Heinlein wrote a number of interesting analyses of that academic exercise. I suggest "The Man Who Sold The Moon" and "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". Just an old hack SF writer from the Mauve Decade, perhaps, but also an Annapolis graduate who did the sums. The interesting part of those books was not necessarily the action, but the obstacles presented -- some very human, some raw physics. Enough in there to teach a young wannabe scientist that progress is more than just the math...
So if we used 10,000 times as much energy as we do now, it could be bad.
Or it could be good. Or neither. Or both. Care to explain why it might be bad? Your statement is like that of people arguing against asteroid mining on the grounds that if we accidentally bring too much extra mass to Earth it'll collapse into a black hole.
Indeed. Once we import three solar masses of material to the Earth, we will be in a spot of trouble. On the other hand, it would be nice to be part of a Big Bang in some other tensor.
Also in Melbourne, AU. 3.5kw array on the roof. I don't really care about the time to ROI; we had a bit of money for a while and spent a chunk of it reducing our power bill expenses now and into the future. Non-solar energy prices will only go up; ours will, but more slowly. We time the big appliances to run mostly during the day. Are we happy about it? Yes, yes we are.
We get a few cents per kWH back from the power utility. Not a lot, but it's amazing how much power we've generated since we bought it.
Answer is yes. Google "microCHP". Lots of commercially-produced cogenerators for home use. Whispertech did these until New Zealand blew up around it. Volkswagen does it through "LichtBlich" (LightPoint) and much of German and Spain are using these distributed generators.
The economies are political as well as financial; it's a lot easier to build a distributed generation capacity than it is to fight the NIMBY for another centralised power plant built with 1950's thinking.
It is a lot. At that scale you could run a small truck with it fairly easily. 25 kW isn't much in terms of internal combustion (my daughter's Honda VTR250 has about that much) but it's a huge amount of torque from zero RPM for an electric motor or two.
I was under the impression that large power plants use downstream heat from their main generators by using Stirling-cycle cogenerators (the rather large ones) in stages until the exhaust temperature is very close to ambient. Thus there isn't really all that much "waste" heat.
Why are we assuming a cataclysm? Yes, there may be one, and we have to prepare for the worst, but we should also make as much available via technology as well. A thousand copies of an encyclopedia on thumb drives perhaps? In that case they'd probably have all the data, but the quaint snapshot of what we knew at the time would be of interest, too.
Just don't use ROHS-compliant electronics; the lack of lead in the solder joints would whisker them to death over time.
In the George Pal version of H.G.Wells' "The Time Machine", the intrepid traveller comes upon a flat desk with a series of rings arrayed around. He spins a ring, and the story unfolds... a little hologram appears, with the message
Yes, the average 18 to 45 consumer spends a lot more time on their phone than they do on their computer.
Then they go to work, and they're faced with doing their job, with a PC that's organised completely differently.
There's been a rather huge corporate investment in getting desktop machines sorted to maximise productivity, with applications developed, training provided, and documentation written. I'm talking about billions of dollars in investment, and so much of which would have to be re-spent to use the Windows 8 UI.
Take-up among the Corporate sector? Don't hold your breath.
It just sounds like a bunch of Whiny people who wants to get an Apple or Defend Linux, or are so old or autistic that they cannot handle any change.
And your comment sounds rude and rather incredibly arrogant.
I believe the criticisms with the UI I've read above are relevant and germane. And, supporting several thousand users over the phone, I am not enjoying the workload increase from having to explain the chaos of W8 to the clerical staff who are trained to a pattern in XP or W7.
The best thing Microsoft did after introducing W8 was to fire Sinofsky.
I've done that. Ancient General Automation GA-16/440 minicomputer using their native Fortran 66.
I'd set a constant = 5, then inadvertently used the constant as the result variable in an expression, and, sure enough, it was 5 that I'd redefined. Incredible whacked-out results from then on.
Took one hell of a long time to debug.
I think that bug, and all the accumulated strangeness of writing for that platform, is why I feel relieved that I don't write software any more.
Contrast that with the products of Microsoft, Oracle
As an independent, it's always been frustrating to try to evaluate new releases from those vendors.
I think that's also by design, to keep C-level business decisions from being influenced by criticism from the technically-astute tier. After all, these deals are often brokered at the golf course, where one's handicap is more relevant than platform or infrastructure culture.
Slashdot Mirror
The metric you're looking for is the "Vote"
Taking away the moments that make up a dull day...
And when the projectiles from said weapons achieve low, high-speed Lunar orbit? I think that was covered in the Golden Age of SF too.
Heinlein wrote a number of interesting analyses of that academic exercise. I suggest "The Man Who Sold The Moon" and "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". Just an old hack SF writer from the Mauve Decade, perhaps, but also an Annapolis graduate who did the sums. The interesting part of those books was not necessarily the action, but the obstacles presented -- some very human, some raw physics. Enough in there to teach a young wannabe scientist that progress is more than just the math...
This would not work as the strategy I need to power up my Firefly-class starship, nor provide the Serenity I need.
So if we used 10,000 times as much energy as we do now, it could be bad.
Or it could be good. Or neither. Or both. Care to explain why it might be bad?
Your statement is like that of people arguing against asteroid mining on the grounds that if we accidentally bring too much extra mass to Earth it'll collapse into a black hole.
Indeed. Once we import three solar masses of material to the Earth, we will be in a spot of trouble. On the other hand, it would be nice to be part of a Big Bang in some other tensor.
How can this article possibly be construed as matching the tone and subject matter of this fine journal?
Gosh!
Also in Melbourne, AU. 3.5kw array on the roof. I don't really care about the time to ROI; we had a bit of money for a while and spent a chunk of it reducing our power bill expenses now and into the future. Non-solar energy prices will only go up; ours will, but more slowly. We time the big appliances to run mostly during the day. Are we happy about it? Yes, yes we are.
We get a few cents per kWH back from the power utility. Not a lot, but it's amazing how much power we've generated since we bought it.
Answer is yes. Google "microCHP". Lots of commercially-produced cogenerators for home use. Whispertech did these until New Zealand blew up around it. Volkswagen does it through "LichtBlich" (LightPoint) and much of German and Spain are using these distributed generators.
The economies are political as well as financial; it's a lot easier to build a distributed generation capacity than it is to fight the NIMBY for another centralised power plant built with 1950's thinking.
It is a lot. At that scale you could run a small truck with it fairly easily. 25 kW isn't much in terms of internal combustion (my daughter's Honda VTR250 has about that much) but it's a huge amount of torque from zero RPM for an electric motor or two.
I was under the impression that large power plants use downstream heat from their main generators by using Stirling-cycle cogenerators (the rather large ones) in stages until the exhaust temperature is very close to ambient. Thus there isn't really all that much "waste" heat.
Spray WD-40 on your fishing lure. It's fish-oil based...
...when newspapers feared the rise of the internet. Now we have all the new money buying one outright. ...
Not the first time this has happened. Remember AOL/Time-Warner?
Yes, Hollywood should underwrite the venture. The payback dividends will be enormous!
If they don't... what's cheaper than Windows 8?
Windows 7.
Given the cost of change in the corporate sphere, you are exactly right.
Read Frank Herbert's "Dune" for the reference.
It'll just drive the movement underground.
Well, sort of like BART.
Why are we assuming a cataclysm? Yes, there may be one, and we have to prepare for the worst, but we should also make as much available via technology as well. A thousand copies of an encyclopedia on thumb drives perhaps? In that case they'd probably have all the data, but the quaint snapshot of what we knew at the time would be of interest, too.
Just don't use ROHS-compliant electronics; the lack of lead in the solder joints would whisker them to death over time.
In the George Pal version of H.G.Wells' "The Time Machine", the intrepid traveller comes upon a flat desk with a series of rings arrayed around. He spins a ring, and the story unfolds... a little hologram appears, with the message
"Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope."
Or words to that effect.
Yes, the average 18 to 45 consumer spends a lot more time on their phone than they do on their computer.
Then they go to work, and they're faced with doing their job, with a PC that's organised completely differently.
There's been a rather huge corporate investment in getting desktop machines sorted to maximise productivity, with applications developed, training provided, and documentation written. I'm talking about billions of dollars in investment, and so much of which would have to be re-spent to use the Windows 8 UI.
Take-up among the Corporate sector? Don't hold your breath.
It just sounds like a bunch of Whiny people who wants to get an Apple or Defend Linux, or are so old or autistic that they cannot handle any change.
And your comment sounds rude and rather incredibly arrogant.
I believe the criticisms with the UI I've read above are relevant and germane. And, supporting several thousand users over the phone, I am not enjoying the workload increase from having to explain the chaos of W8 to the clerical staff who are trained to a pattern in XP or W7.
The best thing Microsoft did after introducing W8 was to fire Sinofsky.
I've done that. Ancient General Automation GA-16/440 minicomputer using their native Fortran 66.
I'd set a constant = 5, then inadvertently used the constant as the result variable in an expression, and, sure enough, it was 5 that I'd redefined. Incredible whacked-out results from then on.
Took one hell of a long time to debug.
I think that bug, and all the accumulated strangeness of writing for that platform, is why I feel relieved that I don't write software any more.
Times a million. Chas just won the entire Internet with that post.
Contrast that with the products of Microsoft, Oracle
As an independent, it's always been frustrating to try to evaluate new releases from those vendors.
I think that's also by design, to keep C-level business decisions from being influenced by criticism from the technically-astute tier. After all, these deals are often brokered at the golf course, where one's handicap is more relevant than platform or infrastructure culture.