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Comment FCC is wrong. Its power that matters. Low power. (Score 1) 300

The FCC person is wrong. Flat wrong.
Without new bandwidth being opened up he is wrong. Essentially, the amount of data that can be transmitted over say a city is determined by two things:
1) The frequency bands available.
2) The power of the transmitting device. The lower the power the more bandwidth we have. By factors of millions.

So in the old days (like now), a single TV channel covered a city, and gave 6 Mbits (or whatever the rate is) for the whole city. ie close to zero. The transmitter is 100,000 watts.
Now, imagine two 0.01 watt transmitters on the same channel. You can have literally millions of these pairs using the same channel in the same city, since they only have a range of say 100 m. The result is millions of times the bandwidth, along with lower powered devices.

Chips that do exactly that are being developed now. Its sort of like the ethernet protocol, in ethernet, the channel just wait for blank air time on the wire, while with devices, they just look for clear frequencies. Combine that with advances that use reflections and ghosting to improve signal, and you have an era where wireless wins.
Wires will still be handy for backbone, etc. Perhaps even one to your house if its easy.

It really is the power thats the factor.

Linux Business

Microsoft Attacks Linux With Retail-Training Talking Points 681

DesiVideoGamer writes "Over at Overclock.net, a user has posted screen-shots from Microsoft's 'ExpertZone' training course entitled 'Linux vs. Windows 7.' This course is available to BestBuy employees and will make them eligible for a $10 copy of Windows 7 upon completion." The screenshots linked show at least some creative interpretations of the state of Linux vs. Windows on a wide range of things, from media playback and video conferencing to ease of updates to (of all things) keeping your PCs "safer." Most of the claims, though, aren't concrete enough to be perfectly refuted. Writes DesiVideoGamer, "I think I now know why, when I enter BestBuy, the employees say the odd lies that they do."

Comment Re:Wind is free. Wind power is very expensive. (Score 1) 164

The reality is that it does not matter how you are going to get paid. Tax breaks, overpriced electrical contracts, no property taxes. It really does not matter.

I was not trying to show how they get paid, but rather the return they will need based on capital invested. This return needs to be 20% or so due to the uncertain nature of the tax breaks, contracts, etc for Wind. I did not include maintenance, as wind argues that this is very small. If you add in any kind of depreciation and a little maintenance, my 20% return works out to closer to 10 - 15% or so. The way the companies are chasing Wind development right now shows that this is a high return 'gold rush' scenario.

Taking the return that capital needs and dividing it by the amount of electricity produced returns the true price. The 'contract' price is an illusion cooked up by government and business to hide the massive subsidies that are the reality of Wind Power.

Ontario does have cheaper power than Texas. But not that much cheaper. Ontario gets 25% of power from hydro, 50% from nuclear with coal, gas, etc for the rest. Yes its likely cheaper than Texas power - but coal and nuclear are close in price.

  Spot prices are not what is paid to coal and nuclear, they are on a contract at about $50/MWh. They can sign contracts cause they can produce electricity on demand. The value of wind energy is reflected in the spot price.

Yes the spot price for electricity can be high - but it rarely is. Furthermore the spot price usually always dives to close to zero (or even negative!) during periods of high wind. The utility HAS to buy wind when its windy, plus it has base load generation going, so if those two numbers add to demand (or more), then the spot price collapses.

Of the say $500 million spent on a wind power project, about $400 million has to come from taxpayers - either in taxes or in overpriced electricity - which is a tax since electricity is a monopoly.

If the governments pulled out of Wind subsidies, installation costs would magically fall, wind would only be installed in really windy places (doubling the average wind speed produces triple or more the power), and there would be a real industry. What you have right now is pure socialism.

Comment Wind is free. Wind power is very expensive. (Score 1) 164

Wind power is very expensive to produce. Just add up the numbers for investment. Sticky Widgets numbers are ok, if a tad low: So about 500 million for these turbines. So in order to get any kind of ecomic return - which better be on the order of 20% per year given the political uncertainty with wind, means that you need to charge about 100 million per year for the electricity. How much juice? Easy. 100 turbines x 365*24*1.5MW * 30% of the time its windy, means $253 per megawatt hour. Or 25c per kwh. This is about 5x the price for nuclear or coal, and nuclear and coal can be called up on demand. The 'real' price is higher still, as you need a 450MW (likely gas fired) plant built to cover the times when no wind is blowing.

Right now in Ontario, power is selling for a spot price of about 1/12 that - $17 US /Mwh. Wind energy needs to be priced at the spot market value, since it is not predictable. (Unless you also build the 450 MW gas plant, and add that to the cost). http://www.theimo.com/imoweb/marketdata/marketToday.asp

Wind power is a run for your wallet arranged by big business, demanded by the populace (who can't add) and approved by the government who gets elected by city people who don't have to live with it.

Say hello to tripling your elecric bill, while not measurably lowering carbon output.

Comment Geothermal pays if you can't get Natural Gas (Score 1) 215

Colder climates - If you can't get Natural Gas, then you are stuck with Propane, Heating oil, or electric. Heat pumps usually produce about 3x - 5x the energy that you put into them. Work best with heated floors. Unfortunately the installers have been installing oversized systems - it is best to make one that can't keep up on 10% of January days, and supplement with propane on those days. We stopped using approx 1ton propane/month for the winter big three months - which is about a 15 ton CO2 reduction for the house per year. Also air conditioning is just about free. Almost all buildings use it in some places in the mountains. (Propane is very expensive on a mountain). Nat gas costs 1/3 that of Propane, oil or electric.

Comment Obviously bad science (Score 1) 319

If you have 72 subjects, and you do a paper like this, you absolutely have to publish the data. This paper is unscientific and a lie. I would bet 10 bucks that if you saw the results for all 72 subjects in a nice table it would become obvious that nothing happened. It was likely that a few people with the radio transmitter on took 30 mins longer to go to sleep, But when you say " "Under the RF exposure condition, participants exhibited a longer latency to deep sleep (stage 3, meanRF=0.37, (SD=0.33), mean- Sham=0.27 hours (SD=0.12); F=9.34, p=0.0037)." Hey it sounds technical. "During the sessions participants carried out performance and memory tests, scored self-reported symptoms and state of mood." This gives you an idea of what was tested for. They, as usual, did not find anything where they were looking, so they report on something else. This widely used trick in the medical sciences artificially increases the chances of finding 'significant' results. Another way of saying this: If you do an experiment on 72 people and measure 72 variables, all you get is a mess.

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