I'd advise you to move to the US south right now if it wasn't for the oil spill. See, I'm not that insensitive! hahaha! Not sure how that will shakeout. If they get it fixed though, hopefully, it is much nicer here than these urban yankee loons (I am a reformed yankee loon, heh) go on and on about. This is 2010 here, not 1950. Cheaper to live than most other areas of the US as well. Year round growing season here, etc, (just cabbages and carrots, etc in the winter though) even though we get a little winter and the occasional snow, it's nothing like "up north". Plenty of sunshine, and still jobs to be had. Not bad at all really. Plenty of recreation, including fishing, etc on open to the public areas, zillions of acres of that. I lived in many yankee states, but I like Georgia a whole lot bettah. Mountains, rolling hills, huge farmlands, lakes, streams and some beach action, big city life to as far in the sticks as you care to go. Got it all.
Including that scam wall street cap and trade carbon tax. That is something they brainwashed the greenies into thinking is "the solution". Total mind fsck. On the other hand, I love the tax *credit*, the anti tax. If the government would just pass a 100% tax credit for people and businesses, say up to 25 grand for individuals amortized over 5-10 years, there would be zillions of PV panels and assorted whatnot up there within a short time. The carbon tax just goes to make the same fatcats richer, that's it. That money will leave your pocket anyway, so which would most folks like, get to have some decent solar installed, or read little blurbs in the paper about megacorp making record profits? I think most folks would opt for getting their own panels, etc. At commercial scales, if there was a full tax credit for some huge commercial solar installation (whatever, variations there), investors would look at that, as opposed to tradition burn fuel plants, which are still taxed, and go "this is a no brainer" and opt for cleaner and more sustainable and more profitable.
Government can either tax or not tax, all taxes do today is act as social engineering. With fiat currencies, there is no direct need to fund government with taxes, we the people could demand direct funding and get the new money into circulation that way, rather than "loaning into existence" through the banks. I just hates that con game they have pulled with the federal reserve and lesser banks , it's a pure scam.
If we switched to direct funding (with balanced budgets and no increases beyond proven productivity gains), it would do wonders for the economy of the 99% who aren't already fatcats out there, and really clean up the environment and spur better quality development and investments, etc.
Trillions to bailout the fatcats, put everyone else into generations long debt. seems rather ludicrous to me when we have decent alternatives out there that could be implemented. I'd like a more advanced variation on the "bancor" currency, I designed it some years back, using the top 100 traded commodities as our new currency backing and to set M3 rates of new currency creation existence. Etc. Another subject, but that's how to afford a lot of new spiffy things and stop ripping the "we the people" off. Of course those goons who control government through wall street investment banks would hate it, they'd have to go get real jobs.;)
Ya it's useful. I used to be in the biz and sold a ton of solar hot water heaters, and worked on several air heaters as well, residential and commercial. As to absorption cooling, correct again, that is how a lot of ammonia gas RV (or remote cabin, etc) refrigerators work, I have three of them (all small though).
I just think decentralized solar power, of any type, is just spiffy beyond belief. anything to get the homeowner away from the monthly "bill" that can never be paid off. That and superinsulation of the home are the best bets for personal alt energy independence. I work on this stuff a lot for myself, this is how I "invest", no wall street scam stocks or put your grandchildren into debt government paper for me, useful and practical tangibles only. Trying to get as independent as possible. We've made a huge hit on the grocery bill with extensive gardens, a greenhouse, etc. We switched to stored solar-wood-for heating and haven't used any propane for heating for three years now. I have some solar PV but not enough to replace everything, like a lot of folks waiting for it to drop a scosh more in price, that's all. Went mostly retired a few years back and my income dropped like down to 25% of what I was making, so everything I do has to be on the ultra cheap. I rotate around, this year will be lots more insulation, next year, something else.
I see a lot of greenies rag on suburbia, on the contrary, I think stand alone suburban homes with a decent yard (and a good internet connection so if possible telecommuting) are the best compromise for most people, has the most potential. You *can* do solar PV and thermal and have a decent garden etc, and eventually the solar PV carport or garage for the electric ride. Can't do any of that in town in some apartment, you stay tied to "the man" forever and ever. We live further out than suburbia on a big farm, yesterday we had the "all our own stuff" fourth of july cookout, our own beef, chicken and bass, veggies from the garden, etc. tres cool, good eats. Fresh picked watermelon and sweet corn and tomatoes just can't be beat.
If you think slashdotting the Honduran ambassador with some "please help to get this aid shipment cleared" emails might help with that container of computers, provide some more details. To me, it sorta seems like someone in that customs area has his hand out for a "consultation and redtape/paperwork" fee to get it through.
Thirty year lifespan and it won't pay back cost of production? Where did you get that? Why do people keep repeating this? This has been debunked here on slashdot numerous times now in these discussions.
Here ya go, you offered no citation for your 30 year claim, but I have a counter with citation. Various types of PV panels and energy to build them payback period, goes from one for thin film bleeding edge to four years for more expensive crystalline types, after that, all the power they make is free. OK, double that for some place with crappy sun, 8 years, that leaves 22 years of free or real dang cheap power.
The big energy companies really don't like solar all that much, because eventually your home power plant is paid off and no need to send them a check every month. They'll fool around with it, good for PR purposes, but they really don't push it that hard either.
As to government subsidies and whatnot, meh, I can't think of a single form of energy production that hasn't been subsidized one way or the other from government. Heck, centralized power absolutely depends on government subsidy in perpetuity, eminent domain seizure and use with no check cutting to the property owners for power poles and natgas lines. If they had to negotiate transit fees property owner by property owner, coal and nuke power and natgas would be as expensive a way to make power as you can think of. And there wouldn't be nuke one if the government didn't back them up as the insurer of last resort, not a private insurer out there would cover all the liability risks and costs. Now look at making sure foreign oil keeps flowing with our military presence for decades...
Any subsidies or tax breaks for solar are the proverbial drop in the bucket, compared to what the other energy sources have benefited and profited from over the generations now.
Solar PV and thermal *is* fusion power. It works today, and can only get better with more adoption and economies of scale. The original solar PV panels cost over ten grand apiece and weren't near as efficient as we have today! Now it is a few hundred, and they are better.
Solar PV is good for joe homeowner, solar thermal is good for making larger commercial generating plants. We have millions and millions of rooftops sitting baking in the hot sun that could be covered with panels, and millions of acres of desert that could have mirrors and towers.
You want fusion, let the engineers start building it,(I suggest 100% tax credits for actual deployment as opposed to a carbon tax to jumpstart cleaner power adoption better) the scientists can keep playing around with laser magnetic plasma bubbles at their leisure. If you want the power though, today, all we lack is building the stuff and getting it out there.
And no threats of war over who gets access to solar power, as opposed to oil or fission or man made fusion power. No embargoes, no acrimonious debate, no inspectors needed, nothing. It's the most peaceful energy source we have that actually works now, and it scales from running one small house to a whole city. This is stuff we have *now* that could be used a lot more.
Not sure if you can slap a dollar sign amount on what "peaceful" is worth, but you sure can see the external costs and threats with other sources of energy like oil and fission and coal and so on, along with the not barely hidden environmental costs. Fission power is the largest threat we have to global war today, because nations threaten each other with the weapons. If you can make fission power, it is a short step away from fission weapons, as such, too dang dangerous if you ask me. I don't care if a fission reactor can make a lot of "hot", because it is in the headlines daily that we could go to a larger war over who has access or "permission" to develop the tech.
This doesn't exist at all with solar fusion power. There should be a global trillion dollar massive push for solar, just to help eliminate the threats of war over fission power level tech. This is no joke, we are *this close* to a much larger major middle eastern war over fission tech, and that in turn WILL impact oil prices once it starts, and it looks worse and worse daily.
If we had gone heavily solar thirty years ago, on a massive scale, just done it, we could have nipped this in the bud, and helped avoid it.
All our forms of energy have costs, money, waste, etc, but eliminating wars and threats of wars, *those* costs in terms of money and human misery, should never be overlooked in the larger and more long range picture.
They can crack down all they want. Sneakernet. Terrabyte and larger portable hard drives. Everything has *already* been "file shared" that's out there. That horse is out of the barn, and they simply cannot put it back in. Fine, crack down on the university ISP, the students will just walk a hundred movies and ten thousand tunes around in their pockets, and still share them around. Hundreds of thousands of them will do that, on every campus that gets the federal MAFIAA treatment. What then, have security checkpoints with armed goons quick on the taser trigger with full frisking all over campus, 24/7, everywhere? Really? Because that is what it would take to stop any sort of mass sneakernet, and even then you couldn't really stop it, they'll just swap off campus instead.
College students may not be quite as much enthused about mass protest as they were back in the day, but something that draconian will get them aroused, and the universities would be shut down.
This is like alcohol prohibition or the war on unapproved and cheap drugs. A big fat expensive joke that will never work, ever.
Hey, big media sellers- didja ever think your "products" might be over priced just a scosh, that trying to charge many folding dollars for less than a penny copy cost just might be counter productive and a bad business decision, that your customers just hate being price gouged so they routed around your BS out to lunch unrealistic pricing, and have been doing so for years and years now?
Hey, corrupt, stupid and inept and bought off federal government..have ya noticed lately you are down to your own employees as the only demographic that even moderately approves of most of what you do, and half of them are seriously waffling, but are afraid to jump ship to no income at all because you thoroughly screwed up the private economy already?
Yes and no. We have natural resources, but the bureaucracy expense and unending red tape, the lack of speedy decisions, the sheer expense of supporting government workers for life at mostly higher than private sector pay..all of that would help to en-screw the US, especially when/if we lost exclusive world reserve currency status. When that happens, and it will, it's coming, that's it, the party is over, the US will de-evolve into second world status within a few short years, tops. We are just way too top heavy, way too many non producers who need high level incomes.
We have been having a super emergency disaster in the gulf, even with that impetus the fed response has been beyond dismal in speeding things up and cutting redtape to get stuff done. If something of this magnitude can't get them in gear and to get efficient..nothing will, absolutely nothing. It's just too far gone to fix, IMO, collapse is inevitable at this point. Economic, social, all of the above.
Right now we are down to maybe 1/5th of the adult population actually produces real wealth, they are supporting the whole thing. And that is only because the rest of the planet still takes greenbacks as something of worth. As soon as they want harder currency, even the 1/5th still producing wealth here won't be able to support everyone else, especially the millions of government workers. You can see it on smaller scales with most of the states now, they simply cannot function with a ten percent or higher unemployment rate. Governmental expense have grown too large, and you simply can't plop everyone at some 90% tax rate to make up for that. Our wealthiest state, California, broke as can be. This is supposed to be our bragger state, the best, with much higher incomes that most other places, especially for such a large population-broke, can't even cover what has already been spent in advance, let alone anything new.
I sincerely believe we are in the last days of a rapidly fading American empire. There are no more accounting tricks left they can use to cover all the looming debt and "entitlements" and pensions and so on, the real money simply doesn't even come close to existing for this, and what they pay the real producers of tangible goods here is already hovering at bankruptcy levels for those producers, very broadly speaking.
We may still have raw resources, but they will wind up being sold off cheap to cover our national debts, we won't be doing any value added work with them. Similar to some African nation for example, just sell what you have off cheap, wind up with a handful of really wealth people then a buncha peons.
My guess is china will wind up owning everything, they have really the only long range foreign policy of any of the major nations that's worth a flip, and are as protectionist as it gets to boot. It works-and has worked- for them just fine, just no one at high levels of globalist finance in the west says that out loud much, that would spill too many beans for them to easily explain away. We got sold down the river to make billionaires out of millionaires, they sold everyone the fairy tale that credit equals produced wealth equals money in the bank, then decided to fund and expand government based on that fairy tale. It just don't work that way, but it's too late to "not do that".
Just too far gone, man, that's it. I agree that we could be *theoretically* better off than greece, I just disagree that will happen, I think we will get worse, because we will become a serious armed threat to the rest of the planet as the economy implodes further, and eventually, they will take us out just like you'd shoot any mad dog. They will have no choice. Boom. Greece may go broke, but they won't be desperate and turn into some huge threat against other nations, the USA is different in that regard and judging by our track record of lashing out disproportionally..eventually we will get lashed right back in a major way.
That's the progression and timeline I see happening. Steps, in order: Continue with the fai
Here is the wiki page on zfs. Seems possible with some skull sweat and some hoop jumping. Supports file sizes up to 16 exabyte, so that is certainly large enough. Good luck man!
I always like to think of the profit angle when there is a problem, the silver lining hiding in plain sight with any problem or hassle. Your situation sounds like a great way to go into business for yourself. Walk away with a few other key players, then contract the work for more money-then do it, use the machines you really need, and as long as you are forced into being your own IT department-so what? You are *anyway* according to what you say so you might as well get paid for it. Get mo' money for more responsibility. Not sure how this works with grants, but sounds like the work really needs to be done, and medical stuff....seems like anything medical related today is a license to print money somewhere just under top investment banks.
File systems...seems like all the heavy hitters here are always going on and on about ZFS, best thing since burritos to go in a bag, etc, so is that an option for your macs and the recipients?
As to file sizes..I'm a dumbass on this but can't they be chunked up, like torrent files are chunked up into much smaller sizes? Torrent them to..wherever they need to go to?
Blue collar workers are at an economic disadvantage when it comes to voting because in a lot of cases they can't get to the polls in time, nor take/afford the time off from work. When you are almost paycheck to paycheck, you don't chance getting fired or make demands. I know I had to physically *quit* a blue collar job I had because joe boss wouldn't let me split at five to try and go make it to the polls before 7. We had to work overtime that day, I promised to come back and stay as late as it took..nope..ordered to stay and work so I said see ya later. I actually quit just to go vote, but I know most of my fellow employees that day did not vote..couldn't afford it, too afraid of getting on a shitlist to get fired later, etc.
I know that isn't the entire reason for the voting disparity, but it does come into play.
We really need a 24 hour voting period, or have it be a full week, etc, all over at a bare minimum.
Stuff with less specs than that, especially laptops, still go for decent folding green around here. You won't find anything like that in dumpsters, you'd have to go way back to like pentium 1 stuff for that. Shoot, I'm still using a sempron at 1.3 gig, although I did bump the ram to 2 gigs. A typical bundle around here for a hundred bucks would be a pentium 4 something or other with half a gig of ram and a 15 inch crt monitor, usually some off lease old business desktop or mini tower. Used laptops of similar vintage are like 200 and up (which does get stupid with *mart lappies going for 350 a lot of times on sale).
And I am still using an old "no wireless" router, still works fine, never even owned any 802.11 gear. Network cables still work.
One of the advantages of living in an old cabin, out in the medium sticks, no one gives crap one if you need to pop a hole in a wall. (Muahahahaha! Just had an idea for some sport! Next time I need another hole in the wall for a cable, instead of a cordless drill, I am going to use my.45 with some hardball..just cuz I can..heheheh)
Of course I am also against state "license" of straight marriages as well. Unconstitutional crapola.
Why the two camps don't join together and demand the END of licenses to love and live with someone else is beyond me. They are both demanding to have LESS RIGHTS than what you are freely born with. Marriage is between you and partner(s) and your community and that should be it.
It's none of the government's business *at all* who you marry, and a violation of civil rights IMO-1st amendment, 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th- to require some permission/permit/license from big brother to get married. Violates all of them one way or the other.
Every single solitary law/regulation whatever that is on the books regarding some government "marriage license" should be stricken and be made null.
USA marriage licenses are an archaic holdover from extremely racist jim crow miscegenation "don't mix the races" so called "laws". The same with gun control laws, they all started out with trying to deny born - with second amendment rights to people of other than Caucasian extraction.
Any contractural living arrangements, child care provisions, insurance, economic issues, whatever, are just that..and can be handled with a normal contract. There is no reason whatsoever for any marriage "license" other than overreaching big brother action.
But you see, it is much preferable for big brother and the two corrupt criminal political party gangs, who make up big brother, to keep people divided and conquered, so that's why both political gangs insist and demand to have a "license" for a born-with right.
If she gets on the court, you can go up and down the list of born with rights and start kissing them goodbye. Just today, with the important second amendment issue, that would have failed.
She is a Constitutional disaster and has NO business on the Supreme court..or any court for that matter.
There is no good single word equivalent of an extreme left wing fascist, but if it existed, her picture would be next to it in the dictionary.
I'd guess you've never seen or experienced a superinsulated residence. "They" don't push it from the reasons I state, it would collapse energy prices because demand would drop. The energy cartels are some of the biggest lobbying and influence kahunas out there, they fund "studies" like this MIT propaganda piece.
There's a reason there's a push for the "passive house" in places like Germany where energy prices are high and winters are long..it *works*.
Go outside in the winter in some chilly northern clime with a T shirt and shorts, then try it in an insulated snowsuit/ snowmobile suit, see which works better on "saving energy". Same with your house/building, it's dogshit simple to see this. It can be done new construction or retrofit, I have worked on both kinds. Try a house in Maine in January, comfy inside, with NO heater running during the day, and just a very small supplement at night when it is below zero F. It can and does work that well.
Part of getting it adopted is educating people that superinsulation (R55 or better all around, planned air intake and exhaust with a heat exchanger, triple pane windows with pull down insulated covers for at night, etc) exists and can work, that's why I posted the above with the link, so people can see they have some options.
Heating and cooling buildings is the number one energy use in the nation, dropping demand, while retaining the same or even better comfort levels (planned air in and out means you can run a much better air filter, keeps the inside cleaner, plus the house is quieter), would greatly negate this "need" for more plants and using all this fuel, natgas coal nukes whatever. Those boys are in the energy SELLING business, at best they will pay lipservice to the energy savings business, mostly for PR purposes to look green trendy when they are anything but. They are in no way sha[pe or form ever going to push rational conservation as an option, it makes them loads LESS money. There's nothing new to patent, no giant wall street speculation is needed, no one company can gobble up a whole region worth of the insulation business because any carpentry crew can do it. This is off the shelf, already invented long ago stuff, just MORE of it with a few other efficiency tweaks involved.
Superinsulation works with air conditioning as well. Another project I worked on in Missouri was in the summer, the lady there called us up after the install/retrofit was finished and complained we "broke" her air conditioner. She was so used to it kicking on every half hour or hour during the summer, hearing it, when it went more than a day and didn't come on she thought it was broken. I asked her if it was still nice and cool inside, she goes "yes.." "that's what you paid for ma'am". It really does work that well.
This is a great post! I was going to post something like this if no one else did. This 99% fixation on OMG WE NEED MORE POWER PLANTS! Instead of looking to REDUCE DEMAND is plain nuts. It's been pure propaganda and brainwashing of the population for decades now. I know why they do it, to keep wall street traders and speculators and the entrenched energy companies rich. Super insulate ONCE, save forever, or ignore rational insulation and efficiencies that are quite possible and keep up the propaganda that we "need" more power plants, of any kind, and keep paying through the nose month after year after decade for your energy. Freakin loony tunes how many people they have brainwashed against the realities of actual do-able energy savings that are possible using off the shelf technologies.
I've worked on several superinsulation projects, the heating and cooling savings are ginormous, simply *astounding*. The energy industry does NOT want this pushed, they got millions to throw around lobbying, so it isn't pushed. We're talking dropping your energy demands down to 20-10% sometimes of what they were previously, it's that good. It is by far and away the best ROI "energy dollar" that can be spent.
Next up, build out a better internet! It's ludicrous in the 21st century to have millions of people commute daily to go sit in front of a screen with an internet connection. That's bob cratchet and a quill pen action, we don't need that physical presence in the office all the time. We could eliminate millions of transportation miles, millions of lost production hours, by car or bus or train, and eliminate all this supposed "need" for huge SUV energy hog office towers, the ones with huge lights blaring all night long advertising to the space aliens.
There's tons and tons of places that we could be reducing demand at, without reducing quality of life at all, but wall street and the big energy cartels don't like that, and they run the nation. You saving money is not what they like, taking your money every month in big chunks is what they like, and they'll keep shoving propaganda like this article at people as long as it takes to keep you faked out, or feed you BS like "good cents" homes. That's a joke level.
You aren't looking at all the costs of driving petroleum fueled vehicles. Trillion bucks to be heavy in the middle east for decades, health costs especially in major urban areas with smog pollution, and now the gulf oil disaster.
I would actually look forward to much cheaper electric vehicles being on the car lots used, that's the only way I could get one anyway. I'd love to have a small electric truck for use around here, and I only need a 30 mile range to go to town and back, I wouldn't need a 100-300 mile range. And for just driving around the farm, I could keep a smaller cheaper set of batts charged with my solar PV panels.
As to range in general, the generator trailer range extender eliminates that "need" for the 100-300 mile range on pure electric. You could rent one of those for the occasional long trip. These companies could offer a base model with just the 30 - 50 mile range, with more batteries and/or the generator trailer as options. That would reduce the price considerably to just get into an electric ride of some sort.
There's a real easy solution to get rid of flash trading and excessive speculation and get the stock market back to investing...a sales tax on stock sales. I see no reason stocks should be exempt from other "products".
All those big houses use computerized trading to game the system, remember this story?
Then some fed prosecutor (I forget who know) let it out that this was bad because "in the wrong hands" the code could "manipulate the markets".
Well, in ANY hands that means it could and was designed to "manipulate the markets". These too big to fail places get a license to steal, to skim off billions, and when that isn't enough, they still get bailed out, loot gets stolen from everyone else and handed to them. Then they can take that loot and buy bonds and government paper of assorted kinds, get even more money, put everyone else into "debt" to them.
And having their boys in and out of the Fed and Treasury and Sec..naw, that isn't a conflict of interest...
Tell ya what I want, a good smartphone that is built on purpose to snap into a netbook (as in integrated by the manufacturer, no kludge, a smooth good design), or snap into a docking station at home. Phones are powerful enough now for everything except extreme gaming, and seeing as how I don't game, that means they are powerful enough. Your home "desktop" is just a bigger screen and full sized keyboard, and an optical drive and NAS. Out and about, you carry it by itself or snapped into a netbook or laptop. When you upgrade your phone every 2-3 years, your two other "computers" are automagically upgraded as well. Added bonus, you now have two screens with your laptop and desktop by default, if you design it so the phone screen is right there visible however it fits into the docks.
Have you tried a mechanism to lean your vertical axis design in high winds, so it slips better? Of course you would lose your stability fast then....hmmm
I remember in the olden days the guys fooling around with savonius rotors made from cut in half oil drums. I think most of them worked OK for a while but never took off from those limitations.
You are right seems dumb compared to the normal horizontal ones. I have a small aero marine windcharger (300 watts), but haven't bothered setting it up here, just not good enough average winds. My PV panels rock though.
No one single magic silver energy bullet, I think it will take all of the above.
With that said, the best "ROI" with energy is to put the skull sweat into dropping demand instead of trying to always just increase production. I am a huge fan of superinsulation to drop heating and cooling costs for instance. I've worked on a few new construction and retrofit examples, it is so amazing..it's..you can't believe it until you have seen the dramatic drops in energy use to maintain previous or even better comfort levels. My fav anecdotal from back then was some lady we had done a mild retrofit for called up to complain we had "broken her air conditioner". OK, I am stumped for a second, we never touched her aircondo or wiring.. She goes "It's not coming on!!". I go "is your house still cool ma'am"? She goes "well, yes..." "You got what you paid for ma'am, big energy savings". She was just so used to her rig kicking on every hour in the summer heat, that when it went more than a day without needing to kick on she thought it was broken!
And I know why superinsulation isn't pushed at the highest levels as much as it should be. No more nuthin needs to be invented or patented. No huge research needed or government boondoggles. It really can't be centrally controlled by any company or small cartel, it really is a small crew/small local business oriented approach. No VC vultures would make any money from it much, nor wall street. All the big energy/utility boys would hate for you to not keep cutting them those huge monthly checks. And stuff like that. It just works too good. Plus it isn't sexy, people just think the opposite, that they "need" more power all the time, they really don't stop and think how to achieve the same result with much less power. Here is another example, most of my rural bubba friends here drive v-8 trucks. I drive a four cylinder diesel truck that gets 2-3 times the mileage of their trucks and does all the work a regular pickup needs to do. The only thing I can't do with that truck is pull the heaviest trailers..meh..that's why we have mid size flatbeds and dumps.
I wonder if it would be possible to retrofit old ships to be windcharger production centers, perhaps the old single hull oil tankers they are phasing out for the double hull jobbies? Then they could be moved where they are needed the most, plus maneuver to avoid storms, etc. And if they ran on electric motors, they could be mostly or totally self propelled as well. Have some big batteries for ballast and stability. Then all that is needed for a permanent structure to be built is the offshore connection points.
Just sign right up to have all your electricity use monitored and controlled. Just stay being a good little consumer. Don't get a sub panel and start replacing circuits in your home one by one with your own solar power, thereby doing your part in getting economies of scale going and getting prices to drop. That's terrorism! Besides, it "will never work" because they say so, plus many internet experts on various forums sayso, and they know better than you! Keep that centralized grid connection, the one with no long term contract available, the one where the prices go up constantly, the one where some old corporation has already made zillions and will continue to make zillions, and you can never pay it off, no matter how much money you give those guys. If you own anything, it is unAmerican, you must *rent* from your corporate overlords..everything.
While you are at it, trash that desktop and sign up for centralized grid computing/cloud computing, pay an extra fee forever, never have your "apps" paid off and leave all that hard "technical" stuff to "the experts" at computecentral, they are your friends..besides, all that complicated stuff is just too much to figure out, you can't do that, it is too hard, so just rent your computer time, and just rent their wonderful magic boxes that connect you to all their complicated computer stuff. Same with your TV, you just can't be allowed an antenna, why, that's dangerous and complicated! And, you are violating "covenants" and your renter's contracts, you must rent a wire and a magic box from them.
Now get rid of all your furniture and go rent all your furniture. If you own your furniture, oh noes, something might break and you could trip and fall, and you couldn't possibly fix it yourself, that's too hard and complicated for you, the furniture pros are the only ones who can fix furniture. Get rid of your car, then go rent one, I mean, checking your oil?? What's that, you can't figure it out, too hard for you, you need a car expert for that at the car rental place. Same with your bicycle, you couldn't possibly fix a flat or oil a chain. Let the central bicycle fixers do that. Make sure you never buy a house, always be a renter, never an owner.
You see, you are just too simple, owning is "hard work", you can't do it, you just aren't smart enough either, it needs a big corporation to own things, consumers just work for them and consume, that's it. You pay what they say, that's all you can do and should do. And if they say you are using too much of that complicated "lektricity" stuff, well, they are the "experts" and all, you just won't understand all those technical details. If they need to shut you off, well, they know better. Charge you more, well, they just know more than you, because you are just a consumer.
One of the best and simplest and clearest descriptions of this huge ripoff economy I have read, mucho props to you.
The sad part is, millions of otherwise intelligent people are still defending those thieves, the thieve's political sockpuppets, and this conjob-based economic system in general.
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I'd advise you to move to the US south right now if it wasn't for the oil spill. See, I'm not that insensitive! hahaha! Not sure how that will shakeout. If they get it fixed though, hopefully, it is much nicer here than these urban yankee loons (I am a reformed yankee loon, heh) go on and on about. This is 2010 here, not 1950. Cheaper to live than most other areas of the US as well. Year round growing season here, etc, (just cabbages and carrots, etc in the winter though) even though we get a little winter and the occasional snow, it's nothing like "up north". Plenty of sunshine, and still jobs to be had. Not bad at all really. Plenty of recreation, including fishing, etc on open to the public areas, zillions of acres of that. I lived in many yankee states, but I like Georgia a whole lot bettah. Mountains, rolling hills, huge farmlands, lakes, streams and some beach action, big city life to as far in the sticks as you care to go. Got it all.
Including that scam wall street cap and trade carbon tax. That is something they brainwashed the greenies into thinking is "the solution". Total mind fsck. On the other hand, I love the tax *credit*, the anti tax. If the government would just pass a 100% tax credit for people and businesses, say up to 25 grand for individuals amortized over 5-10 years, there would be zillions of PV panels and assorted whatnot up there within a short time. The carbon tax just goes to make the same fatcats richer, that's it. That money will leave your pocket anyway, so which would most folks like, get to have some decent solar installed, or read little blurbs in the paper about megacorp making record profits? I think most folks would opt for getting their own panels, etc. At commercial scales, if there was a full tax credit for some huge commercial solar installation (whatever, variations there), investors would look at that, as opposed to tradition burn fuel plants, which are still taxed, and go "this is a no brainer" and opt for cleaner and more sustainable and more profitable.
Government can either tax or not tax, all taxes do today is act as social engineering. With fiat currencies, there is no direct need to fund government with taxes, we the people could demand direct funding and get the new money into circulation that way, rather than "loaning into existence" through the banks. I just hates that con game they have pulled with the federal reserve and lesser banks , it's a pure scam.
If we switched to direct funding (with balanced budgets and no increases beyond proven productivity gains), it would do wonders for the economy of the 99% who aren't already fatcats out there, and really clean up the environment and spur better quality development and investments, etc.
Trillions to bailout the fatcats, put everyone else into generations long debt. seems rather ludicrous to me when we have decent alternatives out there that could be implemented. I'd like a more advanced variation on the "bancor" currency, I designed it some years back, using the top 100 traded commodities as our new currency backing and to set M3 rates of new currency creation existence. Etc. Another subject, but that's how to afford a lot of new spiffy things and stop ripping the "we the people" off. Of course those goons who control government through wall street investment banks would hate it, they'd have to go get real jobs. ;)
Ya it's useful. I used to be in the biz and sold a ton of solar hot water heaters, and worked on several air heaters as well, residential and commercial. As to absorption cooling, correct again, that is how a lot of ammonia gas RV (or remote cabin, etc) refrigerators work, I have three of them (all small though).
I just think decentralized solar power, of any type, is just spiffy beyond belief. anything to get the homeowner away from the monthly "bill" that can never be paid off. That and superinsulation of the home are the best bets for personal alt energy independence. I work on this stuff a lot for myself, this is how I "invest", no wall street scam stocks or put your grandchildren into debt government paper for me, useful and practical tangibles only. Trying to get as independent as possible. We've made a huge hit on the grocery bill with extensive gardens, a greenhouse, etc. We switched to stored solar-wood-for heating and haven't used any propane for heating for three years now. I have some solar PV but not enough to replace everything, like a lot of folks waiting for it to drop a scosh more in price, that's all. Went mostly retired a few years back and my income dropped like down to 25% of what I was making, so everything I do has to be on the ultra cheap. I rotate around, this year will be lots more insulation, next year, something else.
I see a lot of greenies rag on suburbia, on the contrary, I think stand alone suburban homes with a decent yard (and a good internet connection so if possible telecommuting) are the best compromise for most people, has the most potential. You *can* do solar PV and thermal and have a decent garden etc, and eventually the solar PV carport or garage for the electric ride. Can't do any of that in town in some apartment, you stay tied to "the man" forever and ever. We live further out than suburbia on a big farm, yesterday we had the "all our own stuff" fourth of july cookout, our own beef, chicken and bass, veggies from the garden, etc. tres cool, good eats. Fresh picked watermelon and sweet corn and tomatoes just can't be beat.
If you think slashdotting the Honduran ambassador with some "please help to get this aid shipment cleared" emails might help with that container of computers, provide some more details. To me, it sorta seems like someone in that customs area has his hand out for a "consultation and redtape/paperwork" fee to get it through.
Thirty year lifespan and it won't pay back cost of production? Where did you get that? Why do people keep repeating this? This has been debunked here on slashdot numerous times now in these discussions.
Here ya go, you offered no citation for your 30 year claim, but I have a counter with citation. Various types of PV panels and energy to build them payback period, goes from one for thin film bleeding edge to four years for more expensive crystalline types, after that, all the power they make is free. OK, double that for some place with crappy sun, 8 years, that leaves 22 years of free or real dang cheap power.
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf
The big energy companies really don't like solar all that much, because eventually your home power plant is paid off and no need to send them a check every month. They'll fool around with it, good for PR purposes, but they really don't push it that hard either.
As to government subsidies and whatnot, meh, I can't think of a single form of energy production that hasn't been subsidized one way or the other from government. Heck, centralized power absolutely depends on government subsidy in perpetuity, eminent domain seizure and use with no check cutting to the property owners for power poles and natgas lines. If they had to negotiate transit fees property owner by property owner, coal and nuke power and natgas would be as expensive a way to make power as you can think of. And there wouldn't be nuke one if the government didn't back them up as the insurer of last resort, not a private insurer out there would cover all the liability risks and costs. Now look at making sure foreign oil keeps flowing with our military presence for decades...
Any subsidies or tax breaks for solar are the proverbial drop in the bucket, compared to what the other energy sources have benefited and profited from over the generations now.
Solar PV and thermal *is* fusion power. It works today, and can only get better with more adoption and economies of scale. The original solar PV panels cost over ten grand apiece and weren't near as efficient as we have today! Now it is a few hundred, and they are better.
Solar PV is good for joe homeowner, solar thermal is good for making larger commercial generating plants. We have millions and millions of rooftops sitting baking in the hot sun that could be covered with panels, and millions of acres of desert that could have mirrors and towers.
You want fusion, let the engineers start building it,(I suggest 100% tax credits for actual deployment as opposed to a carbon tax to jumpstart cleaner power adoption better) the scientists can keep playing around with laser magnetic plasma bubbles at their leisure. If you want the power though, today, all we lack is building the stuff and getting it out there.
And no threats of war over who gets access to solar power, as opposed to oil or fission or man made fusion power. No embargoes, no acrimonious debate, no inspectors needed, nothing. It's the most peaceful energy source we have that actually works now, and it scales from running one small house to a whole city. This is stuff we have *now* that could be used a lot more.
Not sure if you can slap a dollar sign amount on what "peaceful" is worth, but you sure can see the external costs and threats with other sources of energy like oil and fission and coal and so on, along with the not barely hidden environmental costs. Fission power is the largest threat we have to global war today, because nations threaten each other with the weapons. If you can make fission power, it is a short step away from fission weapons, as such, too dang dangerous if you ask me. I don't care if a fission reactor can make a lot of "hot", because it is in the headlines daily that we could go to a larger war over who has access or "permission" to develop the tech.
This doesn't exist at all with solar fusion power. There should be a global trillion dollar massive push for solar, just to help eliminate the threats of war over fission power level tech. This is no joke, we are *this close* to a much larger major middle eastern war over fission tech, and that in turn WILL impact oil prices once it starts, and it looks worse and worse daily.
If we had gone heavily solar thirty years ago, on a massive scale, just done it, we could have nipped this in the bud, and helped avoid it.
All our forms of energy have costs, money, waste, etc, but eliminating wars and threats of wars, *those* costs in terms of money and human misery, should never be overlooked in the larger and more long range picture.
They can crack down all they want. Sneakernet. Terrabyte and larger portable hard drives. Everything has *already* been "file shared" that's out there. That horse is out of the barn, and they simply cannot put it back in. Fine, crack down on the university ISP, the students will just walk a hundred movies and ten thousand tunes around in their pockets, and still share them around. Hundreds of thousands of them will do that, on every campus that gets the federal MAFIAA treatment. What then, have security checkpoints with armed goons quick on the taser trigger with full frisking all over campus, 24/7, everywhere? Really? Because that is what it would take to stop any sort of mass sneakernet, and even then you couldn't really stop it, they'll just swap off campus instead.
College students may not be quite as much enthused about mass protest as they were back in the day, but something that draconian will get them aroused, and the universities would be shut down.
This is like alcohol prohibition or the war on unapproved and cheap drugs. A big fat expensive joke that will never work, ever.
Hey, big media sellers- didja ever think your "products" might be over priced just a scosh, that trying to charge many folding dollars for less than a penny copy cost just might be counter productive and a bad business decision, that your customers just hate being price gouged so they routed around your BS out to lunch unrealistic pricing, and have been doing so for years and years now?
Hey, corrupt, stupid and inept and bought off federal government..have ya noticed lately you are down to your own employees as the only demographic that even moderately approves of most of what you do, and half of them are seriously waffling, but are afraid to jump ship to no income at all because you thoroughly screwed up the private economy already?
Yes and no. We have natural resources, but the bureaucracy expense and unending red tape, the lack of speedy decisions, the sheer expense of supporting government workers for life at mostly higher than private sector pay..all of that would help to en-screw the US, especially when/if we lost exclusive world reserve currency status. When that happens, and it will, it's coming, that's it, the party is over, the US will de-evolve into second world status within a few short years, tops. We are just way too top heavy, way too many non producers who need high level incomes.
We have been having a super emergency disaster in the gulf, even with that impetus the fed response has been beyond dismal in speeding things up and cutting redtape to get stuff done. If something of this magnitude can't get them in gear and to get efficient..nothing will, absolutely nothing. It's just too far gone to fix, IMO, collapse is inevitable at this point. Economic, social, all of the above.
Right now we are down to maybe 1/5th of the adult population actually produces real wealth, they are supporting the whole thing. And that is only because the rest of the planet still takes greenbacks as something of worth. As soon as they want harder currency, even the 1/5th still producing wealth here won't be able to support everyone else, especially the millions of government workers. You can see it on smaller scales with most of the states now, they simply cannot function with a ten percent or higher unemployment rate. Governmental expense have grown too large, and you simply can't plop everyone at some 90% tax rate to make up for that. Our wealthiest state, California, broke as can be. This is supposed to be our bragger state, the best, with much higher incomes that most other places, especially for such a large population-broke, can't even cover what has already been spent in advance, let alone anything new.
I sincerely believe we are in the last days of a rapidly fading American empire. There are no more accounting tricks left they can use to cover all the looming debt and "entitlements" and pensions and so on, the real money simply doesn't even come close to existing for this, and what they pay the real producers of tangible goods here is already hovering at bankruptcy levels for those producers, very broadly speaking.
We may still have raw resources, but they will wind up being sold off cheap to cover our national debts, we won't be doing any value added work with them. Similar to some African nation for example, just sell what you have off cheap, wind up with a handful of really wealth people then a buncha peons.
My guess is china will wind up owning everything, they have really the only long range foreign policy of any of the major nations that's worth a flip, and are as protectionist as it gets to boot. It works-and has worked- for them just fine, just no one at high levels of globalist finance in the west says that out loud much, that would spill too many beans for them to easily explain away. We got sold down the river to make billionaires out of millionaires, they sold everyone the fairy tale that credit equals produced wealth equals money in the bank, then decided to fund and expand government based on that fairy tale. It just don't work that way, but it's too late to "not do that".
Just too far gone, man, that's it. I agree that we could be *theoretically* better off than greece, I just disagree that will happen, I think we will get worse, because we will become a serious armed threat to the rest of the planet as the economy implodes further, and eventually, they will take us out just like you'd shoot any mad dog. They will have no choice. Boom. Greece may go broke, but they won't be desperate and turn into some huge threat against other nations, the USA is different in that regard and judging by our track record of lashing out disproportionally..eventually we will get lashed right back in a major way.
That's the progression and timeline I see happening. Steps, in order: Continue with the fai
So..*with* global warming we get NYC and DC flooded into oblivion?
I am trying but cannot see any negatives here...why again are we trying to stop global warming?
OK, that makes more sense now, I understand.
Here is the wiki page on zfs. Seems possible with some skull sweat and some hoop jumping. Supports file sizes up to 16 exabyte, so that is certainly large enough. Good luck man!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zfs
I always like to think of the profit angle when there is a problem, the silver lining hiding in plain sight with any problem or hassle. Your situation sounds like a great way to go into business for yourself. Walk away with a few other key players, then contract the work for more money-then do it, use the machines you really need, and as long as you are forced into being your own IT department-so what? You are *anyway* according to what you say so you might as well get paid for it. Get mo' money for more responsibility. Not sure how this works with grants, but sounds like the work really needs to be done, and medical stuff....seems like anything medical related today is a license to print money somewhere just under top investment banks.
File systems...seems like all the heavy hitters here are always going on and on about ZFS, best thing since burritos to go in a bag, etc, so is that an option for your macs and the recipients?
As to file sizes..I'm a dumbass on this but can't they be chunked up, like torrent files are chunked up into much smaller sizes? Torrent them to..wherever they need to go to?
Blue collar workers are at an economic disadvantage when it comes to voting because in a lot of cases they can't get to the polls in time, nor take/afford the time off from work. When you are almost paycheck to paycheck, you don't chance getting fired or make demands. I know I had to physically *quit* a blue collar job I had because joe boss wouldn't let me split at five to try and go make it to the polls before 7. We had to work overtime that day, I promised to come back and stay as late as it took..nope..ordered to stay and work so I said see ya later. I actually quit just to go vote, but I know most of my fellow employees that day did not vote..couldn't afford it, too afraid of getting on a shitlist to get fired later, etc.
I know that isn't the entire reason for the voting disparity, but it does come into play.
We really need a 24 hour voting period, or have it be a full week, etc, all over at a bare minimum.
Stuff with less specs than that, especially laptops, still go for decent folding green around here. You won't find anything like that in dumpsters, you'd have to go way back to like pentium 1 stuff for that. Shoot, I'm still using a sempron at 1.3 gig, although I did bump the ram to 2 gigs. A typical bundle around here for a hundred bucks would be a pentium 4 something or other with half a gig of ram and a 15 inch crt monitor, usually some off lease old business desktop or mini tower. Used laptops of similar vintage are like 200 and up (which does get stupid with *mart lappies going for 350 a lot of times on sale).
And I am still using an old "no wireless" router, still works fine, never even owned any 802.11 gear. Network cables still work.
One of the advantages of living in an old cabin, out in the medium sticks, no one gives crap one if you need to pop a hole in a wall. (Muahahahaha! Just had an idea for some sport! Next time I need another hole in the wall for a cable, instead of a cordless drill, I am going to use my .45 with some hardball..just cuz I can..heheheh)
Last I looked a few months ago or so Damn Small Linux looks to be abandoned ware, or close to it. Too bad, an interesting and useful little distro.
Of course I am also against state "license" of straight marriages as well. Unconstitutional crapola.
Why the two camps don't join together and demand the END of licenses to love and live with someone else is beyond me. They are both demanding to have LESS RIGHTS than what you are freely born with. Marriage is between you and partner(s) and your community and that should be it.
It's none of the government's business *at all* who you marry, and a violation of civil rights IMO-1st amendment, 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th- to require some permission/permit/license from big brother to get married. Violates all of them one way or the other.
Every single solitary law/regulation whatever that is on the books regarding some government "marriage license" should be stricken and be made null.
USA marriage licenses are an archaic holdover from extremely racist jim crow miscegenation "don't mix the races" so called "laws". The same with gun control laws, they all started out with trying to deny born - with second amendment rights to people of other than Caucasian extraction.
Any contractural living arrangements, child care provisions, insurance, economic issues, whatever, are just that..and can be handled with a normal contract. There is no reason whatsoever for any marriage "license" other than overreaching big brother action.
But you see, it is much preferable for big brother and the two corrupt criminal political party gangs, who make up big brother, to keep people divided and conquered, so that's why both political gangs insist and demand to have a "license" for a born-with right.
If she gets on the court, you can go up and down the list of born with rights and start kissing them goodbye. Just today, with the important second amendment issue, that would have failed.
She is a Constitutional disaster and has NO business on the Supreme court..or any court for that matter.
There is no good single word equivalent of an extreme left wing fascist, but if it existed, her picture would be next to it in the dictionary.
I'd guess you've never seen or experienced a superinsulated residence. "They" don't push it from the reasons I state, it would collapse energy prices because demand would drop. The energy cartels are some of the biggest lobbying and influence kahunas out there, they fund "studies" like this MIT propaganda piece.
There's a reason there's a push for the "passive house" in places like Germany where energy prices are high and winters are long..it *works*.
Go outside in the winter in some chilly northern clime with a T shirt and shorts, then try it in an insulated snowsuit/ snowmobile suit, see which works better on "saving energy". Same with your house/building, it's dogshit simple to see this. It can be done new construction or retrofit, I have worked on both kinds. Try a house in Maine in January, comfy inside, with NO heater running during the day, and just a very small supplement at night when it is below zero F. It can and does work that well.
Part of getting it adopted is educating people that superinsulation (R55 or better all around, planned air intake and exhaust with a heat exchanger, triple pane windows with pull down insulated covers for at night, etc) exists and can work, that's why I posted the above with the link, so people can see they have some options.
Heating and cooling buildings is the number one energy use in the nation, dropping demand, while retaining the same or even better comfort levels (planned air in and out means you can run a much better air filter, keeps the inside cleaner, plus the house is quieter), would greatly negate this "need" for more plants and using all this fuel, natgas coal nukes whatever. Those boys are in the energy SELLING business, at best they will pay lipservice to the energy savings business, mostly for PR purposes to look green trendy when they are anything but. They are in no way sha[pe or form ever going to push rational conservation as an option, it makes them loads LESS money. There's nothing new to patent, no giant wall street speculation is needed, no one company can gobble up a whole region worth of the insulation business because any carpentry crew can do it. This is off the shelf, already invented long ago stuff, just MORE of it with a few other efficiency tweaks involved.
Superinsulation works with air conditioning as well. Another project I worked on in Missouri was in the summer, the lady there called us up after the install/retrofit was finished and complained we "broke" her air conditioner. She was so used to it kicking on every half hour or hour during the summer, hearing it, when it went more than a day and didn't come on she thought it was broken. I asked her if it was still nice and cool inside, she goes "yes.." "that's what you paid for ma'am". It really does work that well.
This is a great post! I was going to post something like this if no one else did. This 99% fixation on OMG WE NEED MORE POWER PLANTS! Instead of looking to REDUCE DEMAND is plain nuts. It's been pure propaganda and brainwashing of the population for decades now. I know why they do it, to keep wall street traders and speculators and the entrenched energy companies rich. Super insulate ONCE, save forever, or ignore rational insulation and efficiencies that are quite possible and keep up the propaganda that we "need" more power plants, of any kind, and keep paying through the nose month after year after decade for your energy. Freakin loony tunes how many people they have brainwashed against the realities of actual do-able energy savings that are possible using off the shelf technologies.
I've worked on several superinsulation projects, the heating and cooling savings are ginormous, simply *astounding*. The energy industry does NOT want this pushed, they got millions to throw around lobbying, so it isn't pushed. We're talking dropping your energy demands down to 20-10% sometimes of what they were previously, it's that good. It is by far and away the best ROI "energy dollar" that can be spent.
Next up, build out a better internet! It's ludicrous in the 21st century to have millions of people commute daily to go sit in front of a screen with an internet connection. That's bob cratchet and a quill pen action, we don't need that physical presence in the office all the time. We could eliminate millions of transportation miles, millions of lost production hours, by car or bus or train, and eliminate all this supposed "need" for huge SUV energy hog office towers, the ones with huge lights blaring all night long advertising to the space aliens.
There's tons and tons of places that we could be reducing demand at, without reducing quality of life at all, but wall street and the big energy cartels don't like that, and they run the nation. You saving money is not what they like, taking your money every month in big chunks is what they like, and they'll keep shoving propaganda like this article at people as long as it takes to keep you faked out, or feed you BS like "good cents" homes. That's a joke level.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superinsulation
You aren't looking at all the costs of driving petroleum fueled vehicles. Trillion bucks to be heavy in the middle east for decades, health costs especially in major urban areas with smog pollution, and now the gulf oil disaster.
I would actually look forward to much cheaper electric vehicles being on the car lots used, that's the only way I could get one anyway. I'd love to have a small electric truck for use around here, and I only need a 30 mile range to go to town and back, I wouldn't need a 100-300 mile range. And for just driving around the farm, I could keep a smaller cheaper set of batts charged with my solar PV panels.
As to range in general, the generator trailer range extender eliminates that "need" for the 100-300 mile range on pure electric. You could rent one of those for the occasional long trip. These companies could offer a base model with just the 30 - 50 mile range, with more batteries and/or the generator trailer as options. That would reduce the price considerably to just get into an electric ride of some sort.
There's a real easy solution to get rid of flash trading and excessive speculation and get the stock market back to investing...a sales tax on stock sales. I see no reason stocks should be exempt from other "products".
All those big houses use computerized trading to game the system, remember this story?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jul/06/golman-sachs-computer-codes-stolen
Then some fed prosecutor (I forget who know) let it out that this was bad because "in the wrong hands" the code could "manipulate the markets".
Well, in ANY hands that means it could and was designed to
"manipulate the markets". These too big to fail places get a license to steal, to skim off billions, and when that isn't enough, they still get bailed out, loot gets stolen from everyone else and handed to them. Then they can take that loot and buy bonds and government paper of assorted kinds, get even more money, put everyone else into "debt" to them.
And having their boys in and out of the Fed and Treasury and Sec..naw, that isn't a conflict of interest...
Tell ya what I want, a good smartphone that is built on purpose to snap into a netbook (as in integrated by the manufacturer, no kludge, a smooth good design), or snap into a docking station at home. Phones are powerful enough now for everything except extreme gaming, and seeing as how I don't game, that means they are powerful enough. Your home "desktop" is just a bigger screen and full sized keyboard, and an optical drive and NAS. Out and about, you carry it by itself or snapped into a netbook or laptop. When you upgrade your phone every 2-3 years, your two other "computers" are automagically upgraded as well. Added bonus, you now have two screens with your laptop and desktop by default, if you design it so the phone screen is right there visible however it fits into the docks.
Have you tried a mechanism to lean your vertical axis design in high winds, so it slips better? Of course you would lose your stability fast then....hmmm
I remember in the olden days the guys fooling around with savonius rotors made from cut in half oil drums. I think most of them worked OK for a while but never took off from those limitations.
You are right seems dumb compared to the normal horizontal ones. I have a small aero marine windcharger (300 watts), but haven't bothered setting it up here, just not good enough average winds. My PV panels rock though.
No one single magic silver energy bullet, I think it will take all of the above.
With that said, the best "ROI" with energy is to put the skull sweat into dropping demand instead of trying to always just increase production. I am a huge fan of superinsulation to drop heating and cooling costs for instance. I've worked on a few new construction and retrofit examples, it is so amazing..it's..you can't believe it until you have seen the dramatic drops in energy use to maintain previous or even better comfort levels. My fav anecdotal from back then was some lady we had done a mild retrofit for called up to complain we had "broken her air conditioner". OK, I am stumped for a second, we never touched her aircondo or wiring.. She goes "It's not coming on!!". I go "is your house still cool ma'am"? She goes "well, yes..." "You got what you paid for ma'am, big energy savings". She was just so used to her rig kicking on every hour in the summer heat, that when it went more than a day without needing to kick on she thought it was broken!
And I know why superinsulation isn't pushed at the highest levels as much as it should be. No more nuthin needs to be invented or patented. No huge research needed or government boondoggles. It really can't be centrally controlled by any company or small cartel, it really is a small crew/small local business oriented approach. No VC vultures would make any money from it much, nor wall street. All the big energy/utility boys would hate for you to not keep cutting them those huge monthly checks. And stuff like that. It just works too good. Plus it isn't sexy, people just think the opposite, that they "need" more power all the time, they really don't stop and think how to achieve the same result with much less power. Here is another example, most of my rural bubba friends here drive v-8 trucks. I drive a four cylinder diesel truck that gets 2-3 times the mileage of their trucks and does all the work a regular pickup needs to do. The only thing I can't do with that truck is pull the heaviest trailers..meh..that's why we have mid size flatbeds and dumps.
I wonder if it would be possible to retrofit old ships to be windcharger production centers, perhaps the old single hull oil tankers they are phasing out for the double hull jobbies? Then they could be moved where they are needed the most, plus maneuver to avoid storms, etc. And if they ran on electric motors, they could be mostly or totally self propelled as well. Have some big batteries for ballast and stability. Then all that is needed for a permanent structure to be built is the offshore connection points.
Just sign right up to have all your electricity use monitored and controlled. Just stay being a good little consumer. Don't get a sub panel and start replacing circuits in your home one by one with your own solar power, thereby doing your part in getting economies of scale going and getting prices to drop. That's terrorism! Besides, it "will never work" because they say so, plus many internet experts on various forums sayso, and they know better than you! Keep that centralized grid connection, the one with no long term contract available, the one where the prices go up constantly, the one where some old corporation has already made zillions and will continue to make zillions, and you can never pay it off, no matter how much money you give those guys. If you own anything, it is unAmerican, you must *rent* from your corporate overlords..everything.
While you are at it, trash that desktop and sign up for centralized grid computing/cloud computing, pay an extra fee forever, never have your "apps" paid off and leave all that hard "technical" stuff to "the experts" at computecentral, they are your friends..besides, all that complicated stuff is just too much to figure out, you can't do that, it is too hard, so just rent your computer time, and just rent their wonderful magic boxes that connect you to all their complicated computer stuff. Same with your TV, you just can't be allowed an antenna, why, that's dangerous and complicated! And, you are violating "covenants" and your renter's contracts, you must rent a wire and a magic box from them.
Now get rid of all your furniture and go rent all your furniture. If you own your furniture, oh noes, something might break and you could trip and fall, and you couldn't possibly fix it yourself, that's too hard and complicated for you, the furniture pros are the only ones who can fix furniture. Get rid of your car, then go rent one, I mean, checking your oil?? What's that, you can't figure it out, too hard for you, you need a car expert for that at the car rental place. Same with your bicycle, you couldn't possibly fix a flat or oil a chain. Let the central bicycle fixers do that. Make sure you never buy a house, always be a renter, never an owner.
You see, you are just too simple, owning is "hard work", you can't do it, you just aren't smart enough either, it needs a big corporation to own things, consumers just work for them and consume, that's it. You pay what they say, that's all you can do and should do. And if they say you are using too much of that complicated "lektricity" stuff, well, they are the "experts" and all, you just won't understand all those technical details. If they need to shut you off, well, they know better. Charge you more, well, they just know more than you, because you are just a consumer.
One of the best and simplest and clearest descriptions of this huge ripoff economy I have read, mucho props to you.
The sad part is, millions of otherwise intelligent people are still defending those thieves, the thieve's political sockpuppets, and this conjob-based economic system in general.