The issue is that you were acting like solar is a dead end. It's anything but.
Actually, I wasn't the original poster. And I don't mean to imply it's a dead end, I just think it's going to be a few decades before photovoltaic cells are practical for non-niche use.
Well, technically feasible and economically feasible are two different things. The plant in California worked, but they calculated the cost for each home so powered would be on the order of $275k/year. Granted, that was a small demonstration project, but what it demonstrated was the technology is pretty far from prime-time.
I think the draw for the method they chose is the fact the plant will produce electricity as long as the salts are hot. In California they built one of these, and they were saying the plant would actually generate power at a continuous rate even at night or on a cloudy day. As long as you don't have too many cloudy days in a row.
The heat engine will only run when the sun is shining.
Sure, it's been advancing by leaps and bounds. PV went from something that can only be justified on a multi-million-dollar satellite to something that makes sense if you live in the boonies and can't get the power company to hook you up. But it's still a long way from competitive on an even or near-even playing field.
Here in California you can get some pretty nice tax breaks for installing a solar system. Also the power company is obligated to buy your excess power at retail rates, so the grid becomes your "battery", which saves a lot of money and hassle. A guy at my office ran the numbers earlier this year, and what he found is it still doesn't make sense to install a PV system. And it's not the cells that get you in the end, it's the installation costs, the rectifier, the extra electronics to connect to the grid, the batteries (if you need them), and the fact that you and I don't pay wholesale prices in the real world. So even if the cells drop to half what they are today it won't be enough.
Also, the cells will degrade with time, so for a practical system you'd need to start with excess power or add to the system as time goes by. You have to clean them periodically. And because your investment is all up front, you pay an opportunity cost for your money.
The financial picture gets much worse if the tax breaks are removed and the power company doesn't have to buy your excess power, or pays the same rates it pays to its suppliers.
It may be we'll see breakthroughs in PV technology which change this equation. But the technology is mature enough that the low-hanging fruit has already been picked, and you can't base real-life policy on theoretical breakthroughs.
If energy is cheap enough to make hydrocarbons, then we can make hydrogen and dispense with the unwanted byproducts. Or do you mean to say we can make hydrocabon fuels directly from atmospheric carbon?
It's our place as the strong to protect the weak, even from themselves.
Sez you. It's that kind of thinking that gave us this stupid "war" on drugs. How about we allow other people to live their lives and reap the consequences, good or bad?
No, I don't know who the US Government is. The people feeding that billboard are individuals. I don't know them. I don't know how competent they are or how honest they are.
Let me pose a hypothetical. Let's say you turn someone in based on what you saw on a billboard. The person is shot while being apprehended. Let's further say later it comes out the allegations against him are false - a product of an ugly divorce. Do you bear some responsibility for an innocent man's death? I understand for people in law enforcement that's just an occupational hazard. But I'm not a cop.
Noooo, you misunderstand my point. The point isn't that I don't know the victim or the attacker. The point is I don't know a crime has actually occurred. If I see someone attacked on the street it's a much different situation than the one where some faceless bureaucrat is telling me someone is wanted for a crime. Is it such a stretch to imagine a situation where the person in question isn't a child molester, but is instead someone who videotaped some kind of government corruption?
I realize that's not much different than what we have today, where the cops will run someone down after an APB. But in this case it would be me that's involved. I guess what's bothering me is I'm wondering if I have some kind of moral responsibility to determine the situation is what the FBI says it is before I help them.
I suppose if you're willing to trust the authorities not to manipulate you it must be very comforting.
This kinds of schemes always remind me of the old Ahnold movie The Running Man. I understand there are lots of bad people out there... but, thing is, it takes a certain amount of trust for me to believe the guy on the billboard really is a murderer/child molester. Somebody I don't know is trying to enlist me in the search for someone else I don't know. It makes me a little uncomfortable.
I hope you've saved up for the big fine the FCC is going to levy on you. Those channels aren't going to be unused, they just won't be used by television signals. The new legitimate users of the spectrum are not going to be happy about the interference. Also, since it may be used by emergency services, you could actually end up harming your neighbors.
And there's no reason for it anyway. Everything you intend to broadcast can be put up on youtube, reaching far more people and costing you much less money.
You and me both. Unfortunately, development costs for such a craft would be almost as much as those of a 747, and since they'd never have the sales volume the commercial jet market has, I don't think we'll ever see it unless the price of fuel really takes off.
And airships have their own peculiar difficulties. Zeppelin just lost one the other day to a freak gust of wind in South Africa.
You laugh, but speed does indeed make things cheaper. In 1937 you could take an airship from Friedrickhshaffenn, Germany to Lakehurst,New Jersey, nonstop, using far less fuel than jets use today. A modern version would use even less - you could make the same trip at about 1/4 commercial jet speeds using far less than 1/4 of the fuel. And yet, it doesn't make sense - have you noticed the lack of transcontinental passenger airship service?
The reason is a jet can make four trips in the same time period, which reduces the number of aircraft you need. According to the Boeing site, a 747 costs somewhere between $225 million an $300 million, so if you could find a jet that would travell four times as fast, you could save about $750 million in capital outlays for every new scramjet vehicle when it came time to replace your fleet. That will buy a lot of jet fuel. Even if the whole thing is a wash you'd still want to do it because your passengers would be willing to pay extra for a transcontinental flight that only lasts an hour or two.
I admit there may be sites without backup power that I don't know about. All the majors except Sprint were created by merger, so there may be some markets where the original installers didn't put in generators. But that certainly wasn't the case in NO. I watched them go out one at a time more than a day after the hurricane struck.
As far as the refueling goes, I don't remember anybody complaining about the national guard. I do remember crews complaining they they couldn't physically get to the generators because of debris on the roads.
I work for a large cell carrier. We had backup power to every single cell in the area. In fact, after the hurricane we were doing pretty well, though some of the towers were taken out by debris. Only a couple were actually submerged. We lost a few trunk lines, but for the most part the system was working.
The problem was we didn't have any way to get gas to the generators. The roads were impassible, and based on news reports we were reluctant to send crews in to the sites we could reach for security reasons. So after a couple days the cell sites started going offline one at a time as the generators ran out of power.
As far as I know every one of our sites, in the entire country, already has a couple days worth of backup power.
This is just wrong for a lot of reasons. First, jamming is spectacularly ineffective. Not only is the other responder correct in pointing out antennas can be designed to reject signals coming from the wrong direction, but also spread spectrum communications operate over such wide bands it's impractical to jam them - it takes too much power.
Finally, any source of a jamming signal has a big bullseye on it, since the signal can be used for homing. No jammer will last more than a few minutes after the engagement is joined.
Also, the JDAM isn't designed to hit moving targets. Once the target is programmed in to the drone, the operator doesn't need to do anything, so even if you could jam communications with the drone, it would finish its mission.
I don't think the cost of the actual cable will change the equation very much. I've been out of it for more than ten years, but even then you could get fiber for less than $1/foot - I assume it's even cheaper now. I have to believe most of the cost lies in planning, getting permits, and digging trenches.
Torture is still used because it works, and it works because it's still used? That's some nice circular logic there, Lou.
You must be projecting. Where did I say the second half of that statement?
Gee, you managed to find a list of biased articles quoting people who claim to 1) know that torture doesn't work, and 2) never have engaged in it themselves. So either they're lying, or they don't have firsthand knowledge. Which is it? Your "verifiable fact" looks a lot more like working backwards from the "right" answer.
Of course people will say anything to make the torture stop. But that in itself is no obstacle to gathering information. When you put the thumbscrews to someone you make sure you have a way to check out the story, and you make sure the subject knows falsehood will bring back the pain. Verification can be done by obtaining corroborating physical evidence, but if you have a group of people, especially if they were taken unawares and separated immediately, you can keep at it until the stories agree. If you have one guy and no way to verify the story then, yeah, torture doesn't work in that case.
Oh, and one other thing... I don't have to rely on speculation to know it works. Khalid Sheik Mohamed was waterboarded for two and a half minutes before he sang like a canary. And everything he said was verified through physical evidence or financial records.
Whether or not it's always unethical to engage in torture is a pretty tricky question - there's no getting around the "ticking time bomb" scenario. But don't pretend your wishful thinking regarding the efficacy of torture allows us as a society to avoid asking the question.
For me, if someone has information that will save the lives of my friends and family, he better give it up.
This is wrong. The sad fact of the matter is torture works, and it works well. That's why it's still used. The belief that it doesn't work allows you to square the intellectual circle, I suppose, allowing you to claim torture is wrong even in the "ticking bomb" scenario. But you're wrong.
No, I don't think I missed the point at all. To sum up the original post - "you Americans think the free market solves everything. See, it doesn't!"
I was simply pointing out this has nothing to do with the free market, as utilities are typically regulated monopolies. Now, I would agree with you when you say these monopolies could be regulated much better, but that wasn't the argument I was responding to.
Actually, most utilities in the United States are regulated monopolies. In my area we only have one source for water, electricity, gas, and (wired) phone service. I have the choice of two cable providers, but that's very unusual. In most places the cable company has a monopoly.
If Americans have faith in the free market, one of the reasons is we have to deal with regulated monopolies like the cable company.
Next time please check your assumptions before you start ranting.
Did my point make any sound as it soared over your head? Yes, of course lots of people would wear helmets even if they weren't forced to. And yes, helmets save lives. Personally, I would wear a helmet if I rode a motorcycle, and I would even go so far as to say it's not very smart not to wear one.
But those aren't good reasons to bring the power of the state to bear on those who don't agree. If an adult doesn't want to wear a helmet, what business is it of the state? You could ride without a helmet in California for almost a century... all the way up to the time when the trauma care system ran into financial trouble.
A few months of gambling and brothel hopping would have taught them the error of their ways.
Except that it wouldn't. Not everyone thinks like Americans think, and not everyone considers hedonism a worthy pursuit. Some people just need killing.
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Actually, I wasn't the original poster. And I don't mean to imply it's a dead end, I just think it's going to be a few decades before photovoltaic cells are practical for non-niche use.
Which newspaper does Rove own?
Well, technically feasible and economically feasible are two different things. The plant in California worked, but they calculated the cost for each home so powered would be on the order of $275k/year. Granted, that was a small demonstration project, but what it demonstrated was the technology is pretty far from prime-time.
I think the draw for the method they chose is the fact the plant will produce electricity as long as the salts are hot. In California they built one of these, and they were saying the plant would actually generate power at a continuous rate even at night or on a cloudy day. As long as you don't have too many cloudy days in a row.
The heat engine will only run when the sun is shining.
Sure, it's been advancing by leaps and bounds. PV went from something that can only be justified on a multi-million-dollar satellite to something that makes sense if you live in the boonies and can't get the power company to hook you up. But it's still a long way from competitive on an even or near-even playing field.
Here in California you can get some pretty nice tax breaks for installing a solar system. Also the power company is obligated to buy your excess power at retail rates, so the grid becomes your "battery", which saves a lot of money and hassle. A guy at my office ran the numbers earlier this year, and what he found is it still doesn't make sense to install a PV system. And it's not the cells that get you in the end, it's the installation costs, the rectifier, the extra electronics to connect to the grid, the batteries (if you need them), and the fact that you and I don't pay wholesale prices in the real world. So even if the cells drop to half what they are today it won't be enough.
Also, the cells will degrade with time, so for a practical system you'd need to start with excess power or add to the system as time goes by. You have to clean them periodically. And because your investment is all up front, you pay an opportunity cost for your money.
The financial picture gets much worse if the tax breaks are removed and the power company doesn't have to buy your excess power, or pays the same rates it pays to its suppliers.
It may be we'll see breakthroughs in PV technology which change this equation. But the technology is mature enough that the low-hanging fruit has already been picked, and you can't base real-life policy on theoretical breakthroughs.
If energy is cheap enough to make hydrocarbons, then we can make hydrogen and dispense with the unwanted byproducts. Or do you mean to say we can make hydrocabon fuels directly from atmospheric carbon?
Sez you. It's that kind of thinking that gave us this stupid "war" on drugs. How about we allow other people to live their lives and reap the consequences, good or bad?
It's more like real life in, say, the Congo. If someone pisses you off you kill them. If you can't do that you just live with it.
No, I don't know who the US Government is. The people feeding that billboard are individuals. I don't know them. I don't know how competent they are or how honest they are.
Let me pose a hypothetical. Let's say you turn someone in based on what you saw on a billboard. The person is shot while being apprehended. Let's further say later it comes out the allegations against him are false - a product of an ugly divorce. Do you bear some responsibility for an innocent man's death? I understand for people in law enforcement that's just an occupational hazard. But I'm not a cop.
Noooo, you misunderstand my point. The point isn't that I don't know the victim or the attacker. The point is I don't know a crime has actually occurred. If I see someone attacked on the street it's a much different situation than the one where some faceless bureaucrat is telling me someone is wanted for a crime. Is it such a stretch to imagine a situation where the person in question isn't a child molester, but is instead someone who videotaped some kind of government corruption?
I realize that's not much different than what we have today, where the cops will run someone down after an APB. But in this case it would be me that's involved. I guess what's bothering me is I'm wondering if I have some kind of moral responsibility to determine the situation is what the FBI says it is before I help them.
I suppose if you're willing to trust the authorities not to manipulate you it must be very comforting.
This kinds of schemes always remind me of the old Ahnold movie The Running Man. I understand there are lots of bad people out there... but, thing is, it takes a certain amount of trust for me to believe the guy on the billboard really is a murderer/child molester. Somebody I don't know is trying to enlist me in the search for someone else I don't know. It makes me a little uncomfortable.
I hope you've saved up for the big fine the FCC is going to levy on you. Those channels aren't going to be unused, they just won't be used by television signals. The new legitimate users of the spectrum are not going to be happy about the interference. Also, since it may be used by emergency services, you could actually end up harming your neighbors.
And there's no reason for it anyway. Everything you intend to broadcast can be put up on youtube, reaching far more people and costing you much less money.
You and me both. Unfortunately, development costs for such a craft would be almost as much as those of a 747, and since they'd never have the sales volume the commercial jet market has, I don't think we'll ever see it unless the price of fuel really takes off.
And airships have their own peculiar difficulties. Zeppelin just lost one the other day to a freak gust of wind in South Africa.
You laugh, but speed does indeed make things cheaper. In 1937 you could take an airship from Friedrickhshaffenn, Germany to Lakehurst,New Jersey, nonstop, using far less fuel than jets use today. A modern version would use even less - you could make the same trip at about 1/4 commercial jet speeds using far less than 1/4 of the fuel. And yet, it doesn't make sense - have you noticed the lack of transcontinental passenger airship service?
The reason is a jet can make four trips in the same time period, which reduces the number of aircraft you need. According to the Boeing site, a 747 costs somewhere between $225 million an $300 million, so if you could find a jet that would travell four times as fast, you could save about $750 million in capital outlays for every new scramjet vehicle when it came time to replace your fleet. That will buy a lot of jet fuel. Even if the whole thing is a wash you'd still want to do it because your passengers would be willing to pay extra for a transcontinental flight that only lasts an hour or two.
I admit there may be sites without backup power that I don't know about. All the majors except Sprint were created by merger, so there may be some markets where the original installers didn't put in generators. But that certainly wasn't the case in NO. I watched them go out one at a time more than a day after the hurricane struck.
As far as the refueling goes, I don't remember anybody complaining about the national guard. I do remember crews complaining they they couldn't physically get to the generators because of debris on the roads.
Regarding hurricane Katrina:
I work for a large cell carrier. We had backup power to every single cell in the area. In fact, after the hurricane we were doing pretty well, though some of the towers were taken out by debris. Only a couple were actually submerged. We lost a few trunk lines, but for the most part the system was working.
The problem was we didn't have any way to get gas to the generators. The roads were impassible, and based on news reports we were reluctant to send crews in to the sites we could reach for security reasons. So after a couple days the cell sites started going offline one at a time as the generators ran out of power.
As far as I know every one of our sites, in the entire country, already has a couple days worth of backup power.
I believe that's the most ignorant thing I've ever read.
This is just wrong for a lot of reasons. First, jamming is spectacularly ineffective. Not only is the other responder correct in pointing out antennas can be designed to reject signals coming from the wrong direction, but also spread spectrum communications operate over such wide bands it's impractical to jam them - it takes too much power. Finally, any source of a jamming signal has a big bullseye on it, since the signal can be used for homing. No jammer will last more than a few minutes after the engagement is joined. Also, the JDAM isn't designed to hit moving targets. Once the target is programmed in to the drone, the operator doesn't need to do anything, so even if you could jam communications with the drone, it would finish its mission.
I don't think the cost of the actual cable will change the equation very much. I've been out of it for more than ten years, but even then you could get fiber for less than $1/foot - I assume it's even cheaper now. I have to believe most of the cost lies in planning, getting permits, and digging trenches.
You must be projecting. Where did I say the second half of that statement?
Gee, you managed to find a list of biased articles quoting people who claim to 1) know that torture doesn't work, and 2) never have engaged in it themselves. So either they're lying, or they don't have firsthand knowledge. Which is it? Your "verifiable fact" looks a lot more like working backwards from the "right" answer.
Of course people will say anything to make the torture stop. But that in itself is no obstacle to gathering information. When you put the thumbscrews to someone you make sure you have a way to check out the story, and you make sure the subject knows falsehood will bring back the pain. Verification can be done by obtaining corroborating physical evidence, but if you have a group of people, especially if they were taken unawares and separated immediately, you can keep at it until the stories agree. If you have one guy and no way to verify the story then, yeah, torture doesn't work in that case.
Oh, and one other thing... I don't have to rely on speculation to know it works. Khalid Sheik Mohamed was waterboarded for two and a half minutes before he sang like a canary. And everything he said was verified through physical evidence or financial records.
Whether or not it's always unethical to engage in torture is a pretty tricky question - there's no getting around the "ticking time bomb" scenario. But don't pretend your wishful thinking regarding the efficacy of torture allows us as a society to avoid asking the question.
For me, if someone has information that will save the lives of my friends and family, he better give it up.
This is wrong. The sad fact of the matter is torture works, and it works well. That's why it's still used. The belief that it doesn't work allows you to square the intellectual circle, I suppose, allowing you to claim torture is wrong even in the "ticking bomb" scenario. But you're wrong.
No, I don't think I missed the point at all. To sum up the original post - "you Americans think the free market solves everything. See, it doesn't!"
I was simply pointing out this has nothing to do with the free market, as utilities are typically regulated monopolies. Now, I would agree with you when you say these monopolies could be regulated much better, but that wasn't the argument I was responding to.
Actually, most utilities in the United States are regulated monopolies. In my area we only have one source for water, electricity, gas, and (wired) phone service. I have the choice of two cable providers, but that's very unusual. In most places the cable company has a monopoly. If Americans have faith in the free market, one of the reasons is we have to deal with regulated monopolies like the cable company. Next time please check your assumptions before you start ranting.
Did my point make any sound as it soared over your head? Yes, of course lots of people would wear helmets even if they weren't forced to. And yes, helmets save lives. Personally, I would wear a helmet if I rode a motorcycle, and I would even go so far as to say it's not very smart not to wear one.
But those aren't good reasons to bring the power of the state to bear on those who don't agree. If an adult doesn't want to wear a helmet, what business is it of the state? You could ride without a helmet in California for almost a century... all the way up to the time when the trauma care system ran into financial trouble.
Except that it wouldn't. Not everyone thinks like Americans think, and not everyone considers hedonism a worthy pursuit. Some people just need killing.