What about any electtical outlet for the Segway? The thing goes 10-12 miles on $0.10 USD. That bicycle goes 10-12 miles on $0.25 USD.
Have you seen the pollution in growing nations that have cities full of 2 cycle engines on motor scooters? Damn man talk about stinky horrible asthma causing pollution.
The max current on that is about 1A. It will be dissipating a couple watts. The heatsink will be hot. Max short circuit current is 3.6A. Too small. Probably not easy to parallel either. They tend to fight with eachother when they are in parallel.
That's not neccessarily a good idea either. The inrush current from the DC outlet in the car will cause a spark. It may also be enough to pop the breaker. Look at putting some sort of low ohm high power resistor in series. Many car outlets are rated for 120 Watts maximum. Make sure the wiring can stand "continuous" high power. I would run a separate set of wires from my car battery (fused at the battery) to a heavy duty outlet in the car. Also for safety you'll want to put a diode in series with the incoming line so that you don't have as much chance of shocking yourself from the capacitor discharge when you unplug the converter. For clamping the incoming spikes find yourself a good 14V Zener diode and shunt the incoming line with it.
Think safety when you build these things. Unfortunately, many times easy safety tricks cost efficiency losses. Electricity can be dangerous and you don't want to hurt anybody because of your stupid mistakes. Great White didn't think about the pyrotechnics in a small building and they lost a guitarist.
Most solar panels allow light to come through. Making all the windows in the building from solar panels might work. It would be just like putting a dark tint on your normal windows.
It is probably cheap in comparison to other brand new technologies but won't be cheap in comparison to existing technology for 10-20 years.
My wife bitches about how ugly they are also. The way to get around this is to use solar shingles on the roof. they are also more expensive. An article in HomePower magazine recently did a study on correct positioning of solar panels toward the sun. The resulting losses from misaligned panels wasn't as much as I thought it would be. If you had a roof top facing roughly 10-45 degrees off from true south the losses might be worth the odd look of mounting the panels true south.
There have been some big chages with solar cells lately with respect to flexibility. Including this "denim" like stuff, thin films have allowed a lot of flexibility since they don't have to be cut from the silicon bowl.
I checked out the website and it is confusing me. If I type in my name in the box "Tim" "Darnit" it says that I can get Tim@darnit.name and tim.darnit.name. What does that get me? Do they delegate tim.darnit.name to me or darnit.name. Do I have to have the email forwarding? If I set up my own domain with tim.darnit.name then I would only be able to give out buelah@tim.darnit.name to my wife. To be Buelah@darnit.name she woiuld have to pay for her own stuff. Am I correct on this?
This must be marketed to more mainstream net users and not people like me.
I'll have to disagree. You need to use GlobalStar. The phones have this really neat flip out antenna without some ugly bulbous looking antenna. I've seen the Iridium antenna at pr0n shops before.
I'm not biased or anything. I just helped the manufacturing of the antenna for Globalstar/Qualcomm. I got to build a small anechoic chamber for the testing/tuning of the antennas. BTW, if anybody needs help building fully or semi-anechoic chambers for EM, I need a job.:)
Company (Microsoft, Symantec, etc.) selling software gives the user a bootable CD (or other media) with out an EULA (Knoppix?) that only displays the EULA of the software that they are purchasing. This CD is attached to the outside of the box so the main box does not need to be opened and can be returned if the purchaser does not agree with the EULA. Although adding a paper copy of the EULA to the outside of the box would be cheaper. I feel the bootable CD would be much cooler (geekwise).:)
If she has a ground source (geothermal) heat pump then she is polluting much less than you and more efficient. Your oil fired heater puts up more particulates than an old diesel engine for output. The differences in the temperature between the fire and the surrounding air are a major factor in efficiency. The larger the difference the worse the efficiency. Geothermal heat pumps raise the plenum to about 120F (i think) and heat the air to the house to just a few degrees warmer than what is needed. What temp does oil burn at? I'm assuming it iwll burn paper so therefore it is at least 400F. I would imagine that at least 1/2 of your available energy is going out through your chimney.
Electric water heaters kind of annoy me since they take so long to produce hot water.
Hydrogen sucks as a fuel source because the cost of production, transportation, and storage is so energy intensive. Hydrogen is almost as bad as gasoline in the end because so much energy is wasted just moving and compressing it.
The facts remain though. From coal mine to usable energy in the wheels of your car, battery electric vehicles are the most efficient. The geothermal heat pump will blow the doors off your oil fired heater for efficiency and pollute less.
#1 coal mine to geothermal heat pump energy
#2 natural gas well to natural gas furnace energy
#1 and #2 I think are very close in efficiency and pollution with the new equipment available today. High efficiency gas furnaces still cost more per year to run in Nebraska (not all places) than a geothermal heat pump. The heat pump costs more initially though (about a 15 year payback w/interest).
Be careful how you use electric heat. Ground source (geothermal) heat pumps only use electricity and are very efficient. They are even more efficient than burning propane or natural gas to heat a house. Air-Air exchange heat pumps aren't worth a shit if you are routinely getting down to 40 degrees F. There is just not enough heat left in the air outside to make them efficient. They usually have electric resistive backup heat which is horribly inefficient for heating large areas like houses. Geothermal heat pumps though almost always have the same efficiency year round because the inside of your has doesn't fluctuate temperature much (65-80 F) and the ground on the other side changes even less (50-55F). My parents live in Nebraska (temps range from -10F to 110F winter to summer) and using all electric never have an electric bill over 125 bucks in an early 190X house with 1700 sq ft. In the winter they have the temp set at 70 and in the summer it is set at 76.
Or you could tie a decent breathalizer with some sort of serial port to it and compare the real number with the caculated number and get some really useful data. Put this at a number of parties and you could maybe even get sponsored by some govt program to offset the cost of the "study".
I think the bigges problem with hybrid electric cars currently is that they are not grid rechargeable.
From mining (drilling) to propulsion, electric drive with current battery technology is more efficient and better for the environment than a brand spanking new hybrid electric car. The gasoline motor in that will prgressively pollute more as it is used. Why can't I buy a hybrid electric that allows me to drive the first 5-10 miles of my commute by pure electric then when the charge on the batteries gets down to about 50% kick the gas engine in. With this configuration over 70% of my driving would never require me to use gasoline.
In Nebraska with the current electrical prices, it would take about $2/gal for an purely electric car and gasoline vehicle to be equal in running costs. This assumes a battery pack that lasts 30,000 miles and costs about $5000. The gasoline vehicle would need to get about 25 mpg These last 3 figures are kinda rusty since I did the calculations in May 2002. All my calculations are for city driving since that's what I would use the vehicle for.
When calculating the cost of fuel for comparison, you have to factor in the cost of the battery pack since it only lasts for a limited amount of miles depending on the battery management system and pack discharge.
The point is that hybrid electric vehicles would be much better if they were grid rechargeable.
There shouldn't be because in the USA some of the power plants are using low interest govt. loans and grants. Reducing the number of low interest loans/grants can save the govt some money. They will also have a sales tax from the initial sale of the panels.
There will be because the govt just likes to tax stuff.
shird kinda says what I want to say. It's all about choice. We at TheOpenCD are trying to show people that Microsoft or whatever other company is not the only choice they have. There are very good opensource alternatives to the programs we run. The switch to Linux is not on our agenda. Personally I just want to have my parents running the same basic software on Windows that I run in Debian Linux. When they call me for support of OpenOffice I can bring it up and not have to guess what the options in MS Word are because I don't own it.
Sorry about that. All the main hubbub happened during the summer when people weren't as busy with school. Selanit busted some major ass to get this out before finals came up and bit him.
Progress was very slow though at the start of the fall semester of school.
As a member of the OpenCD project, I think this is a good idea. Hopefully our next release will have an html interface. The download will consist of a bunch of html files that link to the software on the web.
There hopefully won't be unnecessary downloading if people with broadband connections make a few copies of the CD for their family and friends that want to try it out.
Not even close to the target. If OpenOffice can read/write MS Office files then the people will send it to you in MS Office format anyway. If they can also read/write OpenOffice files then it is a perfect 2 way street using the default configuration of either Office suite. By showing them that OO files can do everything MS files can do they will consider the switch. Otherwise they will never see the OO format and never think it could be done.
128MB version is 250 USD and the 20GB version is 400 USD. Nice to see the the backpack for the 20GB version can be added on later if you can't afford it now. This means that as larger HD's are available you can upgrade. This also means that people will hack together their own "backpacks" with large hard drives.
This sounds like a very good idea! Some uses for it that I can think of:
1) biking/walking - u and ur friend (in my case, wife) can list to the music on the nueros and only have to buy one mp3 player. She has a cheap fm receiver. If she doesn't like the music she can hit you to change it or change the station she listens too. This works both ways. Maybe she'll carry the mp3 player.
2) Similar use in car - buy one or two of these and put them in you car with different types of music. The kid(s) can listen to something different than the parent(s).
I'm not too worried about sound quality. I mainly just would like music/voices/something other than wind noise while I'm walking/riding/driving.
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What about any electtical outlet for the Segway? The thing goes 10-12 miles on $0.10 USD. That bicycle goes 10-12 miles on $0.25 USD.
Have you seen the pollution in growing nations that have cities full of 2 cycle engines on motor scooters? Damn man talk about stinky horrible asthma causing pollution.
How about this one?
http://www.austinev.org/evalbum/427.html
This bike is probably a little bit better than some stinky ICE bike. It also has the same range. Go figure.
For those of you touting Knoppix, it is not feasible in this situation most of the time. I bet very few of these machines have the required memory.
Knoppix is awesome but not feasible with under 96MB of RAM. Although a cut down version with it's quick install would be nice.
The max current on that is about 1A. It will be dissipating a couple watts. The heatsink will be hot. Max short circuit current is 3.6A. Too small. Probably not easy to parallel either. They tend to fight with eachother when they are in parallel.
That's a little dramatic. The car may burn. The battery probably won't explode. It'll sag down to a very low voltage and then die.
Remember violent explosions only happen on TV for effect. The real world is usually much less dramatic.
But you're right about the Metro thing. Go for it.
That's not neccessarily a good idea either. The inrush current from the DC outlet in the car will cause a spark. It may also be enough to pop the breaker. Look at putting some sort of low ohm high power resistor in series. Many car outlets are rated for 120 Watts maximum. Make sure the wiring can stand "continuous" high power. I would run a separate set of wires from my car battery (fused at the battery) to a heavy duty outlet in the car. Also for safety you'll want to put a diode in series with the incoming line so that you don't have as much chance of shocking yourself from the capacitor discharge when you unplug the converter. For clamping the incoming spikes find yourself a good 14V Zener diode and shunt the incoming line with it.
Think safety when you build these things. Unfortunately, many times easy safety tricks cost efficiency losses. Electricity can be dangerous and you don't want to hurt anybody because of your stupid mistakes. Great White didn't think about the pyrotechnics in a small building and they lost a guitarist.
Most solar panels allow light to come through. Making all the windows in the building from solar panels might work. It would be just like putting a dark tint on your normal windows.
It is probably cheap in comparison to other brand new technologies but won't be cheap in comparison to existing technology for 10-20 years.
My wife bitches about how ugly they are also. The way to get around this is to use solar shingles on the roof. they are also more expensive. An article in HomePower magazine recently did a study on correct positioning of solar panels toward the sun. The resulting losses from misaligned panels wasn't as much as I thought it would be. If you had a roof top facing roughly 10-45 degrees off from true south the losses might be worth the odd look of mounting the panels true south.
There have been some big chages with solar cells lately with respect to flexibility. Including this "denim" like stuff, thin films have allowed a lot of flexibility since they don't have to be cut from the silicon bowl.
I checked out the website and it is confusing me. If I type in my name in the box "Tim" "Darnit" it says that I can get Tim@darnit.name and tim.darnit.name. What does that get me? Do they delegate tim.darnit.name to me or darnit.name. Do I have to have the email forwarding? If I set up my own domain with tim.darnit.name then I would only be able to give out buelah@tim.darnit.name to my wife. To be Buelah@darnit.name she woiuld have to pay for her own stuff. Am I correct on this?
This must be marketed to more mainstream net users and not people like me.
I'll have to disagree. You need to use GlobalStar. The phones have this really neat flip out antenna without some ugly bulbous looking antenna. I've seen the Iridium antenna at pr0n shops before.
:)
I'm not biased or anything. I just helped the manufacturing of the antenna for Globalstar/Qualcomm. I got to build a small anechoic chamber for the testing/tuning of the antennas. BTW, if anybody needs help building fully or semi-anechoic chambers for EM, I need a job.
Company (Microsoft, Symantec, etc.) selling software gives the user a bootable CD (or other media) with out an EULA (Knoppix?) that only displays the EULA of the software that they are purchasing. This CD is attached to the outside of the box so the main box does not need to be opened and can be returned if the purchaser does not agree with the EULA. Although adding a paper copy of the EULA to the outside of the box would be cheaper. I feel the bootable CD would be much cooler (geekwise). :)
There is a paper describing the cost of distribution in a 3 part series at evworld.com that concluded this week.
? storyid=471
http://www.evworld.com/databases/storybuilder.cfm
Yes the claims are crap about hydrogen being the savior of the environment.
If she has a ground source (geothermal) heat pump then she is polluting much less than you and more efficient. Your oil fired heater puts up more particulates than an old diesel engine for output. The differences in the temperature between the fire and the surrounding air are a major factor in efficiency. The larger the difference the worse the efficiency. Geothermal heat pumps raise the plenum to about 120F (i think) and heat the air to the house to just a few degrees warmer than what is needed. What temp does oil burn at? I'm assuming it iwll burn paper so therefore it is at least 400F. I would imagine that at least 1/2 of your available energy is going out through your chimney.
Electric water heaters kind of annoy me since they take so long to produce hot water.
Hydrogen sucks as a fuel source because the cost of production, transportation, and storage is so energy intensive. Hydrogen is almost as bad as gasoline in the end because so much energy is wasted just moving and compressing it.
The facts remain though. From coal mine to usable energy in the wheels of your car, battery electric vehicles are the most efficient. The geothermal heat pump will blow the doors off your oil fired heater for efficiency and pollute less.
#1 coal mine to geothermal heat pump energy
#2 natural gas well to natural gas furnace energy
#1 and #2 I think are very close in efficiency and pollution with the new equipment available today. High efficiency gas furnaces still cost more per year to run in Nebraska (not all places) than a geothermal heat pump. The heat pump costs more initially though (about a 15 year payback w/interest).
Be careful how you use electric heat. Ground source (geothermal) heat pumps only use electricity and are very efficient. They are even more efficient than burning propane or natural gas to heat a house. Air-Air exchange heat pumps aren't worth a shit if you are routinely getting down to 40 degrees F. There is just not enough heat left in the air outside to make them efficient. They usually have electric resistive backup heat which is horribly inefficient for heating large areas like houses. Geothermal heat pumps though almost always have the same efficiency year round because the inside of your has doesn't fluctuate temperature much (65-80 F) and the ground on the other side changes even less (50-55F). My parents live in Nebraska (temps range from -10F to 110F winter to summer) and using all electric never have an electric bill over 125 bucks in an early 190X house with 1700 sq ft. In the winter they have the temp set at 70 and in the summer it is set at 76.
It says on the website that they charge for drinks.
Or you could tie a decent breathalizer with some sort of serial port to it and compare the real number with the caculated number and get some really useful data. Put this at a number of parties and you could maybe even get sponsored by some govt program to offset the cost of the "study".
I think the bigges problem with hybrid electric cars currently is that they are not grid rechargeable.
From mining (drilling) to propulsion, electric drive with current battery technology is more efficient and better for the environment than a brand spanking new hybrid electric car. The gasoline motor in that will prgressively pollute more as it is used. Why can't I buy a hybrid electric that allows me to drive the first 5-10 miles of my commute by pure electric then when the charge on the batteries gets down to about 50% kick the gas engine in. With this configuration over 70% of my driving would never require me to use gasoline.
In Nebraska with the current electrical prices, it would take about $2/gal for an purely electric car and gasoline vehicle to be equal in running costs. This assumes a battery pack that lasts 30,000 miles and costs about $5000. The gasoline vehicle would need to get about 25 mpg These last 3 figures are kinda rusty since I did the calculations in May 2002. All my calculations are for city driving since that's what I would use the vehicle for.
When calculating the cost of fuel for comparison, you have to factor in the cost of the battery pack since it only lasts for a limited amount of miles depending on the battery management system and pack discharge.
The point is that hybrid electric vehicles would be much better if they were grid rechargeable.
Eric
There shouldn't be because in the USA some of the power plants are using low interest govt. loans and grants. Reducing the number of low interest loans/grants can save the govt some money. They will also have a sales tax from the initial sale of the panels.
There will be because the govt just likes to tax stuff.
shird kinda says what I want to say. It's all about choice. We at TheOpenCD are trying to show people that Microsoft or whatever other company is not the only choice they have. There are very good opensource alternatives to the programs we run. The switch to Linux is not on our agenda. Personally I just want to have my parents running the same basic software on Windows that I run in Debian Linux. When they call me for support of OpenOffice I can bring it up and not have to guess what the options in MS Word are because I don't own it.
Eric
Theopencd.org is not one of the download sites.
Sorry about that. All the main hubbub happened during the summer when people weren't as busy with school. Selanit busted some major ass to get this out before finals came up and bit him.
Progress was very slow though at the start of the fall semester of school.
But we are still here.
As a member of the OpenCD project, I think this is a good idea. Hopefully our next release will have an html interface. The download will consist of a bunch of html files that link to the software on the web.
There hopefully won't be unnecessary downloading if people with broadband connections make a few copies of the CD for their family and friends that want to try it out.
I'll copy your suggestion to the forum though.
Not even close to the target. If OpenOffice can read/write MS Office files then the people will send it to you in MS Office format anyway. If they can also read/write OpenOffice files then it is a perfect 2 way street using the default configuration of either Office suite. By showing them that OO files can do everything MS files can do they will consider the switch. Otherwise they will never see the OO format and never think it could be done.
I see the prices now:
128MB version is 250 USD and the 20GB version is 400 USD. Nice to see the the backpack for the 20GB version can be added on later if you can't afford it now. This means that as larger HD's are available you can upgrade. This also means that people will hack together their own "backpacks" with large hard drives.
This sounds like a very good idea! Some uses for it that I can think of:
1) biking/walking - u and ur friend (in my case, wife) can list to the music on the nueros and only have to buy one mp3 player. She has a cheap fm receiver. If she doesn't like the music she can hit you to change it or change the station she listens too. This works both ways. Maybe she'll carry the mp3 player.
2) Similar use in car - buy one or two of these and put them in you car with different types of music. The kid(s) can listen to something different than the parent(s).
I'm not too worried about sound quality. I mainly just would like music/voices/something other than wind noise while I'm walking/riding/driving.
I didn't see a price anywhere though.