to sum up, it's a $500 device that you plan to use for at least 2 years... Buy a 2 year warranty, get your batteries replaced for free. As far as a loaner phone? It's not even an option on my Motorola or my LG phones from Sprint or Verizon. If I have an issue, I either 1: have to go to the store, hand in my phone, wait 1 day for diagnostics, then wait 1-2 days to get a replacement (assuming my model is more than 4 months old and no longer carried in the store), or 2: I have to call in for a warranty replacement, waste 2 hours on hold or talking to people, pay for a cross shipping service, and still be without a phone for 24 hours or more. In either case, this is only an option while the phone is under manufacturer warranty, doesn't cover the battery at all (which is $40-70 to replace), and I have to pay $4 per month for the privilege of having an extended warranty, but I have to pay that every month through the first year too (and it's more for a PDA phone).
Apple's policy is more than reasonable seeing that by not having a replaceable battery, the phone can be weatherproof (not necessarily water proof), doesn't have battery contacts that corrode with time (causing battery wear and unnecessary overheating), and doesn't fall apart and loose connection (or power reset) if I drop it. $29.00 for a loaner phone is a great idea, and virtually unique in the industry. $80 for a battery replacement is not out of line, especially including shipping charges, compared to replacement batteries, that don't last as long, in other similar phones.
Oh yea, whether Apple's site if easy enough to locate battery information or not (it is, and was posted at the same time or before phones were on sale), the fact that it's PRINTED ON THE BOX, and on all sales brochures on hand in the store, not to mention the media coverage for it, there's no way the customer was not informed before purchasing the phone, unless he chose not to read the information at hand, and he had every opportunity to return the phone unopened or not activated for a full refund when he did read the box.
I attribute nothing to that republican congress under Clinton. Remember, they bitterly fought every move Clinton made, including TWICE completely shutting down the house/senate (http://www.cnn.com/US/9512/budget/budget_battle/i ndex.html) when they failed to approve a budget. They voted down dozens of Democratic bills that would have lowered taxes on the middle and lower class, raised taxes several times, and approved spending for programs that were unnecessary. Were it not for Republican roadblocks, experts estimate an additional 50-75% more would have been shaved from the debt, much of that carrying into Bush's first few years, every single one of which has increased our national debt at a record breaking pace (since WWII).
It took every effort Clinton and the Democrats had, a full 8 years, to change record breaking rises into a 3 year drop. The 2 years that dropped the most were bush's first 2 years in office, during which time, he undid most of the legislation previously passed (or simply ignored it) and we again have 5 straight years in a row of record breaking growth. In fact, based on information from http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/faq.html, each year a republican has been in power has seen a higher increase than a Democrat since the 1970s. Prior to that, the debt was basically flat back to 1945 where it in 3 years dropped almost $0.5T.
Comparing now to Clinton's early years, I pay significantly more in tax (property, sales, AND income), have fewer community services available, worse performing schools, higher fuel prices, and worse roads. Even in IT my salary increases are not out pacing my expenses year over year. They were in Clinton's time. I don't give a rats ass if the man had his cock sucked or not. He was a financial genius, was loved by other nations, and did more not only for the USA in his 8 years than any other president in 50, but also improved our overall image with the rest of the world. In 6 years, bush and his congress undid all that, and actually set us back to a worse state than before Clinton ever started the recovery process from Bush Sr. and Reagan's years.
I am NOT a Democrat, and may very well vote Republican for president this time through, but you can bet I'm not voting Republican for ANY single republican seat up in congress. It's really the congress that has been fucking us for the last 20 years. How many Republicans have been accused, investigated, or imprisoned for crimes in office in the last 20 years, and how many Democrats? Granted, Bush has likely been the worst president in our countries history, but other than the money blown on his Daddy's war, and a few bills he signed that CONGRESS passed, he really hasn't been a leader at all, and has not proposed any bad legislation that the Republican party didn't ask him to. He's simply a dumb puppet, and does what he's told. He's the Republican's perfect candidate. Some of the Republicans running now for president won't be so easily swayed. Of course, looking at the Democratic offering, there's a few there that, if they actually get a party nomination, I don't think anyone can stand against.
Developers don't need a holiday, they get the opportunity to attend dozens of "developer day" events all over the world. Support staff have their own appreciation day (I can't find a link to what day that is, but our company celebrated it recently). What do IT guys get? Calls at 3AM, ever shrinking budgets, every greater system complexity, and occassionally, if they're lucky, they get a day in a classroom that ends in a test and all they get is a shirt that in many cases I have gotten that actually reads "...and all i got was this lousy t-shirt."
My position is not officially "sys-admin" but I support hundreds of them with my companies backup product and am constantly on remote connections rebuilding servers, diagnosing systems, and personally feel the pain not only of one shop's system troubles, but can attest to the fact that sys admins all over the country have some of the most thankless jobs going. I work 60 hours every week, am wakened frequently from sleep, and spend hours on conference calls with panicking customers, resellers, and site managers....and I don't even have to deal with end users!
I barely stay sane in my position, and I don't have budget issues or roll-out deadlines. I don't know how you guys do it. I did it years ago when things were simpler and even then it was a suck job. I've also been a programmer before and can definitively say that even under production deadlines, and the stress of problem solving and code testing, being a coder is a hell of a lot easier than being an admin. It also takes (typically) requires less frequent training on new systems and processes (once you know C++ you're good for 10 years), and programming PAYS BETTER. So any of you coders that bitch about how cushy our job is, I say to you, YOU TRY IT! Being a sys admin sucks almost as working for a city government, and yet hundreds of admins I know DO work for cities, ouch.
So if this movie includes "young Spock" does this mean it takes place or at least flashes back to Captain Pike's time, or even the first Enterprise (though Spock didn't serve on that ship in any story I read). The founding of the Federation would make a good story, lots of characters and political views of the world, but few ships and an young federation means not much space battle, so they wouldn't be able to waste too much on special effects and can actually write a good story for once.
Personally, I'm looking more forward to Babylon 5's upcoming flick than this, but we'll give it a shot anyway.
UPS are typically a 2U or 4U solution and can power up to half a rack. Data centers almost always charge less for U's associated with devices that don't add to power or heating costs (KVM, terminal display, tape jukeboxes, etc). Rack space itself is cheap if the costs of cooling and power can be eliminated. A company we partner with (we back up their racks, not use their space) charge a base price for the 1st U per server, plus a lower price per additional U (for the same server). Buying a 1/4 rack, half rack, or full rack is always at a discount compared to U-by-U purchase. Any reasonable configuration is going to be at least 3 individual servers anyway, so an extra 2U for the UPS divided out to a few servers should not be worth considering when looking at the cost of power loss. Some data centers even include this additional UPS space (and the UPS itself) as part of the regular fees.
This is exactly the reason my company manufactures and sells backup appliances that 1: use disk not tape, 2: offer real time encryption of selective servers, and most importantly 3: offers electronic off site data replication using packet encryption (whether or not the data encryption module is installed). Archives only need to be run weekly or monthly, not daily, so no one is porting disks or tapes back and forth. Any data leaving the unit goes from here to there (typically a secure location), and typically never back again. 30-90 days of data are on site, live and restoreable, in the unit at all times so you can restore data from weeks ago without going to get archives at all. The unit supports about 20 different OS and has integrated BareMetal and support for Exchange, SQL, Group wise and more. No client licenses to buy, only the backup unit itself, and we undercut solution costs from Symantec and CA typically by 50%.
We did a live demo of our box to a big company, and while in the middle of the presentation, someone walked by the conference room wearing an Iron Mountain shirt, had security let him into the server room, filled a case with tapes, and walked out of the building without so much as a second glance. We asked "does anyone know who that was?" and we got a room full of blank stares. When we asked "were those tapes encrypted" someone said "well, we bought an encryption module, but we haven't gotten it working yet. It's too slow to back up our SAN box reliably."
Do you know how easy it is to find a company that uses Iron Mountain, figure out their rotational schedule, and then buy a shirt from ebay and walk in to steal tapes like this? A month or so of surveillance and a good story about leaving your clipboard at another site across town should be good enough to get you past just about any front desk security guard. Worse, if you've got a secretary or intern moving tapes for you you're just asking to get robbed. However, it's far more likely for the theft to be internal. Many IT people are willing to accept a few thousand to "loose" a few tapes. Unless their bar coded, he can do this without anyone even knowing their missing by substituting other tapes back into the rotation.
Check out Unitrends.com and ask questions if this sounds too good to be true. If you're serious, someone can hook you up with a reseller near you to demonstrate the product.
Well, I know Lotus Notes is still hiding out there. I have several clients who's Notes databases are being backed up by our DPUs. I've also seen some Dbase out there (My Mom uses it in her accounting practice). Amiga and Commodore are trying to make comebacks. I know a lot of layers who still have WordPerfect around to access old documents. The rest, as far as I can tell, are dead. Good riddance to VAX!
In a 1st world retail market, you are absolutely right. Keep in mind the 1LPC initiative is not for people to buy these, but governments. You can be sure they're not going to throw these out in bulk simply to replace them with a slightly better model. We're talking about giving notebooks to people who have trouble affording even simple education and in many cases food. The only way to make this program succeed without people wanting to kill each other or sell the machines for food is to make them so cheap and ubiquitous that everyone gets one. The problem we'll have to watch is how do we eventually (2-3 years from now) replace that societies machines with new ones without introducing competition between new and old. To do this, things like a brighter screen, faster chip, and more need to be played down. The screen may be better, or creaper, but it should not be obvious to the users. Processor speed is unimportant as even the slowest chip will provide the same experience as a faster one due simply to limited content. We're not giving them entertainment centers (does it even have a sound card?) just simple machines for web and word processing. Since they're primarily for children only (and likely won't even leave school grounds) replacing them from time to time should not be a real issue as children don't really care.
As for recycling, since its a government program, it should be easy for defective units to be reclaimed, replaced, and possibly centrally repaired. They're supposed to be modular, with field replaceable components. We're not talking about even having real IT support, just simple repair, re-image, and return. Governments in poor countries will pay people a couple of bucks a day to do that, not $50 per hour like here. I'm also assuming since governments will be giving these away basically free, some tracking process will be used and punishments will be steep for destroying one or stealing one from someone else.
Well, they DO test this regularly, at least generator fail over in the event of power loss. Unfortunately, it appears that a significant power SURGE occurred from a transformer back feed. This resulted in the flywheels in their generators spinning down before power could be switched over and likely some system that detects power loss probably got fried in the surge and never notified the generator controller of the loss. 1) they're lucky they have a REALLY good ground fault interrupter as this likely would have cooked every server in every rack otherwise, or at least every surge stopgap between the line feed and the racks, which still could have caused days of downtime to replace, 2) how does one test for a several megawatt power surge? 3) Only some of their racks went down so at least some battery or generator power came online, just not all of them, or not ones that powered certain rooms.
That said, the fact that they're running exclusively on generator until they identify and fix this fault, and that the power company and the generator operators are jumping in means they're more than willing to blow several thousand in fuel costs to make sure this does not happen again, and I would expect they'll bill the generator manufacturer for this failure and all related costs (which that company will likely bill to an insurance provider) and possibly find another generator company or add a few more redundant systems.
The fact that the clients are not insisting on installing UPS systems with at least 30 minute run times IN the racks with their servers means either the clients are cheap, or no one considered that a fuse, breaker, or PDU in a rack could blow and take out half a rack or more if it wasn't on internal UPS power, regardless of whether power was on or not... This is flawed redundancy thinking.
Business Continuity should be 25% of total IT spending (labor, hardware & software, backup, everything combined). This does not include redundant co-lo for users, only servers. If you want redundancy for everyone, users included, take you IT budget now (without that redundancy) and add 125% to it (it costs MORE than double).
It's every 24 months, not 18, and it has nothing to do with power or speed. CPU speed has increased at significantly higher pace than Moore's law. Moore's law views the number of transistor junctions in an IC, nothing more. The size, power consumption, MIPS, and other values have had significantly different curves, most at higher paces than the law, and not in direct comparison to transistor count. CPU power (in watts) over all is relatively the same as where it started in the 80s, and is currently reducing even as Moore's law increases. http://www.eng.tulane.edu/Tef/Slides/Tulane-Moore' s%20Law%20Sept02.ppt
Also, Moore's law clearly states that the number of transistors doubles "as costs remain the same." This means if we can have a $100 laptop today, in 2 years it will still cost $100 (or more accurately the portion of the $100 cost represented by the CPU will be the same), but the CPU will have 2X the number of transistors. It may be faster, maybe not. It may use more or less wattage. This is determined by transistor spacing, impedance layers (SoI, etc), volts, and clock frequency, not Moore's law. The articles premise is simply a logical fallacy.
One more thing: Moore's law does not apply to EVERY processor, only the leading generation vs. the predecessor. There's no reason to believe the notebook will use the current processor generation, and in fact likely it will not. This has no impact at all on the validity of the law as other processors will exist that follow the law. They may simply decide that instead of the build cost for the notebook being $90 to sell at $100, that they'll use previous generation hardware using more modern manufacturing processes, and reduce the build cost to $60-80, and still likely make it faster or better somehow in the process.
Were I a betting man, I'd put money on the $100 laptop not only having a faster chip with more transistors, but that it will use less watts, have a higher resolution display, faster or stronger wireless antenna, more storage, and more ports when we look at it in 2 years. Of course, part of the design of the machine, and it's low cost, is the intent of model line longevity. We don't expect to have a new one of these every 2-4 months like the retail PC industry does. Likely, this will be re-engineered at most once per year.
Learned fear is one of the primary motivations behind the conscious and the ability to determine right and wrong. Take away fear, and watch out what people can be convinced to do.
I suppose if your level of moral capacity is to equate whether you'll get caught with being moral, then that's accurate. This is the moral capacity of your average 3-4 year-old, incidentally. Once you're past about 4 years old you've got the capacity to understand the 'would I want to be treated that way?' principle. (note that although we all have this capacity, we don't all use it fully all the time).
Well, one would expect there to be this level of morality, but then, such things as rape do exists anyway. I didn't say more people would get raped, but this could definetly be used as an alternative to other more difficult to acquire chemicals. More importantly, since the person would be completely lucid, and remember everything, they might not even realize they'd been raped. If that were true, it might be a real problem...
The Power company in Columbia, SC just allows the meter to run backwards, so yes, it's 100% compensation. The power company I have here at my current house refuses to buy it at all. They use meters that can't run backwards and their contract specifically states that unused residentially generated power is not compensated.
Why are electrics bad? 1 - Environmental impact from battery production, which is very high in the case of batteries using significant quantities of heavy metals. Also many batteries are not recycled. If only 1% of the batteries are not recycled, then moving to all electric cars would represent an awful lot of very nasty material that isn't where it needs to be for humans and other species we care about to be happy. -- Simple, make recycling madatory. it is in most states. people throw out regular batteries because it's easy. Try getting your garbage company to haul off 300 lbs of car batteries. You just try. Also, these metals, or other by products, can be easily buried if we have to, and a proper containment facility can be made. FYI: no landfil in the history of the US has ever been found to have leaked, ever.
2 - Theoretical energy density of chemical batteries is lower than liquid fuels in use today. This results in many of the same problems as hydrogen in terms of space; it also increases weight (in spite of disposing of the ICE!) -- It's lower than liquid fuel, but TONS safer, and better then we can do with H2 if you include the size and weight of the container necessary to safely transport it. Batteries are also getting better as we've now learned through nanomanufacturing to not store in a material, but between nanoscale capacitors, increasing battery density by as much as 9 fold (didn't you read that/. article a few weeks ago?) 3 - Today, environmental impact from adding electric cars is greater than using biofuels (if we didn't make them from crops which make no sense as feedstocks.) -- How is completely green energy on the grid more impactful than biofulel? We can get energy from wind in the north, sun in the south, geothermin and water in a lot of places, and super conduct the electricity anywhere we want. Biofules have significantly greater impact. And btw, H2 has more of a carbon footprint than ethanol, and though it burns clean, the manufacturing process uses 50-100% more energy than charging batteries does, and creates billions of tons of O2 that we can't simply let into the atmosphere anymore than we can CO2. 4 - Cars are quiet and people don't hear them coming:) -- lol. though fuel cells have this problem to no?:)
I'm lazy so that's all I can think of immediately.
Why is ethanol bad? 1 - Currently made from ridiculous feedstocks, esp. corn - but any topsoil-based feedstock use is basically wrongheaded barring taking steps to mitigate damage thereof. Example, when plants grow in nature the parts that aren't eaten by someone fall on the ground and become mulch. We tend to burn that stuff, returning all of the CO2 into the air at once and depleting the soil. We then use chemical fertilizers in many cases (esp. factory farming) which damages the soil. --Make it from sugar beets. Corn is BAD, and I hate we're using it at all. It's only the 5th best thing we have an industry for to make ethanol. It yields about 1/3rd the ethanol per acre of better materials that are not feed stock. Also, we no longer need crops at all! Cellulostic ethanol can be made from wood pulp, kudzu, and virtually any plant based material. We could even use the stalks of feed stocks that we'd normally burn to make the ethanol...
And that's about it:) Actually the energy return for ethanol so far is just piss-poor compared to biodiesel, which can be made from algae, which can be grown in fresh or salt water. The algaes do tend to produce both carbohydrates and oils, however, so if you could efficiently separate them (perhaps with that cyclone machine thingy? I can never find a URL for that any more and I'm on a modem, so if anyone else has a link handy, please comment) you could ostensibly use the stuff to produce a plethora of biofuels. It also makes nice fertilizer. So my argument basically is that we should be using biodiesel from algae. I'd like to see turbine series plugin hybrids which
We're talking fuel cells, not combustion. Propane is a risky repair too, but fortunately, extremely uncommon, and shops charege a LOT for someone trainined to fix those.
1) Yes, there is a fire/explosion potential. There are also fire/explosion potentials with conventional hydrocarbon fuels and batteries. In fact, ANY system in which energy is stored has the potential to be a hazard. However, when you quantify the potential hazards in terms of flammability/explosion concentration limits, and the physical properties of materials such as vaporization and diffusion rates, it turns out that hydrogen is just as safe if not safer than gasoline. -- are you factoring in vapor expansion or liquid to gaseous state hydrogen? Did you see what happened in NYC yesterday? That was only 120 atmosphere pressure. Liquid H2 would be hundreds of PSI, and we'd have to keep it cold just to keep it from exploding.
2) Yes, metal hydrides do take a long time to charge. BUT, if you are using such a system, it tends to negate all the hazards you listed in point number 1. You can't claim both disadvantages at the same time. However, in practice (for those lucky few who have FC cars already), filling a compressed hydrogen tank is just as fast (if not faster) than filling a car with gasoline. -- 5-8 hour refulings are simply not an option for anyone, so lets dismiss that theory now completely. Even if we could make it 15 minutes, there's be lines hours long just to get to the pumps to start fueling. We are talking about compressed to liquid fuel. It's really the only option. Those do fill quick, like normal tanks, but the inherent danger puts it out of likely acceptance.
3) Fucking is only expensive when you pay a prostitute for it. Instead, you should find a nice person, make a lifelong commitment, and get married. A relationship in which love and commitment come first - and the fucking is an expression of that love and commitment - is much more meaningful and much less expensive. Same thing with energy. If people would make a commitment to understanding hydrogen and supporting it, then the eventually the costs would not be prohibitive, and the overall experience would be better as the technology matures. -- cost to make vs cost to make, deliver, and use safely, is something H2 can't bridge. In some industries (factories) it will make more sense to use H2, and I fully support it as a technology there, just not in small point applications like transportation.
4) Burning hydrogen? So are you trying to put down the fuel cell technology, or the hydrogen combustion engine? Both are emerging technologies, but only the latter can be compared directly with hydrocarbon combustion engines. The real fact is that although an "equivalent gallon" of hydrogen (which BTW is how it gets sold at the pump so that the government can charge a fuel tax without having to think too hard) is more expensive than gasoline or ethanol, fuel cells are SIGNIFICANTLY MORE efficient than combustion engines, making the cost-per-mile significantly cheaper. From the carbon waste standpoint, consuming significantly less fuel per mile driven equates to less carbon per mile, wherever the carbon is used in the hydrogen production cycle. Additionally, here's a question for you: since carbon emission is a growing problem, and one of the promising solutions is carbon capture and sequestration, which will be easier - capturing carbon at a few large hydrocarbon to hydrogen plants, or capturing the carbon at millions of individual tailpipes? Eventually scale will favor the hydrogen economy. It's just a matter of time and patience. -- Fuel cells are more efficient, but H2 is only a storage medium for energy, not energy itself. Use the same energy to make the H2 and put that in a battery instead. There's less loss overall and it will require fewer power plants and less money to do it. Batteries also cost a hell of a lot less than fuel cells and in some cases less than traditional engines. Carbon sequestering is a good idea, but not making carbon at all, or using renewable carbon are both cheaper and easier ideas to implement, and we can do it now, not later when you finish your research and then mark up your technolog
1 - So a hydrogen-powered car is a bomb but a gasoline-powered car isn't? What kind of drugs are you smoking? -- H2 is compressed to several times atmospheric volume. Whether or not it's flammable is irrelevant. Gas cars don't explode, they simply burn. H2 will explode like the streets of NY did yesterday! It's a vapor expansion issue, and there's a MASSIVE concussive wave that will kill people and shred the vehicle into shrapnel. What part of that don't you understand? In solid infused H2 tanks, we don't have this fear, but what happens if the tank (or fuel line, or valve, etc) is leaking inside a closed garage overnight? Have you seen a propane explosion before? H2 is more violent as it burns both cleaner and faster than propane.
2 - There is absolutely no need to mimic the same refueling paradigm of the gas-powered car. For example, what's wrong with replacing the entire fuel cell? -- Well, this requires massive warehousing of used, replaceable fuel calls, standardization across multiple vehicle types and power curves, a system capable of lifting and replacing a 400 pound fuel cell, and dozens of times more trucks to move them around. For every car you're talking about making what, 5-10 fuel cells? NUTS I tell you. There are 1.3 million cars in the new work city area. Where do you plan to store 6 million 400 pound fuel cells?
3 - So? Do you really believe that gas will cost the same in the near future or even become cheaper? Better be prepared than grabbing your ankles and biting your lip. -- Gas won't be cheaper, but electric energy will be, and so will Ethanol. This is not suspicion, but market research based reality. It will go up before it comes down, but gas will only continue to go up. H2 is already 10 times more expensive per mile driven than ethanol. It will get better, but it can never directly compete, especially vs cellulostic ethanol production. The balancing factor is if ethanol and electricity go up too far, farmers can start making it and selling it themselves and reap the profits while undercutting the local filling station. ANYONE can make ethanol. Oil costs money because access to the resource is strictly controlled.
4 - if the hydrogen is produced from thermal or hydroelectric power plants, how many "carbon waste" do you end up spending? None? That's nice. -- True, we could make 100% of hydrogen using green technology, but since H2 is an energy storage medium, not real energy, we can make electricity to power cars directly and it will take 50% fewer power plants, and thus cost less. Can I bill you for that extra infrastructure?
5 - So? We also didn't have any when the first "auto mobile" appeared. In fact, the infrastructure is already in place and there isn't absolutely no reason to avoid upgrading the present infrastructure. Should we stick with the old, dangerous, unreliable method just because you are confortable with it? Obviously not. -- OK, you've got a lot of logic issues here. First, when cars appeared, we didn't have a society that "required" them. People also didn't have roads to drive on half way across a nation in one day. It took 30 years to build that infrastructure and a society to use it. We don't have 30 years. We're also not talking about upgrading our infrastructure, we're talking about a need to replace it, and with one that requires significant safety measures, a complete (and redundant) fuel delivery system, and more. We could eliminate 89 octane (which almost nobody uses) and pump ethanol through those pipes and pumps without ANY modification. We can add electric refueling stations in homes, business parking lots, shopping centers, and more, with no more difficulty than a little paving, some cables, and some parking meters. Adding H2 is extremely complicated, expensive, dangerous, and we don't have a place to put the H2 without making huge holes in the middle of cities to bury the tanks (which require 3 times the space of existing gas tanks and could take out whole blocks if they rupture). Next, people un
1 - (on H2 tank bombs) Energy per cubic mass is much higher in H2 as with other systems. Common fuels used now are liquid, not compressed. Propane vehicles exist, but usually only as vans or other large vehicles to accomodate an extremely strong tank system that will survive enevn extremely bad crashes. This however isn't my concern, as I expect H2 tanks to be equally built. Keep in mind, H2 is only a liquid, even under pressure, at extremely cold temperatures. We can't safely generate the pressure needed to make liquid H2 without energy to keep it at more than 100 below zero. If the car looses the ability to keep the liquid frozen, the tank will rupture in an extremely violent vapor explosion. I'm not even worried if this catches fire. We're talking about pressure here. See that explosion of steam in NY yesterday? We also now would be giving terrorists a new way to make car bombs. A small piece of shaped charge (available to most construction crews) could be placed on an H2 tank, and an O2 tank next to it. This would be a vicious bomb, easy to make, and freely available, and nearly untraceable.
2- (underground tanks) propane tanks, though liquid, are hot pressurized as much. They're also typically above ground to prevent shear in earthquakes. Also keep in mind the gas in these tanks is used to fill small containers once or twice a season for home grills and such. Tanks to fill cars with H2 would be massive, and everywhere. An explosion of 1 would likely rupture any other within 1 block. The pressure expansion alone (let alone flame) would level everything in 200 feet and kill dozens of people.
3 (expense) H2 electrolysis uses about as much energy as filling a battery, sure. However, add to this transportation, cold storage, and the energy required to move a pressurized frozen liquid from 1 tank to another, and the expense becomes very high, not to mention the cost of the H2 engine, storage tanks, and more that batteries don't have issue with.
4 (power for electric cars) Your partly right, we don't have enough grid power in a lot of places to make electric cars work for 100% of americans today. Keep in mind the average age of a vehicle on the road is 27 years. It will be a LONG while until we're all using electric cars (25-50 years). We have a lot of time to add parking stalls at rest stops, shopping malls, and more. I imaging parking meters with credit card slots and simply 120 volt safety capped lines. Also keep in mind this way we're adding the power needs to local, distributed grids. Want to make H2? it's going to be done at only a few centralized locations. getting enough power to those factories will require a super conducting grid anyway. We're still talking watts to watts being equivalent. I'm also not suggesting we run 100% electric, but only from home to work and home to local shopping. We'll likely still run ethanol on long travels (or have a "family outing" vehicle or rent a car for long travel) Infrastructure for recharging cars is simple every day technology. Infrastructure for filling H2 cars requires customized pumping systems, radiators for cooling tanks as they heat when filled, electricity to power the radiators, and extreme safety measures and more. Also, batteries can charge in less than 2 minutes, H2 not in less than 100 times that long. A drive from DC to NY on H2 would take almost 3 days while you wait 5 hours to fill for every 2 hours of driving. Electricity already gets to these places by itself. H2 has to be brought there...
5 (battery size) current electric only cars run for up to 200 miles on a charge and are nice small compact cars. The size of battery (getting smaller every day) is only about 2 large suitcases, easily distributed under floorboards, in wheel hubs, and in place of larger engine cavities and transmissions. Currently, and for simplicity, most cars have batteries in the trunk, but even in the case of the prius plugin crossover vehicle, you only loose 20% more of your t
The problem with solid storage of H2 is that even the best system only allows a small amount of H2 to be stored (about enough to go 100 miles) and the substrate is a heavy metal, weighing 92% of the tank's mass (typically several hundred pounds). It's extremely safe, but heavy and the metals are expensive. Problem 2 is that filling this tank generates massive amounts of heat. Liquid based radiators are necessary to dissipate this heat actively while the talk is filled, and the H2 necessary to go as little as 100 miles could take 5-8 hours to fill.
In my vast experience, working in multiple markets for a company that sells electronically vaulted backup data and a target customer of SMB market size, I typically find the smaller, localized ISPs are offering BETTER speeds at lower prices than the big guys (to remain competitive mostly I guess). Rarely do i find a small town ISP that can't provide at least 2Mbit down and 512Kbit up to all their customers. It's not an issue of line quality as cable and DSL are capable of per-connections speeds far in excess of that mark with technology that is both cheap and readily available.
Sometimes the issue is the ISP itself only having a moderate connection to the national backbone or a larger parent telco that manages their connection. Buying high speed bandwidth for these cases costs less per user the faster you go. If the ISP can't afford to go from 1 OC3 to 2 or more to accommodate that speed, or switch to 1Gbit fiber, then they are not providing an adequate customer service to their community, and deserve to be overtaken by a larger competitor.
ISPs, even small ones are massively profitable if they're correctly managed. Extreme speed connections that these ISPs buy cost about 10K per month (at wholesale prices, and even less if they contract for more than one to the backbone). At 2Mbit per user, that's 500 connections, or $20 per month per active user. Cable services are shared bandwidth systems, and they account for the condition that not all users will be at 100% capacity all the time. Normally, they run at 150-200% load or more, accounting for 750-1000 connected users per gigabit fiber line, cutting that cost further to about $10-15 per month. Even small ISPs should be able to provide 2Mbit service lines to customers for $29.99 per month, and over a 1 year contract term, profit about $50 per customer, each year after should yield another $250 per user. Most are still charging $44.95 or more for this connection.
On top of this, small ISPs usually provide higher speed alternatives at far below market rate of their competitors. Advanced options like having a static IP is often a $10 option from a local ISP. The ISP I have here is offering me 10Mbit down, 2Mbit up, static IP, 5 e-mails, ghost e-mail accounts for spam filtering, 1GB online storage, and they monitor my in-home security system too, and that's all for $99 per month. A basic 5 down 1 up connection (with static) is $39.95. Time Warner Cable wants $139.99 for 4 down 512 up with a static, and none of the other features are included. This is in Rural Columbia SC, more than 10 miles from city center
Sure, I come across small towns all the time (like Myrtle Beach) where even pathetic connections like 512 down 128 up cost $49.99 per month. This law will not effect the local ISP because they have a legally protected monopoly and there not only isn't any competition, but they're not required by law to share their poles, so there won't be competition until the FCC regulates there to be, or until enough people complain. With this law, we can document a minimum speed as "high speed" internet, and the local monopoly will either have to offer faster service or stop calling it "high speed" internet. Whole zip codes will no longer be considered "broadband available" under this law for easter SC unless the ISPs get on with the game.
If ISPs don't start complying, I expect increasing federal pressure. We're WAY behind the world in broadband penetration. With this law changed, we're going to drop 5-10 places on the list overnight. Some areas of the country are too difficult or expensive to wire, but most other places, like Myrtle beach, and going to be a sore spot for congressmen, and they will "make" them comply one way or the other. Those who refuse will be deregulated forcibly and go out of business. It's their choice, to fight this, their choice to comply. Compliance is not expensive. It will effect the bottom line. Those who really, truly, can't afford it, are mismanaged ISPs, and would likely be out of business in a
I live in middle South Carolina. I had 3 different companies quote me solar installations for a new home I'm building. The best offer was going to take me 23 years to recoup the cost, assuming the cells actually lasted that long without failure, hail damage, or other issues out of warranty. All that money would still have only covered about 60% on average of my electric bill. My house is also in a lucky position where both sides of the A frame roof could have had cells and received sun all day long (roof faces N/S). This quote included covering the entire roof with cells that would have had an overhang on both sides of an additional 8 inches.
To get to 100% green solar energy, I was not only going to have to cover my entire roof, but add an additional bank of cells in the back yard almost 40 feet across that would actually track the sun as it moved. Since South Carolina only offers a single, one time solar subsidy of $2000 (which is actually federal money, meaning SC gives us NOTHING!), it would have taken me 27 years to pay off a complete 100% efficient solar solution (23 years at 60% efficiency). This did not take into account my added insurance value on the home, including solar panel rider policy outside of my deductibles, nor routine maintenance on the system, the fees and taxes I would still pay monthly to be on the grid (to sell power in the summer and buy it back in the winter), not interest paid on the mortgage for the system.
For solar to become reasonable for most people, the time to recoup the cost of the solution must be less time than the warranty on the product lasts. Say 5-7 years. Many states offer awesome solar subsidies, covering as much as 80% of the cost of the system up front. Even with that, my home would be an eyesore using current technology. Solar panels need to get to about 25% efficiency before even half of America can use them within reason.
RTFA. They're not dropping incoming attachments, but attachments you received, stored, and yourself chose not to delete. At some point, if the message goes unaccessed for a while, HotMail is deleting the attachments to save space. This is not fraud or tampering in any way, but a condition of service. Apparently, they give you 2GB of storage, but i guess to USE it, all your mail has to be current mail. They're not giving you an unlimited inbox to store whatever you want forever.
I'm not talking about connection speed, I'm talking about data type speed throttling. I may pay for a 10Mbit connection, but my ISP may still decide video and P2P traffic get capped at 512Kbps. Were I to download from "approved" partner sites, only then could I get 10Mbit. This means that to get real speed I may have to pay MORE to get my data from approved (partner) services, or services owned by the ISP. That's not "who wants more pays more" that's "if the ISP gets paid more, I can go faster" Services that pay the ISP will get prefered traffic, and smaller companies that can't compete with major network providers get little or no bandwidth. This creates artificial monopolies as well as an ISP may be contracted to only allow 1 popular MP3 site, and if I want music from someone other than Apple.com, it will download slower.
I don't care how cool they make the tank operate at. This was not something stopping them from being used, only increasing their cost due to insulating layers and radiator systems. Great, man made diamonds make them cooler, but at 3 times the cost, and the only benefit is we can reduce the cost of the cooling systems... Hello?
Lets face it, there's no way in hell any of us are ever driving a hydrogen car. Heres a list of reasons why: 1 - If you drive a liquid H2 car, you're driving A BOMB! One that can never be turned off, unplugged, get in a bad crash, or run out of fuel or it will explode! 2 - Solid (metal infused) H2 tanks take approximately 6-8 hours to refill with enough H2 to drive 150 miles. This is MUCH worse than electric only cars. (In fact, using Toshiba's new battery technology, we could refuel electric cars in 90 seconds, to 90% charge. 3 - it's FUCKING expensive!!! 4 - sure the H2 burns clean, but takes 3-5 times as much energy (ie carbon waste) to make it than burning ethanol, meaning its far WORSE for the environment (unless we can make it exclusively from wind, water, or solar power, which reasonably, we can't, but even if we could, it would still be cheaper to build and drive electric cars) 5 - we don't have ANYTHING resembling an industry for transportation, storage, or pumping of H2. 6 - we can't make an H2 pipelines unless the H2 is moved in a gaseous state, not liquid, and the pipes would be too big, too expensive, and too dangerous, not to mention expensive condensing systems required at each endpoint. 7 - what happens if the great big H2 tanks at the filling station are involved in an earthquake, terrorist attack, or extended power outage? Can you say goodbye to 3-5 city blocks? 8 - it's too damned big of a system. Cars would have to be the size of hybrid SUVs and loose either 2 seats or the trunk to run on H2 safely. 9 - There are several safer, cheaper, better, more environmentally sound alternatives, easier to implement solutions. 10 - will you trust a grease monkey to fix an H2 powered engine? (no offense to my many talented automotive engineering friends) Do you have any idea what it might take to fix an engine like this? can it even be repaired at the component level safely?
OK, thats 10 I though up while sitting here. Can you think of 10 reasons why electric cars are a bad solution? Or ethanol hybrids?
Meet the new date rape drug... Learned fear is one of the primary motivations behind the conscious and the ability to determine right and wrong. Take away fear, and watch out what people can be convinced to do.
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to sum up, it's a $500 device that you plan to use for at least 2 years... Buy a 2 year warranty, get your batteries replaced for free. As far as a loaner phone? It's not even an option on my Motorola or my LG phones from Sprint or Verizon. If I have an issue, I either 1: have to go to the store, hand in my phone, wait 1 day for diagnostics, then wait 1-2 days to get a replacement (assuming my model is more than 4 months old and no longer carried in the store), or 2: I have to call in for a warranty replacement, waste 2 hours on hold or talking to people, pay for a cross shipping service, and still be without a phone for 24 hours or more. In either case, this is only an option while the phone is under manufacturer warranty, doesn't cover the battery at all (which is $40-70 to replace), and I have to pay $4 per month for the privilege of having an extended warranty, but I have to pay that every month through the first year too (and it's more for a PDA phone). Apple's policy is more than reasonable seeing that by not having a replaceable battery, the phone can be weatherproof (not necessarily water proof), doesn't have battery contacts that corrode with time (causing battery wear and unnecessary overheating), and doesn't fall apart and loose connection (or power reset) if I drop it. $29.00 for a loaner phone is a great idea, and virtually unique in the industry. $80 for a battery replacement is not out of line, especially including shipping charges, compared to replacement batteries, that don't last as long, in other similar phones. Oh yea, whether Apple's site if easy enough to locate battery information or not (it is, and was posted at the same time or before phones were on sale), the fact that it's PRINTED ON THE BOX, and on all sales brochures on hand in the store, not to mention the media coverage for it, there's no way the customer was not informed before purchasing the phone, unless he chose not to read the information at hand, and he had every opportunity to return the phone unopened or not activated for a full refund when he did read the box.
I attribute nothing to that republican congress under Clinton. Remember, they bitterly fought every move Clinton made, including TWICE completely shutting down the house/senate (http://www.cnn.com/US/9512/budget/budget_battle/i ndex.html) when they failed to approve a budget. They voted down dozens of Democratic bills that would have lowered taxes on the middle and lower class, raised taxes several times, and approved spending for programs that were unnecessary. Were it not for Republican roadblocks, experts estimate an additional 50-75% more would have been shaved from the debt, much of that carrying into Bush's first few years, every single one of which has increased our national debt at a record breaking pace (since WWII).
It took every effort Clinton and the Democrats had, a full 8 years, to change record breaking rises into a 3 year drop. The 2 years that dropped the most were bush's first 2 years in office, during which time, he undid most of the legislation previously passed (or simply ignored it) and we again have 5 straight years in a row of record breaking growth. In fact, based on information from http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/faq.html, each year a republican has been in power has seen a higher increase than a Democrat since the 1970s. Prior to that, the debt was basically flat back to 1945 where it in 3 years dropped almost $0.5T.
Comparing now to Clinton's early years, I pay significantly more in tax (property, sales, AND income), have fewer community services available, worse performing schools, higher fuel prices, and worse roads. Even in IT my salary increases are not out pacing my expenses year over year. They were in Clinton's time. I don't give a rats ass if the man had his cock sucked or not. He was a financial genius, was loved by other nations, and did more not only for the USA in his 8 years than any other president in 50, but also improved our overall image with the rest of the world. In 6 years, bush and his congress undid all that, and actually set us back to a worse state than before Clinton ever started the recovery process from Bush Sr. and Reagan's years.
I am NOT a Democrat, and may very well vote Republican for president this time through, but you can bet I'm not voting Republican for ANY single republican seat up in congress. It's really the congress that has been fucking us for the last 20 years. How many Republicans have been accused, investigated, or imprisoned for crimes in office in the last 20 years, and how many Democrats? Granted, Bush has likely been the worst president in our countries history, but other than the money blown on his Daddy's war, and a few bills he signed that CONGRESS passed, he really hasn't been a leader at all, and has not proposed any bad legislation that the Republican party didn't ask him to. He's simply a dumb puppet, and does what he's told. He's the Republican's perfect candidate. Some of the Republicans running now for president won't be so easily swayed. Of course, looking at the Democratic offering, there's a few there that, if they actually get a party nomination, I don't think anyone can stand against.
Developers don't need a holiday, they get the opportunity to attend dozens of "developer day" events all over the world. Support staff have their own appreciation day (I can't find a link to what day that is, but our company celebrated it recently). What do IT guys get? Calls at 3AM, ever shrinking budgets, every greater system complexity, and occassionally, if they're lucky, they get a day in a classroom that ends in a test and all they get is a shirt that in many cases I have gotten that actually reads "...and all i got was this lousy t-shirt."
...and I don't even have to deal with end users!
My position is not officially "sys-admin" but I support hundreds of them with my companies backup product and am constantly on remote connections rebuilding servers, diagnosing systems, and personally feel the pain not only of one shop's system troubles, but can attest to the fact that sys admins all over the country have some of the most thankless jobs going. I work 60 hours every week, am wakened frequently from sleep, and spend hours on conference calls with panicking customers, resellers, and site managers.
I barely stay sane in my position, and I don't have budget issues or roll-out deadlines. I don't know how you guys do it. I did it years ago when things were simpler and even then it was a suck job. I've also been a programmer before and can definitively say that even under production deadlines, and the stress of problem solving and code testing, being a coder is a hell of a lot easier than being an admin. It also takes (typically) requires less frequent training on new systems and processes (once you know C++ you're good for 10 years), and programming PAYS BETTER. So any of you coders that bitch about how cushy our job is, I say to you, YOU TRY IT! Being a sys admin sucks almost as working for a city government, and yet hundreds of admins I know DO work for cities, ouch.
So if this movie includes "young Spock" does this mean it takes place or at least flashes back to Captain Pike's time, or even the first Enterprise (though Spock didn't serve on that ship in any story I read). The founding of the Federation would make a good story, lots of characters and political views of the world, but few ships and an young federation means not much space battle, so they wouldn't be able to waste too much on special effects and can actually write a good story for once.
Personally, I'm looking more forward to Babylon 5's upcoming flick than this, but we'll give it a shot anyway.
UPS are typically a 2U or 4U solution and can power up to half a rack. Data centers almost always charge less for U's associated with devices that don't add to power or heating costs (KVM, terminal display, tape jukeboxes, etc). Rack space itself is cheap if the costs of cooling and power can be eliminated. A company we partner with (we back up their racks, not use their space) charge a base price for the 1st U per server, plus a lower price per additional U (for the same server). Buying a 1/4 rack, half rack, or full rack is always at a discount compared to U-by-U purchase. Any reasonable configuration is going to be at least 3 individual servers anyway, so an extra 2U for the UPS divided out to a few servers should not be worth considering when looking at the cost of power loss. Some data centers even include this additional UPS space (and the UPS itself) as part of the regular fees.
This is exactly the reason my company manufactures and sells backup appliances that 1: use disk not tape, 2: offer real time encryption of selective servers, and most importantly 3: offers electronic off site data replication using packet encryption (whether or not the data encryption module is installed). Archives only need to be run weekly or monthly, not daily, so no one is porting disks or tapes back and forth. Any data leaving the unit goes from here to there (typically a secure location), and typically never back again. 30-90 days of data are on site, live and restoreable, in the unit at all times so you can restore data from weeks ago without going to get archives at all. The unit supports about 20 different OS and has integrated BareMetal and support for Exchange, SQL, Group wise and more. No client licenses to buy, only the backup unit itself, and we undercut solution costs from Symantec and CA typically by 50%.
We did a live demo of our box to a big company, and while in the middle of the presentation, someone walked by the conference room wearing an Iron Mountain shirt, had security let him into the server room, filled a case with tapes, and walked out of the building without so much as a second glance. We asked "does anyone know who that was?" and we got a room full of blank stares. When we asked "were those tapes encrypted" someone said "well, we bought an encryption module, but we haven't gotten it working yet. It's too slow to back up our SAN box reliably."
Do you know how easy it is to find a company that uses Iron Mountain, figure out their rotational schedule, and then buy a shirt from ebay and walk in to steal tapes like this? A month or so of surveillance and a good story about leaving your clipboard at another site across town should be good enough to get you past just about any front desk security guard. Worse, if you've got a secretary or intern moving tapes for you you're just asking to get robbed. However, it's far more likely for the theft to be internal. Many IT people are willing to accept a few thousand to "loose" a few tapes. Unless their bar coded, he can do this without anyone even knowing their missing by substituting other tapes back into the rotation.
Check out Unitrends.com and ask questions if this sounds too good to be true. If you're serious, someone can hook you up with a reseller near you to demonstrate the product.
Well, I know Lotus Notes is still hiding out there. I have several clients who's Notes databases are being backed up by our DPUs. I've also seen some Dbase out there (My Mom uses it in her accounting practice). Amiga and Commodore are trying to make comebacks. I know a lot of layers who still have WordPerfect around to access old documents. The rest, as far as I can tell, are dead. Good riddance to VAX!
In a 1st world retail market, you are absolutely right. Keep in mind the 1LPC initiative is not for people to buy these, but governments. You can be sure they're not going to throw these out in bulk simply to replace them with a slightly better model. We're talking about giving notebooks to people who have trouble affording even simple education and in many cases food. The only way to make this program succeed without people wanting to kill each other or sell the machines for food is to make them so cheap and ubiquitous that everyone gets one. The problem we'll have to watch is how do we eventually (2-3 years from now) replace that societies machines with new ones without introducing competition between new and old. To do this, things like a brighter screen, faster chip, and more need to be played down. The screen may be better, or creaper, but it should not be obvious to the users. Processor speed is unimportant as even the slowest chip will provide the same experience as a faster one due simply to limited content. We're not giving them entertainment centers (does it even have a sound card?) just simple machines for web and word processing. Since they're primarily for children only (and likely won't even leave school grounds) replacing them from time to time should not be a real issue as children don't really care.
As for recycling, since its a government program, it should be easy for defective units to be reclaimed, replaced, and possibly centrally repaired. They're supposed to be modular, with field replaceable components. We're not talking about even having real IT support, just simple repair, re-image, and return. Governments in poor countries will pay people a couple of bucks a day to do that, not $50 per hour like here. I'm also assuming since governments will be giving these away basically free, some tracking process will be used and punishments will be steep for destroying one or stealing one from someone else.
Well, they DO test this regularly, at least generator fail over in the event of power loss. Unfortunately, it appears that a significant power SURGE occurred from a transformer back feed. This resulted in the flywheels in their generators spinning down before power could be switched over and likely some system that detects power loss probably got fried in the surge and never notified the generator controller of the loss. 1) they're lucky they have a REALLY good ground fault interrupter as this likely would have cooked every server in every rack otherwise, or at least every surge stopgap between the line feed and the racks, which still could have caused days of downtime to replace, 2) how does one test for a several megawatt power surge? 3) Only some of their racks went down so at least some battery or generator power came online, just not all of them, or not ones that powered certain rooms.
That said, the fact that they're running exclusively on generator until they identify and fix this fault, and that the power company and the generator operators are jumping in means they're more than willing to blow several thousand in fuel costs to make sure this does not happen again, and I would expect they'll bill the generator manufacturer for this failure and all related costs (which that company will likely bill to an insurance provider) and possibly find another generator company or add a few more redundant systems.
The fact that the clients are not insisting on installing UPS systems with at least 30 minute run times IN the racks with their servers means either the clients are cheap, or no one considered that a fuse, breaker, or PDU in a rack could blow and take out half a rack or more if it wasn't on internal UPS power, regardless of whether power was on or not... This is flawed redundancy thinking.
Business Continuity should be 25% of total IT spending (labor, hardware & software, backup, everything combined). This does not include redundant co-lo for users, only servers. If you want redundancy for everyone, users included, take you IT budget now (without that redundancy) and add 125% to it (it costs MORE than double).
Please quote the law properly: http://foldoc.org/?query=Moore's+Law
' s%20Law%20Sept02.ppt
It's every 24 months, not 18, and it has nothing to do with power or speed. CPU speed has increased at significantly higher pace than Moore's law. Moore's law views the number of transistor junctions in an IC, nothing more. The size, power consumption, MIPS, and other values have had significantly different curves, most at higher paces than the law, and not in direct comparison to transistor count. CPU power (in watts) over all is relatively the same as where it started in the 80s, and is currently reducing even as Moore's law increases. http://www.eng.tulane.edu/Tef/Slides/Tulane-Moore
Also, Moore's law clearly states that the number of transistors doubles "as costs remain the same." This means if we can have a $100 laptop today, in 2 years it will still cost $100 (or more accurately the portion of the $100 cost represented by the CPU will be the same), but the CPU will have 2X the number of transistors. It may be faster, maybe not. It may use more or less wattage. This is determined by transistor spacing, impedance layers (SoI, etc), volts, and clock frequency, not Moore's law. The articles premise is simply a logical fallacy.
One more thing: Moore's law does not apply to EVERY processor, only the leading generation vs. the predecessor. There's no reason to believe the notebook will use the current processor generation, and in fact likely it will not. This has no impact at all on the validity of the law as other processors will exist that follow the law. They may simply decide that instead of the build cost for the notebook being $90 to sell at $100, that they'll use previous generation hardware using more modern manufacturing processes, and reduce the build cost to $60-80, and still likely make it faster or better somehow in the process.
Were I a betting man, I'd put money on the $100 laptop not only having a faster chip with more transistors, but that it will use less watts, have a higher resolution display, faster or stronger wireless antenna, more storage, and more ports when we look at it in 2 years. Of course, part of the design of the machine, and it's low cost, is the intent of model line longevity. We don't expect to have a new one of these every 2-4 months like the retail PC industry does. Likely, this will be re-engineered at most once per year.
Learned fear is one of the primary motivations behind the conscious and the ability to determine right and wrong. Take away fear, and watch out what people can be convinced to do. I suppose if your level of moral capacity is to equate whether you'll get caught with being moral, then that's accurate. This is the moral capacity of your average 3-4 year-old, incidentally. Once you're past about 4 years old you've got the capacity to understand the 'would I want to be treated that way?' principle. (note that although we all have this capacity, we don't all use it fully all the time). Well, one would expect there to be this level of morality, but then, such things as rape do exists anyway. I didn't say more people would get raped, but this could definetly be used as an alternative to other more difficult to acquire chemicals. More importantly, since the person would be completely lucid, and remember everything, they might not even realize they'd been raped. If that were true, it might be a real problem...
The Power company in Columbia, SC just allows the meter to run backwards, so yes, it's 100% compensation. The power company I have here at my current house refuses to buy it at all. They use meters that can't run backwards and their contract specifically states that unused residentially generated power is not compensated.
Why are electrics bad?
/. article a few weeks ago?) :) :)
:) Actually the energy return for ethanol so far is just piss-poor compared to biodiesel, which can be made from algae, which can be grown in fresh or salt water. The algaes do tend to produce both carbohydrates and oils, however, so if you could efficiently separate them (perhaps with that cyclone machine thingy? I can never find a URL for that any more and I'm on a modem, so if anyone else has a link handy, please comment) you could ostensibly use the stuff to produce a plethora of biofuels. It also makes nice fertilizer. So my argument basically is that we should be using biodiesel from algae. I'd like to see turbine series plugin hybrids which
1 - Environmental impact from battery production, which is very high in the case of batteries using significant quantities of heavy metals. Also many batteries are not recycled. If only 1% of the batteries are not recycled, then moving to all electric cars would represent an awful lot of very nasty material that isn't where it needs to be for humans and other species we care about to be happy.
-- Simple, make recycling madatory. it is in most states. people throw out regular batteries because it's easy. Try getting your garbage company to haul off 300 lbs of car batteries. You just try. Also, these metals, or other by products, can be easily buried if we have to, and a proper containment facility can be made. FYI: no landfil in the history of the US has ever been found to have leaked, ever.
2 - Theoretical energy density of chemical batteries is lower than liquid fuels in use today. This results in many of the same problems as hydrogen in terms of space; it also increases weight (in spite of disposing of the ICE!)
-- It's lower than liquid fuel, but TONS safer, and better then we can do with H2 if you include the size and weight of the container necessary to safely transport it. Batteries are also getting better as we've now learned through nanomanufacturing to not store in a material, but between nanoscale capacitors, increasing battery density by as much as 9 fold (didn't you read that
3 - Today, environmental impact from adding electric cars is greater than using biofuels (if we didn't make them from crops which make no sense as feedstocks.)
-- How is completely green energy on the grid more impactful than biofulel? We can get energy from wind in the north, sun in the south, geothermin and water in a lot of places, and super conduct the electricity anywhere we want. Biofules have significantly greater impact. And btw, H2 has more of a carbon footprint than ethanol, and though it burns clean, the manufacturing process uses 50-100% more energy than charging batteries does, and creates billions of tons of O2 that we can't simply let into the atmosphere anymore than we can CO2.
4 - Cars are quiet and people don't hear them coming
-- lol. though fuel cells have this problem to no?
I'm lazy so that's all I can think of immediately.
Why is ethanol bad?
1 - Currently made from ridiculous feedstocks, esp. corn - but any topsoil-based feedstock use is basically wrongheaded barring taking steps to mitigate damage thereof. Example, when plants grow in nature the parts that aren't eaten by someone fall on the ground and become mulch. We tend to burn that stuff, returning all of the CO2 into the air at once and depleting the soil. We then use chemical fertilizers in many cases (esp. factory farming) which damages the soil.
--Make it from sugar beets. Corn is BAD, and I hate we're using it at all. It's only the 5th best thing we have an industry for to make ethanol. It yields about 1/3rd the ethanol per acre of better materials that are not feed stock. Also, we no longer need crops at all! Cellulostic ethanol can be made from wood pulp, kudzu, and virtually any plant based material. We could even use the stalks of feed stocks that we'd normally burn to make the ethanol...
And that's about it
We're talking fuel cells, not combustion. Propane is a risky repair too, but fortunately, extremely uncommon, and shops charege a LOT for someone trainined to fix those.
1) Yes, there is a fire/explosion potential. There are also fire/explosion potentials with conventional hydrocarbon fuels and batteries. In fact, ANY system in which energy is stored has the potential to be a hazard. However, when you quantify the potential hazards in terms of flammability/explosion concentration limits, and the physical properties of materials such as vaporization and diffusion rates, it turns out that hydrogen is just as safe if not safer than gasoline.
-- are you factoring in vapor expansion or liquid to gaseous state hydrogen? Did you see what happened in NYC yesterday? That was only 120 atmosphere pressure. Liquid H2 would be hundreds of PSI, and we'd have to keep it cold just to keep it from exploding.
2) Yes, metal hydrides do take a long time to charge. BUT, if you are using such a system, it tends to negate all the hazards you listed in point number 1. You can't claim both disadvantages at the same time. However, in practice (for those lucky few who have FC cars already), filling a compressed hydrogen tank is just as fast (if not faster) than filling a car with gasoline.
-- 5-8 hour refulings are simply not an option for anyone, so lets dismiss that theory now completely. Even if we could make it 15 minutes, there's be lines hours long just to get to the pumps to start fueling. We are talking about compressed to liquid fuel. It's really the only option. Those do fill quick, like normal tanks, but the inherent danger puts it out of likely acceptance.
3) Fucking is only expensive when you pay a prostitute for it. Instead, you should find a nice person, make a lifelong commitment, and get married. A relationship in which love and commitment come first - and the fucking is an expression of that love and commitment - is much more meaningful and much less expensive. Same thing with energy. If people would make a commitment to understanding hydrogen and supporting it, then the eventually the costs would not be prohibitive, and the overall experience would be better as the technology matures.
-- cost to make vs cost to make, deliver, and use safely, is something H2 can't bridge. In some industries (factories) it will make more sense to use H2, and I fully support it as a technology there, just not in small point applications like transportation.
4) Burning hydrogen? So are you trying to put down the fuel cell technology, or the hydrogen combustion engine? Both are emerging technologies, but only the latter can be compared directly with hydrocarbon combustion engines. The real fact is that although an "equivalent gallon" of hydrogen (which BTW is how it gets sold at the pump so that the government can charge a fuel tax without having to think too hard) is more expensive than gasoline or ethanol, fuel cells are SIGNIFICANTLY MORE efficient than combustion engines, making the cost-per-mile significantly cheaper. From the carbon waste standpoint, consuming significantly less fuel per mile driven equates to less carbon per mile, wherever the carbon is used in the hydrogen production cycle. Additionally, here's a question for you: since carbon emission is a growing problem, and one of the promising solutions is carbon capture and sequestration, which will be easier - capturing carbon at a few large hydrocarbon to hydrogen plants, or capturing the carbon at millions of individual tailpipes? Eventually scale will favor the hydrogen economy. It's just a matter of time and patience.
-- Fuel cells are more efficient, but H2 is only a storage medium for energy, not energy itself. Use the same energy to make the H2 and put that in a battery instead. There's less loss overall and it will require fewer power plants and less money to do it. Batteries also cost a hell of a lot less than fuel cells and in some cases less than traditional engines. Carbon sequestering is a good idea, but not making carbon at all, or using renewable carbon are both cheaper and easier ideas to implement, and we can do it now, not later when you finish your research and then mark up your technolog
1 - So a hydrogen-powered car is a bomb but a gasoline-powered car isn't? What kind of drugs are you smoking?
-- H2 is compressed to several times atmospheric volume. Whether or not it's flammable is irrelevant. Gas cars don't explode, they simply burn. H2 will explode like the streets of NY did yesterday! It's a vapor expansion issue, and there's a MASSIVE concussive wave that will kill people and shred the vehicle into shrapnel. What part of that don't you understand? In solid infused H2 tanks, we don't have this fear, but what happens if the tank (or fuel line, or valve, etc) is leaking inside a closed garage overnight? Have you seen a propane explosion before? H2 is more violent as it burns both cleaner and faster than propane.
2 - There is absolutely no need to mimic the same refueling paradigm of the gas-powered car. For example, what's wrong with replacing the entire fuel cell?
-- Well, this requires massive warehousing of used, replaceable fuel calls, standardization across multiple vehicle types and power curves, a system capable of lifting and replacing a 400 pound fuel cell, and dozens of times more trucks to move them around. For every car you're talking about making what, 5-10 fuel cells? NUTS I tell you. There are 1.3 million cars in the new work city area. Where do you plan to store 6 million 400 pound fuel cells?
3 - So? Do you really believe that gas will cost the same in the near future or even become cheaper? Better be prepared than grabbing your ankles and biting your lip.
-- Gas won't be cheaper, but electric energy will be, and so will Ethanol. This is not suspicion, but market research based reality. It will go up before it comes down, but gas will only continue to go up. H2 is already 10 times more expensive per mile driven than ethanol. It will get better, but it can never directly compete, especially vs cellulostic ethanol production. The balancing factor is if ethanol and electricity go up too far, farmers can start making it and selling it themselves and reap the profits while undercutting the local filling station. ANYONE can make ethanol. Oil costs money because access to the resource is strictly controlled.
4 - if the hydrogen is produced from thermal or hydroelectric power plants, how many "carbon waste" do you end up spending? None? That's nice.
-- True, we could make 100% of hydrogen using green technology, but since H2 is an energy storage medium, not real energy, we can make electricity to power cars directly and it will take 50% fewer power plants, and thus cost less. Can I bill you for that extra infrastructure?
5 - So? We also didn't have any when the first "auto mobile" appeared. In fact, the infrastructure is already in place and there isn't absolutely no reason to avoid upgrading the present infrastructure. Should we stick with the old, dangerous, unreliable method just because you are confortable with it? Obviously not.
-- OK, you've got a lot of logic issues here. First, when cars appeared, we didn't have a society that "required" them. People also didn't have roads to drive on half way across a nation in one day. It took 30 years to build that infrastructure and a society to use it. We don't have 30 years. We're also not talking about upgrading our infrastructure, we're talking about a need to replace it, and with one that requires significant safety measures, a complete (and redundant) fuel delivery system, and more. We could eliminate 89 octane (which almost nobody uses) and pump ethanol through those pipes and pumps without ANY modification. We can add electric refueling stations in homes, business parking lots, shopping centers, and more, with no more difficulty than a little paving, some cables, and some parking meters. Adding H2 is extremely complicated, expensive, dangerous, and we don't have a place to put the H2 without making huge holes in the middle of cities to bury the tanks (which require 3 times the space of existing gas tanks and could take out whole blocks if they rupture). Next, people un
I'll respond in kind to each line item:
1 - (on H2 tank bombs) Energy per cubic mass is much higher in H2 as with other systems. Common fuels used now are liquid, not compressed. Propane vehicles exist, but usually only as vans or other large vehicles to accomodate an extremely strong tank system that will survive enevn extremely bad crashes. This however isn't my concern, as I expect H2 tanks to be equally built. Keep in mind, H2 is only a liquid, even under pressure, at extremely cold temperatures. We can't safely generate the pressure needed to make liquid H2 without energy to keep it at more than 100 below zero. If the car looses the ability to keep the liquid frozen, the tank will rupture in an extremely violent vapor explosion. I'm not even worried if this catches fire. We're talking about pressure here. See that explosion of steam in NY yesterday? We also now would be giving terrorists a new way to make car bombs. A small piece of shaped charge (available to most construction crews) could be placed on an H2 tank, and an O2 tank next to it. This would be a vicious bomb, easy to make, and freely available, and nearly untraceable.
2- (underground tanks) propane tanks, though liquid, are hot pressurized as much. They're also typically above ground to prevent shear in earthquakes. Also keep in mind the gas in these tanks is used to fill small containers once or twice a season for home grills and such. Tanks to fill cars with H2 would be massive, and everywhere. An explosion of 1 would likely rupture any other within 1 block. The pressure expansion alone (let alone flame) would level everything in 200 feet and kill dozens of people.
3 (expense) H2 electrolysis uses about as much energy as filling a battery, sure. However, add to this transportation, cold storage, and the energy required to move a pressurized frozen liquid from 1 tank to another, and the expense becomes very high, not to mention the cost of the H2 engine, storage tanks, and more that batteries don't have issue with.
4 (power for electric cars) Your partly right, we don't have enough grid power in a lot of places to make electric cars work for 100% of americans today. Keep in mind the average age of a vehicle on the road is 27 years. It will be a LONG while until we're all using electric cars (25-50 years). We have a lot of time to add parking stalls at rest stops, shopping malls, and more. I imaging parking meters with credit card slots and simply 120 volt safety capped lines. Also keep in mind this way we're adding the power needs to local, distributed grids. Want to make H2? it's going to be done at only a few centralized locations. getting enough power to those factories will require a super conducting grid anyway. We're still talking watts to watts being equivalent. I'm also not suggesting we run 100% electric, but only from home to work and home to local shopping. We'll likely still run ethanol on long travels (or have a "family outing" vehicle or rent a car for long travel) Infrastructure for recharging cars is simple every day technology. Infrastructure for filling H2 cars requires customized pumping systems, radiators for cooling tanks as they heat when filled, electricity to power the radiators, and extreme safety measures and more. Also, batteries can charge in less than 2 minutes, H2 not in less than 100 times that long. A drive from DC to NY on H2 would take almost 3 days while you wait 5 hours to fill for every 2 hours of driving. Electricity already gets to these places by itself. H2 has to be brought there...
5 (battery size) current electric only cars run for up to 200 miles on a charge and are nice small compact cars. The size of battery (getting smaller every day) is only about 2 large suitcases, easily distributed under floorboards, in wheel hubs, and in place of larger engine cavities and transmissions. Currently, and for simplicity, most cars have batteries in the trunk, but even in the case of the prius plugin crossover vehicle, you only loose 20% more of your t
The problem with solid storage of H2 is that even the best system only allows a small amount of H2 to be stored (about enough to go 100 miles) and the substrate is a heavy metal, weighing 92% of the tank's mass (typically several hundred pounds). It's extremely safe, but heavy and the metals are expensive. Problem 2 is that filling this tank generates massive amounts of heat. Liquid based radiators are necessary to dissipate this heat actively while the talk is filled, and the H2 necessary to go as little as 100 miles could take 5-8 hours to fill.
In my vast experience, working in multiple markets for a company that sells electronically vaulted backup data and a target customer of SMB market size, I typically find the smaller, localized ISPs are offering BETTER speeds at lower prices than the big guys (to remain competitive mostly I guess). Rarely do i find a small town ISP that can't provide at least 2Mbit down and 512Kbit up to all their customers. It's not an issue of line quality as cable and DSL are capable of per-connections speeds far in excess of that mark with technology that is both cheap and readily available.
Sometimes the issue is the ISP itself only having a moderate connection to the national backbone or a larger parent telco that manages their connection. Buying high speed bandwidth for these cases costs less per user the faster you go. If the ISP can't afford to go from 1 OC3 to 2 or more to accommodate that speed, or switch to 1Gbit fiber, then they are not providing an adequate customer service to their community, and deserve to be overtaken by a larger competitor.
ISPs, even small ones are massively profitable if they're correctly managed. Extreme speed connections that these ISPs buy cost about 10K per month (at wholesale prices, and even less if they contract for more than one to the backbone). At 2Mbit per user, that's 500 connections, or $20 per month per active user. Cable services are shared bandwidth systems, and they account for the condition that not all users will be at 100% capacity all the time. Normally, they run at 150-200% load or more, accounting for 750-1000 connected users per gigabit fiber line, cutting that cost further to about $10-15 per month. Even small ISPs should be able to provide 2Mbit service lines to customers for $29.99 per month, and over a 1 year contract term, profit about $50 per customer, each year after should yield another $250 per user. Most are still charging $44.95 or more for this connection.
On top of this, small ISPs usually provide higher speed alternatives at far below market rate of their competitors. Advanced options like having a static IP is often a $10 option from a local ISP. The ISP I have here is offering me 10Mbit down, 2Mbit up, static IP, 5 e-mails, ghost e-mail accounts for spam filtering, 1GB online storage, and they monitor my in-home security system too, and that's all for $99 per month. A basic 5 down 1 up connection (with static) is $39.95. Time Warner Cable wants $139.99 for 4 down 512 up with a static, and none of the other features are included. This is in Rural Columbia SC, more than 10 miles from city center
Sure, I come across small towns all the time (like Myrtle Beach) where even pathetic connections like 512 down 128 up cost $49.99 per month. This law will not effect the local ISP because they have a legally protected monopoly and there not only isn't any competition, but they're not required by law to share their poles, so there won't be competition until the FCC regulates there to be, or until enough people complain. With this law, we can document a minimum speed as "high speed" internet, and the local monopoly will either have to offer faster service or stop calling it "high speed" internet. Whole zip codes will no longer be considered "broadband available" under this law for easter SC unless the ISPs get on with the game.
If ISPs don't start complying, I expect increasing federal pressure. We're WAY behind the world in broadband penetration. With this law changed, we're going to drop 5-10 places on the list overnight. Some areas of the country are too difficult or expensive to wire, but most other places, like Myrtle beach, and going to be a sore spot for congressmen, and they will "make" them comply one way or the other. Those who refuse will be deregulated forcibly and go out of business. It's their choice, to fight this, their choice to comply. Compliance is not expensive. It will effect the bottom line. Those who really, truly, can't afford it, are mismanaged ISPs, and would likely be out of business in a
I live in middle South Carolina. I had 3 different companies quote me solar installations for a new home I'm building. The best offer was going to take me 23 years to recoup the cost, assuming the cells actually lasted that long without failure, hail damage, or other issues out of warranty. All that money would still have only covered about 60% on average of my electric bill. My house is also in a lucky position where both sides of the A frame roof could have had cells and received sun all day long (roof faces N/S). This quote included covering the entire roof with cells that would have had an overhang on both sides of an additional 8 inches.
To get to 100% green solar energy, I was not only going to have to cover my entire roof, but add an additional bank of cells in the back yard almost 40 feet across that would actually track the sun as it moved. Since South Carolina only offers a single, one time solar subsidy of $2000 (which is actually federal money, meaning SC gives us NOTHING!), it would have taken me 27 years to pay off a complete 100% efficient solar solution (23 years at 60% efficiency). This did not take into account my added insurance value on the home, including solar panel rider policy outside of my deductibles, nor routine maintenance on the system, the fees and taxes I would still pay monthly to be on the grid (to sell power in the summer and buy it back in the winter), not interest paid on the mortgage for the system.
For solar to become reasonable for most people, the time to recoup the cost of the solution must be less time than the warranty on the product lasts. Say 5-7 years. Many states offer awesome solar subsidies, covering as much as 80% of the cost of the system up front. Even with that, my home would be an eyesore using current technology. Solar panels need to get to about 25% efficiency before even half of America can use them within reason.
RTFA. They're not dropping incoming attachments, but attachments you received, stored, and yourself chose not to delete. At some point, if the message goes unaccessed for a while, HotMail is deleting the attachments to save space. This is not fraud or tampering in any way, but a condition of service. Apparently, they give you 2GB of storage, but i guess to USE it, all your mail has to be current mail. They're not giving you an unlimited inbox to store whatever you want forever.
I'm not talking about connection speed, I'm talking about data type speed throttling. I may pay for a 10Mbit connection, but my ISP may still decide video and P2P traffic get capped at 512Kbps. Were I to download from "approved" partner sites, only then could I get 10Mbit. This means that to get real speed I may have to pay MORE to get my data from approved (partner) services, or services owned by the ISP. That's not "who wants more pays more" that's "if the ISP gets paid more, I can go faster" Services that pay the ISP will get prefered traffic, and smaller companies that can't compete with major network providers get little or no bandwidth. This creates artificial monopolies as well as an ISP may be contracted to only allow 1 popular MP3 site, and if I want music from someone other than Apple.com, it will download slower.
you, sorry typo... or rather, I think my auto correct got that one on me. Conscience was the work I intended there.
I don't care how cool they make the tank operate at. This was not something stopping them from being used, only increasing their cost due to insulating layers and radiator systems. Great, man made diamonds make them cooler, but at 3 times the cost, and the only benefit is we can reduce the cost of the cooling systems... Hello?
Lets face it, there's no way in hell any of us are ever driving a hydrogen car. Heres a list of reasons why:
1 - If you drive a liquid H2 car, you're driving A BOMB! One that can never be turned off, unplugged, get in a bad crash, or run out of fuel or it will explode!
2 - Solid (metal infused) H2 tanks take approximately 6-8 hours to refill with enough H2 to drive 150 miles. This is MUCH worse than electric only cars. (In fact, using Toshiba's new battery technology, we could refuel electric cars in 90 seconds, to 90% charge.
3 - it's FUCKING expensive!!!
4 - sure the H2 burns clean, but takes 3-5 times as much energy (ie carbon waste) to make it than burning ethanol, meaning its far WORSE for the environment (unless we can make it exclusively from wind, water, or solar power, which reasonably, we can't, but even if we could, it would still be cheaper to build and drive electric cars)
5 - we don't have ANYTHING resembling an industry for transportation, storage, or pumping of H2.
6 - we can't make an H2 pipelines unless the H2 is moved in a gaseous state, not liquid, and the pipes would be too big, too expensive, and too dangerous, not to mention expensive condensing systems required at each endpoint.
7 - what happens if the great big H2 tanks at the filling station are involved in an earthquake, terrorist attack, or extended power outage? Can you say goodbye to 3-5 city blocks?
8 - it's too damned big of a system. Cars would have to be the size of hybrid SUVs and loose either 2 seats or the trunk to run on H2 safely.
9 - There are several safer, cheaper, better, more environmentally sound alternatives, easier to implement solutions.
10 - will you trust a grease monkey to fix an H2 powered engine? (no offense to my many talented automotive engineering friends) Do you have any idea what it might take to fix an engine like this? can it even be repaired at the component level safely?
OK, thats 10 I though up while sitting here. Can you think of 10 reasons why electric cars are a bad solution? Or ethanol hybrids?
Meet the new date rape drug... Learned fear is one of the primary motivations behind the conscious and the ability to determine right and wrong. Take away fear, and watch out what people can be convinced to do.