...a yard boy? muahahahahaha! I guess you rake in just a *scosh* more BernankeBingoBux than I do! I can afford a Tesla..Tonka! Anyway, sounds like you got that covered. Now do the whole house battery/UPS deal. Go ahead, I'll spend your money for ya!
...for a plugin hybrid or pure electric car. One cent a kilowatt hour is dang hard to beat. Heck, even going to a whole house battery system (as an alternative to the car, which are still mostly unobtanium or real pricey like a Tesla), you might come out ahead by just charging up a battery bank at night and using the juice during the day, plus, it gives you a whole house UPS system (or individual circuits of your choice, such as for the fridge/freezer/ or furnace for ice storms when the lines go down from tree branches, the home office, etc).
I want one that snaps into a netbook sized device (giving you a bigger battery, a bigger screen and keyboard and perhaps some more flash memory), or a laptop (ability to access optical drives, longer battery life, etc), or expand that laptop like it is a dock to make it a desktop with full sized monitor and keyboard and good mouse. The same basic unit, but highly modular. A very portable computer that functions as a cellphone, or "other" depending on what is is snapped into to and what accessories are then present. *That* would be a slick little gadget, and once it was attached to another thing, you'd have two or even three screens!
And also we were the first family in the whole neighborhood to even have a TV. I get black and white dreams mostly (well over 95%, something like that), rarely once in a great while in color (that I remember anyway), with the caveat I am red/green deficient, but see colors well enough to identify the basic roygbiv deal if they are truly vibrant enough. So, that's my anecdotal to add to the study. Not sure on total viewing time of tv back then, coupla hours a night I guess (not a whole lot of viewing choices back then, made it easier to not watch much once the novelty of it wore off)(and bring back cool radio, that was nice), a little more on the weekends, but I do know I spent more time reading during childhood evening hours than watching TV, and was outside a whole lot during the day, as much as possible, which continues to this day, doing outside work mostly. So, to really round it off, call it back in childhood being exposed to a half black and white "world" while awake, half color, something like that (books=b/w as well obviously, so school and personal reading pleasure was a lot less colorful). And this is interesting, I never bothered to ask other boomers what color they dreamt in, except right now, I will ask my GF, she is similar age...she reports about half and half, color and b/w dreaming, and she has perfectly fine sense of color, like most women. So something causes the b/w dreaming, maybe the TV and alpha brainwaves caused that, especially in children when their minds are being formed so fast.
In case you missed it, the entire article is about them having problems with money and expenses. We wouldn't even be reading this now if that wasn't happening, and they are in silicon valley, so that blows that argument that just being there is some automagical guarantee of success and immediate profitability. And that is partially because of their location, it is just way expensive there. The whole state is grossly expensive, they are bankrupt at the governmental level and are having a lot of "problems" at the private level, and are having to go hat in hand for a federal government bailout now. And to say VC money is only available in sillyconvalley is ludicrous, projects go in and get funded all over the planet Earth, and to say there only exists "talent" in siliconvalley is again, ludicrous, in fact that is beyond ludicrous. And for that matter, they could say to their current employees "two choices, we stay as a company, but we are moving to a place with a lot lower cost of living and cost of operations, so you can keep your jobs if you agree to move and take a paycut that will still be quite snazzy for the new area, OR, *not*, here's todays newspaper with the help wanted ads, have fun with your million dollar mortgage you still have 29 more years to go on and this unemployment check".
And I honestly don't think Tesla, with what they have so developed far, would have any problem whatsoever hiring "talent", no matter where they are located.
Cheaper electric cars that *will* sell mass market will be coming from where all the other cheaper electronic devices come from, China. [ shameless plug for illustration purposes;) ] As long as they are good enough for commuting purposes, range of around 50 to 60 miles, and they can keep up with normal traffic, they'll sell. And that will fund interest and more R&D and so on and they'll get better. And project better place is moving right along as well, with nissan/renault as the manufacturer. The electric car industry has passed critical mass when it comes to global interest, and is now in the early development and deployment stages. There's enough interest out there now and the tech is "good enough" to get going with it. You have to start someplace.
Tesla is an interesting company and could probably do well, but right off the bat, as they are first starting out, they need to get the heck out of expensive California, maybe just maintain a sales office there. They could drop their costs as regards their buildings and what they need to pay for salaries, etc, just by moving to a *much* cheaper state. I think there's a sound reason the Japanese automakers, when they setup shop in the US, choose "flyover" country. There's little physical need to be in $illycon valley when we have the internet now, they can maintain all the contacts they need there electronically for the most part.
I looked through the tech specs on the thing and noticed one omission-it doesn't have just a normal "real" radio in it for getting free OTA broadcasts, AM/FM, which would be a nice addition as long as it is being touted as a smart phone capable of a lot of functions.
It stops being "backed by property" when they count that property x-times more via leveraging with sliced up diced and blended derivatives. 100-1 or 200-1 does not make 200 more magical properties. The notion that literally 10 to 20 more sets of mega profits could be built on top of one mortgage payment going upstream and changing hands constantly is insane. And a lot of contrarian/austrian school economists kept pointing this out while it was happening, but see, we let the same guys who profit from this run the oversight, look who gets hired to run the central bank money creation system and the US treasury-the same fools from the same firms who need bailing out now. The old phrase letting the foxes guard the henhouse comes to mind. They knew this would happen, but as long as "their guys" are in charge, they can issue scary decrees and threaten to collapse the financial system unless they get trillions more money "backed" by tax payer labor, ie, perpetual debt of the people to the overlords.
It's a conjob and has always been a conjob. It is the highest of stakes protection racket among other high level crimes.
A 500 buck cheap laptop today IS a cheap "all in one" from just a couple of years ago or so, which means it is perfectly fine except for most uses except extreme high end new games (mostly). You can still run a full size monitor and keyboard and a real mouse from them. Bonus extra screen and built in UPS that lasts for hours, not minutes!
That's a business decision designed on purpose to make people want to upgrade more often than they need to. "oh well, this battery sucks now and the new models are out anyway, and..." That's how that works. Even larger ticket items with batteries like laptops that still have a good used market are almost invariably sold when the built in batteries are mostly hosed, it's a psychological deal there. Especially when the OEM replacement battery is half what the unit is worth, or even more. A variant on planned obsolescence. Anytime there is a hassle for user serviceability with any appliance or gadget, look in that direction. Look at cellphones, this is common as anything, the batteries can typically cost more than another brand new cheap phone of similar make/model. Here's a better analogy, inkjet printers and replacement carts. I don't know how many people just go get another cheap as heck printer once they get sticker shock on a black and white and color cartridge, compared to the cost of yet another cheap inkjet. I know it is false economy, but these manufacturers always seem to do this with parts and so on. I've never done the study but it would be intertesting to say take a car, and see how much it would cost to recreate it all with replacement parts at normal car parts store and then at dealers retail prices. I bet a 20 grand car would cost over a hundred grand if you tried to build one that way.
Anyway, I like that they are forcing the issue, sealed blackbox gadgets are not any sort of fav for me, just gives me the creeps being a long time nerd and tinkerer. If I can't open it up and play, I don't want the dang thing (probably why I don't own an ipod or iphone). I remember a long time ago going out and getting a long torx screwdriver just so I could take my mac (first computer I owned) 512k apart (still have it, BTW). That was annoying. Couldn't just use a normal phillips or anything. Just wanted to see the inside, hated not being able to do it easier without a special tool. Hate that "special tool" nonsense that manufacturers love..anything to gouge a few more pennies out of you or make it a hassle so you use their "special" repair shops.
They are bred for docility and for large and fast weight gain and huge milk production. Docility is number one though, you can't do squat with a really wild cow (total range cows excluded, they are all mostly wild) I have an eastern perspective on this, and a small herd that are traditional barbed wire fenced in. I have one now, pretty wild and suspicious, takes me forever to lure it into the barn/corral in order to deal with it, like de worming, etc.. The rest, tame enough, come when they are called-literally, I just yell at them to come on in. I make a point every new calf to go up to them and rub them a lot and get them to smell me and be around me for the first week, momma willing of course, most put up with it because we get along OK, and it works, they get and stay at least half tame-to me anyway, not to anyone else around here. Dairy cows I have worked with, about as tame as puppies, most of them anyway, because they are handled daily and want to be milked, they line up for it. As to smarts a big variable there, I've seen some pretty sharp ones then some walking vegetables, the majority are in between. Lot of folks around the world still use oxen for working, singly or in teams, they tame up and are smart enough to be reliable enough for that sort of thing. I was going to do that myself, but haven't had a good set of bull twins yet.
Sort of what I thought was happening because they aren't showing up in any of the usual places that handle refurbed laptops. At least I haven't seen them yet, looked a couple of times since the big netbook thing hit with the eee. I've seen *used* but not factory refurbs with warranties. Ergo, being repackaged as "new".
Personally, I don't want to hear a peep out of any congress weasel who voted for it, or business goon who wanted it (or takes the cash), about "free markets" and "capitalism", because this bill is neither. Those people are big fat hypocritical liars.
Really, trees are just a much better idea. Lumber is better to store carbon from trees. We still have hundreds of millions of people living in cardboard and tincan shacks around the planet. I think it would be borderline socially criminal to bury trees instead of providing cheap lumber universally for construction. And properly made wooden houses can last a long time if they are a foot or better off the ground and away from termites. Heck, the US is still a young nation compared to nations in europe, and I have lived in still very good shape wooden homes built in the 1700s in New England. Very common. That's a long time to have stable and useful stored carbon. And having to use electricity for these manufactured devices when so many are still using oil lamps and such? Again, borderline socially criminal. Spend the manufacturing effort in building better solar PV and wind chargers and get them out there to people cheap, folks who don't have any power now, or just very expensive power.
And large trees left alone-the ones you don't harvest for lumber, say nut producing trees- can last hundreds of years. They could store the excess carbon at least until then, and by then maybe we will have better technical climate and energy solutions-one would hope anyway.
Anyway, for those reasons and more, I vote no on building millions of manufactured co2 suckers. Plant trees, so we can house people, provide food and fuel, help to rectify desertification, increase local water supply, provide cooling shade and cold wind blocks-trees are just spiffy. Hey, "solar powered".
Just saying I am not too concerned over changing the albedo with massive solar pv deployment, all the black roofs covered might be a good first test, if the effects are even measurable.
I'm not seeing any big problem throwing black solar panels on top of already mostly black roofs. Black shingles or tar and gravel on flat roofs, makes little difference if there's a panel there or not - except you get a lot more electricity with the panels;) - and for that matter, they have total roofing panels now, the panel *is* the roof. Big @$$ wind chargers are better for centralized power, solar PV is better for smaller scale de-centralized power, IMO, in most but not all circumstances, some places just don't have the wind, no way around that. Where I live wind power just sucks, but solar rocks, that's why my wind charger isn't even installed, but my panels are up working. That's PV, solar thermal, probably better as centralized large scale once you are dealing with high pressure and hot fluids or gases and turbines, etc. PV is about as simple as it gets once it is installed. As to total surface area needed, let's see how covering the roofs go first, only a few tens of millions of roofs more to go so far...
Ya,solar power works well in space, but you'd need a few quadrillion dollars to get any usable amounts up there and use microwave power transmission for back to earth. It is a non starter for a few more generations methinks...it will become practical once the space elevator is working, but not before that. It's dandy to run space stations though.
a slightly larger OLPC XO, with their nifty screen advantage, with at least two gigs of ram, 10-20 gigs of flash, and the original idea of an additional crank charger built in. And wireless, including a place for a SIM card. And it can run any modern linux or bsd distro, it doesn't need any sort of special tweaked version.
To me a netbook is-should be- like a wide PDA and phone combo. You should have the ability to access any sort of network, wired or wireless, and it is a full computer with a "big enough" keyboard so it doesn't completely suck. Ya, it will mission creep to small "normal" laptop/notebook size, oh well, that's around the sweet spot I think that balances very portable plus very practical, somewhere around a ten inch screen, that allows for a more normal sized keyboard as well.
Solar power is the only form of practical fusion power we have now, it is likely to be the only form of practical fusion power for the next several decades at least, and it scales from small dedicated solar powered devices to multiple megawatt sized solar farms. As for it being 24/7 we don't need that so much, the grid itself doesn't run peak capacity 24/7. We typically get larger demands during the heat (and sunshine) of mid day, when solar really rocks. As an adjunct to what we have now, a few billion panels more out on roofs all over would negate the need to build so many more fossil fuel plants, especially those "peaker" plants, and once you start talking billions of panels, economies of scale cost savings kick in and more R&D will come with it. You as joe sixpack also get to own it, compared to leasing your infrastructure with an open ended contract from the power company. Something else to consider if one wants to build equity instead of renting forever, and to have a supply independent of the vagaries of power politics and the rigged energy market.
Solar PV since its invention has dropped from thousands of dollars per watt to now under 4 bucks. This is not insignificant and is an indication of the direction it has been going. We are *this close* to having it being really cheap.
Diversified energy sources all contributing is the "silver bullet" energy solution, there isn't going to be any single "one" type of energy source in our immediate future that will cover all needs. Solar has a prominent place in the mix and could be more widely used (as some nations are doing right now, the US lags quite a bit in that regard).
In fact, this thread is about google looking for new ideas, solar is a good enough idea for them that they have already dumped some millions into it for their own purposes.
..on this thread as well, the cameras on phones suck but it would be nice if they didn't suck. So here's a business plan for a niche gadget: a decent digital camera that has a built in simple cellphone. Put the emphasis where it is wanted.
I have an old sony watchman black and white handheld portable analog TV and it is the *best* TV I have ever owned for reception, and all it has is a rod antenna! I can sit inside with storms going on outside and get several stations clear, long after the big TV with the outside antenna is reduced to ghosts and static and whitenoise. And yep, I haven't seen any sort of digital replacement for that sort of purpose yet, short of having a big inverter and a battery to run one of the newer digital TVs. And I have no idea why they aren't on the market yet, seems a natural for that emergency/storms/camping niche. Or maybe they are and I haven't seen one yet, don't know. Man, sony used to make good stuff, the best car radio I ever had for reception was a sony as well. No idea what happened to them, they just went downhill bad the past buncha years now, both in quality and in being stupid jerks in general.
You mean for the analog to digital converters? I suppose so, but sort of chintzy. I would much rather-just a for instance from the FCC, YMMV- to legally be able to put up a micro AM or FM radio station-say even just 10 or 20 watts- and be able to run commercials on it, or even a SSB on the shortwave without having to pay ridiculous monthly fees. I mean, how "crowded" is shortwave now? As it stands, you have your choice of either being a millionaire or a millionaire to have any sort of practical at least might pay for itself radio station.
My point was the alleged public government sells stuff to cartels or monopolies all the time and calls that a good deal for the consumer, and I think it sure ain't. Look at the chump change we get for oil and natural gas taken off of public lands, and even then it isn't audited, they just take their word for it how much is pumped out. That should go instead to a national coop type structure, and people could at least get a certain small monthly fuel allowance at cost or damn near. The NASA patents were already paid for, they should just release them to the public gratis, see what people can do with them.
Slashdot Mirror
...a yard boy? muahahahahaha! I guess you rake in just a *scosh* more BernankeBingoBux than I do! I can afford a Tesla..Tonka! Anyway, sounds like you got that covered. Now do the whole house battery/UPS deal. Go ahead, I'll spend your money for ya!
...for a plugin hybrid or pure electric car. One cent a kilowatt hour is dang hard to beat. Heck, even going to a whole house battery system (as an alternative to the car, which are still mostly unobtanium or real pricey like a Tesla), you might come out ahead by just charging up a battery bank at night and using the juice during the day, plus, it gives you a whole house UPS system (or individual circuits of your choice, such as for the fridge/freezer/ or furnace for ice storms when the lines go down from tree branches, the home office, etc).
I want one that snaps into a netbook sized device (giving you a bigger battery, a bigger screen and keyboard and perhaps some more flash memory), or a laptop (ability to access optical drives, longer battery life, etc), or expand that laptop like it is a dock to make it a desktop with full sized monitor and keyboard and good mouse. The same basic unit, but highly modular. A very portable computer that functions as a cellphone, or "other" depending on what is is snapped into to and what accessories are then present. *That* would be a slick little gadget, and once it was attached to another thing, you'd have two or even three screens!
And also we were the first family in the whole neighborhood to even have a TV. I get black and white dreams mostly (well over 95%, something like that), rarely once in a great while in color (that I remember anyway), with the caveat I am red/green deficient, but see colors well enough to identify the basic roygbiv deal if they are truly vibrant enough. So, that's my anecdotal to add to the study. Not sure on total viewing time of tv back then, coupla hours a night I guess (not a whole lot of viewing choices back then, made it easier to not watch much once the novelty of it wore off)(and bring back cool radio, that was nice), a little more on the weekends, but I do know I spent more time reading during childhood evening hours than watching TV, and was outside a whole lot during the day, as much as possible, which continues to this day, doing outside work mostly. So, to really round it off, call it back in childhood being exposed to a half black and white "world" while awake, half color, something like that (books=b/w as well obviously, so school and personal reading pleasure was a lot less colorful). And this is interesting, I never bothered to ask other boomers what color they dreamt in, except right now, I will ask my GF, she is similar age...she reports about half and half, color and b/w dreaming, and she has perfectly fine sense of color, like most women. So something causes the b/w dreaming, maybe the TV and alpha brainwaves caused that, especially in children when their minds are being formed so fast.
In case you missed it, the entire article is about them having problems with money and expenses. We wouldn't even be reading this now if that wasn't happening, and they are in silicon valley, so that blows that argument that just being there is some automagical guarantee of success and immediate profitability. And that is partially because of their location, it is just way expensive there. The whole state is grossly expensive, they are bankrupt at the governmental level and are having a lot of "problems" at the private level, and are having to go hat in hand for a federal government bailout now. And to say VC money is only available in sillyconvalley is ludicrous, projects go in and get funded all over the planet Earth, and to say there only exists "talent" in siliconvalley is again, ludicrous, in fact that is beyond ludicrous. And for that matter, they could say to their current employees "two choices, we stay as a company, but we are moving to a place with a lot lower cost of living and cost of operations, so you can keep your jobs if you agree to move and take a paycut that will still be quite snazzy for the new area, OR, *not*, here's todays newspaper with the help wanted ads, have fun with your million dollar mortgage you still have 29 more years to go on and this unemployment check".
And I honestly don't think Tesla, with what they have so developed far, would have any problem whatsoever hiring "talent", no matter where they are located.
Cheaper electric cars that *will* sell mass market will be coming from where all the other cheaper electronic devices come from, China. [ shameless plug for illustration purposes ;) ] As long as they are good enough for commuting purposes, range of around 50 to 60 miles, and they can keep up with normal traffic, they'll sell. And that will fund interest and more R&D and so on and they'll get better. And project better place is moving right along as well, with nissan/renault as the manufacturer. The electric car industry has passed critical mass when it comes to global interest, and is now in the early development and deployment stages. There's enough interest out there now and the tech is "good enough" to get going with it. You have to start someplace.
Tesla is an interesting company and could probably do well, but right off the bat, as they are first starting out, they need to get the heck out of expensive California, maybe just maintain a sales office there. They could drop their costs as regards their buildings and what they need to pay for salaries, etc, just by moving to a *much* cheaper state. I think there's a sound reason the Japanese automakers, when they setup shop in the US, choose "flyover" country. There's little physical need to be in $illycon valley when we have the internet now, they can maintain all the contacts they need there electronically for the most part.
Detroit big three and bailouts
I looked through the tech specs on the thing and noticed one omission-it doesn't have just a normal "real" radio in it for getting free OTA broadcasts, AM/FM, which would be a nice addition as long as it is being touted as a smart phone capable of a lot of functions.
It stops being "backed by property" when they count that property x-times more via leveraging with sliced up diced and blended derivatives. 100-1 or 200-1 does not make 200 more magical properties. The notion that literally 10 to 20 more sets of mega profits could be built on top of one mortgage payment going upstream and changing hands constantly is insane. And a lot of contrarian/austrian school economists kept pointing this out while it was happening, but see, we let the same guys who profit from this run the oversight, look who gets hired to run the central bank money creation system and the US treasury-the same fools from the same firms who need bailing out now. The old phrase letting the foxes guard the henhouse comes to mind. They knew this would happen, but as long as "their guys" are in charge, they can issue scary decrees and threaten to collapse the financial system unless they get trillions more money "backed" by tax payer labor, ie, perpetual debt of the people to the overlords.
It's a conjob and has always been a conjob. It is the highest of stakes protection racket among other high level crimes.
A 500 buck cheap laptop today IS a cheap "all in one" from just a couple of years ago or so, which means it is perfectly fine except for most uses except extreme high end new games (mostly). You can still run a full size monitor and keyboard and a real mouse from them. Bonus extra screen and built in UPS that lasts for hours, not minutes!
That's a business decision designed on purpose to make people want to upgrade more often than they need to. "oh well, this battery sucks now and the new models are out anyway, and..." That's how that works. Even larger ticket items with batteries like laptops that still have a good used market are almost invariably sold when the built in batteries are mostly hosed, it's a psychological deal there. Especially when the OEM replacement battery is half what the unit is worth, or even more. A variant on planned obsolescence. Anytime there is a hassle for user serviceability with any appliance or gadget, look in that direction. Look at cellphones, this is common as anything, the batteries can typically cost more than another brand new cheap phone of similar make/model. Here's a better analogy, inkjet printers and replacement carts. I don't know how many people just go get another cheap as heck printer once they get sticker shock on a black and white and color cartridge, compared to the cost of yet another cheap inkjet. I know it is false economy, but these manufacturers always seem to do this with parts and so on. I've never done the study but it would be intertesting to say take a car, and see how much it would cost to recreate it all with replacement parts at normal car parts store and then at dealers retail prices. I bet a 20 grand car would cost over a hundred grand if you tried to build one that way.
Anyway, I like that they are forcing the issue, sealed blackbox gadgets are not any sort of fav for me, just gives me the creeps being a long time nerd and tinkerer. If I can't open it up and play, I don't want the dang thing (probably why I don't own an ipod or iphone). I remember a long time ago going out and getting a long torx screwdriver just so I could take my mac (first computer I owned) 512k apart (still have it, BTW). That was annoying. Couldn't just use a normal phillips or anything. Just wanted to see the inside, hated not being able to do it easier without a special tool. Hate that "special tool" nonsense that manufacturers love..anything to gouge a few more pennies out of you or make it a hassle so you use their "special" repair shops.
They are bred for docility and for large and fast weight gain and huge milk production. Docility is number one though, you can't do squat with a really wild cow (total range cows excluded, they are all mostly wild) I have an eastern perspective on this, and a small herd that are traditional barbed wire fenced in. I have one now, pretty wild and suspicious, takes me forever to lure it into the barn/corral in order to deal with it, like de worming, etc.. The rest, tame enough, come when they are called-literally, I just yell at them to come on in. I make a point every new calf to go up to them and rub them a lot and get them to smell me and be around me for the first week, momma willing of course, most put up with it because we get along OK, and it works, they get and stay at least half tame-to me anyway, not to anyone else around here. Dairy cows I have worked with, about as tame as puppies, most of them anyway, because they are handled daily and want to be milked, they line up for it. As to smarts a big variable there, I've seen some pretty sharp ones then some walking vegetables, the majority are in between. Lot of folks around the world still use oxen for working, singly or in teams, they tame up and are smart enough to be reliable enough for that sort of thing. I was going to do that myself, but haven't had a good set of bull twins yet.
Sort of what I thought was happening because they aren't showing up in any of the usual places that handle refurbed laptops. At least I haven't seen them yet, looked a couple of times since the big netbook thing hit with the eee. I've seen *used* but not factory refurbs with warranties. Ergo, being repackaged as "new".
Where are the half price (whatever) cheap refurb units being sold for these netbooks then?
link to house roll call vote on the "billionaire's socialism bill of 2008"
Personally, I don't want to hear a peep out of any congress weasel who voted for it, or business goon who wanted it (or takes the cash), about "free markets" and "capitalism", because this bill is neither. Those people are big fat hypocritical liars.
Voting yes were 172 Democrats and 91 Republicans.
Voting no were 63 Democrats and 108 Republicans.
anyway, here is my state vote record
GEORGIA
Democrats - Barrow, N; Bishop, Y; Johnson, N; Lewis, Y; Marshall, Y; Scott, Y.
Republicans - Broun, N; Deal, N; Gingrey, N; Kingston, N; Linder, N; Price, N; Westmoreland, N.
across the board Nays by the Rs
Really, trees are just a much better idea. Lumber is better to store carbon from trees. We still have hundreds of millions of people living in cardboard and tincan shacks around the planet. I think it would be borderline socially criminal to bury trees instead of providing cheap lumber universally for construction. And properly made wooden houses can last a long time if they are a foot or better off the ground and away from termites. Heck, the US is still a young nation compared to nations in europe, and I have lived in still very good shape wooden homes built in the 1700s in New England. Very common. That's a long time to have stable and useful stored carbon. And having to use electricity for these manufactured devices when so many are still using oil lamps and such? Again, borderline socially criminal. Spend the manufacturing effort in building better solar PV and wind chargers and get them out there to people cheap, folks who don't have any power now, or just very expensive power.
And large trees left alone-the ones you don't harvest for lumber, say nut producing trees- can last hundreds of years. They could store the excess carbon at least until then, and by then maybe we will have better technical climate and energy solutions-one would hope anyway.
Anyway, for those reasons and more, I vote no on building millions of manufactured co2 suckers. Plant trees, so we can house people, provide food and fuel, help to rectify desertification, increase local water supply, provide cooling shade and cold wind blocks-trees are just spiffy. Hey, "solar powered".
The handwriting is on the wall, the FSM wants you to start your own company instead. "Go with the flow", as we used to say, back in the day....
Just saying I am not too concerned over changing the albedo with massive solar pv deployment, all the black roofs covered might be a good first test, if the effects are even measurable.
I'm not seeing any big problem throwing black solar panels on top of already mostly black roofs. Black shingles or tar and gravel on flat roofs, makes little difference if there's a panel there or not - except you get a lot more electricity with the panels;) - and for that matter, they have total roofing panels now, the panel *is* the roof. Big @$$ wind chargers are better for centralized power, solar PV is better for smaller scale de-centralized power, IMO, in most but not all circumstances, some places just don't have the wind, no way around that. Where I live wind power just sucks, but solar rocks, that's why my wind charger isn't even installed, but my panels are up working. That's PV, solar thermal, probably better as centralized large scale once you are dealing with high pressure and hot fluids or gases and turbines, etc. PV is about as simple as it gets once it is installed. As to total surface area needed, let's see how covering the roofs go first, only a few tens of millions of roofs more to go so far...
Ya,solar power works well in space, but you'd need a few quadrillion dollars to get any usable amounts up there and use microwave power transmission for back to earth. It is a non starter for a few more generations methinks...it will become practical once the space elevator is working, but not before that. It's dandy to run space stations though.
a slightly larger OLPC XO, with their nifty screen advantage, with at least two gigs of ram, 10-20 gigs of flash, and the original idea of an additional crank charger built in. And wireless, including a place for a SIM card. And it can run any modern linux or bsd distro, it doesn't need any sort of special tweaked version.
To me a netbook is-should be- like a wide PDA and phone combo. You should have the ability to access any sort of network, wired or wireless, and it is a full computer with a "big enough" keyboard so it doesn't completely suck. Ya, it will mission creep to small "normal" laptop/notebook size, oh well, that's around the sweet spot I think that balances very portable plus very practical, somewhere around a ten inch screen, that allows for a more normal sized keyboard as well.
Solar power is the only form of practical fusion power we have now, it is likely to be the only form of practical fusion power for the next several decades at least, and it scales from small dedicated solar powered devices to multiple megawatt sized solar farms. As for it being 24/7 we don't need that so much, the grid itself doesn't run peak capacity 24/7. We typically get larger demands during the heat (and sunshine) of mid day, when solar really rocks. As an adjunct to what we have now, a few billion panels more out on roofs all over would negate the need to build so many more fossil fuel plants, especially those "peaker" plants, and once you start talking billions of panels, economies of scale cost savings kick in and more R&D will come with it. You as joe sixpack also get to own it, compared to leasing your infrastructure with an open ended contract from the power company. Something else to consider if one wants to build equity instead of renting forever, and to have a supply independent of the vagaries of power politics and the rigged energy market.
Solar PV since its invention has dropped from thousands of dollars per watt to now under 4 bucks. This is not insignificant and is an indication of the direction it has been going. We are *this close* to having it being really cheap.
Diversified energy sources all contributing is the "silver bullet" energy solution, there isn't going to be any single "one" type of energy source in our immediate future that will cover all needs. Solar has a prominent place in the mix and could be more widely used (as some nations are doing right now, the US lags quite a bit in that regard).
In fact, this thread is about google looking for new ideas, solar is a good enough idea for them that they have already dumped some millions into it for their own purposes.
..on this thread as well, the cameras on phones suck but it would be nice if they didn't suck. So here's a business plan for a niche gadget: a decent digital camera that has a built in simple cellphone. Put the emphasis where it is wanted.
and then there's always duct tape...
I have an old sony watchman black and white handheld portable analog TV and it is the *best* TV I have ever owned for reception, and all it has is a rod antenna! I can sit inside with storms going on outside and get several stations clear, long after the big TV with the outside antenna is reduced to ghosts and static and whitenoise. And yep, I haven't seen any sort of digital replacement for that sort of purpose yet, short of having a big inverter and a battery to run one of the newer digital TVs. And I have no idea why they aren't on the market yet, seems a natural for that emergency/storms/camping niche. Or maybe they are and I haven't seen one yet, don't know. Man, sony used to make good stuff, the best car radio I ever had for reception was a sony as well. No idea what happened to them, they just went downhill bad the past buncha years now, both in quality and in being stupid jerks in general.
You mean for the analog to digital converters? I suppose so, but sort of chintzy. I would much rather-just a for instance from the FCC, YMMV- to legally be able to put up a micro AM or FM radio station-say even just 10 or 20 watts- and be able to run commercials on it, or even a SSB on the shortwave without having to pay ridiculous monthly fees. I mean, how "crowded" is shortwave now? As it stands, you have your choice of either being a millionaire or a millionaire to have any sort of practical at least might pay for itself radio station.
My point was the alleged public government sells stuff to cartels or monopolies all the time and calls that a good deal for the consumer, and I think it sure ain't. Look at the chump change we get for oil and natural gas taken off of public lands, and even then it isn't audited, they just take their word for it how much is pumped out. That should go instead to a national coop type structure, and people could at least get a certain small monthly fuel allowance at cost or damn near. The NASA patents were already paid for, they should just release them to the public gratis, see what people can do with them.