it is, we have to have enough of it to cover thousands of square miles of the Earth.
In the long run, yes. But some people do it as a stepping stone to a full renewable energy system. That way they don't have to purchase batteries or inverters to get some immediate benefit.
I've recently come to the conclusion that I would require twenty-eight 10 ft diameter windmills to provide heat for my two-bedroom house in the central US for the coldest month of the year. Just looking at parts alone, even at the (ridiculously low) price of $500 each, that's 14 grand in equipment. I can put together a decent sized solar heating array for half of that.
But there are other factors as well, while a small windfarm would require an acre at minimum, it produces electricity year-round. A solar array would only produce heat, which is a bit less useful. As mentioned, the solar array is at its worst when you need it most. Wind is usually at its best. And, finally, a tracking array can be just as complicated as a windmill, and require even more maintenance.
But really there's no point in arguing over which form of renewable energy is better. Few will build enough to displace even their current uses. We can use all the new sources of power we can find.
since it generates more power than gasoline
That's incorrect. Methanol has about half the volumetric energy density of gasoline and less than half the gravimetric energy density.
and it's cheaper to produce
Not many things are cheaper to produce than gasoline. Coal, perhaps, and certain grasses. Methanol is made from natural gas, so, even if it's cheaper, it won't be for long.
Yeah well I'd like for my grandchildren not to have to deal with cleaning up all the disposable toxic batteries that you want to use instead.
Try these instead:
Canon develops fuel cell prototypes
Canon shows prototype hydrogen fuel cell
Canon to develop fuel cells for printers, cameras
Christ, no one cares. Can we please stop bringing this up on every hydrogen story?
Where do you get the dinosaurs to make your oil/coal? That's just about how stupid your question is.
I plan on getting hydrogen from windmills in my backyard. I plan on getting the copper for the windmills from a mine in Mexico. I plan on getting the magnets for the windmills from China. I plan for the water for the hydrogen to fall from the sky periodically.
You can get yours out of the little plugs in your wall for all I care.
But in this case the nougat pralines aren't even made by the person who sold you the box, and you have to accept a contract to eat them. Who are you contracting with? Dell? Best Buy? Are they agents of Microsoft? Have they accepted the contract for you and resold it? How can they bind you in a contract with a third party that isn't (usually) even revealed until after the sale is complete? See how this quickly becomes an exercise in stupidity?
It's amazing what industrialized nations can accomplish when they're prohibited from deploying a military.
As much as I'd like to think "ploy", they probably are onto something.
If you think about automobiles, for instance, the most efficient configuration seems to be a combination of small passenger cars and large semi-trucks. The shuttle was basically an SUV: high maintenance, high cost, low gas mileage and range, and not big enough for truly heavy lifting. It was popular because it fit into the American one-size-fits-all independent mentality.
But the shuttle was also part of a natural evolution. We started out driving a Pinto. We had newfound freedom, but little useful to do with it. To take the next step required a vehicle capable of doing some serious work. But we couldn't afford to go from a Pinto to a Mack Truck. That would've been too expensive, and risky. Instead, we got a Suburban, and used it as a daily-driver, as well as for some backyard projects. The insurance was less than having two autos. There was some maintenance, but we could do it ourselves, without an expensive mechanic.
Now, though, we can afford both the Mercedes and the F-350 flatbed. We have a legitimate use for each. Eventually, we may need the equivalent of a subway car, and a Greyhound bus, and a bullet train. But even here on Earth we have lots of different ways to get around, each optimized for a specific task. We shouldn't be surprised that space is no different.
in the old days we called them milk maids.
That's because you were sexist, and probably got a hard-on making women do menial work wearing stupid outfits.
Got to wonder how much of it is a true advancement and how much is simply replacing a minimum wage job with technology?
It's both. They're equivalent.
At what point does replacing a ten grand a year employee with a 100 grand machine become impractical?
This has been answered already. Had you gotten past a 3rd grade education "in the old days" you would be able to do the simple arithmetic required. Had you reached college you might even be able to correct for interest and inflation.
Farm jobs actually don't fall under minimum wage laws or more to the point they have a seperate lower wage.
And this is a good thing?
I have to wonder if humans aren't more efficent than machines at certain jobs?
Haven't found one yet. And that certainly isn't the case here.
A machine breaks down you repair it or buy another one. With minimum wage labor you hire another one.
It costs less to build a machine than it does a person. Much less.
By simply creating technology to replace workers are we really improving things?
You keep repeating this as though you actually believe you're onto something. You're not.
You can call it survival of the fittest but that doesn't stop out of work people from breaking into your car or house to feed their families.
No one's calling it survival of the fittest. As for out of work people, you should probably make sure they get a share of the robotic milkings so they don't have to steal your car. (PS, this is the closest you came in your entire post to making a valid point. Bravo.)
Isn't food production a factory enough at this stage?
Not until there's a food factory in every backyard.
Personally I buy free range for a reason.
I have a feeling that reason is that you're out of touch with reality.
because it made the cow look more streamlined.
I'm glad all those farm subsidies are going towards creating useful advances.
And I suppose you're hard at work on a catalyst for obtaining milk from grass? You're not? A microbe or something at least? (Surely microbes have fewer rights than cows) Are you planning on giving up your share of dairy products to offset the cows you want to "free"?
Regardless, I'm more concerned with the freedom of the humans that have to milk the cows to survive than that of the cows. Face it, life sucks. It's not quite dog-eat-dog, but for now it's man-eat-cow, and it will never be less than man-eat-plant. I fail to see the ethical dilemma people like you see in living.