Explain to me, then, why none of the local shops can fab aluminum beyond cutting it, and all of them can, and do, work in iron and steel? Last time I went hunting for aluminum fabrication capability here (last year) I came up completely dry.

I don't get the obsession with ultracaps.

No? Here's the litany, then:

Near-instant charging. Much higher discharge rates, so much higher instantaneous power availability, and that without developing significant heat, because their series resistance is negligible, and that in turn means less energy spent as waste heat. Enormously more charge/discharge cycles than anything in battery tech - so many more, you could will ultracaps used in a vehicle context to your children, and they to theirs. No more replacement concerns. Much wider range of usable performance over temperature; much colder, much hotter. Much less need for recycling because of the comparatively much longer lifetime. They can't be overcharged at their rated voltage, they simply stop taking charge. Consequently, they can be infinitely trickle charged, so for instance, solar panels on the roof can help keep a vehicle topped up. They have completely predictable, and 100% stable, discharge curves, so a five year old ultracap performs just as well as a brand new one, plus the predictability and stability enable trivial measurement of consumption, hence permanently accurate gauges that tell you your remaining range, etc. Without having to take age or usage patterns into consideration. These are just the advantages the ultracap has over chemical batteries. Ultracaps also share every significant advantage batteries offer: power distribution system already in place (compare to building a hydrogen infrastructure); it's trivial to implement a bucket brigade style of charge storage so that the grid can be tapped when there is (presently) excess capacity; much more efficient use of power with electrical motors and centralized generation as compared to IC engines; ability to acquire and use solar power; agnostic as to where the power comes from, so as sources get greener, so do battery and UC uses of electrical power; no air pollution in operation; relief of pressure on petrochemical supplies and consequent relief of remaining dependence on foreign petrochemical supplies.

The show-stopper is insufficient energy density, or to look at it from the other direction, sufficient energy requires too much weight and space. The hope is that with so many attempts being made to solve that, it will happen sooner rather than later.

UC's have many characteristics that make them inherently superior to batteries. They have only that one failing. Fix that, and there would no reason at all to go with a battery.

Thanks. :)

For someone who only occasionally uses the vehicle, a roof full of solar panels would keep it fully charged and ready to go for the weekly trip to the grocery store. I no longer drive a great deal, and I've been thinking this might be just the thing for around-town use about 8-9 months out of the year here (can't see a sedan as a practical winter vehicle.) And it can charge while moving, and while you're in the store or other place doing what you need to do. Not too bad!

The only thing is that it has to be mostly parked. Otherwise, not enough power in as compared to power out, and then you're back to a tethered, cost-plus vehicle.

rimshot.

I got the impression that the cost savings were in manufacturing. Machining and otherwise dealing with steel is a quite different set of tasks and requirements as opposed to trying to make essentially the same components out of aluminum; admittedly, steel is heavier (hence the lesser range, perhaps) but it's a lot easier to fabricate steel. Every tiny shop I know of can do it, while handling aluminum is still somewhat of a speciality undertaking.

Ultracaps. So far, in the field, they're no threat WRT energy density. Pretty much everything else, though, they blow batteries away.

There are plenty of in-lab efforts ongoing right now that bring the energy densities up to par. It remains to be seen which one(s), if any, can make it to market in such a way as to displace the role of batterie; that's all about expense, presuming energy density is licked.

Bottom line, though, is that battery tech isn't likely to continue to hold its ground for much longer, barring some disruptive discovery in its own domain.

fucking moron. Why don't you go wine(sic) somewhere else

If only one could subsist off of irony. Slashdot alone could feed the world...

...but man, you should see how flat that train squashed my penny!

people who were bad, still are bad, and don't want you to find out easily

So the best solution is to brand everyone as untrustworthy? Please. If person X is still bad, that's a matter for law enforcement. Not for your back-fence gossip fest.

Some of this would be solved by simply not indexing local news stories and police blotters. As these are generally of interest mostly to locals (surprise!), little loss of significant information access would occur. I already know where to go for my local information. I don't really benefit from the ability to find your local news and police blotter without an actual interest in your locality (and in which case, hunting down your local websites is trivial.) The ability to see everything from everywhere by searching for the essential equivalent to "search term: John Doe" is only something really of benefit to the gossipmonger's mentality. I really don't think you could ever convince me that such gossip is of much positive use to society.

Google wouldn't even have to do anything; all it would take is a legislated robots.txt entry, and bingo, local news and blotter gossip is gone.

So for you, the only kind of suffering is "pain", eh? Are you always this simpleminded, or did you take a stupid pill especially for this conversation?

Can suffer. Not *will* suffer. Learn English. It's a great language.

The point being made is that a distinct human is formed at the time of conception.

You think so? Ok, take it in your arms and rock it then, crooning nice things for it to hear. Wait, what? You can't? It can't hear! Or see! And there's no body! And no limbs! And no nothing else for that matter! And why? Because it's OBVIOUSLY not human. And it won't be for some time yet. How much? You already know my answer: when it develops an operating nervous system. That's debartable, certainly. But pretending that the first few days of undifferentiated cell division equate to humanity is ridiculous.

Where does an individual human begin or end?

Already addressed. Not my fault if you don't read.

other lines are more like fuzzy guidelines in comparison

Yes, exactly what I said. But I also said that at conception, it's not fuzzy: that is not a human, and a term, it's not fuzzy, that IS a human. All of the fuzziness lies in between those two points.

Is it alright to abort a currently single celled human because it didn't suffer?

Yes, absolutely. Women do it due to autonomic response all the time, doing it due to choice isn't in any way more troublesome, other than when superstition comes into play. Because the thing being disposed of is not a human being by any scientific rationale.

Would it be okay to painlessly kill an otherwise healthy sixteen year old in their sleep? Why would one be worse than the other?

Because the former is not human, and cannot suffer; while the 16 YO is, and can, nor is it ok that their years of work in developing personality and humanity go to waste; nor is it ok that the family's and society's investment in forming this human being do to waste, NOR is your presumption that suffering is not possible during sleep in any way valid -- of course, even if it were, the implied zero value of the developed person as compared to a clump of undifferentiated cells is a cognitive fail of brobdingnagian proportions.

Make sure you never fall asleep or get put under for surgery or go into a coma. Or better yet don't get instantly killed in any way since you would not suffer

The whole *point* of being put under for surgery is to decouple the brain -- which a mass of undifferentiated cells does not have -- from the nervous system; The whole *point* of sleep is to allow the brain -- which a mass of undifferentiated cells does not have -- to rest and adjust to new experiences; the whole *problem* with a coma is that the brain -- which a mass of undifferentiated cells does not have -- is unresponsive at a point where it is developed to the point where it *should* be.

Not one thing in your post addresses the objective reality at hand here: a clump of undifferentiated cells isn't a human being, doesn't have a brain, and treating it as if those things were not true is, at best, purest superstition and ignorance.

You want to care for it, give it time to develop, it'll be something else. You bet. But until, or unless, you do so, it won't be.

This is not opinion. Facts only. Objecting is futile.

I'm not sure it's the others that are using "hucksterism of philosophy".

Of your obvious severe cognitive problems, that one should go to the bottom of the list.