If you really want to see solar displace oil, somebody needs to start selling solar cells that match the cost per watt of oil.
My answer wasn't "uncalled for"; it was exactly on point to the original question, "Is energy really expensive enough to justify covering your house in solar cells?", and is related to your statement about matching the cost per watt of oil.
If you want solar to "match the cost per watt of oil", you must first calculate the "cost per watt of oil". The true cost per watt of oil includes the cost of caring for asthmatics who are afflicted by air pollution that comes from burning oil. The true cost per watt of oil includes any military expenditures that go toward insuring our access to oil. The true cost per watt of oil includes the hundreds of billions of dollars that will be spent to build seawalls around our coastal cities, or to relocate the people and businesses when we abondon those cities.
The cost of oil is not just what you pay at the pump. I am not advocating a non-economic, starry-eyed solution to our energy problems. I just want us to look at the systemic costs of all solutions, and choose the solutions that have the lowest true costs.
Is energy really expensive enough to justify covering your house in solar cells?
Energy as we collect it now, has some non-obvious costs. What does pollution from burning fossil fuels cost us in terms of healthcare? What will sea-level rise cost us? (hint: NYC, LA, DC, Miami, New Orleans, Mobile, and others are very close to sea level, and those are just the US examples.) Would we really have spent $300B and 2,906 American lives (so far) in Iraq if we didn't need to "stabilize" the region that supplies most of our oil?
Part of every dollar that you pay in taxes, at the store, at the hospital, in fact pretty much everywhere, is an energy cost.
I suppose each session would be a new user with their own/usr/random directory . Once they are done, the user got deletedd.
No, always use the same user account, such as "publicusr". At the end of a session, just run "rm -Rf/home/publicusr/*". That will leave the publicusr home directory intact, but remove all of its contents, including any downloaded material (copyrighted material, malware, etc.) and clear the browser settings and browser history.
If you want to have certain settings exist in the user directory, copy them in from a pre-defined directory, after running the delete.
Don't force a capable athlete to ride in an expensive wheelchair, just because all of your professional experience comes from working with cripples.
Shhh. How dare you threaten the myth of the Rugged Individual? These are self-made men! All of your girly infrastructure, legal protections, immunizations, public education, stabilized currency and whatnot just impeded their awesome achievements.
"Scientific" announcements should be made in ways that make this clear.
Or our high school science classes should be improved to the point that every adult would already know that these caveats are implicit in every scientific announcement. Way too many of us (esp. us Americans) treat science as either gospel or hogwash. Note that claiming that science is hogwash in no way implies rejecting the practical fruits of said hogwash.
In the "Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick any two." quote, the 'Good' refers to the software (including its speed), the 'Fast' and 'Cheap' refer to the development process. You can have it fast by hiring lots and lots of really good developers (not cheap). You can have it pretty cheap by hiring one or two really good developers and giving them a many-year deadline (not fast). Or you can have a piece of crap software by January for a pretty cheap development price (Vista).
Linux is good, but the development process wasn't very cheap (thousands of developers, hundreds of thousands of man-hours), or very fast (it took what, seven years (1998) before Linux was ready for heavy use as a business-class server OS).
one of these times they'll get it right and we'll be locked out for good
And that day will be a banner day for the garage bands. You know, the bands that charge $10 for a CD (without DRM) at a concert where the cover charge is $15. Our local ClearChannel venue is charging up to $120 for lousy seats. I don't know how much the CDs cost, and probably never will.
And the day that Microsoft comes out with a 100% effective anti-infringement method (think non-broken WGA) for Windows, will be a banner day for Linux.
I have a friend who is a neuro-oncology researcher. A very large part of her job is: causing cancer in rats, killing those rats, and sectioning their brains. Horror may be in the eye of the beholder, but she does not practice cruelty. The rats are killed by being placed into a box with CO2 (from a dry-ice chamber). That's probably a more peaceful death than I can expect.
Granted, when you are researching pain meds, there's probably going to be pain involved. But that doesn't mean than the researchers get any pleasure out of causing this pain, or that they cause any more pain than necessary.
If you truly feel that a rat life is worth as much as a human life, or that an hour of rat pain is as bad as an hour of human pain, then it is hard to justify your continued existence. Even if you are as green as you can get, and a hard-core vegan, your ecological footprint is very large (certainly compared to a rat), and responsible for the deaths of many small animals. The fact that you use a computer means that your carbon footprint is not that of a primitive hunter-gatherer. If you eat vegetables and/or grains, you are responsible for the deaths of several small mammals (such as fieldmice) and thousands of insects every week, just from the mechanical harvesting process (even assuming that your food is 'organic' and thus pesticide-free.
That's not actually a legal requirement (unless I missed something). I've seen firearms for sale by individuals (not FFLs) at flea markets, in newspapers, etc. Is there a law in your state, or is there a new federal law that sales have to go through FFLs?
I actually like this idea. It would do almost nothing to prevent honest citizens from buying and selling guns, but could make it harder for criminals to buy guns. It could also hamper straw-buyers from buying hundreds of guns and reselling them without background checks or paperwork. ATF could go to a straw-buyer and demand to either see the guns that he purchased, or know which FFL he sold them through.
To keep this requirement from being abused by FFLs, and to keep it from hindering the legal buying and selling by individuals, FFLs should be required to charge no more than a small fee ($5? $10?) to conduct the background check and handle the paperwork.
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Hey now! Animated paperclips don't invent themselves.
My answer wasn't "uncalled for"; it was exactly on point to the original question, "Is energy really expensive enough to justify covering your house in solar cells?", and is related to your statement about matching the cost per watt of oil.
If you want solar to "match the cost per watt of oil", you must first calculate the "cost per watt of oil". The true cost per watt of oil includes the cost of caring for asthmatics who are afflicted by air pollution that comes from burning oil. The true cost per watt of oil includes any military expenditures that go toward insuring our access to oil. The true cost per watt of oil includes the hundreds of billions of dollars that will be spent to build seawalls around our coastal cities, or to relocate the people and businesses when we abondon those cities.
The cost of oil is not just what you pay at the pump. I am not advocating a non-economic, starry-eyed solution to our energy problems. I just want us to look at the systemic costs of all solutions, and choose the solutions that have the lowest true costs.
Energy as we collect it now, has some non-obvious costs. What does pollution from burning fossil fuels cost us in terms of healthcare? What will sea-level rise cost us? (hint: NYC, LA, DC, Miami, New Orleans, Mobile, and others are very close to sea level, and those are just the US examples.) Would we really have spent $300B and 2,906 American lives (so far) in Iraq if we didn't need to "stabilize" the region that supplies most of our oil?
Part of every dollar that you pay in taxes, at the store, at the hospital, in fact pretty much everywhere, is an energy cost.
That's good, because at 6 times the speed of light 'soon' would be 'recently', and your comment would be a dupe.
Teach a man to fish, and he'll spend all afternoon sitting in a boat drinking beer.
No, always use the same user account, such as "publicusr". At the end of a session, just run "rm -Rf /home/publicusr/*". That will leave the publicusr home directory intact, but remove all of its contents, including any downloaded material (copyrighted material, malware, etc.) and clear the browser settings and browser history.
If you want to have certain settings exist in the user directory, copy them in from a pre-defined directory, after running the delete.
Don't force a capable athlete to ride in an expensive wheelchair, just because all of your professional experience comes from working with cripples.
Shhh. How dare you threaten the myth of the Rugged Individual? These are self-made men! All of your girly infrastructure, legal protections, immunizations, public education, stabilized currency and whatnot just impeded their awesome achievements.
Capacitors don't kill people. Capacitor manufacturers kill people. Capacitors are just the tool they use to do it.
Or our high school science classes should be improved to the point that every adult would already know that these caveats are implicit in every scientific announcement. Way too many of us (esp. us Americans) treat science as either gospel or hogwash. Note that claiming that science is hogwash in no way implies rejecting the practical fruits of said hogwash.
In the "Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick any two." quote, the 'Good' refers to the software (including its speed), the 'Fast' and 'Cheap' refer to the development process. You can have it fast by hiring lots and lots of really good developers (not cheap). You can have it pretty cheap by hiring one or two really good developers and giving them a many-year deadline (not fast). Or you can have a piece of crap software by January for a pretty cheap development price (Vista).
Linux is good, but the development process wasn't very cheap (thousands of developers, hundreds of thousands of man-hours), or very fast (it took what, seven years (1998) before Linux was ready for heavy use as a business-class server OS).
This is /. You are required to call him a 'copyright infringer', not a 'pirate'. Thank you.
And that day will be a banner day for the garage bands. You know, the bands that charge $10 for a CD (without DRM) at a concert where the cover charge is $15. Our local ClearChannel venue is charging up to $120 for lousy seats. I don't know how much the CDs cost, and probably never will.
And the day that Microsoft comes out with a 100% effective anti-infringement method (think non-broken WGA) for Windows, will be a banner day for Linux.
I have a friend who is a neuro-oncology researcher. A very large part of her job is: causing cancer in rats, killing those rats, and sectioning their brains. Horror may be in the eye of the beholder, but she does not practice cruelty. The rats are killed by being placed into a box with CO2 (from a dry-ice chamber). That's probably a more peaceful death than I can expect.
Granted, when you are researching pain meds, there's probably going to be pain involved. But that doesn't mean than the researchers get any pleasure out of causing this pain, or that they cause any more pain than necessary.
If you truly feel that a rat life is worth as much as a human life, or that an hour of rat pain is as bad as an hour of human pain, then it is hard to justify your continued existence. Even if you are as green as you can get, and a hard-core vegan, your ecological footprint is very large (certainly compared to a rat), and responsible for the deaths of many small animals. The fact that you use a computer means that your carbon footprint is not that of a primitive hunter-gatherer. If you eat vegetables and/or grains, you are responsible for the deaths of several small mammals (such as fieldmice) and thousands of insects every week, just from the mechanical harvesting process (even assuming that your food is 'organic' and thus pesticide-free.
Said Mr. I-don't-have-half-a-million-dollars
To be fair, I wouldn't be entirely comfortable giving condoms to a 7 year-old.
You've stumbled across their secret plan. Vista won't run programs. 99.9% of Windows problems have been traced to 'users' running 'programs'.
Can't you just see Balmer standing in the bow: "I'm king of the world!" Of course, the iceberg this ship hits will have penguins on it.
You first.
Prayer Hankies.
Bush used this word three days ago. Granted he was trying to discuss the beliefs of Episcopalians, but technically he did use this word.
Ah yes, the Pontifex Ursus. But what about the thousands of Discordian Popes?
Don't be evil, Sparky. Don't be evil.
Hey, the Coward family has been plagued by their name for years. They thought they were doing the son a favor by naming him "Anonymous".
This is why I stopped looking for investors and folded my company.
That's not actually a legal requirement (unless I missed something). I've seen firearms for sale by individuals (not FFLs) at flea markets, in newspapers, etc. Is there a law in your state, or is there a new federal law that sales have to go through FFLs?
I actually like this idea. It would do almost nothing to prevent honest citizens from buying and selling guns, but could make it harder for criminals to buy guns. It could also hamper straw-buyers from buying hundreds of guns and reselling them without background checks or paperwork. ATF could go to a straw-buyer and demand to either see the guns that he purchased, or know which FFL he sold them through.
To keep this requirement from being abused by FFLs, and to keep it from hindering the legal buying and selling by individuals, FFLs should be required to charge no more than a small fee ($5? $10?) to conduct the background check and handle the paperwork.