"And he's a BILLIONAIRE!" So was Bernie Madoff until the Feds netted him out and he was sentenced to 150 years in prison. Not that I think Elon is headed for jail. But his empire could be maybe, perhaps, just a bit leveraged.
"Raspberry Pis have a single 10/100 port on them. In what universe is that good for a router?"
The many 10s of millions of North Americans who live in rural areas? Contrary to the assumption of those running things, a lot of us are lucky to be be able to get enough bandwidth to stream video while downloading Slashdot, much less saturate a 100 mbps connection. Yeah, I know a Raspberry Pi probably won't transfer anywhere near 100 mbps in practice. I expect it'd manage routing stuff to/from a 5mbps DSL line without a lot of stress.
And folks who actually live out in dirt road and try not to run into the cows country very likely don't even have DSL.
Back in the 1960s, the USAF deployed a Surface to air missile called the Bomarc ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) The thing had a range of around 400km and conceptually, could be used to intercept flights of long range bombers headed toward the US. The problem was that the bomarc could have a nuclear warhead. Fine if you want to take out a squadron of bombers someplace out over the Atlantic. But what if you wanted to call off an intercept for some reason? You can tell an F-106 to return to base. But putting a pilotless missile with a nuclear warhead on RTB was considered to be a non-optimum strategy.
I'm not sure the usage was ever resolved. Fortunately or not, the threat switched from long range bombers (which we probably could not actually intercept reliably because of jamming) to ICBMs that we could not intercept reliably because we lacked the technology to intercept them.
You use it? So what. Microsoft quit caring much about user needs/preferences a decade ago.
I would guess that half the folks around here don't remember that Microsoft's huge success in the 1980s and 1990s was largely based on user friendliness -- inexpensive, non-copy protected, software that mostly sorta worked. Their strategy now is quite clear. Lock in as many users as possible. Minimize support and maintenance costs. And try to keep the franchise going for as many decades as possible while collecting rents and fixing only the stuff that absolutely **HAS** to be fixed...
Works for slumlords. Why not for software companies? If you were running MS, would you do something different?
Well, there's the I-95 median strip.for maybe 95 % of the distance. And/or I suppose Elon could suspend his hyperloop over the Interstate somehow. He seems to have a certain talent for trivializing engineering problems.
But I am curious where Musk found one person, or small group capable of speaking for the city and state of New York, the states of New Jersey,(Delaware?), Pennsylvania, Maryland, the District of Columbia, the city of Philadelphia, the City of Baltimore, and about 500 other counties, cities, towns, and other.legal entities with zoning authority.
Surely it's closer to 3% than 30%. Exactly how much power does a train coach car need? Modern illumination needs virtually no power in the grand scheme of things. Likewise displays. Air conditioning?... maybe... The big power drain of a train is trundling maybe 30 metric tons per car (plus the engine) around the countryside.
Seems reasonable. But I doubt it's a "conversion" More of an "installation. They probably need backup at night and on cloudy days. That'd be the existing diesel generation which will be retained but won't have to run all the time?
I've never been to India, but from what I hear from folks who have, the guy with the cricket bat will probably pocket a rupee or three from every roof passenger and in return will help them up and down, and assist in getting their baggage on and off the roof.
The wonders of "scientific" analysis. T Rex can't walk without crutches and bumblebees can't fly.
In maybe 50 or 100 years, genetic engineering will probably be able to produce not a T Rex, but a reptilian critter that looks a lot like one in a lot of ways and has similar musculature, skelatal characteristics... and teeth. Anyone want to bet there won't be a few non-reptilian participants eaten at the first running of the pseudo-Rex's in Rapid City, SD in 2067?
"Stored hydropower and other such systems will probably need to be part of the plan"
Pumped storage can work. Niagara Mohawk uses it to store energy generated at Niagara Falls in offpeak hours. The storage facilities (they have two) are basically two good sized reservoirs at different elevations and a set of reversible turbines that can either pump water from the lower reservoir to the upper and act as generators when the water is allowed to come back down. The facilities are serious engineering projects that would cost many hundreds of millions of dollars to replicate. Gilboa-Blenheim near Albany, NY is probably typical. It can output about 1.1Gw and is speced at 17Gw of storage capacity.
They are probably only cost effective if you use them a lot (i.e. daily)
And there aren't all that many good sites.
And in arid areas like the Western US, you need not only sites with an elevation difference, you need water. Lots of water.
"Ya, but the Sun is overhead and walls are vertical so we'll have to tip the whole planet to get maximum efficiency. That will be a huge PITA with stuff sliding around, rolling off tables and such."
Congress will handle that. Just as soon as they fix health care, eliminate all taxation, straighten out the Middle East, and restore American manufacturing to its proper place in the world.
The math for the solar array is certainly in the ballpark.
For the battery? Who the hell knows? You probably need a pdf (No, not that kind of pdf -- a Probability Distribution Function.) for sunshine and a specification for how many days, hours, minutes, seconds a year of outage can be tolerated in order to spec out the battery. I'm skeptical that one square mile of "battery" is adequate.
Or maybe you need a full, rarely used, backup generation facility (generating power from what?) for periods when the sun just doesn't shine as much as one would like.
Could we power the US with solar power using today's technology? I doubt it. Will we be able to in a century or three? One certainly hopes so. We're burning fossil fuels way faster than they are being created. When they "run out" (i.e. become too costly to produce from low grade resources) we will certainly fervently want a plan B. Maybe that'll be nuclear fission or fusion. But if that doesn't work out...
"all someone has to do is credit an ACH payment against your routing and account number and the money is withdrawn and gone."
In the US at least, your routing and account number are printed on the bottom left of every physical check you write in those odd, but quite human readable, MICR characters. Doesn't give one a warm fuzzy feeling. OTOH, I've never had any problem with ACH based raids on my bank account and have never heard of anyone who has.
Make that WHEN someone hacks them. Which will almost certainly happen sooner or later. If it's a broad breach instead of just a few accounts, it's a safe bet that in the US neither PayPal nor your money will be anywhere to be found. In the EU where PayPal is subject to banking laws, you may have recourse. Not so in the US where PayPal operates as an unregulated bank. (Why would any sane person give an unregulated bank access to their money?)
I'm willing to bet that you've never served in the military. It'd be difficult to imagine a task more ill suited to the military than airport security screening.
Not that the TSA seems to have any aptitude for it either.
Beyond the metal detectors which are simple, non-intrusive, and should keep firearms and broadswords off the planes, effective airport security would require trained professionals with a thorough knowledge of threats and contraband and the ever changing (and quite bizzare) regulations. You really think a few E-4 enlisted folks with an average IQ of maybe 105 who have caught a 30 day airport detail are capable of doing what would need to be done?
OTOH, many people decided ten or even 20 years ago that market forces would eventually make Microsoft increasingly user hostile and migrated much/all of their workflow elsewhere. For them, proprietary NTFS -- even if supported in their alternative -- was and is an anathema.
"Yes, my company is done growing and is starting on the failing phase of it's existence, but I don't care that much about it if they keep paying me."
Y'all reckon that they can/will hold it together long enough for you to sock away an adequate retirement nestegg? If not, then you have a bigger problem than your users.
Education is important, but it's not clear this has anything much to do with education. This is about a probably nutty idea that punishes 17-18 year olds for not having a clear idea what they want to do with their lives. Or maybe it punishes them for having such an idea if it isn't conventional.
My opinion. The kids did the school work. Give them their damn diploma.
You can use ordinary motor oil in your two stroke. OR get a four stroke with powered wheels. Yes some are heavy, but you don't have to push it. It'll trundle itself. And not all four strokes are heavy. My neighbor has been using mine -- which is quite light --for two years since his broke. Me, I have a battery powered mower. I **HATE** tinkering with small engines of any sort. I have no rapport whatsoever with the infernal devices. With battery power, you just throw the switch and it's running. But it is kinda heavy and noisier than I'd hoped.
This is just this morning's tidbit from BeauHD's seemingly endless supply of climate-crap. The dates are incredibly optimistic and the problems are minimized or ignored completely. Nonetheless -- barring running into some inherent limitation of battery storage -- many homes and businesses will very likely drop off the grid someday when it becomes technically and economically practical to do so. Many folks living in densely populated urban areas with multistory housing probably will never leave the grid. Not enough solar panel area to cover refrigeration, illumination, cooking, hot water, and climate control.
Hint -- watch Hawaii. Economically developed. Reasonable amounts of sunshine. Moderate climate, so minimal heating and cooling needs. High electricity cost because hydrocarbon fuels for electrical generation need to be lugged 5000km.from North America. It'll probably be one of the first "countries" to go renewable.
Slashdot Mirror
"And he's a BILLIONAIRE!" So was Bernie Madoff until the Feds netted him out and he was sentenced to 150 years in prison. Not that I think Elon is headed for jail. But his empire could be maybe, perhaps, just a bit leveraged.
"Raspberry Pis have a single 10/100 port on them. In what universe is that good for a router?"
The many 10s of millions of North Americans who live in rural areas? Contrary to the assumption of those running things, a lot of us are lucky to be be able to get enough bandwidth to stream video while downloading Slashdot, much less saturate a 100 mbps connection. Yeah, I know a Raspberry Pi probably won't transfer anywhere near 100 mbps in practice. I expect it'd manage routing stuff to/from a 5mbps DSL line without a lot of stress.
And folks who actually live out in dirt road and try not to run into the cows country very likely don't even have DSL.
Back in the 1960s, the USAF deployed a Surface to air missile called the Bomarc ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) The thing had a range of around 400km and conceptually, could be used to intercept flights of long range bombers headed toward the US. The problem was that the bomarc could have a nuclear warhead. Fine if you want to take out a squadron of bombers someplace out over the Atlantic. But what if you wanted to call off an intercept for some reason? You can tell an F-106 to return to base. But putting a pilotless missile with a nuclear warhead on RTB was considered to be a non-optimum strategy.
I'm not sure the usage was ever resolved. Fortunately or not, the threat switched from long range bombers (which we probably could not actually intercept reliably because of jamming) to ICBMs that we could not intercept reliably because we lacked the technology to intercept them.
The bomarcs were scrapped in the early 1970s.
You use it? So what. Microsoft quit caring much about user needs/preferences a decade ago.
I would guess that half the folks around here don't remember that Microsoft's huge success in the 1980s and 1990s was largely based on user friendliness -- inexpensive, non-copy protected, software that mostly sorta worked. Their strategy now is quite clear. Lock in as many users as possible. Minimize support and maintenance costs. And try to keep the franchise going for as many decades as possible while collecting rents and fixing only the stuff that absolutely **HAS** to be fixed...
Works for slumlords. Why not for software companies? If you were running MS, would you do something different?
If Custer had these at the Little Bighorn ...
Sitting Bull (who was a shaman as well as Lakota War Chief) would likely have hacked them.
Well, there's the I-95 median strip.for maybe 95 % of the distance. And/or I suppose Elon could suspend his hyperloop over the Interstate somehow. He seems to have a certain talent for trivializing engineering problems.
But I am curious where Musk found one person, or small group capable of speaking for the city and state of New York, the states of New Jersey,(Delaware?), Pennsylvania, Maryland, the District of Columbia, the city of Philadelphia, the City of Baltimore, and about 500 other counties, cities, towns, and other.legal entities with zoning authority.
Surely it's closer to 3% than 30%. Exactly how much power does a train coach car need? Modern illumination needs virtually no power in the grand scheme of things. Likewise displays. Air conditioning? ... maybe ... The big power drain of a train is trundling maybe 30 metric tons per car (plus the engine) around the countryside.
Seems reasonable. But I doubt it's a "conversion" More of an "installation. They probably need backup at night and on cloudy days. That'd be the existing diesel generation which will be retained but won't have to run all the time?
I've never been to India, but from what I hear from folks who have, the guy with the cricket bat will probably pocket a rupee or three from every roof passenger and in return will help them up and down, and assist in getting their baggage on and off the roof.
The wonders of "scientific" analysis. T Rex can't walk without crutches and bumblebees can't fly.
In maybe 50 or 100 years, genetic engineering will probably be able to produce not a T Rex, but a reptilian critter that looks a lot like one in a lot of ways and has similar musculature, skelatal characteristics ... and teeth. Anyone want to bet there won't be a few non-reptilian participants eaten at the first running of the pseudo-Rex's in Rapid City, SD in 2067?
"Stored hydropower and other such systems will probably need to be part of the plan"
Pumped storage can work. Niagara Mohawk uses it to store energy generated at Niagara Falls in offpeak hours. The storage facilities (they have two) are basically two good sized reservoirs at different elevations and a set of reversible turbines that can either pump water from the lower reservoir to the upper and act as generators when the water is allowed to come back down. The facilities are serious engineering projects that would cost many hundreds of millions of dollars to replicate. Gilboa-Blenheim near Albany, NY is probably typical. It can output about 1.1Gw and is speced at 17Gw of storage capacity.
They are probably only cost effective if you use them a lot (i.e. daily)
And there aren't all that many good sites.
And in arid areas like the Western US, you need not only sites with an elevation difference, you need water. Lots of water.
"Ya, but the Sun is overhead and walls are vertical so we'll have to tip the whole planet to get maximum efficiency. That will be a huge PITA with stuff sliding around, rolling off tables and such."
Congress will handle that. Just as soon as they fix health care, eliminate all taxation, straighten out the Middle East, and restore American manufacturing to its proper place in the world.
The math for the solar array is certainly in the ballpark.
For the battery? Who the hell knows? You probably need a pdf (No, not that kind of pdf -- a Probability Distribution Function.) for sunshine and a specification for how many days, hours, minutes, seconds a year of outage can be tolerated in order to spec out the battery. I'm skeptical that one square mile of "battery" is adequate.
Or maybe you need a full, rarely used, backup generation facility (generating power from what?) for periods when the sun just doesn't shine as much as one would like.
Could we power the US with solar power using today's technology? I doubt it. Will we be able to in a century or three? One certainly hopes so. We're burning fossil fuels way faster than they are being created. When they "run out" (i.e. become too costly to produce from low grade resources) we will certainly fervently want a plan B. Maybe that'll be nuclear fission or fusion. But if that doesn't work out ...
Plus, you can probably use any that's left over as a herbicide/insecticide.
"all someone has to do is credit an ACH payment against your routing and account number and the money is withdrawn and gone."
In the US at least, your routing and account number are printed on the bottom left of every physical check you write in those odd, but quite human readable, MICR characters. Doesn't give one a warm fuzzy feeling. OTOH, I've never had any problem with ACH based raids on my bank account and have never heard of anyone who has.
Make that WHEN someone hacks them. Which will almost certainly happen sooner or later. If it's a broad breach instead of just a few accounts, it's a safe bet that in the US neither PayPal nor your money will be anywhere to be found. In the EU where PayPal is subject to banking laws, you may have recourse. Not so in the US where PayPal operates as an unregulated bank. (Why would any sane person give an unregulated bank access to their money?)
"Eliminate TSA and bring in Military."
I'm willing to bet that you've never served in the military. It'd be difficult to imagine a task more ill suited to the military than airport security screening.
Not that the TSA seems to have any aptitude for it either.
Beyond the metal detectors which are simple, non-intrusive, and should keep firearms and broadswords off the planes, effective airport security would require trained professionals with a thorough knowledge of threats and contraband and the ever changing (and quite bizzare) regulations. You really think a few E-4 enlisted folks with an average IQ of maybe 105 who have caught a 30 day airport detail are capable of doing what would need to be done?
OTOH, many people decided ten or even 20 years ago that market forces would eventually make Microsoft increasingly user hostile and migrated much/all of their workflow elsewhere. For them, proprietary NTFS -- even if supported in their alternative -- was and is an anathema.
I don't know about you, but I've always found visibility to be really bad in clouds.
"Yes, my company is done growing and is starting on the failing phase of it's existence, but I don't care that much about it if they keep paying me."
Y'all reckon that they can/will hold it together long enough for you to sock away an adequate retirement nestegg? If not, then you have a bigger problem than your users.
They can walk away.
You, on the other hand ...
Education is important, but it's not clear this has anything much to do with education. This is about a probably nutty idea that punishes 17-18 year olds for not having a clear idea what they want to do with their lives. Or maybe it punishes them for having such an idea if it isn't conventional.
My opinion. The kids did the school work. Give them their damn diploma.
You can use ordinary motor oil in your two stroke. OR get a four stroke with powered wheels. Yes some are heavy, but you don't have to push it. It'll trundle itself. And not all four strokes are heavy. My neighbor has been using mine -- which is quite light --for two years since his broke. Me, I have a battery powered mower. I **HATE** tinkering with small engines of any sort. I have no rapport whatsoever with the infernal devices. With battery power, you just throw the switch and it's running. But it is kinda heavy and noisier than I'd hoped.
This is just this morning's tidbit from BeauHD's seemingly endless supply of climate-crap. The dates are incredibly optimistic and the problems are minimized or ignored completely. Nonetheless -- barring running into some inherent limitation of battery storage -- many homes and businesses will very likely drop off the grid someday when it becomes technically and economically practical to do so. Many folks living in densely populated urban areas with multistory housing probably will never leave the grid. Not enough solar panel area to cover refrigeration, illumination, cooking, hot water, and climate control.
Hint -- watch Hawaii. Economically developed. Reasonable amounts of sunshine. Moderate climate, so minimal heating and cooling needs. High electricity cost because hydrocarbon fuels for electrical generation need to be lugged 5000km.from North America. It'll probably be one of the first "countries" to go renewable.
Now why didn't I think of that?
(Thanks)
"It's not perfect, but it could be a lot worse."
I'm confident that it'll get to 'a lot worse' eventually. Destruction takes time. Rome wasn't sacked in a day y'know.