> Hillary suffered a "terrible" concussion requiring "six months of very serious work to get over."
So the very thing that would make us like a politician - overcoming adversity to rise again - is supposed to be a disqualification in this case?
That this comes from the AAPS is not at all surprising, but if anyone needed more ammunition to believe conservatives in the US are sexist, they're doing a fine job of providing it. Thanks, AAPS.
> M$ not doing that is not surprising, they're pants-on-head retarded.
Let me repeat this in all caps:
THE DATA ON THE WIKIPEDIA IS CORRECT, AND ALWAYS WAS CORRECT. MICROSOFT INCORRECTLY CONVERTED THE COORDINATES.
There, does that make it clearer?
The suggestion that the data was incorrect was synthesized by the Register from a tweet from MS. And this is precisely why sources like the Wiki are better than single-editor sources like the Register.
"Those few contributors now have to spend more and more time fixing random bugs and just plain BS introduced into the code, rather than actually improving the software"
Another non-contributing zero complaining like his opinion matters.
As/. regulars are no doubt aware, the Reg has been fighting a single-handed battle against the Wiki for some years now. This has often led to some hilarity, as is the case here.
If one visits the Melbourne page on the Wiki, you'll find the coordinates are correct. If one examines the history, you'll see they have been correct for longer than Bing Maps has existed. There is no error in the data. The problem is MS's import.
Nevertheless, the Reg decides to read MS's tweet another way and blame it all on MS being stupid for trusting the Wiki. This is rather ironic.
> The wind doesn't just suddenly and unexpectedly stop blowing.
Indeed, a very much underappreciated - or deliberately ignored - point.
I've seen the software they use for this. They're predicting wind output more than 24 hours in advance, in 15 minute baskets. They have all the information they need to bring up or down other sources as needed.
IBM used to have a couple of pages about it but I can no longer find them.
Do you see the.32 and.80? Those are the capacity factors. Capacity factor is the "amount of electricity in a year" you're trying to talk about. It is not "3 to 5" times as you claim, it is about 2.5 times, yet wind is so much cheaper than nuclear to build that it doesn't make a difference, on a per kWh basis, wind is still less than half the cost.
Those numbers, by the way, are actually being very favorable to nuclear, because the actual value measured last year was 72%, not 80% as I put here. I used 80 because Hinkley would improve the CF, and I think that's a fair estimate of the result.
No, I don't. Because most of them are made up by people who don't work in the energy industry, work for other sources (the nuclear and coal industries publish a constant stream of anti-renewables materials) or just don't want turbines in their backyard and will pick up any any old crap they find on the 'net as "proof", like YouTube videos.
Let me make this very simple: the people who actually buy, sell and finance these things *don't care about these made up problems* that anti-wind people dream up. They are as cogent as complaining about the color of the blades. Want proof?
Sure, but with utility installs at $1/Wp, that's actually a moot point. At this point a larger concern is lack of land.
> wind performance isn't exactly spectacular
The UK's average wind CF is 32% in 2014, which is slightly better than average. That is up significantly from previous years, due to the installation of newer (larger) turbines. It is also installing wind second only to Germany in Europe.
> They would have to install massive amounts of offshore wind overcapacity
Given that a wind turbine costs $1.50/Wp and a nuclear reactor $8.25/Wp, you can install 5.5 W of turbines for every W of reactor. With a CF of 32% vs. 72% for nuclear (old plants are terrible) that means the effective CAPEX cost is:
So wind costs less than half as much to build the same capacity. Moreover, in the last 25 years wind has decreased about three times in cost while nuclear has doubled. So, given a 10 year construction time for Hinkley C, these numbers will only get worse for nuclear. The decision is quite clear.
Who are selling products worth millions, or billions. An iPhone is less than $1000.
Apple sells something like 250 million iPhones a year. Even if they get a 3 million for the entire armed forces, piled with all the goodies and cherries on top, it's still a drop in the bucket.
> Just pull out the old panel and add in the new panel
And you can do that if it's not a solar panel, you could use cheap materials like concrete or steel instead of glass. And yet, we don't do that, because steamrolling asphalt costs much, much less. Adding glass and electronics to the physical panel will not improve things.
> I've seen lots of heated driveways in Utah
But we're not talking about a few hundred square feet of driveway, we're talking about a few million square miles of hiway. And then one can easily estimate the costs of doing so by looking up the operational costs:
and then multiplying. A standard lane in the US is 12 feet, we'll consider a two-lane highway and add the same for the shoulders and median and such, and multiply by a mile to get 190,080 square feet. According to that source, a snow melt system will cost $700 per 1000 square feet. So that means a two-lane highway will cost $133,000 to melt the snow PER MILE.
These articles come up all the time, things like space power and fusion. They are all completely hopeless, but because they're technological everyone argues for them. DO THE MATH FIRST.
> Without enough data, it's hard to say
Well maybe use Google to get enough data? I'm sure you can use it just as well as I can.
> But best of all is that they let the telcos and the "enterprise" users turn off any features that made the phone enjoyable at all
That misses the point of BB10. Sure, they can turn those features off when the user is on their "business account", but they can (or should be able to) still use them when using their personal account. And they can switch back and forth easily.
I thought it was a great idea. Still do. Implementation? Not so much. But a dual-SIM iPhone or Android with such a system? Still seems like a great idea to me.
This really is the most moronic idea I have ever seen. Glass is not exactly on the list of best materials to use for:
1) high traffic areas 2) load bearing capacity 3) coefficient of friction, especially when wet
That last part is especially laughable when you consider their solution, a pattern of pimple-like bumps on the top. Ok, so those will last exactly as long as the first snowfall, at which point the plough will make it rather smooth again. And, of course, as anyone knows, rough roads will produce lower gas milage, so the effect of this surface might be to use *more* energy.
And everyone really needs to go and look at their youtube videos where they show how it's wired up, which requires a trench to be dug under the roadway and kept waterproof because it's stuffed with expensive non-waterproof electronics.
> The inconsistency of solar and wind will do nasty things to our electric grid if much more is added
Older projections say the problem starts somewhere around 25% of total generation. Right now the US is around 10%, so "much more" is really "MUCH more".
However, since those projections were published any number of locations have pushed right past that number with no ill effects, The software has improved faster than the installations.
It's really quite maddening to see people here on/. claim that something is impossible when its a software problem.
And FIT only applies to small systems, wind power under 500kWp for instance, which is about 1/3rd of a single modern turbine. Everything above that is PPAed at very competitive rates, wind around 6 cents and PV around 10.
Slashdot Mirror
> Hillary suffered a "terrible" concussion requiring "six months of very serious work to get over."
So the very thing that would make us like a politician - overcoming adversity to rise again - is supposed to be a disqualification in this case?
That this comes from the AAPS is not at all surprising, but if anyone needed more ammunition to believe conservatives in the US are sexist, they're doing a fine job of providing it. Thanks, AAPS.
"how can you compare it in a reproducible manner"
If you bother to look it up, you'll see exactly how this is done.
It's widely used and there are numerous automated benchmarking systems.
"The 20% is just over VP9."
So, basically, VP9 offers little to no advantage over 264, while even 265 is somewhat limited.
That strikes me as somewhat sad, considering all the verbiage wasted by Google on the licensing issue.
> M$ not doing that is not surprising, they're pants-on-head retarded.
Let me repeat this in all caps:
THE DATA ON THE WIKIPEDIA IS CORRECT, AND ALWAYS WAS CORRECT. MICROSOFT INCORRECTLY CONVERTED THE COORDINATES.
There, does that make it clearer?
The suggestion that the data was incorrect was synthesized by the Register from a tweet from MS. And this is precisely why sources like the Wiki are better than single-editor sources like the Register.
"Those few contributors now have to spend more and more time fixing random bugs and just plain BS introduced into the code, rather than actually improving the software"
Another non-contributing zero complaining like his opinion matters.
As /. regulars are no doubt aware, the Reg has been fighting a single-handed battle against the Wiki for some years now. This has often led to some hilarity, as is the case here.
If one visits the Melbourne page on the Wiki, you'll find the coordinates are correct. If one examines the history, you'll see they have been correct for longer than Bing Maps has existed. There is no error in the data. The problem is MS's import.
Nevertheless, the Reg decides to read MS's tweet another way and blame it all on MS being stupid for trusting the Wiki. This is rather ironic.
> Still, 57.7% is a good figure.
Hell ya!
Of course, it's 59.3 in Canada, so take that! :-)
> The wind doesn't just suddenly and unexpectedly stop blowing.
Indeed, a very much underappreciated - or deliberately ignored - point.
I've seen the software they use for this. They're predicting wind output more than 24 hours in advance, in 15 minute baskets. They have all the information they need to bring up or down other sources as needed.
IBM used to have a couple of pages about it but I can no longer find them.
> An installed watt of nuclear generates 3 to 5 times the amount of electricity in a year
You did *actually read the post*, right? I ask, because you quoted the part that negates your complaint right here:
wind: $1.50 / .32 = $4.70 / Wc nuclear: $8.25 / .80 = $10.30 / Wc
Do you see the .32 and .80? Those are the capacity factors. Capacity factor is the "amount of electricity in a year" you're trying to talk about. It is not "3 to 5" times as you claim, it is about 2.5 times, yet wind is so much cheaper than nuclear to build that it doesn't make a difference, on a per kWh basis, wind is still less than half the cost.
Those numbers, by the way, are actually being very favorable to nuclear, because the actual value measured last year was 72%, not 80% as I put here. I used 80 because Hinkley would improve the CF, and I think that's a fair estimate of the result.
> you forget all the problems with wind
No, I don't. Because most of them are made up by people who don't work in the energy industry, work for other sources (the nuclear and coal industries publish a constant stream of anti-renewables materials) or just don't want turbines in their backyard and will pick up any any old crap they find on the 'net as "proof", like YouTube videos.
Let me make this very simple: the people who actually buy, sell and finance these things *don't care about these made up problems* that anti-wind people dream up. They are as cogent as complaining about the color of the blades. Want proof?
https://www.iea.org/Textbase/npsum/WEO2015SUM.pdf
> The UK is mostly in a poor region for solar
Sure, but with utility installs at $1/Wp, that's actually a moot point. At this point a larger concern is lack of land.
> wind performance isn't exactly spectacular
The UK's average wind CF is 32% in 2014, which is slightly better than average. That is up significantly from previous years, due to the installation of newer (larger) turbines. It is also installing wind second only to Germany in Europe.
> They would have to install massive amounts of offshore wind overcapacity
Given that a wind turbine costs $1.50/Wp and a nuclear reactor $8.25/Wp, you can install 5.5 W of turbines for every W of reactor. With a CF of 32% vs. 72% for nuclear (old plants are terrible) that means the effective CAPEX cost is:
wind: $1.50 / .32 = $4.70 / Wc .80 = $10.30 / Wc
nuclear: $8.25 /
So wind costs less than half as much to build the same capacity. Moreover, in the last 25 years wind has decreased about three times in cost while nuclear has doubled. So, given a 10 year construction time for Hinkley C, these numbers will only get worse for nuclear. The decision is quite clear.
"expressly prohibited"
Brazil, as a signatory to the Berne Convention, makes this perfectly legal no matter what the IOC says.
"the most controversial new change is that the pistol emoji will be replaced with a green water gun emoji"
In the US maybe, but no one else on the planet gives a crap.
I'm surprised to learn this wasn't already a thing.
Are these basically wrappers on the online code? I'd be fine with that.
> bitter taste
Bitter is the taste of poison. That's why it makes you cringe.
Yes, sometimes the system doesn't work well, like coffee, or antifreeze.
In any event, I get three weeks out of bagged milk all the time, I'm not sure I need another way to do that.
> Ask Lockheed Martin, or Oracle or MS
Who are selling products worth millions, or billions. An iPhone is less than $1000.
Apple sells something like 250 million iPhones a year. Even if they get a 3 million for the entire armed forces, piled with all the goodies and cherries on top, it's still a drop in the bucket.
It's called math, try it some time.
> A DoD contract would mean a LOT of money to Apple,
Meh. They could sell what, a couple thousand phones to SOC? 10k maybe? That's what, an hour of retail?
This isn't the 50's.
> Just pull out the old panel and add in the new panel
And you can do that if it's not a solar panel, you could use cheap materials like concrete or steel instead of glass. And yet, we don't do that, because steamrolling asphalt costs much, much less. Adding glass and electronics to the physical panel will not improve things.
> I've seen lots of heated driveways in Utah
But we're not talking about a few hundred square feet of driveway, we're talking about a few million square miles of hiway. And then one can easily estimate the costs of doing so by looking up the operational costs:
http://www.concretenetwork.com/concrete/snow_melting_systems/costs.htm
and then multiplying. A standard lane in the US is 12 feet, we'll consider a two-lane highway and add the same for the shoulders and median and such, and multiply by a mile to get 190,080 square feet. According to that source, a snow melt system will cost $700 per 1000 square feet. So that means a two-lane highway will cost $133,000 to melt the snow PER MILE.
These articles come up all the time, things like space power and fusion. They are all completely hopeless, but because they're technological everyone argues for them. DO THE MATH FIRST.
> Without enough data, it's hard to say
Well maybe use Google to get enough data? I'm sure you can use it just as well as I can.
> But best of all is that they let the telcos and the "enterprise" users turn off any features that made the phone enjoyable at all
That misses the point of BB10. Sure, they can turn those features off when the user is on their "business account", but they can (or should be able to) still use them when using their personal account. And they can switch back and forth easily.
I thought it was a great idea. Still do. Implementation? Not so much. But a dual-SIM iPhone or Android with such a system? Still seems like a great idea to me.
> already described as the safest form of travel
I think that's elevators.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_RC-1
> Potholes shouldn't be an issue because the solar panels include a heating element
OMG, do you have any idea how much power you need to melt an inch of snow?!? There's a reason we use snowplows!
> and reduce maintenance costs
Yeah, because we all know how great glass is in high-wear areas when it comes to reducing maintenance.
Ugh!
This really is the most moronic idea I have ever seen. Glass is not exactly on the list of best materials to use for:
1) high traffic areas
2) load bearing capacity
3) coefficient of friction, especially when wet
That last part is especially laughable when you consider their solution, a pattern of pimple-like bumps on the top. Ok, so those will last exactly as long as the first snowfall, at which point the plough will make it rather smooth again. And, of course, as anyone knows, rough roads will produce lower gas milage, so the effect of this surface might be to use *more* energy.
And everyone really needs to go and look at their youtube videos where they show how it's wired up, which requires a trench to be dug under the roadway and kept waterproof because it's stuffed with expensive non-waterproof electronics.
What a joke.
> The inconsistency of solar and wind will do nasty things to our electric grid if much more is added
Older projections say the problem starts somewhere around 25% of total generation. Right now the US is around 10%, so "much more" is really "MUCH more".
However, since those projections were published any number of locations have pushed right past that number with no ill effects, The software has improved faster than the installations.
It's really quite maddening to see people here on /. claim that something is impossible when its a software problem.
> they were paying 0.87kWh
Uggg. It was 82 for tiny rooftop solar on houses. I know because I built one. Large systems were much lower. Wind was 13 cents.
> about 2/3's to 1/2 that now
Less than one-quarter, at 29 cents. Using google removes that "I don't know what I'm talking about" smell you're emanating:
http://fit.powerauthority.on.ca/sites/default/files/version4/FIT-Price-Schedule-2016-01-01.pdf
And FIT only applies to small systems, wind power under 500kWp for instance, which is about 1/3rd of a single modern turbine. Everything above that is PPAed at very competitive rates, wind around 6 cents and PV around 10.