Bell and Telus collectively spent about $1 billion rolling out 7.2 Mbps GSM across Canada, and did it in about one year. Canada is larger than the US, and has 1/10th the population. That means it costs a lot more to provide bandwidth on a per-person basis. Backhaul links are less available as well, further increasing difficulties.
So why is this going to cost AT&T 5 times as much, especially when they already have the towers and the problem is (apparently) backhaul - which is cheap.
Wow. Not only does it simply rip off the Wikipedia without crediting it, it's technically wrong throughout. Terrible article, not worthy of front page/.
John Linsley (1963). "Evidence for a Primary Cosmic-Ray Particle with Energy 10^20 eV". Physical Review Letters 10: 146. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.10.146.
That one is about 20 million times more powerful that LCH. There's dozen of similar examples, here: http://tinyurl.com/yjgs4ae
Or do you mean "prove it though" as in "this guy was actually lying" as in "all these guys are actually lying" as in "9/11 is a coverup and everyone is lying"? In that case, why fear the LHC? After all, they're lying about actually having a machine, let alone doing anything with it. Why would you believe there's a danger when the real cover up is that it doesn't even exist in the first place?
> Obviuosly this beast is muy importante to science
Indeed, in exactly the same way the World Series is to a baseball fan. Everyone will be watching a multi-billion dollar spectacle, even though we know deep down that the outcome is both easy to predict and completely unimportant.
> So I understand that more energy means faster moving protons and anti-protons. > How does this equivocate to finding, say, the Higgs-Boson more easily?
In the quantum world you have to forget about "particles" in the classical sense. There is no spoon.
Think, instead, of a big bag with a bunch of quantities in it. Reach into the bag and you can pull something out, shouting "electron"! The chance that you'll say "electron" and not "proton" is based on what you put into the bag, you can only get out something that meets the conservation laws. So if you put in 0 charge, you might get a neutron out, or an electron and a positron, both have net charge 0.
Which one of those you get depends on the rest of the things you put in, spin, isospin, color, momentum, etc. Chances are you'll get the set of particles that has the lowest energy and still meets the requirements. However, you'll always have a chance of getting the oddballs even if there is a low-energy solution.
The reason for high energies in accelerators is to fill up the bag. That way you can reach in and pull out a single really big particle instead of the bunch of little ones you put into it. If the Higgs really is in the 115 to 180 GeV range, as currently believed, you're going to need to put in a WHOLE LOT of energy so you have a lot left over. And even then, you're going to have to try a WHOLE LOT of times before you're going to see it. It's all statistics at that point.
> Anyone have recommended reading for me?
Yes, "The Great Design: Particles, Fields, and Creation". A bit low-rent, but does cover the topics.
> but extremely disappointing to the rest of the world who can't fathom why something > so expensive, with such a long development time...still has not provided any research.... and never will. Seriously, do you think anyone in "the rest of the world" gives a hoot whether the Higgs is 22 GeV or 26 GeV?
As I said elsewhere, Higgs is the football of the physics world - its the big game so we convince ourselves its worth watching and stand around cheering while the game is on, although we all know the outcome is completely unimportant.
All right! One old white man's failed paid-content business plan + another middle-aged clueless white man's failed search business = FAIL. This is great, they'll move millions of dollars from one account to the other so both can go out of business faster. Egggcellent.
> That time of sunlight needs to be multiplied by the solar flux to determine the total energy available per year. >The solar flux (W/m^2) in space is about 1,366 W/m^2. After passing through the atmoshpere at the equator, it's about half that.
Ummm, no. AM1.5, useful for the USA, is generally taken as 1000 W/m^2. That's a lot more than half. Do your homework.
> Once you correct for daylight hours and cloud cover
I did, that's 1950 hours of "bright direct sunlight". As in "bright" and "direct" "sunlight".
> It's not like you're going to make things worse with SPS.
Unless you wipe out all LEO satellites as a side effect, which is a real possibility.
Carbon-carbon, carbon fibre, Al-Ti and Al-Li alloys, new steels, new heat shields, new turbines, and lots of similar new technologies. That's not including the MASSIVE changes in electronics, which reduce the weight and size of the avionics by a ridiculous amount.
And in spite of these changes, as you note, we're still doing the same-old-same-old.
> Space power also doesn't suffer from cloudy weather
If you read the linked posts you'll note that I took all of that into account. If you take night, weather, low angles, color, you name it, you'll get about 2 times as much power from an SPS as the same panel on Earth over its lifetime.
> little space we have for things like farms instead of solar plants
You have seen a rectenna, right? Are you sure you want to put YOUR crops under a microwave oven?
> That is to say, they can be used for things other than launching solar arrays into space.
Like what, exactly? No one's figured out an answer to that question in the last 40 years. Read "The Space Shuttle Decision" some time.
But you're just proving the point - this is really a bunch of space nerds trying to dream up ways to make cool new rockets. Don't fool yourself this has anything to do with power. Just look at the affiliations of the people who go to the meetings - see anyone from the power industry there? I don't, I see lots of rocket companies.
We have all the night-time power we need already, it's peaking demand that's the problem and there's nothing better suited to meeting that than distributed PV. Worse, base load sells for nothing, so you're killing your payback.
Do you mean like here in Toronto? We get 1950 hours of bright direct sunlight a year. When you do the math (the subject of my first post on the topic) you'll get about a 20% difference.
> might require 4-10x (or more) the panels on earth
So? We're not talking about a lot of land. You can power the entire USA with solar panels taking up 1/2 the area that's been paved. We've done this before.
> Don't forget that Japan has very little available land
Don't forget that in addition to taking up just as much room, rectennas have to be built away from settled areas or flight paths. Solar cells have no such limitations, and can be built on top of existing structures, like my garage roof. Now ask yourself: which of those does Japan have in greater abundance?
> does this take into account land costs of ground based solar cells
Ummm, you realize you need a ground footprint just about the same size for the rectenna, right? And unlike a rectenna, you can build solar panels in settled areas, like rooftops, car parks, etc. The land footprint of ground-based solar is FAR less expensive than the same power beamed from space.
> seems at least a few people are convinced enough to spen some serious money on this project
I'm not so sure on that count... a few million here and there it seems.
To put that in perspective, they're supposedly blowing $2 billion on a study for high speed trains between Toronto and Montreal (although I hope that's a typo in the newspaper!)
> Your argument is a bit silly and is ignoring the economy of scale.
Ahhh yes, the economy of scale claim. People have been making that claim since the 1960s (Seahorse) but in spite of 40 years of new technology it still isn't true.
You did read the linked articles right? You need a reduction in launch costs of over 100 times before it can think about breaking even. I _might_ be inclined to believe a 10 times reduction, but 100 times? Riiiight....
And that's ignoring the space debris issue, the fact that most of this technology doesn't exist, that the rest has a 100% failure rate, and that you're economically better off leaving them on the ground anyway. That last one is vitally important. Space power gets you about 2x the power from the same panel on Earth, once you beam it down.
That's it, that's the end of the argument right there. Build twice as many panels right here, and you get the same amount of power for 1/100th to 1/1000th the cost. It doesn't make a difference what panels you use or what technology, anything that changes the economics of the panels in space does the same for the panels on Earth. So I'll just buy 100 times as many and deliver 50 times the power. Why the heck would you put them in space? (if you're going to come back with "24 hours" or some other vapid argument, read the other articles first).
I'm sorry, but I would disagree that the argument is "a bit silly".
WPS does little in this scenario. Sure I get to know the WPA2 setup, but I'm not sure that really helps anything. I still need to "find that printer on the net".
From what I can see so far, this is really just a WPS server in a "soft AP" in the devices. Unless the WFA also demands something like zeroconf, I don't see how this is going to work.
I'm also curious about the connection method. If the idea is that you connect to the soft AP using infrastructure mode, how do I get a 'net connection? And if it's not and it's based on ad hoc, is everyone talking to everyone again?
Really, this press release went out way too early.
Slashdot Mirror
Bell and Telus collectively spent about $1 billion rolling out 7.2 Mbps GSM across Canada, and did it in about one year. Canada is larger than the US, and has 1/10th the population. That means it costs a lot more to provide bandwidth on a per-person basis. Backhaul links are less available as well, further increasing difficulties.
So why is this going to cost AT&T 5 times as much, especially when they already have the towers and the problem is (apparently) backhaul - which is cheap.
What am I missing here?
Maury
Wow. Not only does it simply rip off the Wikipedia without crediting it, it's technically wrong throughout. Terrible article, not worthy of front page /.
Maury
TV as we know it will be dead in 10 years. This is regulation of buggy whips. But not unnecessary.
Indeed.
Maury
> Prove it, though
John Linsley (1963). "Evidence for a Primary Cosmic-Ray Particle with Energy 10^20 eV". Physical Review Letters 10: 146. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.10.146.
That one is about 20 million times more powerful that LCH. There's dozen of similar examples, here: http://tinyurl.com/yjgs4ae
Or do you mean "prove it though" as in "this guy was actually lying" as in "all these guys are actually lying" as in "9/11 is a coverup and everyone is lying"? In that case, why fear the LHC? After all, they're lying about actually having a machine, let alone doing anything with it. Why would you believe there's a danger when the real cover up is that it doesn't even exist in the first place?
Maury
> Obviuosly this beast is muy importante to science
Indeed, in exactly the same way the World Series is to a baseball fan. Everyone will be watching a multi-billion dollar spectacle, even though we know deep down that the outcome is both easy to predict and completely unimportant.
Maury
> So I understand that more energy means faster moving protons and anti-protons.
> How does this equivocate to finding, say, the Higgs-Boson more easily?
In the quantum world you have to forget about "particles" in the classical sense. There is no spoon.
Think, instead, of a big bag with a bunch of quantities in it. Reach into the bag and you can pull something out, shouting "electron"! The chance that you'll say "electron" and not "proton" is based on what you put into the bag, you can only get out something that meets the conservation laws. So if you put in 0 charge, you might get a neutron out, or an electron and a positron, both have net charge 0.
Which one of those you get depends on the rest of the things you put in, spin, isospin, color, momentum, etc. Chances are you'll get the set of particles that has the lowest energy and still meets the requirements. However, you'll always have a chance of getting the oddballs even if there is a low-energy solution.
The reason for high energies in accelerators is to fill up the bag. That way you can reach in and pull out a single really big particle instead of the bunch of little ones you put into it. If the Higgs really is in the 115 to 180 GeV range, as currently believed, you're going to need to put in a WHOLE LOT of energy so you have a lot left over. And even then, you're going to have to try a WHOLE LOT of times before you're going to see it. It's all statistics at that point.
> Anyone have recommended reading for me?
Yes, "The Great Design: Particles, Fields, and Creation". A bit low-rent, but does cover the topics.
Maury
> but extremely disappointing to the rest of the world who can't fathom why something ... and never will. Seriously, do you think anyone in "the rest of the world" gives a hoot whether the Higgs is 22 GeV or 26 GeV?
> so expensive, with such a long development time...still has not provided any research.
As I said elsewhere, Higgs is the football of the physics world - its the big game so we convince ourselves its worth watching and stand around cheering while the game is on, although we all know the outcome is completely unimportant.
Maury
All right! One old white man's failed paid-content business plan + another middle-aged clueless white man's failed search business = FAIL. This is great, they'll move millions of dollars from one account to the other so both can go out of business faster. Egggcellent.
Maury
> > Apollo was initiated on technology that had been baking for more than 30 years ...and everything we knew about it told us we could do it.
Whereas everything we know about fusion says we can't. Of course that doesn't stop the people in charge of the funding continuing to claim otherwise:
http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/fusion-implosion-its-all-in-the-mind/
Maury
Actually, none of the things you use as examples of "they said" are actually true.
> Seeing a pattern, here?
Umm, perhaps it's that you have no idea what you're talking about?
> Inroduce the launch loop
Another non-existant technology. Why not just introduce "angels" who will fly the SPS directly into "heaven"? Oh, THAT'S unrealistic, right?
Maury
> You seem to completely miss the idea that space based collectors are on 100% of the time.
And you seem to completely miss the idea that no one cares. We have all the baseload power we need already, and it costs only 4 cents a kWh.
The problem we _actually_ has is peaking capacity. And that's what rooftop PV is perfect for.
> Solar panels are never base load power
Good! That's what we want! Sheesh.
Maury
> Use pumped storage hydro and only release power to the grid during peak hours.
Or don't even pump, just close the turbine intakes.
BTW, we Cannuckians have it good. There's enough hydro power lying undeveloped to power all our houses, industry and cars.
But we don't build it. The ROI isn't good enough.
Maury
> That time of sunlight needs to be multiplied by the solar flux to determine the total energy available per year.
>The solar flux (W/m^2) in space is about 1,366 W/m^2. After passing through the atmoshpere at the equator, it's about half that.
Ummm, no. AM1.5, useful for the USA, is generally taken as 1000 W/m^2. That's a lot more than half. Do your homework.
> Once you correct for daylight hours and cloud cover
I did, that's 1950 hours of "bright direct sunlight". As in "bright" and "direct" "sunlight".
> It's not like you're going to make things worse with SPS.
Unless you wipe out all LEO satellites as a side effect, which is a real possibility.
Maury
> You don't want a Japanese rectenna on land anyways. Float it in the ocean
> and route shipping around it.
Float the solar panels on the ocean and route shipping around that. There, you just saved billions and billions of dollars in launch costs.
Maury
> I just want to point out that ultimately your launch cost estimates are based
> on NASA's launch costs
No they weren't, they were based on a pretty much universal survey of all existing launch systems. You did click through the link, right?
Maury
> What new technology?
Carbon-carbon, carbon fibre, Al-Ti and Al-Li alloys, new steels, new heat shields, new turbines, and lots of similar new technologies. That's not including the MASSIVE changes in electronics, which reduce the weight and size of the avionics by a ridiculous amount.
And in spite of these changes, as you note, we're still doing the same-old-same-old.
Maury
> Space power also doesn't suffer from cloudy weather
If you read the linked posts you'll note that I took all of that into account. If you take night, weather, low angles, color, you name it, you'll get about 2 times as much power from an SPS as the same panel on Earth over its lifetime.
> little space we have for things like farms instead of solar plants
You have seen a rectenna, right? Are you sure you want to put YOUR crops under a microwave oven?
> That is to say, they can be used for things other than launching solar arrays into space.
Like what, exactly? No one's figured out an answer to that question in the last 40 years. Read "The Space Shuttle Decision" some time.
But you're just proving the point - this is really a bunch of space nerds trying to dream up ways to make cool new rockets. Don't fool yourself this has anything to do with power. Just look at the affiliations of the people who go to the meetings - see anyone from the power industry there? I don't, I see lots of rocket companies.
Maury
> Oh? What about at night?
We have all the night-time power we need already, it's peaking demand that's the problem and there's nothing better suited to meeting that than distributed PV. Worse, base load sells for nothing, so you're killing your payback.
Maury
> but at higher latitudes
Do you mean like here in Toronto? We get 1950 hours of bright direct sunlight a year. When you do the math (the subject of my first post on the topic) you'll get about a 20% difference.
> might require 4-10x (or more) the panels on earth
So? We're not talking about a lot of land. You can power the entire USA with solar panels taking up 1/2 the area that's been paved. We've done this before.
> Don't forget that Japan has very little available land
Don't forget that in addition to taking up just as much room, rectennas have to be built away from settled areas or flight paths. Solar cells have no such limitations, and can be built on top of existing structures, like my garage roof. Now ask yourself: which of those does Japan have in greater abundance?
Maury
> does this take into account land costs of ground based solar cells
Ummm, you realize you need a ground footprint just about the same size for the rectenna, right? And unlike a rectenna, you can build solar panels in settled areas, like rooftops, car parks, etc. The land footprint of ground-based solar is FAR less expensive than the same power beamed from space.
Maury
> seems at least a few people are convinced enough to spen some serious money on this project
I'm not so sure on that count... a few million here and there it seems.
To put that in perspective, they're supposedly blowing $2 billion on a study for high speed trains between Toronto and Montreal (although I hope that's a typo in the newspaper!)
Maury
> Your argument is a bit silly and is ignoring the economy of scale.
Ahhh yes, the economy of scale claim. People have been making that claim since the 1960s (Seahorse) but in spite of 40 years of new technology it still isn't true.
You did read the linked articles right? You need a reduction in launch costs of over 100 times before it can think about breaking even. I _might_ be inclined to believe a 10 times reduction, but 100 times? Riiiight....
And that's ignoring the space debris issue, the fact that most of this technology doesn't exist, that the rest has a 100% failure rate, and that you're economically better off leaving them on the ground anyway. That last one is vitally important. Space power gets you about 2x the power from the same panel on Earth, once you beam it down.
That's it, that's the end of the argument right there. Build twice as many panels right here, and you get the same amount of power for 1/100th to 1/1000th the cost. It doesn't make a difference what panels you use or what technology, anything that changes the economics of the panels in space does the same for the panels on Earth. So I'll just buy 100 times as many and deliver 50 times the power. Why the heck would you put them in space? (if you're going to come back with "24 hours" or some other vapid argument, read the other articles first).
I'm sorry, but I would disagree that the argument is "a bit silly".
Maury
Not going to happen. No use writing why AGAIN, I think this reply to the original post is just fine:
http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/here-we-go-again-with-the-spss/
The good news: there are now two usable touch-screen smart phones on the market
The bad news: they still run on the same networks.
WPS does little in this scenario. Sure I get to know the WPA2 setup, but I'm not sure that really helps anything. I still need to "find that printer on the net".
From what I can see so far, this is really just a WPS server in a "soft AP" in the devices. Unless the WFA also demands something like zeroconf, I don't see how this is going to work.
I'm also curious about the connection method. If the idea is that you connect to the soft AP using infrastructure mode, how do I get a 'net connection? And if it's not and it's based on ad hoc, is everyone talking to everyone again?
Really, this press release went out way too early.