Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:"Grid Parity" ... on sunny days only (Score 1) 735

by slb (#42291883) Attached to: Solar Panels For Every Home?

> WTF is a "feed-in tarif"?
In Europe that's a guaranteed purchase price by the utilities for home producers of "green" energy. You can also call that a subsidy. Now If you really believe that when WE Energy buy your PV electricity at $.25 per kWh they will be able to recoup these costs by selling it at a premium, this is were you enter the delusional category.

FYI WE Energy do have an offer at 100% renewable energy[1]: with a rate of $.14 (0.12611+0.01388 [2]) ! So basically all their customers are subsiding the purchase price of PVs, and the taxpayers subsidizing your installation. And you have the balls to tell me that I'm the one working from inaccurate or obsolete information ...

Also, if you did this installation recently, double-check your contract I am not sure that this scam will go for long, even in Germany the government is starting to see the stupidity of all this and is reducing the feed-in tariff.

[1] http://www.we-energies.com/business/wisconsin_service_rates/eft_smbus.htm
[2] http://www.we-energies.com/business/elec/std_rateplan.htm

Comment Re:"Grid Parity" ... on sunny days only (Score 3, Interesting) 735

by slb (#42288551) Attached to: Solar Panels For Every Home?

Your installation cost for a residential system is extremely cheap ! On average in the USA a 3kW system would be a $17000 investment [1]. Also your annual savings are quite incredible: with the average household cost of electricity in the USA at 11.72c per kWh [2], it would mean that your system produced around 13413 kWh [12x(163-32)/0.1172] over a year ! For a 3kW system this would mean that your magic installation as a capacity factor of 51% !!!! [13413/ (3 x 24 x 365)].

So yes, I don't know if you're delusional but you have been most likely lying by forgetting to speak about the subsidies you received for the installation and feed-in tarif. Oh and if you want to prove your case, please state your location and the supplier of your system...

What is far more annoying than your convenient omission of subsidies is all the idiots solar fanboys moderating you informative when they have absolutely no clue about the real cost of Solar PV energy....

[1] http://www.irena.org/DocumentDownloads/Publications/RE_Technologies_Cost_Analysis-SOLAR_PV.pdf
[2] http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_03

Comment "Grid Parity" ... on sunny days only (Score -1, Troll) 735

by slb (#42286961) Attached to: Solar Panels For Every Home?
This is quite incredible that people continue to tout Solar PV as an economically viable energy when it is completely ineffective most of the time. And when the sun does not shines, one still need the energy from the Local Distribution Company. Saying that Solar PV is at the retail cost of grid power is either a lie or a complete delusion.

Comment This is hype: NTLM is broken by design (Score 5, Insightful) 330

by slb (#42189893) Attached to: New 25-GPU Monster Devours Strong Passwords In Minutes
This is well known and no sane people uses NTLM auth anymore, even Microsoft recommend to deactivate this authentication method. The idiots at Microsoft used a DES ECB implementation instead of CBC that anyone with two ounce of crypto knowledge would choose. The practical impact of this very bad design choice is that a 14 character password has as much complexity as two independant 7 characters passwords ! So when the authors brag about cracking a 14 character password in 6 minutes, what they're really doing is cracking two 7 character passwords in 6 minutes, this is entirely different and not impressive at all.
Power

Ask Slashdot: What Stands In the Way of a Truly Solar-Powered Airliner? 590

Posted by Soulskill from the i-blame-gravity dept.
centre21 writes "I've been reading about solar-powered aircraft all over the Internet, as well as solar power in general. But I'm wondering: is it more than just solar cell efficiency that's preventing the creation of a solar-powered airliner? Conspiracy views aside (which may be valid), it seems to me that if I were running an airline the size of United or American, eliminating the need for jet fuel as a cost would be highly appealing. So, I'm asking: what stands in the way of creating true solar-powered airliners?"
News

26 Nuclear Power Plants In Hurricane Sandy's Path 392

Posted by samzenpus from the perfect-storm dept.
pigrabbitbear writes "Hurricane Sandy is about to ruin a bunch of people's Mondays. In New York City alone, the storm has already shut down public transportation, forced tens of thousands to relocate to higher ground and compelled even more office jockeys to work from home. (Okay, that last part might not be so bad, especially for the folks that don't actually have to work at all.) But if it knocks out power to any of the 26 nuclear power plants that lie directly in its path, the frankenstorm of the century will ruin Tuesday, too. Heck, a nuclear meltdown would be a much bigger problem."
Science

Ancient Tsunami Devastated Lake Geneva Shoreline 41

Posted by samzenpus from the five-feet-high-and-rising dept.
ananyo writes "In ad 563, more than a century after the Romans gave up control of what is now Geneva, Switzerland, a deadly tsunami on Lake Geneva poured over the city walls. Originating from a rock fall where the River Rhône enters at the opposite end of the lake to Geneva, the tsunami destroyed surrounding villages, people and livestock, according to two known historical accounts. Researchers now report the first geological evidence from the lake to support these ancient accounts. The findings suggest that the region would be wise to evaluate the risk today, with more than one million inhabitants living on the lake's shores, including 200,000 people in Geneva alone. The researchers cannot say exactly what created the tsunami (nothing suggests it was an earthquake), but they propose that the falling rock caused an accumulated heap of sediment in the Rhône delta to collapse. This would have launched the wave and carried the sediment from the delta to the center of the lake, where the researchers detected it. The researchers used the geological information gathered in the study to recreate how the wave might have behaved. Their model predicted that a 13-meter-high wave would have hit Lausanne 15 minutes after the rock fall, with an 8-meter-high wave reaching Geneva after 70 minutes."
Medicine

Gut Bacteria Cocktail May End Need for Fecal Transplants 183

Posted by timothy from the or-do-you-prefer-it-old-school dept.
sciencehabit writes "A tonic of gut microbes may be the secret recipe for treating a common hospital scourge. Researchers have pinpointed the exact mix of microbes required to cure mice of chronic infection by Clostridium difficile. The hard-to-treat bacterium infects alomst 336,000 in the US each year and causes bloating, pain, & diarrhea. A similar bacterial cocktail may be able to replace the current controversial treatment involving the intake of a healthy person's fecal matter to restore the right balance of microbes in the gut."
Transportation

Standard For Electric Car Charging Announced 212

Posted by Soulskill from the which-automakers-will-promptly-ignore dept.
SchrodingerZ writes "The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), an international syndicate, has unveiled what is to become the standard for electric car charging. In today's market there are hundreds of different methods and plugs to charge a variety of different cars, now a single multi use plug is announced as the world standard. Called the J1772 , it 'has two charging plugs incorporated into a single design and is said to reduce charging times from as long as eight hours to as little as 20 minutes.' The cumulative work of over 190 'global experts,' the plug can cater to both AC and DC currents for charging. The plug also sets a new standard on safety regulations, including 'its ability to be safely used in all weather conditions, and the fact that its connections are never live unless commanded by the car during charging.' The J1772 beat out its Japanese competitor the CHAdeMO, used as an option on the Nissan Leaf."
Education

Parent Questions Mandatory High School Chemistry 866

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the redox-reactions-how-do-they-work dept.
Ollabelle writes "David Bernstein, a nonprofit executive who lives in Gaithersburg, Md., has two sons, ages 7 and 15. He has previously written about how schools fail students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Now he turns his attention to mandated curriculum in public schools, and argues that his sons shouldn't be forced to take any science class." From the article: "There’s a concept in economics called 'opportunity costs,' which you may not have learned about because you were taking chemistry instead of economics. Opportunity costs are the sacrifices we make when we choose one alternative over another. ... When you force my son to take chemistry (and several other subjects, this is not only about chemistry), you are not allowing him that same time to take a public speaking course, which he could be really good at, or music, or political science, or creative writing, or HTML coding for websites."
Privacy

Proposed Posting of Clients List In Prostitution Case Raises Privacy Concerns 533

Posted by samzenpus from the staying-off-the-list dept.
An anonymous reader writes "An interesting case touching on privacy in the Internet age has erupted in Kennebunk, Maine, the coastal town where the Bush family has a vacation home. When a fitness instructor who maintained a private studio was arrested for prostitution, she turned out to have maintained meticulous billing records on some 150 clients, and had secretly recorded the proceedings on video files stored in her computer. Local police have begun issuing summons to her alleged johns, and have announced intentions to publish the list, as is customary in such cases. Police believe such publication has a deterrent effect on future incidents of the kind. However, the notoriety of the case has some, including newspaper editors, wondering whether the lives of the accused johns may be disproportionately scarred (obtaining or keeping a job, treatment of members of their families within the community) for a the mere accusation of having committed a misdemeanor. Also, the list of names will be permanently archived and indexed by search engines essentially forever."
NASA

NASA's Giant Crawler-Transporter Is Getting an Upgrade 135

Posted by Soulskill from the new-paint-job-and-millions-of-pounds-of-carrying-capacity dept.
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from Transportation Nation: "Retired space shuttles are being readied for museums, but there's one piece of equipment at the Kennedy Space Center that dates back to before the moon landing and it's not going anywhere. NASA's giant crawler transporter is the only machine with enough muscle to move Apollo rockets and space shuttles out to the launch pad, and after nearly 50 years on the job the agency's decided there's still no better way to transport heavy loads. It's about as wide as a six lane highway, higher than a two story building, with huge caterpillar treads at each of its four corners. ... Crawler two is being upgraded from its current lifting capacity of 12 million pounds — the combined weight of the shuttle and mobile launcher — to 18 million pounds, for NASA’s new heavy lift rocket."
Communications

Russia's Former KGB Invests In Political Propaganda Spambots 164

Posted by timothy from the in-post-soviet-russia dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The newspaper Kommersant reports that the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (formerly part of the KGB) has invested 30 million roubles (USD $940,000) on 'blog and social network intelligence' programs (Google translation of Russian original). A small part of that money is used for surveillance and analytics, but 22 million roubles (USD $690,000) is invested in 'mass distribution of messages in social networks with a view to the formation of public opinion.' Which presumably can be rephrased as 'launching massive pro-Kremlin astroturfing propaganda spambots in order to stifle and undermine political dissent.' The brazen Russian government acknowledgement of this investment indicates that the Kremlin does not think of such activities to be in any way illegal or unethical. No words whether these spambots would respect any anti-spam laws or the Terms and Conditions of victim websites. But hey, now you can accuse anyone you disagree with online of being a 'KGB bot'!"
Science

Surfacestations: NOAA Has Overestimated Land Surface Temperature Trends 474

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the climate-change-driven-by-hippies dept.
New submitter BMOC writes "Anthony Watts of Surfacestations project (crowdsourced research) has finally yielded some discussion worthy results (PDF). He uses a siting classification system developed by Michel Leroy for Meteofrance in 1999 that was improved in 2010 to quantify the effect of heat sinks and sources within the thermometer viewshed by calculation of the area- weighted and distance-weighted impact of biasing elements to calculate both raw and gridded 30 year trends for each surveyed station, using temperature data from USHCNv2. His initial claims are that station siting is impacting the surface temperature record significantly, and NOAA adjustments are exacerbating that problem, not helping. Whether you agree with his results or not, recognize that this method of research is modern and worth your participation in the review. Poke holes in publicly sourced and presented research all you can, that's what makes this method useful."

Slashdot Top Deals

Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem in relation to a bigger problem. -- P.D. Ouspensky

Close