erm.. right who gives a flying rats backside, your point is irrelevant to my argument, which is that: Arguing that we have an ethical obligation to give rich people more money cos they are rich and therefore will give it to charity anyway, is completely rediculous! if they deserved it, they shouldnt need to give it to charity. If they dont deserve it, it should go to those that do deserve it.
my other related point is that the current system is completely biased towards investors and high level managers as opposed to those people who actually do the work and create the products of the company. You can work a steady job full time for all your life, inventing ideas that increase a companies value, building objects that the company sells, etc etc. If you dont get into management, and more importantly, dont have an investment portfolio, you will never be rich. you may get by, you may live ok, but youll never get that new ferrari. On the other hand, if you simply invest money in companies (that you probably got from your daddy for being born in the right family)that you do nothing else useful for, you can easily become rich, while creating no useful products or doing any productinve work.
I realise that in this society, without money you cant do much of anything, and therefore investing is important, and unfortunately I dont have any alternative yet, but Im just saying that this system is flawed, and that those that do the work should get the majority of the rewards.
It doesnt matter what they call it. If they say unlimited downloads, in any other business, that would mean UNLIMITED DOWNLOADS. instead, isp's sucker you in with FALSE ADVERTISING, with the details in the fine print that you dont really get unlimited downloads cos we are counting on users not to use what they paid for.
Its like getting an unlimited electricity contract from your power company, at a maximum of say 5KW. then you try to use 5KW for a while to run your airconditioner and your airconditioner blows up due to a brown out caused by 50 people trying to run 5KW aircons off of one 5KW maximum powerline, the the power company forgot to tell you was running the entire street. They then try to charge the airconditioner company for creating a device which uses lots of power, and want to be able to turn your airconditioner off if they have too much demand on a hot day, while letting those that pay the manager a bit of extra on the side run their airconditioners on high all day. Meanwhile the whole time this has been happening, you and all the other people in the street were paying money for a service listed as UNLIMITED ELECTRICITY up to 5KW, and yet not getting it.
Its bullshit. If we pay for a 1Mbit connection, we should get a 1Mb connection. If they want to limit our downloads on that connection, they should state the limits OPENLY and OBVIOUSLY and NEVER CALL IT AN UNLIMITED CONNECTION. whatever downloads we pay for we should get!! and no whingeing that we are downloading the amount we paid for, just cos they didnt actually expect us to use what we paid for
I cant get a contract to build a highway, get paid to build a highway, then mow a track through some paddocks with a ride-on lawnmower, just cos I figured no one would ever use the highway much anyway!
If they need more money because the ratio of users to actual available bandwidth is too low, they should charge more money to the users - UP FRONT. If they want to advertise an unlimited plan, thereby gaining an advantage in terms of number of customers over a limited plan, then they should be required to put in the equipment necessary to cover that plan no matter how much the users download. the cost of this equipment should be in the initial plan price. (obviously as costs rise, so can the monthly fee, but if its listed as unlimited it should goddamn well be unlimited and price all inclusive
ha ha... HAHAHAHAHA. tehehehe har har har ho ho... frown..
by your logic, it is immmoral for me to not give my money to the richest person I can find, because obviously, being so rich, it is "fully possible and even likely" they will have no use for the money and give it to charity.... HAHAHAHAHAHAHA...have you ever met a rich person?
I work in various industries (music performance, business computer programmer, games programming, lecturer at a uni, phd student) and I can tell you, the richest people have ALWAYS been the ones who try to screw me and pay me peanuts (hence why they are rich, getting more for their money than they really should by using their power position as leverage.. yeah i know, just dont deal with them blah blah). Whenever I do a gig, the average pub owners are reasonable and try to pay a decent price, while the ones who are richer, owning more than one business etc, always try to pay me crap all. When busking, same story: rich looking business people are my worst audience, its your average worker type that is the most generous (obviously, this is all generalizations based on possibly prone manual observational statistical analysis, but I've been doing it long enough to believe it's valid)
my rich uncle always gives the cheapest presents, etc etc. Why the hell SHOULD shareholders and management types make SO MUCH more than the people who actually produce the goods/ services, add value to the raw materials etc. Having worked for a few large corporations, I can tell you that while in some businesses, the managers were inteligent and useful (also the corporation that paid the best and was the most enjoyable to work at ), most had managers who I wouldnt trust to make me a sandwitch without putting the butter on the outside, or perhaps just buttering their head and eating the filling.
Hmm rant over I guess, basically I cant believe you think there is a moral obligation to give rich shareholders more money for doing nothing but investing (yeah I know how important investing is in todays system, but it still doesnt count as work, and shouldnt be more valueable than the actual work done by the company workers) just on the offchance they will give it to charity? IF they deserved the money, then they shouldnt need to give it to charity, and if they dont deserve the money WHY GIVE IT TO THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE, give it to those that earned it!
or even better, a pda program that uses a camera to scan the barcode when your at a store/supermarket, lets you scan in the price (ocr) as well, tells you if the company is "ethically responsible" and more importantly why (sometimes we may not agree that a companies actions were deserving of a blackmark).
it also uses OCR to scan your bill at the checkout, to check for overpriced items, double charges and items you didnt purchase by comparing against those items you scanned in as a purchase(according to "A current affair" , who obvoiusly has an interest in stirring up controversy, but yet may still be correct, pretty much everytime you go shopping you get ripped of by checkouts scanning things at a higher price. there is a guy who goes round and somehow knows which items are likely to be overcharged, and ends up getting almost everything free (if it overscans at a supermarket here in australia, you get it free (if you notice))
end result: huge power (which has to be carefully controlled: dont want company a putting in false ethics violations for competitor company b in the system or similar) to influence companies actions through virtual boycotts, cheaper stuff at the supermarket cos they stop ripping you off.
just keep in mind though, energy usage in a car-> mostly used for acceleration/deceleration of said car (assuming city driving), with smaller amounts for maintaining speed and smaller amounts for lights/ A/C etc. Therefore energy usage is almost linearly related to total mass (E=1/2 mv^2). notice that velocity is squared, meaning that a small decrease in peak vvelocity is a large decrease in energy needed.
In the case of a tractor, most energy is used to churn up the dirt or bale the hey, chop the grass, harvest stuff, with only a small percentage going to the (slow) movement (accel, decel and maintaining speed) of the actual tractor. Of this small percentage, I think a tractor often moves at a fairly constant speed, going round the fields, for extended periods, in which case the only extra energy use the added weight neccesitates is due to extra friction with the ground as the vehicle sinks further in the mud. obviously there is some acelleration and deceleration, but overall, weight doesnt matter in a tractor any where near as much as in a car (it's almost irrelevant). also, the setup I came up with in above post, IF it was at all accurate, doesnt actually involve raising the total wieight of the tractor: these things weigh quite a few tonnes anyway by the looks of it. basically we can add 2 tonnes of batteries and still have a working tractor, the question is, can we easily swap out a 2 tonne battery, or get it to contain enough energy (at a cheap enough price) to drive said tractor for long enough time (maybe and maybe?)
I thought I'd made a decent case, but not being a farmer, I get the feeling I could well be mostly wrong. I would like to hear from someone that knows whether some second hand purchase prices of $200,000 to $400,000 for 300hp'ish (peak?) tractors is crazy or normal for decent tractors, and if crazy, what a normal price would be for a decent brand high power tractor (ebay seems to have cheaper brands at MUCH cheaper prices to a dealership I looked at, are these your "cheap plastic chinese dvd player" equivalents in the tractor market, or was the second hand site (not sure if i linked it or not) listing the high prices just nuts)
I think in the end, I'll revise my figures a little and say it may still be worthwhile if a NEW quality tractor costs more than ~$80,000 to $120,000. if these are unreasonable prices, then I'll agree with AOSU, and we have to wait 5 years and try again (hopefullly with 2 minute recharge nano based 600 wh/kg lithium sulphur batteries at a cheap price, or 1000 to 6000 wh/kg li-air batteries (I know, optimistic or lala land respectively, to think these will be avail or cheap by then) or cheap membrane high power fuel cells running on....
I still have a feeling that tractors are generally expensive enough new to cover the cost (with no first hand knowledge to back it up, could a farmer please correct me/confirm my feeling)
first of all, why 12 hr recharge? the SLA's I use take 5 - 6 hours to recharge. second, the NimH batteries in the prius store 1.7 kwh of energy. the prius uses nimh to cut down on weight because, like I said, in city driving it is accelerating and decelerating a lot, and even with regen braking, the more weight you accel/decel, the more energy it takes (E = 1/2 MV^2 ).
In the case of a tractor, Velocity is a lot smaller, so the only real weight concern is making sure it doesnt get bogged in the mud. Therefore you can use lead acids or other cheaper heavier battery types. 2 kwh of lead acids cost somewhere round $100 second hand ebay batteries, and weigh about 50 kg but I think we'd need a LOT more than that.
lets see, cant find a new price for tractor but since they seem to be going for $200,000 (AUD) for a good second hand 375hp one, down to 20-30 grand on ebay for (i assume) what must be cheaper models, we can assume we got a bit of money to play round with if we eliminate the engine cost.
lets start with a 3-4 tonne, 70hp model. assume maybe 30-40hp (22 -28 kw) average power use(pulling this figure out of my #%&! but it seems generous to me), so we want say 4* 3 hour packs for a single 12hr workday, each one 80 kwh, about 1.5 ton, cost roughly $4000 each, brings us to 16 grand plus the rest of the tractor. 1.5 tonnes is fine for including in the tractor weight (they are usually about 3-4 ton, and seem to have extra weights added for stability sometimes) since we are eliminating the weight of the engine and fuel (leaves us 1.5 to 2 tonnes just for chasis, tyres, body etc), but obviously we will require a decent setup for the swapping of batteries over (maybe just some hefty prongs which slide into holes in the battery pack, providing electricity connection and holding it at the right height to replace it later) , gonna add to the cost, although I guess it could be shared among tractors).
end result: initial cost- batteries 5,000 to 50,000 dollars, depending on how long you want to work each day, new/second hand, lead acid or other, etc. The rest of the tractor should be lots cheaper as you dont have the normal engine and drive train, but you need extra for the battery swap mechanism, say $1000-$2000,
advantage: cheaper running costs to diesel (though maybe not biodiesel), especially if you have a windpower setup as a farmer easily could. No onsite pollution. quieter.
Disadvantage: annoying swapping of batteries (so yeah, having lithium or other high power packs to allow longer running time, if they ever drop in price, will be a big advantage)
Price advantage: undecided, I think a cheap simple diesel one will beat a cheap electric, but as you scale up in power and features, I think the electric should win pricewise
overall conclusion: maybe not worth it just yet unless you intend to invest a decent amount (eg $80,000 or more at a guess) in a new tractor (not impossible, some 400hp tractors (this will be 500hp) were going for $300,000 second hand!). If you were setting up a fleet of tractors for a big farm, could be a worthwhile option. Or I could be way off and talking out my %@##, whatever, its late, im going to bed:)
I assume you say this because of the relatively small (power wise) electric motors and crippled battery supplies used in many mainstream electric/hyrid vehicles. Try putting one of these
onto the tractor. Overkill I guess but ought to do the trick. only issue is battery power, but since tractors are normally working on a farm, not driving cross country, you could set up easy to swap battery packs and a charging station in a shed/barn(eg lead acid if you wanna go cheap) which you swap out for a charged one whenever the ones on it get low.
now I have no idea how much that electric motor costs, but id imagine with mass production it should cost less than a new diesel engine, given the size and relative simplicity, and cant see the batteries being a show stopper (especially since we dont need to accelerate much or get to high speeds, so most of the energy goes into mushing up the fields or pulling whatever implement, weight shouldnt be too much of an issue, unlike in a car where the less weight, the better the acceleration or the less power we need to get same accel)
in other words: Do-able (and yet I doubt Ill see one mass marketed for a while). Interestingly I heard about this 500 HP motor because there was talk of putting it in a motorbike!!, and considering when racing, to get equivalent performance (i.e. lap times, not top speed I guess) from an electric bike to a petrol one, you only need rouhgly 1/3 the power, that would be one FAST bike!!!:) (equiv to a 1000 - 1500 hp motorbike) checkout gizmag.com.au in the vehicle section somewhere, where they talk about different electric bikes (that website is also the ULTIMATE geek toy website: robots, exoskeletons, electric vehcles, flying cars, cool giant boats, planes, gadgets, guns, millitary gear, etc etc. of course half the stuff talked about is millions of dollars or prototype stuff, but still fun to dream)
not necessarily, something extremely advanced like zero-point energy (not theretically impossible, as far as I know, but not necessarily possible either, kinda like faster than light travel and time travel, and no, i dont believe anyones come up with a way to tap into it yet) or perhaps direct matter to energy transfer device would appear to us now as being virtually free energy, and yet not defy the laws of thermodynamics.
Note that this guy didnt say "hey look at me, i dont really understand quantum physics at all, or Heisenberg's Uncertainty principal, or much real science at all, but I made this cool perpetual motion zero point thingemybob... see... look... MAGNETS!!!" (hehe), he said he saw documents relating to them on a NASA server.
The question then becomes, did he see them or is he using this to get publicity so the U.S. doesn't just destroy him with extradition/a huge jail term, and if he did see them (obviously the less likely of the two options, but personally I dont rule it out entirely) is the person who made them, A)lying (eg honeypot puter for suckering the hackers) B)crazy C)telling the truth (least likely but most interesting possibility)
on the new toshibe batteries(actually its been over a year now, wonder where we can buy them, i've got a few projects they'd be useful in:
- my 2KW mini mini scooter (looks like a little kid push scooter, weighs less than 7 kg, goes like hell (not yet finished)
- my busking portable power source, currently use SLA batteries cos I already had them, but damn are they heavy to lug round (15kg plus my other gear (guitar, amp, mikestand etc) ouch)
They really should be pushing these by now for all sorts of purposes, but cars especially, being able to charge your car fully in under 2 minutes is VERY impressive, and will convince lots of those doubtful about electric cars that they are ready to be used widely (if they ever start selling them cheap enough to afford enough to get decent range).
Obviously you need that much larger car to offset the imbalance caused by your much smaller penis (and brain it seems). In fact, it's so small it has a negative mass (maybe we could harvest it and use it for time travel, only useful thing it will ever do ), so I guess together you and your SUV add up to the equivalent of one large idiot.
hey I just had an idea, what if you deliberately virtualised your machine in a hidden manner, so a vm rootkit trying to virtualise your os would actually be virtualising between the good VM and the OS, and the godd VM could detect and report on the bad VM:) (long way to go about it).
how will a networked virus scanner help? its still getting the system info from the OS on the compromised system, and the OS on the compromised system does not know its compromised because the VM is UNDERNEATH it, and therefore tries to act for all intents and purposes as if it's not there!!!.
With a perfect bug free VM, neglecting slight performance differences that may or may not be detectable, you pretty much have to scan the compromised hard drive by pluggin it into another pc (as unbootable of course) running a clean os to detect it (or at least thats my understanding which could be wrong:) )
thermal depolymerisation good place to start. From reading elsewhere(cant remember where, some forum discussion by knowledgable people) looks like some of the companies claims are probably overexagerated (eg probably 60-70% efficiency not 85 or whatever it is they claim) however It still appears EXTREMELY useful, and I hope some serious investing goes into it to build more of the plant's around the world
I have a motorola a1000. Comes very close to what you want: PDA style phone with very large (for a phone) touchscreen stylus interface, built in agps for mapping software etc, very good sounding mp3 player (using earphones - although built in speakers are better than most at that size, they're still not all that good), takes transflash cards : ( tiny flash memory, up to 512mb, only about 8*11*0.5 mm so you could fit quite a few in your wallet if wanted), plays back mpeg4 video, opens.doc,.pdf,.txt,.jpg.mp3 (I think.wma not sure), 1mp camera (not good enough, very noisy) and does video conferencing, can browse the normal internet, not just wap, and many more features.
Basically, if it had 1. faster processor and 2. better camera and 3. a little thinner with better battery life (not that its bad already or too unwieldy), it would be almost perfect (which was going to happen in the a1010 supposed to be released last year but cancelled, and may still happen in a newer one called I think the a2000 or something like that)
all this and its already out of date, being more than a year old. Bring on the successor moto:) (plus it doesnt crash anywhere near as much as other smart phones i've seen -> 3-4 times in almost a year of use)
look, im not saying that what parents parents parent said is ok, personally I think its a grey area, although if the game is EXACTLY the same as one you've already bought (sp?)(especially one you've bought twice), no upgrades/extra bits, then morally I dont have a problem, however, YOU CAN NOT COMPARE IT TO STEALING SOMEONES CAR, unless its a MAGICAL CAR THAT DUPLICATES ITSELF ONCE STOLEN SO THE OWNER DOESN'T EVEN REALISE IT's STOLEN!!!!! (ok enough angry caps, I know I know, dont use caps etc sorry I just couldnt help it:P)
all legality and morality aside, downloading a rom for a game you own is nothing at all like stealing someones car. The only metaphor I can think of thats even close is copying a custom paint job off one of your old cars onto a new one without telling the artist, and then parking that new car in the garage so no one sees it anyway:)
enough stupid RIAA MPAA AAAAA ISUCKAA propaganda already, make your own mind up as to the consequences of your actions with the game designer/artist/musicians interest in mind, not the greedy corporations exploiting them. (although this wont help ya if you get sued by said corp:( )
first off, I'd like to say that I do believe (95% certain) we are causing noticeable global warming with the various greenhouse gases we are releasing. After saying that, my contribution to the discussion is this :
For all those of you saying "hey its just a natural cycle, ice ages, hot spells etc etc", while I understand that it is perfectly normal for the earth to have wild temperature swings all on its own, DO WE REALLY WANT ONE NOW, NATURAL OR NOT???? do you really think we would be better off in a hotter world or an ice age?
I like the world the way it is, and Im pretty sure any drastic changes due to global warming will cause millions or even billions of deaths, and much suffering. Who cares if the hot spell/possible ice age is a natural cycle, WE STILL DONT WANT IT TO HAPPEN RIGHT NOW!!! at least not till we get some alternative energy sources that can heat us in an ice age and better ways of growing crops in glacial conditions (eg wind power/fusion power and hydroponics/hothouse farming)
if you look at the ice core record, temperatures and greenhouse gas levels seem to rise untill something triggers an ice age (eg shutting down of certain ocean currents) then the earth sits in an ice age for quite a while before going back to this present day type of weather.now normally the CO2 and other greenhouse gases are building up naturally, with the rising temperature (cause or effect or positive feedback loop?), causing them to rise further, until an ice age is triggered. even if there was going to be an ice age eventually, why hurry it along?
Slashdot Mirror
my other related point is that the current system is completely biased towards investors and high level managers as opposed to those people who actually do the work and create the products of the company. You can work a steady job full time for all your life, inventing ideas that increase a companies value, building objects that the company sells, etc etc. If you dont get into management, and more importantly, dont have an investment portfolio, you will never be rich. you may get by, you may live ok, but youll never get that new ferrari. On the other hand, if you simply invest money in companies (that you probably got from your daddy for being born in the right family)that you do nothing else useful for, you can easily become rich, while creating no useful products or doing any productinve work.
I realise that in this society, without money you cant do much of anything, and therefore investing is important, and unfortunately I dont have any alternative yet, but Im just saying that this system is flawed, and that those that do the work should get the majority of the rewards.
Its like getting an unlimited electricity contract from your power company, at a maximum of say 5KW. then you try to use 5KW for a while to run your airconditioner and your airconditioner blows up due to a brown out caused by 50 people trying to run 5KW aircons off of one 5KW maximum powerline, the the power company forgot to tell you was running the entire street. They then try to charge the airconditioner company for creating a device which uses lots of power, and want to be able to turn your airconditioner off if they have too much demand on a hot day, while letting those that pay the manager a bit of extra on the side run their airconditioners on high all day. Meanwhile the whole time this has been happening, you and all the other people in the street were paying money for a service listed as UNLIMITED ELECTRICITY up to 5KW, and yet not getting it.
Its bullshit. If we pay for a 1Mbit connection, we should get a 1Mb connection. If they want to limit our downloads on that connection, they should state the limits OPENLY and OBVIOUSLY and NEVER CALL IT AN UNLIMITED CONNECTION. whatever downloads we pay for we should get!! and no whingeing that we are downloading the amount we paid for, just cos they didnt actually expect us to use what we paid for
I cant get a contract to build a highway, get paid to build a highway, then mow a track through some paddocks with a ride-on lawnmower, just cos I figured no one would ever use the highway much anyway!
If they need more money because the ratio of users to actual available bandwidth is too low, they should charge more money to the users - UP FRONT. If they want to advertise an unlimited plan, thereby gaining an advantage in terms of number of customers over a limited plan, then they should be required to put in the equipment necessary to cover that plan no matter how much the users download. the cost of this equipment should be in the initial plan price. (obviously as costs rise, so can the monthly fee, but if its listed as unlimited it should goddamn well be unlimited and price all inclusive
by your logic, it is immmoral for me to not give my money to the richest person I can find, because obviously, being so rich, it is "fully possible and even likely" they will have no use for the money and give it to charity.... HAHAHAHAHAHAHA ...have you ever met a rich person?
I work in various industries (music performance, business computer programmer, games programming, lecturer at a uni, phd student) and I can tell you, the richest people have ALWAYS been the ones who try to screw me and pay me peanuts (hence why they are rich, getting more for their money than they really should by using their power position as leverage.. yeah i know, just dont deal with them blah blah). Whenever I do a gig, the average pub owners are reasonable and try to pay a decent price, while the ones who are richer, owning more than one business etc, always try to pay me crap all. When busking, same story: rich looking business people are my worst audience, its your average worker type that is the most generous (obviously, this is all generalizations based on possibly prone manual observational statistical analysis, but I've been doing it long enough to believe it's valid)
my rich uncle always gives the cheapest presents, etc etc. Why the hell SHOULD shareholders and management types make SO MUCH more than the people who actually produce the goods/ services, add value to the raw materials etc. Having worked for a few large corporations, I can tell you that while in some businesses, the managers were inteligent and useful (also the corporation that paid the best and was the most enjoyable to work at ), most had managers who I wouldnt trust to make me a sandwitch without putting the butter on the outside, or perhaps just buttering their head and eating the filling.
Hmm rant over I guess, basically I cant believe you think there is a moral obligation to give rich shareholders more money for doing nothing but investing (yeah I know how important investing is in todays system, but it still doesnt count as work, and shouldnt be more valueable than the actual work done by the company workers) just on the offchance they will give it to charity? IF they deserved the money, then they shouldnt need to give it to charity, and if they dont deserve the money WHY GIVE IT TO THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE, give it to those that earned it!
it also uses OCR to scan your bill at the checkout, to check for overpriced items, double charges and items you didnt purchase by comparing against those items you scanned in as a purchase(according to "A current affair" , who obvoiusly has an interest in stirring up controversy, but yet may still be correct, pretty much everytime you go shopping you get ripped of by checkouts scanning things at a higher price. there is a guy who goes round and somehow knows which items are likely to be overcharged, and ends up getting almost everything free (if it overscans at a supermarket here in australia, you get it free (if you notice))
end result: huge power (which has to be carefully controlled: dont want company a putting in false ethics violations for competitor company b in the system or similar) to influence companies actions through virtual boycotts, cheaper stuff at the supermarket cos they stop ripping you off.
In the case of a tractor, most energy is used to churn up the dirt or bale the hey, chop the grass, harvest stuff, with only a small percentage going to the (slow) movement (accel, decel and maintaining speed) of the actual tractor. Of this small percentage, I think a tractor often moves at a fairly constant speed, going round the fields, for extended periods, in which case the only extra energy use the added weight neccesitates is due to extra friction with the ground as the vehicle sinks further in the mud. obviously there is some acelleration and deceleration, but overall, weight doesnt matter in a tractor any where near as much as in a car (it's almost irrelevant). also, the setup I came up with in above post, IF it was at all accurate, doesnt actually involve raising the total wieight of the tractor: these things weigh quite a few tonnes anyway by the looks of it. basically we can add 2 tonnes of batteries and still have a working tractor, the question is, can we easily swap out a 2 tonne battery, or get it to contain enough energy (at a cheap enough price) to drive said tractor for long enough time (maybe and maybe?)
I think in the end, I'll revise my figures a little and say it may still be worthwhile if a NEW quality tractor costs more than ~$80,000 to $120,000. if these are unreasonable prices, then I'll agree with AOSU, and we have to wait 5 years and try again (hopefullly with 2 minute recharge nano based 600 wh/kg lithium sulphur batteries at a cheap price, or 1000 to 6000 wh/kg li-air batteries (I know, optimistic or lala land respectively, to think these will be avail or cheap by then) or cheap membrane high power fuel cells running on ....
I still have a feeling that tractors are generally expensive enough new to cover the cost (with no first hand knowledge to back it up, could a farmer please correct me/confirm my feeling)
In the case of a tractor, Velocity is a lot smaller, so the only real weight concern is making sure it doesnt get bogged in the mud. Therefore you can use lead acids or other cheaper heavier battery types. 2 kwh of lead acids cost somewhere round $100 second hand ebay batteries, and weigh about 50 kg but I think we'd need a LOT more than that.
lets see, cant find a new price for tractor but since they seem to be going for $200,000 (AUD) for a good second hand 375hp one, down to 20-30 grand on ebay for (i assume) what must be cheaper models, we can assume we got a bit of money to play round with if we eliminate the engine cost.
lets start with a 3-4 tonne, 70hp model. assume maybe 30-40hp (22 -28 kw) average power use(pulling this figure out of my #%&! but it seems generous to me), so we want say 4* 3 hour packs for a single 12hr workday, each one 80 kwh, about 1.5 ton, cost roughly $4000 each, brings us to 16 grand plus the rest of the tractor. 1.5 tonnes is fine for including in the tractor weight (they are usually about 3-4 ton, and seem to have extra weights added for stability sometimes) since we are eliminating the weight of the engine and fuel (leaves us 1.5 to 2 tonnes just for chasis, tyres, body etc), but obviously we will require a decent setup for the swapping of batteries over (maybe just some hefty prongs which slide into holes in the battery pack, providing electricity connection and holding it at the right height to replace it later) , gonna add to the cost, although I guess it could be shared among tractors).
end result: initial cost- batteries 5,000 to 50,000 dollars, depending on how long you want to work each day, new/second hand, lead acid or other, etc. The rest of the tractor should be lots cheaper as you dont have the normal engine and drive train, but you need extra for the battery swap mechanism, say $1000-$2000,
advantage: cheaper running costs to diesel (though maybe not biodiesel), especially if you have a windpower setup as a farmer easily could. No onsite pollution. quieter.
Disadvantage: annoying swapping of batteries (so yeah, having lithium or other high power packs to allow longer running time, if they ever drop in price, will be a big advantage)
Price advantage: undecided, I think a cheap simple diesel one will beat a cheap electric, but as you scale up in power and features, I think the electric should win pricewise
overall conclusion: maybe not worth it just yet unless you intend to invest a decent amount (eg $80,000 or more at a guess) in a new tractor (not impossible, some 400hp tractors (this will be 500hp) were going for $300,000 second hand!). If you were setting up a fleet of tractors for a big farm, could be a worthwhile option. Or I could be way off and talking out my %@##, whatever, its late, im going to bed :)
500 hp 420 ft lb torque symetron electric motor (weighs only 70kg if another website I read is to be trusted)
onto the tractor. Overkill I guess but ought to do the trick. only issue is battery power, but since tractors are normally working on a farm, not driving cross country, you could set up easy to swap battery packs and a charging station in a shed/barn(eg lead acid if you wanna go cheap) which you swap out for a charged one whenever the ones on it get low.
now I have no idea how much that electric motor costs, but id imagine with mass production it should cost less than a new diesel engine, given the size and relative simplicity, and cant see the batteries being a show stopper (especially since we dont need to accelerate much or get to high speeds, so most of the energy goes into mushing up the fields or pulling whatever implement, weight shouldnt be too much of an issue, unlike in a car where the less weight, the better the acceleration or the less power we need to get same accel)
in other words: Do-able (and yet I doubt Ill see one mass marketed for a while). Interestingly I heard about this 500 HP motor because there was talk of putting it in a motorbike!!, and considering when racing, to get equivalent performance (i.e. lap times, not top speed I guess) from an electric bike to a petrol one, you only need rouhgly 1/3 the power, that would be one FAST bike!!! :) (equiv to a 1000 - 1500 hp motorbike) checkout gizmag.com.au in the vehicle section somewhere, where they talk about different electric bikes (that website is also the ULTIMATE geek toy website: robots, exoskeletons, electric vehcles, flying cars, cool giant boats, planes, gadgets, guns, millitary gear, etc etc. of course half the stuff talked about is millions of dollars or prototype stuff, but still fun to dream)
Note that this guy didnt say "hey look at me, i dont really understand quantum physics at all, or Heisenberg's Uncertainty principal, or much real science at all, but I made this cool perpetual motion zero point thingemybob... see... look... MAGNETS!!!" (hehe), he said he saw documents relating to them on a NASA server.
The question then becomes, did he see them or is he using this to get publicity so the U.S. doesn't just destroy him with extradition/a huge jail term, and if he did see them (obviously the less likely of the two options, but personally I dont rule it out entirely) is the person who made them, A)lying (eg honeypot puter for suckering the hackers) B)crazy C)telling the truth (least likely but most interesting possibility)
toshiba 1 minute 80% charge batteries
on the new toshibe batteries(actually its been over a year now, wonder where we can buy them, i've got a few projects they'd be useful in :
- my 2KW mini mini scooter (looks like a little kid push scooter, weighs less than 7 kg, goes like hell (not yet finished)
- my busking portable power source, currently use SLA batteries cos I already had them, but damn are they heavy to lug round (15kg plus my other gear (guitar, amp, mikestand etc) ouch)
They really should be pushing these by now for all sorts of purposes, but cars especially, being able to charge your car fully in under 2 minutes is VERY impressive, and will convince lots of those doubtful about electric cars that they are ready to be used widely (if they ever start selling them cheap enough to afford enough to get decent range).
hehehe I thought your comment was s'posed to be a poem because of the format, and spent a good 30 seconds trying to figure out the timing hehe
Obviously you need that much larger car to offset the imbalance caused by your much smaller penis (and brain it seems). In fact, it's so small it has a negative mass (maybe we could harvest it and use it for time travel, only useful thing it will ever do ), so I guess together you and your SUV add up to the equivalent of one large idiot.
only the Stud Bulls get to breed, and if you were going to be classed as one of those, I dont think youd be needing the help
Which is fairly linearly related to how many cores and therefore how much computing power you can fit on a chip..... :|
:) made me laugh
hey I just had an idea, what if you deliberately virtualised your machine in a hidden manner, so a vm rootkit trying to virtualise your os would actually be virtualising between the good VM and the OS, and the godd VM could detect and report on the bad VM :) (long way to go about it).
With a perfect bug free VM, neglecting slight performance differences that may or may not be detectable, you pretty much have to scan the compromised hard drive by pluggin it into another pc (as unbootable of course) running a clean os to detect it (or at least thats my understanding which could be wrong :) )
actually wasnt there an article a few weeks back stating the oposite: that he intends to crack blu-ray drm as soon as possible?
thermal depolymerisation good place to start. From reading elsewhere(cant remember where, some forum discussion by knowledgable people) looks like some of the companies claims are probably overexagerated (eg probably 60-70% efficiency not 85 or whatever it is they claim) however It still appears EXTREMELY useful, and I hope some serious investing goes into it to build more of the plant's around the world
forgot to say also plays 3D Games !!! :D I was surprised at how well (though I think thats common in new phones now)
Basically, if it had 1. faster processor and 2. better camera and 3. a little thinner with better battery life (not that its bad already or too unwieldy), it would be almost perfect (which was going to happen in the a1010 supposed to be released last year but cancelled, and may still happen in a newer one called I think the a2000 or something like that)
all this and its already out of date, being more than a year old. Bring on the successor moto :) (plus it doesnt crash anywhere near as much as other smart phones i've seen -> 3-4 times in almost a year of use)
all legality and morality aside, downloading a rom for a game you own is nothing at all like stealing someones car. The only metaphor I can think of thats even close is copying a custom paint job off one of your old cars onto a new one without telling the artist, and then parking that new car in the garage so no one sees it anyway :)
enough stupid RIAA MPAA AAAAA ISUCKAA propaganda already, make your own mind up as to the consequences of your actions with the game designer/artist/musicians interest in mind, not the greedy corporations exploiting them. (although this wont help ya if you get sued by said corp :( )
For all those of you saying "hey its just a natural cycle, ice ages, hot spells etc etc", while I understand that it is perfectly normal for the earth to have wild temperature swings all on its own, DO WE REALLY WANT ONE NOW, NATURAL OR NOT???? do you really think we would be better off in a hotter world or an ice age?
I like the world the way it is, and Im pretty sure any drastic changes due to global warming will cause millions or even billions of deaths, and much suffering. Who cares if the hot spell/possible ice age is a natural cycle, WE STILL DONT WANT IT TO HAPPEN RIGHT NOW!!! at least not till we get some alternative energy sources that can heat us in an ice age and better ways of growing crops in glacial conditions (eg wind power/fusion power and hydroponics/hothouse farming)
if you look at the ice core record, temperatures and greenhouse gas levels seem to rise untill something triggers an ice age (eg shutting down of certain ocean currents) then the earth sits in an ice age for quite a while before going back to this present day type of weather.now normally the CO2 and other greenhouse gases are building up naturally, with the rising temperature (cause or effect or positive feedback loop?), causing them to rise further, until an ice age is triggered. even if there was going to be an ice age eventually, why hurry it along?
we could call it DOOM 4 (in little writing "your senator")
now that could be a popular game :) heheh