It's also important to note 12% of HOUSEHOLDS had a mac, not 12% of individuals. Though households that did often owned more than 1 with many owning 3 or more total machines including at least 1 PC.
Now, combine the 12% of households with a greater than 90% repeat customer rate, and the fact that most of those households with PCs and Macs are in that case because as another poster pointed out, the PC becomes a "hand-me-down." Eventually that PC will fall out of favor (or die) and a new mac will be purchased to replace and older one and perpetuate the chain, in 90% of cases or so anyway. in 3-5 years, we'll see houses with 1 mac and 2 PCs become houses with 3 macs and no PCs, taking a significant dent in PC marketshare.
Considdering last year, only 9% of houses had a mac, a 3% net gain, that's some impressive traction. As an IT systems analyst and architect for a major firm with 14,000 employees, we're seeing a major swing in what people bring with them to work, and IT is looking into offical Mac support in the network (and they like what they're looking at). in 5 years, we could see mac/PC options for employees being fully integrated, and those with Macs at home will also use Macs at work, which by then on the current trent could be over 25% of employees. Since all our suftware is moving to SOA java based serevices, platform of choice is irrelevent. Macs are easier to STIG secure as well, and require less support IT side making their TCO for an enterprise MUCH lower (by $2,500-4K per machine over 4 years per our IS finance folks).
Just because the CPU speed in GHz, RAM size in GB, and HDD size and type are a match does NOT mean the machines are even CLOSE to equal.
Compare for example the 15" macbook pro, with the nVidia 9400GPU (base, not even the enhanced 9600M GT), to a Dell Studio 15, or to their new "flagship" machine.
The Mac has a faster system bus, included bluetooth by default, includes an enhanced multi-anteanna wireless N radio, better graphics than any Dell in even a similar price range without going into 16" and larger models, weighs less than the 13" dell systems, has a really solid feeling aliminum chassis, has higher tech LiPo batteries that last longer and charge faster and don't explode, has a higher screen resolution, offers a non-glossy screen option, can run both Mac OS and Windows, and in the case of Dell's new flagship machine, it's user field upgradeable where Dell's is NOT! All that for $1599 or less, compared to Dell's closest equavalent machine at $1709. Oh yea, Apple support also actually HELPS you with OS and software issues, Dell references you to microsoft who charges $199 per incident for support. A 13" model is ontl 1099, and the white macbook can be found easily under $950.
You go find a 13" or 15" machine with 7 hour battery life, that weighs 5lbs or less, operates on a 1066 bus with a full featured Core 2 (including VT!), comes with descrete graphics, 1200x800 or better screen, Wireless N, bluetooth, and has an internal optical drive that costs less. I can't find a competitor more than $80 lower in price that meets that, and that's without throwing in the backlit keyboard, 8GB ram max (not 4), memory card reader, firewire ports, a webcam, and other non-essential "specs" and that's also without any of the software you're going to need to buy for a Windows box (OK, some people buy,/.ers know how to get other ways).
No, Apple does not make a cheap shit netbook for $400. Who cares! Anyone who only needs the most basic netbook features (mail, web, word processing and well that's about all they can handle) doesn't need anything more, but, statistics show more than 90% of netbook buyrers have a second more powerful machine already... If you;re buying a more powerful notebook, start looking in the $700-900 range, and realize a Macbook Pro is $100 more, but has so much more performance it would last 4-5 years not 2-3, all of a sudden it's CHEAPER.
Keep in mind, OS X has had consistantly declining operating requirements, where Windows (and even linux!) makes LEAPS in requirements, greatly shortening the survivable life of the machine. Having a laptop that supporets 8GB of RAM, user replaceable HDDs, and more powerful chipsets and faster subsystems, for a small premium over a "cheap" full notebook, and over 4 years, the Mac is far cheaper. compared to equivalent PCs, the Macs are in line. On the high end, the macs are hundreds cheaper (Macbook 17" is more than $700 cheaper than Del;l's equivalent flagship notebook and $300 less than Adamo).
The class is about the study of the evoluytion of the genre and style in writing, not about the content itself.
You don't need them to read 600 pages to find out that the world takes shape over a longer period of pages in modern fantasy. For most books, a subsection covering a historical flashback of 50-100 pages would suffice.
I did encourage the poster to look into short novels, but unfortunately, that would completely ignore epic fantasy, which is a major component of the entire fantasy movement, and thus can not be ignored in an exploration of the history of the style. This is a compromise move to allow them to read the style of writing without having to read the entire piece. It is not a suggesttion they only read such pieces.
First of all, your state likely already has a printed list of accepted works of Sci-fi and Fantasy based on 11-12th grade reading levels. YOU SHOULD STICK TO THIS! The material they read is to be used on state standardized or national tests, and potentially college acceptance essays, and the use on non-standard or non-approved material will mean likely the people administering and grading the essay portions of high school state/national exams will not be prepared for that material should your student leverage the reading in an answer, meaning that any grading could potentially be skewed.
Next, Tolkein is generally considdered an advanced college level read, with possibly the hobbit as the 1 exception. An AP high school class may tacle it on occasion, but not a general class.
Jordan? You mentioned "short" works... i think you're confused:)
I'd reccomend taking a look at some of the short stories presented in Volume 1 and 2 of "Legends" for any of the 2nd and 3rd generation fantasy, though you'll need to come up with classroom exceptable versions of them as you can't reccomend parents to buy the book as a whole, and the school won't provide it (several of the stories in there are definetly NOT acceptable high school material). Most of the authors listed in Legends do have numerous short (400 page and less) novels available, but most o fthem are parts of series.
For older fantasy, Verne's not bad, and anything from the Narnia series is a short simple read on high school or at least late middle school levels (I'd suggest one that wasn't yet a movie). For Sci-Fi, Asimoff is your core resource. For Modern Sci-fi, Neil Stephenson's Diamond Age (I'd stay away from Snow Crash due to the content).
I'd probably also not assign entire books. I'd assign sections or select chapters... Asking kids to read more than 100-150 pages a week is going to be a tall order (our local district bans assignments exceeding 2 hours per night more than 2 nights poer week to prevent kids from being overwhelmed, and to allow them time for sports and other after school programs, it;s hard to read more than 100 pages in 4 hours). They can easily get a solid taste of an author's styles, and how the genre changed over time, by reading a small subset, say 50-75 pages, of a book. Completing the entire story is unnecessary. Short novels under 70 pages are common to a lot of authors, especially George Martin and Asimoff. most of the content from "legends" are nice as they're short stories that hold on their own, but they're bridges into major series, and might hook a lot of the kids to read a lot more from most of those authors.
DEFINETLY, for ANYTHING you plan to include in a class, ensure your local and/or district administrators have expliocity read every page of everything you propose for your kids to read. Do NOT let them have any opportunity to hear something like this from them: "ScuttleMonkey suggested this book for his class to us, so we assumed it was clean reading and followed school policies on his word, we're sorry you're child is traumatized by the attack upon god, or the gratuitous scene, or the (fill in horrible thing parent could easily use in a lawsuit against school for smahing beliefs of innocense here) included in this novel, we were not aware of this content and we will suspend/fire him immediately."
Also, even an AP exploration of the evolution of a genre over time is a big thing to take on. I'd not try doing 2 at once, but make 1 class for sci-fi and another class for Fantasy.
Sci-fi sort of starts with Nueromancer, Blade Runner, and Metropolis. From there you;re looking at Asimoff, then niven Pournelle, then the new guys neil Stephenson and Tad willaims. Fantasy naturally was born pre-tolkein and that should be discussed, though he reinvented it and started the real movement. Since I reccomend against having them outright read tolkein, i'd simply study him and his works as a whole and the idea of "tolkeinesque" fantasy and have them read simpler exam
Of course, that was harsh, and one should point out that the FTC could really give a fuck about your wife and her friend. This law was passed, in spirit, to eliminate people making illigitimate posts, or endorsing products with unreasonably high ratings because they got PAID to do so and failed to make people aware of that.
When you see a celebrity on TV, you understand the endorsement is paid. When you see some random named schmoe in a "user rating" you have no idea if the endorsement is legit or not. This ends the confusion (or at least, provides the FTC with a method for dealing with companies who solicit such advertizing gimicks, or who fail to properly document gifts, freebes, and payments to professional reviewers.
WTF? why would you not simply provide a disclaimer, or list the link as an "advertisement?"
You're a stupid fucking ass to WISH for the FTC to come down on you, especially blogging about it on a public forum they're likely to have someone reazd.
If the link is benign, and simply a friend linking another friend's business, then you;re clear. If it's an honest "endoresemnt" they you SHOULD, both by the law and for MORAL reasons disclaim the intent of the link.
Depending on how it's already posted, you MAY ALREADY BE IN COMPLIANCE. The "my friend runs this buinsess and you should check it out line" clearly disclaims your wife is not a customer making a review, but a known acquaintence of the other business who may have a biased opinion. That's all you need to do, if that at all.
REFUSING to comply with the law, in a public forum? Your wife should leave you now so at least she has half of something to take...
I am not an associate of doty energy, nor do i have a newsletter of my own. I merely point as many people as i can to this technology when i find a good venue. I know about it through a personal association with several of the people who work there, including the owners and their son, as i spent time in college with him. I am not an investor, have no stake in the firm, and receive no benefits from them. They're simply friends (very smart friends).
Doty's site is higly descriptive and technical, and should have pretty much everything you want to know and more on the subject of their process. (as well as faults in other options) www.dotyenergy.com. They also have a print publication covering the scope of their patents and the specifics of their technology and plans for their facility, and economics data (it was $90 a copy last time i checked).
Granted, this is all specific to THEIR process, which assumes a significant scale multimillion dollar facility based on more than 60 technical patents. If you inquire as you would like to make gasoline on your own, I'm afraid you'll find the economics of scale far less than ideal. When this process was used in WWII, it was out of necessicty due to breaks in the supply line, not because it was cheap or easy. Making it yourself using a scaled down recouperator might cost a few tens of thousands to set up, and make gas at about $20 a gallon... if you're lucky. Their are other small scale fuel making methods that would likely work out better economically (like home ethanol production). those methods are great in small batches, but do not scale to oil sized capacity requirements due to the limited amount of crops to feed the process or other limiting factors.
The law doesn't say you can';t reccomend it, you just need to disclose the association.
Place the link in a section on the site noting that the other site is beinbg "advertised" here. If the link is in a descriptive part of the site, inline with other text, then place an notation, and at the bottom of the page, in clear language, indicate that the link is not included as a personal reccomnedation, but as an advertisement for services. That's it...
This would only apply if those gifts were from one business to another, or from the business to the friend, not one friend to another. If the gifts were personal in nature between firends, and not associated necessarily with the business, then it IS a personal reccomendation, and no disclosure is necessary.
However, even a disclosure of "my friend of 50 years own this other shop..." is clarly a positive reccomendation, and most people would not associate that to a generic advertisement anyway, and the FTC certainly would have a hard time prosecuting that statement as less than full disclosure, since no person of sound mind would not assume friends over 50 yearsd did not exchange gifts and money.
Now, if your wife got a discount at her friends shop specitfically for mentioning the other site on her own (not because she would get that discount anyway simply being a firend), that would have to be spelled out in exact terms under this new FTC rule.
Or when companies are being PAID to have a small army of people download apps from the app store tand then give them glowing 5 star reviews to pro up their ratings, (or to give 1 star reviews to competitor's apps!) making honest people think a bad app is really good, and devaluing the entire rating system.
That's not the point... It's NOT about reviewers. It;s about all the paid trolls kiving items 5 star reviews because they were paid to, so other people thing its a good product and buy it.
Blog and Blogger do not require a definition. Simply, ANY statement of endorsement in print, media, or on the web, where ANY form of payment, discount, freebie, etc was given, with or without a request for a favorablke posting, requires disclosure.
Also, since the penalty is not necessarily on the blogger, but on the company they're blogging on behalf of (if we can find the blogger, they get punbished too), the companies themselves will be seeking a bit more documentation to ensure anyone given a freebe, and especially paid endorsements, are explicity told they have to disclaim so. Companies that have the product wonp;t want negative FTC attention because people are illegally posting reviews of their stuff...
It's pretty opbvious in the text, which actually does not define "blog" or "blogger." in ANY form of print or media, on your web site or someone elses, if you have received freebies or payent of any kind (money , services, discounts, etc), you are now required to state so if you are making an endoresement of that product.
unfortunately, "how" to state so is not defined, so it;s still possible to put in your post "see site for more info." and then there make the disclaimer. It could also be in a sig line, or some abscured method less than obvious. I'm sure this law will soon get soume court guidance on what is and is not a valid disclaimer.
All i can say is, at least they're headed in the right direction. Now if only it was enforceible without massive amounts of patperwork and the efforts of several judges. How do you get a warrent to find out who someone IS, so you can determine if they got paid or not if they do not disclaim it???
Spare grid capacity? only as an aggreegate of the whole.
Spare available power? again, only as aggregate of the whole.
LOCAL available power, and LOCAL grid capacity are NOT sufficient to support the use of electric cars for more than about 0.5% of americans.
Few people will plug in their car at noon in the summer for an all day charge, but on weekends, LOTS of them will require FAST CHARGING in the middle of the day, which is WORSE.
1) "wells to wheels" energy efficincy of EVs is only proven when the energy is from 100% renewalble sources, for which less than 10% currently is. wells to wheels in some areas of the country, for the same size and class vehicle, there are many ICE systems available that actually exceed EV CO2 emission benefits. Further, a petrol engine is only inefficient because of varying load, isle, etc; it never really runs at peak efficiuncy. however, replace the fule in that EV with a carbon nuetral fuel, and it;s emissions effectively become zero (net) and the EV will still have CO2 base load from the manufacture of the electricity. it is NOT as green as a solution.
2) the gas weight a lot less than a 450lb 16Kw battery that only goes 40 miles. ALL the proposed EVs have curb weight in excess of their ICE powered counterpart cars of the same model.
3) ICEs last 200-400K miles with regular maintenance. The average life of a car on the road today is 17 years. Engines cost 3-6K to replace for most cars. batteries are good for 8-10 years and cost 10-14K to replace. Also, the elecric motors driving your wheels are essentiually reverse alternators, and will require costly maintenance about every 80K miles. Finally, the most common repair to a vehicle is not the engine, but engine suppoort systems (oil, cooling, AC, radiator, etc). most of these systems are present in EVs, and all are present in hybrids.
4) Fire burns, but is predictable and easy to handle, and generates temps in the low 1,000 degree range. batteries have dangerous outgas, can violently explode, and can burn in the 5-8K degree range, possibly even melting road pavement and steel support structures on bridges. Newer gas tanks have also gotten much better at containing leaks in a wreck. Batteries contain dangerous acids and chemicals that are major environmental issues to deal with.
A) they can;t all change to makeing batteries. even if we had the factories to do it, we don;t have the mines to get that much material that fast. B) Economy of full production scale at best, for LiPo batteries is getting pretty close to realized. They already make several BILLION LiPo cells a day, and they think in 3-5 years they might shave 20-30% off the cost, not 300% which is what is required. C) You have to have a garrage or port on your house to charge a car, good luck with the other 70% of america... D) massive infrastructure chages to add fast charge ports to at least 1 gas station every 20-30 miles. This requires not only putting in the station, but in most cases, since local gas stations are not in industrial areas, but commercial or residential, we need new power lines and new transformers to bring them 3phase lines and proper amperage.
Your facts are wrong. Your assumptions are based on marketing hype not fact.
in the end, carbon nuetral fuel requires 1) no change in vehicle of fuel infrastructure, 2) no replacement of existing cars (new cars should be based on ever incresing standards, and hybrid electric cars ARE a good thing, provided they do not charge from the grid at all for 10-20 years), 3) it's cheaper. 4) it does not require the training/replacement of thousands of mechanics to support the electrical systems. 5) we have no battery recycling system capable of handling the load of all that new gear, nor an infrastricuture to deal with shipping 500lb packs around the country. 6) factories are constantly changing what batteries and technology they make, standardizing on a batter now means making and supporting them for decades, which meansd locking
except that varios government contracts, as well as a few private business contracts, require all our hardware and software to be covered by "Vendor Support" and be not more than 2 releases back in age... It;s also part of the STIGs for many applications and systems.
We'd love to have in-house linux support, but for us and most enterprises, it's not possible.
Um, it's a financial fact. Saving corporations money does NOT translate into financial savings on the same scale for end consumers. Trickly down economics is one of the most regressive policies ever put forward (besides sales taxes on food and clothing).
I should have phrazed that "it's easier to patch and maintain a Linux machine, easier still on VMWare, even easier in zVM on a mainframe." Sorry for the confusion.
We can not completely eliminate Windows, not for years... Too mane legacy apps, too many apps only available for that platform.
For support, as I said, linux actually costs more, but we prefer it since it solves other regulatory issues and other back-end costs (except on the mainframe whre it actually IS cheaper).
Yea, if we could run Windows on s390x, we would... Fault tolerant hardware, the IFL is a "single socket" CPU capable of hosting 30-40 machine images for the same price as licencing a single socket in a single machine. Even VMWare is a whole bunch of CPU or cores, so it's still a 1:1 license model for processor licensing models, there's just some hardware savings, DR savings, operations savings, and OS licnesing savings that come into play, as well as utilization and power savings, but it's not the same as Z/OS which cuts licensing by potentially 30 fold!
Again, can't eliminate Windows (not for a very long time, maybe 6-8 years on our current internal software development cycle).
but, the point in fact was, Windows licenses are still cheaper than linux, for us, except on the mainframe...
yeah right, its going to be REAL PRACTICAL to put 500 mile range into a battery pack. the gasoline nozzle pumps 3 MEGAWATTS of energy into your gas tank in 2 minutes. try to get a battery pack to recharge that fast or hold that much energy and what you have is a BOMB (literally, a coupla sticks of dynamite)..
However, you cannot fill up the gas tank at home. That is one of the killer features of the battery: no more annoying visits to the gas station, just plug it in when you get home. No more fiddling around with plastic gloves/wait for your fingers to stop smelling of diesel.
And seriously, driving more than 800km in a day is a long stretch.
But I do not really believe that range will be the range on a motorway for a holiday-packed car:)
OK, you can't fill up 3MW at home either, in any reasonable time. The battery pack in the Chevy Volt goes ~40 miles. It's a 16KW battery, but is never less than half full for saftey and battery longevity. It takes 8 hours to recharge that 8KW over a home 2Phase 22v outlet, and that's no ordinary outlet like you plug you're dryer into, that's a high AMP circuit like an inline hot water heater, 80-120amps... Most homes don't even have a power box that can support it (most "modern" homes have a total 200amp panel, my 4600sqft 2 year old home only has 320 available).
40 miles = 8kw. OK, easy math is 50miles : 10kw. 500 miles = 100kw. 1kwh = 1 hour, so 100 hours to fully charge at home... They can make a denser battery, but you can only put juice in as fast as you have it available to you. Even the "fast charge" 3-phase 400Amp rigs being tested for SCiB batteries (the 80% charge in 15 minute batteries) is based on a 12Kw pack. So even on fast charge, which is only available on industrial grade circuits and not on common residential streets, would take 3+ hours to recharge, assuming the battery can actually suck it in that fast and the grid can handle the load of a couple cars doing that at once.
It's NOT the next step, it;s a later one, our next step is efficincy improvements to gas engines, followed by a massive investment in grid expansion to support those electrci cars.
It's also only going to happen for about 30% of the people in the world, since the rest have nowhere to plug-in said electreic car... even with a milti-trillion dollar investment in wind power, and 15-20 trillion in grid overhaul over 30 years, you;re still not going to change the fact that charging at the power station down the street on a fast-charge rig is going to cost twice what charging at home would, and since charging at home is only 50% cheaper per mile driven (in energy terms only, not accounting for the premium price on the car), it will be impossible for people without garrages to break even on the massive price difference of a $10K battery pack vs a petrol car.
Chemical energy storage? Yea, it's called HYDROCARBON. Screw batteries, screw off-peak power storage, use the electricity to MAKE gasoline, using waste CO2 as input into RWGS process engines. It;s technology used since WWII, and with modern changes to catalysts, heat exchangers, recouperators, and more, it can now be done for about $3 a gallon... 100% clean gas (no sulfer wastes) and it;s carbon nuetral, and available today. Stop screwing around with technologies that can be monopolized, start using something we have today that works, and lets people keep using current cars, current mechanics, current fuel infrastducture, and in 30-40 years when the grid and the battery industry are ready, we'll start with the electrci cars.
Coal: Output is mostly CO2. We can CAPTURE that CO2, feed it into an RWGS/RFTS catalytic processor, with some H2 and some additional water, and make ANY kind of hydrocarbon you want, without additional waste materials (other than O2, which there's pleanty of market for, and which releasing is not an issue).
Dotyenergy has solutions to make gasoline grades up through jet fuels for as little as $60 a barrel using off-peak wind energy. As we expand wind deployments, we have an increassin issue with what to do with the energy we donp;t need at the moment it's gernated. Their facilities can adjust dnaamically, in less than 1/60th of a second, to take that excess and turn it into carbon nuetral gasoline to run in our current cars.
The GRID needs a lot of work, but our energy production expansion is holding up. (getting power to where it;s NEEDED is the problem, not making it). This process lets us use excess energy made from cheap sourtces when it's not needed, turn it into fuel, and ship that fuel to places that can't support the additional electric loads on the grid. It will also feed wind energy expansion, which by nature also feeds grid expansion and overhaul.
There's enough wind availabe on non-farm, non-residential, easy to access (aka inexpensive to build on) land, plus some limited offshore deployments, within the boarders of the USA to power the entire hemesphere all by itself, and that's only using high tier wind areas suited for large scale wind deployments. We have pleanty of green energy. You're right, no grid = no electric cars (for now), but we CAN use that energy to make carbon nuetral fules, so who cares, we can still reduce carbon emissions from cars by over 60% in 30-40 years...
Now: - tell me over 100,000 miles it's break even or cheaper than driving a petrol car - Tell me the battery lasts 300,000 miles - Tell me the battery pack size does not reduce the vehicle storage capacity by more than a negligable amount (it can be mounted entirely under the floor and under the hood, not saccrificing any trunk space and leaving me with a flat floor inside the car) - Tell me this 500 miles is based on a standard sized fully equipped sedan, or small SUV, and that a large SUV or minivan can also be equipped with a slightly larger battery and get the same range - Tell me the charge time from 10% to 85% is less than 20 minutes, or there will still be a gas backup engine. - Tell me charging on a standard home power supply (2 phase 220v) can be done in under 10 hours - Tell me the materials in the battery pack are both common, there's enough of that material to support every car having packs within 30 years, and that the packs are easily reculced and easily repaired. - Tell me the packs provide no dangerous chemical output when burned, can easily be put out if on fire, and are not subject to the combistion common in LiIon packs. - Tell me you've included maintenance costs and higher insurance costs in the 100,000 and 300,000 mile vehicle costs. - Tell me production is easy to ramp up quickly, and we can actually build enough facilities to make these batteries in capacity to satisfy demand. - Tell me these batteries have other uses (laptops, phones, etc). - What to do with people who don't have a garrage?
Even IF you get past these hurdles, provide an affordable solution (even if it's not exactly break even, but close enough to justify the expense in favor of cleaner air, which some still debatable on electric cars), there are other FAR more pressing issue:
The grid can NOT handle it, for more than 0.5% of us to have a plug-in hybrid, let alone full electric car, by 2020. We have enough aggregate power, yes, but not in the right places, and not at the right times of day, and the grid system can't suffle the load around properly. Large numbers of cars charging in any area would brown out local grids and cause transformer issues. We have 30-40 years of work and trillions of dollars to spend before we can let electric cars start to become the norm.
I know the response: "We have to do SOMETHING now, and this is something, the other options are too far down the road..." Well, partly right. mostly wrong.
1) Vehicle efficincy changes in ordinary petrol cars can compete directly with the CO2 savings of buying an electric. We CAN drive 50MPG in an ordinary engine in a car on a competitive size to an electric. We don't becauase those engines are not universally offered in larger sized cars, and hardly at all in America. 2) Cross-over hybrids (electric drive, gas generator, very small battery) are a cheaper option, and will limit the electrical draw from the grid while doubling average fuel economy at a $1-2K premium instead of 8-12K premium for full electric. 3) We can make UNLIMITED fuel in a carbon nuetral fashion for about $3 a gallon using RFTS and waste carbon from coal plants. There's enough material to make gas today for about half the US fleet, and this technology is proven, and available now (www.dotyenergy.com). Keep running the current cars (replace them over time with more efficient ones) and do it with no additional CO2 released... Over time, this will be a 60% vreduction in total CO2 output from cars, and gives us the 30-40 years we need to overhaul the grid. 4) Abandon H2 investments, stop wasting money on green technology that can't make impacts for 20+ years, stop wasting money on solar (we have enough wind at both a lower price and longer lifespan, and simpler deployment in North america to power the entire hemisphere on it's own and then some). Take ALL those billions and billions and invest it instead into vehicle replacement programs to get the worst guzzlers off the road sooner.
Licensing is a tiny fraction of what we pay for our infrastructure.
besides, we looked at the math. We have over 2,500 MS Server licenses. We don't buy support, we pay on a case by case basis or buy blocks of support hours. Support total costs us under $15K anually. We have an EA to cover upgrade costs, and don;t buy licences on a one-to-one basis for servers either.
With RedHat and Suse, we pay nothing for the OS, but we buy support on each and every install (since support is tracked on a system to system basis by hteir organizations), and in the end, each RedHat licence actually costs more than each Windows (standard) License according to our IS Finance folks. The difference, mostly, is that it's easier to support and patch Linux systems in VMWare, especially on a mainframe where we can utilize single binary imaging. There are just less regulatory and compliance hurdles to Linux.
In the end though, the only reason we use Linux is not because it;s cheaper to license or easier to maintain, but because it run in s390x, and microsoft does not, so IFL licensing saves us millions per year vs x86 and x64 licensing... When they make a version of Windows for s390x hardware, that will change fast an d we'll deploy a lot more microsoft OS.
If you really think the 5-10 seconds saved is that critical for a non-critical thing like playing music (which can just as easily be done with in-dash systems today), then thats fine. This is not a concern for the 99+% of drivers, only a fraction of tweakers.
Even my GPS takes about 5-8 seconds to load after power on. i get in the car, and turn it on, it;s another 15-20 seconds before I've gotten the iPod plugged in and docked and start a playlist. If the in-car computer took that long to come up, that's not an obstacle, provided the car actually runs... I'm not looking for a getaway vehicle, I've got 30-45 seconds to turn my stuffg on, tune in, put on a seat belt, check the mirrors and put it in drive. If the complete car computer took that long, but saved me messing with an iPod and GPS, it;s break even, with existing BIOS...
I'm assuming of course these in-car comuters use basic hardware, not PXE boot, RAID controllers, more than 2GB of basic RAM, etc, and only take 5-8 seconds to post (not 42 seconds to pass BIOS as my gaming and video editing desktop rig does, fo which thuis new tech would only shave the first 8 seconds of that pre-boot time anyway).
Handover resources to cluster node, sync cached writes, terminate service level applications, confirm disconnections, export log data, perform pre-shutdown security check, and more.
This is not all servers, but specifically MS Exchange servers tend to take forever to shut down, as well as many protal servers and clustered servers running other database apps.
Incidently, the Exchange boxes are the most powerful X64 chassis we have in the building (we have lots of P5 and P6+ chassis that smoke them, not to mention the z9s and z10s, but for x64, they're hot boxes). The CPU is fairly idle during shutdown, it's mostly wait states and timeouts making the reboots take that long.
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It's also important to note 12% of HOUSEHOLDS had a mac, not 12% of individuals. Though households that did often owned more than 1 with many owning 3 or more total machines including at least 1 PC.
Now, combine the 12% of households with a greater than 90% repeat customer rate, and the fact that most of those households with PCs and Macs are in that case because as another poster pointed out, the PC becomes a "hand-me-down." Eventually that PC will fall out of favor (or die) and a new mac will be purchased to replace and older one and perpetuate the chain, in 90% of cases or so anyway. in 3-5 years, we'll see houses with 1 mac and 2 PCs become houses with 3 macs and no PCs, taking a significant dent in PC marketshare.
Considdering last year, only 9% of houses had a mac, a 3% net gain, that's some impressive traction. As an IT systems analyst and architect for a major firm with 14,000 employees, we're seeing a major swing in what people bring with them to work, and IT is looking into offical Mac support in the network (and they like what they're looking at). in 5 years, we could see mac/PC options for employees being fully integrated, and those with Macs at home will also use Macs at work, which by then on the current trent could be over 25% of employees. Since all our suftware is moving to SOA java based serevices, platform of choice is irrelevent. Macs are easier to STIG secure as well, and require less support IT side making their TCO for an enterprise MUCH lower (by $2,500-4K per machine over 4 years per our IS finance folks).
It's a bite more, give them some credit....
Just because the CPU speed in GHz, RAM size in GB, and HDD size and type are a match does NOT mean the machines are even CLOSE to equal.
Compare for example the 15" macbook pro, with the nVidia 9400GPU (base, not even the enhanced 9600M GT), to a Dell Studio 15, or to their new "flagship" machine.
The Mac has a faster system bus, included bluetooth by default, includes an enhanced multi-anteanna wireless N radio, better graphics than any Dell in even a similar price range without going into 16" and larger models, weighs less than the 13" dell systems, has a really solid feeling aliminum chassis, has higher tech LiPo batteries that last longer and charge faster and don't explode, has a higher screen resolution, offers a non-glossy screen option, can run both Mac OS and Windows, and in the case of Dell's new flagship machine, it's user field upgradeable where Dell's is NOT! All that for $1599 or less, compared to Dell's closest equavalent machine at $1709. Oh yea, Apple support also actually HELPS you with OS and software issues, Dell references you to microsoft who charges $199 per incident for support. A 13" model is ontl 1099, and the white macbook can be found easily under $950.
You go find a 13" or 15" machine with 7 hour battery life, that weighs 5lbs or less, operates on a 1066 bus with a full featured Core 2 (including VT!), comes with descrete graphics, 1200x800 or better screen, Wireless N, bluetooth, and has an internal optical drive that costs less. I can't find a competitor more than $80 lower in price that meets that, and that's without throwing in the backlit keyboard, 8GB ram max (not 4), memory card reader, firewire ports, a webcam, and other non-essential "specs" and that's also without any of the software you're going to need to buy for a Windows box (OK, some people buy, /.ers know how to get other ways).
No, Apple does not make a cheap shit netbook for $400. Who cares! Anyone who only needs the most basic netbook features (mail, web, word processing and well that's about all they can handle) doesn't need anything more, but, statistics show more than 90% of netbook buyrers have a second more powerful machine already... If you;re buying a more powerful notebook, start looking in the $700-900 range, and realize a Macbook Pro is $100 more, but has so much more performance it would last 4-5 years not 2-3, all of a sudden it's CHEAPER.
Keep in mind, OS X has had consistantly declining operating requirements, where Windows (and even linux!) makes LEAPS in requirements, greatly shortening the survivable life of the machine. Having a laptop that supporets 8GB of RAM, user replaceable HDDs, and more powerful chipsets and faster subsystems, for a small premium over a "cheap" full notebook, and over 4 years, the Mac is far cheaper. compared to equivalent PCs, the Macs are in line. On the high end, the macs are hundreds cheaper (Macbook 17" is more than $700 cheaper than Del;l's equivalent flagship notebook and $300 less than Adamo).
The class is about the study of the evoluytion of the genre and style in writing, not about the content itself.
You don't need them to read 600 pages to find out that the world takes shape over a longer period of pages in modern fantasy. For most books, a subsection covering a historical flashback of 50-100 pages would suffice.
I did encourage the poster to look into short novels, but unfortunately, that would completely ignore epic fantasy, which is a major component of the entire fantasy movement, and thus can not be ignored in an exploration of the history of the style. This is a compromise move to allow them to read the style of writing without having to read the entire piece. It is not a suggesttion they only read such pieces.
First of all, your state likely already has a printed list of accepted works of Sci-fi and Fantasy based on 11-12th grade reading levels. YOU SHOULD STICK TO THIS! The material they read is to be used on state standardized or national tests, and potentially college acceptance essays, and the use on non-standard or non-approved material will mean likely the people administering and grading the essay portions of high school state/national exams will not be prepared for that material should your student leverage the reading in an answer, meaning that any grading could potentially be skewed.
Next, Tolkein is generally considdered an advanced college level read, with possibly the hobbit as the 1 exception. An AP high school class may tacle it on occasion, but not a general class.
Jordan? You mentioned "short" works... i think you're confused :)
I'd reccomend taking a look at some of the short stories presented in Volume 1 and 2 of "Legends" for any of the 2nd and 3rd generation fantasy, though you'll need to come up with classroom exceptable versions of them as you can't reccomend parents to buy the book as a whole, and the school won't provide it (several of the stories in there are definetly NOT acceptable high school material). Most of the authors listed in Legends do have numerous short (400 page and less) novels available, but most o fthem are parts of series.
For older fantasy, Verne's not bad, and anything from the Narnia series is a short simple read on high school or at least late middle school levels (I'd suggest one that wasn't yet a movie). For Sci-Fi, Asimoff is your core resource. For Modern Sci-fi, Neil Stephenson's Diamond Age (I'd stay away from Snow Crash due to the content).
I'd probably also not assign entire books. I'd assign sections or select chapters... Asking kids to read more than 100-150 pages a week is going to be a tall order (our local district bans assignments exceeding 2 hours per night more than 2 nights poer week to prevent kids from being overwhelmed, and to allow them time for sports and other after school programs, it;s hard to read more than 100 pages in 4 hours). They can easily get a solid taste of an author's styles, and how the genre changed over time, by reading a small subset, say 50-75 pages, of a book. Completing the entire story is unnecessary. Short novels under 70 pages are common to a lot of authors, especially George Martin and Asimoff. most of the content from "legends" are nice as they're short stories that hold on their own, but they're bridges into major series, and might hook a lot of the kids to read a lot more from most of those authors.
DEFINETLY, for ANYTHING you plan to include in a class, ensure your local and/or district administrators have expliocity read every page of everything you propose for your kids to read. Do NOT let them have any opportunity to hear something like this from them: "ScuttleMonkey suggested this book for his class to us, so we assumed it was clean reading and followed school policies on his word, we're sorry you're child is traumatized by the attack upon god, or the gratuitous scene, or the (fill in horrible thing parent could easily use in a lawsuit against school for smahing beliefs of innocense here) included in this novel, we were not aware of this content and we will suspend/fire him immediately."
Also, even an AP exploration of the evolution of a genre over time is a big thing to take on. I'd not try doing 2 at once, but make 1 class for sci-fi and another class for Fantasy.
Sci-fi sort of starts with Nueromancer, Blade Runner, and Metropolis. From there you;re looking at Asimoff, then niven Pournelle, then the new guys neil Stephenson and Tad willaims. Fantasy naturally was born pre-tolkein and that should be discussed, though he reinvented it and started the real movement. Since I reccomend against having them outright read tolkein, i'd simply study him and his works as a whole and the idea of "tolkeinesque" fantasy and have them read simpler exam
Of course, that was harsh, and one should point out that the FTC could really give a fuck about your wife and her friend. This law was passed, in spirit, to eliminate people making illigitimate posts, or endorsing products with unreasonably high ratings because they got PAID to do so and failed to make people aware of that.
When you see a celebrity on TV, you understand the endorsement is paid. When you see some random named schmoe in a "user rating" you have no idea if the endorsement is legit or not. This ends the confusion (or at least, provides the FTC with a method for dealing with companies who solicit such advertizing gimicks, or who fail to properly document gifts, freebes, and payments to professional reviewers.
WTF? why would you not simply provide a disclaimer, or list the link as an "advertisement?"
You're a stupid fucking ass to WISH for the FTC to come down on you, especially blogging about it on a public forum they're likely to have someone reazd.
If the link is benign, and simply a friend linking another friend's business, then you;re clear. If it's an honest "endoresemnt" they you SHOULD, both by the law and for MORAL reasons disclaim the intent of the link.
Depending on how it's already posted, you MAY ALREADY BE IN COMPLIANCE. The "my friend runs this buinsess and you should check it out line" clearly disclaims your wife is not a customer making a review, but a known acquaintence of the other business who may have a biased opinion. That's all you need to do, if that at all.
REFUSING to comply with the law, in a public forum? Your wife should leave you now so at least she has half of something to take...
I am not an associate of doty energy, nor do i have a newsletter of my own. I merely point as many people as i can to this technology when i find a good venue. I know about it through a personal association with several of the people who work there, including the owners and their son, as i spent time in college with him. I am not an investor, have no stake in the firm, and receive no benefits from them. They're simply friends (very smart friends).
Doty's site is higly descriptive and technical, and should have pretty much everything you want to know and more on the subject of their process. (as well as faults in other options) www.dotyenergy.com. They also have a print publication covering the scope of their patents and the specifics of their technology and plans for their facility, and economics data (it was $90 a copy last time i checked).
Granted, this is all specific to THEIR process, which assumes a significant scale multimillion dollar facility based on more than 60 technical patents. If you inquire as you would like to make gasoline on your own, I'm afraid you'll find the economics of scale far less than ideal. When this process was used in WWII, it was out of necessicty due to breaks in the supply line, not because it was cheap or easy. Making it yourself using a scaled down recouperator might cost a few tens of thousands to set up, and make gas at about $20 a gallon... if you're lucky. Their are other small scale fuel making methods that would likely work out better economically (like home ethanol production). those methods are great in small batches, but do not scale to oil sized capacity requirements due to the limited amount of crops to feed the process or other limiting factors.
The law doesn't say you can';t reccomend it, you just need to disclose the association.
Place the link in a section on the site noting that the other site is beinbg "advertised" here. If the link is in a descriptive part of the site, inline with other text, then place an notation, and at the bottom of the page, in clear language, indicate that the link is not included as a personal reccomnedation, but as an advertisement for services. That's it...
This would only apply if those gifts were from one business to another, or from the business to the friend, not one friend to another. If the gifts were personal in nature between firends, and not associated necessarily with the business, then it IS a personal reccomendation, and no disclosure is necessary.
However, even a disclosure of "my friend of 50 years own this other shop..." is clarly a positive reccomendation, and most people would not associate that to a generic advertisement anyway, and the FTC certainly would have a hard time prosecuting that statement as less than full disclosure, since no person of sound mind would not assume friends over 50 yearsd did not exchange gifts and money.
Now, if your wife got a discount at her friends shop specitfically for mentioning the other site on her own (not because she would get that discount anyway simply being a firend), that would have to be spelled out in exact terms under this new FTC rule.
Or when companies are being PAID to have a small army of people download apps from the app store tand then give them glowing 5 star reviews to pro up their ratings, (or to give 1 star reviews to competitor's apps!) making honest people think a bad app is really good, and devaluing the entire rating system.
That's not the point... It's NOT about reviewers. It;s about all the paid trolls kiving items 5 star reviews because they were paid to, so other people thing its a good product and buy it.
Blog and Blogger do not require a definition. Simply, ANY statement of endorsement in print, media, or on the web, where ANY form of payment, discount, freebie, etc was given, with or without a request for a favorablke posting, requires disclosure.
Also, since the penalty is not necessarily on the blogger, but on the company they're blogging on behalf of (if we can find the blogger, they get punbished too), the companies themselves will be seeking a bit more documentation to ensure anyone given a freebe, and especially paid endorsements, are explicity told they have to disclaim so. Companies that have the product wonp;t want negative FTC attention because people are illegally posting reviews of their stuff...
It's pretty opbvious in the text, which actually does not define "blog" or "blogger." in ANY form of print or media, on your web site or someone elses, if you have received freebies or payent of any kind (money , services, discounts, etc), you are now required to state so if you are making an endoresement of that product.
unfortunately, "how" to state so is not defined, so it;s still possible to put in your post "see site for more info." and then there make the disclaimer. It could also be in a sig line, or some abscured method less than obvious. I'm sure this law will soon get soume court guidance on what is and is not a valid disclaimer.
All i can say is, at least they're headed in the right direction. Now if only it was enforceible without massive amounts of patperwork and the efforts of several judges. How do you get a warrent to find out who someone IS, so you can determine if they got paid or not if they do not disclaim it???
Sorry for the mistakes. your numbers are more accurate, thank you. Charge time I must have confused with some of the other EVs with much larger packs.
but ...still 2 days on fast charge, and 3-4 hours at a 3phase charging station at 400Apm....
Still completely unacceptable.
Spare grid capacity? only as an aggreegate of the whole.
Spare available power? again, only as aggregate of the whole.
LOCAL available power, and LOCAL grid capacity are NOT sufficient to support the use of electric cars for more than about 0.5% of americans.
Few people will plug in their car at noon in the summer for an all day charge, but on weekends, LOTS of them will require FAST CHARGING in the middle of the day, which is WORSE.
1) "wells to wheels" energy efficincy of EVs is only proven when the energy is from 100% renewalble sources, for which less than 10% currently is. wells to wheels in some areas of the country, for the same size and class vehicle, there are many ICE systems available that actually exceed EV CO2 emission benefits. Further, a petrol engine is only inefficient because of varying load, isle, etc; it never really runs at peak efficiuncy. however, replace the fule in that EV with a carbon nuetral fuel, and it;s emissions effectively become zero (net) and the EV will still have CO2 base load from the manufacture of the electricity. it is NOT as green as a solution.
2) the gas weight a lot less than a 450lb 16Kw battery that only goes 40 miles. ALL the proposed EVs have curb weight in excess of their ICE powered counterpart cars of the same model.
3) ICEs last 200-400K miles with regular maintenance. The average life of a car on the road today is 17 years. Engines cost 3-6K to replace for most cars. batteries are good for 8-10 years and cost 10-14K to replace. Also, the elecric motors driving your wheels are essentiually reverse alternators, and will require costly maintenance about every 80K miles. Finally, the most common repair to a vehicle is not the engine, but engine suppoort systems (oil, cooling, AC, radiator, etc). most of these systems are present in EVs, and all are present in hybrids.
4) Fire burns, but is predictable and easy to handle, and generates temps in the low 1,000 degree range. batteries have dangerous outgas, can violently explode, and can burn in the 5-8K degree range, possibly even melting road pavement and steel support structures on bridges. Newer gas tanks have also gotten much better at containing leaks in a wreck. Batteries contain dangerous acids and chemicals that are major environmental issues to deal with.
A) they can;t all change to makeing batteries. even if we had the factories to do it, we don;t have the mines to get that much material that fast.
B) Economy of full production scale at best, for LiPo batteries is getting pretty close to realized. They already make several BILLION LiPo cells a day, and they think in 3-5 years they might shave 20-30% off the cost, not 300% which is what is required.
C) You have to have a garrage or port on your house to charge a car, good luck with the other 70% of america...
D) massive infrastructure chages to add fast charge ports to at least 1 gas station every 20-30 miles. This requires not only putting in the station, but in most cases, since local gas stations are not in industrial areas, but commercial or residential, we need new power lines and new transformers to bring them 3phase lines and proper amperage.
Your facts are wrong. Your assumptions are based on marketing hype not fact.
in the end, carbon nuetral fuel requires 1) no change in vehicle of fuel infrastructure, 2) no replacement of existing cars (new cars should be based on ever incresing standards, and hybrid electric cars ARE a good thing, provided they do not charge from the grid at all for 10-20 years), 3) it's cheaper.
4) it does not require the training/replacement of thousands of mechanics to support the electrical systems.
5) we have no battery recycling system capable of handling the load of all that new gear, nor an infrastricuture to deal with shipping 500lb packs around the country.
6) factories are constantly changing what batteries and technology they make, standardizing on a batter now means making and supporting them for decades, which meansd locking
www.dotyenergy.com.
RWGS = Reverse Water Gas Shift
RFTS = Refined Fischer Tropsch Synthesis
I'd have spelled it out, but that really would not have helped, would it? :)
except that varios government contracts, as well as a few private business contracts, require all our hardware and software to be covered by "Vendor Support" and be not more than 2 releases back in age... It;s also part of the STIGs for many applications and systems.
We'd love to have in-house linux support, but for us and most enterprises, it's not possible.
Troll?
Um, it's a financial fact. Saving corporations money does NOT translate into financial savings on the same scale for end consumers. Trickly down economics is one of the most regressive policies ever put forward (besides sales taxes on food and clothing).
I should have phrazed that "it's easier to patch and maintain a Linux machine, easier still on VMWare, even easier in zVM on a mainframe." Sorry for the confusion.
We can not completely eliminate Windows, not for years... Too mane legacy apps, too many apps only available for that platform.
For support, as I said, linux actually costs more, but we prefer it since it solves other regulatory issues and other back-end costs (except on the mainframe whre it actually IS cheaper).
Yea, if we could run Windows on s390x, we would... Fault tolerant hardware, the IFL is a "single socket" CPU capable of hosting 30-40 machine images for the same price as licencing a single socket in a single machine. Even VMWare is a whole bunch of CPU or cores, so it's still a 1:1 license model for processor licensing models, there's just some hardware savings, DR savings, operations savings, and OS licnesing savings that come into play, as well as utilization and power savings, but it's not the same as Z/OS which cuts licensing by potentially 30 fold!
Again, can't eliminate Windows (not for a very long time, maybe 6-8 years on our current internal software development cycle).
but, the point in fact was, Windows licenses are still cheaper than linux, for us, except on the mainframe...
yeah right, its going to be REAL PRACTICAL to put 500 mile range into a battery pack. the gasoline nozzle pumps 3 MEGAWATTS of energy into your gas tank in 2 minutes. try to get a battery pack to recharge that fast or hold that much energy and what you have is a BOMB (literally, a coupla sticks of dynamite)..
However, you cannot fill up the gas tank at home. That is one of the killer features of the battery: no more annoying visits to the gas station, just plug it in when you get home. No more fiddling around with plastic gloves/wait for your fingers to stop smelling of diesel.
And seriously, driving more than 800km in a day is a long stretch.
But I do not really believe that range will be the range on a motorway for a holiday-packed car :)
OK, you can't fill up 3MW at home either, in any reasonable time. The battery pack in the Chevy Volt goes ~40 miles. It's a 16KW battery, but is never less than half full for saftey and battery longevity. It takes 8 hours to recharge that 8KW over a home 2Phase 22v outlet, and that's no ordinary outlet like you plug you're dryer into, that's a high AMP circuit like an inline hot water heater, 80-120amps... Most homes don't even have a power box that can support it (most "modern" homes have a total 200amp panel, my 4600sqft 2 year old home only has 320 available).
40 miles = 8kw. OK, easy math is 50miles : 10kw. 500 miles = 100kw. 1kwh = 1 hour, so 100 hours to fully charge at home... They can make a denser battery, but you can only put juice in as fast as you have it available to you. Even the "fast charge" 3-phase 400Amp rigs being tested for SCiB batteries (the 80% charge in 15 minute batteries) is based on a 12Kw pack. So even on fast charge, which is only available on industrial grade circuits and not on common residential streets, would take 3+ hours to recharge, assuming the battery can actually suck it in that fast and the grid can handle the load of a couple cars doing that at once.
It's NOT the next step, it;s a later one, our next step is efficincy improvements to gas engines, followed by a massive investment in grid expansion to support those electrci cars.
It's also only going to happen for about 30% of the people in the world, since the rest have nowhere to plug-in said electreic car... even with a milti-trillion dollar investment in wind power, and 15-20 trillion in grid overhaul over 30 years, you;re still not going to change the fact that charging at the power station down the street on a fast-charge rig is going to cost twice what charging at home would, and since charging at home is only 50% cheaper per mile driven (in energy terms only, not accounting for the premium price on the car), it will be impossible for people without garrages to break even on the massive price difference of a $10K battery pack vs a petrol car.
Chemical energy storage? Yea, it's called HYDROCARBON. Screw batteries, screw off-peak power storage, use the electricity to MAKE gasoline, using waste CO2 as input into RWGS process engines. It;s technology used since WWII, and with modern changes to catalysts, heat exchangers, recouperators, and more, it can now be done for about $3 a gallon... 100% clean gas (no sulfer wastes) and it;s carbon nuetral, and available today. Stop screwing around with technologies that can be monopolized, start using something we have today that works, and lets people keep using current cars, current mechanics, current fuel infrastducture, and in 30-40 years when the grid and the battery industry are ready, we'll start with the electrci cars.
Coal: Output is mostly CO2. We can CAPTURE that CO2, feed it into an RWGS/RFTS catalytic processor, with some H2 and some additional water, and make ANY kind of hydrocarbon you want, without additional waste materials (other than O2, which there's pleanty of market for, and which releasing is not an issue).
Dotyenergy has solutions to make gasoline grades up through jet fuels for as little as $60 a barrel using off-peak wind energy. As we expand wind deployments, we have an increassin issue with what to do with the energy we donp;t need at the moment it's gernated. Their facilities can adjust dnaamically, in less than 1/60th of a second, to take that excess and turn it into carbon nuetral gasoline to run in our current cars.
The GRID needs a lot of work, but our energy production expansion is holding up. (getting power to where it;s NEEDED is the problem, not making it). This process lets us use excess energy made from cheap sourtces when it's not needed, turn it into fuel, and ship that fuel to places that can't support the additional electric loads on the grid. It will also feed wind energy expansion, which by nature also feeds grid expansion and overhaul.
There's enough wind availabe on non-farm, non-residential, easy to access (aka inexpensive to build on) land, plus some limited offshore deployments, within the boarders of the USA to power the entire hemesphere all by itself, and that's only using high tier wind areas suited for large scale wind deployments. We have pleanty of green energy. You're right, no grid = no electric cars (for now), but we CAN use that energy to make carbon nuetral fules, so who cares, we can still reduce carbon emissions from cars by over 60% in 30-40 years...
Great, 500 mioles off a charge.
Now:
- tell me over 100,000 miles it's break even or cheaper than driving a petrol car
- Tell me the battery lasts 300,000 miles
- Tell me the battery pack size does not reduce the vehicle storage capacity by more than a negligable amount (it can be mounted entirely under the floor and under the hood, not saccrificing any trunk space and leaving me with a flat floor inside the car)
- Tell me this 500 miles is based on a standard sized fully equipped sedan, or small SUV, and that a large SUV or minivan can also be equipped with a slightly larger battery and get the same range
- Tell me the charge time from 10% to 85% is less than 20 minutes, or there will still be a gas backup engine.
- Tell me charging on a standard home power supply (2 phase 220v) can be done in under 10 hours
- Tell me the materials in the battery pack are both common, there's enough of that material to support every car having packs within 30 years, and that the packs are easily reculced and easily repaired.
- Tell me the packs provide no dangerous chemical output when burned, can easily be put out if on fire, and are not subject to the combistion common in LiIon packs.
- Tell me you've included maintenance costs and higher insurance costs in the 100,000 and 300,000 mile vehicle costs.
- Tell me production is easy to ramp up quickly, and we can actually build enough facilities to make these batteries in capacity to satisfy demand.
- Tell me these batteries have other uses (laptops, phones, etc).
- What to do with people who don't have a garrage?
Even IF you get past these hurdles, provide an affordable solution (even if it's not exactly break even, but close enough to justify the expense in favor of cleaner air, which some still debatable on electric cars), there are other FAR more pressing issue:
The grid can NOT handle it, for more than 0.5% of us to have a plug-in hybrid, let alone full electric car, by 2020. We have enough aggregate power, yes, but not in the right places, and not at the right times of day, and the grid system can't suffle the load around properly. Large numbers of cars charging in any area would brown out local grids and cause transformer issues. We have 30-40 years of work and trillions of dollars to spend before we can let electric cars start to become the norm.
I know the response: "We have to do SOMETHING now, and this is something, the other options are too far down the road..." Well, partly right. mostly wrong.
1) Vehicle efficincy changes in ordinary petrol cars can compete directly with the CO2 savings of buying an electric. We CAN drive 50MPG in an ordinary engine in a car on a competitive size to an electric. We don't becauase those engines are not universally offered in larger sized cars, and hardly at all in America.
2) Cross-over hybrids (electric drive, gas generator, very small battery) are a cheaper option, and will limit the electrical draw from the grid while doubling average fuel economy at a $1-2K premium instead of 8-12K premium for full electric.
3) We can make UNLIMITED fuel in a carbon nuetral fashion for about $3 a gallon using RFTS and waste carbon from coal plants. There's enough material to make gas today for about half the US fleet, and this technology is proven, and available now (www.dotyenergy.com). Keep running the current cars (replace them over time with more efficient ones) and do it with no additional CO2 released... Over time, this will be a 60% vreduction in total CO2 output from cars, and gives us the 30-40 years we need to overhaul the grid.
4) Abandon H2 investments, stop wasting money on green technology that can't make impacts for 20+ years, stop wasting money on solar (we have enough wind at both a lower price and longer lifespan, and simpler deployment in North america to power the entire hemisphere on it's own and then some). Take ALL those billions and billions and invest it instead into vehicle replacement programs to get the worst guzzlers off the road sooner.
Licensing is a tiny fraction of what we pay for our infrastructure.
besides, we looked at the math. We have over 2,500 MS Server licenses. We don't buy support, we pay on a case by case basis or buy blocks of support hours. Support total costs us under $15K anually. We have an EA to cover upgrade costs, and don;t buy licences on a one-to-one basis for servers either.
With RedHat and Suse, we pay nothing for the OS, but we buy support on each and every install (since support is tracked on a system to system basis by hteir organizations), and in the end, each RedHat licence actually costs more than each Windows (standard) License according to our IS Finance folks. The difference, mostly, is that it's easier to support and patch Linux systems in VMWare, especially on a mainframe where we can utilize single binary imaging. There are just less regulatory and compliance hurdles to Linux.
In the end though, the only reason we use Linux is not because it;s cheaper to license or easier to maintain, but because it run in s390x, and microsoft does not, so IFL licensing saves us millions per year vs x86 and x64 licensing... When they make a version of Windows for s390x hardware, that will change fast an d we'll deploy a lot more microsoft OS.
so, then, you're still not convinced trickly down economoics was a flop?
If you really think the 5-10 seconds saved is that critical for a non-critical thing like playing music (which can just as easily be done with in-dash systems today), then thats fine. This is not a concern for the 99+% of drivers, only a fraction of tweakers.
Even my GPS takes about 5-8 seconds to load after power on. i get in the car, and turn it on, it;s another 15-20 seconds before I've gotten the iPod plugged in and docked and start a playlist. If the in-car computer took that long to come up, that's not an obstacle, provided the car actually runs... I'm not looking for a getaway vehicle, I've got 30-45 seconds to turn my stuffg on, tune in, put on a seat belt, check the mirrors and put it in drive. If the complete car computer took that long, but saved me messing with an iPod and GPS, it;s break even, with existing BIOS...
I'm assuming of course these in-car comuters use basic hardware, not PXE boot, RAID controllers, more than 2GB of basic RAM, etc, and only take 5-8 seconds to post (not 42 seconds to pass BIOS as my gaming and video editing desktop rig does, fo which thuis new tech would only shave the first 8 seconds of that pre-boot time anyway).
Handover resources to cluster node, sync cached writes, terminate service level applications, confirm disconnections, export log data, perform pre-shutdown security check, and more.
This is not all servers, but specifically MS Exchange servers tend to take forever to shut down, as well as many protal servers and clustered servers running other database apps.
Incidently, the Exchange boxes are the most powerful X64 chassis we have in the building (we have lots of P5 and P6+ chassis that smoke them, not to mention the z9s and z10s, but for x64, they're hot boxes). The CPU is fairly idle during shutdown, it's mostly wait states and timeouts making the reboots take that long.