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Comment Re:Flashback! (Score 1) 432

"Coal is a disaster for air quality" is a generalization but is generally true.
There is a definite cost/benefit analysis and at some point coal will fall below the threshold. I propose that nuclear be the tipper some day but I may be dreaming. America had two entire generations grow up believing that we would be either vaporized or mutated by anything radioactive. Meanwhile the damn Frogs are making most of their power from the stuff.

Comment Re:Flashback! (Score 1) 432

I will grant that I may be up to 1.1% wrong in my statement.
The linked chart HERE indicates that up to 1.1% of electricity is generated by "Petrolium".
Graph data is represented as such:
Coal 48.2%
Petroleum 1.1%
Natural Gas 21.4%
Other Gases 0.3%
Nuclear 19.6%
Hydroelectric Conventional 6.0%
Other Renewables 3.1%
Other 0.3%

It is true that you CAN produce fuel oil with which to heat a home, and thereby supplant the need for electricity in that home, from crude oil. This is, however, one of the lowest ROI products of a commodity that you've gone to all the trouble of carting around the globe (or at least across the border).
I submit that little or none of that 1.1% of electricity generated by petroleum was imported. The cost factor simply nets out better when you sell whatever commodity you produce to the highest-paying consumer, which would mean you're going to be selling that imported commodity to a wholesaler at markup, not a power station. My understanding is that natural gas plants use petroleum as a primer. If someone has a link regarding this hit us up. Otherwise I'm betting that this petroleum that is being consumed is byproduct and made in the USA my friends.

Comment Greed Jobs? (Score 0, Flamebait) 432

Imagine all the money! Awesome that future technologies like wind energy only cost gobs more than all those technologies of the past. Even the article suggests that cost/kwh will go up for consumers. These are being built on subsidized contracts, of course, because the only thing that would make THIS project (not all wind projects) doable is massive cash injections from the feds. Still, with the low cost of "fossil" fuel and the billions of other products (you can't make plastics out of air power) that rely on oil, there is no way that wind and oil even exist in the same product category. Salazar's claim that this will contribute to "America's energy independence" is an empty claim since the energy that is generated by these windfarms will replace exactly zero percent of imported energy! Also, the article lauds this as a green jobs boon which, of course, has been repeatedly disproven a-la Spain's booming "Green/d" economy.

Comment Re:WMWiFiRouter FTW (Score 1) 192

To preserve battery you can also use bluetooth to tether your devices... or just use USB. Bluetooth SHOULD save battery life. Not the highest performance for local file transfers but your internet connection is still the choke point, not the BT.

I don't believe that phones are artificially slowed but can tell you that the data should be limited only by the bandwidth of the connection technology (GPRS/Edge/HSPA/Etc.) If you were to aggregate multiple devices/data streams (make the cell you're connected to THINK that you were multiple devices) you could increase your bandwidth... theoretically.

Simply maintaining a HSDPA connection is hard on a battery. You can configure your cellular radio software for optimal data transport, don't know how effective that is either or what it does to the voice signal.

I'm not saying "don't use WMWiFiRouter"... it's a cool product that manages several features of WM.

Comment Re:WMWiFiRouter FTW (Score 1) 192

Yep, the only problem is that technically you're breaking the terms of most contracts by using the data service with other devices.

Of course, this should stop no one.

Also, I would encourage anyone who would even consider BUYING a software add-on that permits tethering to make a quick jaunt over to xda-developers.com and flash a new ROM onto your device that will give you that native functionality of Windows Mobile (5 and 6 both have internet connection sharing native in the OS) but will also give you better performance and features than your phone vendor would ever care for you to have access to.

ALSO, you can tether using bluetooth, so as long as your phone is on you can get to the internet from your other bluetooth-enabled devices like your netbook or laptop and without all the battery drain of provisional 802.X wifi.

It's just crazy that phone companies would create this "device" to charge you for what you've already got in your pocket.

If you've got a WM phone do yourself a favor and log in to xda-developers.com.

Comment Lock and Print (Score 1) 340

Whenever you find an unlocked wireless signal it's best practice to lock it down for the owner.
Sure, this limits their ability to access it, but you can assume they have access to the reset switch.
Whenever possible you can access a network print resource and print the password for them.

Comment iTouch U (Score 0, Troll) 216

I feel as though I just wasted an additional entire minute and a half re-reading this review for content...
It appears as though this is a "review" of a book about iTouch software development.
iWouldn't eRead this rEview.

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