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I'd much prefer people check out new stuff over Monopoly and Life. Though Boggle and Scrabble are hard to improve upon....but overall there are some really great games out there.

Then don't buy things (as someone below your comment has said) if you don't need them. Or, you might be interested in trying what these folks set out to do.

I won't say I've gone anywhere near as far as these folks have done (I just picked up three Calphalon pans which were at least 50% off regular price as replacements), but as a rule, I don't buy something unless I absolutely need it. Cell phone? Don't have. Newest, latest, blingiest PC? Nope. 18 different electronic devices? Nada.

It's amazing how much money people can accumulate if they exercise a bit of self-control. I mean supposedly we're the smartest animals on this ball of rock, dirt and water. How about we use some of that intelligence.

Except that they appear to be researching their locations pretty carefully. San Francisco does not have hurricanes or tropical storms as the water around it is too shallow to hold all the energy. Besides, the Bay is just that: A bay. I don't know if you've ever been to SF, but pier 50 is way south well inside the bay. It is very safe.

Yea, don't think that boating accident that happened last november http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/11/08/MNUKT85I3.DTL will affect the local opinion on decommissioned container ships being parked in their bay...

Yep...

1)The biggest road-hog remains spam (unsolicited e-mail), which accounts for 90% of traffic on the internet.

Spam does *NOT* constitute 90% of all internet traffic. It constitutes 90% of all emails. At 10-to-15 kbytes each, they're not exactly overwhelming the internet. I should also point out that an email with multiple recipients at the same ISP goes as one email, and is exploded into multiple copies at the receiving ISP. This reduces the internet traffic even more. The biggest single traffic use is bittorrent and friends. Streaming video and legit online/download sales of movies might challenge it in future.

2) Soon, portable media-players, personal navigators, digital cameras, DVD players, flat-panel TV sets, and even mobile phones won't be able to function properly without access to the internet.

OMFG, NNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! The only way you'll see that is if linux is outlawed, and DRM-crippled computers/mediaplayers won't function without a live connection to the mothership.

3) Apple's initial response was to attempt a heavy-handed crackdown. But then a court decision in Germany forced its local carrier to unlock all iPhones sold there. Good news for iPhone owners everywhere: a flood of third-party applications is now underway.

The decision was overturned on appeal three weeks ago.

4)The trend toward openness has been given added impetus by the recent collapse of the legal battles brought by SCO, a software developer. Formerly known as Santa Cruz Operations, the firm bought the Unix operating system and core technology in 1995 from Novell (which, in turn, had bought it from its original developer, AT&T).

Dear Economist, please hire Dan Lyons. He's a helluva lot more knowledgable about the SCOX case than you are. Sad, isn't it? Santa Cruz Operations sold their Unix distribution business to Caldera, who later renamed themselves The SCO Group and started trying to shake down linux users.

5)Pressured by worried customers fearing prosecution, a handful of Linux distributors settled with SCO just to stay in business.

NO. A handful of firms that use linux in their business signed SCOSource licences. None of these firms were linux distributors. The reporter might be confusing the SCOSource licence, with Microsoft's FUD licence, which a few distributors actually have signed.

And fer-cryin-out-loud, please knock off this bit about "The Year Of The Linux Desktop". Linux is growing slowly, relative to the overall market. It will overtake Apple, and eventually Windows. But it will be a long slow grind. What might happen is that one year people will stop counting sales (obviously $0 even for millions of free copies) and start counting desktops. Much to the establishment's surprise, they'll discover that there's a helluva lot more linux desktops than they expected.

"Internally self-venting" = same newfarkled California crap. There is a solution - go to a motorcycle store or a store which caters to car racing. There, you will find a selection of these nice 5 gallon jugs, with old fashioned manual vents: http://mpnmag.com/site/content/site/images/7A-906-MP.jpg

Funny thing is, I was on a business trip to California, and stopped in at Chaparral Motorsports in San Bernardino. They sell those cans, with manual vents - but there is a poster on the display which states "THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA PROHIBITS THE USE OF THESE CONTAINERS TO STORE OR TRANSPORT GASOLINE OR ANY OTHER VOLATILE SOLVENT".

Then again, I also ate dinner at an upscale steak restaurant. They had a sign in the window: "THIS ESTABLISHMENT SERVES CHARRED MEAT, WHICH HAS BEEN DETERMINED BY THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA TO CAUSE CANCER"

I know that California has already established it's reputation as the land of fruits and nuts, but now they want to put cancer warning labels on prune juice and almonds: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/05/25/MNGD2CU9RA1.DTL

"When you are in public, you are in public." should not equal "When you are public, you are presumed to have criminal intent." This is yet another symptom of the growing perceptual gap between the police and the community they are supposed to "protect and serve". There are new stories every day about the effects of the increased militarization of the civilian police forces. Some of the stories are about SWAT teams kicking in the wrong door and terrorizing and/or shooting innocent people in their own homes. http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/10/06/tennessee.shooting.02.ap/index.html http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,188934,00.html http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/1107/474003.html
Some of the stories are about police view everyone they don't like as a "badguy" and then using that to justify violence. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tOVkT2YESU&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e2-qi0Rc3w&feature=related
And some of the stories are about police purposefully criminalizing citizens when they want to protest peacefully (another right fading away) http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/07/28/SURVEILLANCE.TMP http://www.notinourname.net/restrictions/infiltration-19feb04.htm http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0101/msg00193.html http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/22/nyregion/22police.html

Why do we want to add power to an already out of control aspect of our government? When did the police stop serving the people of the community and start serving political masters?

Verizon gets a lot of flak here and elsewhere for locking up phone capabilities. And as a current Verizon customer, I'd certainly love to be able to transfer files between my phone and computer with Bluetooth. At the same time, I still generally recommend Verizon to friends looking at switching or getting new service because here in San Francisco, as most places I've travelled in the U.S., my phone service just works.

Verizon Wireless reminds me of another company whose products I've grown to appreciate: Apple. Both companies seem to share a business model rooted in some common principles, producing a similar result: it just works.

Both companies control the hardware (Apple by making it, Verizon by installing their own interface), so they can solve users' problems when they crop up (under warranty, anyway...). And both companies charge a premium up front for their products, with users receiving solutions in exchange while using it. If you want to save some money, you get a PC and spend time and/or money getting things set up, configured, updated, upgraded as time goes on, or you use AT&T wireless and take your chances with network connectivity and customer service. But Verizon and Apple base their business models on making it work, and charging a premium for that.

No doubt folks will post here with horror stories with Apple tech support or Verizon customer service. My point is that in comparison, a given group of customers (non-techies with Apple, busy people with Verizon) are more satisfied with these companies overall than with other companies. Check out Consumer Reports' most recent survey of cell phone companies - they all rated abysmal in service, but they found Verizon the least so...

Wait, you're suggesting by "I dont know of any company that could afford to beat out the fossil fuel companies to do so." that there aren't companies in the US trying to make money off alternative energy? Further, lots of state governments are actively trying to promote alternative energy, which undermines the theory that the government is afraid of a tax revenue collapse. State governments are subsidizing alternative energy using those very tax revenues, in the hopes that home-grown alternative energy producers will create even more tax revenue in the future.

I hate to sound like a slashvertisement, but I think the following US companies and groups would all disagree with you:

Evergreen Solar (producer based in Mass.)
Heliodyne (producer based in California)
Google (installing panels on its roof)
Solar Energy Industry Association (US trade group)
Tesla Motors) (selling 100% electric cars in the US)
List of solar manufacturers in the US
US solar power installations increase 33% year-to-year

The New York Times has a story about this issue: "Venture Capital Rushes into Alternate Energy" suggesting that $1.5 billion in VC money was invested in 2006 alone in new companies who hope to profit from overthrowing the energy status quo. If you add private equity money then there was $18.1 billion in dealflow in 2006 in the alternate energy sector. Or listen to a 2004 story about the same issue.

It's nice to think that there's some great conspiracy against alternate energy, but the simple truth is that there is a lot of market action in the field and nothing stopping people from making money in it. There is a HUGE amount of money to be made from alternate energy and plenty of people are trying to make it.

And as a final point, the U.S. Military hardly behaves like the crips, and don't compare the two.

really? why are gang tags appearing on walls in baghdad? why are people in the army complaining about how gangs like the crips (and white supremacists) are gaining influence in the armed forces? thanks to lax recruiting. you have no idea about *any* army let alone your own. i'm not comparing the two. i am stating, with evidence, that one is literally becoming the other. and if that doesn't bother you, what do you think all those gang members are going to do when they get back home, to where you live?

again, you don't get it. modern wars aren't about numbers. the IRA never numbered more than about 2000 members and they successfully forced the british to give them most of what they wanted. there are hundreds of thousands of iraqi resistance fighters and millions of sympathisers. and everytime the us relies on technology to put force protection above accomplishing the mission (calling in air or artillery in urban areas) that number ticks up.

it's mathematics, something everyone on slashdot should understand. iraqis don't have to be monolithic, though the one thing almost all of them seem to agree on is that they want you all gone and that it's ok to kill you. keep in mind that there are 25 million iraqis. if even 10% wanted you gone and thought it was ok to kill you that's 2.5 million people. the actual number is more like 12 - 15 million people. i should also point out that iraq's population has a lot of people between 12 and 35 years of age. very , very few of them have jobs, or electricity, or running water and lots and lots of them were in the army or had some military training. in fact the only hope you guys have for mitigating the damage is that the resistance is so big. it makes it hard to operate secure cells and lets you get better intelligence. still, the numbers don't lie. you're fucked. it's just a matter of how fucked. will it be an honourable withdrawl with some face saving interim govt. that'll hang around long enough to save your blushes, or will it be helicopters on embassy roofs?

and you're right, there was an 'anbar awakening' until the us bombed the local sheiks it depended on to keep it going, and called them liars when they complained. as if they didn't have it hard enough already. look, this is how it works. you're a sheik, the americans offer you money and a grab bag of iraqi troops, many of whom work for the resistance. the resistance on the other hand know where you live and how many kids you have. which side has a convincing argument for you to join them? seriously man, you have the internet, how can you not know this stuff? you're going to lose in iraq and you won't even know why.

There was an endless thread once in Make magazine's forums arguing the pros and cons of putting solar powered fans on a sail-powered car to make it go faster! Sheesh.

And obviously, as recent events prove (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/09/BAD8T8PLU.DTL ) , you need a non-dumbass boat driver who knows where the bridges are.

California's testing and qualification of voting machines -- this time around, at least -- was quite formidable, including tiger teams to hack the machines. The report from the testers was the reason they all got sent back in the first place.

"In California, repair and installation labor is non-taxable."

It will probably be taxed sometime next year or the year after. The alternative is California having its' credit rating downgraded, because of the huge (10 billion bucks) shortfall in taxation revenue, which is likely to grow to approximately $30 billion by 2009, as the rest of the mortgage resets, foreclosures, and reposessions work their way through the system.

1. According to a report by "The Economist", the Japanese government, by 2005, had apologized 17 times for the role of the Japanese in World War II. The Japanese government even gave a written apology to the Korean government.

2. According to a report by "The Washington Post", Tokyo paid $500 million of war reparations to Seoul in 1965.

3. According to a CNN report, a "Time" magazine report, and several other reports, Nazi symbols are popular in Korea. "A small photo of Adolf Hitler adorns the entrance to the Fifth Reich, an upscale watering hole in Seoul's Shinchon university district. A larger picture of the Führer hangs across from the bar, where waiters and waitresses with swastika arm badges mix drinks that have names like 'Adolf Hitler' and 'Dead'."

4. Koreans have viciously treated non-Koreans in South Korea. The Chinese immigrant community has succeeded in nearly every Asian country (including Japan). The exception is South Korea. The Chinese population in Korea declined from 50,000 to 10,000. "Many Chinese claim they were forced out by the Seoul authorities."

5. A reporter at "The Economist" wrote, "Koreans have always prided themselves on ethnic homogeneity, and feared and distrusted outsiders."

6. The U.S. State department has warned, "Citizenship [in Korea] is based on blood, not location of birth, and Koreans must show as proof their family genealogy. Thus, ethnic Chinese born and resident in Korea cannot obtain citizenship or become public servants."

7. "Purity" of blood is extremely important in Korean culture. "Traditional reverence for familial bloodlines [in Korea] and the social stigmas attached to adoptees as well as children who are disabled, mixed race or born out of wedlock limit local enthusiasm for the [adoption] program. Thus, international adoption continues to outpace domestic." "Because of societal values emphasizing the importance of bloodline, children were adopted domestically only by extended family or blood relatives."

Although a tiny percentage of Japanese citizens supports a revisionist history (as evidenced by the shocking memorial next to Yasukuni Shrine), the overwhelming majority of Japanese is aware of the correct history of World War II: specifically, the Japanese military initiated a war of aggression.

However, this unfortunate history is no justification, whatsoever, for the the racist and bigotted attitudes of the Koreans. Korean citizens who reside in Japan but who refuse Japanese citizenship should be treated as foreigners. These Korean "refuseniks" are loyal to either South Korea or North Korea. The Japanese government should fingerprint all Korean "refuseniks".

The taxpayers will only hold still for a certain amount of screwing. We won't continue to fund every scheme somebody dreams up.

The fact that we've continued to fund Fusion research, now into it's - at least - 40th year with no payback in sight continues to amaze me. And it's only because the payback may be so great that we do so, decade in and decade out.

Some great things come out of academic research, but others are a huge money sink and have to be whacked. If it is so great, good chance somebody else will pick it up and carry on.

The problem with the hard core "don't tax me bro" crowd is that they really really believe that there is no cost in letting people starve in the streets/have no education/have no health care.

People don't passively starve in the street. They will try to find food. A large population of people who can't afford food is a serious problem, not because the more fortunate will have to step over them in the gutter, but because the more fortunate will come home to find that they've been robbed. Right now it's a truism that people don't steal to afford food...That's because they don't have to, because the government provides it.

Likewise education. A well educated populace makes a better workforce, military, and tax base. What benefits the economy benefits most the people who have the largest stake in it: the rich.

Health care. What do you think happens when a guy with no insurance walks into the emergency room with a legitimate emergency? Well, in LA, they let 'em die on the floor but in most places they treat them anyway and eat the cost. This person can't get the sort of routine care that would keep them out of the emergency room, but they can get the sort of massively expensive care that you get from the emergency room. That cost gets passed to the hospital, and then down to the first guy who walks through the door who CAN pay.

There are a lot of things in society that have a cost. The hardcore conservative really believes that those costs don't exist...Everything would be just the same if they didn't have to pay for the damn poor people. Hardcore liberals? I don't know what the hell they believe in. Fairies? I don't know. They tend to push the right thing, but for the wrong reasons...Fuzzy relativist ethics rather than simple economics.

The simple truth of it is that it is a lot better for society to shoulder costs like education, care for the disabled, workfare, etc, because if society doesn't shoulder the cost, then individuals have to shoulder the costs and that generally causes problems itself and results in a less effective solution. It's fair to talk reform, but don't try to pretend like the problem is the fact that the government spends money, while ignoring the reality of what would happen if they didn't.

To speculate wildly, I'd guess the transportation costs for oil/gas/coal far exceed nuclear, given their respective energy densities. Additionally, there have been dozens of significant accidents in the transportation of oil (Valdez, the recent San Francisco spill, etc.), the costs (cleanup + environmental + economic impact) of which are non-trivial.

I disagree. I was at the Hyatt a few months ago when Tesla and the Hyatt announced a partnership. Check out http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/30/BUKERRNPR.DTL/ for details on their agreement

Electric cars only need electricity; therefore you don't need to go to a gas station. You can fill up at home or any other place that has electricity. By Tesla partnering with non "Big oil" companies, there is no conflict of interest.

DoD: You see - we are putting this network of satellites which will be watching you 24/7 so that we can see if there is a mosquito and rodents creeping up on you.
Joe Average: You can spot a mosquito? Cool! But wait... won't that be invasion of privacy?
DoD: LOL! No. See... we can't spot a mosquito - we can only see larger things like "environment" and then try to guess where they will go.
Joe Average: But you can are still monitoring the world 24/7?
DoD: Well... yeah. But its for your own good.
Joe Average: But... how does any of that help with idiots? http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2007/05/30/international/i072359D10.DTL
DoD: Oh, that is the next step. We have these cool personal disease detectors we are making... Bend over, let me show you.

Google's stated aversion to conspicuous consumption.

The day before Google went public in 2004, Wayne Rosing, then the vice president for engineering, stood on a stage during a companywide meeting and brandished a baseball bat. He threatened to use it on anyone's car in the Google parking lot that was anything flashier than a 3 Series BMW.

Did Markoff actually take a walk around Google's parking lot today? There are a lot of very nice cars there, and there have been for many years. He also somehow missed the ENORMOUS WIDE BODIED LUXURY FURNISHED PERSONAL JET parked a few miles up 101.

Most predators also won't bother to hunt if they aren't hungry -- it's a waste of energy -- they never did explain (in either the book or the movie) why the presumably well-fed dinosaurs felt the need to go to such lengths to hunt humans.

Ever been to an aquarium and seen the pray fish in the same tank with the sharks? The sharks completely ignore them because they are well fed by their handlers.

No, if they were popular celebs, they would have gotten clearances before hand and then presented it and been waived on through.

Canada allows exceptions to the rules but you have to apply for them before hand. This is no secrete. What it does is allow you to make a case for being in the country despite being technically barred. I need to do it because I had a conviction for assaulting a police officer that was overturned on appeals about 15 years ago.

Here is a link from the Canadian web site (or it appears that way. maybe a border station at Seattle or something) that tells more about the process. Here is another link to a story from February talking about it.

Because there were two programs. The international call tapping program at least has historical defense, if not constitutional defense (remember, the person on this end of the line is in the US, unless you can explain how telephones magically teleport people out of the country), but the other program is what this article is referring to: the "dragnet" operation whereby all communications are logged and screened by computer for establishing connections such as whether or not you called the same pizza parlor as a known terrorist. Or that your calling pattern "looks like" a terrorist cell calling pattern, whatever that may be.

Indeed, this is one of the landmark fraud-leads-to-business-failure cases from the 80s. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/08/29/BU12623.DTL

The military offered helicopters for dropping water on the fires, but they weren't allowed to because California State Department of Forestry rules required that a CDF fire spotter ride in each aircraft. Not only did it take more than 24 hours to get the fire spotters to the choppers, but there weren't enough spotters to man all the available aircraft.

Some official allowed an exception to the rule to allow just one spotter for each squadron of three, but by the time this was all sorted out, the high winds proved to be too dangerous, and so the aircraft were grounded.

Had they been able to take off when first called upon, the winds wouldn't have been so severe and they might have been able to contain the fire.

What's worse is that the military has several C-130 transport planes on call for dropping very large amounts of water from the air. I saw one of these at the Big Bear Lake fire in 1985, and it was a truly awesome sight to behold.

However, it was determined that their tanks were unsafe, so several years ago they were taken out of service until a new tank could be designed. The first try at a new tank didn't fit in the planes - yes, you read that right - so they went back to the drawing board.

It's been four years since then and they still don't have a new tank design.

Let me find you a link.

Well, in a very real albeit indirect sense, the modern industrial human consumes petroleum-based hydrocarbons as food. A typical meal in the developed world had seven calories of fossil fuel-based energy (in the form of fertilizer, fuel for farm equipment, transportation, irrigation, pesticides, refrigeration, etc.) go into it for every calorie that the eater receives from it.

However, in what world is the "left" the ones censoring pornography and "dangerous" material? Sure, there are parents who are overprotective despite being leftists, but that's far more the exception than the rule.

This is actually extremely shortsighted of the Democrats:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/examiner/archive/1997/02/07/NEWS12418.dtl

As Nixon has shown, presidents are willing to use their spying powers against political opponents during elections, and for the most part are able to get away with it. If it weren't for the good conscience of an insider who was able to anonymously cause the Watergate leak (at risk to his own life), Nixon would likely have continued to have gotten away with it and be remembered as the anti-communist president who improved relations with China.

Right now, I'm willing to bet that Rudy Giuliani (and his ilk) are partying like it was 1969.

You don't get out much, do you?
I was about to say "Only in America" but you guys are merely the world champs of armed stupidity. We aren't nearly as creative.

I'd say the most valuable mathematical skill to possess is the ability to prove concepts.

An enormous piece of any pursuit, whether it's teaching, software development, marketing, or construction, is finding logical ways to attack new problems and finding ways of approaching existing problems that lead to more efficient solutions.

Even if you never need to prove any piece of geometry, trigonometry, or calculus in your actual job, developing skills at proving will lend itself to learning the skills you actually do need at a much faster pace.

There was a news article about this earlier this year, which Slashdot discussed: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/07/26/national/w111044D35.DTL

I hope 50 Cent doesn't try selling music in Canada...

When it comes to Canada, 50 Cent is already screwed

What is this Rush Limbaugh's blog?

Hmm I can't seem to recall that part of the Quran talking about how Mohammed was a mysogynistic bastard who raped 5 year olds. When you make wild claims, isn't it a good idea to cite a source?

I wonder if I'd get modded +5 for writing about why I think Christianity is bullshit, that Mary was no virgin but a slut, and since she never admitted it
her son grew up with a complex, and he certainly never wrote any testaments. That was all "supposedly" written by people who claimed to know him, but we have very little historical proof of that. We do have proof of this guy named Paul who likely had his own agenda.

I personally do not buy into any of the major religion, but I try to respect the beliefs of others. Now I am not saying that fanatic Muslim idealogues should be embraced, but there are many people who practice Islam but believe in common sense. Is it equally acceptable to equate all of Christianity with killing gay people, blowing up the offices of abortion doctors and bombing mosques??

Why do you say muslims can only interpret the qu'ran literally?
Are you a representative of all muslim people?
Have you heard of the Progressive Muslim Union? http://www.pmuna.org/

As far as TFA is concerned, it may very well be true that less scientific journals
are coming out of the middle east. In part it could be because the one country which allowed women to go to school and work (Iraq) has a university system
that has been bombed into looking something like this http://sfgate.com/c/pictures/2007/04/23/mn_iraq_car_bomb_2.jpg
But really, how many peer reviewed scientific journals came out of the vatican?

I'd wager no small amount that there are some talented geophysicists in the middle east figureing out how to extract more oil tp feed volkswagens all over the world.

Not true. Just for starters, (and at the risk of repeating myself)..

http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=46415

Summary: Australia plans to build a 154MW solar plant which powers 45,000 homes. No info on cost or scalability (the government is contributing $120 million, but we're not told how much the total cost is). Is 154MW max energy, or average/expected energy?

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/08/worlds_largest_4.php

I don't go to "treehugger.com" for unbiased news about energy, but okay. Summary: They announced they would build an experimental 500MW plant over a 20 year period. Once they've built 1MW they'll see if it works, and if it does they'll continue to ramp it up to a potential 500MW in 20 years time. And is 500MW max energy, or average/expected energy? It's interesting, but it's not available here and now, and I question the 6c/kWh price too (which is coming from the people seeking investment).
See Wikipedia for information on why no-one is rushing to invest in the Stirling Engine.

Nuclear power, by contrast, is here now; ready, and waiting, and capable of taking on the entire burden of our energy needs.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/06/21/BUG9VJHBLB1.DTL

Summary: A company is investing $100 million in another experimental solar technology that hopes to solve the problem of our limited silicon resources. No mention of efficiency, timeline, or why we haven't heard anything about the technology since the article was published, as they said they would be pumping out "200 million" cells by 2007.
Again: Nuclear power is not an experimental dream or the idea of a gambler looking for investors; it's a tried, tested, readily available technology.

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1321857,00.html

Summary: The worlds largest solar plant in 2004. $26.5 million, 33k cells * 150W/cell = 495KW = 5MW. It also uses silicon, which we don't have enough of to make enough of these to contribute a significant chunk of power. Is 150W/cell max energy, or average/expected energy?

http://www.pvresources.com/en/top50pv.php

A list of solar sites, no mention of costs. Topping the list is a solar site that generates 20MW (max energy, or average/expected energy?). Your average nuclear reactor generates 1000MW (max energy, but it can be maintained at max energy, unlike solar/wind power which depends on sunlight/wind). Did I mention nuclear is scalable, and ready now?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/6031995.stm

Wind farm. 300MW *max energy, or average/expected energy?), $300million. It beats the $30 million for 5MW for the German plant you gave above, but it won't work too well in places which aren't as windy as Scotland. Nuclear power can be used anywhere, and in any amount. Things like hydroelectric power are good where there are canyons, and wind power is good where there's wind, and solar may possibly be good if you're a small town in the middle of a desert, and geothermal is good if you live near a volcanic site, but nuclear is good everywhere.

All of Americas power needs could be supplied by (for example) covering 100x100 km of the Nevada Desert with PV cells. Why not just bite the bullet and do it?

Because we don't have the silicon required, and it would be massively expensive even if we d

Ok, additional info to my original post..

You would need to build a solar plant of about 100 x 100 Miles in the Nevada desert to generate the USAs electricity. USA had around 743 GigaWatt (0.743 TerraWatt) installed generating capacity in 1998 - I will dig out a newer figure, but lets say about 1 TerraWatt today.. This scheme in Nevada:

http://www.reuk.co.uk/Nevada-Solar-One.htm

Delievers 64 Mw for 350 acres = 45 watts per sqr meter.
100 x100 miles = 26 000 000 000 m2.
* 44 (watts) = 1.17 TerraWatt supply. Is 100x100 miles too much? How does it compare to coal-strip mining?
It is true that the sun doesnt shine at night - so in reality you would have a mix - wind power, tidal, etc - backed up with ready-to-roll capacity, pumped hyroelectric storage, and new tech like very large SuperCapacitors. Technology is moving all the time..

Cost? Figures vary, but Nevada Solar quote about $0.07/Kwh, wind and others maybe a little less. With oil hitting $80 a barrel this looks good, its hard to compare to Nuclear because of the huge hidden subsidies it recieved, both in terms of research and hidden unknown costs like waste disposal and decomissioning..

More links on power schemes..

http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=46415
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/08/worlds_largest_4.php
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/06/21/BUG9VJHBLB1.DTL
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1321857,00.html
http://www.pvresources.com/en/top50pv.php
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/6031995.stm

As for Three Mile Island, read this link. Years later, when they could actually inspect inside the reactor, they were horrified to see just what a mess it was in - a huge glob of melted reactor fuel nearly breached the containment vessel - it was very very close to a Chernobyl type meltdown..

http://americanhistory.si.edu/tmi/tmi03.htm

Is it really going to be cheaper than (say) paving large areas of desert with ever-cheaper solar cells? Or building the really large wind-farm projects in the many available on/off shore locations?

Yes, with a capital 'Y'. Much, much cheaper, much, much more scalable, and also more environmentally friendly.

Nuclear is really the only option, and it's great that your government is going with what's right rather than what the misinformed majority think about nuclear power.

But, dammit, nuclear energy has no alternative for the moment.

Not true..

http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=46415
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/08/worlds_largest_4.php
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/06/21/BUG9VJHBLB1.DTL
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1321857,00.html
http://www.pvresources.com/en/top50pv.php
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/6031995.stm

All of Americas power needs could be supplied by (for example) covering 100x100 km of the Nevada Desert with PV cells. Why not just bite the bullet and do it?

there are risks in nuclear energy production

Hmm.. People dont realise just how close 3 mile island came to being as bad as Chernobyl - by sheer luck the vessel held the molten glob of reactor fuel. For a little exersize, extrapolate a Chernobyl scale incident to the 3 mile island area..

http://americanhistory.si.edu/tmi/tmi03.htm

It fits the pattern we've been seeing from them. Remember, this is the company that pillaged South Africa's economy, rewrote its privacy policy to give itself more leniency, lobbies against net neutrality, and fights open-access wireless.

And don't forget, they shut down the time service too. Bastards.

Is that so? Do you have numbers? How many XP box licenses were sold in the EU in the relevant timeframe? Not many at all, I'd say. Was XP-N cheaper in any way? Shouldn't it have been, given that Media Player is valuable Microsoft IP?

This "designed by committee" approach to product development spawned one of the lowest-selling products ever released by the software giant, with the new XP N accounting for only 0.005 percent of all XP sales in Europe.

Choice, you say. Have you ever uninstalled IE? Don't bother answering that one, it's called a rhetorical question.

You don't have to uninstall it to have choice. Install an alternative, use it.

I'm surprised that no one has seen/mentioned the work Donald Shoup at UCLA has done covering the very high societal costs associated with free parking. I'm further surprised (although I guess I shouldn't be) that the "progressive" Apple is pushing for free parking given the conclusive evidence that free parking is very harmful to the environment, increases traffic, and wastes everyone's time.

the high cost of free parking in the SFGate. The research behind this article can be found on the professor's UCLA page.

From a libertarian website:
McCain-Feingold makes it a felony for a "corporation" (company, grassroots organization, an incorporated blog or Internet site that takes subscribers) to mention in advertising or on a web site any Congressman within two months of an election. And there are hundreds of pages of complex election "reform" laws that came out of McCain-Feingold just like this one. Given the complexity, organizations may simply decide to walk away from the political arena, fearing having to fight a lawsuit brought by a vengeful government. Net effect? Shutting down grassroots organizations, abridging the First Amendment, prevention of public discussion of voter issues.
* Radio talk shows are getting in trouble for expressing opinions on a topic, being told that what they are doing is essentially a campaign contribution. Net effect? Preventing public discourse on voter issues.
* Note that the news media has no such restrictions. What does this mean? As the media knows which side its bread is buttered on, is it in their best interest to go up against a strong incumbent? Net effect? Issues that could paint the incumbents in a bad light do not get aired in the mainstream media.

Here's another source on McCain-Feingold from a liberal angle:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/09/14/IN288208.DTL

Oh yeah, "willful" violations of McCain-Feingold are felonies punishable by up to 5 years in jail. Say good-bye to your right to vote or right to own a firearm and ability to get a job in the future. "So what are you in for?"

I doubt that anyone would argue that we have fucked it up quite badly over there, but Iraq was never sold as retribution for 9/11

I call bullshit

Vice President Dick Cheney, lashing out at Democrats for the first time since the felony conviction of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, his former top deputy, resumed his controversial claims Monday that the war in Iraq is the central front in the worldwide U.S. response to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Yes, it was called OpenDoc, and I really thought that document-centric computing was the way to go. Well, I still do, I've just given up hope.

The idea is simple: we want context-rich documents, with different kinds of information and presentation as necessary. So, work on the document until it's done, by opening a different software component for each kind of content. The document's always there, the software comes and goes. Compare that to how I work now, with production suites of huge complexity and vast feature sets, but awkward interoperability. In this software utopia, we would have only bought the features we would actually use, and it was all about integration, and not being distracted from the main thing: the document.

Unfortunately, it died before the bugs could be worked out (the few available components were nowhere near optimized yet, buggy and slow).

AppleWorks was a transition example of this: a monolithic program that was document-centric, so that you could kind of 'have it all' if your needs weren't too extreme. I suspect that in the big plan it might have had a place weaning us off of the application-centric software economy.

I wonder about that... [tinfoilhat mode] I'm sure some big money would have been lost if this paradigm had caught on... a blossoming of garage businesses to compete with, it would have been a major shift. I wonder if some horse trading went on to encourage them to "knife the baby". [/tinfoilhat]

Hi Jamar,

Tor project is one well-established effort for both bypassing the firewall of China and encrypting traffic so that the government can not tell that you are accessing forbidden sites. The project's official home page is at http://tor.eff.org/, however that's probably blocked from China. Therefore, I mirrored some key files on my own site. Please download them for yourself or your friends.

http://homepage.mac.com/cat_plus_plus/tor.html - text of tor documentation (I didn't copy all the images, but it should be usable)
http://homepage.mac.com/cat_plus_plus/tor.exe - Windows installer
http://homepage.mac.com/cat_plus_plus/tor.tar - Linux source
http://homepage.mac.com/cat_plus_plus/tor.dmg - Mac installer.

Let me know if it works for you or if you have further questions. You can reach me at my mac username without underscores at gmail (scrambled to avoid spam). Once you are able to surf anonymously, you might want to get started with the following sites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Republic_of_ China - unbiased history of your country created by contributors from around the world
http://www.cnn.com/ - The most popular news source in US. Biased in it's own way (for example, whitewashing or involvement in Iraq), but still a good source of information.
http://www.sfgate.com/ - Local newspaper in my area which is far more liberal than CNN.

I am sure other slashdot readers can add more suggestions here.

You really don't want to do it this way anyway:
Those are the roofs. Added up, they might add up to Arizona. Not likely though. Now imagine that you wanted to cover up Arizona with big pieces of paper, the whole state. I want you to imagine the scale of a project like that with just paper. Now I want you to reflect on the difficulty inherent with replacing all of that paper with silicon semiconductors that currently require clean rooms for manufacture.

Much better solutions are coming online. Like hydrogen-producing algae beds. Which solves half of the problem - how to produce a basic energy source. It's distributable too - plants are much better at this whole photosynthesis thing than any solar cell we've come up with, and it'd work in some pretty dark and gloomy conditions (Washington state).

The other half of the problem is how to move energy around without it being wasted so much, and how to store it. Electricity is the obvious mechanism for moving it around - we've got the infrastructure there. But how to store it?

Carbon nanotube batteries/ultra capacitors are the way to go here. If the technology comes along as expected, it could mean a revolution in the way we use energy. Forget generators, or gas tanks, or anything like that - just put these puppies everywhere. In cars. In your house. Your car needs filling up? Go to the "gas" station and charge it up right there in seconds. Or have a mechanical arm that just swaps the battery out for a fresh one.

The reason I like this plan?

The algae beds are a great way to produce hydrogen. Which is a great way to fuel fusion reactors or other kinds of engines. You don't need to ship the hydrogen anywhere to use it - you can produce it at the site it's going to be used. You don't need to worry about making vehicles that burn the hydrogen as fuels or the safety concerns related to that - all of your energy gets stored in the carbon nanotube batteries.

If I had a big chunk o' money to bet with, I'd be putting all my money on this right now as being the most likely eventual energy solution.

Or traffic wind generators? That one takes the cake. If someone can't grasp why traffic wind generators are a moronic idea, that person can't handle the real world. Transferring energy from wind to turn generators will slow the air. If the air is slowed, it makes the cars work harder to maintain speed. If the cars are working harder, they burn more fuel. See where this is headed?

Traffic wind generators aren't a bad idea. The vehicles are going to displace air anyway - whether you're taking energy from it or not. If the generators are far enough away from the vehicles, the vehicles are still doing as much work as they were before, but the disturbance they're creating won't just bleed off - it'll be usable.

My hunch would be (I've not done the math, and frankly fluid dynamics gives me the heebie jeebies - damn you, Navier Stokes) that if a lane of traffic is 4m wide, a 16m wide semicircular "capture" zone of fans will grab the wind without affecting the pressure that the vehicle in the middle is working against too much. It'll be like a soliton wave around the car.

An alternative, probably better idea though, is to use something similar to supercavitation on the vehicles to minimize their drag instead of trying to reclaim the energy from it. I can't remember the name used to describe the process in air, but it involves creating vortices at the leading edge of the vehicle to reduce the drag on it. Some experiments on semi trucks and planes were showing great promise at one point, but I can't dig up any references right now.

Buy DRM locked music from Microsoft? Surely there is no possible risk. They even labelled it "PlaysForSure", so I know I'll still have access to it in a few years. Oops, you old music doesn't work on the new media player, and your new music doesn't work on your old media player.

Buy DRM locked movies in the form of silver access to DIVX disks? A giant chain like Circuit City won't screw you. Unless they decided it's no longer profitable and take your access away.

Love your EV1 electric car and would happily pay to own it? Too bad, the manufacturer wants it back and would rather destroy the car than sell it to you.

Buy video to watch online through Google? Google's a good company with a long view, there is no risk there. Oops, again.

This is why a world where you don't own anything is a bad idea. The people leasing or licensing the access to you can and will take it away from you. It's alright to agree upon fixed terms up front (I'm only guaranteed my apartment for a year; I'm only guaranteed access to a given NetFlix video stream for a day or two), but when I decide I want access forever, it damn well better be forever.

Uh, no I don't think that's what was said at all. Care to elaborate, AC?

My concern is that in the last several posts above, several mention these clowns and then essentially :rolleyes:

Why mention them at all, and give them page-space and mind-share? That is what they live for; if you don't always agree with them, then why do their work for them? As our fearless leader often inappropriately chimes: "We don't want to embolden the enemy."

I think we should experiment on mice to save lives because I think people are more important than mice. The fact that there are too many people, living in an unsustainable fashion doesn't change that. For example, I don't think those people mentioned in the link above should be tortured in the exact same way they abused those animals they were "saving". Because they are (heartless, psychotic) people, not animals. I guess that organization would disagree with me about it's own members and so probably slaughtered them and left them in a dumpster somewhere. Since our relative value is the same as cockroach, and all.

If need a liver from a mouse to live, I'll thank the mouse. And take the liver.

The even scarier part is that the Diebold machines have not been decertified.

That's misleading. They decertified them, then recertified them with some additional security requirements.

See here: Elections chief gives OK to vote machines

It doesn't even take aviation fuel to soften/melt steel: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/ 04/29/BAGVOPHQU46.DTL