When built it will be the largest US based solar plant:
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/14863899.htm
I can’t wait for cheap solar. Yes I’m some kind of a hippy.
Monthly Archive for June, 2006
What is with tech journalism today?
I just read the New York Times article entitled “Growing Wikipedia Revises Its ‘Anyone Can Edit’ Policy“. A provocative tagline that is disingenuous, on multiple levels. First of all, it’s not a revision to the policy, Wikipedia has had page protection for quite some time now. Futhermore anyone can edit, so long as they abide by the rules. So nothing has changed. Wikipedia’s methods continue to produce great results. Jimmy Wales, we salute thee!
I use a simple recipe to keep virus free
- Clamwin
- Firefox:
- Clamwin Glue for Firefox
- Common Sense
Clamwin is a free anti-virus scanner, with high detection rates. The only thing that keeps it off the desktop of many users is that it’s missing what many consider to be a critical feature; real time scanning. Most modern anti-virus programs remain in memory, and check every file when it is opened, moved or created. This is a very thorough way to check for virii but it is very taxing on the performance of your system. Since I need those computational cycles for other tasks I usually disable or limit real time scanning to newly created files.
It is perfectly safe not to use real time scanning, but you need to understand how a virus comes to infect your computer in the first place. A virus sneaks inside your computer on a file that you introduce by one of the following means:
- You download it
- You get it in an email
- You bring it on removable media, like a floppy disc, CD, or a usb thumb drive
So all you really need to do, in order to keep your computer clean and virus free, is to scan all the files at these entry points before you use them. That’s where common sense comes in.
Luckily there are tools to make this a bit easier. Clamwin Glue for Firefox scans anything you download using Firefox. Clamwin also has a plugin for Microsoft Outlook. This covers the most common points of entry automatically. Add a nightly scan of your entire system, and you’ve got a free anti-virus solution that doesn’t constantly burn CPU cycles.
The single greatest problem with solar energy has been getting the cost of solar panels down to the point at which they pay for themselves in a short time. Current solar technology is based on expensive silicon technology, however several companies are working on a cheaper process, thin film solar cells.
I’ve been watching Nanosolar ever since I read this Slashdot article and the corresponding article in the Hindu. Nanosolar has been real quiet lately, and I’ve been getting worried that we will never see these cheap solar cells. After watching for news for about six months I finally contacted Nanosolar to find out for myself. An email interview was arranged and Martin Roscheisen emailed this response with remarkable speed:
1) A little about yourself: I’ve read the official stuff on the site and what I’ve found on the web, but I’m unclear on a lot of things.
How old are you? Where do you live? What precisely is your role at Nanosolar, researcher or more administrative? What other things are important to you, aside from Nanosolar?
I’m 37 and live in San Francisco. Here’s my house…they actually put it onto the cover of Dwell in Jan: http://www.rmartinr.com/Dwell.htm
My role at Nanosolar is to lead the team in the right direction as a company. I don’t do adminstration. I work very closely with our team which is mostly engineers right now. I’ve always been very involved in all aspects of the technology, whether the overall choices or other key items. I’m also spending a good chunk of time with customers. I know how to make decisions in situations when there’s only very partial information and/or very little time available to make such decisions — and build a company and a business from nothing much there.
Other things important to me: I like architecture (see above).
2) What are the primary challenges Nanosolar is facing right now?
We have the process and the capital to deliver the products we want…so our present focus is on building a factory that delivers the production capacity we want.
3) Why has Nanosolar been so quiet lately? For reasons of secrecy or strategy?
We do not yet have any PR or marketing person on our team, and we’re very much focused on product and production development. So if we’re quiet, the main reason for this is that we’re simply busy! Things are going very very well. Everything is coming together very nicely. But since you have reminded me, we should probably announce a few things we’ve recently accomplished.
4) When will your product reach the market? 2007? Will the product be offered to large commercial interests before it is available to residential customers?
We have prototype products now; we’re testing them very thoroughly in environmental chambers and outdoors. The larger volumes will be available from our production fab in 2007, yes.
So there you have it, sit tight and we will have practical solar by 2007!
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