When do I get my check?...What, the government keeps the money?? And Oracle... raises their prices to compensate?? So as an Oracle customer, what did *I* do to deserve this?
> A better reason would be "Don't pirate movies because most of them stink anyway and you don't want your mind warped by what constitutes scripts, dialogue or acting these days.
Well yeah, but I'm eight years old fer chrissake. We have much lower standards for entertainment.
"I'm eight years old, and I used to watch The Little Mermaid every day. One day my disc wouldn't play. My dad says it's got a scratch on it so it won't play anymore. I cried and cried, so my dad downloaded the movie from some website and burned me another copy. I turned my dad in to the nice people at the MPAA and he's serving hard time now. My mom and I aren't very happy at the shelter, but we feel better now that the movie studios are getting their fair share."
Don't pirate movies. Because the movie studios aren't rich enough."
I did read the FA, and I understand that. As the title of my response indicates, (not to mention the body of my response) I was responding to the contention that mechanically inept people would prefer this solution to standard solar panels for private dwellings. See other articles in this same thread. Again, I was answering the contention that this was appropriate for non-technical people to install themselves in dwellings in which they live. I don't know how many other ways I need to say it.
So no, in the context of my reply, the previous poster made a non-sequitur, unless we've gotten so hyper sensitive here that we are reading into criticism of a single incorrect marketing point the condemnation of an entire technology.. He was answering a criticism that I had not made. Although, hyper-sensitivity and "green" technologies appear to go hand-in-hand for reasons not entirely clear to me. Shall we go cry for the trees now? And thank the Earth Mother that the pollution from the manufacture of CFLs is occurring in China and not here?
I have installed the solar panel system used at my house. I know what is involved. My point was and continues to be that the assembly and positioning of the solar panels is among the least of the tasks of setting up such a system. (an intellectually dishonest person would ignore this paragraph) My teenage daughter assembled the frame and attached about half the panels while I attached the other half. It's the wiring, charge controllers, batteries, more wiring, inverter, more wiring, and how to merge that into the current grid-powered system that's the laborious part. I get the impression sometimes that many of the people hysterically clamoring for solar power have never actually touched a solar panel. [1] Money, mouth, proximity.
[1] Well, maybe those solar ipod chargers sold at ThinkGeek. But they are toys, and you could reduce your carbon footprint orders of magnitude more by not buying the ipod in the first place. Which is another story.
I'm not a big fan of solar power, I think solar solutions are *way* oversold, but there are cases where they pay for themselves immediately.
I had an issue where a new building on my property needed power. I had the city come out and mark where all the utilities were, so I could trench it myself and only have to hire out running the actual electrical and wiring it into the panel. (Which I could also do, but I'm not licensed so it'd put me in a legal grey area...)
So I pick my path, and start digging the trench, and run into a pipe that wasn't on the city's plat map. It's obviously a wet pipe (water, sewage or drainage) and it's only 18 inches down, and it combines with the other utilities to make it impossible to trench from the new building to the existing house without crossing a utility. In my area, electrical MUST be buried 24 inches down and MUST NOT cross under a wet pipe. (It's ok for electrical to cross *over* a wet pipe as long as it's 24 inches below ground.)
This resulted in making it impossible to run electricity to the building in any way I could afford. So I started looking into alternatives. Wind power was out, as wind is noisy and I have neighbors nearby. But solar looked like it would work.
So I planned it out and (this is the point) to my utter amazement, the cost of the solar kit was *less* than the total cost of labor to wire the building into the house. Of course, I had to assemble and wire it myself, but I'm willing to trade sweat equity for having to hire contractors, and I learned valuable information useful to design a larger installation for the main house.
So, I understand what you're saying, but in some cases, the savings, especially for a new installation, can be immediate, if total cost (not just the cost of power) is factored in.
Consider: If you wire just one circuit to solar, and put your freezer and fridge on that circuit, you only have to save your food a couple times during major power outages before you've paid for the installation.
That's interesting. You can actually see through my current solar array, if you squint a little. It's not completely opaque. And it actually produces 100% of the power of a solar array, not just 20% as does this film.
> Ssuussh!! 20% (1/5) efficiency at half the price of a panel means 2.5x more expensive per watt capacity than solar panel.
BINGO! Sorry (whispered) bingo. As a substitute for a traditional solar panel installation, this stuff SUCKS. There are applications where it will be useful, probably in large commercial buildings with lots of windows. But if you're looking for a retrofitted home installation, do yourself a favor and get a real, permanently mounted solar array. They start at 60 watts, which is still too wimpy for realistic use, but you can start small if you want and build up the array over time to a significant fraction of your power usage.
Trust me, unless you're Bill Gates, you don't *own* enough square footage for this film to provide any appreciable amount of the power you use. And at 2.5X the cost per watt of conventional arrays. What a BARGAIN. (Sorry... (whispered) what a bargain.)
Cover your sun-facing windows with this stuff, and you might be able to charge your ipod. If that makes you feel good, go for it. When you're ready for *real* solar power, let me know.
> Funny thing, people generally prefer bigger windows on the sunny sides of their houses...what with the natural 'light' thing and all:)
> While they won't be angled outside of vertical in most cases, it is an interesting use of an existing space to produce power. Much like the solar shingles [wikipedia.org] that already exist.
So, I have a house with windows facing south, and am at a northern latitude, so I really do get exposure for much of the day. That's not, as it turns out, where I put my solar panels (I have a solar installation I did myself) but it could have been.
But I suspect that what most people are thinking of is the big picture window facing East or West, and the results are going to be disappointing.
The solar shingles are a different thing -- their placement makes it more likely that they'll receive sunlight throughout the day, even though the angle might not be optimal.
You can already, this very day, buy solar power solutions at the big hardware stores, and no, the kits aren't foolproof unless your use is trivial. For instance, setting up a single-use circuit, like to power a freezer, isn't hard. (And incidentally, that -- powering fridge/freezer -- is a great use of solar and a good introduction to the technology.) But you still need to know which end of a screwdriver to hold and have some rudimentary understanding of electricity.
Perhaps, but again, the panels are such a small part of the total amount of work that it's like arguing over the kind of hubcaps you'd put on a car you're building by hand. (*There's* our car analogy!) Scroll up to my longer article in the same thread for more information.
Caveat: I'm not an expert, but I have installed a solar power system in my home.
I'm not arguing against the product, I'm arguing against the contention that it makes the product easy for mechanically-stupid people to set up a solar power system. In reality, the panels are the easy part. Scroll up to my longer article in this same thread.
Ok, I may have an unfair advantage here because I just installed a solar system in my own home, and I may have prepped for it a little too much, reading up ahead of time and studying the pros and cons of various types of installations.
So, how do you think a solar power system works? You put a film on the windows and magically the power appears in your house? Like, via bluetooth?
There are a lot more pieces than that. The film, whatever it is, has wires attached, the wires have to go somewhere, hopefully in a way that doesn't get your homeowner's association pissed off, and finally find their way inside some part of the house (entering in some weatherproof fashion) to an appropriately sized charge controller, which charges a fuckton of batteries which also have to be somewhere in the house in a proper enclosure with ventilation, which in turn power an appropriate sized inverter, (you did work backwards from your power needs, didn't you?) which produces the actual power, which then has to be routed somewhere useful. There's a lot of wiring and drilling holes into walls and maybe even breaking down drywall, running wires, installing panels, and then re-sheetrocking, tape, mud, paint.
And that's not counting more exotic systems (like what I put in) that run separate 12 volt (more efficient use of battery power) and 110 volt circuits with two sets of outlets and a bunch of those funny 12 volt lightbulbs you usually only see at RV supply houses.
It's a big deal. The actual solar panels are the easy part. My teenage daughter assembled half of ours while I assembled the other half, and the frame was already canted at an angle that was Good Enough for where we were putting it. (Your mileage may vary with latitude.) Takes one (1) tool -- a crosshead screwdriver. It's the rest -- the wires and batteries and electronics -- that's a headache.
So, no. If the expectation is that this film stuff makes it easier for someone too stupid to hold the correct end of a screwdriver to set up their own solar power system, there's going to be a lot of disappointed customers.
Mind you, I can see the use of this stuff in certain situations, but sadly, until they figure out the Unicorn Magic connection between solar panels and your wall socket, there's going to be no substitute for (a) knowing what the hell you're doing, or (b) hiring it out.
Not dissing the product, just the expectation that it somehow magically makes it trivial for Fred and Ethyl Mertz to have solar power. It doesn't.
Incidentally, you *can* contract the whole thing, rather easily. Many home improvement superstores now will sell you complete solutions, including installation. And as usual, a savvy person can do it significantly cheaper on their own. And it isn't even that tough to learn. (I didn't know crap about solar power before I started.) But the key word is "learn". It's not magic, at least not yet.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, I can't parse either of these sentences.
When do I get my check? ...What, the government keeps the money?? And Oracle... raises their prices to compensate?? So as an Oracle customer, what did *I* do to deserve this?
> You eight-year-olds sew some crooked and brittle seams into the clothes I buy.
I work my fingers to the bone making your GAP hoodies and this is the thanks I get??
> A better reason would be "Don't pirate movies because most of them stink anyway and you don't want your mind warped by what constitutes scripts, dialogue or acting these days.
Well yeah, but I'm eight years old fer chrissake. We have much lower standards for entertainment.
Here's hoping the reason isn't "Diving into the timezone database"...
"I'm eight years old, and I used to watch The Little Mermaid every day. One day my disc wouldn't play. My dad says it's got a scratch on it so it won't play anymore. I cried and cried, so my dad downloaded the movie from some website and burned me another copy. I turned my dad in to the nice people at the MPAA and he's serving hard time now. My mom and I aren't very happy at the shelter, but we feel better now that the movie studios are getting their fair share."
Don't pirate movies. Because the movie studios aren't rich enough."
> Suing for the purpose of getting money from the IETF is pretty much like rolling bums for loose change.
That's my favorite phrase for this week.
At least not this year.
Funny, but not very helpful.
Maybe it's time for the phone to go back to being just a phone. It'd certainly be cheaper, and this *is* a down economy.
I did read the FA, and I understand that. As the title of my response indicates, (not to mention the body of my response) I was responding to the contention that mechanically inept people would prefer this solution to standard solar panels for private dwellings. See other articles in this same thread. Again, I was answering the contention that this was appropriate for non-technical people to install themselves in dwellings in which they live. I don't know how many other ways I need to say it.
So no, in the context of my reply, the previous poster made a non-sequitur, unless we've gotten so hyper sensitive here that we are reading into criticism of a single incorrect marketing point the condemnation of an entire technology.. He was answering a criticism that I had not made. Although, hyper-sensitivity and "green" technologies appear to go hand-in-hand for reasons not entirely clear to me. Shall we go cry for the trees now? And thank the Earth Mother that the pollution from the manufacture of CFLs is occurring in China and not here?
I have installed the solar panel system used at my house. I know what is involved. My point was and continues to be that the assembly and positioning of the solar panels is among the least of the tasks of setting up such a system. (an intellectually dishonest person would ignore this paragraph) My teenage daughter assembled the frame and attached about half the panels while I attached the other half. It's the wiring, charge controllers, batteries, more wiring, inverter, more wiring, and how to merge that into the current grid-powered system that's the laborious part. I get the impression sometimes that many of the people hysterically clamoring for solar power have never actually touched a solar panel. [1] Money, mouth, proximity.
[1] Well, maybe those solar ipod chargers sold at ThinkGeek. But they are toys, and you could reduce your carbon footprint orders of magnitude more by not buying the ipod in the first place. Which is another story.
Flash on the iphone?
Ok, was uncalled for, but someone had to say it.
There's an app for that...
Yeah, it could. Citibank.
Oh c'mon, someone tell me they got that!
Ok hang on.
I'm not a big fan of solar power, I think solar solutions are *way* oversold, but there are cases where they pay for themselves immediately.
I had an issue where a new building on my property needed power. I had the city come out and mark where all the utilities were, so I could trench it myself and only have to hire out running the actual electrical and wiring it into the panel. (Which I could also do, but I'm not licensed so it'd put me in a legal grey area...)
So I pick my path, and start digging the trench, and run into a pipe that wasn't on the city's plat map. It's obviously a wet pipe (water, sewage or drainage) and it's only 18 inches down, and it combines with the other utilities to make it impossible to trench from the new building to the existing house without crossing a utility. In my area, electrical MUST be buried 24 inches down and MUST NOT cross under a wet pipe. (It's ok for electrical to cross *over* a wet pipe as long as it's 24 inches below ground.)
This resulted in making it impossible to run electricity to the building in any way I could afford. So I started looking into alternatives. Wind power was out, as wind is noisy and I have neighbors nearby. But solar looked like it would work.
So I planned it out and (this is the point) to my utter amazement, the cost of the solar kit was *less* than the total cost of labor to wire the building into the house. Of course, I had to assemble and wire it myself, but I'm willing to trade sweat equity for having to hire contractors, and I learned valuable information useful to design a larger installation for the main house.
So, I understand what you're saying, but in some cases, the savings, especially for a new installation, can be immediate, if total cost (not just the cost of power) is factored in.
Consider: If you wire just one circuit to solar, and put your freezer and fridge on that circuit, you only have to save your food a couple times during major power outages before you've paid for the installation.
Yes...
But it's still funny.
That's interesting. You can actually see through my current solar array, if you squint a little. It's not completely opaque. And it actually produces 100% of the power of a solar array, not just 20% as does this film.
> Ssuussh!! 20% (1/5) efficiency at half the price of a panel means 2.5x more expensive per watt capacity than solar panel.
BINGO! Sorry (whispered) bingo. As a substitute for a traditional solar panel installation, this stuff SUCKS. There are applications where it will be useful, probably in large commercial buildings with lots of windows. But if you're looking for a retrofitted home installation, do yourself a favor and get a real, permanently mounted solar array. They start at 60 watts, which is still too wimpy for realistic use, but you can start small if you want and build up the array over time to a significant fraction of your power usage.
Trust me, unless you're Bill Gates, you don't *own* enough square footage for this film to provide any appreciable amount of the power you use. And at 2.5X the cost per watt of conventional arrays. What a BARGAIN. (Sorry... (whispered) what a bargain.)
Cover your sun-facing windows with this stuff, and you might be able to charge your ipod. If that makes you feel good, go for it. When you're ready for *real* solar power, let me know.
> Funny thing, people generally prefer bigger windows on the sunny sides of their houses...what with the natural 'light' thing and all :)
> While they won't be angled outside of vertical in most cases, it is an interesting use of an existing space to produce power. Much like the solar shingles [wikipedia.org] that already exist.
So, I have a house with windows facing south, and am at a northern latitude, so I really do get exposure for much of the day. That's not, as it turns out, where I put my solar panels (I have a solar installation I did myself) but it could have been.
But I suspect that what most people are thinking of is the big picture window facing East or West, and the results are going to be disappointing.
The solar shingles are a different thing -- their placement makes it more likely that they'll receive sunlight throughout the day, even though the angle might not be optimal.
You can already, this very day, buy solar power solutions at the big hardware stores, and no, the kits aren't foolproof unless your use is trivial. For instance, setting up a single-use circuit, like to power a freezer, isn't hard. (And incidentally, that -- powering fridge/freezer -- is a great use of solar and a good introduction to the technology.) But you still need to know which end of a screwdriver to hold and have some rudimentary understanding of electricity.
Perhaps, but again, the panels are such a small part of the total amount of work that it's like arguing over the kind of hubcaps you'd put on a car you're building by hand. (*There's* our car analogy!) Scroll up to my longer article in the same thread for more information.
Caveat: I'm not an expert, but I have installed a solar power system in my home.
I'm not arguing against the product, I'm arguing against the contention that it makes the product easy for mechanically-stupid people to set up a solar power system. In reality, the panels are the easy part. Scroll up to my longer article in this same thread.
Ok, I may have an unfair advantage here because I just installed a solar system in my own home, and I may have prepped for it a little too much, reading up ahead of time and studying the pros and cons of various types of installations.
So, how do you think a solar power system works? You put a film on the windows and magically the power appears in your house? Like, via bluetooth?
There are a lot more pieces than that. The film, whatever it is, has wires attached, the wires have to go somewhere, hopefully in a way that doesn't get your homeowner's association pissed off, and finally find their way inside some part of the house (entering in some weatherproof fashion) to an appropriately sized charge controller, which charges a fuckton of batteries which also have to be somewhere in the house in a proper enclosure with ventilation, which in turn power an appropriate sized inverter, (you did work backwards from your power needs, didn't you?) which produces the actual power, which then has to be routed somewhere useful. There's a lot of wiring and drilling holes into walls and maybe even breaking down drywall, running wires, installing panels, and then re-sheetrocking, tape, mud, paint.
And that's not counting more exotic systems (like what I put in) that run separate 12 volt (more efficient use of battery power) and 110 volt circuits with two sets of outlets and a bunch of those funny 12 volt lightbulbs you usually only see at RV supply houses.
It's a big deal. The actual solar panels are the easy part. My teenage daughter assembled half of ours while I assembled the other half, and the frame was already canted at an angle that was Good Enough for where we were putting it. (Your mileage may vary with latitude.) Takes one (1) tool -- a crosshead screwdriver. It's the rest -- the wires and batteries and electronics -- that's a headache.
So, no. If the expectation is that this film stuff makes it easier for someone too stupid to hold the correct end of a screwdriver to set up their own solar power system, there's going to be a lot of disappointed customers.
Mind you, I can see the use of this stuff in certain situations, but sadly, until they figure out the Unicorn Magic connection between solar panels and your wall socket, there's going to be no substitute for (a) knowing what the hell you're doing, or (b) hiring it out.
Not dissing the product, just the expectation that it somehow magically makes it trivial for Fred and Ethyl Mertz to have solar power. It doesn't.
Incidentally, you *can* contract the whole thing, rather easily. Many home improvement superstores now will sell you complete solutions, including installation. And as usual, a savvy person can do it significantly cheaper on their own. And it isn't even that tough to learn. (I didn't know crap about solar power before I started.) But the key word is "learn". It's not magic, at least not yet.