The origin of this information is a former saudi oil company exec. The leak just quotes it and tells us, that US diplomats think he's believable.
This has been an "open secret for some time. It's pretty clear from various analyses that the Saudis (and everybody else) are just flat out lying when it comes to their reserves.
On a semi related note, the Oil Drum as a collection of the best articles of the past 6 years. Anyone moderately interested in reasonably coherent discussion of Peak Oil and related subjects should read most of those articles.
Exactly. The safest, most efficient form of energy we have right now is nuclear energy but of course we can't have that because its nuclear! We need to focus on the here and now and the here and now is nuclear.
It's a tad ironic - your statement juxtaposed with your sig. Do you realize that nuclear power has enormous, truly enormous government subsidies (from tax revenue)? Without those subsidies the industry would be completely dead in the water, as opposed to severely moribund. There are several reasons (and discoverable by a trivial search) for this, among them the very long lead time involved in plant siting, design and construction. But as a 'free market' short term proposition, nucs aren't glowing very brightly.
HP has a long ways to go, but they might be trying to create another Appleesque system - smartphone / tablet / PC (later on) running a limited OS which would be just perfect for most of the limited users out there in Box-o-rocks land. According to TFA they're adding some social networking (which will of course fail), yet another movie portal (likewise) and partnering with Skype to counter facetime. Whether or not anyone is interested in the latter remains to be seen but at least they're going to try to put stuff together.
Likely to little too late, but you have to start somewhere.
Ha, I have something of the opposite problem with my HTC Android phone. At work (in the secret underground bunker), it doesn't get a signal anywhere at all. Unless it's sitting in my pocket under my desk, then it somehow manages to barely hold onto an EDGE link.;-P
Fool. That's because the cheap Chinese power strip on the floor is really a secret WIFI point with a VPN tunnel to some rice swilling hackers north of Bejing. We told you all to get American Made power strips. Now it's too late.
Oh, and the Reality Distortion Field prevents this stuff from happening. Just so you'll know next time to get an iPhone.
Telestar-1 (the satellite) was launched around 2009 and apparently is pretty advanced. Their website, although as usual devoid of anything remotely technical does have this to say:
A significant factor in TerreStar's IOT success was validating that TerreStar-1's 18 meter 2GHz S Band reflector was performing as designed. It is this very large reflector that enables voice, data and video communications to be transmitted to mobile devices the size of a typical smartphone.
"The completion of in-orbit testing has verified several new technologies developed by Space Systems/Loral and our key suppliers," said John Celli, President and Chief Operating Officer, Space Systems/Loral (SS/L). "We are pleased to report that all of the new developments meet or exceed performance expectations. In particular, the S-band antenna, which includes an 18-meter reflector developed by Harris Corporation and a complex feed array developed by SS/L, has been verified by measurements of the antenna patterns on the ground. The reflector mesh is correctly aligned to the feed and the surface shape is accurate."
TerreStar is now entering the Ground Based Beam Forming (GBBF) testing phase. With GBBF, TerreStar-1 is capable of generating more than 500 simultaneous spot beams, enabling the satellite's power to be directed where it is needed the most at any point in time.
Which strongly implies that it's pretty much state of the art. I rather doubt that this one is going to go on the block for only 150K and even it is, there are the previously mentioned holes in TFA - how they plan to move it, how they plan to get permission to move it, what orbit it is currently in vs. what they want, how they're going to hook this to to rest of the Internet (likely to cost more than 150K by itself in terms of ground station and tie in).
It's time to learn old fashioned orientation again! When driving on car trips as a child, when we got lost, my father would always ask, "Where's the sun?" This to figure out in what direction we were traveling. He grew up on a large, remote ranch, so he learned this skill from my grandpa. Now if some other broadcaster starts sending something that interferes with the Earth's magnetic field . . . the rest of us will be in big trouble.
I'll just mention that to the Alaska Airlines pilots who are shooting GPS assisted landings into Juneau and Ketchikan (next to mountains) or Sitka (where the airport hangs out over the ocean AND abuts the mountains). I'm sure they still carry their sextants in their flight bags.
Alaska is sending fresh water to China in oil tankers, kind of a scary thought since I like drinking water and I don't want to compete with 3 billion Chinese for it...
What? No we're not. A few insane people are thinking about it (we've got plenty, just bring your own jar) but the catch has been the tanker. You can't just clean out anything floating and put potable water in it and the costs of making a new purpose built water tanker seem to be too high. Everything from freezing the water to shipping it in giant plastic bags has been proposed, but nothing yet has come of it.
I still get this with bluetooth headsets. See someone walking alone down the street arguing with them self for a few minutes. That little blue LED really needs to stay on during use instead of blink so we can more quickly identify the real schizophrenics.
I'm not sure I get this - do all schizophrenics have blinking blue lights, or is it just you?
While I think that standing in front of a 'computer' and waving my hands looking retarded isn't the best way to interface with a machine, it would get folks off the couch and at least moving more than their fingers.
Just don't make it mobile. People look stupid enough with bluetooth head sets as it is.
It's more than a disaster issue: if that city is where a larger part of the cloud computing services are located, it would be a VERY inviting target for a first strike by a single nuclear warhead if general war breaks out between China and the USA. Don't be surprised that the Chinese military puts in a lot of defensive missile positions using the licensed version of the Russian S-300PMU-1 missile so it could even defend this complex even against ICBM attack.
Why bother with an expensive missile and nuke warhead? USB drives are cheap. Just sprinkle them around the parking lot. Use Chinese USB drives for the ironic win. Less mess to clean up later.
Software is more important than hardware today. The whole cloud computing movement shows that in many cases hardware is just a cheap commodity. This datacenter is some politicians building themselves a monument and pretending to be ahead or at least on the same level with the west. This is just a lot of hot air, but otherwise quite irrelevant. Building a large datacenter is pretty easy, once you have the cash, and does not show any level of technological sophistication.
You have ah, interesting, definitions of 'cheap' and 'easy'. Are you, by some chance, in management?
I do agree with you there, but windmills are a really expensive way to generate power, and those generators are difficult enough to keep operating without exposing them to salt water spray.
Why not stick a nuclear reactor out there instead of a windmill? It wouldn't be visible from shore, wouldn't even need a cooling tower since you could use the sea water as a heat sink, and would be far enough out to reduce any chance of radiation leakage hitting the short to a minimum.
Because for all the cost of an expensive wind plant, it's dwarfed by the construction and maintenance costs of a nuclear plant. Putting one offshore means more hassles getting the power inshore, more hassles with security and even more hassles with salt water corrosion. One of the really amusing things about trying to wean ourselves off fossil fuels is that we're more than willing to spend billions upon billions of dollars bankrolling nuc plants, we don't give but pennies to wind / water.
Slashdot Mirror
The origin of this information is a former saudi oil company exec. The leak just quotes it and tells us, that US diplomats think he's believable.
This has been an "open secret for some time. It's pretty clear from various analyses that the Saudis (and everybody else) are just flat out lying when it comes to their reserves.
On a semi related note, the Oil Drum as a collection of the best articles of the past 6 years. Anyone moderately interested in reasonably coherent discussion of Peak Oil and related subjects should read most of those articles.
Exactly. The safest, most efficient form of energy we have right now is nuclear energy but of course we can't have that because its nuclear! We need to focus on the here and now and the here and now is nuclear.
It's a tad ironic - your statement juxtaposed with your sig. Do you realize that nuclear power has enormous, truly enormous government subsidies (from tax revenue)? Without those subsidies the industry would be completely dead in the water, as opposed to severely moribund. There are several reasons (and discoverable by a trivial search) for this, among them the very long lead time involved in plant siting, design and construction. But as a 'free market' short term proposition, nucs aren't glowing very brightly.
they'll have died from death
Keep going. How else would this happen?
Hmm. I never tought of my buttocks as my private parts. Interesting.
We have. Please put your clothes back on.
What to do... what to do...
What you need, son, is some thermite. Column of fire and all that. Forget the stupid bush league stuff.
Dunno about that. Eight hours with a bar but without a bathroom sounds like a fairly unpleasant afternoon.
HP has a long ways to go, but they might be trying to create another Appleesque system - smartphone / tablet / PC (later on) running a limited OS which would be just perfect for most of the limited users out there in Box-o-rocks land. According to TFA they're adding some social networking (which will of course fail), yet another movie portal (likewise) and partnering with Skype to counter facetime. Whether or not anyone is interested in the latter remains to be seen but at least they're going to try to put stuff together.
Likely to little too late, but you have to start somewhere.
Ha, I have something of the opposite problem with my HTC Android phone. At work (in the secret underground bunker), it doesn't get a signal anywhere at all. Unless it's sitting in my pocket under my desk, then it somehow manages to barely hold onto an EDGE link.;-P
Fool. That's because the cheap Chinese power strip on the floor is really a secret WIFI point with a VPN tunnel to some rice swilling hackers north of Bejing. We told you all to get American Made power strips. Now it's too late.
Oh, and the Reality Distortion Field prevents this stuff from happening. Just so you'll know next time to get an iPhone.
A significant factor in TerreStar's IOT success was validating that TerreStar-1's 18 meter 2GHz S Band reflector was performing as designed. It is this very large reflector that enables voice, data and video communications to be transmitted to mobile devices the size of a typical smartphone.
"The completion of in-orbit testing has verified several new technologies developed by Space Systems/Loral and our key suppliers," said John Celli, President and Chief Operating Officer, Space Systems/Loral (SS/L). "We are pleased to report that all of the new developments meet or exceed performance expectations. In particular, the S-band antenna, which includes an 18-meter reflector developed by Harris Corporation and a complex feed array developed by SS/L, has been verified by measurements of the antenna patterns on the ground. The reflector mesh is correctly aligned to the feed and the surface shape is accurate."
TerreStar is now entering the Ground Based Beam Forming (GBBF) testing phase. With GBBF, TerreStar-1 is capable of generating more than 500 simultaneous spot beams, enabling the satellite's power to be directed where it is needed the most at any point in time.
Which strongly implies that it's pretty much state of the art. I rather doubt that this one is going to go on the block for only 150K and even it is, there are the previously mentioned holes in TFA - how they plan to move it, how they plan to get permission to move it, what orbit it is currently in vs. what they want, how they're going to hook this to to rest of the Internet (likely to cost more than 150K by itself in terms of ground station and tie in).
Sounds like an "I want a Pony" moment.
I just keep thinking about this. (From the movie 5th Element if you don't get it.)
Inability to cower the population on your part does not constitute and emergency on ours.
Could this post be translated into English understandable by people over 40?
I can't believe I just asked that! But I don't know how to congugate "to retweet" nor how to parse "X followers tweet read."
This might help, gramps.
It's time to learn old fashioned orientation again! When driving on car trips as a child, when we got lost, my father would always ask, "Where's the sun?" This to figure out in what direction we were traveling. He grew up on a large, remote ranch, so he learned this skill from my grandpa. Now if some other broadcaster starts sending something that interferes with the Earth's magnetic field . . . the rest of us will be in big trouble.
I'll just mention that to the Alaska Airlines pilots who are shooting GPS assisted landings into Juneau and Ketchikan (next to mountains) or Sitka (where the airport hangs out over the ocean AND abuts the mountains). I'm sure they still carry their sextants in their flight bags.
The FCC is too busy policing the airwaves for porn to be tied down with such droll technical matters.
Nipples or electricity - the choice is clear.
A company well known for releasing new models of its products will release a new model of one of its newest products! Gasp!
A company notorious about being tightlipped on new stuff in development can't trust their Chinese partner company and gets scooped by the Grey Lady.
It's slashdot news-worthy.
The Gray Lady typically refers to the New York Times. The Wall Street Journal is the Gray Lady's psychotic older sister.
Alaska is sending fresh water to China in oil tankers, kind of a scary thought since I like drinking water and I don't want to compete with 3 billion Chinese for it...
What? No we're not. A few insane people are thinking about it (we've got plenty, just bring your own jar) but the catch has been the tanker. You can't just clean out anything floating and put potable water in it and the costs of making a new purpose built water tanker seem to be too high. Everything from freezing the water to shipping it in giant plastic bags has been proposed, but nothing yet has come of it.
What about pairing an engineer and a guy from marketing?
What are you trying to do? That's very dangerous. Like self-annihilating matter-antimatter dangerous. Your head asplode.
Wait till you see the unicorns....
No one single thing sank the titanic
Hubris sank the Titanic.
No, it was a committee. Just like everything else in life.
I still get this with bluetooth headsets. See someone walking alone down the street arguing with them self for a few minutes. That little blue LED really needs to stay on during use instead of blink so we can more quickly identify the real schizophrenics.
I'm not sure I get this - do all schizophrenics have blinking blue lights, or is it just you?
While I think that standing in front of a 'computer' and waving my hands looking retarded isn't the best way to interface with a machine, it would get folks off the couch and at least moving more than their fingers.
Just don't make it mobile. People look stupid enough with bluetooth head sets as it is.
It's more than a disaster issue: if that city is where a larger part of the cloud computing services are located, it would be a VERY inviting target for a first strike by a single nuclear warhead if general war breaks out between China and the USA. Don't be surprised that the Chinese military puts in a lot of defensive missile positions using the licensed version of the Russian S-300PMU-1 missile so it could even defend this complex even against ICBM attack.
Why bother with an expensive missile and nuke warhead? USB drives are cheap. Just sprinkle them around the parking lot. Use Chinese USB drives for the ironic win. Less mess to clean up later.
.... You are talking like an economist!
Keep it clean, guy. This isn't /b/
Software is more important than hardware today. The whole cloud computing movement shows that in many cases hardware is just a cheap commodity. This datacenter is some politicians building themselves a monument and pretending to be ahead or at least on the same level with the west. This is just a lot of hot air, but otherwise quite irrelevant. Building a large datacenter is pretty easy, once you have the cash, and does not show any level of technological sophistication.
You have ah, interesting, definitions of 'cheap' and 'easy'. Are you, by some chance, in management?
I do agree with you there, but windmills are a really expensive way to generate power, and those generators are difficult enough to keep operating without exposing them to salt water spray.
Why not stick a nuclear reactor out there instead of a windmill? It wouldn't be visible from shore, wouldn't even need a cooling tower since you could use the sea water as a heat sink, and would be far enough out to reduce any chance of radiation leakage hitting the short to a minimum.
Because for all the cost of an expensive wind plant, it's dwarfed by the construction and maintenance costs of a nuclear plant. Putting one offshore means more hassles getting the power inshore, more hassles with security and even more hassles with salt water corrosion. One of the really amusing things about trying to wean ourselves off fossil fuels is that we're more than willing to spend billions upon billions of dollars bankrolling nuc plants, we don't give but pennies to wind / water.