Where are you getting this viewpoint from? The average US commute is something like 33-34 miles round trip. A 50-100 mile range electric vehicle would suit those needs just swell, with the added bonus of not concentrating massive amounts of pollution in urban heat trap zones.
Heck, I live out in the sticks, my round trip to town is 26 to 30 miles depending on what stores I need to hit. A 50 mile range light weight small pickup would suit 99% of my needs *right now*, and we have mid range flatbeds and dumptrucks and even some road tractors if I need a bigger truck for the occasional heavy load. Most of the time I get by with a four cylinder diesel datsun pickup 1/2 ton that gets 30-40 MPG.
And with my solar panels, once there are pure electric vehicles beyond sedans, and only needing to travel into town once a week...free fuel for me. I'll wait a few years after I start seeing them, then get a used one. Around the farm, no probs, it's 1.5 miles wide at the widest, meaning I can scoot around here for cheap/free as well (we have a lot of our own gravel roads). Electric works just fine in industry now, plenty of useful and practical all electric vehicles, from forklifts to mining equipment. Smallish electric cars have been used since forever in the form of golf carts. It's the same tech, just scaled up to make a road vehicle.
The prius sold out fast when it was first introduced and still sells well, despite all the naysayers pre release-and I distinctly remember a lot of internet predictions saying 'they wouldn't sell". The tesla at the other end, sells all they make.
I'll make a prediction to counter your opinion..both the nissan leaf (pure electric, mid $20ks) and the chevy volt (extended range plug in hybrid, 41 grand) and the tesla model S sedan (fifty something grand) will sell every single one they first release, and will then have to increase production to meet demand. And then a few years from now the chinese electrics (BYD company at first) will finally hit, and they will come in under 20 grand and sell like freekin mad, and *that* will be when the electric vehicle dam bursts, and you will see them at all price ranges from cheap intro level "your basic ride" to luxury exotic and everything in between, just like today with pure ICE vehicles.
We'll have to wait to see who is correct of course.
Thanks for the reply. I have wondered about this for the longest time.
With that said, the slow speed they move at, etc..I guess I would still doubt they would break a tread, or throw a tread, but I do guess weight limitations were a major part of it, along with keeping the design simpler.
I know around here (I live on a large farm), a small crawler can get in and un-stick a very large wheeled vehicle. Just no comparison with traction.
Normally I am one to not want yet another new law, but I think in this case there should be a law that says these gadget sellers and makers should support their devices for x-years, whether they want to or not, beyond the normal short warranties and covering more stuff. And that would include security fixes. They are obviously just wanting you to trash perfectly functional devices to buy something new all the time.
You can still get partial tax credit for alternate energy production systems, some places have similar for going to an electric car, and it is totally legal to make your own ethanol fuel (you do have to register though and use an additive to make your 'shine undrinkable), or you can make biodiesel, using waste products you scrounge up, or grow your own veggie oil source. So you have the freedom to subsidize yourself, given you just do it.
Like others have pointed out, issue a standard locked down simple calculator just for the tests. That still leaves a niche for all those other times outside of tests where a truly open and easily hackable calculator could have a market.
me = older guy who remembers when we couldn't use our slide rules on tests...and we made real bona fide stinky brand blueprints... and first drew it by hand..and during recess, we practiced our nerd ninja skills by ripping an onion off of our belt, tossing it up in the air, and slicing it cleanly in half with the slide rule edge we had honed down with our teeth....then before the two slices hit the floor, you had to re-scabbard your slide rule sword, draw two mechanical pencils from your pocket protector, one with each hand, and neatly stab the two slices. Then we ate them for lunch.
Kids..they just don't believe a dang thing we say about ye olden days...
Looks to me like a potential good enough niche market for some startup (or a cooperative) to build and sell a really open calculator. And I would guess said designers and builders could come from within that same community, ie, engineers/students/scientists who are already using these high end calculators. That pool of people has the necessary skillset taken as a whole. Electronic pocket calculators have been around a long time, the basic design must be well understood by now. And it seems like if you weren't trying to keep it locked down, the design would be simpler by some not insignificant degree.
thanks man. I've been into alt energy since the late 60s. I am finally getting some satisfaction that after all these years it is starting to crack through some skulls that this is the long term really good solution and the quicker we adopt it en masse and get it going so it can go through faster evolutionary cycles, the better.
Solar is just fantastic, it is working here and now fusion tech,the only one we have. It just ain't gonna get better than that anytime soon. I also like it because it is safe, and no wars over it, and it can't be monopolized, and joe homeowner can actually own the means of production and get one serious bill *paid the heck off*.
It's simple economics, really, once you look at the dollars and how they shift around with a credit. If this money leaving my wallet goes to a solar system via a tax credit (it would be leaving anyway, to disappear into "government" in general where it is ususally half wasted on bullshit, and then some more going to pay for higher electric costs), then it isn't going to the entrenched coal system...it's both really, a punishment and a reward, the coal gets punished because it isn't getting my money now,(now compound that by millions of joe sixpacks doing the same thing with their tax credit) and there is one guy less amount being burnt=better for the environment. The good, the solar, is being rewarded, by being actually purchased, deployed, up and working, tons of new jobs, and every system up is one more systems worth of coal not being burnt, better for the environment. This happens simultaneously.
Go back and research where the carbon tax and cap and trade ideas came from...it comes from the casino banks, from freaking *enron* no shit there, those same gangsters! It's a *conjob* man, a fake out and it has corrupted the green movement really really bad b3ecause they just slap ain't understanding where the con came from and it was packaged really really slick.
A tax credit rewards joe sixpack immediately, or joe responsible energy company immediately, and it takes money away from the entrenched monopoly energy cartels. I see no downside to it at all. A carbon tax just keeps the same fatcats in power, and they will just raise rates, pass the tax right on down the line to the watt buyer, you know it, it will happen, nature of the beast. That's it. The same amount of coal will get burnt, the same rich farts get richer. Our goal is to change that, so starve that beast of its income by switching the payments to alternatives. It will wither off and croak from that *if* the alternatives are adopted, and the 100% tax credit is by far and away the easiest way to do that for most guys. They won't have to come up with one single teeny extra penny, they are spending the same they always were, now it is just going to some solar, instead of to the coal electric company or disappear into government who knows what they do with it land. I mean..this is the freekin bee's knees! One of the few times yu'ou can have your cake and eat it, too.
It's great, it works, we had something very like this in the 80s (the tax credit, Carter legacy, expired in 84) and I was selling some solar then. A great story. My first call was an *accountant*. He didn't want to listen to my dog and pony show schtick, he goes, "lemme see the contract".. A coupla minutes later, he signs the thing! I am flabbergasted, he goes "free stuff for me, this is a serious no brainer" paraphrased.
He knew exactly what I have been saying, if the government winds up with a lot of your loot every tax season, after everything else, the tax credit lets you re-purpose it into something that gets to be YOURS, plus, its a good deal for the climate and so on. I mean..it's cool man, it really works and could work a lot better if they went 100% instead of like 10, 20, 30% like now. The credit is an *incentive*, and a full 100%, that's a HELLA incentive!
Those are still carrots or the stick examples. "Investing" in research by the government is done with tax money, it's a tax, the stick. Writing a law against something is the stick, BAM, you can't do that. Allowing some research to go forward, by encouraging it with a tax credit, that's a carrot. It's just variations on social engineering, and there are still only two basic ways they can do that, bribe or punish, tax or not-tax.
Go buy one, they start out cheap, great fun! A boy and his welder opens up a lot of possibilities. I still medium suck at it, but I still plug away at it and learn new things all the time. Right now all I have is an old electric welder, but I'd like to get into the other forms as well. Mostly today I just do necessary repairs on our equipment, but eventually I want to build interesting stuff from scratch, like some time build a small (what they term "compact" sized) electric tractor, where heavy battery weight, using (relatively, as opposed to lithium type) cheap lead acid batts, would be a plus, not a detriment, in function. Either pure electric, or diesel electric hybrid, haven't made up my mind yet. Proly just pure electric, much cheaper to start out with.
Most of the rest of the nation is plain *revolted* at that entire casino scam industry and the huge wealth they skim out of the economy.
They need to slap the local sales tax on these high speed trades, just for a starter. They insist on calling those BS gambling games "financial products", fine, let them be treated like any other "product" and apply the sales tax to them. It's not "investment" anymore, it's just gambling.
And before anyone says "but, but, we need this and.."" chuck you farley, if it worked, and really helped the economy, they wouldn't have needed that bailout, now would they? Admit reality, it's a harmful conjob "industry". It's a broken, crooked, rigged, screwed up system and needs to be knocked down about 18 pegs or so, the whole ball game there is WAY overpaid for what they do, not just those poor 150 grand programmers.
You wouldn't be paying for my things, the things you are saying are "bad", I'd be paying for an improvement in energy production, which means I am *not* paying for the thing you are against, because I would then *not be using that product*, I'd be using the new better product, in this case, the switch from coal burning, and all the costs you mention, to solar, which has little of the downside coal has.. Both sides win under a tax credit, I win, you win, plus the environment gets cleaner.
I'll turn it around, why do you not want me to switch to solar, when with a pro rated ten year tax credit, this could be possible? You want me to stay stuck on coal brand electricity, just pay a lot more for it, because of the externalities which I admit exist readily, or to actually switch completely off coal? That's my point, what is the *real* goal? Just pay more to keep using coal, or like I suggest, take that money and go directly to solar, and do it quite willingly, and wind up owning the means of production, rather than renting my grid infrastructure forever, where the costs just go up, and you never get to own anything?
Me, I'd rather dump the coal, and go to solar, given the two choices. Your method keeps me stuck on coal, just costs more than, because there's no extra loot for doing anything else then. If you make the coal just way more expensive, I won't have the money to go to solar, because I'll be stuck in an endless loop of paying for the more expensive now coal, which is still being burnt.
You are talking to one of *the* biggest alternative energy enthusiasts and proponents on this board, and I tell you, the carbon tax is the worst way to achieve the goal of getting away from burning nasty stuff. Offering full tax credits for the alternatives is by far and away the fastest, easiest and cheapest way to slide away from the fossil fuel economy to a renewable and cleaner energy economy.
We just have two differing philosophies headed towards the same goal, you want to punish the bad, I prefer to route around/bypass/shun the bad and reward the good, and do that directly and as soon as possible. We can recognize that what we did in the past wasn't all that swift, and we need to do something better in the future, but the money has to come from somewhere, ultimately, the tax payer and energy buyer. Spend the effort and all the money in punishing, there isn't as much left to reward. It's really simple. If my x-amount of money is going to go someplace, I would much rather it go directly to the solution, not just to punish the problem. The problem will be solved once the solution is implemented. Punishing the problem will not pay for any solution, it will just delay it and make it cost way way more than it needs to be.
Governments can only do two things, tax or not-tax, offer a credit. They both are examples of social engineering, but one is a lot more palatable to people than the other, because it really is the carrot-reward, or stick-punish system. that's it.
A hypothetical then to achieve this goal of cleaner renewable energy sources, by reducing demand and use of the dirtier sources.
Say you are joe blow, make fifty grand a year, and after all other deductions and whatnot, the government still walks off with five grand every year. On top of that, you buy stuff, stuff that uses energy to get made, including a lot of nasty coal that stinks up the air and has a negative effect on climate and so on, all in all, we agree it is bad news in mass quantities..
A carbon tax increases what you have to pay, this is the main point of it, increase the costs to discourage use. These companies are in no manner going to eat any new tax, they just will pass it on to the end user. Nature of the beast. OK, that is the stick method. You are still out five grand taxes, plus now a lot of your stuff costs more, so you went negative after this new carbon tax gets put in. And all the coal is still being burnt.
Now, the carrot method. The government offers a five grand tax credit for *you* to use for personal alternative energy stuff, or perhaps for retrofitting a lot more insulation or what not. So now you have a choice, let the government take that five grand, or you get to spend it, and directly improve your economic and comfort bottom line, whilst also doing your personal fair share of improving the environment.
Which would you pick then? I know I'd take the tax credit over the carbon tax and the rising cost of goods. I think most people would, and it would probably result in much faster uptake and use of the alternative cleaner and more long term carbon neutral methods.
Now say the same five grand credit was pro rated, and you could use it for five to ten years. Now you are talking some serious loot, at ten years, that's a *fifty grand* solar system (random example there)for your house you could get that would rock, this directly would eliminate all that amount of coal burning that your previous demand was responsible for, it would add to the demand in general for panels and increase competition and economies of scale (with millions of people taking advantage of that credit), and keep reducing that coal demand for the life of the system, currently 25-30 years and still then at 80% (most new panels today). In other words, a lot. Buhzillions of solar panels would be going up all over, tons of new factories to make them, hundreds of thousands of productive jobs for the factory workers and installers, etc, and the demand for the coal juice would drop exactly as much as the solar production went up, watt hour for watt hour.
To me, I would much prefer the multi year pro rated tax credit, both for individuals and for corporations doing commercial scale (whatever that might be, make it some millions of bucks, 1-5 maybe, the same pro rated for initial deployment), over just slapping a new tax burden on stuff. Both methods are social engineering, this is undebatable, so which suits human nature better and which would be more likely to be adopted at huge scales, and quite willingly and enthusiastically?
We've already seen just partial credits help a lot, these 10-30% credits that exist now, so imagine full 100% multi year pro-rated credits!
I really think it would work a lot better, individuals and companies would just go to the cleaner, more sustainable solutions, given the two choices. With the carbon tax, they are five grand a year, plus rising costs for just about everything, out of pocket..nothing left to invest in cleaner solutions then, they get tapped out, just have to pay more for everything, and all that nasty coal will still get burnt, it just costs more now, but people still need the power, so they will cut someplace else. With the tax, you go broker faster and nothing much happens to the positive for the environment, with the credit, tens of millions go solar (or whatever works for them at their x-y the best).
Are you able to get a contract from your local utility to carve in stone that kilowatt hour price for ten, twenty or thirty years, get it locked in? If so, cool, if not, your figures are an apples and oranges comparison because you have no idea what your centralized grid supplied power will cost in the future. My guess would be..always go up.
Also, prices on panels..there is a theoretical way to get cheaper panels, do a mass bulk group buy and get wholesale instead of retail prices. Once you can deal with the real panel manufacturer instead of some middle man retail, well, it's just loads cheaper. Buy a few at a time, expensive, get a container load..cheaper.
Then there is also the benefit of having on site power that is clean and acts as a whole house UPS system. You get *good* power out of these systems, very clean, better than most grid supplied. This is worth something, along with I have noticed that grid supplied always seems to go out at the most inopportune time, right when you need it the most, cold ice storms (whoops! furnace stops working), heat waves (whoops, no AC or fans available, food melting away in freezer, etc), etc. Hard to put an actual cost figure on that, but it *is* useful to have your power supply better secured.
Been there done that, went through a near week long grid outage, but because the place was mostly PV and batts (all circuits but the ancient outside heatpump), suffered not one second downtime (january ice and windstorm). In fact, I didn't even know the grid was down until the evening, when I noticed all the street lights down in the valley weren't on. A few hours grid downtime ain't bad, but days can start to get really sucky. Doesn't happen all the time, but it does happen across the nation to large segments of the people now and then.
Home produced you are paying a premium partially as it has a more "electricity insurance" benefit than grid supplied. That's worth something, but it is a variable situation to situation.
Another thing about solar PV is that it isn't an either/or situation, you don't have to replace all your needs, you can go one circuit at a time. Example, like noted above, it might be nice if your furnace circuit could stay up, to burn that natgas in your furnace in the winter, or to keep a window fan going in a heat wave, or to power your home office and all your expensive gear (we are geeks, we all appreciate a good UPS system, the benefits there). You can add on more PV powered circuits at your leisure, just start out with a large enough subpanel so you have upgrade room.
So, like today, get one or two circuits, your most critical done, even if it is more expensive. Five ~ ten years down the road, your loot has gone to help fund more R and D and production, now the stuff is cheaper still, and better quality, more efficient. If everyone did this, eventually, it would be really slick, real cost competitive and quite functional. Look at the relatively short time frame when computers were still rare in the home and very expensive, to today, say the last 15 years. Thousands of bucks back then, for slow speed, limited ram and storage, etc, to today a few hundred bucks for systems much better overall. That's what economies of scale can do, once the ball really gets rolling and mass adoption and competition kicks in better.
Yes, like that, thanks for the link. The SSD part needs to be larger though, that's it. All your OS and apps would go on it. I guess you can do that now with just two different drives, put/home on the spinning disk, but that combo drive is interesting, I'll bookmark/retain the info and follow that model. Eventually soon here I need a new drive, that might be it.
So, won't the real future be a combo/hybrid drive that has both technologies in the same unit? Seems to be the SSD is good to run the apps, and the spinning stuff is good-and cheaper- for long term bulk storage. So why not combine the two, with some sort of intelligent control, so the combo drive knows which to use and when?
Anyone using infra red detection goggles/devices will see a very unusual cool spot that stands out against the background (try out some first or second gen goggles some time). And it will be especially noticeable if this cool spot is moving. Good milspec devices like this, to be really stealthy, would detect and measure the surrounding background heat levels and *match them*, like a chameleon matches background visual colors.
I can about guarantee you that once there are a lot of all electric rides out there, the modders and gear heads -watt heads- will go nutz with them. Electric drive lends itself to hot rodding quite well. They already are now, the only way you really can get an all electric ride is either be rich enough for a tesla, or build it yourself, and there are now thousands of home brewed rides out there, the garage hot rodders are the ones already doing it. Electric motors are burn out torque city! Of course they'll be some spiffy street rods.
Well, I live in the heart of what could be considered fairly right wing territory, and I have yet to hear anyone dis the post office or call for its removal. I think you are classifying "blue" area urban rich people millionaires who are globalists anyway, not nationalists, in with the normal regular folks.
There's really a wide range of opinion here, it isn't all conservative or liberal, and globalists are neither, they are monetarists and fascists, they just latch on to whatever support they can get..like Hollywood "blue" liberal millionaires who still want all their profits private, but want government to protect them as well, ie, xxAA type folks. All for liberal causes, like you mention global warming, but it doesn't stop them running Ferrari, private jets, having huge energy hog mansions, etc. Are they the same "liberal" as some college student eating ramen living in a dorm and walking everywhere?
So you can't really generalize all that much. Heck, I am a rural person, socially liberal, and old time civil rights worker back in the day, but economically conservative, enough so that I think bailing out the banks and GM was a horrid idea, it made no sense from either a right nor a left wing view, but again, wanting some control on mega corporations so they don't usurp government. So, mostly hands off..but let them fail when their biz model fails. What does that make me, liberal or conservative? I like green power a *lot*, I think solar power is our only practical fusion power and should be widely adopted, all the way to 100% tax credits, am one of the few people here who bought solar panels instead of some gaming rig or three, but I also think carbon credits and cap and trade "to fight global warming"!! is not only wrong, but insanely wrong and won't do jack squat to save the environment any, just make wall street skunks like goldman sachs richer, like they really need it. To think they have so many greens faked out on this... Am I liberal or conservative?
I could go on with a lot of other examples, but this left/right deal the uber goons keep trying to force people into, like it is carved in stone you must be one "wing" or the other, is quite destructive and is playing into their hands and is part of their "keep the people divided and conquered" routine.
Left and right have no bearing in today's world if you really think about it, it is globalist billionaires who co-opted government versus their prey animals, which is everyone else. *That* is the real political divide, the one worth noting and working against, because it is so inherently unfair and outright criminal how much they control so called "elected" governments. That other crap is what they want to keep most people trapped in, because that means all the victims point fingers at each other constantly, instead of looking just one more step upstream where the real problems occur, and at that level, there is no "left versus right" that exists very much, they all look and act the same at that level, they are the new aristocrats, or what I call the technofeudalists. Back to the casino bank bailouts, when the shrubbery did it, it was a "right wing" gift to some "right wing" billionaires..but then later on mr. party animal did the same thing....see how it doesn't matter, those labels? All part of the big fake out, along with that ludicrous "don't waste your vote"! and only vote for some hand picked for you candidate from the short list of approved and compromised millionaire globalist candidates. Remember when our big fat choice was between skull and bones frat boy millionaire and skull and bones frat boy millionaire?
Anyway, the post office..most real old fashioned "paleo" conservatives (as opposed to neocons) I know support the Constitution and as such, are in favor of the post office and public roads, the "post roads". It's the globalist already billionaires who want privatized everything, and that notion flows downstream from the mega "blue" areas, like NYC and wall street (for the most part and I am really just generally speaking)
That's why I said small and doesn't scale up very far..it doesn't. It still by use and numbers probably is the most used form of government by humans (which is what I meant by successful) if you go back to caveman days to today, the "tribe". As long as they don't try to scale up far, it seems to work better than most other forms. A single family unit is the smallest example of a similar arrangement.
You are missing the point completely. The point was cities exist because we developed a "commons", for the public good so the public pays for it universally approach to necessary infrastructure and utlities and so on, the roads, the power lines in, the piped in water, the centralized electricity delivery, etc. Today, the internet is a necessary infrastructure component, and as such, needs a "commons" approach as well, and it needs to be universal. My beef is with urban greedtards who take advantage of all that other "commons" action, but don't want to extend that to the internet now, because they already got theirs, so their attitude is "fuck them hicks". Well, fuck them right back, I am perfectly willing to go to all private everything to see how "economically cool" cities really are once there are no more commons for all that stuff that gets delivered and piped into them cheaply. Most of the cities would utterly collapse and turn into human cannibal cess pits if they had to really pay real "free market" rates for everything and there was no "commons" approach to their life and living situations.
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Where are you getting this viewpoint from? The average US commute is something like 33-34 miles round trip. A 50-100 mile range electric vehicle would suit those needs just swell, with the added bonus of not concentrating massive amounts of pollution in urban heat trap zones.
Heck, I live out in the sticks, my round trip to town is 26 to 30 miles depending on what stores I need to hit. A 50 mile range light weight small pickup would suit 99% of my needs *right now*, and we have mid range flatbeds and dumptrucks and even some road tractors if I need a bigger truck for the occasional heavy load. Most of the time I get by with a four cylinder diesel datsun pickup 1/2 ton that gets 30-40 MPG.
And with my solar panels, once there are pure electric vehicles beyond sedans, and only needing to travel into town once a week...free fuel for me. I'll wait a few years after I start seeing them, then get a used one. Around the farm, no probs, it's 1.5 miles wide at the widest, meaning I can scoot around here for cheap/free as well (we have a lot of our own gravel roads). Electric works just fine in industry now, plenty of useful and practical all electric vehicles, from forklifts to mining equipment. Smallish electric cars have been used since forever in the form of golf carts. It's the same tech, just scaled up to make a road vehicle.
The prius sold out fast when it was first introduced and still sells well, despite all the naysayers pre release-and I distinctly remember a lot of internet predictions saying 'they wouldn't sell". The tesla at the other end, sells all they make.
I'll make a prediction to counter your opinion..both the nissan leaf (pure electric, mid $20ks) and the chevy volt (extended range plug in hybrid, 41 grand) and the tesla model S sedan (fifty something grand) will sell every single one they first release, and will then have to increase production to meet demand. And then a few years from now the chinese electrics (BYD company at first) will finally hit, and they will come in under 20 grand and sell like freekin mad, and *that* will be when the electric vehicle dam bursts, and you will see them at all price ranges from cheap intro level "your basic ride" to luxury exotic and everything in between, just like today with pure ICE vehicles.
We'll have to wait to see who is correct of course.
Best post of the thread, best use of stats
Ya, pretty radical left, I know....
Thanks for the reply. I have wondered about this for the longest time.
With that said, the slow speed they move at, etc..I guess I would still doubt they would break a tread, or throw a tread, but I do guess weight limitations were a major part of it, along with keeping the design simpler.
I know around here (I live on a large farm), a small crawler can get in and un-stick a very large wheeled vehicle. Just no comparison with traction.
What was their main reasoning for adopting wheels over tracks, given they knew about the terrain in advance?
Normally I am one to not want yet another new law, but I think in this case there should be a law that says these gadget sellers and makers should support their devices for x-years, whether they want to or not, beyond the normal short warranties and covering more stuff. And that would include security fixes. They are obviously just wanting you to trash perfectly functional devices to buy something new all the time.
You can still get partial tax credit for alternate energy production systems, some places have similar for going to an electric car, and it is totally legal to make your own ethanol fuel (you do have to register though and use an additive to make your 'shine undrinkable), or you can make biodiesel, using waste products you scrounge up, or grow your own veggie oil source. So you have the freedom to subsidize yourself, given you just do it.
Like others have pointed out, issue a standard locked down simple calculator just for the tests. That still leaves a niche for all those other times outside of tests where a truly open and easily hackable calculator could have a market.
me = older guy who remembers when we couldn't use our slide rules on tests...and we made real bona fide stinky brand blueprints... and first drew it by hand..and during recess, we practiced our nerd ninja skills by ripping an onion off of our belt, tossing it up in the air, and slicing it cleanly in half with the slide rule edge we had honed down with our teeth....then before the two slices hit the floor, you had to re-scabbard your slide rule sword, draw two mechanical pencils from your pocket protector, one with each hand, and neatly stab the two slices. Then we ate them for lunch.
Kids..they just don't believe a dang thing we say about ye olden days...
Looks to me like a potential good enough niche market for some startup (or a cooperative) to build and sell a really open calculator. And I would guess said designers and builders could come from within that same community, ie, engineers/students/scientists who are already using these high end calculators. That pool of people has the necessary skillset taken as a whole. Electronic pocket calculators have been around a long time, the basic design must be well understood by now. And it seems like if you weren't trying to keep it locked down, the design would be simpler by some not insignificant degree.
thanks man. I've been into alt energy since the late 60s. I am finally getting some satisfaction that after all these years it is starting to crack through some skulls that this is the long term really good solution and the quicker we adopt it en masse and get it going so it can go through faster evolutionary cycles, the better.
Solar is just fantastic, it is working here and now fusion tech,the only one we have. It just ain't gonna get better than that anytime soon. I also like it because it is safe, and no wars over it, and it can't be monopolized, and joe homeowner can actually own the means of production and get one serious bill *paid the heck off*.
It's simple economics, really, once you look at the dollars and how they shift around with a credit. If this money leaving my wallet goes to a solar system via a tax credit (it would be leaving anyway, to disappear into "government" in general where it is ususally half wasted on bullshit, and then some more going to pay for higher electric costs), then it isn't going to the entrenched coal system...it's both really, a punishment and a reward, the coal gets punished because it isn't getting my money now,(now compound that by millions of joe sixpacks doing the same thing with their tax credit) and there is one guy less amount being burnt=better for the environment. The good, the solar, is being rewarded, by being actually purchased, deployed, up and working, tons of new jobs, and every system up is one more systems worth of coal not being burnt, better for the environment. This happens simultaneously.
Go back and research where the carbon tax and cap and trade ideas came from...it comes from the casino banks, from freaking *enron* no shit there, those same gangsters! It's a *conjob* man, a fake out and it has corrupted the green movement really really bad b3ecause they just slap ain't understanding where the con came from and it was packaged really really slick.
A tax credit rewards joe sixpack immediately, or joe responsible energy company immediately, and it takes money away from the entrenched monopoly energy cartels. I see no downside to it at all. A carbon tax just keeps the same fatcats in power, and they will just raise rates, pass the tax right on down the line to the watt buyer, you know it, it will happen, nature of the beast. That's it. The same amount of coal will get burnt, the same rich farts get richer. Our goal is to change that, so starve that beast of its income by switching the payments to alternatives. It will wither off and croak from that *if* the alternatives are adopted, and the 100% tax credit is by far and away the easiest way to do that for most guys. They won't have to come up with one single teeny extra penny, they are spending the same they always were, now it is just going to some solar, instead of to the coal electric company or disappear into government who knows what they do with it land. I mean..this is the freekin bee's knees! One of the few times yu'ou can have your cake and eat it, too.
It's great, it works, we had something very like this in the 80s (the tax credit, Carter legacy, expired in 84) and I was selling some solar then. A great story. My first call was an *accountant*. He didn't want to listen to my dog and pony show schtick, he goes, "lemme see the contract".. A coupla minutes later, he signs the thing! I am flabbergasted, he goes "free stuff for me, this is a serious no brainer" paraphrased.
He knew exactly what I have been saying, if the government winds up with a lot of your loot every tax season, after everything else, the tax credit lets you re-purpose it into something that gets to be YOURS, plus, its a good deal for the climate and so on. I mean..it's cool man, it really works and could work a lot better if they went 100% instead of like 10, 20, 30% like now. The credit is an *incentive*, and a full 100%, that's a HELLA incentive!
Those are still carrots or the stick examples. "Investing" in research by the government is done with tax money, it's a tax, the stick. Writing a law against something is the stick, BAM, you can't do that. Allowing some research to go forward, by encouraging it with a tax credit, that's a carrot. It's just variations on social engineering, and there are still only two basic ways they can do that, bribe or punish, tax or not-tax.
Go buy one, they start out cheap, great fun! A boy and his welder opens up a lot of possibilities. I still medium suck at it, but I still plug away at it and learn new things all the time. Right now all I have is an old electric welder, but I'd like to get into the other forms as well. Mostly today I just do necessary repairs on our equipment, but eventually I want to build interesting stuff from scratch, like some time build a small (what they term "compact" sized) electric tractor, where heavy battery weight, using (relatively, as opposed to lithium type) cheap lead acid batts, would be a plus, not a detriment, in function. Either pure electric, or diesel electric hybrid, haven't made up my mind yet. Proly just pure electric, much cheaper to start out with.
Most of the rest of the nation is plain *revolted* at that entire casino scam industry and the huge wealth they skim out of the economy.
They need to slap the local sales tax on these high speed trades, just for a starter. They insist on calling those BS gambling games "financial products", fine, let them be treated like any other "product" and apply the sales tax to them. It's not "investment" anymore, it's just gambling.
And before anyone says "but, but, we need this and.."" chuck you farley, if it worked, and really helped the economy, they wouldn't have needed that bailout, now would they? Admit reality, it's a harmful conjob "industry". It's a broken, crooked, rigged, screwed up system and needs to be knocked down about 18 pegs or so, the whole ball game there is WAY overpaid for what they do, not just those poor 150 grand programmers.
You wouldn't be paying for my things, the things you are saying are "bad", I'd be paying for an improvement in energy production, which means I am *not* paying for the thing you are against, because I would then *not be using that product*, I'd be using the new better product, in this case, the switch from coal burning, and all the costs you mention, to solar, which has little of the downside coal has.. Both sides win under a tax credit, I win, you win, plus the environment gets cleaner.
I'll turn it around, why do you not want me to switch to solar, when with a pro rated ten year tax credit, this could be possible? You want me to stay stuck on coal brand electricity, just pay a lot more for it, because of the externalities which I admit exist readily, or to actually switch completely off coal? That's my point, what is the *real* goal? Just pay more to keep using coal, or like I suggest, take that money and go directly to solar, and do it quite willingly, and wind up owning the means of production, rather than renting my grid infrastructure forever, where the costs just go up, and you never get to own anything?
Me, I'd rather dump the coal, and go to solar, given the two choices. Your method keeps me stuck on coal, just costs more than, because there's no extra loot for doing anything else then. If you make the coal just way more expensive, I won't have the money to go to solar, because I'll be stuck in an endless loop of paying for the more expensive now coal, which is still being burnt.
You are talking to one of *the* biggest alternative energy enthusiasts and proponents on this board, and I tell you, the carbon tax is the worst way to achieve the goal of getting away from burning nasty stuff. Offering full tax credits for the alternatives is by far and away the fastest, easiest and cheapest way to slide away from the fossil fuel economy to a renewable and cleaner energy economy.
We just have two differing philosophies headed towards the same goal, you want to punish the bad, I prefer to route around/bypass/shun the bad and reward the good, and do that directly and as soon as possible. We can recognize that what we did in the past wasn't all that swift, and we need to do something better in the future, but the money has to come from somewhere, ultimately, the tax payer and energy buyer. Spend the effort and all the money in punishing, there isn't as much left to reward. It's really simple. If my x-amount of money is going to go someplace, I would much rather it go directly to the solution, not just to punish the problem. The problem will be solved once the solution is implemented. Punishing the problem will not pay for any solution, it will just delay it and make it cost way way more than it needs to be.
Governments can only do two things, tax or not-tax, offer a credit. They both are examples of social engineering, but one is a lot more palatable to people than the other, because it really is the carrot-reward, or stick-punish system. that's it.
A hypothetical then to achieve this goal of cleaner renewable energy sources, by reducing demand and use of the dirtier sources.
Say you are joe blow, make fifty grand a year, and after all other deductions and whatnot, the government still walks off with five grand every year. On top of that, you buy stuff, stuff that uses energy to get made, including a lot of nasty coal that stinks up the air and has a negative effect on climate and so on, all in all, we agree it is bad news in mass quantities..
A carbon tax increases what you have to pay, this is the main point of it, increase the costs to discourage use. These companies are in no manner going to eat any new tax, they just will pass it on to the end user. Nature of the beast. OK, that is the stick method. You are still out five grand taxes, plus now a lot of your stuff costs more, so you went negative after this new carbon tax gets put in. And all the coal is still being burnt.
Now, the carrot method. The government offers a five grand tax credit for *you* to use for personal alternative energy stuff, or perhaps for retrofitting a lot more insulation or what not. So now you have a choice, let the government take that five grand, or you get to spend it, and directly improve your economic and comfort bottom line, whilst also doing your personal fair share of improving the environment.
Which would you pick then? I know I'd take the tax credit over the carbon tax and the rising cost of goods. I think most people would, and it would probably result in much faster uptake and use of the alternative cleaner and more long term carbon neutral methods.
Now say the same five grand credit was pro rated, and you could use it for five to ten years. Now you are talking some serious loot, at ten years, that's a *fifty grand* solar system (random example there)for your house you could get that would rock, this directly would eliminate all that amount of coal burning that your previous demand was responsible for, it would add to the demand in general for panels and increase competition and economies of scale (with millions of people taking advantage of that credit), and keep reducing that coal demand for the life of the system, currently 25-30 years and still then at 80% (most new panels today). In other words, a lot. Buhzillions of solar panels would be going up all over, tons of new factories to make them, hundreds of thousands of productive jobs for the factory workers and installers, etc, and the demand for the coal juice would drop exactly as much as the solar production went up, watt hour for watt hour.
To me, I would much prefer the multi year pro rated tax credit, both for individuals and for corporations doing commercial scale (whatever that might be, make it some millions of bucks, 1-5 maybe, the same pro rated for initial deployment), over just slapping a new tax burden on stuff. Both methods are social engineering, this is undebatable, so which suits human nature better and which would be more likely to be adopted at huge scales, and quite willingly and enthusiastically?
We've already seen just partial credits help a lot, these 10-30% credits that exist now, so imagine full 100% multi year pro-rated credits!
I really think it would work a lot better, individuals and companies would just go to the cleaner, more sustainable solutions, given the two choices. With the carbon tax, they are five grand a year, plus rising costs for just about everything, out of pocket..nothing left to invest in cleaner solutions then, they get tapped out, just have to pay more for everything, and all that nasty coal will still get burnt, it just costs more now, but people still need the power, so they will cut someplace else. With the tax, you go broker faster and nothing much happens to the positive for the environment, with the credit, tens of millions go solar (or whatever works for them at their x-y the best).
Are you able to get a contract from your local utility to carve in stone that kilowatt hour price for ten, twenty or thirty years, get it locked in? If so, cool, if not, your figures are an apples and oranges comparison because you have no idea what your centralized grid supplied power will cost in the future. My guess would be..always go up.
Also, prices on panels..there is a theoretical way to get cheaper panels, do a mass bulk group buy and get wholesale instead of retail prices. Once you can deal with the real panel manufacturer instead of some middle man retail, well, it's just loads cheaper. Buy a few at a time, expensive, get a container load..cheaper.
Then there is also the benefit of having on site power that is clean and acts as a whole house UPS system. You get *good* power out of these systems, very clean, better than most grid supplied. This is worth something, along with I have noticed that grid supplied always seems to go out at the most inopportune time, right when you need it the most, cold ice storms (whoops! furnace stops working), heat waves (whoops, no AC or fans available, food melting away in freezer, etc), etc. Hard to put an actual cost figure on that, but it *is* useful to have your power supply better secured.
Been there done that, went through a near week long grid outage, but because the place was mostly PV and batts (all circuits but the ancient outside heatpump), suffered not one second downtime (january ice and windstorm). In fact, I didn't even know the grid was down until the evening, when I noticed all the street lights down in the valley weren't on. A few hours grid downtime ain't bad, but days can start to get really sucky. Doesn't happen all the time, but it does happen across the nation to large segments of the people now and then.
Home produced you are paying a premium partially as it has a more "electricity insurance" benefit than grid supplied. That's worth something, but it is a variable situation to situation.
Another thing about solar PV is that it isn't an either/or situation, you don't have to replace all your needs, you can go one circuit at a time. Example, like noted above, it might be nice if your furnace circuit could stay up, to burn that natgas in your furnace in the winter, or to keep a window fan going in a heat wave, or to power your home office and all your expensive gear (we are geeks, we all appreciate a good UPS system, the benefits there). You can add on more PV powered circuits at your leisure, just start out with a large enough subpanel so you have upgrade room.
So, like today, get one or two circuits, your most critical done, even if it is more expensive. Five ~ ten years down the road, your loot has gone to help fund more R and D and production, now the stuff is cheaper still, and better quality, more efficient. If everyone did this, eventually, it would be really slick, real cost competitive and quite functional. Look at the relatively short time frame when computers were still rare in the home and very expensive, to today, say the last 15 years. Thousands of bucks back then, for slow speed, limited ram and storage, etc, to today a few hundred bucks for systems much better overall. That's what economies of scale can do, once the ball really gets rolling and mass adoption and competition kicks in better.
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Yes, like that, thanks for the link. The SSD part needs to be larger though, that's it. All your OS and apps would go on it. I guess you can do that now with just two different drives, put /home on the spinning disk, but that combo drive is interesting, I'll bookmark/retain the info and follow that model. Eventually soon here I need a new drive, that might be it.
So, won't the real future be a combo/hybrid drive that has both technologies in the same unit? Seems to be the SSD is good to run the apps, and the spinning stuff is good-and cheaper- for long term bulk storage. So why not combine the two, with some sort of intelligent control, so the combo drive knows which to use and when?
Anyone using infra red detection goggles/devices will see a very unusual cool spot that stands out against the background (try out some first or second gen goggles some time). And it will be especially noticeable if this cool spot is moving. Good milspec devices like this, to be really stealthy, would detect and measure the surrounding background heat levels and *match them*, like a chameleon matches background visual colors.
I can about guarantee you that once there are a lot of all electric rides out there, the modders and gear heads -watt heads- will go nutz with them. Electric drive lends itself to hot rodding quite well. They already are now, the only way you really can get an all electric ride is either be rich enough for a tesla, or build it yourself, and there are now thousands of home brewed rides out there, the garage hot rodders are the ones already doing it. Electric motors are burn out torque city! Of course they'll be some spiffy street rods.
Well, I live in the heart of what could be considered fairly right wing territory, and I have yet to hear anyone dis the post office or call for its removal. I think you are classifying "blue" area urban rich people millionaires who are globalists anyway, not nationalists, in with the normal regular folks.
There's really a wide range of opinion here, it isn't all conservative or liberal, and globalists are neither, they are monetarists and fascists, they just latch on to whatever support they can get..like Hollywood "blue" liberal millionaires who still want all their profits private, but want government to protect them as well, ie, xxAA type folks. All for liberal causes, like you mention global warming, but it doesn't stop them running Ferrari, private jets, having huge energy hog mansions, etc. Are they the same "liberal" as some college student eating ramen living in a dorm and walking everywhere?
So you can't really generalize all that much. Heck, I am a rural person, socially liberal, and old time civil rights worker back in the day, but economically conservative, enough so that I think bailing out the banks and GM was a horrid idea, it made no sense from either a right nor a left wing view, but again, wanting some control on mega corporations so they don't usurp government. So, mostly hands off..but let them fail when their biz model fails. What does that make me, liberal or conservative? I like green power a *lot*, I think solar power is our only practical fusion power and should be widely adopted, all the way to 100% tax credits, am one of the few people here who bought solar panels instead of some gaming rig or three, but I also think carbon credits and cap and trade "to fight global warming"!! is not only wrong, but insanely wrong and won't do jack squat to save the environment any, just make wall street skunks like goldman sachs richer, like they really need it. To think they have so many greens faked out on this... Am I liberal or conservative?
I could go on with a lot of other examples, but this left/right deal the uber goons keep trying to force people into, like it is carved in stone you must be one "wing" or the other, is quite destructive and is playing into their hands and is part of their "keep the people divided and conquered" routine.
Left and right have no bearing in today's world if you really think about it, it is globalist billionaires who co-opted government versus their prey animals, which is everyone else. *That* is the real political divide, the one worth noting and working against, because it is so inherently unfair and outright criminal how much they control so called "elected" governments. That other crap is what they want to keep most people trapped in, because that means all the victims point fingers at each other constantly, instead of looking just one more step upstream where the real problems occur, and at that level, there is no "left versus right" that exists very much, they all look and act the same at that level, they are the new aristocrats, or what I call the technofeudalists. Back to the casino bank bailouts, when the shrubbery did it, it was a "right wing" gift to some "right wing" billionaires..but then later on mr. party animal did the same thing....see how it doesn't matter, those labels? All part of the big fake out, along with that ludicrous "don't waste your vote"! and only vote for some hand picked for you candidate from the short list of approved and compromised millionaire globalist candidates. Remember when our big fat choice was between skull and bones frat boy millionaire and skull and bones frat boy millionaire?
Anyway, the post office..most real old fashioned "paleo" conservatives (as opposed to neocons) I know support the Constitution and as such, are in favor of the post office and public roads, the "post roads". It's the globalist already billionaires who want privatized everything, and that notion flows downstream from the mega "blue" areas, like NYC and wall street (for the most part and I am really just generally speaking)
That's why I said small and doesn't scale up very far..it doesn't. It still by use and numbers probably is the most used form of government by humans (which is what I meant by successful) if you go back to caveman days to today, the "tribe". As long as they don't try to scale up far, it seems to work better than most other forms. A single family unit is the smallest example of a similar arrangement.
You are missing the point completely. The point was cities exist because we developed a "commons", for the public good so the public pays for it universally approach to necessary infrastructure and utlities and so on, the roads, the power lines in, the piped in water, the centralized electricity delivery, etc. Today, the internet is a necessary infrastructure component, and as such, needs a "commons" approach as well, and it needs to be universal. My beef is with urban greedtards who take advantage of all that other "commons" action, but don't want to extend that to the internet now, because they already got theirs, so their attitude is "fuck them hicks". Well, fuck them right back, I am perfectly willing to go to all private everything to see how "economically cool" cities really are once there are no more commons for all that stuff that gets delivered and piped into them cheaply. Most of the cities would utterly collapse and turn into human cannibal cess pits if they had to really pay real "free market" rates for everything and there was no "commons" approach to their life and living situations.