Anyone who doesn't ask that (in our litigious society, especially) deserves what they get, because they're stupid.
Whoever screwed up in that VA thing will likely get a promotion.
The current administration has a pattern of rewarding incompetence. Recall NORAD and FBI higher-ups getting promotions after 9/11 and CIA's Tenet getting the top civilian medal for screwup on Iraq's WMD intel.
FirstOne, thanks for a thoughtfull response. I would like you to consider for now only the immediate cost to consumer (myself, for example):
1 gal. of gasoline: 36 kWh/galon @ US$3/gal = $0.08/kWh 1 kWh of electricity: 1kWh/ $0.10 = $0.10/kWh
Electric power today (to consumer; industrial costs are lower) is more expensive than gasoline power!
Futhermore, Li batteries are not suitable for running cars because these are low current devices, and extremely expensive at that. Current hybrids use metal hydrate batteries that can provide high current needed. Even your link rates them at 60% efficiency, and that's the very best case scenario, probably not factoring in the charger efficiency (look up the requirements for getting Energy Star cert, for example, you would be amazed at how much those things suck).
Hence to your engine, the electric battery power cost comes out to be more like $0.20/kWh (50% power lost due to charger, battery storage, discharge, heat, etc.). To the gas engine, gas comes when it's still $0.08/kWh
Also, consider that per-pound storage efficiency of gasoline vs battery is very disappointing right now: 6kWh/pound of gas vs 0.1kWh/pound of battery... need to haul a lot of battery deadwood around in a purely-electric car. Also consider that the batteries have a limited life cycle, and need to be replaced (very pricy).
So even though electric engines are twice as efficient as IC engines, the battery tech. is killing any advantage. Electric car is the way of the future, but we need lots more research dedicated to batteries, hopefully looking for a fundamentally different technology (capacitor, flywheel, whatever... not my area so I am a total newbie).
But yeah, once gas is at $20/gal electric-only cars will become a real alternative even given how much the batteries suck.
there is no contradiction there, if that's what you are implying.
Consider that the Space Shuffle is actually a glider over most of the re-entry (called glide-approach).
A cruise missile is a jet-propelled glider... as opposed to a Russian Satan ss-18, which is a jet-propelled ballista, though such things may use fins and such for stabilization.
In other words, anything that uses wings for flying (and not solely for manuvering e.g. a fighter during afterburn) is a glider.
No, not really, all is legal. It just has to be slow (100 mph I believe) and weigh less than 200 lb (100 kg).
Unpowered verstions of paragliding and hand gliding are very popular and have been around for decades. Re: http://www.ushga.org/ and http://www.paragliding.net/ And the only reason the story made the front page is because it had 'anime'
Check your state law, however, as some states have certain restrictions on flying over populated areas, cities, etc. Also, you might get shot down if you try to fly one of those around Washington, DC.
ahah, an excellent point: heaters are power-hungry as hell! Much much worse than cooling/AC in fact, about 10-20 times worse... (in terms of BTU/W (heat mover per power consumed)
At which points why not dump the IC engine add some more batteries and go for 100% electric.
But because our current power storage technology is bad. Batteries suck, and cannot be improved; fundamentally different technology is needed, such as capacitors (which is undeveloped at this point).
Hybrid cars are more efficient in highway driving because the engine is designed for a smaller operating range No kidding! We are currently toying with a prototype vessel with an electric powertrain running off a fossil-fueled generator! Looks very promissing.
I have seen the system in Scandinavia where they use fjord water for heat exchangers (mostly for heating large buildings: like the air-conditioning in reverse).
And no, one cannot generate electricity this way: the Peltier effect would only give you uV/m capability (yeah, that's microVolt), so the ocean is just not deep enough for this system to be efficient; also impossible to get large surface area/volume exchange that would be needed to generate enough power for anything.
And no, the kinds of submerged pump system needed to extract deep sea water are just too expensive (about 10 kPa per meter of depth); the technology just isn't there.
Good idea, but in the same range as Dyson Spheres.
Those numbers are only for fossil-fueled plants. Once the power comes from Nuclear/Solar/Wind sources, the equations are out the windows. In particular, nuclear source can be reguarded as highly efficient (depending on the cost of uranium vs carbon fossil since no fossil fuels are used). Right now, the price of uranium is low (because of the Russians), while price of oil is going up.
Also, the electric cars would be extremely efficient if there was a better way to store energy other than by electrolysis. Carbon nanotube research is considered key here.
Nice arguement; however, the transduction costs still make this less efficient, unfortunately:
Gas/diesel car is 30% efficient (~10% cities, upper-40% highway). Diesel is more efficient (better compression Re: Carnot theorem) Hybrid car (gas/electric) on board is only efficient in the cities, and less efficient on highways. Purely electric car is actually only 24% efficient (cities and highways) Until hybrids can use something like advanced tantallum capacitors, battery/charger efficiency is killing the whole idea.
To memory, calcs go something like this: Fossil fuel power plant: 50% efficiency. Factor: 0.5 Transformer/power line efficiency: 98%, 0.5*0.98 Battery charging/storage: 70%, 0.5*0.98*0.70 (Value for near-best case, usually these are as low as 0.1% for small batteries and charges!!!)
scientists who build and run these things are mostly left leaning looneys who think people are responsible for global warming.
I could not have said it better myself. I mean, there were dinosaurs in Siberia long time ago, way before humans. All this Global Warming is part of a natural cycle, but a bunch of leftie "scientists" and al gores just want to blame our innovation and prosperity.
Google cache and.edu proxies are your friends. And if you do not know what that means, then you are right, those are just empty links:-) Seriously though, I am sorry that if you are off a University campus you need to pay; it's stupid how those scientific journals still charge insane fees in this day and age.
As to "people outside", I can certainly see why the mainstream would not care about knowing global temperatures and sizes of polar caps... All that Global Warming croud is just a bunch of Freedom Haters, right, right?
As to my use of ellipsises (elipsi), I use them to indicate omission of words or ideas from my text. Off-topic things like "uneducated people are helping the American Nation apply for a Darwin award" etc.
[...] questions why General Motors created the battery-powered vehicles and then crushed the program a few years later.
I would venture they did it for the same reason that US satellite systems lost polar icecap sensors and other climate sensors... Here are two articles from Nature and Science journal... Apparently this is a non-news outside of a scientific community, for some reason...
vertinox: clearly, I my comment covered only the sting operations only; I by no means advocate giving the police a carte blanche.
But also, understand that there is a difference between pervs that have images in browser cache and pervs that are actively soliciting what they believe to be children.
you left out... and get busted for obstruction of justice part.
Seriously, leave the police alone; those sting operations are doing one job: clearing the dangerous scumbags off the Web and street. The reason those operations are important is that they target perdators actively seeking out children and not some closeted freaks, so if it's not an undercover officer that the perv hits on, it will be your sons or daughters!
Let me clue you in: most fathers hate seeing "your daughter" and "sex" in the same sentence, much less using them...
It's all well and good to wish fathers would take a greater initiative, but, realistically, it's the mothers that bear the onus of having the "little talk" with their girls
this has been fixed in that there are ways to enforce per-user resource limits, including the number of processes, pipes, file handles, disk/memory IO, memory use, etc. Whether these are always enabled in default config on all systems, I doubt.
I believe you, InsaneGeek. I (accidentally)brought OS X.3 server down by a runaway sh script that turned out to exploit a bug in disk image framework and dev/random, all as an unpriviledged user:) (yeah, we sent Apple the bug report, but I almost lost my job before then by tinkering with a production machine).
In my experience, unix crashes can only be caused given a pre-existing condition that allows a priviledge escalation of some sort... properly configured unix with good drivers (e.g. minimal netbsd/FreeBSD install) is quite idiot-proof, however. I also did crash FreeBSD a few years back by a carefully crafted bogus modem init script (actually, accidentally typoed just the right thing, by touch-typing without looking at screen and my hands being off, one in a trillion chance!). Though I did have a dialout there, so not exactly a normal user.
But in general, one has to get root first (e.g. via bad security, or a poorly written driver), to crash a *nix system.
Slashdot Mirror
"It is as if millions of chairs cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced"
And the higher-up that O.K.ed the staff to take out hardware probably got a bonus.
Anyone who doesn't ask that (in our litigious society, especially) deserves what they get, because they're stupid.
6 23-2004Dec14.html
Whoever screwed up in that VA thing will likely get a promotion.
The current administration has a pattern of rewarding incompetence. Recall NORAD and FBI higher-ups getting promotions after 9/11 and CIA's Tenet getting the top civilian medal for screwup on Iraq's WMD intel.
Oh, and Iraq's Bremer getting Freedom Medal for 'losing' US$ 8,000,000,000 in Iraq, and Gen. Franks for sending enough troops. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63
"Brownie, you are doing a heck of a job!"
Bah, that liberal NYT... Just stick to Fox News, newbie. Fair and Balanced!
FirstOne, thanks for a thoughtfull response. I would like you to consider for now only the immediate cost to consumer (myself, for example):
1 gal. of gasoline: 36 kWh/galon @ US$3/gal = $0.08/kWh
1 kWh of electricity: 1kWh/ $0.10 = $0.10/kWh
Electric power today (to consumer; industrial costs are lower) is more expensive than gasoline power!
Futhermore, Li batteries are not suitable for running cars because these are low current devices, and extremely expensive at that. Current hybrids use metal hydrate batteries that can provide high current needed. Even your link rates them at 60% efficiency, and that's the very best case scenario, probably not factoring in the charger efficiency (look up the requirements for getting Energy Star cert, for example, you would be amazed at how much those things suck).
Hence to your engine, the electric battery power cost comes out to be more like $0.20/kWh (50% power lost due to charger, battery storage, discharge, heat, etc.). To the gas engine, gas comes when it's still $0.08/kWh
Also, consider that per-pound storage efficiency of gasoline vs battery is very disappointing right now: 6kWh/pound of gas vs 0.1kWh/pound of battery... need to haul a lot of battery deadwood around in a purely-electric car. Also consider that the batteries have a limited life cycle, and need to be replaced (very pricy).
So even though electric engines are twice as efficient as IC engines, the battery tech. is killing any advantage. Electric car is the way of the future, but we need lots more research dedicated to batteries, hopefully looking for a fundamentally different technology (capacitor, flywheel, whatever... not my area so I am a total newbie).
But yeah, once gas is at $20/gal electric-only cars will become a real alternative even given how much the batteries suck.
there is no contradiction there, if that's what you are implying.
Consider that the Space Shuffle is actually a glider over most of the re-entry (called glide-approach).
A cruise missile is a jet-propelled glider... as opposed to a Russian Satan ss-18, which is a jet-propelled ballista, though such things may use fins and such for stabilization.
In other words, anything that uses wings for flying (and not solely for manuvering e.g. a fighter during afterburn) is a glider.
No, not really, all is legal. It just has to be slow (100 mph I believe) and weigh less than 200 lb (100 kg).
Unpowered verstions of paragliding and hand gliding are very popular and have been around for decades. Re: http://www.ushga.org/ and http://www.paragliding.net/
And the only reason the story made the front page is because it had 'anime'
Check your state law, however, as some states have certain restrictions on flying over populated areas, cities, etc.
Also, you might get shot down if you try to fly one of those around Washington, DC.
I sure hope this is not some kind of rooster. I am not looking forward to spam like:
Enl4r9e y0ur missing link now
Free \/ia9ra and C14L!S for your Gansu cock
ahah, an excellent point: heaters are power-hungry as hell! Much much worse than cooling/AC in fact, about 10-20 times worse... (in terms of BTU/W (heat mover per power consumed)
At which points why not dump the IC engine add some more batteries and go for 100% electric.
But because our current power storage technology is bad. Batteries suck, and cannot be improved; fundamentally different technology is needed, such as capacitors (which is undeveloped at this point).
Hybrid cars are more efficient in highway driving because the engine is designed for a smaller operating range
No kidding! We are currently toying with a prototype vessel with an electric powertrain running off a fossil-fueled generator! Looks very promissing.
I have seen the system in Scandinavia where they use fjord water for heat exchangers (mostly for heating large buildings: like the air-conditioning in reverse).
And no, one cannot generate electricity this way: the Peltier effect would only give you uV/m capability (yeah, that's microVolt), so the ocean is just not deep enough for this system to be efficient; also impossible to get large surface area/volume exchange that would be needed to generate enough power for anything.
And no, the kinds of submerged pump system needed to extract deep sea water are just too expensive (about 10 kPa per meter of depth); the technology just isn't there.
Good idea, but in the same range as Dyson Spheres.
I forgot to mention that GOES N was launched last month and is checking out perfectly. This should help fill the gap.
Sir, I salute you!
absolutely correct, leonardluen.
Those numbers are only for fossil-fueled plants. Once the power comes from Nuclear/Solar/Wind sources, the equations are out the windows. In particular, nuclear source can be reguarded as highly efficient (depending on the cost of uranium vs carbon fossil since no fossil fuels are used). Right now, the price of uranium is low (because of the Russians), while price of oil is going up.
Also, the electric cars would be extremely efficient if there was a better way to store energy other than by electrolysis. Carbon nanotube research is considered key here.
Nice arguement; however, the transduction costs still make this less efficient, unfortunately:
Gas/diesel car is 30% efficient (~10% cities, upper-40% highway). Diesel is more efficient (better compression Re: Carnot theorem)
Hybrid car (gas/electric) on board is only efficient in the cities, and less efficient on highways.
Purely electric car is actually only 24% efficient (cities and highways)
Until hybrids can use something like advanced tantallum capacitors, battery/charger efficiency is killing the whole idea.
To memory, calcs go something like this:
Fossil fuel power plant: 50% efficiency. Factor: 0.5
Transformer/power line efficiency: 98%, 0.5*0.98
Battery charging/storage: 70%, 0.5*0.98*0.70 (Value for near-best case, usually these are as low as 0.1% for small batteries and charges!!!)
Electrical-to-mechanical (incl gears etc): 70% 0.5*0.98*0.70*0.70 =0.2401
Secrity: Also sorry about the subscription issues: AC copy-pasted the article here: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=188737 &cid=15552980
I was not happy to violate the copyright, but that brave Anonymous Covvard did that.
Sorry about my spelling; I do not know what 'croud' is either (a musical instrument).
scientists who build and run these things are mostly left leaning looneys who think people are responsible for global warming.
I could not have said it better myself. I mean, there were dinosaurs in Siberia long time ago, way before humans. All this Global Warming is part of a natural cycle, but a bunch of leftie "scientists" and al gores just want to blame our innovation and prosperity.
Google cache and .edu proxies are your friends. And if you do not know what that means, then you are right, those are just empty links :-) Seriously though, I am sorry that if you are off a University campus you need to pay; it's stupid how those scientific journals still charge insane fees in this day and age.
As to "people outside", I can certainly see why the mainstream would not care about knowing global temperatures and sizes of polar caps... All that Global Warming croud is just a bunch of Freedom Haters, right, right?
As to my use of ellipsises (elipsi), I use them to indicate omission of words or ideas from my text. Off-topic things like "uneducated people are helping the American Nation apply for a Darwin award" etc.
Megadittoes
[...] questions why General Motors created the battery-powered vehicles and then crushed the program a few years later.
8 b.html8 0/1580
I would venture they did it for the same reason that US satellite systems lost polar icecap sensors and other climate sensors... Here are two articles from Nature and Science journal... Apparently this is a non-news outside of a scientific community, for some reason...
http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060612/full/44179
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/312/57
vertinox: clearly, I my comment covered only the sting operations only; I by no means advocate giving the police a carte blanche.
But also, understand that there is a difference between pervs that have images in browser cache and pervs that are actively soliciting what they believe to be children.
[Yahoo!] is therefore censoring more than its Chinese competitor Baidu.
That's would be like IBM packaging a can of Zyclon B with every punchcard machine sale to the Nazis
you left out ... and get busted for obstruction of justice part.
Seriously, leave the police alone; those sting operations are doing one job: clearing the dangerous scumbags off the Web and street. The reason those operations are important is that they target perdators actively seeking out children and not some closeted freaks, so if it's not an undercover officer that the perv hits on, it will be your sons or daughters!
Let me clue you in: most fathers hate seeing "your daughter" and "sex" in the same sentence, much less using them...
It's all well and good to wish fathers would take a greater initiative, but, realistically, it's the mothers that bear the onus of having the "little talk" with their girls
Didn't we already hear that the NSA will be providing myspace searchfunctionality?
this has been fixed in that there are ways to enforce per-user resource limits, including the number of processes, pipes, file handles, disk/memory IO, memory use, etc. Whether these are always enabled in default config on all systems, I doubt.
I believe you, InsaneGeek. I (accidentally)brought OS X.3 server down by a runaway sh script that turned out to exploit a bug in disk image framework and dev/random, all as an unpriviledged user :) (yeah, we sent Apple the bug report, but I almost lost my job before then by tinkering with a production machine).
In my experience, unix crashes can only be caused given a pre-existing condition that allows a priviledge escalation of some sort... properly configured unix with good drivers (e.g. minimal netbsd/FreeBSD install) is quite idiot-proof, however. I also did crash FreeBSD a few years back by a carefully crafted bogus modem init script (actually, accidentally typoed just the right thing, by touch-typing without looking at screen and my hands being off, one in a trillion chance!). Though I did have a dialout there, so not exactly a normal user.
But in general, one has to get root first (e.g. via bad security, or a poorly written driver), to crash a *nix system.