Feasible maybe depending on what costs you call feasible, more like possible, but efficient, no.
When you transmit power over lines, you loose efficiency. I have seen numbers in the 20-40% range at the turbine. Loss due to transmission is about 7% from what I have just read. It was my understanding that it was exponential or at least directly proportionate to the distance to which the electricity travels, which is the reason why we can't just make all our power generation in one place and just ship it all over everyplace, however I couldn't find a quick wiki reference. However you do start getting into stability and balance issues requiring better lines basically at higher cost, and I assume there is a limit to what can be done in this regard.
Solar is worse than wind. I keep hearing about a 40% break through every other year, but it never really materializes. In effect it is much worse than that. Couple this with the fact that it degrades over time (though most plants compensate for this through replacements). Also the 99% you refer to is heat storage. It says nothing about electrical energy which is what matters. I have not heard of Molten Salt batteries before and while they certainly sound interesting/promising, keep in mind this is something that is being reported in Forbes, a Financial Magazine, and the figures you are quoting, come directly from the company that is trying to get funding, etc... Take it with a grain of salt. (sorry couldn't resist the pun, oh there is another one... lol)...
I have been to both Wind and Solar operations multiple times in the recent past, and while they are good, they have severe limitations (currently anyway, whoops, there is another!).
Nukes on the other had generate actual electricity 98% efficient, 24/7 (unless down for maintenance of course). They have their own sets of limitations, in that there is risk that need to be mitigated, and costs can be very high. However in their ability to generate electricity that we can use they are kings.
Real thermal generation is only really feasible in a few places (not including home temperature geothermal, but the kind that makes sparks).
Tidal is also only feasible in very few locations. They are also small (in comparison) operations. Only 3 have ever existed in the world, one in Russia, one in Canada, and ironically one in France. I used to live minutes away from the Canadian one in Nova Scotia. I think it is an 80MW facility. Small potatoes.
I have yet to see any wave generation work in practice, though I know there have been experiments.
However the main thing is capacity. (sorry another pun) A modern nuclear plant could produce 8GW, all the time. That would be say the equivalent of 1000 of those tidal plants, just to make it up. A mega 3MW wind turbine (most of the new ones I have seen I think were 2.3), you would need 10,000 for 3GW, 20,000 for 6GW, and 25,000 for about 8GW. The installation I saw had issue making 86. Land owners, and associations, are not fans. (damn, another). Solar, I won't even bother doing the math. I went to the 2nd biggest one in Canada at the time and it was 20MW for the whole solar farm. Anyway it is a big challenge. Realistically, unless we want to go back to hunter/gatherers (or burn coal like the dickens, which might also be a sort of pun), I do not see nuclear power generation going anywhere regardless of what anyone says/thinks, because it really just is not possible if we want to continue to live the way we do.
Or if you are like me, you don't throw anything away, only re-purpose them as web servers, file servers, media pc's, bookshelves, small tables, dust protectors, ancient artifacts, and curious images of days of yor.
Until you have played ball hockey in the winter, with one of those orange balls from Canadian Tire, which has frozen solid, and someone takes a slapshot with it, and hits you in the balls, you are not entirely Canadian yet.
I'll take one of those in the head any day of the week over the "LBI".
Good if you live where they offer coverage. I have looked into getting Teksavvy myself after getting abused by Cogeco and Bell for years. However according to their website there is no service to Peterborough, Ontario.
It a good win, and a surprising one for consumers however, a small step to a better future in broadband.
However one spinoff I see of this, is the purposeful degradation of lines, and further inhibiting of growth. Both Bell and Rogers won the right previously in an earlier CRTC ruling to be able to throttle speeds based on usage (p2p or whatever they like really, no regulation). They justify this by saying that they do it to their own customers, and thus it is a fair market (they tried to show that they needed to, to protect the network from congestion, however internal leaked Bell documents showed this was a pile of BS). What use is a unlimited or 300GB account if your speed is reduced to a crawl.
Anyway currently this isn't the case, but it could be a result of this decision. So long as the big two (Bell/Rogers) do the same to their own networks it would not be in violation of the previous ruling by the CRTC.
While I won't try and refute your nuclear rant, I will say I call BS on your 90% efficiency number for wind power storage.
If you are referring to pump storage for wind power, it is a great idea, however it requires there to be a storage medium close by to the turbines for any sort of efficiency, and considering that the most efficient turbines are located either offshore, or on the coast, that is not all that common an occurrence.
I agree it is great when you can do it, it just isn't feasible in many places.
I have done a number of these "tests" as a practical portion of an interview. I have found in most cases it is retarded. "Here is X problem, solve it using Y language, you have 30min and a sheet of paper and a pencil, good luck".
I never code that way. It would be different if they asked me what my solution would be, or to write it in pseudocode, or how I would go about it. I just think asking someone to write perfect code, with no references, is stupid. It most cases I end up piecing together my code from various other projects I have worked on, from other sources, books, etc.... But it is all just syntax. The solution for the most part (unless for whatever reason isn't easily supported by the required language) doesn't change. Anyway I am not a "programmer", and haven't applied for a "programming" job, but most would require some ability.
Anyway most tests I have seen are silly and are really not a good test of how good a programmer you are, but more of how familiar you are with one particular language syntax, which most of you will probably agree isn't everything. I think part of the problem is this stuff is put together by HR and Management staff, who don't know any better other than one of the requirements of the job is Y.
I agree to pay you a million dollars if gravity is suddenly turned off. I am pretty sure its not going to happen, and if it does I don't think I will care anymore.
This is just political speak for the stupid.
The stupid go "Ook Ook, Nuke Bad! Leader shut down. Leader Good ook ook!"
What this really means is the politician will say he will shut them down, but when he doesn't because he cannot due to need, he will just point to his previous remarks and say that is what I said originally.
That said I am sure France would love your money and your sovereignty.
What got me thinking, is that perhaps it was a coincidence, or perhaps it is part of the underlying process, but if you look closely at when communism failed, namely when the former Soviet Union fell, and exactly when the "wealth gap" started to really expand, you will see they coincide very closely.
I am unsure if this means A) that having that counterpart served to keep capitalists "honest", B) that having communism "fail" proved capitalism "win" and was thus a carte blanche to push the limits, or C) nothing or all the above.
Given the underlying difference between say communism and capitalism, and the results, and then ultimately the evidence of the narrowing of dispersal of wealth to a tiny few, I think it might be hard to simply say it is totally unconnected. It might not be totally cause and causality in the traditional sense, but it sure makes one wonder.
Why go through all the bother of owning a private army when you can simply get the biggest army in the world to do your bidding... It is easier and cheaper to own politicians I think.
Whats the quote? Those who don't follow history are doomed to repeat it?
A few years ago there was this housing crisis (been around for awhile btw with nothing being done about it), where untrustworthy financial institutions lent money to people who could clearly not pay it back, and then transferred that debt to someone else, in the end government will have to pay the bill to save the economy, and is ultimately born by the taxpayer.
Now there is a student load crisis (been around for awhile btw with nothing being done about it), where for profit sketchy educational institutions facilitate the government to lend people money who will clearly not pay it back...
I saw a special on TV where basically these for profit schools are really just taking advantage of the US student loan program and defrauding everyone and getting away with it. People's lives are ruined, with a useless degree and no way to pay back the loans, and the US is out Trillions. Guess who wins? CEO of the school, and whoever the rich investors are. I'm pretty sure they have a pretty big political lobby as well. Funny that.
I'm not even US, but clearly you have to seen a pattern here right?
I'll put it in Slashdot terms: Current 1% business plan 1) Loan money to someone who can't pay it back, but is backed by government loan guarantee 2) ??? 3) PROFIT!
I think people like Ron Paul because he is an idealist, and as such seems honest and not corrupt like most politicians these days. His policies however are like taking a sledgehammer to open heart surgery. Or a bone saw to hang nail. Or bleach to AIDS, sure it solves the problem, but it will also kill the patient.
So you are replacing the limited non-renewable resource of oil, with the limited non-renewable resource of helium?
Though it would slow the consumption of oil, so it might be marginally useful.
I guess for me, is the benefit really worth the effort. You are offsetting the crappy efficiency of solar power, using the buoyancy of a limited non-renewable resource of helium, so you can burn less limited non-renewable oil basically.
This might serve as a limited stop gap measure for awhile once oil prices have skyrocketed, but I don't see much demand before that.
Yeah I figured that out a long time ago. I figure the only people that buy that crap are people that are lazy, want a really simple solution, or do not have the expertise to do it themselves. That is to say you take one of these pre-assembled NAS, plug it in network, do a wizard, done. For a small biz with no tech support, maybe an option. Also most of the bigger NAS support hot swappable drives, which is nice... thought if you spent about 120$ rather than 40$ on your case you can get hot swappable drives anyway.
Also, considering you don't really need a whole lot of RAM or CPU to run the thing, the easiest and cheapest way to make one, is to simply use an old system. They aren't worth anything to sell, but you can still get a lot of use. So buy yourself a new shiny sleek system, and just re-purpose your old, into a NAS, or web server, or dev machine, or whatever as the cost then (not including the upgrade you probably needed anyway) is 0$ dollars.
I guess the short version *is* I think what they are saying is "absurd".
They say "may", but it is a pretty weak "may", in that it is most likely garbage.
If you care to believe their postulation that all life on earth almost ended just over 100 years, ago that's your business.
I am simply saying from a science and statistical standpoint I believe it is very doubtful, and if that is the case, it is likely getting news because it is sensational, which is likely why is was published in the first place.
You talk about misreading, but you seem to not understand what I posted. I didn't see a complaint. It was an opinion. Mine. That the story was BS from a science perspective. Your post on the other hand, does appear to be a complaint, about my post, so take your own advice. At least I had a point to make, whereas you seem to lack even that.
Then it is just a very astronomically (pun intended) rare statistical anomaly and thus nothing to ever worry about, (unless you are worried about getting struck by Lightning twice in the same year while riding a unicycle and simultaneously getting hit by a bus within your lifetime, in which case you actually have bigger problems) unless they are trying to say that this happens more common then we think, which is to say are you almost hit by a car everyday?
No?
Then yes. They they may not be lairs, but they are misleading you.
Corruption is corruption is corruption. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, etc... Simply take the largest power in the world (USA), and the Richest People in the world (Wall Street), and don't be surprised with what you eventually get.
However it is no different than say Soviet Communism, when all the power and money was controlled by the political party elite. In most cases the actual political system or philosophy has nothing to do with it, only the corruption of it. Communism by its very name was supposed to be a collective of equals sharing everything a la Marxism. However the "ideal" and how shit actually works out, as we all know now can be vary different.
However certain beliefs such as corporatism, capitalism, etc... may be more susceptible to corruption than others. You can try and "regulate" it a bit with democracy, or in this case a republic, however everything has a weakness. Ideally the free market invisible hand would self regulate itself, in that no one wants to blow up the system they make so much profit from, however it simply does not work that way. Add to that the fact that now Government is backing this behavior, we are likely in even worse condition, with no more regulation than we had to begin with.
Anyway this all is the cause of the cozy relationship of corporations with government. So long as governments are elected by money, and corporations are allowed to fund elections, they will forever buy the government they wish. To what degree you allow that to happen is what you have to live with.
Everyone who cares, knows what Mars is. Most people do not know who, where, or WTF Europa, Titan, and Enceladus are. When a big part of the mission would be public appeal, that does count.
Slashdot Mirror
Feasible maybe depending on what costs you call feasible, more like possible, but efficient, no.
When you transmit power over lines, you loose efficiency.
I have seen numbers in the 20-40% range at the turbine.
Loss due to transmission is about 7% from what I have just read. It was my understanding that it was exponential or at least directly proportionate to the distance to which the electricity travels, which is the reason why we can't just make all our power generation in one place and just ship it all over everyplace, however I couldn't find a quick wiki reference.
However you do start getting into stability and balance issues requiring better lines basically at higher cost, and I assume there is a limit to what can be done in this regard.
Solar is worse than wind. I keep hearing about a 40% break through every other year, but it never really materializes. In effect it is much worse than that. Couple this with the fact that it degrades over time (though most plants compensate for this through replacements). Also the 99% you refer to is heat storage. It says nothing about electrical energy which is what matters. I have not heard of Molten Salt batteries before and while they certainly sound interesting/promising, keep in mind this is something that is being reported in Forbes, a Financial Magazine, and the figures you are quoting, come directly from the company that is trying to get funding, etc... Take it with a grain of salt. (sorry couldn't resist the pun, oh there is another one... lol)...
I have been to both Wind and Solar operations multiple times in the recent past, and while they are good, they have severe limitations (currently anyway, whoops, there is another!).
Nukes on the other had generate actual electricity 98% efficient, 24/7 (unless down for maintenance of course). They have their own sets of limitations, in that there is risk that need to be mitigated, and costs can be very high. However in their ability to generate electricity that we can use they are kings.
Real thermal generation is only really feasible in a few places (not including home temperature geothermal, but the kind that makes sparks).
Tidal is also only feasible in very few locations. They are also small (in comparison) operations. Only 3 have ever existed in the world, one in Russia, one in Canada, and ironically one in France. I used to live minutes away from the Canadian one in Nova Scotia. I think it is an 80MW facility. Small potatoes.
I have yet to see any wave generation work in practice, though I know there have been experiments.
However the main thing is capacity. (sorry another pun) A modern nuclear plant could produce 8GW, all the time. That would be say the equivalent of 1000 of those tidal plants, just to make it up. A mega 3MW wind turbine (most of the new ones I have seen I think were 2.3), you would need 10,000 for 3GW, 20,000 for 6GW, and 25,000 for about 8GW. The installation I saw had issue making 86. Land owners, and associations, are not fans. (damn, another). Solar, I won't even bother doing the math. I went to the 2nd biggest one in Canada at the time and it was 20MW for the whole solar farm. Anyway it is a big challenge. Realistically, unless we want to go back to hunter/gatherers (or burn coal like the dickens, which might also be a sort of pun), I do not see nuclear power generation going anywhere regardless of what anyone says/thinks, because it really just is not possible if we want to continue to live the way we do.
Or if you are like me, you don't throw anything away, only re-purpose them as web servers, file servers, media pc's, bookshelves, small tables, dust protectors, ancient artifacts, and curious images of days of yor.
Until you have played ball hockey in the winter, with one of those orange balls from Canadian Tire, which has frozen solid, and someone takes a slapshot with it, and hits you in the balls, you are not entirely Canadian yet.
I'll take one of those in the head any day of the week over the "LBI".
Good if you live where they offer coverage. I have looked into getting Teksavvy myself after getting abused by Cogeco and Bell for years. However according to their website there is no service to Peterborough, Ontario.
It a good win, and a surprising one for consumers however, a small step to a better future in broadband.
However one spinoff I see of this, is the purposeful degradation of lines, and further inhibiting of growth. Both Bell and Rogers won the right previously in an earlier CRTC ruling to be able to throttle speeds based on usage (p2p or whatever they like really, no regulation). They justify this by saying that they do it to their own customers, and thus it is a fair market (they tried to show that they needed to, to protect the network from congestion, however internal leaked Bell documents showed this was a pile of BS). What use is a unlimited or 300GB account if your speed is reduced to a crawl.
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/P2P-Internet-Torrents-Comcast,news-3340.html
Anyway currently this isn't the case, but it could be a result of this decision. So long as the big two (Bell/Rogers) do the same to their own networks it would not be in violation of the previous ruling by the CRTC.
Exactly. If your plant gets attacked by aliens, you may have bigger problems than safety protocols.
While I won't try and refute your nuclear rant, I will say I call BS on your 90% efficiency number for wind power storage.
If you are referring to pump storage for wind power, it is a great idea, however it requires there to be a storage medium close by to the turbines for any sort of efficiency, and considering that the most efficient turbines are located either offshore, or on the coast, that is not all that common an occurrence.
I agree it is great when you can do it, it just isn't feasible in many places.
as it must be a cold day in hell that not only one, but two politicians actually spoke the truth.
I can't imagine why no one would agree to sign any carbon reduction treaty that doesn't include any serious restrictions to China.
China will never sign.
This is why we are all doomed.
Even if one settled once and for all the climate change debate (HA!), we couldn't do anything about it due to politics.
Department of Inequality, Capitalism, Korruption and Servitude
Sorry, couldn't think of anything good that starts with "K"
I have done a number of these "tests" as a practical portion of an interview. I have found in most cases it is retarded. "Here is X problem, solve it using Y language, you have 30min and a sheet of paper and a pencil, good luck".
I never code that way. It would be different if they asked me what my solution would be, or to write it in pseudocode, or how I would go about it. I just think asking someone to write perfect code, with no references, is stupid. It most cases I end up piecing together my code from various other projects I have worked on, from other sources, books, etc.... But it is all just syntax. The solution for the most part (unless for whatever reason isn't easily supported by the required language) doesn't change. Anyway I am not a "programmer", and haven't applied for a "programming" job, but most would require some ability.
Anyway most tests I have seen are silly and are really not a good test of how good a programmer you are, but more of how familiar you are with one particular language syntax, which most of you will probably agree isn't everything. I think part of the problem is this stuff is put together by HR and Management staff, who don't know any better other than one of the requirements of the job is Y.
"They did what?!... Ha ha ha ho ho ho... silly humans!"
We'll learn ya good!
I see this as simply a notification that people shouldn't go there for higher learning.
I agree to pay you a million dollars if gravity is suddenly turned off. I am pretty sure its not going to happen, and if it does I don't think I will care anymore.
This is just political speak for the stupid.
The stupid go "Ook Ook, Nuke Bad! Leader shut down. Leader Good ook ook!"
What this really means is the politician will say he will shut them down, but when he doesn't because he cannot due to need, he will just point to his previous remarks and say that is what I said originally.
That said I am sure France would love your money and your sovereignty.
That's how I read that, anyway. Perhaps I see what I want to...
Followed closely by a image of a sad pirate with no other ships to pillage...
Of course they could hold our telecommunications satellites hostage for big profits... Hmmmmm....
What got me thinking, is that perhaps it was a coincidence, or perhaps it is part of the underlying process, but if you look closely at when communism failed, namely when the former Soviet Union fell, and exactly when the "wealth gap" started to really expand, you will see they coincide very closely.
I am unsure if this means A) that having that counterpart served to keep capitalists "honest", B) that having communism "fail" proved capitalism "win" and was thus a carte blanche to push the limits, or C) nothing or all the above.
Given the underlying difference between say communism and capitalism, and the results, and then ultimately the evidence of the narrowing of dispersal of wealth to a tiny few, I think it might be hard to simply say it is totally unconnected. It might not be totally cause and causality in the traditional sense, but it sure makes one wonder.
Why go through all the bother of owning a private army when you can simply get the biggest army in the world to do your bidding... It is easier and cheaper to own politicians I think.
Whats the quote? Those who don't follow history are doomed to repeat it?
A few years ago there was this housing crisis (been around for awhile btw with nothing being done about it), where untrustworthy financial institutions lent money to people who could clearly not pay it back, and then transferred that debt to someone else, in the end government will have to pay the bill to save the economy, and is ultimately born by the taxpayer.
Now there is a student load crisis (been around for awhile btw with nothing being done about it), where for profit sketchy educational institutions facilitate the government to lend people money who will clearly not pay it back...
I saw a special on TV where basically these for profit schools are really just taking advantage of the US student loan program and defrauding everyone and getting away with it. People's lives are ruined, with a useless degree and no way to pay back the loans, and the US is out Trillions. Guess who wins? CEO of the school, and whoever the rich investors are. I'm pretty sure they have a pretty big political lobby as well. Funny that.
I'm not even US, but clearly you have to seen a pattern here right?
I'll put it in Slashdot terms:
Current 1% business plan
1) Loan money to someone who can't pay it back, but is backed by government loan guarantee
2) ???
3) PROFIT!
I think people like Ron Paul because he is an idealist, and as such seems honest and not corrupt like most politicians these days. His policies however are like taking a sledgehammer to open heart surgery. Or a bone saw to hang nail. Or bleach to AIDS, sure it solves the problem, but it will also kill the patient.
The communists were idealists as well.
As it turns out reality is a lot different than the ideal, and the world is a complicated place.
So you are replacing the limited non-renewable resource of oil, with the limited non-renewable resource of helium?
Though it would slow the consumption of oil, so it might be marginally useful.
I guess for me, is the benefit really worth the effort. You are offsetting the crappy efficiency of solar power, using the buoyancy of a limited non-renewable resource of helium, so you can burn less limited non-renewable oil basically.
This might serve as a limited stop gap measure for awhile once oil prices have skyrocketed, but I don't see much demand before that.
Yeah I figured that out a long time ago. I figure the only people that buy that crap are people that are lazy, want a really simple solution, or do not have the expertise to do it themselves. That is to say you take one of these pre-assembled NAS, plug it in network, do a wizard, done. For a small biz with no tech support, maybe an option. Also most of the bigger NAS support hot swappable drives, which is nice... thought if you spent about 120$ rather than 40$ on your case you can get hot swappable drives anyway.
Also, considering you don't really need a whole lot of RAM or CPU to run the thing, the easiest and cheapest way to make one, is to simply use an old system. They aren't worth anything to sell, but you can still get a lot of use. So buy yourself a new shiny sleek system, and just re-purpose your old, into a NAS, or web server, or dev machine, or whatever as the cost then (not including the upgrade you probably needed anyway) is 0$ dollars.
I guess the short version *is* I think what they are saying is "absurd".
They say "may", but it is a pretty weak "may", in that it is most likely garbage.
If you care to believe their postulation that all life on earth almost ended just over 100 years, ago that's your business.
I am simply saying from a science and statistical standpoint I believe it is very doubtful, and if that is the case, it is likely getting news because it is sensational, which is likely why is was published in the first place.
You talk about misreading, but you seem to not understand what I posted. I didn't see a complaint. It was an opinion. Mine. That the story was BS from a science perspective. Your post on the other hand, does appear to be a complaint, about my post, so take your own advice. At least I had a point to make, whereas you seem to lack even that.
Then it is just a very astronomically (pun intended) rare statistical anomaly and thus nothing to ever worry about, (unless you are worried about getting struck by Lightning twice in the same year while riding a unicycle and simultaneously getting hit by a bus within your lifetime, in which case you actually have bigger problems) unless they are trying to say that this happens more common then we think, which is to say are you almost hit by a car everyday?
No?
Then yes. They they may not be lairs, but they are misleading you.
Life is too short.
Correct, sort of.
Corruption is corruption is corruption. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, etc... Simply take the largest power in the world (USA), and the Richest People in the world (Wall Street), and don't be surprised with what you eventually get.
However it is no different than say Soviet Communism, when all the power and money was controlled by the political party elite. In most cases the actual political system or philosophy has nothing to do with it, only the corruption of it. Communism by its very name was supposed to be a collective of equals sharing everything a la Marxism. However the "ideal" and how shit actually works out, as we all know now can be vary different.
However certain beliefs such as corporatism, capitalism, etc... may be more susceptible to corruption than others. You can try and "regulate" it a bit with democracy, or in this case a republic, however everything has a weakness. Ideally the free market invisible hand would self regulate itself, in that no one wants to blow up the system they make so much profit from, however it simply does not work that way. Add to that the fact that now Government is backing this behavior, we are likely in even worse condition, with no more regulation than we had to begin with.
Anyway this all is the cause of the cozy relationship of corporations with government. So long as governments are elected by money, and corporations are allowed to fund elections, they will forever buy the government they wish. To what degree you allow that to happen is what you have to live with.
Unless the name of the movie is Cryptonomicon, I'll take a pass. Otherwise Hella yeah!
Everyone who cares, knows what Mars is. Most people do not know who, where, or WTF Europa, Titan, and Enceladus are. When a big part of the mission would be public appeal, that does count.