Read the article, read the website. I've read a lot of other publications regarding the conversion of ag waste to energy, too.
The problem is, there are other uses for ag waste besides converting it to expensive oil. Farmers already have ways to make use of most ag "waste" - from using it as fertilizer to selling it as a building material. That means much of the ag "waste" already has a non-zero dollar value to the farmer, and they aren't going to give it away (let alone pay someone to haul it off). That seems to be blowing CWT's model, leading to the $80 a barrel price.
And of course, as petroleum grows more expensive, petroleum fertilizers will grow more expensive, making ag "waste" even more valuable. Funny how that works out. Agribusiness might be willing to part with that "waste" for the right price - but that price may well lead to $120 a barrel oil. Ouch!
there's plenty of agwaste that producers pay to dispose, like the $200:ton NYC pays to send its sewage to Texas.
Yeah, but will they continue doing that in the future? I doubt it. They'll probably end up burning it for fuel at some point, or selling at as fertilizer. Today's trash (with oil at $40-$50 a barrel, plentiful natural gas in the market and cheap electricity as a result) is tomorrow's treasure (with oil at $80 - $100 a barrel, and electricity prices thru the roof as the gas runs out).
And the "natural gas" isn't going to run out - it's a byproduct of their process
You do know that most of the electrical plants built in the US in the past two decades are gas fired, right? Or that many (most?) of the homes built in the last 2 - 3 decades use gas for heating, for hot water, and that many use it for cooking? We're already importing LNG to make up for domestic demand. This process won't come close to meeting demand for natural gas, and of course the process itself will consume a great deal of electricity (or gas) to generate all of the heat and pressure it requires. Not to mention the energy it takes to build the facility in the first place. How many months (years?) does one of these things have to operate to generate enough energy to recoup the energy investment in the facility itself?
BTW, coal -> crude oil is now about $50:bbl, with a huge startup cost.
Now. How expensive will it be though when coal is in even greater demand for electrical generation in a decade? I doubt we'll ever see coal to oil conversion become commercially viable, simply because the coal is better used as a fuel in coal fired electrical plants. China's gonna have to get all their electrical power from somewhere.
The estimates I've seen from CWT over the past couple of years say that the annual US agwaste, funneled through their process, would produce the same amount of oil we import
Yeah, but we've heard that before from other alternative energy proponents, and it's never come close to panning out. Remember, these guys are all looking for investors. I still don't think we could economically convert coal into gasoline (the Nazis were desperate enough to try it at the end of WWII - didn't save 'em), which makes me doubt we could convert an even less dense source of energy to oil with any great efficiency.
Even if we could do it at the $80 a barrel figure being tossed around, that's close to twice what we were paying for oil a couple of years ago. How expensive will that make it to grow crops - especially subsidy crops like much (most?) of the corn grown in the United States? My guess is $80 a barrel oil will lead to a decline in the amount of useless crap grown in the United States, in turn reducing the amount of agricultural waste available to "replace" imported oil in the first place. Whoops.
On top of that, our oil consumption continues to increase at the same time our domestic supplies (offshore, Alaska) are dwindling, increasing the amount of oil we need to import (and its cost).
I also wonder if their estimates take into consideration the amount of electricity it takes to run their plants - where's that going to come from as the natural gas begins to run out? Are they also factoring in how much it's going to cost to collect and transport ag waste to the "refinery"? Or how much energy it's going to take to build and maintain all of these ag waste conversion plants?
Doesn't this process consume more energy than it produces?
Depends on how you look at it, I suppose. Looks like they are getting more energy out of the recycling process than they're putting into it, which is a plus. OTOH, everything they're recycling ultimately took a lot of oil to produce, and they're not able to turn most of that back into oil.
I mean, think about it with just the turkeys. In order to raise a bunch of turkeys, it takes oil to get oil out of the ground. Then it takes oil to transport the oil to the United States. Then it takes oil to refine that oil into gas or other fuel. Then it takes oil to transport that fuel to its destination. Then the fuel is used in a tractor - which took a ton of oil to make - to grow the grain that the turkeys are fed. Oh, and the crops are fertilized with oil-derived fertilizers, so there's more oil dumped in the system. The grain is then harvested, consuming more fuel, processed and transported to where the turkeys are being raised. It took oil to build the factory farm where the turkeys are being raised, and they're fed a steady stream of pharmaceuticals that were made from and transported by oil. The turkeys are then slaughtered (they may be transported first, using oil), processed and typically frozen. They're then transported, in giant oil-gulping refrigerated trucks, wrapped in oil (plastic), to the local Albertsons. There, suburban housewives show up in their oil-guzzling SUV's to lug the birds home.
Now, even if you were able to convert all of the unused bits of the turkeys and their waste to oil or some other fuel at 100% efficiency, you still would only produce a fraction of the oil it took to raise those turkeys in the first place. That leaves a tremendous energy gap to be addressed, and we don't have any technology in place or on the horizon capable of filling that void. (Please, don't say "nuclear" anybody. If we tried to replace our petroleum consumption with nuclear, we'd rapidly run out of uranium and be left with a lot of dead nuclear plants. And South Africa, that bastion of political and social stability, has the world's largest reserves of uranium. We'd just be trading our problems in the Middle East for a whole new set of problems.)
Technologies like this waste-to-oil recycling will help to boost overall energy efficiency a teeny little bit, but they won't come close to providing a substitute for our colossal consumption of petroleum. Remember too, these technologies take oil to develop and construct, and that oil is about to become far more expensive, making these technologies less and less efficient as a result. Unfortunately, global demand continues to skyrocket, while global supply may well have peaked (thanks to political instability, if nothing else). This does not bode well for our oil-based civilization.
i disagree about BG. (Great writing? Maybe. But it's not BG, just something else that's wearing the trappings without the spirit of the original series)
And this spirit of the original series would be what, exactly? Cornball? Cheezy? Amateurish? Nonsensical? Moronic? Derivative?
I remember watching the original BSG when I was 8. I thought it was idiotic even then. Their 12 homeworlds are wiped out, with most everybody the survivors knew being slaughtered. They're crammed into tin cans blindly fleeing across the universe in search of a mythical world that might or might not exist. So, what's the first thing they do? Stop off at Casino Planet, of course! Par-tay!
Hey, I know if the Los Angeles area were wiped out in an atomic attack and I somehow managed to survive and make it to Las Vegas - with the attackers in hot pursuit - the first thing I'd do is hit the strip for some serious drinking and gambling. Woo-hoo! Luck be a lady tonight!
Stone stupid.
BSG defined sh*tty '70s television. Nonsensical plots (or stories ripped off from earlier Universal films), a cast that couldn't out-act a class play put on by 4th graders (save Dirk Benedict), the same effects shots played over and over, and sets that looked like an unlit locker room. With blinky lights. And an annoying robot dog. The only thing it had going for it was the basic concept, which it bungled horribly in the very first episode. The amazing thing is, it got even worse after that.
Fortunately, the new BSG is staying far, far away from the spirit of the original. Amen and halleluiah to that! I think a successful formula for any SF series would be to have a spirit as unlike the original BSG's as possible.
Well then, good luck to Microsoft! The per-unit cost of Windows CE is going to have to be miniscule to compete with open source operating systems and software developed in-house by electronics giants like Sony and Matsushita. These companies will sell tens of millions of units, all no doubt based off code they've developed in-house and recycle from project to project. That will allow them to spread the cost of development over zillions of units. They may be willing to buy Win CE instead, for maybe 25 cents a unit, to slap into microwaves and remote controls, but I don't see that adding much in the way of profit to Microsoft's bottom line. Indeed, Microsoft would be lucky to make enough to pay for all the support those manufacturers will be likely to demand.
Microsoft, king of bloatware, is also going to find itself in competition with other vendors in the embedded OS space, like Wind River. They may find it more difficult to knock those guys off than it was to bump of players in the PC space like WordPerfect and Netscape.
Putting aside any opinions on the quality of either alternative, you would have to agree that although it is possible to get 'free' water by lapping it up out of the gutter, it might be a better proposition to spend money and get something decent.
Only if the solution you have to pay a per-unit tax on ends up being cheaper per-unit than some OSS / in-house solution. That might be the case for limited production runs, or for devices whose requirements outstrip the current capabilities of OSS. The problem for Microsoft is that as open source operating systems grow increasingly sophisticated the percentage of non-PC devices whose needs can't be addressed by OSS are going to continue to dwindle.
And in some cases paying for Windows CE would be like paying for gutter water. If a device doesn't need most of its capabilities, you're just adding on bloat and instability, plus a per-unit tax which does nothing to enhance your company's intellectual capital, and makes your product less competitive in the marketplace.
people buy the software because they believe it enables them to get the job done.
No, people buy *PC* software from Microsoft because it works with either the applications, with the data files or with the operating system they already use. There's absolutely no reason for those customers to prefer a Windows CE microwave or a Windows CE cell phone over one running Linux or BeOS or AmigaOS or whatever. In that space the consumers are going to weigh the price/performance of the device and make a decision. Right now when given a choice - for example in the PDA and cell phone market - consumers seem to be going with non-MS based alternatives at least as much as they are with the solution involving MS. All of this in spite of the fact Microsoft is by far the largest player in that space, and has poured hundreds of millions into developing and promoting Win CE. As with the console marketplace, Microsoft has certainly established itself as a presence, but hardly as a profitable one. If they're to transition to the post-PC future, they're going to need a product that can stand on its own merits. Not only has the market determined that Win CE isn't there yet, the direction the market seems to be headed in looks to marginalize Win CE even further.
Your view that the world is full of helpless retards that only use 'inferior' Microsoft software on their PCs because they have been unfairly 'trapped' by the evil empire is childish and a world away from the truth.
Nice strawman you're blowdrying there with all that hot air. Pity I never said that.
Simple minded zealots sprouting unfounded crap like that are the single biggest threat to open source software.
How is it "simple minded" or "unfounded" to point out that Microsoft totally and completely missed th
Of course nobody needs to use MS software, but it is clearly an area in which they are willing to compete. I would say they have an initial advantage over many other competitors.
How do you compete with something that's free? Will they give CE away? What happens as the current cash cows - their desktop OS and Office - mature, or are bumped down in the marketplace by OSS alternatives (as is happening to IE right now with Firefox)? How long will they be able to afford to just give CE away? Will there even be any takers? Will other major electronics firms want to be held hostage to Microsoft's whims?
And to suggest that it is 'free' for a company to use OSS is just ridiculous.
Except it is free. There may be development costs involved in coding your own device drivers and firmware and such, assuming you can't purchase or don't already have such code, but those costs can be spread out over the number of devices you intend to sell, potentially resulting in far lower costs per unit than the fixed $5 (or whatever) per-unit tax Microsoft wants to impose on CE devices. Plus, you've just gained valuable experience writing that code, experience you can use on other devices your company makes down the road.
Microsoft aims to empower people with new capability through software.
If you want a ridiculous statement, that's one for the record books. Microsoft aims to extend their desktop OS and Office software monopoly to every market they enter, as it's the only way they know to reliably make money. They've flopped miserably when they've attempted to compete outside their single sphere of influence. Microsoft represents the antithesis of empowering people through software - they want to trap customers in their proprietary environment, and make it as costly as possible to leave. This behavior has been noted, and is one of the reasons why IBM has been so successful to date selling Linux to enterprise customers, who have grown weary of being left to Microsoft's tender mercies.
If a lightweight device running simple software empowers users in a way that is valuable and marketable then Microsoft will do it.
Then why did RIM have to come out with the Blackberry? Why didn't Microsoft release software for a device like that? I'll tell you why - because Microsoft has never developed a "lightweight" or "simple" piece of software. They may have bought a few products which met that description, but they're incapable of developing such a beast.
And take note of the current strategies Microsoft is looking into to make the cost of Windows less significant on cheap hardware or in other countries.
What, give Windows away? Because that's what it's going to take to compete with OSS in the third world, where labor is incredibly cheap. The only reason why MS has more than a 1% marketshare in the third world is thanks to piracy. As they continue to clamp down on that, they'll only drive more and more users to OSS. Users who will in turn churn out more and more OSS software, expanding the base of OSS programmers. All at Microsoft's expense.
Do you seriously think the Chinese government wants to be dependent on Microsoft? They aren't as stupid as we are. Operating systems are way too fundamental a bedrock of modern industry to leave in the hands of a single foreign corporation, especially one in what will inevitably become a major competitor as the century progresses.
Again, I don't think any of this dooms Microsoft to the poor house, but their growth is about to be rapidly curtailed and they may even begin to enter a long, slow decline over the next decade.
You see, even if Microsoft charges $5 per license to run CE on some embedded device which has a $10 microcontroller, they're still making the same profit per person as they would otherwise be making. sure, the profit per product is lower, but their total revenue stays positive.
Except that isn't going to fly in the electronics market, because the margins are tiny, the devices frequently cheap (under $200) and the competition is fierce. How much are the CE API's worth to you when coders can be had in India and China for a pittance? Will it cost you $5 a device to code your own firmware from scratch? Doubtful. And that assumes you even need to do it from scratch - if you're a huge company like Samsung, you may already have some of that code completed for other devices. Also, the more devices you sell, the lower the cost of software development per device. This will motivate the electronics giants to develop their own software based on OSS (free) platforms, instead of paying a $5 a device tax to a potential rival like Microsoft.
It is all about margins vs. scale. Microsoft will of course make more off a PC than a phone, but how many PCs do you have in comparison to other things in your home (phones, tvs, stereos, cameras, etc)?
Oh I agree - that's the conventional wisdom, that MS will make up in volume what it loses in margin. I think that's a load of hooey, though. Margins in the electronics business are razor thin, even compared to the PC business these days, and there's absolutely no reason why these devices need access to MS-specific software. Phones, TV's, stereos and cameras can work perfectly well running software written on Linux or some other OSS (i.e. free) alternative. RIM's Blackberry has proven you don't need a portable version of Outlook to do e-mail on a pocket device. These devices are all about simplicity, which is the very antithesis of the Microsoft model with Windows and Office of adding more complexity with each release. People don't want a TV or a phone that's complicated - they want one that works.
By the way, PCs are getting cheaper too so that is going to put downward pressure on the price of bundled copies of Windows...
And we're already seeing cheap PCs coming with Linux as a result. Expect to see that trend accelerate, especially overseas where most of the real growth in the PC market will take place over the next decade.
It's not like MS will go bankrupt tomorrow, but their growth is certainly going to be curtailed at some point, and they haven't yet developed an effective Plan B to milking the Windows desktop monopoly, in spite of numerous attempts (XBox, Win CE, etc.).
They'll probably just buy the next big thing, whatever that is, unless whoever comes up with it is so huge they can't buy them (i.e. IBM).
Seems to me, the general trend in PDAs has been to get more and more expensive. You can buy them for $600+.
Only because the market for PDA's is dwindling. PDA features have moved on to cell phones and integrated PDA/Cell devices. Simple Palm-based PDAs can be had for $99, but there's little market for electronic organizers these days, with Treos and Blackberrys to be had. And as more manufacturers enter that space, expect price competition to grow fierce, putting additional pressure on the cost of the OS the devices run.
Win CE devices are going to continue dropping in price as they become more common. There's no way Microsoft is going to be able to earn anywhere near the margins they make in the PC business on a $100 cell phone, and there's no reason why hardware makers in the competitive electronics marketplace won't switch to open source (i.e. free) alternatives in the not too distant future in order to make their products more competitive. It's not like there's a huge inventory of Win CE software out there that absolutely must be run on these portable devices.
If MS is betting the future on CE devices, dump your MS stock right now while it's still worth something. MS remains a one trick pony, and their one trick is their OS monopoly in the PC marketplace. In spite of their billions, they've never been able to dominate any other industry and they never will because they're incapable of innovation. Their entire culture involves around theft, acquisition and intimidation. Expecting Microsoft to compete in a more open marketplace and win would be like expecting the Mafia to get into the automobile manufacturing business and compete with Toyota. They aren't structured for that kind of business, have no aptitude for it, and their strong-arm techniques only alienate customers and potential partners.
Why are PC's still so damn fugly? You'd think at least one vendor could make a computer that doesn't look like it was designed to appeal to teenagers who pimp out their Honda Civics with neon, spoilers and rims. Apple hit a homerun on their first at bat with the Mac Mini - these other clowns can't even find the locker room, let alone home base.
And does this thing have enough fans in it, or what? Probably sounds like a bloody hairdryer when it's up and running. I'd rather have a box the size of a coffee table that's quiet than a toaster-sized box that sounds like a buzzsaw.
The only "SFF" PC's I've seen that get it right are the Hush models, and they're outrageously expensive. But at least they'll fit in a rack with stereo equipment and are silent. With the rest of these systems, I think you'd be better off just buying a laptop with a docking station. They're typically better looking, come with their own nice LCD display, are quieter, smaller and with wireless you can use them in any room of your home or even on the road.
>Considering that Christianity tends to include a support >network and a structured framework, I'd be a little leery >of questioning if Christians committed less crime than >non-Christians.
Hmmm. Christianity includes a "support network" and a "structured framework". Why would you assume members of this organization would commit less crime than non-members. Your description of Christianity sounds a lot like the Mafia.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons in the U.S. in 1997 indicated that only.209% of their prison population were atheists, as opposed to over 75% of the population, which were Christian. Atheists represent far more than.209% of the U.S. population, which means they're significantly under-represented in our Federal prison system. I'd say that these figures demonstrate a correlation between religious belief and criminal behavior.
Or, maybe religious people are just dumber on average than atheists and are more likely to be convicted of any crimes they commit.
>But Battlestar Galactica seems like a cheap and >somewhat clueless rip-off of B-5.
Galactica is absolutely nothing like B5. For starters, the plots are entirely different. B5 was about a space station and the long buildup to a great war. Galactica is about a fleet of ships fleeing the overnight destruction of almost the entire human race. The characters on Galactica are nothing like the characters on B5. The sets are vastly superior on Galactica, as is the dialog and the acting. There were two great actors on B5 (Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas), a couple of skilled actors (Mira Furlan, Stephen Furst), and a whole bunch of people who'd have trouble coping on a daytime soap. Even the bit players on Galactica are better actors than that, and all of the major characters are being portrayed by actors at least as skilled as Furlan and Furst. I'd argue that almost half a dozen of them are as good as Jurasik and maybe even Katsulas, including Olmos, McDonnell, James Callis, Michael Hogan and (surprisingly) Tricia Helfer. Helfer may be fairly new to acting and got her start as a model for Victoria's Secret, but it's clear from her performance on this program that she has a lot going on besides an incredible body.
>It's like somebody copied all the superficial elements >(right down to the officers' uniforms), but forgot that >the story ought to make some kind of sense.
I'm still trying to figure out what "elements" were "copied" from Babylon 5, because I've seen every episode of B5 at least twice, and there's nothing remotely similar on Galactica. The models don't look anything like those on B5, the sets aren't similar, the costumes aren't particularly similar (and civilian wardrobes are completely different), the Cylons are nothing like any of the races on B5, etc. etc. etc. And the story makes perfect sense to me and to millions of other viewers, so I'm not sure what you're going on about there, either.
>And, as somebody else pointed out. . . Galactica is so >relentlessly dark. Is that really necessary?
Well, the characters are survivors of a holocaust that's wiped out 12 worlds and all but about 50,000 members of the human race. They are on the run from genocidal robots who want to see them all dead. Robots they themselves had created. They're short on food, water and ammunition, among other things. And they know they probably have spies in their midst. So yeah, I'd say it's really necessary that the show be a little bit dark.
But if you want something lighter, watch DVD's of the original Galactica where, after seeing their 12 colonies and billions of souls wiped out of existence by the Cylons, the survivors flee to casino planet and are serenaded by multi-mouthed soul sisters at an interstellar disco. It doesn't get any lighter than that.
>I have to be careful here. If I end up seeing both >shows, and galactica _is_ better, I think my head >will explode.
If you had told me 10 years ago that in the year 2005 the new Star Trek and Star Wars adventures would both be tired, ridiculous garbage and that a remake of Battlestar Galactica would be the best thing on tee vee, I would have called the nuthouse and asked them if they were missing an inmate.
Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction.
The Galactica miniseries is out on DVD. You should rent it. Ron Moore was the best writer on the modern (TNG, DS9) Treks, this show is his baby, and he's doing an incredible job with it.
>I mean, Cylons that look like humans and apparently >can't even be distinguished from humans with medical >tests -- yet still have robot-like abilities. How >could that possibly work?
Um, what robot-like abilities? Do little buzz saws and electric prods pop out of their abdomens, like R2-D2?
>Cylons wiping out humanity for reasons that are poorly >defined and make no sense. (The parent must die before >the child can come into his own? Give me a break!)
Actually, they haven't defined exactly why the Cylons wiped out humanity. We do know the Cylons think God likes them best. It's possible God told them to wipe out humanity, but they haven't come right out and said that. We do know a Six model expressed sadness over the destruction of humanity. Another Cylon reminded her that humanity probably would have destroyed itself anyhow, eventually. In a way humanity did just that, through creating the Cylons. And the Cylons fear humanity - they made that clear at the end of the miniseries. If it weren't for that fear, it seemed as though they might have been willing to just let the survivors run away.
>Baltar's inexplicable tendency to side with the Cylons >even after they *duped* him into helping them. Wouldn't >you be hacked off if they did that to you?
Huh? When has he sided with the Cylons? He unwittingly aided them, but he hasn't "sided" with them. He's kept his mouth shut about some of what he knows to avoid incriminating himself. If anything, he's the only reason why the fleet has survived so long, or rather his Cylon friend Six is the reason why they've survived. Why is she helping them? Does this model also feel sorry for humanity, or is she in love with Gaius?
>Maybe the point is that he's a jerk. Why does so much >of the show focus on a jerk?
Gee, I don't know. Why do so many dramas focus on jerks? Maybe it's because they can be interesting characters. Shakespeare's plays were full of "jerks" - they tend to set plots in motion, and elicit strong reactions from the other characters. As opposed to the dull technobabble talkfests that are modern Trek (I hear Enterprise is improving, although even a dead cat will bounce if you throw it hard enough).
>Celestial bodies with WATER are rare? I guess our solar >system is some kind of freakish curiosity, since it's >littered with icy bodies.
Actually, it isn't. Apart from Earth, water ice is pretty rare in the inner solar system (it's present in the Martian polar caps and probably mixed with regolith elsewhere underground). Jupiter's moons are icy, but that ice appears to be pretty heavily contaminated (Europa's ice for example is laced with sulfuric acid). Water ice further out in the solar system is mixed with volatile contaminants like ammonia. On Titan it's mixed with hydrocarbons. They made it clear in last week's episode they'd have trouble processing water that isn't already pretty pure.
>I'd much rather watch a good old-fashioned outer space >show -- with things blowing up -- rather than this >strange rambling exploration of some jerk's unconscious.
Well, there's no shortage of sci-fi shows featuring things blowing up, and the good news is you won't have to put any thought into understanding those stories the way you might have to with Battlestar Galactica.
>I thought it was a good line at the time. Now that I >know the story behind it, I think it's brilliant.
Yeah, I thought that was a fine piece of writing, too. And hey, they're on spaceships with hyperdrives and other groovy tech. I'm willing to see them resort to a bit of technobabble now and again to get their *sses out of a crack. Just preferably not in the last 10 minutes of every episode, a la Voyager.
Of course, part of what makes Galactica work so well is the quality of the actors. Mary McDonnell delivered that line of hers - "The lesson here is not to ask follow-up questions, but to simply say thank you Captain Apollo for saving our collective asses" - perfectly. I don't think there's *ever* been a science fiction television program with a cast this skilled. Most science fiction programs have casts that would barely be considered competent on a daytime soap opera. On Galactica, even the bit players are about as good as the best Trek actors. It's like a cast full of nothing but Patrick Stewarts and Leonard Nimoys and Jeri Ryans (yeah, I know she was hired as T&A, but she could act circles around the rest of her Voyager crewmates, save the scene-stealing Holodoc).
The problem with most of these devices is their interface - too complex for grandma. It's like the blinking VCR clock to the n'th degree. People don't quite understand what it is these expensive boxes do in the first place, and the frequently cruddy interfaces are just one more hurdle to overcome.
Until someone comes along who can successfully explain what these DVR gadgets do to John Q. Public and slap an easy to use interface on them the average NASCAR fan can navigate, they're going nowhere fast in the marketplace.
Maybe Apple will convert the new Mac mini into a home media server at some point down the road. The form factor is certainly right. Slap in better video abilities (maybe some dedicated MPEG encoding and decoding hardware), a larger hard drive and even built in wireless and you'd have a killer home media center capable of accessing not only video, but also a ripped CD collection or iTunes purchases and streams. Throw in an iPod-like remote and they could market this device as an iPod for your home theater. Consumers might actually get that angle, and Apple has already proven they can design user interfaces that just work.
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You're not reading the article, or their website.
Read the article, read the website. I've read a lot of other publications regarding the conversion of ag waste to energy, too.
The problem is, there are other uses for ag waste besides converting it to expensive oil. Farmers already have ways to make use of most ag "waste" - from using it as fertilizer to selling it as a building material. That means much of the ag "waste" already has a non-zero dollar value to the farmer, and they aren't going to give it away (let alone pay someone to haul it off). That seems to be blowing CWT's model, leading to the $80 a barrel price.
And of course, as petroleum grows more expensive, petroleum fertilizers will grow more expensive, making ag "waste" even more valuable. Funny how that works out. Agribusiness might be willing to part with that "waste" for the right price - but that price may well lead to $120 a barrel oil. Ouch!
there's plenty of agwaste that producers pay to dispose, like the $200:ton NYC pays to send its sewage to Texas.
Yeah, but will they continue doing that in the future? I doubt it. They'll probably end up burning it for fuel at some point, or selling at as fertilizer. Today's trash (with oil at $40-$50 a barrel, plentiful natural gas in the market and cheap electricity as a result) is tomorrow's treasure (with oil at $80 - $100 a barrel, and electricity prices thru the roof as the gas runs out).
And the "natural gas" isn't going to run out - it's a byproduct of their process
You do know that most of the electrical plants built in the US in the past two decades are gas fired, right? Or that many (most?) of the homes built in the last 2 - 3 decades use gas for heating, for hot water, and that many use it for cooking? We're already importing LNG to make up for domestic demand. This process won't come close to meeting demand for natural gas, and of course the process itself will consume a great deal of electricity (or gas) to generate all of the heat and pressure it requires. Not to mention the energy it takes to build the facility in the first place. How many months (years?) does one of these things have to operate to generate enough energy to recoup the energy investment in the facility itself?
BTW, coal -> crude oil is now about $50:bbl, with a huge startup cost.
Now. How expensive will it be though when coal is in even greater demand for electrical generation in a decade? I doubt we'll ever see coal to oil conversion become commercially viable, simply because the coal is better used as a fuel in coal fired electrical plants. China's gonna have to get all their electrical power from somewhere.
The estimates I've seen from CWT over the past couple of years say that the annual US agwaste, funneled through their process, would produce the same amount of oil we import
Yeah, but we've heard that before from other alternative energy proponents, and it's never come close to panning out. Remember, these guys are all looking for investors. I still don't think we could economically convert coal into gasoline (the Nazis were desperate enough to try it at the end of WWII - didn't save 'em), which makes me doubt we could convert an even less dense source of energy to oil with any great efficiency.
Even if we could do it at the $80 a barrel figure being tossed around, that's close to twice what we were paying for oil a couple of years ago. How expensive will that make it to grow crops - especially subsidy crops like much (most?) of the corn grown in the United States? My guess is $80 a barrel oil will lead to a decline in the amount of useless crap grown in the United States, in turn reducing the amount of agricultural waste available to "replace" imported oil in the first place. Whoops.
On top of that, our oil consumption continues to increase at the same time our domestic supplies (offshore, Alaska) are dwindling, increasing the amount of oil we need to import (and its cost).
I also wonder if their estimates take into consideration the amount of electricity it takes to run their plants - where's that going to come from as the natural gas begins to run out? Are they also factoring in how much it's going to cost to collect and transport ag waste to the "refinery"? Or how much energy it's going to take to build and maintain all of these ag waste conversion plants?
Doesn't this process consume more energy than it produces?
Depends on how you look at it, I suppose. Looks like they are getting more energy out of the recycling process than they're putting into it, which is a plus. OTOH, everything they're recycling ultimately took a lot of oil to produce, and they're not able to turn most of that back into oil.
I mean, think about it with just the turkeys. In order to raise a bunch of turkeys, it takes oil to get oil out of the ground. Then it takes oil to transport the oil to the United States. Then it takes oil to refine that oil into gas or other fuel. Then it takes oil to transport that fuel to its destination. Then the fuel is used in a tractor - which took a ton of oil to make - to grow the grain that the turkeys are fed. Oh, and the crops are fertilized with oil-derived fertilizers, so there's more oil dumped in the system. The grain is then harvested, consuming more fuel, processed and transported to where the turkeys are being raised. It took oil to build the factory farm where the turkeys are being raised, and they're fed a steady stream of pharmaceuticals that were made from and transported by oil. The turkeys are then slaughtered (they may be transported first, using oil), processed and typically frozen. They're then transported, in giant oil-gulping refrigerated trucks, wrapped in oil (plastic), to the local Albertsons. There, suburban housewives show up in their oil-guzzling SUV's to lug the birds home.
Now, even if you were able to convert all of the unused bits of the turkeys and their waste to oil or some other fuel at 100% efficiency, you still would only produce a fraction of the oil it took to raise those turkeys in the first place. That leaves a tremendous energy gap to be addressed, and we don't have any technology in place or on the horizon capable of filling that void. (Please, don't say "nuclear" anybody. If we tried to replace our petroleum consumption with nuclear, we'd rapidly run out of uranium and be left with a lot of dead nuclear plants. And South Africa, that bastion of political and social stability, has the world's largest reserves of uranium. We'd just be trading our problems in the Middle East for a whole new set of problems.)
Technologies like this waste-to-oil recycling will help to boost overall energy efficiency a teeny little bit, but they won't come close to providing a substitute for our colossal consumption of petroleum. Remember too, these technologies take oil to develop and construct, and that oil is about to become far more expensive, making these technologies less and less efficient as a result. Unfortunately, global demand continues to skyrocket, while global supply may well have peaked (thanks to political instability, if nothing else). This does not bode well for our oil-based civilization.
i disagree about BG. (Great writing? Maybe. But it's not BG, just something else that's wearing the trappings without the spirit of the original series)
And this spirit of the original series would be what, exactly? Cornball? Cheezy? Amateurish? Nonsensical? Moronic? Derivative?
I remember watching the original BSG when I was 8. I thought it was idiotic even then. Their 12 homeworlds are wiped out, with most everybody the survivors knew being slaughtered. They're crammed into tin cans blindly fleeing across the universe in search of a mythical world that might or might not exist. So, what's the first thing they do? Stop off at Casino Planet, of course! Par-tay!
Hey, I know if the Los Angeles area were wiped out in an atomic attack and I somehow managed to survive and make it to Las Vegas - with the attackers in hot pursuit - the first thing I'd do is hit the strip for some serious drinking and gambling. Woo-hoo! Luck be a lady tonight!
Stone stupid.
BSG defined sh*tty '70s television. Nonsensical plots (or stories ripped off from earlier Universal films), a cast that couldn't out-act a class play put on by 4th graders (save Dirk Benedict), the same effects shots played over and over, and sets that looked like an unlit locker room. With blinky lights. And an annoying robot dog. The only thing it had going for it was the basic concept, which it bungled horribly in the very first episode. The amazing thing is, it got even worse after that.
Fortunately, the new BSG is staying far, far away from the spirit of the original. Amen and halleluiah to that! I think a successful formula for any SF series would be to have a spirit as unlike the original BSG's as possible.
>How do you compete with something that's free?
By providing something with a lower total cost.
Well then, good luck to Microsoft! The per-unit cost of Windows CE is going to have to be miniscule to compete with open source operating systems and software developed in-house by electronics giants like Sony and Matsushita. These companies will sell tens of millions of units, all no doubt based off code they've developed in-house and recycle from project to project. That will allow them to spread the cost of development over zillions of units. They may be willing to buy Win CE instead, for maybe 25 cents a unit, to slap into microwaves and remote controls, but I don't see that adding much in the way of profit to Microsoft's bottom line. Indeed, Microsoft would be lucky to make enough to pay for all the support those manufacturers will be likely to demand.
Microsoft, king of bloatware, is also going to find itself in competition with other vendors in the embedded OS space, like Wind River. They may find it more difficult to knock those guys off than it was to bump of players in the PC space like WordPerfect and Netscape.
Putting aside any opinions on the quality of either alternative, you would have to agree that although it is possible to get 'free' water by lapping it up out of the gutter, it might be a better proposition to spend money and get something decent.
Only if the solution you have to pay a per-unit tax on ends up being cheaper per-unit than some OSS / in-house solution. That might be the case for limited production runs, or for devices whose requirements outstrip the current capabilities of OSS. The problem for Microsoft is that as open source operating systems grow increasingly sophisticated the percentage of non-PC devices whose needs can't be addressed by OSS are going to continue to dwindle.
And in some cases paying for Windows CE would be like paying for gutter water. If a device doesn't need most of its capabilities, you're just adding on bloat and instability, plus a per-unit tax which does nothing to enhance your company's intellectual capital, and makes your product less competitive in the marketplace.
people buy the software because they believe it enables them to get the job done.
No, people buy *PC* software from Microsoft because it works with either the applications, with the data files or with the operating system they already use. There's absolutely no reason for those customers to prefer a Windows CE microwave or a Windows CE cell phone over one running Linux or BeOS or AmigaOS or whatever. In that space the consumers are going to weigh the price/performance of the device and make a decision. Right now when given a choice - for example in the PDA and cell phone market - consumers seem to be going with non-MS based alternatives at least as much as they are with the solution involving MS. All of this in spite of the fact Microsoft is by far the largest player in that space, and has poured hundreds of millions into developing and promoting Win CE. As with the console marketplace, Microsoft has certainly established itself as a presence, but hardly as a profitable one. If they're to transition to the post-PC future, they're going to need a product that can stand on its own merits. Not only has the market determined that Win CE isn't there yet, the direction the market seems to be headed in looks to marginalize Win CE even further.
Your view that the world is full of helpless retards that only use 'inferior' Microsoft software on their PCs because they have been unfairly 'trapped' by the evil empire is childish and a world away from the truth.
Nice strawman you're blowdrying there with all that hot air. Pity I never said that.
Simple minded zealots sprouting unfounded crap like that are the single biggest threat to open source software.
How is it "simple minded" or "unfounded" to point out that Microsoft totally and completely missed th
Of course nobody needs to use MS software, but it is clearly an area in which they are willing to compete. I would say they have an initial advantage over many other competitors.
How do you compete with something that's free? Will they give CE away? What happens as the current cash cows - their desktop OS and Office - mature, or are bumped down in the marketplace by OSS alternatives (as is happening to IE right now with Firefox)? How long will they be able to afford to just give CE away? Will there even be any takers? Will other major electronics firms want to be held hostage to Microsoft's whims?
And to suggest that it is 'free' for a company to use OSS is just ridiculous.
Except it is free. There may be development costs involved in coding your own device drivers and firmware and such, assuming you can't purchase or don't already have such code, but those costs can be spread out over the number of devices you intend to sell, potentially resulting in far lower costs per unit than the fixed $5 (or whatever) per-unit tax Microsoft wants to impose on CE devices. Plus, you've just gained valuable experience writing that code, experience you can use on other devices your company makes down the road.
Microsoft aims to empower people with new capability through software.
If you want a ridiculous statement, that's one for the record books. Microsoft aims to extend their desktop OS and Office software monopoly to every market they enter, as it's the only way they know to reliably make money. They've flopped miserably when they've attempted to compete outside their single sphere of influence. Microsoft represents the antithesis of empowering people through software - they want to trap customers in their proprietary environment, and make it as costly as possible to leave. This behavior has been noted, and is one of the reasons why IBM has been so successful to date selling Linux to enterprise customers, who have grown weary of being left to Microsoft's tender mercies.
If a lightweight device running simple software empowers users in a way that is valuable and marketable then Microsoft will do it.
Then why did RIM have to come out with the Blackberry? Why didn't Microsoft release software for a device like that? I'll tell you why - because Microsoft has never developed a "lightweight" or "simple" piece of software. They may have bought a few products which met that description, but they're incapable of developing such a beast.
And take note of the current strategies Microsoft is looking into to make the cost of Windows less significant on cheap hardware or in other countries.
What, give Windows away? Because that's what it's going to take to compete with OSS in the third world, where labor is incredibly cheap. The only reason why MS has more than a 1% marketshare in the third world is thanks to piracy. As they continue to clamp down on that, they'll only drive more and more users to OSS. Users who will in turn churn out more and more OSS software, expanding the base of OSS programmers. All at Microsoft's expense.
Do you seriously think the Chinese government wants to be dependent on Microsoft? They aren't as stupid as we are. Operating systems are way too fundamental a bedrock of modern industry to leave in the hands of a single foreign corporation, especially one in what will inevitably become a major competitor as the century progresses.
Again, I don't think any of this dooms Microsoft to the poor house, but their growth is about to be rapidly curtailed and they may even begin to enter a long, slow decline over the next decade.
You see, even if Microsoft charges $5 per license to run CE on some embedded device which has a $10 microcontroller, they're still making the same profit per person as they would otherwise be making. sure, the profit per product is lower, but their total revenue stays positive.
Except that isn't going to fly in the electronics market, because the margins are tiny, the devices frequently cheap (under $200) and the competition is fierce. How much are the CE API's worth to you when coders can be had in India and China for a pittance? Will it cost you $5 a device to code your own firmware from scratch? Doubtful. And that assumes you even need to do it from scratch - if you're a huge company like Samsung, you may already have some of that code completed for other devices. Also, the more devices you sell, the lower the cost of software development per device. This will motivate the electronics giants to develop their own software based on OSS (free) platforms, instead of paying a $5 a device tax to a potential rival like Microsoft.
It is all about margins vs. scale. Microsoft will of course make more off a PC than a phone, but how many PCs do you have in comparison to other things in your home (phones, tvs, stereos, cameras, etc)?
Oh I agree - that's the conventional wisdom, that MS will make up in volume what it loses in margin. I think that's a load of hooey, though. Margins in the electronics business are razor thin, even compared to the PC business these days, and there's absolutely no reason why these devices need access to MS-specific software. Phones, TV's, stereos and cameras can work perfectly well running software written on Linux or some other OSS (i.e. free) alternative. RIM's Blackberry has proven you don't need a portable version of Outlook to do e-mail on a pocket device. These devices are all about simplicity, which is the very antithesis of the Microsoft model with Windows and Office of adding more complexity with each release. People don't want a TV or a phone that's complicated - they want one that works.
By the way, PCs are getting cheaper too so that is going to put downward pressure on the price of bundled copies of Windows...
And we're already seeing cheap PCs coming with Linux as a result. Expect to see that trend accelerate, especially overseas where most of the real growth in the PC market will take place over the next decade.
It's not like MS will go bankrupt tomorrow, but their growth is certainly going to be curtailed at some point, and they haven't yet developed an effective Plan B to milking the Windows desktop monopoly, in spite of numerous attempts (XBox, Win CE, etc.).
They'll probably just buy the next big thing, whatever that is, unless whoever comes up with it is so huge they can't buy them (i.e. IBM).
Seems to me, the general trend in PDAs has been to get more and more expensive. You can buy them for $600+.
Only because the market for PDA's is dwindling. PDA features have moved on to cell phones and integrated PDA/Cell devices. Simple Palm-based PDAs can be had for $99, but there's little market for electronic organizers these days, with Treos and Blackberrys to be had. And as more manufacturers enter that space, expect price competition to grow fierce, putting additional pressure on the cost of the OS the devices run.
Win CE devices are going to continue dropping in price as they become more common. There's no way Microsoft is going to be able to earn anywhere near the margins they make in the PC business on a $100 cell phone, and there's no reason why hardware makers in the competitive electronics marketplace won't switch to open source (i.e. free) alternatives in the not too distant future in order to make their products more competitive. It's not like there's a huge inventory of Win CE software out there that absolutely must be run on these portable devices.
If MS is betting the future on CE devices, dump your MS stock right now while it's still worth something. MS remains a one trick pony, and their one trick is their OS monopoly in the PC marketplace. In spite of their billions, they've never been able to dominate any other industry and they never will because they're incapable of innovation. Their entire culture involves around theft, acquisition and intimidation. Expecting Microsoft to compete in a more open marketplace and win would be like expecting the Mafia to get into the automobile manufacturing business and compete with Toyota. They aren't structured for that kind of business, have no aptitude for it, and their strong-arm techniques only alienate customers and potential partners.
I wouldn't worry, I'm sure someone will be able to cobble together some kind of meaningful response.
Ah yes. Another post laced with puns.
Why not have a lottery? Each "ticket" costs US$20 and if enough money is raised, 3 winners are selected for roles on Enterprise.
Ooooh yeah! Just what Enterprise needs - three more people who can't act.
Why are PC's still so damn fugly? You'd think at least one vendor could make a computer that doesn't look like it was designed to appeal to teenagers who pimp out their Honda Civics with neon, spoilers and rims. Apple hit a homerun on their first at bat with the Mac Mini - these other clowns can't even find the locker room, let alone home base.
And does this thing have enough fans in it, or what? Probably sounds like a bloody hairdryer when it's up and running. I'd rather have a box the size of a coffee table that's quiet than a toaster-sized box that sounds like a buzzsaw.
The only "SFF" PC's I've seen that get it right are the Hush models, and they're outrageously expensive. But at least they'll fit in a rack with stereo equipment and are silent. With the rest of these systems, I think you'd be better off just buying a laptop with a docking station. They're typically better looking, come with their own nice LCD display, are quieter, smaller and with wireless you can use them in any room of your home or even on the road.
This is how the Cylons got their start. One minute they were cleaning up the floor, the next minute they were plotting genocide.
I carve all my important data on stone tablets. If it was good enough for Yaweh, they by Him, its good enough for me!
Unfortunately, stone can be very brittle and stone tablets shatter easily. You do know there were originally 15 Commandments, don't you?
Or maybe as a prisoner, it would be best to call yourself a "Christian" then an "Atheist" when it comes to trial by jury and parole.
Except that these individuals weren't being asked their religion at parole hearings or in front of a jury.
>Considering that Christianity tends to include a support
.209% of their prison population were atheists, as opposed to over 75% of the population, which were Christian. Atheists represent far more than .209% of the U.S. population, which means they're significantly under-represented in our Federal prison system. I'd say that these figures demonstrate a correlation between religious belief and criminal behavior.
>network and a structured framework, I'd be a little leery
>of questioning if Christians committed less crime than
>non-Christians.
Hmmm. Christianity includes a "support network" and a "structured framework". Why would you assume members of this organization would commit less crime than non-members. Your description of Christianity sounds a lot like the Mafia.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons in the U.S. in 1997 indicated that only
Or, maybe religious people are just dumber on average than atheists and are more likely to be convicted of any crimes they commit.
>But Battlestar Galactica seems like a cheap and
>somewhat clueless rip-off of B-5.
Galactica is absolutely nothing like B5. For starters, the plots are entirely different. B5 was about a space station and the long buildup to a great war. Galactica is about a fleet of ships fleeing the overnight destruction of almost the entire human race. The characters on Galactica are nothing like the characters on B5. The sets are vastly superior on Galactica, as is the dialog and the acting. There were two great actors on B5 (Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas), a couple of skilled actors (Mira Furlan, Stephen Furst), and a whole bunch of people who'd have trouble coping on a daytime soap. Even the bit players on Galactica are better actors than that, and all of the major characters are being portrayed by actors at least as skilled as Furlan and Furst. I'd argue that almost half a dozen of them are as good as Jurasik and maybe even Katsulas, including Olmos, McDonnell, James Callis, Michael Hogan and (surprisingly) Tricia Helfer. Helfer may be fairly new to acting and got her start as a model for Victoria's Secret, but it's clear from her performance on this program that she has a lot going on besides an incredible body.
>It's like somebody copied all the superficial elements
>(right down to the officers' uniforms), but forgot that
>the story ought to make some kind of sense.
I'm still trying to figure out what "elements" were "copied" from Babylon 5, because I've seen every episode of B5 at least twice, and there's nothing remotely similar on Galactica. The models don't look anything like those on B5, the sets aren't similar, the costumes aren't particularly similar (and civilian wardrobes are completely different), the Cylons are nothing like any of the races on B5, etc. etc. etc. And the story makes perfect sense to me and to millions of other viewers, so I'm not sure what you're going on about there, either.
>And, as somebody else pointed out. . . Galactica is so
>relentlessly dark. Is that really necessary?
Well, the characters are survivors of a holocaust that's wiped out 12 worlds and all but about 50,000 members of the human race. They are on the run from genocidal robots who want to see them all dead. Robots they themselves had created. They're short on food, water and ammunition, among other things. And they know they probably have spies in their midst. So yeah, I'd say it's really necessary that the show be a little bit dark.
But if you want something lighter, watch DVD's of the original Galactica where, after seeing their 12 colonies and billions of souls wiped out of existence by the Cylons, the survivors flee to casino planet and are serenaded by multi-mouthed soul sisters at an interstellar disco. It doesn't get any lighter than that.
>I have to be careful here. If I end up seeing both
>shows, and galactica _is_ better, I think my head
>will explode.
If you had told me 10 years ago that in the year 2005 the new Star Trek and Star Wars adventures would both be tired, ridiculous garbage and that a remake of Battlestar Galactica would be the best thing on tee vee, I would have called the nuthouse and asked them if they were missing an inmate.
Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction.
The Galactica miniseries is out on DVD. You should rent it. Ron Moore was the best writer on the modern (TNG, DS9) Treks, this show is his baby, and he's doing an incredible job with it.
>I mean, Cylons that look like humans and apparently
>can't even be distinguished from humans with medical
>tests -- yet still have robot-like abilities. How
>could that possibly work?
Um, what robot-like abilities? Do little buzz saws and electric prods pop out of their abdomens, like R2-D2?
>Cylons wiping out humanity for reasons that are poorly
>defined and make no sense. (The parent must die before
>the child can come into his own? Give me a break!)
Actually, they haven't defined exactly why the Cylons wiped out humanity. We do know the Cylons think God likes them best. It's possible God told them to wipe out humanity, but they haven't come right out and said that. We do know a Six model expressed sadness over the destruction of humanity. Another Cylon reminded her that humanity probably would have destroyed itself anyhow, eventually. In a way humanity did just that, through creating the Cylons. And the Cylons fear humanity - they made that clear at the end of the miniseries. If it weren't for that fear, it seemed as though they might have been willing to just let the survivors run away.
>Baltar's inexplicable tendency to side with the Cylons
>even after they *duped* him into helping them. Wouldn't
>you be hacked off if they did that to you?
Huh? When has he sided with the Cylons? He unwittingly aided them, but he hasn't "sided" with them. He's kept his mouth shut about some of what he knows to avoid incriminating himself. If anything, he's the only reason why the fleet has survived so long, or rather his Cylon friend Six is the reason why they've survived. Why is she helping them? Does this model also feel sorry for humanity, or is she in love with Gaius?
>Maybe the point is that he's a jerk. Why does so much
>of the show focus on a jerk?
Gee, I don't know. Why do so many dramas focus on jerks? Maybe it's because they can be interesting characters. Shakespeare's plays were full of "jerks" - they tend to set plots in motion, and elicit strong reactions from the other characters. As opposed to the dull technobabble talkfests that are modern Trek (I hear Enterprise is improving, although even a dead cat will bounce if you throw it hard enough).
>Celestial bodies with WATER are rare? I guess our solar
>system is some kind of freakish curiosity, since it's
>littered with icy bodies.
Actually, it isn't. Apart from Earth, water ice is pretty rare in the inner solar system (it's present in the Martian polar caps and probably mixed with regolith elsewhere underground). Jupiter's moons are icy, but that ice appears to be pretty heavily contaminated (Europa's ice for example is laced with sulfuric acid). Water ice further out in the solar system is mixed with volatile contaminants like ammonia. On Titan it's mixed with hydrocarbons. They made it clear in last week's episode they'd have trouble processing water that isn't already pretty pure.
>I'd much rather watch a good old-fashioned outer space
>show -- with things blowing up -- rather than this
>strange rambling exploration of some jerk's unconscious.
Well, there's no shortage of sci-fi shows featuring things blowing up, and the good news is you won't have to put any thought into understanding those stories the way you might have to with Battlestar Galactica.
>Unfortunately, they also lost some of that delicious
>ambiguity at the end, when the president revealed that
>she has cancer.
That was revealed in the first 15 minutes of the miniseries. She just finally told somebody in the fleet outside of her assistant.
>I thought it was a good line at the time. Now that I
>know the story behind it, I think it's brilliant.
Yeah, I thought that was a fine piece of writing, too. And hey, they're on spaceships with hyperdrives and other groovy tech. I'm willing to see them resort to a bit of technobabble now and again to get their *sses out of a crack. Just preferably not in the last 10 minutes of every episode, a la Voyager.
Of course, part of what makes Galactica work so well is the quality of the actors. Mary McDonnell delivered that line of hers - "The lesson here is not to ask follow-up questions, but to simply say thank you Captain Apollo for saving our collective asses" - perfectly. I don't think there's *ever* been a science fiction television program with a cast this skilled. Most science fiction programs have casts that would barely be considered competent on a daytime soap opera. On Galactica, even the bit players are about as good as the best Trek actors. It's like a cast full of nothing but Patrick Stewarts and Leonard Nimoys and Jeri Ryans (yeah, I know she was hired as T&A, but she could act circles around the rest of her Voyager crewmates, save the scene-stealing Holodoc).
Here's hoping this is the start of a trend.
Just what we needed. Now where are Adama and the fleet going to run to?
>>It's red, hard, and just plain intimidating.
>
>My girlfriend says the same thing about my
>manhood.
Yes, but fortunately they have a cream for that now.
The problem with most of these devices is their interface - too complex for grandma. It's like the blinking VCR clock to the n'th degree. People don't quite understand what it is these expensive boxes do in the first place, and the frequently cruddy interfaces are just one more hurdle to overcome.
Until someone comes along who can successfully explain what these DVR gadgets do to John Q. Public and slap an easy to use interface on them the average NASCAR fan can navigate, they're going nowhere fast in the marketplace.
Maybe Apple will convert the new Mac mini into a home media server at some point down the road. The form factor is certainly right. Slap in better video abilities (maybe some dedicated MPEG encoding and decoding hardware), a larger hard drive and even built in wireless and you'd have a killer home media center capable of accessing not only video, but also a ripped CD collection or iTunes purchases and streams. Throw in an iPod-like remote and they could market this device as an iPod for your home theater. Consumers might actually get that angle, and Apple has already proven they can design user interfaces that just work.