More than half of the 22 battery fires in the cabin of passenger planes since 1999 have been in the last three years.
What is the reader supposed to draw from this? Will we see 4x as many in the next 3 years? 1.5 years?
This is a great example of misusing statistics to imply the wrong conclusions. What's the degree of relevance? Or is that left as an exercise for the reader, to guess if we have twice as many people travelling with electronics or if electronics are more dangerous, or what?
We've seen iphones explode and laptop fires, but when you use scary events like that and then add some sort of implication that the rate is increasing, that's bad reporting in my book. It's why concepts that cannot stand up to scientific scrutiny (intelligent design, anyone?) can gain such momentum: pick and choose statistics that sound relevant enough to convince, yet mean nothing without further data and degree of relevance.
I think we all are aware of the nastiness lasers can cause to eyes, but blaming your accident on the technology instead of the idiots that calibrated a high power laser show is misplaced.
If you once cut yourself walking past a "miscalibrated" knife hanging off the edge of a counter, are you going to get rid of all knives in your house and avoid using a knife of any strength?
Accidents happen all the time, that aren't always the technology's fault. Your accident was caused by human error not laser error. The guy that didn't calibrate it right might as well have dropped a hammer on you, then you could blame hammers and never go into construction.
Toys like cellphones can run java, but critical applications need a little more certainty and horsepower.
You can always throw more cpu horsepower at it, but the parent is right about Java having issues with timing. The thing is, it's difficult to schedule garbage collection, and the OP said he was looking at embedded devices.
If any sort of real-time system is needed, you could be hosed. Java is not deterministic, and might not do what you want it to do within the time constraints that many embedded devices have. Imagine your front bumper's accelerometer goes crazy, crush sensors determine you're in a major crash, and Java is doing garbage collection instead of deploying the airbag.
Considering the energy required to produce crystalline Si cells, if the manufacturing is perfected, it could be both more efficient and cheaper. A solar pv panel today must produce energy for a year or two to recover the energy used to create it. Nanotubes may be much more complex, but they probably need nowhere near as much power to create.
The bottom line Is what generally matters to consumers, but the cells must still be efficient because roof real estate is not unlimited.
Tons of people go to see live shows, when they like the studio versions of the songs.
Why? There's more noise, the sound is much worse, the volume is usually not enjoyable, you have to deal with other annoying people, seating is horrible, etc.... why would people go to see their favorite songs butchered in this manner? Do you get it, or is that equally obtuse to you?
If you can answer that question, you'll have your answer of why games like Rock Band are entertaining. It's an immersive way to experience your favorite songs.
Comparing it to simon is an uninspired straw man because it intentionally ignores the music aspect which is the whole point. You could use the same logic and claim that playing music is just pushing buttons to a metronome.
That would just be tyrrany of the masses. Nothing new, when you give every idiot a powerful weapon with little repercussion of using it.
You'd have the French revolution all over again, just over the internet. So every server decapitation would be followed by lmfao and lol, as they tweeted it.
In the end, it is currently FAR FAR cheaper to take that initial electricity, send it over a poor wire, store it in a lead acid battery and then use a 98% efficieny motor. Basically, all of those pushing Hydrogen are not just ignoring state of the art, but simple physics.
A 98% efficient motor? But you stated here that electric "motors are very inefficient and fuel cells are a LONG ways off". Both of which are wrong.
I'm not exactly chasing you around trying to debunk you, but you've really only said one thing on this thread that was correct, and that is that there are issues with distribution and production of hydrogen (i.e. a hydrogen economy). It's true that there aren't many refilling stations. It's true that hydrolysis of water takes a lot of energy or is produced from non-renewable CNG. Yet there are catalysts being/already developed that reduce the energy required significantly. If these issues aren't handled, it wouldn't make any sense to try for a "hydrogen economy". So yes, that needs to be solved. But that's the one issue -- how to create cheap hydrogen. The rest of the stuff will fall in line if we can solve that.
The rest of what you said is either a straw man, a misconception, an outright untruth (probably told to you by an oil company), or simple FUD.
Here are some examples of things you've said that are wrong:
You claim fuel cells aren't efficient. In reality, fuel cells are efficient and getting better (recovering about half of the potential energy of hydrogen, compared to about 25% for gasoline engines). And escaping hydrogen doesn't harm the environment, unlike escaping gasoline. You're also counting source-to-end costs in efficiency of producing and using hydrogen (compression, transportation, storage, conversion in fuel cells all result in about 25% efficiency from the source H2 gas, but gasoline is assumed that it takes no energy to pump and transport and distill/separate it. If you count that, gasoline engines are even worse than their poor 25-30% efficiency for cars.)
You claim electric motors are inefficient. Electric motors are efficient compared to gasoline engines. They do lose some energy in heat, but not nearly as much heat as a gasoline engine. They don't have to idle, either, and have instant-on ability, losing little on starts and stops. In addition, they also act as generators and can store braking energy in batteries or caps. Using batteries in addition to a fuel cell means that the batteries can be fairly small and be drained off first for stop-and-go traffic.
Fuel cells are in use today, despite what you said. They're not a long way off.
The lack of hydrogen fueling stations is not a valid claim that we can't have hydrogen vehicles. It's a chicken-egg thing... the infrastructure is being built to support the cars. It's happening in California RIGHT NOW.
---
If your quote is only saying that we should be using batteries instead of hydrogen, fine. I won't argue that a hydrogen economy would be unfeasible at the moment. There's currently far less loss in charging a battery than there is with hydrolysis of water and compressing the H2. The resistance to a hydrogen economy is because it's currently wasteful, but there's tremendous value in researching it due to energy storage potential. (Let's see how many electrical puns I can make in that last sentence!)
Hydrogen, currently, has higher energy density, BUT has issues with storage, as well as usage (motors are very inefficient and fuel cells are a LONG ways off). LONG before hydrogen issues are solved, batteries will have a higher energy density (assuming that hydrogen can not be compressed infinitly).
Fuel cells are currently being used in cars today, so they are definitely NOT a "LONG ways off".
All of your complaints are just complaints, that have already been addressed. It's FUD.
Electric motors are far more efficient at converting power to usable kinetic energy than gasoline engines, yet you actually try to bring this up? Are you "that guy" who makes up non-issues? Sure sounds like it. Hell, if you're so convinced that current engines are so efficient, they can just burn the hydrogen instead.
And to counter a previous statement you made saying there's no free source of hydrogen, you're wrong. I have a solar photovoltaic (pv) panel that can give me "free hydrogen" from water, and I can use the O2 in other applications. And a car can convert it back to water, essentially making it a solar-powered car, with zero emissions. PV panels convert water and use some energy used to liquify the H2, sell the O2, then car converts remaining H2 back to H2O with a free electron used to run the engine.
The only concession I'll give you is that pv panels would not be able to produce enough for all the cars, were they all retrofitted. But that's the entire point of tfa, to find more efficient methods of getting hydrogen. It would take work to develop a hydrogen economy, and still have enough fuel for those that wanted it. But, if other more efficient methods of producing hydrogen could be found, that'd make it take far less space and be much more efficient. Currently available panels range in efficiency from 8% (for A-Si) to 20% or so (hybrid A-Si + C-Si), and electrolysis of water uses a lot of energy (which is why it give so much energy back). Harnessing the crapton of power from the sun for this is the obvious way to do it, so usable methods of stripping off the hydrogen is important.
That would be done with the tower data, not by querying individual phones. Although both are related to cellular service, they're miles apart in terms of privacy issues. Plus, the data would actually be relevant and accurate from the towers, unlike occasional positions from a phone.
The rudimentary 3D info can be used for improving all sorts of scans.
How about...
- Flattening a scan of a book (by the spine) - Focusing an area that's raised (products like Focus magic assume a section is all out of focus at the same level, whereas a map of the amount of lost focus is possible here). - Using the above, scanning non-flat items. - Scanning nearly-flat 3d surfaces.
Add a lens that can vary focus (based on the light differential) and you'd have a good 3D scanner for one side of a mostly-flat item, and a flatbed scanner that wouldn't lose focus on slightly-raised papers.
Earth absorbs a crapton of energy from solar, which is used by plants to power conversions of carbon and other nutrients. You can release that energy, which was original derived from the sun. The easiest example is to burn wood... the tree used carbon matter and CO2, and when you burn it the energy is released, it is returned for another tree to use. To use it requires more energy.
As far as nuclear, I guess he's talking about the ability to produce energy from nuclear materials found on earth. Unlike coal or oil or wood, nuclear materials didn't get their energy coming directly from the sun's rays.... although they probably did come from an exploding sun at some point.
News is not original as it is simply an account of an event. Neither are sets of data such as nutrition tables, product lists or any other recording of factual data - regardless of the effort involved in compiling them.
By simple extension, all photographs should not be allowed copyrights because they are a representation of a fact (basically, something that exists). And because you believe there's no creative content in news, clearly there can be no claims of liberal or conservative press because that would not be representing facts.
Perhaps we can extend that further, and claim all sounds are simply movement of air and simple physics can have no copyright... thus songs are all representations of natural facts, too, and have no creative work. The song itself is not the performance, it's just a representation of a fact.
But no sane person would claim that all news of the same event is the same, so there simply must be some creative work in news. "Liberal press" and "Fox news" mean nothing unless there's bias, and bias directly implies creativity (constructive or not). I believe photography exposes the fallacy even better, being based solely on existing events; yet the vast, vast majority of people believe that photography involves a considerable amount of creative expression.
I've met people who thought computer code wasn't creative and I dismissed them as idiots... but claiming written accounts of events isn't creative is a new one to me.
It's simple: Relatively Unrestricted WiFi - (You can block off the obvious Battle.net and filter anything involving porn) and this allows any student with a laptop to research anything they want. Alot of kids today are getting laptops for the sake of college and university. Its almost a must.
The moment you embark on the "block off the obvious..." you've subverted the university network from a bastion of learning, to enforcing what YOU think students should learn. Would you like your university library refusing to carry banned books?
As an IT muckitymuck who makes policy, before you add any blocking that isn't strictly for technical issues (DOS, email virus filtering, spam filtering, QOS, etc) you better revisit your university's policy on censorship. If it's a state-sponsored institution, your hands might be tied on such blatant censorship. Blocking "the obvious Battle.net and anything involving porn" might land you in a heap o' trouble, depending on your state's laws.
Suddenly, unlike the title, it's not quite so simple. But I completely agree with the following:
Everything they NEED to use should be EASY to use.
Ethernet over powerlines noises up the powerlines, but won't add much EM interference to your wireless, e.g.. I believe the GP is saying that wireless energy transmission is going to make any wireless communication have to compete with the noise, going from a hiss to a yell, like the 2.4Ghz noise of millions of microwave ovens suddenly turning on while you're reading this on your iphone's wifi.
In practicality, that means your phone batteries will die much faster as it has to pump out 1 bar worth of power in a 5 bar zone (that is, it will have to raise the power output to be heard by the tower over the noise, even if the tower is nearby). That means your wifi will be interrupted much easier, or have much lower bandwidth, and won't be usable for long distances. And all these communication devices that have to "yell" to be heard, will be adding just that much more noise for other devices.
I'm hoping that there are 100s of DoD Linux administrators reading this who can bombard me with solutions. How do you balance security with stability?"
Computer security configuration data is on a need-to-know basis. Anyone revealing UCI will be receiving a call or visit from an armed person who had his sense of humor surgically removed.:-)
Although I appreciate the distaste of making money off sick people, I don't think that applies. Promethius should be tied to a rock for a giant eagle to eat their livers.
They merely patented something that a "common knowledge" thing in drugs. It's how urine drug screening has worked for 20 years, it's how tons of drug effectiveness tests work (mostly drug screenings). It's a false monopoly, troll or not.
If they invented some sort of new test for the metabolites... like a special litmus stick which would tell you the levels of metabolites, that would be completely different.
The "grid" isn't some sort of battery. Come talk to me when you're storing your excess wind power yourself and drawing off of that when the wind dies.
People do that all the time. It's often cheaper to use off-grid solutions, especially out in the boonies.
But those solutions are actually less green than hooking into the grid. They have to be, by definition, wasteful. They have to produce enough energy to charge batteries, and when those batteries are charged, all the excess energy generated is WASTED. It's turned into heat to prevent damaging the turbines and batteries. Plus, the batteries are essentially consumables, replaced every year or two. And most off-grid solutions have an emergency backup generator that runs off gasoline or kerosene. Is existence of an emergency generator fired up twice a year also some sort of claim that off-grid people aren't using renewable energy?
Using the grid as a battery is a perfectly apt analogy, and yes it does work as one as long as there's demand for the excess energy. When you overproduce, it means that someone else is using renewable energy, too.
You claim it's not renewable simply because it's not stored by the producer. That's silly. They're just electrons, and they were still produced by a renewable energy source. You don't need to use "your" electrons to be renewable.
If you produce 10,000 KWH in a year from renewable sources, and you use 10,000 KWH in a year, you're 100% powered with renewable energy no matter where those electrons got stored. The math works.
If a farmer produces his own food and calls himself 100% self-sustained, are you going to claim he's lying if he gives his neighbor a couple cabbages, in return for a couple rutabagas a week later? After all, now he didn't produce all the food he ate, right?
Is it cheaper to build out your own power generation than it is to pay for the overhead and profits of the grid power suppliers?
It absolutely is, where I live.
I will give an example from my state, New Mexico, which is very renewable energy friendly.
1. You get a federal rebate of 30% of the total installation cost. This applies to everywhere in the US. 2. NM offers an additional 10%. That's a total of 40% off the cost, refunded on your taxes. 3. NM has exempted renewable energy generators from sales tax. 4. PNM, the electric company, has been mandated to produce 20% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. They will pay renewable energy credits to small generators to do this for them. And they pay them the highest rate per kwh ($0.13) 5. PNM not only pays the highest rate, but they pay you EVEN IF YOU USE THE ENERGY because it's infrastructure they don't have to install, and energy they don't have to pump. And it helps them meet the requirement of 20% renewable by 2020. 6. By using what you produce, you generally drop into a lower tier, for the excess energy you do draw off the grid, which is around $0.07/kwh up to 200 kwh per month. 7. If you outproduce what you use, PNM will send you a check for the difference (or carry it over if it's small).
Even more bizarre is if the cost of electricity goes up, this counts as an investment. You can save more on future energy if the price goes up. It was one of the better investments you could've made in california, as the price of energy went up an average of 7% per year over the past several years. Even if you get a loan to do this, you can actually beat the interest rate.
You get similar benefits from using wind, but my research is in solar. For solar energy, it will pay itself back in under 10 years for the total outlay for the average customer. I'm installing a system in a couple weeks, and I believe it'll repay itself in around 9 years. If things work as expected, I will go from a $65/mo electric bill to about $10. And the expected life of solar is 30+ years, so this should be profitable for some 20 years after it's paid for itself.
Wind takes a lot more maintenance and has a lower expected lifespan due to moving parts, but it's still pretty good in windy areas, especially if you invest in one of the larger turbines which has much better efficiency.
Slashdot Mirror
More than half of the 22 battery fires in the cabin of passenger planes since 1999 have been in the last three years.
What is the reader supposed to draw from this? Will we see 4x as many in the next 3 years? 1.5 years?
This is a great example of misusing statistics to imply the wrong conclusions. What's the degree of relevance? Or is that left as an exercise for the reader, to guess if we have twice as many people travelling with electronics or if electronics are more dangerous, or what?
We've seen iphones explode and laptop fires, but when you use scary events like that and then add some sort of implication that the rate is increasing, that's bad reporting in my book. It's why concepts that cannot stand up to scientific scrutiny (intelligent design, anyone?) can gain such momentum: pick and choose statistics that sound relevant enough to convince, yet mean nothing without further data and degree of relevance.
In case you don't remember, lighters and matches are allowed on planes again. Isn't that a more obvious, more common fire hazard?
I think we all are aware of the nastiness lasers can cause to eyes, but blaming your accident on the technology instead of the idiots that calibrated a high power laser show is misplaced.
If you once cut yourself walking past a "miscalibrated" knife hanging off the edge of a counter, are you going to get rid of all knives in your house and avoid using a knife of any strength?
Accidents happen all the time, that aren't always the technology's fault. Your accident was caused by human error not laser error. The guy that didn't calibrate it right might as well have dropped a hammer on you, then you could blame hammers and never go into construction.
Heck, I should work for them, don't you think?
Two problems: :-)
First they might get sued
Second, your address is currently <speedup@wikis[ ]dia.org ['pee' in gap]>.
That's just gross.
Hahah.
Well, at least network mirror can help for those not interested in destroying sparkfun.
And few in the USA knows wtf a "punter" is!
Toys like cellphones can run java, but critical applications need a little more certainty and horsepower.
You can always throw more cpu horsepower at it, but the parent is right about Java having issues with timing. The thing is, it's difficult to schedule garbage collection, and the OP said he was looking at embedded devices.
If any sort of real-time system is needed, you could be hosed. Java is not deterministic, and might not do what you want it to do within the time constraints that many embedded devices have. Imagine your front bumper's accelerometer goes crazy, crush sensors determine you're in a major crash, and Java is doing garbage collection instead of deploying the airbag.
Official (looking around crowd suspiciously) "Are there any women here?"
Oh wait, this is slashdot....
Considering the energy required to produce crystalline Si cells, if the manufacturing is perfected, it could be both more efficient and cheaper. A solar pv panel today must produce energy for a year or two to recover the energy used to create it. Nanotubes may be much more complex, but they probably need nowhere near as much power to create.
The bottom line Is what generally matters to consumers, but the cells must still be efficient because roof real estate is not unlimited.
Concrete corrodes copper. There are also issues with thermal expansion.
Still, cool idea, as long as you're not going to move your fridge.
Tons of people go to see live shows, when they like the studio versions of the songs.
Why? There's more noise, the sound is much worse, the volume is usually not enjoyable, you have to deal with other annoying people, seating is horrible, etc.... why would people go to see their favorite songs butchered in this manner? Do you get it, or is that equally obtuse to you?
If you can answer that question, you'll have your answer of why games like Rock Band are entertaining. It's an immersive way to experience your favorite songs.
Comparing it to simon is an uninspired straw man because it intentionally ignores the music aspect which is the whole point. You could use the same logic and claim that playing music is just pushing buttons to a metronome.
That would just be tyrrany of the masses. Nothing new, when you give every idiot a powerful weapon with little repercussion of using it.
You'd have the French revolution all over again, just over the internet. So every server decapitation would be followed by lmfao and lol, as they tweeted it.
In the end, it is currently FAR FAR cheaper to take that initial electricity, send it over a poor wire, store it in a lead acid battery and then use a 98% efficieny motor. Basically, all of those pushing Hydrogen are not just ignoring state of the art, but simple physics.
A 98% efficient motor? But you stated here that electric "motors are very inefficient and fuel cells are a LONG ways off". Both of which are wrong.
I'm not exactly chasing you around trying to debunk you, but you've really only said one thing on this thread that was correct, and that is that there are issues with distribution and production of hydrogen (i.e. a hydrogen economy). It's true that there aren't many refilling stations. It's true that hydrolysis of water takes a lot of energy or is produced from non-renewable CNG. Yet there are catalysts being/already developed that reduce the energy required significantly. If these issues aren't handled, it wouldn't make any sense to try for a "hydrogen economy". So yes, that needs to be solved. But that's the one issue -- how to create cheap hydrogen. The rest of the stuff will fall in line if we can solve that.
The rest of what you said is either a straw man, a misconception, an outright untruth (probably told to you by an oil company), or simple FUD.
Here are some examples of things you've said that are wrong:
You claim fuel cells aren't efficient. In reality, fuel cells are efficient and getting better (recovering about half of the potential energy of hydrogen, compared to about 25% for gasoline engines). And escaping hydrogen doesn't harm the environment, unlike escaping gasoline. You're also counting source-to-end costs in efficiency of producing and using hydrogen (compression, transportation, storage, conversion in fuel cells all result in about 25% efficiency from the source H2 gas, but gasoline is assumed that it takes no energy to pump and transport and distill/separate it. If you count that, gasoline engines are even worse than their poor 25-30% efficiency for cars.)
You claim electric motors are inefficient. Electric motors are efficient compared to gasoline engines. They do lose some energy in heat, but not nearly as much heat as a gasoline engine. They don't have to idle, either, and have instant-on ability, losing little on starts and stops. In addition, they also act as generators and can store braking energy in batteries or caps. Using batteries in addition to a fuel cell means that the batteries can be fairly small and be drained off first for stop-and-go traffic.
Fuel cells are in use today, despite what you said. They're not a long way off.
The lack of hydrogen fueling stations is not a valid claim that we can't have hydrogen vehicles. It's a chicken-egg thing... the infrastructure is being built to support the cars. It's happening in California RIGHT NOW.
---
If your quote is only saying that we should be using batteries instead of hydrogen, fine. I won't argue that a hydrogen economy would be unfeasible at the moment. There's currently far less loss in charging a battery than there is with hydrolysis of water and compressing the H2. The resistance to a hydrogen economy is because it's currently wasteful, but there's tremendous value in researching it due to energy storage potential. (Let's see how many electrical puns I can make in that last sentence!)
Hydrogen, currently, has higher energy density, BUT has issues with storage, as well as usage (motors are very inefficient and fuel cells are a LONG ways off). LONG before hydrogen issues are solved, batteries will have a higher energy density (assuming that hydrogen can not be compressed infinitly).
Fuel cells are currently being used in cars today, so they are definitely NOT a "LONG ways off".
All of your complaints are just complaints, that have already been addressed. It's FUD.
Electric motors are far more efficient at converting power to usable kinetic energy than gasoline engines, yet you actually try to bring this up? Are you "that guy" who makes up non-issues? Sure sounds like it. Hell, if you're so convinced that current engines are so efficient, they can just burn the hydrogen instead.
And to counter a previous statement you made saying there's no free source of hydrogen, you're wrong. I have a solar photovoltaic (pv) panel that can give me "free hydrogen" from water, and I can use the O2 in other applications. And a car can convert it back to water, essentially making it a solar-powered car, with zero emissions. PV panels convert water and use some energy used to liquify the H2, sell the O2, then car converts remaining H2 back to H2O with a free electron used to run the engine.
The only concession I'll give you is that pv panels would not be able to produce enough for all the cars, were they all retrofitted. But that's the entire point of tfa, to find more efficient methods of getting hydrogen. It would take work to develop a hydrogen economy, and still have enough fuel for those that wanted it. But, if other more efficient methods of producing hydrogen could be found, that'd make it take far less space and be much more efficient. Currently available panels range in efficiency from 8% (for A-Si) to 20% or so (hybrid A-Si + C-Si), and electrolysis of water uses a lot of energy (which is why it give so much energy back). Harnessing the crapton of power from the sun for this is the obvious way to do it, so usable methods of stripping off the hydrogen is important.
That would be done with the tower data, not by querying individual phones. Although both are related to cellular service, they're miles apart in terms of privacy issues. Plus, the data would actually be relevant and accurate from the towers, unlike occasional positions from a phone.
The rudimentary 3D info can be used for improving all sorts of scans.
How about...
- Flattening a scan of a book (by the spine)
- Focusing an area that's raised (products like Focus magic assume a section is all out of focus at the same level, whereas a map of the amount of lost focus is possible here).
- Using the above, scanning non-flat items.
- Scanning nearly-flat 3d surfaces.
Add a lens that can vary focus (based on the light differential) and you'd have a good 3D scanner for one side of a mostly-flat item, and a flatbed scanner that wouldn't lose focus on slightly-raised papers.
Solar = Nuclear
Technically yes, but not in the context here.
Earth absorbs a crapton of energy from solar, which is used by plants to power conversions of carbon and other nutrients. You can release that energy, which was original derived from the sun. The easiest example is to burn wood... the tree used carbon matter and CO2, and when you burn it the energy is released, it is returned for another tree to use. To use it requires more energy.
As far as nuclear, I guess he's talking about the ability to produce energy from nuclear materials found on earth. Unlike coal or oil or wood, nuclear materials didn't get their energy coming directly from the sun's rays.... although they probably did come from an exploding sun at some point.
News is not original as it is simply an account of an event. Neither are sets of data such as nutrition tables, product lists or any other recording of factual data - regardless of the effort involved in compiling them.
By simple extension, all photographs should not be allowed copyrights because they are a representation of a fact (basically, something that exists). And because you believe there's no creative content in news, clearly there can be no claims of liberal or conservative press because that would not be representing facts.
Perhaps we can extend that further, and claim all sounds are simply movement of air and simple physics can have no copyright ... thus songs are all representations of natural facts, too, and have no creative work. The song itself is not the performance, it's just a representation of a fact.
But no sane person would claim that all news of the same event is the same, so there simply must be some creative work in news. "Liberal press" and "Fox news" mean nothing unless there's bias, and bias directly implies creativity (constructive or not). I believe photography exposes the fallacy even better, being based solely on existing events; yet the vast, vast majority of people believe that photography involves a considerable amount of creative expression.
I've met people who thought computer code wasn't creative and I dismissed them as idiots ... but claiming written accounts of events isn't creative is a new one to me.
It's simple: Relatively Unrestricted WiFi - (You can block off the obvious Battle.net and filter anything involving porn) and this allows any student with a laptop to research anything they want. Alot of kids today are getting laptops for the sake of college and university. Its almost a must.
The moment you embark on the "block off the obvious ..." you've subverted the university network from a bastion of learning, to enforcing what YOU think students should learn. Would you like your university library refusing to carry banned books?
As an IT muckitymuck who makes policy, before you add any blocking that isn't strictly for technical issues (DOS, email virus filtering, spam filtering, QOS, etc) you better revisit your university's policy on censorship. If it's a state-sponsored institution, your hands might be tied on such blatant censorship. Blocking "the obvious Battle.net and anything involving porn" might land you in a heap o' trouble, depending on your state's laws.
Suddenly, unlike the title, it's not quite so simple. But I completely agree with the following:
Everything they NEED to use should be EASY to use.
I'm traumatized just thinking about touching the keyboard.
Ethernet over powerlines noises up the powerlines, but won't add much EM interference to your wireless, e.g.. I believe the GP is saying that wireless energy transmission is going to make any wireless communication have to compete with the noise, going from a hiss to a yell, like the 2.4Ghz noise of millions of microwave ovens suddenly turning on while you're reading this on your iphone's wifi.
In practicality, that means your phone batteries will die much faster as it has to pump out 1 bar worth of power in a 5 bar zone (that is, it will have to raise the power output to be heard by the tower over the noise, even if the tower is nearby). That means your wifi will be interrupted much easier, or have much lower bandwidth, and won't be usable for long distances. And all these communication devices that have to "yell" to be heard, will be adding just that much more noise for other devices.
I'm hoping that there are 100s of DoD Linux administrators reading this who can bombard me with solutions. How do you balance security with stability?"
Computer security configuration data is on a need-to-know basis. Anyone revealing UCI will be receiving a call or visit from an armed person who had his sense of humor surgically removed. :-)
/workedtoolongforDOE
Although I appreciate the distaste of making money off sick people, I don't think that applies. Promethius should be tied to a rock for a giant eagle to eat their livers.
They merely patented something that a "common knowledge" thing in drugs. It's how urine drug screening has worked for 20 years, it's how tons of drug effectiveness tests work (mostly drug screenings). It's a false monopoly, troll or not.
If they invented some sort of new test for the metabolites... like a special litmus stick which would tell you the levels of metabolites, that would be completely different.
The "grid" isn't some sort of battery. Come talk to me when you're storing your excess wind power yourself and drawing off of that when the wind dies.
People do that all the time. It's often cheaper to use off-grid solutions, especially out in the boonies.
But those solutions are actually less green than hooking into the grid. They have to be, by definition, wasteful. They have to produce enough energy to charge batteries, and when those batteries are charged, all the excess energy generated is WASTED. It's turned into heat to prevent damaging the turbines and batteries. Plus, the batteries are essentially consumables, replaced every year or two. And most off-grid solutions have an emergency backup generator that runs off gasoline or kerosene. Is existence of an emergency generator fired up twice a year also some sort of claim that off-grid people aren't using renewable energy?
Using the grid as a battery is a perfectly apt analogy, and yes it does work as one as long as there's demand for the excess energy. When you overproduce, it means that someone else is using renewable energy, too.
You claim it's not renewable simply because it's not stored by the producer. That's silly. They're just electrons, and they were still produced by a renewable energy source. You don't need to use "your" electrons to be renewable.
If you produce 10,000 KWH in a year from renewable sources, and you use 10,000 KWH in a year, you're 100% powered with renewable energy no matter where those electrons got stored. The math works.
If a farmer produces his own food and calls himself 100% self-sustained, are you going to claim he's lying if he gives his neighbor a couple cabbages, in return for a couple rutabagas a week later? After all, now he didn't produce all the food he ate, right?
Is it cheaper to build out your own power generation than it is to pay for the overhead and profits of the grid power suppliers?
It absolutely is, where I live.
I will give an example from my state, New Mexico, which is very renewable energy friendly.
1. You get a federal rebate of 30% of the total installation cost. This applies to everywhere in the US.
2. NM offers an additional 10%. That's a total of 40% off the cost, refunded on your taxes.
3. NM has exempted renewable energy generators from sales tax.
4. PNM, the electric company, has been mandated to produce 20% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. They will pay renewable energy credits to small generators to do this for them. And they pay them the highest rate per kwh ($0.13)
5. PNM not only pays the highest rate, but they pay you EVEN IF YOU USE THE ENERGY because it's infrastructure they don't have to install, and energy they don't have to pump. And it helps them meet the requirement of 20% renewable by 2020.
6. By using what you produce, you generally drop into a lower tier, for the excess energy you do draw off the grid, which is around $0.07/kwh up to 200 kwh per month.
7. If you outproduce what you use, PNM will send you a check for the difference (or carry it over if it's small).
Even more bizarre is if the cost of electricity goes up, this counts as an investment. You can save more on future energy if the price goes up. It was one of the better investments you could've made in california, as the price of energy went up an average of 7% per year over the past several years. Even if you get a loan to do this, you can actually beat the interest rate.
You get similar benefits from using wind, but my research is in solar. For solar energy, it will pay itself back in under 10 years for the total outlay for the average customer. I'm installing a system in a couple weeks, and I believe it'll repay itself in around 9 years. If things work as expected, I will go from a $65/mo electric bill to about $10. And the expected life of solar is 30+ years, so this should be profitable for some 20 years after it's paid for itself.
Wind takes a lot more maintenance and has a lower expected lifespan due to moving parts, but it's still pretty good in windy areas, especially if you invest in one of the larger turbines which has much better efficiency.
You can see what incentives your state has for renewable energy. You might be surprised.