Thats true, but there are also very clear boundaries (I'd assume you couldn't use the military-derived images to prosecute anyone, but TFA doesn't say), which make it much harder for mission creep to happen. Plus the ACLU is keeping a close eye, which personally makes me more comfortable with it. If anything goes beyond what's reasonable I'm sure we'll hear about.
Really, I'd be more worried about law enforcement use of commercial services, which are getting more and more capable. Resolution is limited by ITAR to 0.5-meter, but improvements in revisit time and overall collection rate I'm sure are on the way thanks to new contracts with the NRO, guaranteeing revenue and allowing the private firms to develop better satellites. There's nothing illegal, as far as I know, about a police agency using these services. And if it gets cheap enough for common use, and they're able to do it without warrants (its just an observation), its a much more dangerous thing than this. Then you have legal, warrant-less, on-demand access to space imagery for all law enforcement rather than some gray-area cases where foreign drug traffickers interact with domestic law enforcement.
Because we don't want to have our own military/intelligence services spying on US citizens on US soil?
The satellites may very well be over the US when they're observing the border, the key is that the product is strictly restricted to images of areas outside of our borders unless strict court proceedings are followed... and continued development of commercial offerings make that less important.
The real problem is that its a fuzzy area between law enforcement and national security. I think the strict adherence to only looking outside of the borders, and presumably that the images couldn't be used as evidence in criminal proceedings minimizes the issues, and I'm pretty comfortable with it. Of course, it does help that the ACLU is keeping a close eye to make sure it doesn't cross the line. Its definitely much less troubling than the NSA's shenanigans.
Where do you draw the line between military and law enforcement? Its outside of our borders, but dealing with a non-state organization who have made attacks on our territory and citizens... in many ways similar to hunting down bin Laden and al-Qaeda (neglecting the misadventures that followed).
Personally, I'm not seeing what the big deal is, its only being used outside of the US borders and its being used for national security, exactly what they're supposed to be used for.
Once you get above the magic 100 km marker, its all international space.
Originally, when Sputnik flew over what might have been considered US airspace, the Eisenhower administration intelligently agreed that it was legal and valid... otherwise you couldn't have any kind of orbit that wasn't geostationary.
Yes, when sizing out the power system for a spacecraft you figure out the eclipse period, as well as total power requirements. From there, you can size the solar cells to collect the power needed for a whole orbital period (probably double the power requirements, assuming a 50% eclipse period, which is likely in LEO), and then the battery size, based on the power required and expected eclipse time.
All LEO satellites, except those in sun-synchronous orbits that keep them situated above dusk/dawn all the time (I don't know of any that do this), have to deal with this, so the effect of the charge-discharge cycle is surely well-studied and understood, although I'll be honest, I don't know much about the details on that.
Once you go beyond LEO its a little easier. The eclipse region gets smaller and smaller relatively as you go out. For GEO, in a day-long orbit you'll have 70-minute eclipse periods during part of the year, but other times be free and clear.
They're weightless in an orbiting reference frame, they have weight in an inertial, Earth-fixed reference frame. You don't claim that a person in free-fall off of a building in weightless. In the Vomit Comet-type aircraft, you experience 'weightlessness' because the lack of windows effectively puts you in a free-falling reference frame. However, its all really the same thing and I think most of us here are able to recognize what is meant.
Although clearly made in jest, that is an excellent point. I think, though, that the idea is that people are mobile and able to compact into a small place, while plants really aren't.
If a bad radiation storm is coming you can have everyone hole up in a small protected compartment, rather than protecting the whole ship, which would be devastating on the weight of the vehicle. However, presumably hydroponics would be fairly large area, and it would be much harder to provide protection for that over a long flight, so finding another way around it would make the vehicle much easier to design.
You don't really need full ephemeris data, you'd just need to know when the transit happened. I'll grant you determining when the transit happens is a more difficult problem, although you can pull the data off of the JPL HORIZONS http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?horizons data.
Get two text files with a list of RA/DEC for the sun and Hubble for the next week, and set up a script to read through them and find the closest approach. If its less than the radius of the sun you have a winner. Given that this guy does this a lot (he's credited for earlier ISS images) he probably has a script set up to download and check the ephemeris for any satellites or other objects of interest a week or two in advance..
At least thats what I'd do... in fact maybe I should buy a solar filter and do just that...
I don't think I've seen a transit like this that is of much higher quality, unless its taken from another spacecraft, and then you're not likely to get the same effect. The ISS ones I think are a little more impressive because its bigger and there are a lot more details to make out.
Really this is about the best you can do for something like this. This looks to be right at the seeing limit (maybe doing it from a higher altitude could help), and theres plenty of light, so a bigger telescope isn't going to give you anything.
What are you looking for to make it more impressive?
I also didn't mention anything on facilities, furniture, computers, paperwork, power, phone, internet, etc. I was just trying to give a sense of how small that amount of funding is.
To put it in perspective, its enough to pay 100 peoples salaries/etc over the four year period. This assumes an average of $100k salary+benefits+overhead per employee, which seems if anything an underestimate for hiring people you'd want running a space program. Put another way, a non-ground-breaking, standard satellite like the ones used for broadcasting XM/Sirius radio in the US cost closer to $300M to build.
Not to say you can't do quite a bit with a small amount of money if applied right... theres certainly some interesting work you could do with autonomy and constellations with microsats that you might be able to do in that cost, particularly if a lot of its contracted out to universities (students are cheap labor).
Still, I find that number awfully low, and it sounds like simply playing politics... making a small thing sound more important than it is. Or maybe its additional funding on top of other things that are already going on.
You can't really fix an internal combustion engine to be much greener than what we have now. The only way to fix it and maintain standards of living is to replace to old ICE-based cars with something else. If you can't maintain standards of living its not going to happen unless the current economic troubles turn into a decade-long depression, which will probably put a halt on long-term green initiatives anyway.
Fixing the old stuff almost always means inventing new stuff. For cars you need some kind of electric vehicle or biofuels (which dont help the local pollution problem). For coal plants, some coal-gasification and carbon-sequestration can be worked in, but you're still releasing new carbon into the atmosphere: developing renewables and increasing nuclear is the only long-term solution.
Now some things can be fixed. Improving efficiency on engines, using smaller cars, insulating houses better, using compact fluorescent bulbs and new refrigerators all help. But these aren't going to reduce our energy usage, at most they're going to keep it level as populations and world-wide standards of living continue to grow. Definitely necessary but not enough.
More efficient cars and less polluting coal plants can help, but they're only a stop-gap, not a solution. There's a lot of people working on these problems, some can focus on short-term improvements, while others focus on long-term solutions.
I'm still not sure. You really depend on having a large portion of the population that wouldn't own a generator module, and in makes economical sense for people not to. Unfortunately, I'm not sure people would follow their own best interest in this kind of situation, since its something thats key to a sense of independence to many people. Also, I see more practical problems where you have mass evacuations from hurricanes, or even holidays (Thanksgiving comes to mind), you'd have times when you simply wouldn't have enough to go around.
Also, neglecting the rental solution (which would have trouble here too), it wouldn't work for college students and other young folks who live in apartments and dorms, and do lots of long distance driving. While there are definitely solutions, they'd be less convenient and would be hard to convince people to switch to.
Basically its an argument of convenience versus technical superiority... without rentals, the cost wouldn't make a difference, as long as there were electric only vehicles as well. As I described before the weight of the ICE and fuel tank would have minimal impact on the efficiency, and with the low cost of electric power, a difference between 50 and 60 mpg-equivalent wouldn't be worth the extra inconvenience to most people. Packaging would still be easier than a modern ICE vehicle: hub motors on the wheels powered straight from the battery eliminates any need for any kind of rotary power distribution system (drive shaft, etc.) and the ICE would probably be situated in a front compartment as in a traditional car, primarily because thats how its always been done.
Although, as you say, one size doesn't fit all. I still see that the near-future midsize car or minivan, the typical suburban family car, will have convenience win out though.
Then again, these kind of architecture issues (as opposed to the general technology) will be decided and sorted out by market forces, people deciding what works for them and companies producing what sells, so we'll see how it all works out. It will surely be better than what we have now.
In my mind, an EV with a discrete generator package isn't much different from a plug-in hybrid. Definitely preferable to the current Prius-style hybrids though, which I think everyone had always assumed were going to be a temporary stepping stone kind of technology.
However, I'm not sure that leaving the generator separate is a particularly valuable concept. First is a matter of convenience. As long as electric only range is around the limit of what one would expect to drive in a normal day, you'd want to have the generator to make sure you're not stuck without it. Secondly, you have to have a place to store the generator segment. People who don't have full garages would find this difficult, and you'd probably have people driving around with the generator all the time anyway.
Second, I'm not sure you get much technically either. Presumably the idea is to save weight and improve efficiency for normal driving. However, when you start including regenerative braking, the importance of weight on fuel usage drops significantly. Consider an ideal regenerative braking system, where you restore all of the kinetic energy the motor gives the system initially: in this case the fuel usage is defined entirely by the other inefficiencies, most notably aerodynamic drag. While obviously no system is ideal, looking at hybrid city/highway mileage values, its obvious that the effects of drag become much more dominant. Reducing weight isn't as important as reducing drag, and I'd imagine that the increased drag of a trailer would be more detrimental then the weight increases. If you're referring to the guy who talked about the Honda CRX with a trailer, I'd guess that was more of a packaging issue than anything else. A production vehicle could be designed without the need for a kludge.
The only reason I see for leaving the EV and generator separate is to have a reduced cost model without the generator. Even then, I think a better solution is to just to have an optional ER (extended range) trim package.
Of course, this all applies specifically to the American market where long distance road trips are common, and gas-powered vehicles are an every family kind of thing. I definitely agree with you, that for India or China, pure-EV models probably will be more popular, since they won't have as much of an expectation of what a car is supposed to be able to do, and cost would be much reduced.
But I notice that neither of those are cars that are in wide release or with the actual purchase price available (I'm sure the $600/month lease isn't break-even, its still an R&D project).
While it's certainly possible to store hydrogen, its certainly not cheap. I remember for a project I was involved in a couple of years ago, a DOT approved storage vessel that really would have been too small for a production vehicle was ~$10k. Surely this could be brought down some, but I can't see any way it could be brought down to the point of not being one of the main cost drivers.
Combine that with conversion inefficiencies (compared to batteries/capacitors) and the need for a completely new infrastructure (compared to biofuels) make think this is probably the right choice. EVs and biofuels are much closer to achieving cost-effective solutions, and it seems like a reasonable and responsible move. Plug-in hybrids using biofuels for range extension and quick refueling seem to me to be a lot more effective than hydrogen.
Maybe I'm wrong, I don't think this will completely kill fuel-cell research, if car companies are still interested they'll keep going on it. However shifting funding to something showing more signs of progress sounds like a responsible use of our tax dollars. And I'm not an Obama-ite, I just happen to think this particular decision is correct.
As far as I know, hydrogen fuel was always really an energy storage medium rather than a fuel in and of itself. While it may be the most common element in the universe, free H2 isn't especially abundant on Earth. If you could store it well, it would allow electric vehicles to have the same convenience as petroleum-powered vehicles.
The biggest problems with pure electric cars are that the range is limited and that you can't refill it in a matter of minutes. A pure battery-EV doesn't really allow any kind of long-distance road trip. This is the appeal of plug-in hybrids, it gives you range and easy refilling capability while potentially allowing zero-emissions driving during normal city driving/commuting. Although a hydrogen energy storage system would require new infrastructure, it would serve as a great long-term solution that fits with most peoples lifestyles.
As with any kind of EV, the 'green-ness' depends on the original source of the power. Even from fossil fuels it would probably be slightly better, since large fixed plants are more efficient and cleaner, but definitely better with wind/solar/nuclear/geothermal/whatever.
Note though, that the requirement for all of this is efficient, easy and safe storage, which has been going nowhere with plenty of funding. I think biofuels from non-food crops on non-food-producing land (i.e. not corn ethanol) are a more feasible long term solution, either with or without plug-in hybrid vehicles.
I think the idea with open textbooks is that you can use it in whatever format you like.
For instance, while I definitely prefer a real copy for a textbook, having a digital version to keep on the computer or on my kindle would be really handy for traveling. I don't know how many times I've been somewhere and realized I really needed a book; being in grad school I'm running into topics which aren't covered well or at all online.
Thus, a good bet would be to make the digital copy available, in a reflowable format, as well as at set sizes (Letter/A4) with PDFs. For K-12, presumably the school district would be able to place an order for how many they need, simply at the cost of printing them. College distribution is less obvious, although I have a had a few professors who make a set of class notes available in an inexpensive bound format at different copy shops around town.
I think you've been reading too much FUD. While you're quite free to continue to avoid it, particularly due to the cost and the embedded DRM, you seem to have a few facts wrong.
1. It does have an experimental browser built in, and you can access it over the cell network. It's not that great for non-article content (e.g. forums, discussions on Slashdot), but it works well for articles, and even has convenient access to wikipedia (search "@wiki topic" from any screen). I really don't understand the blog subscriptions.
2. You can load many free books on it. If you can, use a *.mobi file, although *.txt works natively as well. There is also conversion for reasonably simple PDF and HTML files. Loading them is even simpler than you're suggesting. It comes with a USB cable (standard mini-usb plug) and it attaches like any other flash drive. No fancy directory structure, just drop it in the available space and it shows up on the home screen.
I'd guess that the supposedly upcoming Apple Tablet (Mega-iPhone?) is probably more in line with what you need. I think Amazon is pretty devoted to the e-Ink side, and it'll still be a few years until color is ready there, from everything I've read.
It's not going to be conviction that gets a company to be able to do it DRM-free, its going to be the publishers trying to break a single dominant outlet (e.g. iTunes for music). The single dominant outlet is probably an obvious result of a heavily DRM'd market, corresponding with the most convenient solution.
If no one were to use any form of DRM'd e-books, you'd probably have the publishers say 'look, no one wants them.' Fortunately, I think there's enough interest in the product that the publishers will be forced to come around. Its just a matter of time.
Of course, cost is always a matter of time as well.
Comparing between teachers at the same school, or schools with similar socio-economic backgrounds, and averaging over multiple years to account for normal deviations in class performance.
Also, relying on things beyond tests, for instance, parent and student complaints. As an example, my sister (8th grade) has a science teacher who's primary teaching method is 'open the book and read this.' Over Christmas break she said that he had lectured twice that year so far. Sometimes things don't need to be quantified and turned into a science.
As a red-blooded American who lives in Texas and enjoys making fun of Canada as much as the next guy, I must admit:
I like Canadian music.
Looking at my phone... 4 out of the 22 bands on there (I really need to get my full-sized iPod back) are Canadian. For those who are curious: Arcade Fire, Sloan, Stars, and the New Pornographers. Between the Canadian station on XM and a sister who goes to school in Syracuse, I've rather enjoyed my exposure to it. Maybe I just like awful music though...
Slashdot Mirror
Thats true, but there are also very clear boundaries (I'd assume you couldn't use the military-derived images to prosecute anyone, but TFA doesn't say), which make it much harder for mission creep to happen. Plus the ACLU is keeping a close eye, which personally makes me more comfortable with it. If anything goes beyond what's reasonable I'm sure we'll hear about.
Really, I'd be more worried about law enforcement use of commercial services, which are getting more and more capable. Resolution is limited by ITAR to 0.5-meter, but improvements in revisit time and overall collection rate I'm sure are on the way thanks to new contracts with the NRO, guaranteeing revenue and allowing the private firms to develop better satellites. There's nothing illegal, as far as I know, about a police agency using these services. And if it gets cheap enough for common use, and they're able to do it without warrants (its just an observation), its a much more dangerous thing than this. Then you have legal, warrant-less, on-demand access to space imagery for all law enforcement rather than some gray-area cases where foreign drug traffickers interact with domestic law enforcement.
Because we don't want to have our own military/intelligence services spying on US citizens on US soil?
The satellites may very well be over the US when they're observing the border, the key is that the product is strictly restricted to images of areas outside of our borders unless strict court proceedings are followed... and continued development of commercial offerings make that less important.
The real problem is that its a fuzzy area between law enforcement and national security. I think the strict adherence to only looking outside of the borders, and presumably that the images couldn't be used as evidence in criminal proceedings minimizes the issues, and I'm pretty comfortable with it. Of course, it does help that the ACLU is keeping a close eye to make sure it doesn't cross the line. Its definitely much less troubling than the NSA's shenanigans.
Where do you draw the line between military and law enforcement? Its outside of our borders, but dealing with a non-state organization who have made attacks on our territory and citizens... in many ways similar to hunting down bin Laden and al-Qaeda (neglecting the misadventures that followed).
Personally, I'm not seeing what the big deal is, its only being used outside of the US borders and its being used for national security, exactly what they're supposed to be used for.
Once you get above the magic 100 km marker, its all international space.
Originally, when Sputnik flew over what might have been considered US airspace, the Eisenhower administration intelligently agreed that it was legal and valid... otherwise you couldn't have any kind of orbit that wasn't geostationary.
Yes, when sizing out the power system for a spacecraft you figure out the eclipse period, as well as total power requirements. From there, you can size the solar cells to collect the power needed for a whole orbital period (probably double the power requirements, assuming a 50% eclipse period, which is likely in LEO), and then the battery size, based on the power required and expected eclipse time.
All LEO satellites, except those in sun-synchronous orbits that keep them situated above dusk/dawn all the time (I don't know of any that do this), have to deal with this, so the effect of the charge-discharge cycle is surely well-studied and understood, although I'll be honest, I don't know much about the details on that.
Once you go beyond LEO its a little easier. The eclipse region gets smaller and smaller relatively as you go out. For GEO, in a day-long orbit you'll have 70-minute eclipse periods during part of the year, but other times be free and clear.
They're weightless in an orbiting reference frame, they have weight in an inertial, Earth-fixed reference frame. You don't claim that a person in free-fall off of a building in weightless. In the Vomit Comet-type aircraft, you experience 'weightlessness' because the lack of windows effectively puts you in a free-falling reference frame. However, its all really the same thing and I think most of us here are able to recognize what is meant.
Although clearly made in jest, that is an excellent point. I think, though, that the idea is that people are mobile and able to compact into a small place, while plants really aren't.
If a bad radiation storm is coming you can have everyone hole up in a small protected compartment, rather than protecting the whole ship, which would be devastating on the weight of the vehicle. However, presumably hydroponics would be fairly large area, and it would be much harder to provide protection for that over a long flight, so finding another way around it would make the vehicle much easier to design.
You don't really need full ephemeris data, you'd just need to know when the transit happened. I'll grant you determining when the transit happens is a more difficult problem, although you can pull the data off of the JPL HORIZONS http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?horizons data.
Get two text files with a list of RA/DEC for the sun and Hubble for the next week, and set up a script to read through them and find the closest approach. If its less than the radius of the sun you have a winner. Given that this guy does this a lot (he's credited for earlier ISS images) he probably has a script set up to download and check the ephemeris for any satellites or other objects of interest a week or two in advance..
At least thats what I'd do... in fact maybe I should buy a solar filter and do just that...
I don't think I've seen a transit like this that is of much higher quality, unless its taken from another spacecraft, and then you're not likely to get the same effect. The ISS ones I think are a little more impressive because its bigger and there are a lot more details to make out.
Really this is about the best you can do for something like this. This looks to be right at the seeing limit (maybe doing it from a higher altitude could help), and theres plenty of light, so a bigger telescope isn't going to give you anything.
What are you looking for to make it more impressive?
I also didn't mention anything on facilities, furniture, computers, paperwork, power, phone, internet, etc. I was just trying to give a sense of how small that amount of funding is.
$100k/year/person * 100 people = $10M/year.
Am I missing something? Over four years you have enough to pay those people for the same amount of time.
To put it in perspective, its enough to pay 100 peoples salaries/etc over the four year period. This assumes an average of $100k salary+benefits+overhead per employee, which seems if anything an underestimate for hiring people you'd want running a space program. Put another way, a non-ground-breaking, standard satellite like the ones used for broadcasting XM/Sirius radio in the US cost closer to $300M to build.
Not to say you can't do quite a bit with a small amount of money if applied right... theres certainly some interesting work you could do with autonomy and constellations with microsats that you might be able to do in that cost, particularly if a lot of its contracted out to universities (students are cheap labor).
Still, I find that number awfully low, and it sounds like simply playing politics... making a small thing sound more important than it is. Or maybe its additional funding on top of other things that are already going on.
You can't really fix an internal combustion engine to be much greener than what we have now. The only way to fix it and maintain standards of living is to replace to old ICE-based cars with something else. If you can't maintain standards of living its not going to happen unless the current economic troubles turn into a decade-long depression, which will probably put a halt on long-term green initiatives anyway.
Fixing the old stuff almost always means inventing new stuff. For cars you need some kind of electric vehicle or biofuels (which dont help the local pollution problem). For coal plants, some coal-gasification and carbon-sequestration can be worked in, but you're still releasing new carbon into the atmosphere: developing renewables and increasing nuclear is the only long-term solution.
Now some things can be fixed. Improving efficiency on engines, using smaller cars, insulating houses better, using compact fluorescent bulbs and new refrigerators all help. But these aren't going to reduce our energy usage, at most they're going to keep it level as populations and world-wide standards of living continue to grow. Definitely necessary but not enough.
More efficient cars and less polluting coal plants can help, but they're only a stop-gap, not a solution. There's a lot of people working on these problems, some can focus on short-term improvements, while others focus on long-term solutions.
I'm still not sure. You really depend on having a large portion of the population that wouldn't own a generator module, and in makes economical sense for people not to. Unfortunately, I'm not sure people would follow their own best interest in this kind of situation, since its something thats key to a sense of independence to many people. Also, I see more practical problems where you have mass evacuations from hurricanes, or even holidays (Thanksgiving comes to mind), you'd have times when you simply wouldn't have enough to go around.
Also, neglecting the rental solution (which would have trouble here too), it wouldn't work for college students and other young folks who live in apartments and dorms, and do lots of long distance driving. While there are definitely solutions, they'd be less convenient and would be hard to convince people to switch to.
Basically its an argument of convenience versus technical superiority... without rentals, the cost wouldn't make a difference, as long as there were electric only vehicles as well. As I described before the weight of the ICE and fuel tank would have minimal impact on the efficiency, and with the low cost of electric power, a difference between 50 and 60 mpg-equivalent wouldn't be worth the extra inconvenience to most people. Packaging would still be easier than a modern ICE vehicle: hub motors on the wheels powered straight from the battery eliminates any need for any kind of rotary power distribution system (drive shaft, etc.) and the ICE would probably be situated in a front compartment as in a traditional car, primarily because thats how its always been done.
Although, as you say, one size doesn't fit all. I still see that the near-future midsize car or minivan, the typical suburban family car, will have convenience win out though.
Then again, these kind of architecture issues (as opposed to the general technology) will be decided and sorted out by market forces, people deciding what works for them and companies producing what sells, so we'll see how it all works out. It will surely be better than what we have now.
In my mind, an EV with a discrete generator package isn't much different from a plug-in hybrid. Definitely preferable to the current Prius-style hybrids though, which I think everyone had always assumed were going to be a temporary stepping stone kind of technology.
However, I'm not sure that leaving the generator separate is a particularly valuable concept. First is a matter of convenience. As long as electric only range is around the limit of what one would expect to drive in a normal day, you'd want to have the generator to make sure you're not stuck without it. Secondly, you have to have a place to store the generator segment. People who don't have full garages would find this difficult, and you'd probably have people driving around with the generator all the time anyway.
Second, I'm not sure you get much technically either. Presumably the idea is to save weight and improve efficiency for normal driving. However, when you start including regenerative braking, the importance of weight on fuel usage drops significantly. Consider an ideal regenerative braking system, where you restore all of the kinetic energy the motor gives the system initially: in this case the fuel usage is defined entirely by the other inefficiencies, most notably aerodynamic drag. While obviously no system is ideal, looking at hybrid city/highway mileage values, its obvious that the effects of drag become much more dominant. Reducing weight isn't as important as reducing drag, and I'd imagine that the increased drag of a trailer would be more detrimental then the weight increases. If you're referring to the guy who talked about the Honda CRX with a trailer, I'd guess that was more of a packaging issue than anything else. A production vehicle could be designed without the need for a kludge.
The only reason I see for leaving the EV and generator separate is to have a reduced cost model without the generator. Even then, I think a better solution is to just to have an optional ER (extended range) trim package.
Of course, this all applies specifically to the American market where long distance road trips are common, and gas-powered vehicles are an every family kind of thing. I definitely agree with you, that for India or China, pure-EV models probably will be more popular, since they won't have as much of an expectation of what a car is supposed to be able to do, and cost would be much reduced.
I think we have a PR-speak phrase for that now. It's a "plug-in hybrid"! And yes, definitely a much better solution for long trips.
But I notice that neither of those are cars that are in wide release or with the actual purchase price available (I'm sure the $600/month lease isn't break-even, its still an R&D project).
While it's certainly possible to store hydrogen, its certainly not cheap. I remember for a project I was involved in a couple of years ago, a DOT approved storage vessel that really would have been too small for a production vehicle was ~$10k. Surely this could be brought down some, but I can't see any way it could be brought down to the point of not being one of the main cost drivers.
Combine that with conversion inefficiencies (compared to batteries/capacitors) and the need for a completely new infrastructure (compared to biofuels) make think this is probably the right choice. EVs and biofuels are much closer to achieving cost-effective solutions, and it seems like a reasonable and responsible move. Plug-in hybrids using biofuels for range extension and quick refueling seem to me to be a lot more effective than hydrogen.
Maybe I'm wrong, I don't think this will completely kill fuel-cell research, if car companies are still interested they'll keep going on it. However shifting funding to something showing more signs of progress sounds like a responsible use of our tax dollars. And I'm not an Obama-ite, I just happen to think this particular decision is correct.
As far as I know, hydrogen fuel was always really an energy storage medium rather than a fuel in and of itself. While it may be the most common element in the universe, free H2 isn't especially abundant on Earth. If you could store it well, it would allow electric vehicles to have the same convenience as petroleum-powered vehicles.
The biggest problems with pure electric cars are that the range is limited and that you can't refill it in a matter of minutes. A pure battery-EV doesn't really allow any kind of long-distance road trip. This is the appeal of plug-in hybrids, it gives you range and easy refilling capability while potentially allowing zero-emissions driving during normal city driving/commuting. Although a hydrogen energy storage system would require new infrastructure, it would serve as a great long-term solution that fits with most peoples lifestyles.
As with any kind of EV, the 'green-ness' depends on the original source of the power. Even from fossil fuels it would probably be slightly better, since large fixed plants are more efficient and cleaner, but definitely better with wind/solar/nuclear/geothermal/whatever.
Note though, that the requirement for all of this is efficient, easy and safe storage, which has been going nowhere with plenty of funding. I think biofuels from non-food crops on non-food-producing land (i.e. not corn ethanol) are a more feasible long term solution, either with or without plug-in hybrid vehicles.
I think the idea with open textbooks is that you can use it in whatever format you like.
For instance, while I definitely prefer a real copy for a textbook, having a digital version to keep on the computer or on my kindle would be really handy for traveling. I don't know how many times I've been somewhere and realized I really needed a book; being in grad school I'm running into topics which aren't covered well or at all online.
Thus, a good bet would be to make the digital copy available, in a reflowable format, as well as at set sizes (Letter/A4) with PDFs. For K-12, presumably the school district would be able to place an order for how many they need, simply at the cost of printing them. College distribution is less obvious, although I have a had a few professors who make a set of class notes available in an inexpensive bound format at different copy shops around town.
I think you've been reading too much FUD. While you're quite free to continue to avoid it, particularly due to the cost and the embedded DRM, you seem to have a few facts wrong.
1. It does have an experimental browser built in, and you can access it over the cell network. It's not that great for non-article content (e.g. forums, discussions on Slashdot), but it works well for articles, and even has convenient access to wikipedia (search "@wiki topic" from any screen). I really don't understand the blog subscriptions.
2. You can load many free books on it. If you can, use a *.mobi file, although *.txt works natively as well. There is also conversion for reasonably simple PDF and HTML files. Loading them is even simpler than you're suggesting. It comes with a USB cable (standard mini-usb plug) and it attaches like any other flash drive. No fancy directory structure, just drop it in the available space and it shows up on the home screen.
I'd guess that the supposedly upcoming Apple Tablet (Mega-iPhone?) is probably more in line with what you need. I think Amazon is pretty devoted to the e-Ink side, and it'll still be a few years until color is ready there, from everything I've read.
It's not going to be conviction that gets a company to be able to do it DRM-free, its going to be the publishers trying to break a single dominant outlet (e.g. iTunes for music). The single dominant outlet is probably an obvious result of a heavily DRM'd market, corresponding with the most convenient solution.
If no one were to use any form of DRM'd e-books, you'd probably have the publishers say 'look, no one wants them.' Fortunately, I think there's enough interest in the product that the publishers will be forced to come around. Its just a matter of time.
Of course, cost is always a matter of time as well.
They actually fit quite nicely into cargo pants. Useful for taking it on the subway or things like that.
Comparing between teachers at the same school, or schools with similar socio-economic backgrounds, and averaging over multiple years to account for normal deviations in class performance.
Also, relying on things beyond tests, for instance, parent and student complaints. As an example, my sister (8th grade) has a science teacher who's primary teaching method is 'open the book and read this.' Over Christmas break she said that he had lectured twice that year so far. Sometimes things don't need to be quantified and turned into a science.
As a red-blooded American who lives in Texas and enjoys making fun of Canada as much as the next guy, I must admit:
I like Canadian music.
Looking at my phone... 4 out of the 22 bands on there (I really need to get my full-sized iPod back) are Canadian. For those who are curious: Arcade Fire, Sloan, Stars, and the New Pornographers. Between the Canadian station on XM and a sister who goes to school in Syracuse, I've rather enjoyed my exposure to it. Maybe I just like awful music though...