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Comment Re:Evolution is not an Observed Phenomenon (Score 1) 772

Possibly from something more like an egg-laying mammal (see Monotreme). Although there is evidence that Cynognathus and Thrinaxodon (before the dinosaurs), had fur, may have been warm blooded, and may have given live birth.

They all lost out the the dinosaurs and only occupied the mouse like environmental niches until the dinosaurs went extinct.

Comment Re:Will it really go the pulseaudio way? (Score 1) 179

I've seen this, (a while ago it's true). I was curious about why some GTK applications had such terrible remote performance. When I ran the applications through xscope, before the first window materialized, I saw thousands of calls to XGetGeometry(). What made that doubly silly is that any window geometry change is provided to the client as an XConfigureEvent. So, a local copy of window geometry information can be easily kept up to date.

Comment Re:Hydrogen Vs Batteries (Score 1) 659

EV charging systems already are configured for managing recharging load. My Focus electric can be set to start charging at any time. So, I get home plug it in, and it waits for the cheapest rates to start charging. It's called Value Charge. With smart metering and coordinated load management from the utility, it becomes even easier to optimize the whole system for electric vehicles.

Comment Re:Set 'em up, knock 'em down (Score 2) 211

Why don't you take your tin-foil hat brigade somewhere else. Maybe Syria, Somalia, you know someplace that has no effective government.

Could we at least number the anonymous cowards, I'd like to know if the crap is coming from one blabbermouth or if there's a team of sock puppets at work.

It would make it easier to get a better signal to noise ratio.

Comment Re:Big Oil loves Wind & Solar (Score 1) 769

This has been proposed and it seems like it really can work.

The process goes something like

Use surplus renewable electricity to split water to get hydrogen.

Run the hydrogen and atmospheric CO2 through a Sabatier reactor and get methane.

Feed the methane into any natural gas pipeline (The nation wide natural gas pipelines typically have at least a 7 day supply available).

Use the nation wide natural gas pipelines to deliver the product to gas turbine generators.

Storage and production largely use existing infrastructure.

Comment Re:Another RAID? (Score 1) 983

Here's a more subtle way of doing a file system in (from personal, bitter experience).

As root of course.

Start in any directory

rm -rf .*

On the system that I discovered this on, the first file it removed was the system kernel. That's when the panic started. I was just trying to get rid of some hidden directories in a home directory.

Comment Re:No, because they are not compatible (Score 1) 551

That's also true. But, if your variable input energy source can't be used when it's available, running it into an inefficient process to store it doesn't have the same impact as it would if you had to run it through the inefficient process always. Putting it another way, Use it when it's available (for anything), or lose it.

Comment Re:No, because they are not compatible (Score 3, Interesting) 551

You use the wind power to run the pumps on reservoir storage, or to electrolyze water to run Sabatier reactors which generate hydrocarbon gases like methane. Feed the hydrocarbon gases into the existing natural gas pipelines which feed the gas turbine peaking plants. The natural gas pipeline system can maintain at least several days worth of supply for the whole nation.

There are more ways, those two are my favorite candidates. Just keep T. Boone Pickens away from the natural gas.

Comment Re:God of the Gaps (Score 1) 1293

I didn't realize that "humanity" included self-righteousness, arrogance, and a large dose of holier than thou.

Lets see if I got this right, you do what is "right" (according to your religion) because your God says that he'll burn you forever if you don't; not because its the right thing to do. And because you do what is "right" you are feel that you have more "humanity" than anyone who doesn't believe in God.

If that is what it takes to keep you acting civilized, I'm all in favor of it.

Comment Re:3D Tsunami (Score 1) 89

One of the other interesting facets of the whole area is that it isn't just a matter of having a 3D printer. If you're going to create parts for your own ideas, you have to be able to draw them. If you can't create the drawings/models, all you can do is search around for something the somebody else did and hope that it's close enough. (What's the fun in that?)

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