Slashdot Mirror


User: QuantumPion

QuantumPion's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
598
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 598

  1. Re:How I see it... on Slashdot Asks: How Does the US Gov't Budget Crunch Affect You? · · Score: 1

    What are you talking about? The republicans offered up a bill to simply delay the implementation of Obamacare for 1 year and the democrats soundly rejected it. Obama and Harry Reid can be heard on the news vowing "WE WILL NOT NEGOTIATE", comparing the republicans to Islamic terrorists! And you blame the republicans for not negotiating? You sir, have the situation ass backwards.

  2. Re:Well of course on New Solar Cell Sets Record For Energy Efficiency · · Score: 1

    You simplify to much.

    Meanwhile a nice placed solar plant would be cost effective even without the granted feed in tariffs.

    This is due to the fact that you can sell your energy at the spot market and the price for energy peaks there regularly far above the feed in tariffs.

    Only because government regulations mandate renewable power always be purchased, often times leading to negative electricity prices (i.e. power company pays you to waste electricity - nice perverse incentive!). This is basically the same as a tariff - a law meant to protect a particular industry even though its consequences on the whole are a net loss.

    Capacity factors ... an invention by wikipedia ... and some guys who gives talks in TV shows ;D

    No one in the energy business uses that term, it is completely useless.

    I hope that was sarcasm, otherwise you're an idiot.

  3. Re:Free Market? LoL on How Car Dealership Lobbyists Successfully Banned Tesla Motors From Texas · · Score: 1

    But Democrats don't sell themselves as wanting completely free and unregulated markets. That's not to say they are hypocrites about other things but in this case it is more about Republicans.

    Uh, neither do republicans, except for a scant few like Ron/Rand Paul.

  4. Re:Free Market? LoL on How Car Dealership Lobbyists Successfully Banned Tesla Motors From Texas · · Score: 1

    The whole point of libertarianism is that there is no right person with power to bribe in the first place.

  5. Re:Creation on What Works In Education: Scientific Evidence Gets Ignored · · Score: 1

    Pretty much it's always been that way.

    For an example of how corrupt the public school system is, just take Richard Feynman's experience in reviewing school textbooks:

    http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm

  6. Re:Amazing on UK Government Destroys Guardian's Snowden Drives · · Score: 1

    Because we're all sure that Al Qaeda couldn't possibly find any rail lines in Europe without leaks and whistle blowers.

    Seriously, unless you believe that the US has an impervious border (at which point you have issues that can't be solved simply by education) then it should be obvious that al Qaeda isn't what we're being told it is for the simple reason that WE'RE NOT BEING ATTACKED. A dozen guys armed with second hand deer rifles, working as landscapers and dishwashers, driving old beater cars, could take down the entire US electrical grid. No suicide attack necessary. If they work at the Tyson plant they could poison thousands or tens of thousands with biological agents that can be grown in home beer fermentation kits. They can make iron oxide and aluminum powder and burn out railroad bridges with simple thermite. And yet none of these things are happening. Instead we have a Shoe Bomber who forgets to bring matches with him, and the Underwear Bomber.

      Be afraid. Be very afraid.

    Maybe so but when you read stories like this, it makes you worry...7 Pakistani muslim chemical engineers arrested for trespassing at Boston area municipal water supply at midnight

  7. Re:the idea behind the movie is dumb on Former Director of the ISS Division At NASA Talks About Science Behind 'Elysium' · · Score: 0

    both became greater than the mother country because of tremendous "available" tracts of land and natural resources

    Really? Than explain why Africa and South America, regions with the richest natural resources in the world, are also the continually poorest? Or why Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan, islands almost completely devoid of any natural resources, are some of the richest places in the world?

    The source of all wealth is human productivity, not raw materials in the ground. Human productivity is only unleashed when property rights guaranteed by rule of law and an absence of burdening government allow for unrestricted capitalism.

  8. Re:Climate of Stupidity on A Climate of Violence? · · Score: 1

    Don't forget increasing the chance of asteroid impacts, that wasn't on the list.

  9. Re:I'm shocked, SHOCKED, to learn there's gambling on Duke Energy Scraps Plans For Florida Nuclear Plant, Forced To Delay Others · · Score: 1

    Is this one of those cases where the state allowed them to put a surcharge on customers' bills for years before they even built the plant?

    I don't suppose we'll ever see that money back, will we?

    No, in fact the reason why they cancelled the plant was precisely because the state's government told them they could not raise their rates to pay for the construction of the plant, and they didn't have $25 billion just sitting around to pay for the whole thing in advance. I'm sure in 10 years when Floridians are paying three times as much for electricity that they wish they took the 5% increase when they had the chance. That's short-term thinking politicians for you though, they couldn't care less what happens in 10-20 years, all they care about is keeping their constituents happy for their next election.

  10. Re:Blame the government when the real cause is... on Duke Energy Scraps Plans For Florida Nuclear Plant, Forced To Delay Others · · Score: 1

    The reason why the plant was cancelled was because the price tag is $25 billion. The price tag is $25 billion because of government regulation overcomplicating and slowing down construction, causing interest on capital costs to balloon to the point of unprofitability.

  11. Re:Blame the government when the real cause is... on Duke Energy Scraps Plans For Florida Nuclear Plant, Forced To Delay Others · · Score: 2

    To be fair, with zero regulation, oversight, and no delays as well as only minimal safety procedures, nuclear would be the cheapest (but most dangerous) of all our energy options.

    No. Even in the Soviet Union, with extreme lack luster safety standards, the number of people whom died due to nuclear power in the entire history of nuclear power is fewer than the number of coal miners whom die every month.

  12. Re:Technical debt on Decommissioning San Onofre Nuclear Plant May Take Decades · · Score: 1

    You have a pretty poor perspective on things here. The reactors produced 1100 MWe for 28 years with an average capacity factor around 80%. That's ~50 GWe-years or ~1,200,000 megatons TNT (thermal). I'm pretty keeping the lights on in the building for a few decades is a bit less than a million megatons of TNT.

  13. Re: Gov't "Added value" vs. Real Cost? on Japan's Radiation Disaster Toll: None Dead, None Sick · · Score: 1

    No.

    a) by law, the nuclear plant owners pay into a fund for the storage of waste.

    b) nuclear waste becomes contact-safe after about 200 years (half life of Cs-137, the longest lived gamma emitter, is 30 years). Pu-239 is not waste, it is fuel. The only dangerous long-lived fission by-product is Tc-99, which can be separated and vitrified easily (although not done in the US currently, the technology has been proven for decades).

  14. Re:That's nice on The First Fully 3D-Printed Gun Has Been Successfully Test-Fired · · Score: 1

    Murder is inherently wrong. Owning a gun is not.

  15. Not the first, but hopefully bad enough to be last on In Wake of Poor Reviews, Amazon Yanks SimCity Download · · Score: 1

    EA is certainly not the first to have the problem of release-day loads, but game companies need to stop expecting to ride out the release boom and actually implement a solution that works. I don't expect them to spend huge amounts of money on extra server capacity just for release day, but there are other potential solutions. For example - stagger release dates by geography, random chance, or some other method.

  16. Re:Better him than me. on Comet C/2013 A1 May Hit Mars In 2014 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is there any possible a close encounter to Mars that might cause C/2013A1 to act as if it were orbiting mars, (at least for half a rev duration of that single pass)? And if so, just how much can Mars deflect the orbit of C/2013A1 from what it might have been for centuries?

    It is not possible for an object orbiting the sun to become captured by the orbit of a planet, due to conservation of energy. The only way an object can be captured is by either using rockets or aerobraking. However aerobraking alone does not produce a stable orbit since its orbit would continually decay each time it passed through the atmosphere. In order to aerocapture you have to slow down through the atmosphere and then apply thrust at apoapsis to raise the periapsis out of the atmosphere.

  17. Re:No, because it's still laughably expensive on Asteroid Resources Could Make Science Fiction Dreams and Nightmares a Reality · · Score: 1

    I'd imagine the per-kg cost exceeds the value of whatever you could possibly return, even if you found an asteroid made of solid gold and all you had to do was de-orbit it.

    Gold = $50k/kg
    Delta-IV Heavy = 9000 kg to Earth escape velocity @ $250 million = $28k/kg

    If the delta-V requirement to bring a NEO back to earth from earth escape is ~4 km/s, and your rocket was say a RL10 with 100 kN @ 450 Isp, than the final rocket mass m1=mo*e^(-deltav/Isp*g0) would only be ~3600 kg. Assuming the engine + tankage weighs around 1000 kg, we're talking maybe 2600 kg payload return. Again at $250 million launch cost that is $96k/kg, almost double that of pure gold. And it's not like there are actual pure gold asteroids just floating around either. We're looking at a factor of 5-10 or even worse cost difference here.

  18. Not economically possible. on New Asteroid Mining Company Emerges · · Score: 1

    I don't understand how asteroid mining could be profitable with current technology. What is the delta-V budget for sending engines+fuel+mining equipment to a near-earth asteroid and returning it to earth? I'd imagine the per-kg cost exceeds the value of whatever you could possibly return, even if you found an asteroid made of solid gold and all you had to do was de-orbit it.

    Gold = $50k/kg
    Delta-IV Heavy = 9000 kg to Earth escape velocity @ $250 million = $28k/kg

    If the delta-V requirement to bring a NEO back to earth from earth escape is ~4 km/s, and your rocket was say a RL10 with 100 kN @ 450 Isp, than the final rocket mass m1=mo*e^(-deltav/Isp*g0) would only be ~3600 kg. Assuming the engine + tankage weighs around 1000 kg, we're talking maybe 2600 kg payload return. Again at $250 million launch cost that is $96k/kg, almost double that of pure gold. And it's not like there are actual pure gold asteroids just floating around either. We're looking at a factor of 5-10 or even worse cost difference here.

  19. Re:Well... on Dominion Announces Plans To Close Kewaunee Nuclear Power Station In 2013 · · Score: 1

    How is Dominion going to charge more for electricity when once the plant is shut down they won't be producing any in Wisconsin?

  20. Re:Business doesn’t necessarily create jobs on US Presidential Debate #2 Tonight: Discuss Here · · Score: 1

    No.

    There is no demand for products which do not exist. Demand does not exist until the product does.

    How much demand was there for an iphone before the iphone existed? Zero.

    How many jobs as Apple created to make the iphone? Eleventybillion. Mostly in China, but that is besides the point.

  21. Re:Old tech on The Tech Behind Felix Baumgartner's Stratospheric Skydive · · Score: 3

    You can't "base jump" out of the ISS unless you have a portable jetpack capable of decelerating you to deorbit. You need a delta-V of around 225 ft/s. If you step outside the ISS, all that will happen is that you will continue orbit the Earth with the ISS. You would starve to death before deorbiting solely due to atmospheric friction.

  22. Re:The case on Supreme Court To Decide Whether Or Not You Own What You Own · · Score: 1

    One interesting tit bit was that, when I came to USA as a student with F-1 Visa, I was scared by the EEE books I was bringing in. I used some 75% of my baggage allowance with books. I knew how serious copyright law was in USA. I knew my books are cheaper in India. I was worried the immigration officer would reject my visa and send me back! Seriously. I was worried about everything from the turmeric powder in my hand baggage to the loose staple on the sealed I-20 form issued by the university attached to my passport!

    Welcome to America, the land of freedom! ._.

  23. Re:Looks like an end-run around illegal importing on Supreme Court To Decide Whether Or Not You Own What You Own · · Score: 1

    So what is the exact number of books allowed to be imported for re-sale per unit time where by any additional books would constitute "prohibited mass exporting".

  24. Re:Might be incentive to buy American? on Supreme Court To Decide Whether Or Not You Own What You Own · · Score: 1

    The conservative side produced citizen united which basically lets corporation give unlimited money to political speech.

    No. Citizens United case lets people, including groups of people organized into organizations such as corporations or unions, SPEND unlimited money on political speech. In other words, you are now allowed to not only spend a little money on cheap leaflets, but you may spend large amounts of money for example publishing a book or making a TV show. Before Citizens United case, you COULD NOT PUBLISH A BOOK, OR MAKE A TV SHOW that was considered by the court to be political in nature, before an election.

    Let me repeat. Citizens United had NOTHING to do with GIVING money to politicians. Citizens United was about spending money on speech.

  25. Re:this isn't Hollywood on Bruce Perens: The Day I Blundered Into the Nuclear Facility · · Score: 1

    So my numbers and facts are complete BS, because of you don't think 1,000,000 R/hr is a "VERY severe hit on your nervous system" based on watching Star Trek II? Really? Really?