Advances in renewables, particularly PV, are what will lead to electric cars going mainstream eventually. When you get to the point that someone's solar panels can cover their entire house's electrical consumption AND charge their car every night there's no more room for argument.
....as long as you have no intention of going car_range/2 further from your house... Otherwise you're still looking at a commercial infrastructure.
I'm pretty sure that storing electricity is pretty problematic. You are talking about storage batteries. Not very realistic for large amounts of power. (When compared to methane which you can store in a tank).
How about this -- use electricity to power a pump that pumps water up hill to a cistern. Later, have the water run downhill and spin a turbine to produce electricity. Essentially storing electricity in a tank.
In fact, strike that, this is simpler. Have your solar cells pump water to the cistern for all the hours the sun is in the sky. Have a separate pipe in which the water flows down hill to spin the turbine, which is your power source. The cistern acts as a ballast, storing energy during peak production times to be used during times of low or no production.
I confess, I was not impressed with the practicality of the all-electric concept, and felt it would always be pretty much a rich person's toy. Common in Hollywood and maybe the Silicon Valley and around Wall Street, and maybe Redmond, for bragging rights, but you'd never see one in Omaha.
The two issues as I saw it were range and charge time. (Cost is also a factor, but cost usually goes down over time.) It looks like Tesla is making a good faith effort to tackle the range issue, and there is some effort being made to reduce the charge time. Good for them.
It also occurs to me that for self-sufficiency, all-electric vehicles may be an advantage, as electricity could be easier to make and store than methane, for instance.
Actually you can use Emacs now indeed, with current memory sizes 'eight megs and continiously swapping' won't happen anymore:)
That's actually true. Very good point. And considering there's an Emacs plugin to do pretty much anything and Emacs runs on pretty much every platform, there's really no reason (anymore) to use a different editor for anything. Ow, I think the master just struck me on the side of the head. The master speaks: "Emacs is not an editor, Emacs is an operating system".
(Before the editor wars start anew, this was written somewhat in jest. As a sysadmin I had to support Emacs, but I remain a VI user. And yes, I know there's an Emacs plugin to emulate VI. Which is precisely like mounting Volkswagon Beetle controls in a Mack truck.)
Why presume that programmers (or anyone) have to travel from distant lands to the US in order to have an impact? Why not stay in whatever country they currently reside and try to have an impact there? Granted there might be more cutting edge stuff going on here (or there might not -- I could make a case that stuff happens everywhere), but in countries on the verge of being first world, wouldn't there be more to do there? At very least, wouldn't there be more low hanging fruit?
I guess I'm asking, why should we all compete for the subset of opportunities contained within the US? What, there are no opportunities elsewhere? (Actually I know there are, as I worked in India for awhile as a contractor, and have turned down jobs in Germany and Turkey.)
The "fundamentalist scientist" does not seem very extreme - surely he will accept it whenever someone proves him wrong on some account. Otherwise, he is no scientist.
I was going to say, the simile isn't entirely apt because Gates hasn't been totally successful as the Mule. And then I realized, the Mule wasn't entirely, either. So point to you.
It's good that he has a lot of money, because this is going down the toilet.
There was a time when technology was based on science. Today we learn it's based on faith (Bill Gates said that for several years he has been a believer in the idea of LENR).
I remember hearing somewhere that if you imagine science vs religion as an axis, on the extreme side of either end, fundamentalist science and fundamentalist religious, you have people motivated solely by faith.
How about not inventing an entire 45 minute scenario with the Dwarves in the mountain running from Smaug?
As I recall the extent of what happened in the mountain was Bilbo was a sneaky thief, and the dragon flew out to torch the town. How exactly was the story enriched by the hairbrained scheme to drown the dragon in gold?
I'm not going to sit here and apologize for everything in the films. Personally, I didn't mind that Jackson added stuff -- much of it was necessary -- and I felt from the beginning that one film was not enough. But clearly, three films is too much.
...go with Tolkien's later, darker tone. But that's just me.
So you're a revisionist.
Reports are, so was Tolkien. According to lore, he started out writing Fellowship in the same tone as The Hobbit, and the story and characters "got away from him", to use a Zelazney phrase, and became much darker and more violent. Tolkien apparently wanted to rewrite the story contained within The Hobbit in a way that better fit the tone and backstory of LotR. Unfortunately he never finished Quest of Erebor.
So, with all that legitimate material to choose from, why did he feel the need to make shit up?
Because there are a lot of legitimate material to which he did not have access. He had The Hobbit, and the appendicies in Return of the King. He did not have Tolkien's The Quest of Erebor unfinished story, nor did he have any of Tolkien's notes, because Christopher Tolkien refused to deal. So with the objective of creating a franchise that would run up to LotR, with a similar tone and fitting in with that already established mythology, and forbidden by copyright to use materials in Tolkien's own rewrite of The Hobbit to better fit in with LotR, he necessarily had to make some stuff up. Did he make too much stuff up? Probably.
But think -- that simple decision set in motion a chain of events that after many years leads to the destruction of the One Ring -- something that probably could not have happened otherwise. How did Gandalf know?
He didn't know, and LotR makes it abundantly clear that he did not know; he had to go hit a library and do a bunch of research to even be sure that it was the One Ring. That fits the narrative of Bilbo coming upon the ring completely by chance. The Ring is consistently speaking of as having fallen out of all knowledge while Gollum was living under the mountain.
Ok, granted. But how did Gandalf think unassuming Bilbo, a rather hapless Hobbit who had never been far from home, would make an excellent burglar? He did in fact make a very excellent burglar, but the largest part of that is happening to acquire the One Ring, which Gandalf could not have foreseen. I wonder if it's possible that although Gandalf had no knowledge of the specifics, he had some vague foresight, or intuition, that Bilbo would prove to be very important.
The backstory doesn't make a lot of sense otherwise. Retaking Erebor, and the elimination of Smaug, was very important to Gandalf. In the appendicies it states that Gandalf was very concerned that a dragon under the lonely mountain could be used by Sauron to tip the balance in his favor in the upcoming war of the ring. So the quest of Erebor was for very high stakes. With that said, why the heck would he decide to pin the success or failure of the mission, and perhaps the success or failure of the upcoming War of the Ring, on a single rather ineffectual Hobbit? Maybe Gandalf's own ring guided him in making the decision?
Oh bull. It would have been fine if he'd stuck to the story rather than trying to make his mark.
Which story? This is a serious question. Only the words in The Hobbit, or The Hobbit plus the materials in the appendicies to Return of the King (which, for instance, includes Gandalf's meeting with Thorin in Bree, which was in the film) or The Quest of Erebor, the rewrite that more closely matched the tone and happenings in Lord of the Rings, which Tolkien didn't get to complete?
How much to include is very much a matter of opinion. My own is, include as much as possible, and where possible, go with Tolkien's later, darker tone. But that's just me.
> So from his point of view, the movies have been a bit of a disaster. He'd been hoping for something he could take classes along to. Instead, the movies, are dark, brooding, serious, dark and extremely violent in places.
Dark too.
I see what you're saying, but to those of us who did grow up with the book, seeing a darker, more violent, age appropriate (for the age we are now) is a good thing. For the students, why doesn't the teacher rent the Rankin Bass version from 1977. I didn't think it was very good even as a kid, but it sure is more cheery. And has more songs.
Slashdot Mirror
Advances in renewables, particularly PV, are what will lead to electric cars going mainstream eventually. When you get to the point that someone's solar panels can cover their entire house's electrical consumption AND charge their car every night there's no more room for argument.
I'm pretty sure that storing electricity is pretty problematic. You are talking about storage batteries. Not very realistic for large amounts of power. (When compared to methane which you can store in a tank).
How about this -- use electricity to power a pump that pumps water up hill to a cistern. Later, have the water run downhill and spin a turbine to produce electricity. Essentially storing electricity in a tank.
In fact, strike that, this is simpler. Have your solar cells pump water to the cistern for all the hours the sun is in the sky. Have a separate pipe in which the water flows down hill to spin the turbine, which is your power source. The cistern acts as a ballast, storing energy during peak production times to be used during times of low or no production.
I confess, I was not impressed with the practicality of the all-electric concept, and felt it would always be pretty much a rich person's toy. Common in Hollywood and maybe the Silicon Valley and around Wall Street, and maybe Redmond, for bragging rights, but you'd never see one in Omaha.
The two issues as I saw it were range and charge time. (Cost is also a factor, but cost usually goes down over time.) It looks like Tesla is making a good faith effort to tackle the range issue, and there is some effort being made to reduce the charge time. Good for them.
It also occurs to me that for self-sufficiency, all-electric vehicles may be an advantage, as electricity could be easier to make and store than methane, for instance.
Actually you can use Emacs now indeed, with current memory sizes 'eight megs and continiously swapping' won't happen anymore :)
That's actually true. Very good point. And considering there's an Emacs plugin to do pretty much anything and Emacs runs on pretty much every platform, there's really no reason (anymore) to use a different editor for anything. Ow, I think the master just struck me on the side of the head. The master speaks: "Emacs is not an editor, Emacs is an operating system".
(Before the editor wars start anew, this was written somewhat in jest. As a sysadmin I had to support Emacs, but I remain a VI user. And yes, I know there's an Emacs plugin to emulate VI. Which is precisely like mounting Volkswagon Beetle controls in a Mack truck.)
Why presume that programmers (or anyone) have to travel from distant lands to the US in order to have an impact? Why not stay in whatever country they currently reside and try to have an impact there? Granted there might be more cutting edge stuff going on here (or there might not -- I could make a case that stuff happens everywhere), but in countries on the verge of being first world, wouldn't there be more to do there? At very least, wouldn't there be more low hanging fruit?
I guess I'm asking, why should we all compete for the subset of opportunities contained within the US? What, there are no opportunities elsewhere? (Actually I know there are, as I worked in India for awhile as a contractor, and have turned down jobs in Germany and Turkey.)
The "fundamentalist scientist" does not seem very extreme - surely he will accept it whenever someone proves him wrong on some account. Otherwise, he is no scientist.
I think that was the point.
Which version of JS?
Besides, everyone knows you should be using Emacs.
No, wait...
HR people are just waking up. By the end of the day, you'll see some looking for 5 years Ur/Web experience.
You're just jealous... there's 1000's of H1-Bs over in India with at *least* 5 years of Ur/Web experience.
I think we have some working for us. The price was right.
I thought people were pretty much ignoring IE these days.
Sssh. He's entertaining.
Wow. Hero worship much?
And here I thought I was the only one having difficulty parsing that.
I was going to say, the simile isn't entirely apt because Gates hasn't been totally successful as the Mule. And then I realized, the Mule wasn't entirely, either. So point to you.
It's good that he has a lot of money, because this is going down the toilet.
There was a time when technology was based on science. Today we learn it's based on faith (Bill Gates said that for several years he has been a believer in the idea of LENR).
I remember hearing somewhere that if you imagine science vs religion as an axis, on the extreme side of either end, fundamentalist science and fundamentalist religious, you have people motivated solely by faith.
Wait a minute, I'm pretty sure Microsoft invented the internet.
How about not inventing an entire 45 minute scenario with the Dwarves in the mountain running from Smaug?
As I recall the extent of what happened in the mountain was Bilbo was a sneaky thief, and the dragon flew out to torch the town. How exactly was the story enriched by the hairbrained scheme to drown the dragon in gold?
I'm not going to sit here and apologize for everything in the films. Personally, I didn't mind that Jackson added stuff -- much of it was necessary -- and I felt from the beginning that one film was not enough. But clearly, three films is too much.
So you're a revisionist.
Reports are, so was Tolkien. According to lore, he started out writing Fellowship in the same tone as The Hobbit, and the story and characters "got away from him", to use a Zelazney phrase, and became much darker and more violent. Tolkien apparently wanted to rewrite the story contained within The Hobbit in a way that better fit the tone and backstory of LotR. Unfortunately he never finished Quest of Erebor.
Print fan.
So, with all that legitimate material to choose from, why did he feel the need to make shit up?
Because there are a lot of legitimate material to which he did not have access. He had The Hobbit, and the appendicies in Return of the King. He did not have Tolkien's The Quest of Erebor unfinished story, nor did he have any of Tolkien's notes, because Christopher Tolkien refused to deal. So with the objective of creating a franchise that would run up to LotR, with a similar tone and fitting in with that already established mythology, and forbidden by copyright to use materials in Tolkien's own rewrite of The Hobbit to better fit in with LotR, he necessarily had to make some stuff up. Did he make too much stuff up? Probably.
Yeah, with our luck the sci fi channel would option the rights and hire the guy who did Earthsea.
But think -- that simple decision set in motion a chain of events that after many years leads to the destruction of the One Ring -- something that probably could not have happened otherwise. How did Gandalf know?
He didn't know, and LotR makes it abundantly clear that he did not know; he had to go hit a library and do a bunch of research to even be sure that it was the One Ring. That fits the narrative of Bilbo coming upon the ring completely by chance. The Ring is consistently speaking of as having fallen out of all knowledge while Gollum was living under the mountain.
Ok, granted. But how did Gandalf think unassuming Bilbo, a rather hapless Hobbit who had never been far from home, would make an excellent burglar? He did in fact make a very excellent burglar, but the largest part of that is happening to acquire the One Ring, which Gandalf could not have foreseen. I wonder if it's possible that although Gandalf had no knowledge of the specifics, he had some vague foresight, or intuition, that Bilbo would prove to be very important.
The backstory doesn't make a lot of sense otherwise. Retaking Erebor, and the elimination of Smaug, was very important to Gandalf. In the appendicies it states that Gandalf was very concerned that a dragon under the lonely mountain could be used by Sauron to tip the balance in his favor in the upcoming war of the ring. So the quest of Erebor was for very high stakes. With that said, why the heck would he decide to pin the success or failure of the mission, and perhaps the success or failure of the upcoming War of the Ring, on a single rather ineffectual Hobbit? Maybe Gandalf's own ring guided him in making the decision?
Oh bull. It would have been fine if he'd stuck to the story rather than trying to make his mark.
Which story? This is a serious question. Only the words in The Hobbit, or The Hobbit plus the materials in the appendicies to Return of the King (which, for instance, includes Gandalf's meeting with Thorin in Bree, which was in the film) or The Quest of Erebor, the rewrite that more closely matched the tone and happenings in Lord of the Rings, which Tolkien didn't get to complete?
How much to include is very much a matter of opinion. My own is, include as much as possible, and where possible, go with Tolkien's later, darker tone. But that's just me.
> So from his point of view, the movies have been a bit of a disaster. He'd been hoping for something he could take classes along to. Instead, the movies, are dark, brooding, serious, dark and extremely violent in places.
Dark too.
I see what you're saying, but to those of us who did grow up with the book, seeing a darker, more violent, age appropriate (for the age we are now) is a good thing. For the students, why doesn't the teacher rent the Rankin Bass version from 1977. I didn't think it was very good even as a kid, but it sure is more cheery. And has more songs.
20 parts but a darn good nap.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silmarillion
Over Christopher Tolkien's dead body.
On the other hand, nobody lives forever, so maybe some day.
(I tried to read it. Bored the hell outta me. And I've read LotR several times, including the appendicies.)