The author does make many interesting and valid points on the way market information is handled, however adding all those trite cartoons, and taking the time to describe our PCs puttering out on a malware-infested "swamp" while the Mac achieves glorious ascention, made me want to punch the guy in the face.
Lesson: if you've got an interesting point to make, don't go out of the way to be adversaria. You'll just undermine your credibility.
I don't know how accurate this is, but I've heard that there's an ongoing group prank on b3ta involving obiturising Wikipedia articles. Anyone familiar with the site know?
*How does the cost of platinum for a fuel cell compare to the cost of that for a catalytic converter on a bio-diesel vehicle? Or a normal car? How would the platinum demand for fuel cells compare to that for cats at the moment?
*How does relative gravimetric energy density of a lithium-ion battery affect its total efficiency compared to a hydrogen system? If a vehicle is hauling a significant weight of batteries, it's going to waste energy.
*How safe is driving around on a load of lithium-ion batteries compared to driving around on a load of metal hydrides? We all know how those things behave when they're ruptured.
*How energy intensive is conventional battery regeneration compared to the N regeneration cycles of the hydrogen store in the same timeframe?
Writing off hydrogens systems as EV batteries at this stage is utterly laughable. They've disadvantages compared to just wanging off-the-shelf batteries in, but they also have plenty of advantages, and they're still decades from implimentation.
You don't burn the contents of the fuel tank in these hypothetical vehicles. That is the most annoying misconception about hydrogen storage. The chemical is there to provide hydrogen gas for a fuel cell, which together with the hydrogen store makes a high-efficiency chemical battery. If your hydrogen store is regeneratable - which is the plan with all of these projects - you have a high-efficiency rechargable chemical battery.
You jest, but I've seen research papers on using ices to store molecular hydrogen. They were created in diamond anvils, mind, so it's waaaaay off in the periphery of theory right now, but it's got potential.
Hydrogen fuel cells don't burn their fuel, though, they're very specific to the H2+O2->H2O reaction. In fact when you're designing a fuel cell you design the membranes to be as selective as possible to avoid poisoning the system. No spark, no NOX.
Hydrogen's easy to produce by water hydrolysis as long as you have energy, as electricity. I reckon you'd be better off burning waste for power centrally, and then using that electricity to generate hydrogen fuel for the vehicles, in terms of sequestering all the filth that comes off.
IIRC if you describe time using imaginary rather than real numbers, it behaves entirely like the space dimensions, in that it only exists "inside" the universe, and becomes singular very early in the universe's history. So it makes as little sense to talk about what happened before the universe, just as it makes little sense to talk about what happens outside the universe. This also applied to singularities at black holes too. He discussed this in the context of the thermodynamic arrow of time, coming to the conclusion that "imaginary time" (time in imaginary numbers) is the real time, and that "real time" is imaginary (a result of the way consciousness is built around chemical and physical processes).
However I am not an astrophysicist.
Bear in mind that the 2010 target is for the whole storage system: the fuel, the tank and any apparatus needed to get the hydrogen to stay in or come out of it (electrical gear, heaters, coolers, whatever). Ammonia borane stores about 20% hydrogen by weight, for example, but nobody's setting off fireworks yet.
That works fine for compressed or liquefied hydrogen, and maybe some physisorption methods. Chemically stored hydrogen (which seems to be the most promising) would probably require that the cartridge was regenerated by the manufacturer. I think it'll be like milk deliveries: buy new stuff and return the empty bottles.
Of course, the real problem isn't just hydrogen density, the thermodynamics and kinetics of hydrogen uptake and release are important too. You want it to fall off in a nice controlled manner with very little energy: on the order of thermal energies so you can use waste heat from the fuel cell, or a simple heater, to get the hydrogen off. Likewise you want to be able to recharge it with hydrogen quickly and with small energy requirements. Many really great hydrogen storage solutions have run into problems at this end of the problem and need metal catalysts, which increases the weight and cost.
Frankly, practical hydrogen fuel vehicles are still a couple of decades off. It's going to be cool, though. At the gas station, you won't have to go to the pumps, you'll just haul your "empties" out and swap them for reloaded cartridges. If you wanted to take extra fuel with you for a cross-country trip, you could just buy some spares. More expensive than jerry cans, but easier to swap in and out. Of course there's no particular reason for Audi's hydrogen cartridges to be same shape as BMW's, which could get "interesting".
Unsurprisingly it's not the formation of solid dihydrogen as you might expect from the amazingly poorly written press release. Like almost everyone else they're working on chemical hydrogen storage, whereby hydrogen-rich compounds are used to store and release hydrogen gas. The remainder are working on physical dihydrogen storage (carbon nanotubes etc).
I meant, it's interesting that Wikipedia has such a bad reputation when according to the previous poster, desk references such at encyclopedias don't really need to be cited, and thus the Wikipedia shouldn't be in someone's list of references at all. If people are citing it, it suggests it's being used to back up statements beyond general facts like those you'd find in Britannica, which is eyebrow-raising.
That's interesting in light of the Wikipedia's "bad reputation". I wonder if people are treating it as more than a general reference and citing it as such. I personally take a "citation or it didn't happen" approach.
Yes, they don't take it very well when you ask for some references. "But I wrote the textbook on this!" Well, yes, you should have a big box of papers on the subject kicking around then.
Going off at a tangent, but when has an encyclopedia ever been a good source to cite in an academic work? I've never come across someone citing Brittanica or Encarta beyond high-school level. Encyclopedias are up there with pop science books and newspaper columns when it comes to respectability as an academic source. At least Wikipedia has the advantage of giving you references which you can cite, in most cases.
They don't seem to take notice of credentials to be honest. This has annoyed many an academic who has made massive changes to an article only to see it reverted because:
1) He didn't discuss his massive changes with the other editors
2) He didn't provide any references
Generally speaking, when it comes to being taken seriously you have to have good negotiating and debating skills (not a great talent for arguing, actual debating skills) and the ability to provide references which can easily be checked by peers. In my experience, at any rate.
Wikipedia admin access isn't particularly valuable. People are granted admin accounts by votes from other editors at the moment, but el Jimbo has spoken in the past about simply giving away administrator access to a few users at random to see what happens. However this guy represented himself, aside from a few administrative abilities (banning/unbanning users, undeleting and locking articles) the use of which is prescribed by Wikipedia policy, he's just another editor when it comes to adding or removing content. And as we all know, qualifications (real or imagined) don't mean a lot to the Wikipedia posse.
I think the article creator is confusing administrators with Stewards, select members of MediaWiki with project-wide authority.
It's one of the Microgames, and (when unlocked) the Music screen has an option to conduct the tunes. It's not very good and I've read elsewhere that the "waving" which drives both this version and the original demo is nothing like actually conducting. Apparently real conductors are tapping points in space, sort of like a 3D Ouendan/Elite Beat Agents.
I think at the end of the day Wikipedia needs to make it clear just what they're looking for and who the audience is. They need a universal style and content guide. The trio of policies (Verifiability, No Original Research, and Neutral Point of View) helps but the project is still ghettoised. You have various groups writing for themselves and for like-minded people, which doesn't really work. For example the theoretical physicists and mathematicians are writing largely textbook-like articles utterly impenetrable to the lay reader, and likewise webcomic fans are producing a vast database of character and story guides which aren't of much interest to anyone who isn't already familiar with each comic.
On top of this difficulty for the reader, you wind up with different editorial groups who have different criteria for quality, style, and (my favourite) notability. This leads to the endlessly hilarious border skirmishes when humanities editors start nominating webcomics articles for deletion and videogame fans start blasting tracts from the Matrix articles as original research.
I think at the end of the day they need some sort of "round table" discussion to get these cliques talking and sorting things out. Mix things up, put the webcomics project in charge of science articles for a week or something. It's fun and games when everyone's singing from the same hymn sheet, but by far the most important skill in wiki editing is diplomacy, which you can only get really good at by getting into a lot of disputes.
It's unprecidented (the PS2 for example wasn't part of a "format war" and DVD players were not ridiculously expensive when it arrived), so it might happen or might not. That's why I put it forward as a conjecture.
The question isn't how many Blu-Ray disks are going to sell, it's whether it's going to be more of a success than HD-DVD. Obviously if consumers give up on HDTV disks completely they're both going to flop.
Slashdot Mirror
The author does make many interesting and valid points on the way market information is handled, however adding all those trite cartoons, and taking the time to describe our PCs puttering out on a malware-infested "swamp" while the Mac achieves glorious ascention, made me want to punch the guy in the face. Lesson: if you've got an interesting point to make, don't go out of the way to be adversaria. You'll just undermine your credibility.
I don't know how accurate this is, but I've heard that there's an ongoing group prank on b3ta involving obiturising Wikipedia articles. Anyone familiar with the site know?
Lots of talk but few numbers. Obvious questions:
*How does the cost of platinum for a fuel cell compare to the cost of that for a catalytic converter on a bio-diesel vehicle? Or a normal car? How would the platinum demand for fuel cells compare to that for cats at the moment?
*How does relative gravimetric energy density of a lithium-ion battery affect its total efficiency compared to a hydrogen system? If a vehicle is hauling a significant weight of batteries, it's going to waste energy.
*How safe is driving around on a load of lithium-ion batteries compared to driving around on a load of metal hydrides? We all know how those things behave when they're ruptured.
*How energy intensive is conventional battery regeneration compared to the N regeneration cycles of the hydrogen store in the same timeframe?
Writing off hydrogens systems as EV batteries at this stage is utterly laughable. They've disadvantages compared to just wanging off-the-shelf batteries in, but they also have plenty of advantages, and they're still decades from implimentation.
You don't burn the contents of the fuel tank in these hypothetical vehicles. That is the most annoying misconception about hydrogen storage. The chemical is there to provide hydrogen gas for a fuel cell, which together with the hydrogen store makes a high-efficiency chemical battery. If your hydrogen store is regeneratable - which is the plan with all of these projects - you have a high-efficiency rechargable chemical battery.
You jest, but I've seen research papers on using ices to store molecular hydrogen. They were created in diamond anvils, mind, so it's waaaaay off in the periphery of theory right now, but it's got potential.
Hydrogen fuel cells don't burn their fuel, though, they're very specific to the H2+O2->H2O reaction. In fact when you're designing a fuel cell you design the membranes to be as selective as possible to avoid poisoning the system. No spark, no NOX.
Hydrogen's easy to produce by water hydrolysis as long as you have energy, as electricity. I reckon you'd be better off burning waste for power centrally, and then using that electricity to generate hydrogen fuel for the vehicles, in terms of sequestering all the filth that comes off.
IIRC if you describe time using imaginary rather than real numbers, it behaves entirely like the space dimensions, in that it only exists "inside" the universe, and becomes singular very early in the universe's history. So it makes as little sense to talk about what happened before the universe, just as it makes little sense to talk about what happens outside the universe. This also applied to singularities at black holes too. He discussed this in the context of the thermodynamic arrow of time, coming to the conclusion that "imaginary time" (time in imaginary numbers) is the real time, and that "real time" is imaginary (a result of the way consciousness is built around chemical and physical processes). However I am not an astrophysicist.
Bear in mind that the 2010 target is for the whole storage system: the fuel, the tank and any apparatus needed to get the hydrogen to stay in or come out of it (electrical gear, heaters, coolers, whatever). Ammonia borane stores about 20% hydrogen by weight, for example, but nobody's setting off fireworks yet.
That works fine for compressed or liquefied hydrogen, and maybe some physisorption methods. Chemically stored hydrogen (which seems to be the most promising) would probably require that the cartridge was regenerated by the manufacturer. I think it'll be like milk deliveries: buy new stuff and return the empty bottles.
Of course, the real problem isn't just hydrogen density, the thermodynamics and kinetics of hydrogen uptake and release are important too. You want it to fall off in a nice controlled manner with very little energy: on the order of thermal energies so you can use waste heat from the fuel cell, or a simple heater, to get the hydrogen off. Likewise you want to be able to recharge it with hydrogen quickly and with small energy requirements. Many really great hydrogen storage solutions have run into problems at this end of the problem and need metal catalysts, which increases the weight and cost. Frankly, practical hydrogen fuel vehicles are still a couple of decades off. It's going to be cool, though. At the gas station, you won't have to go to the pumps, you'll just haul your "empties" out and swap them for reloaded cartridges. If you wanted to take extra fuel with you for a cross-country trip, you could just buy some spares. More expensive than jerry cans, but easier to swap in and out. Of course there's no particular reason for Audi's hydrogen cartridges to be same shape as BMW's, which could get "interesting".
Unsurprisingly it's not the formation of solid dihydrogen as you might expect from the amazingly poorly written press release. Like almost everyone else they're working on chemical hydrogen storage, whereby hydrogen-rich compounds are used to store and release hydrogen gas. The remainder are working on physical dihydrogen storage (carbon nanotubes etc).
I meant, it's interesting that Wikipedia has such a bad reputation when according to the previous poster, desk references such at encyclopedias don't really need to be cited, and thus the Wikipedia shouldn't be in someone's list of references at all. If people are citing it, it suggests it's being used to back up statements beyond general facts like those you'd find in Britannica, which is eyebrow-raising.
That's interesting in light of the Wikipedia's "bad reputation". I wonder if people are treating it as more than a general reference and citing it as such. I personally take a "citation or it didn't happen" approach.
Yes, they don't take it very well when you ask for some references. "But I wrote the textbook on this!" Well, yes, you should have a big box of papers on the subject kicking around then.
Going off at a tangent, but when has an encyclopedia ever been a good source to cite in an academic work? I've never come across someone citing Brittanica or Encarta beyond high-school level. Encyclopedias are up there with pop science books and newspaper columns when it comes to respectability as an academic source. At least Wikipedia has the advantage of giving you references which you can cite, in most cases.
They don't seem to take notice of credentials to be honest. This has annoyed many an academic who has made massive changes to an article only to see it reverted because: 1) He didn't discuss his massive changes with the other editors 2) He didn't provide any references Generally speaking, when it comes to being taken seriously you have to have good negotiating and debating skills (not a great talent for arguing, actual debating skills) and the ability to provide references which can easily be checked by peers. In my experience, at any rate.
Furthermore, administrators aren't "high up". Just about anyone can become an Admin.
Wikipedia admin access isn't particularly valuable. People are granted admin accounts by votes from other editors at the moment, but el Jimbo has spoken in the past about simply giving away administrator access to a few users at random to see what happens. However this guy represented himself, aside from a few administrative abilities (banning/unbanning users, undeleting and locking articles) the use of which is prescribed by Wikipedia policy, he's just another editor when it comes to adding or removing content. And as we all know, qualifications (real or imagined) don't mean a lot to the Wikipedia posse. I think the article creator is confusing administrators with Stewards, select members of MediaWiki with project-wide authority.
It's one of the Microgames, and (when unlocked) the Music screen has an option to conduct the tunes. It's not very good and I've read elsewhere that the "waving" which drives both this version and the original demo is nothing like actually conducting. Apparently real conductors are tapping points in space, sort of like a 3D Ouendan/Elite Beat Agents.
I think at the end of the day Wikipedia needs to make it clear just what they're looking for and who the audience is. They need a universal style and content guide. The trio of policies (Verifiability, No Original Research, and Neutral Point of View) helps but the project is still ghettoised. You have various groups writing for themselves and for like-minded people, which doesn't really work. For example the theoretical physicists and mathematicians are writing largely textbook-like articles utterly impenetrable to the lay reader, and likewise webcomic fans are producing a vast database of character and story guides which aren't of much interest to anyone who isn't already familiar with each comic.
On top of this difficulty for the reader, you wind up with different editorial groups who have different criteria for quality, style, and (my favourite) notability. This leads to the endlessly hilarious border skirmishes when humanities editors start nominating webcomics articles for deletion and videogame fans start blasting tracts from the Matrix articles as original research.
I think at the end of the day they need some sort of "round table" discussion to get these cliques talking and sorting things out. Mix things up, put the webcomics project in charge of science articles for a week or something. It's fun and games when everyone's singing from the same hymn sheet, but by far the most important skill in wiki editing is diplomacy, which you can only get really good at by getting into a lot of disputes.
Good point, well made.
For regular spam: no change
For companies on the system's good list: allowed past spam filters
So that's a net gain of spam.
GENIUSES
It's unprecidented (the PS2 for example wasn't part of a "format war" and DVD players were not ridiculously expensive when it arrived), so it might happen or might not. That's why I put it forward as a conjecture.
The question isn't how many Blu-Ray disks are going to sell, it's whether it's going to be more of a success than HD-DVD. Obviously if consumers give up on HDTV disks completely they're both going to flop.