I don't have an FB account, nor I want one. For example:
match you with high school classmates, college friends, and coworkers.
I have positive control over who I contact. Everyone else is not welcome. Random assignment of students to classes does not define who is my friend. If that was the case I could just open a phone book and make friends that way. With regard to coworkers, why would anyone need FB to establish a contact with the guy at the next cube?
Friends of your Friends will also not be able to identify you.
Friends of my friends are not my friends, unless they are introduced by a friend. For example, one of my friends was interested in electronics and rock music. I was interested in electronics, science and technology. Some of his friends were interested in rock music and beer. Now, what common ground would be between one of his friends and me?
But of course with this approach I'm not likely to ever have an FB account. I can discuss things on Internet, but I have absolutely no reason to know what is Slashdot user #1685608's legal name or QTH. It is simply orthogonal to the discussion. In this aspect it is perfectly understandable why someone would create a random FB login - to be in control.
but I for one don't believe that the Death Star could generate enough power to destroy an entire planet with a death ray.
Would you bet the existence of your homeworld on that belief of yours about a technology that you know nothing about? A GRB certainly can mess the planet up.
That is typically a simple "connection fee" and is used to cover costs of managing your account - this is not used towards Your electrical rate has energy and distribution charges.
No, it's all spelled out. Here is what it actually says on a typical monthly bill:
Distribution: $12.00
Public Purpose Programs: $0.19
Nuclear Decommissioning: $0.01
Generation: $0.63
Since the connection is all I need to serve power to my neighbors I see no problem here. My negative power consumption is shown in negative dollars. All I want is this amount. It's even OK if they want 5% off of that. But they want 75% of it. This makes PV generation a loss. Why again should I install more PV panels?
It's pretty clear that you've given up already.
I'm not going to start a political party, if that's what you are wondering about. If nobody wants the energy that my PV system generates then they simply won't get it. I'm using this energy for heating now, and I will be running A/C in the summer (even though I don't have to.) The balance will be brought close to zero by the end of the next true-up period.
The government doesn't inflict anything on you for having "too much power". It's the utility company, a private company who doesn't want you generating your own power because that directly eats away at their profits!
I have read their feeble excuses just a few months ago when they sent me a letter telling me why they are keeping all the money. They said that they do so "due to the state law." What they didn't mention is that they purchased that law.
You can read about AB 920 here, for example. Prior to that bill the utility owned the excess power outright. The bill is an improvement, but it contains specific language that allows utilities to continue pocketing energy that is generated locally. If I produce excess 3 kW and my neighbor needs 3 kW then the utility is not even involved... but they are earning money on that transaction.
But this seems somewhat fair as the utility needs to pay for maintenance of your share of the distribution grid
I pay for that as a separate line item on the bill. It is about $15/mo. They don't charge per kWh that I consume, so they shouldn't do that when I produce.
The only way to get the utility companies to do anything different is to get your representatives to write laws to force them to change.
They did that already. To change the law I need to send more money to Sacramento than PG&E did. I'm not that rich.
It's the utility company, a private company who doesn't want you generating your own power because that directly eats away at their profits!
Well, that brings us back to my original conclusion. What is it that we, as the society, want - to have PV or not to have PV? Because you can't expect millions of homeowners to take their meager savings and put them into utility company's pockets. If an economic activity is not profitable it will not happen. The government sits on its hands and appears to be perfectly happy with things as they are - because it knows which side its bread is buttered on.
The main issue is the cost to produce those panels which is dropping quite rapidly - quite a bit more rapidly than expected thanks to massive amounts of silicon manufacturing capacity which has come online in the last 2 years - which is also what led to Solyndra's demise yet made them look promising 4 years ago
Solyndra failed because their efficiency/price ratio was not good enough to compete. If they had 100% efficient panels then they could charge quite a lot of money for them, and people would be gladly paying.
Some say that it also illustrated lack of competitiveness of US-based industries. Solyndra's employees were all living as kings, compared to Chinese workers - but by local standards they were only paid enough to live. A small apartment in SV will cost you $1,500/mo but the same living arrangements in China may be far cheaper (not everywhere, of course.)
And you probably have room to double the size of your PV array - but the cost currently keeps you from doing that.
Yes, I have lots of room on the hillside, I could have installed 10x more. But not only there is no government incentive for me to do that, there is a PUNISHMENT that the government inflicts upon me for having "too much power."
The punishment is that when you consume energy you are paying retail rates, they are high. When however the electrons go in the opposite direction the rules of the game suddenly change, and you are paid at power plant rates - which are far lower. In essence, if you have overproduction of energy by the end of the year you might just as well forget about any revenue from it.
Generators are paying less because that money covers their costs and reasonable profit. The utility charges more because it needs to cover their own costs (the grid) and reasonable profits. As a generator, I am indeed using the grid to deliver the power, so I can understand where they are coming from. However the larger objective of the society - to promote installation of solar panels by every household - suffers terribly because the homeowner is disincentivized to buy larger solar panels in hope of serving his neighbors. Good deeds will always be punished!
So, who benefits from this pay structure? The generator does not really care at this time, they are counting in gigawatts. The PV system owner loses. The utility gains. Yes, if you buy large solar panels then you put your money in pockets of the electric company. They get energy right at the point of consumption, and they get it at dirt cheap rates! No need to incur losses by transporting it over thousands of miles; no need to sign long-term contracts. They have the PV system owner over the barrel on this. Want to make the future green? Fix that, make the prices the same in both directions. The fee for using the grid is actually listed separately on the bill, and PV owners pay it every month regardless of how much they produce. That should remain. But the cost of pure energy should be equal, to consume and to produce. Otherwise if I overproduce it will take me 75 to 100 years to break even - and the PV system is only expected to work for 25 years. In other words it will never be profitable. The government should either put up or shut up.
How about if instead of stopping the bus service you replace it with a hybrid bus that gets 20% better fuel mileage?
Hey, it's a contrived scenario to illustrate a situation.
In practice you might just as well go the full hog and replace the diesel-burning bus with a trolleybus. I rode a lot in those in my earlier days.
But the problem remains of "where will the energy come from?" As more and more vehicles are converted to electric energy you need more of that electric energy. I don't think solar or wind installations are even capable of satisfying the demand; they are better as auxiliary generators due to cost and specific environmental requirements.
You lack imagination. Energy is energy. More solar energy pours down on the planet in a few hours than humans use in a whole year. We didn't get as far as we have by sticking with the old ways of doing things.
I have some imagination - I need it for work, I'm an engineer working with electronics. Yes, we have lots of energy - and we can't capture it. Without capturing energy efficiently we can't use it. Solar and wind are enormously expensive; solar is also very poisonous, since manufacturing of pure silicon requires lots of nasty chemicals.
You should not discount economics. For example, you are taking a bus to school every day. But starting tomorrow someone way above you and me decided that buses are polluting and you should walk or use your bicycle. The only problem is (for example) that you have only one leg and you can't do any of the above at any reasonable efficiency level. You can't spend a week to crawl to the school. You don't have money to pay someone to carry you there, unless you stop eating. What are your choices? This is the problem that invariably occurs when the cart is placed in front of the horse.
The same problem exists everywhere else. Imagine that starting tomorrow coal and gas plants stop making energy. Cost of energy goes through the roof. As result you can't cook food at home! What are your options? Making a fire on the kitchen floor with your philosophy books?
I'm glad that you know of a coal power plant that is more expensive - for whatever reason - than solar. (I have 6 kW of solar panels at my house, by the way.) However failures of solar power are far more common, even despite huge injections of public money into those projects (see Solyndra.) The reason for that is simply that solar panels today are not very efficient. Will they become better? Probably, over time. Maybe even soon. But today we can capture very little of the energy that is coming down.
You need to consider also the weather. Not every region is suitable for solar power. Not every region is suitable for wind either. The energy is out there, but it's very costly to mine it. I have sun here, but wind is either 0 (for most of the year) or 60 mph for a few days in winter; in both cases the windmill would have to be shut down; it would be completely useless to me.
In the end, a hungry man needs his daily food. You cannot tell him that he should eat only every other day - even though food is available - because food on odd days is "unclean." But that's what green advocates are doing. The goal is good since I can't imagine an advanced society of Star Trek type that burns coal to power its spaceships. But we cannot implement the program until the program becomes viable. We cannot destroy the world in order to save it.
I'm not against nuclear power but it's an awful expensive way to produce electricity and the lead times are so long. I'm not sure it will be able to compete with solar and wind in another decade.
Nuclear power is very competitive with these sources right now. We do not need to guess what will be 10 or 20 years in the future. Today's nuclear reactors by that time will be ready for decommissioning, and then we can decide what to do, and we will have all the up to date information. Guessing today is pointless. What is not pointless is running all the reactors that you got. Each operating reactor prevents burning of a mountain of coal!
I would understand if UN, for example, or some other worldwide organization, set up a research institute that would focus on the new energy sources, collection and storage methods. But that's not what happened. Instead we have con men like Al Gore that are cutting coupons from useless "carbon credit" trade. Essentially, rich countries are supposed to pay money to poor countries because those poor countries don't pollute that much. Please tell me how this helps develop new technologies? All that we have here is producers being given another haircut, and the proceeds are given to tinpot dictators in banana
We have to completely transform our energy systems. There doesn't appear to be any physical reason why we can't make that transformation so it's just a matter of will.
This civilization does not know a way to exist without burning oil or coal. Short of having a nuclear reactor on every block, and riding horses, we require oil and coal and gas to live.
2% or 3% of GDP? Over what period of time? 100 years? Most governments on the planet are bankrupt already - there is no surplus money to throw at unproven technologies before they are ready. Money that you take away from the pie will be not used to feed hungry and to treat sick. (Most of the US budget, for example, is spent exactly on that.)
But if you are so enthusiastic about green, please go ahead and tell Japan, Germany and others that their nuclear reactors need to be restarted immediately. I will be all for that. Please come back when those reactors are running and we will discuss the next possible step (like NIF work, for example.) I'm not against better energy sources; however before you jump into the pool it makes sense to check if the pool has water.
I read it as every search that is undertaken detects all the contraband that is there. Well, that's just wishful thinking. Illusionists conceal pretty girls in obviously empty boxes; how hard would it be to conceal gray metal inside another gray metal? You can't take every machine apart and take every single piece to the spectroscope; you can't take every piece of that car's air conditioner and drop it in water to measure its density. It is not humanly possible. If a customs officer sees a car, it's just a car (I'm referring to the public example from Dragon.)
The best weapon is the one that is so powerful that you don't even need to use it. A threat alone is sufficient to achieve your goals. However an ICBM is not suitable for that.
For example, NK wants to respond to a threat. However a launch of an ICBM is a guaranteed suicide on national scale (South Korea will not get out of it alive.) It doesn't matter if that ICBM carries a nuke or a dummy payload; it doesn't matter if that ICBM manages to get onto the trajectory or if it fails over Japan and falls into the ocean. None of that matters. If you launch (against any nuclear country) you should expect immediate response.
NK, however, wants negotiations and political gains. Politics is called "art of the possible." Politicians deal not with accomplished facts but with "what would you do if I do this?" NK needs a threat that is not immediate but that can be activated on short notice. And that threat must be real and there must be no defense against it. A nuclear mine (or several,) planted somewhere on the territory of the opposing country, will do the job just fine.
Also, you are mentioning the 1/10K chance of failure if the delivery is done via normal shipping. However what would you expect the chance of failure of an ICBM be? An ICBM that was never tested for the true distance; an ICBM that probably exists in quantity one; an ICBM designed by people who had more failures than successes; an ICBM made in a tiny pariah country that is under all sorts of embargo? I'd say their chance of failure would be 1/2 if not 1. And that is before the missile shield does anything. In other words, an ICBM threat from NK is not believable; it's on the scale of a threat that some natives on some faraway island pose by praying to their local gods to smite $whoever. But if NK goes ahead and launches then it will be destroyed. Pretty useless as a negotiation tool, I'd say.
Additionally, why do you think the chance of discovery is 1/10K? It can be made very low by carefully hiding parts. I can think of many ways to do it. Perhaps I shouldn't mention any of them, but they are pretty obvious to anyone who just stops for a moment, turns the TV off and thinks. To intercept, you'd need to know for a fact that a specific shipment contains a specific item. This knowledge can't be gained if even the shipper is unaware. Besides, there are 37,000 ways to bypass ports and customs; NK has mini-subs that can be delivered into US coastal waters on (or under) a ship and then dropped off. A mini-sub can then hide in the noise of screws of some large ship, or in its acoustic reflection, and get to the shore completely undetected. All that can be done at NK's leisure, slowly and carefully, with as many dry runs as they want. And once the device is delivered it will be lost for good - until it is activated.
The fact that the Russians and the Chinese (who are STILL our potential enemies) are furious tells us that they are pretty sure that the missiles WILL work.
It's not just that. Perhaps they know that TODAY this shield does not work. However it will be constantly improving, and eventually it will work; one day, perhaps with some laser cannons, it will work 100%. So it is wise to think that it already works, regardless of how good it is today.
But if North Korea or Iran make only one, what happens?
They ship it in small pieces in diplomatic mail to their embassies, if only they had them. Since they don't, they will do the same via regular shipments of heavy machinery. The assembled weapon will be equipped with a radio detonator and well hidden in the target area. (A ground explosion will be dirty.) For example, it can be embedded into liquid concrete of a new building. The only person who knows where the weapon is will be killed; there will be no leads to the location of the weapon. The radio codes will be known to the current NK dictator and they can be transmitted from anywhere in the world. That's what any arch-villain would do, why to even ask?
Actually, the U.S. and NATO offered to include Russia in the missile defense shield in the form of sharing early warning data (I don't believe they intended to share the actual missile intercept systems) around Fall 2010.
Russia has no nuclear-capable "potential enemies" except the USA. China is very safe, and Israel's arsenal is purely defensive. Russia has good relations with both. Europe is not interested in wars. India and Pakistan are focused on each other. However the USA habitually wages wars and throws its weight around; in part that's necessary to sustain the dying economy and falling dollar and the armies of unemployed. Therefore sharing the early warning data would be useless. Russia would need some sufficient control over interceptor sites to be sure that they are not targeting Russian launch sites. But NATO would want to cover Russia as well, even though it is not very effective. The danger here is that what is not sufficiently effective for a general might be sufficiently effective for an ignorant, half-crazy President (like John McCain, for example.) US voters are perfectly capable of electing such a person.
The latest talk is that Obama gives Russia the specs on interceptors (as if Russia doesn't have them already, which I presume.) I do not believe there will be any agreement unless Russia can know for a fact that its territory is not covered by the shield, one way or another. The need for that is caused by existence of WMD in all involved countries. If we look at the history, the Mad Fuehrer rose to absolute power in Germany within about a decade. The same unfortunate event can, theoretically, happen in any nuclear country - and therefore MAD has to remain for now, to keep such a budding dictator of the world in check.
Of course, all of this is extremely hypothetical: the ROI on a first strike is so far in the negative that you'd need a telescope to see the bottom of the pit. Nobody benefits from a first strike.
You don't need to actually do the first strike. You only need to threaten to do it - or just to be able to do it. This gives huge advantages to the country that owns the shield.
If a country refuses the pressure then it can be given some punishment - for example, some unimportant village can be mysteriously destroyed, and an errant warplane of the victim country would be blamed. The politicians will then be privately told that if they don't behave then the same happens to their own cities. What can they do? At that point they are a conquered country with no other shots fired.
That scenario was considered after sinking of Cheonan. Of course North Koreans are not saints, and there were some remnants of a NK torpedo found... perhaps NK did it after all, in that particular case. But in principle a false flag attack can be carried out anywhere, by anyone, deniably.
Obama, however, loves golf; he simply doesn't care what else is happening. There are plenty of very capable people to carry out the neocon agenda in the name of the President while the President is otherwise occupied. Obama himself is most likely not qualified to hold any opinion on any important subject; his dependency on teleprompters is well known (even when he visited children at some school.)
That is true only if the US Army is willing to nuke NYC or go full Fallujah on Atlanta. Which isn't going to happen; the generals won't do it, and the soldiers will frag officers who dare to order such a thing.
If so, what you have is a Syrian situation where the army has armor but doesn't have enough men to control all the important locations... and there are plenty of such locations in this country. There aren't even enough soldiers in the standing army to hold major cities, let alone thousands of smaller towns. Those soldiers will be also targets of potshots from every walk of life, from ultra-racist militia to gangs, each for their own reason. It is not possible to be safe from snipers in a US city.
Most importantly, the US Army will be losing soldiers by tens of thousands per day. After the initial period the soldiers will understand that they are just cannon fodder, a buffer that their superiors are using to delay the inevitable. It is not possible for an army (any army) to conquer this country - not without nuking it all. Soldiers will be deserting, which is extremely easy in their own country.
Citizens of the USA amassed a large number of firearms and ammo. If each armed citizen just walks up to a soldier, kills him and then gets killed himself (making it an equal exchange) then the US army will be wiped out to the last man.
You can see how that works in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US military was able to defeat organized troops but it has no defense against militants. Why do you think it will fare any better here, against a better trained and better armed opponent? Why would it even want to fight? The President will be arrested as soon as the generals decide that the game is lost and a sacrificial victim is necessary.
Not any more than a belief that 3D objects do not exist.
I don't subscribe to any religion, but from purely mathematical POV this God thing can be easily explained by God existing also in another dimension. Then that God could have multiple projections (3D sections) and each section would be a manifestation of the same being. However at the same time each section would have individuality. If you, a 3D person, are stuck through Flatland, your head will be a circle and it can speak. Your hands' section would be able to grab things, your feet's section would be able to move around. But each section will be a part of you. So this ancient tale is quite reasonable, and many a SciFi writer posited a similar higher-dimensional being.
If you're going to bring up what's natural, it's also natural to be ashamed of being naked.
People started wearing clothes to protect themselves from cold, as they migrated from equatorial regions of Earth into colder ones. Some of modern equatorial indian tribes do not bother with clothes. You do not need them, technically, if the climate is warm enough; clothes then only consume money to be purchased, repaired, cleaned.
I have been raising hell about getting critical problems fixed for 20 years or so, occasionally WINNING those fights, and guess what? There have been NO destructive consequences to my life. None. Zero.
Perhaps you are winning fights, but you have lost the war. I do not blame Anrego for his lack of desire to swim in molasses. The country's problems are rooted in democracy - however paradoxical it may sound. Democracy doesn't guarantee good decisions; it only guarantees that decisions, good or bad, are made by the majority. If you have smart voters then you have smart decisions; if the voters are idiots then the decisions will be idiotic. Today the majority of voters will gladly vote against their own interests - and they do. There are of course tricks that help them make the necessary vote. Inconvenient candidates are villified or set up; only those remain who are equally acceptable and equally ready to sell the country.
Go whimper in your little corner, terrified of any word or act that might challenge the absolute dominance of your Rightful Lords And Masters.
A captured animal may throw itself against the bars of the cage, but it is rarely a productive strategy. It only tells the capturer which animal is dangerous and should be destroyed. A wise animal would ascertain the situation, wait for an opportune moment (or, even better, would create it), and only then it tries to run away.
In other words, OWS and other anarchists who burn cars and break store windows during WTO meetings are not helping. They aren't helping themselves, and they aren't helping anyone else. They only make themselves into convenient targets. They throw themselves at the bars while their Lords and Masters are laughing from safety of their offices: their beloved enemy, Emmanuel Goldstein, finally decided to show up!
I see the dots in my comment, but not in the parent.
However the style of dots depends on the root comment. If the root is my own comment then I see two levels (first with hollow dots, second with black squares.) If the root is the parent comment I see his emphasized text in italics, and both levels of my comment are adorned with black squares. The hollow dots are gone.
All in all, Slashdot finally succeeded to break everything that is holy in CSS. I'm reading/. in "Basic Page Style," and something (NoScript, probably, years ago) ate all the Javascript and other things that make Slashdot green and slow and more useless. I see only minimal HTML-formatted text, but all the fluff is gone.
honestly I'd still rather just hand the card over and maintain eye contact.
In this aspect some people in a large meeting full of strangers (visitors) like to arrange their business cards according to the seats those visitors took, so that they know who is who without any extra effort.
The only other way to transfer money out of a country is by converting it to something physical that you can stuff in a suit case and carry across the border.
SWIFT is nothing but a trusted communication system. It was created in days before everyone and their dog had easy access to unbreakable ciphers. Things changed. Today you can create a GnuPG message that will be encrypted only to designated recipients and that can't be broken by any existing or theorized hardware. (The best way to break the GnuPG message is by breaking fingers of the guy who has the keyring and passwords.)
If SWIFT is unavailable then any alternative messaging network will do. You can even send IOUs back and forth through the mail. Denominate them in gold, for example. Iran sells 100 barrels of gold, gets an IOU for one ounce of gold. Iran buys a container of TVs and sends that IOU back. Nothing can be simpler. That's how banks were operating from the early days.
Any new system won't be able to connect to the major currency markets or any of the major financial institutions is doomed to fail.
Why would Iran even need to connect to "major currency markets?" They need to pay and be paid in deals with their international partners; those are countries, not markets. Those "major financial institutions" are a liability since the USA has full control over them and can arrest the money at any time.
In the end Iran becomes a major oil producer that doesn't sell its oil for USD. This is very bad news for Uncle Sam.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't have an FB account, nor I want one. For example:
match you with high school classmates, college friends, and coworkers.
I have positive control over who I contact. Everyone else is not welcome. Random assignment of students to classes does not define who is my friend. If that was the case I could just open a phone book and make friends that way. With regard to coworkers, why would anyone need FB to establish a contact with the guy at the next cube?
Friends of your Friends will also not be able to identify you.
Friends of my friends are not my friends, unless they are introduced by a friend. For example, one of my friends was interested in electronics and rock music. I was interested in electronics, science and technology. Some of his friends were interested in rock music and beer. Now, what common ground would be between one of his friends and me?
But of course with this approach I'm not likely to ever have an FB account. I can discuss things on Internet, but I have absolutely no reason to know what is Slashdot user #1685608's legal name or QTH. It is simply orthogonal to the discussion. In this aspect it is perfectly understandable why someone would create a random FB login - to be in control.
but I for one don't believe that the Death Star could generate enough power to destroy an entire planet with a death ray.
Would you bet the existence of your homeworld on that belief of yours about a technology that you know nothing about? A GRB certainly can mess the planet up.
That is typically a simple "connection fee" and is used to cover costs of managing your account - this is not used towards Your electrical rate has energy and distribution charges.
No, it's all spelled out. Here is what it actually says on a typical monthly bill:
Since the connection is all I need to serve power to my neighbors I see no problem here. My negative power consumption is shown in negative dollars. All I want is this amount. It's even OK if they want 5% off of that. But they want 75% of it. This makes PV generation a loss. Why again should I install more PV panels?
It's pretty clear that you've given up already.
I'm not going to start a political party, if that's what you are wondering about. If nobody wants the energy that my PV system generates then they simply won't get it. I'm using this energy for heating now, and I will be running A/C in the summer (even though I don't have to.) The balance will be brought close to zero by the end of the next true-up period.
The government doesn't inflict anything on you for having "too much power". It's the utility company, a private company who doesn't want you generating your own power because that directly eats away at their profits!
I have read their feeble excuses just a few months ago when they sent me a letter telling me why they are keeping all the money. They said that they do so "due to the state law." What they didn't mention is that they purchased that law.
You can read about AB 920 here, for example. Prior to that bill the utility owned the excess power outright. The bill is an improvement, but it contains specific language that allows utilities to continue pocketing energy that is generated locally. If I produce excess 3 kW and my neighbor needs 3 kW then the utility is not even involved ... but they are earning money on that transaction.
But this seems somewhat fair as the utility needs to pay for maintenance of your share of the distribution grid
I pay for that as a separate line item on the bill. It is about $15/mo. They don't charge per kWh that I consume, so they shouldn't do that when I produce.
The only way to get the utility companies to do anything different is to get your representatives to write laws to force them to change.
They did that already. To change the law I need to send more money to Sacramento than PG&E did. I'm not that rich.
It's the utility company, a private company who doesn't want you generating your own power because that directly eats away at their profits!
Well, that brings us back to my original conclusion. What is it that we, as the society, want - to have PV or not to have PV? Because you can't expect millions of homeowners to take their meager savings and put them into utility company's pockets. If an economic activity is not profitable it will not happen. The government sits on its hands and appears to be perfectly happy with things as they are - because it knows which side its bread is buttered on.
The main issue is the cost to produce those panels which is dropping quite rapidly - quite a bit more rapidly than expected thanks to massive amounts of silicon manufacturing capacity which has come online in the last 2 years - which is also what led to Solyndra's demise yet made them look promising 4 years ago
Solyndra failed because their efficiency/price ratio was not good enough to compete. If they had 100% efficient panels then they could charge quite a lot of money for them, and people would be gladly paying.
Some say that it also illustrated lack of competitiveness of US-based industries. Solyndra's employees were all living as kings, compared to Chinese workers - but by local standards they were only paid enough to live. A small apartment in SV will cost you $1,500/mo but the same living arrangements in China may be far cheaper (not everywhere, of course.)
And you probably have room to double the size of your PV array - but the cost currently keeps you from doing that.
Yes, I have lots of room on the hillside, I could have installed 10x more. But not only there is no government incentive for me to do that, there is a PUNISHMENT that the government inflicts upon me for having "too much power."
The punishment is that when you consume energy you are paying retail rates, they are high. When however the electrons go in the opposite direction the rules of the game suddenly change, and you are paid at power plant rates - which are far lower. In essence, if you have overproduction of energy by the end of the year you might just as well forget about any revenue from it.
Generators are paying less because that money covers their costs and reasonable profit. The utility charges more because it needs to cover their own costs (the grid) and reasonable profits. As a generator, I am indeed using the grid to deliver the power, so I can understand where they are coming from. However the larger objective of the society - to promote installation of solar panels by every household - suffers terribly because the homeowner is disincentivized to buy larger solar panels in hope of serving his neighbors. Good deeds will always be punished!
So, who benefits from this pay structure? The generator does not really care at this time, they are counting in gigawatts. The PV system owner loses. The utility gains. Yes, if you buy large solar panels then you put your money in pockets of the electric company. They get energy right at the point of consumption, and they get it at dirt cheap rates! No need to incur losses by transporting it over thousands of miles; no need to sign long-term contracts. They have the PV system owner over the barrel on this. Want to make the future green? Fix that, make the prices the same in both directions. The fee for using the grid is actually listed separately on the bill, and PV owners pay it every month regardless of how much they produce. That should remain. But the cost of pure energy should be equal, to consume and to produce. Otherwise if I overproduce it will take me 75 to 100 years to break even - and the PV system is only expected to work for 25 years. In other words it will never be profitable. The government should either put up or shut up.
How about if instead of stopping the bus service you replace it with a hybrid bus that gets 20% better fuel mileage?
Hey, it's a contrived scenario to illustrate a situation.
In practice you might just as well go the full hog and replace the diesel-burning bus with a trolleybus. I rode a lot in those in my earlier days.
But the problem remains of "where will the energy come from?" As more and more vehicles are converted to electric energy you need more of that electric energy. I don't think solar or wind installations are even capable of satisfying the demand; they are better as auxiliary generators due to cost and specific environmental requirements.
You lack imagination. Energy is energy. More solar energy pours down on the planet in a few hours than humans use in a whole year. We didn't get as far as we have by sticking with the old ways of doing things.
I have some imagination - I need it for work, I'm an engineer working with electronics. Yes, we have lots of energy - and we can't capture it. Without capturing energy efficiently we can't use it. Solar and wind are enormously expensive; solar is also very poisonous, since manufacturing of pure silicon requires lots of nasty chemicals.
You should not discount economics. For example, you are taking a bus to school every day. But starting tomorrow someone way above you and me decided that buses are polluting and you should walk or use your bicycle. The only problem is (for example) that you have only one leg and you can't do any of the above at any reasonable efficiency level. You can't spend a week to crawl to the school. You don't have money to pay someone to carry you there, unless you stop eating. What are your choices? This is the problem that invariably occurs when the cart is placed in front of the horse.
The same problem exists everywhere else. Imagine that starting tomorrow coal and gas plants stop making energy. Cost of energy goes through the roof. As result you can't cook food at home! What are your options? Making a fire on the kitchen floor with your philosophy books?
I'm glad that you know of a coal power plant that is more expensive - for whatever reason - than solar. (I have 6 kW of solar panels at my house, by the way.) However failures of solar power are far more common, even despite huge injections of public money into those projects (see Solyndra.) The reason for that is simply that solar panels today are not very efficient. Will they become better? Probably, over time. Maybe even soon. But today we can capture very little of the energy that is coming down.
You need to consider also the weather. Not every region is suitable for solar power. Not every region is suitable for wind either. The energy is out there, but it's very costly to mine it. I have sun here, but wind is either 0 (for most of the year) or 60 mph for a few days in winter; in both cases the windmill would have to be shut down; it would be completely useless to me.
In the end, a hungry man needs his daily food. You cannot tell him that he should eat only every other day - even though food is available - because food on odd days is "unclean." But that's what green advocates are doing. The goal is good since I can't imagine an advanced society of Star Trek type that burns coal to power its spaceships. But we cannot implement the program until the program becomes viable. We cannot destroy the world in order to save it.
I'm not against nuclear power but it's an awful expensive way to produce electricity and the lead times are so long. I'm not sure it will be able to compete with solar and wind in another decade.
Nuclear power is very competitive with these sources right now. We do not need to guess what will be 10 or 20 years in the future. Today's nuclear reactors by that time will be ready for decommissioning, and then we can decide what to do, and we will have all the up to date information. Guessing today is pointless. What is not pointless is running all the reactors that you got. Each operating reactor prevents burning of a mountain of coal!
I would understand if UN, for example, or some other worldwide organization, set up a research institute that would focus on the new energy sources, collection and storage methods. But that's not what happened. Instead we have con men like Al Gore that are cutting coupons from useless "carbon credit" trade. Essentially, rich countries are supposed to pay money to poor countries because those poor countries don't pollute that much. Please tell me how this helps develop new technologies? All that we have here is producers being given another haircut, and the proceeds are given to tinpot dictators in banana
We have to completely transform our energy systems. There doesn't appear to be any physical reason why we can't make that transformation so it's just a matter of will.
This civilization does not know a way to exist without burning oil or coal. Short of having a nuclear reactor on every block, and riding horses, we require oil and coal and gas to live.
2% or 3% of GDP? Over what period of time? 100 years? Most governments on the planet are bankrupt already - there is no surplus money to throw at unproven technologies before they are ready. Money that you take away from the pie will be not used to feed hungry and to treat sick. (Most of the US budget, for example, is spent exactly on that.)
But if you are so enthusiastic about green, please go ahead and tell Japan, Germany and others that their nuclear reactors need to be restarted immediately. I will be all for that. Please come back when those reactors are running and we will discuss the next possible step (like NIF work, for example.) I'm not against better energy sources; however before you jump into the pool it makes sense to check if the pool has water.
Understood, thanks. However:
Yes, it presumes a 100% success rate upon search
I read it as every search that is undertaken detects all the contraband that is there. Well, that's just wishful thinking. Illusionists conceal pretty girls in obviously empty boxes; how hard would it be to conceal gray metal inside another gray metal? You can't take every machine apart and take every single piece to the spectroscope; you can't take every piece of that car's air conditioner and drop it in water to measure its density. It is not humanly possible. If a customs officer sees a car, it's just a car (I'm referring to the public example from Dragon.)
Yes, and here is why.
The best weapon is the one that is so powerful that you don't even need to use it. A threat alone is sufficient to achieve your goals. However an ICBM is not suitable for that.
For example, NK wants to respond to a threat. However a launch of an ICBM is a guaranteed suicide on national scale (South Korea will not get out of it alive.) It doesn't matter if that ICBM carries a nuke or a dummy payload; it doesn't matter if that ICBM manages to get onto the trajectory or if it fails over Japan and falls into the ocean. None of that matters. If you launch (against any nuclear country) you should expect immediate response.
NK, however, wants negotiations and political gains. Politics is called "art of the possible." Politicians deal not with accomplished facts but with "what would you do if I do this?" NK needs a threat that is not immediate but that can be activated on short notice. And that threat must be real and there must be no defense against it. A nuclear mine (or several,) planted somewhere on the territory of the opposing country, will do the job just fine.
Also, you are mentioning the 1/10K chance of failure if the delivery is done via normal shipping. However what would you expect the chance of failure of an ICBM be? An ICBM that was never tested for the true distance; an ICBM that probably exists in quantity one; an ICBM designed by people who had more failures than successes; an ICBM made in a tiny pariah country that is under all sorts of embargo? I'd say their chance of failure would be 1/2 if not 1. And that is before the missile shield does anything. In other words, an ICBM threat from NK is not believable; it's on the scale of a threat that some natives on some faraway island pose by praying to their local gods to smite $whoever. But if NK goes ahead and launches then it will be destroyed. Pretty useless as a negotiation tool, I'd say.
Additionally, why do you think the chance of discovery is 1/10K? It can be made very low by carefully hiding parts. I can think of many ways to do it. Perhaps I shouldn't mention any of them, but they are pretty obvious to anyone who just stops for a moment, turns the TV off and thinks. To intercept, you'd need to know for a fact that a specific shipment contains a specific item. This knowledge can't be gained if even the shipper is unaware. Besides, there are 37,000 ways to bypass ports and customs; NK has mini-subs that can be delivered into US coastal waters on (or under) a ship and then dropped off. A mini-sub can then hide in the noise of screws of some large ship, or in its acoustic reflection, and get to the shore completely undetected. All that can be done at NK's leisure, slowly and carefully, with as many dry runs as they want. And once the device is delivered it will be lost for good - until it is activated.
The fact that the Russians and the Chinese (who are STILL our potential enemies) are furious tells us that they are pretty sure that the missiles WILL work.
It's not just that. Perhaps they know that TODAY this shield does not work. However it will be constantly improving, and eventually it will work; one day, perhaps with some laser cannons, it will work 100%. So it is wise to think that it already works, regardless of how good it is today.
But if North Korea or Iran make only one, what happens?
They ship it in small pieces in diplomatic mail to their embassies, if only they had them. Since they don't, they will do the same via regular shipments of heavy machinery. The assembled weapon will be equipped with a radio detonator and well hidden in the target area. (A ground explosion will be dirty.) For example, it can be embedded into liquid concrete of a new building. The only person who knows where the weapon is will be killed; there will be no leads to the location of the weapon. The radio codes will be known to the current NK dictator and they can be transmitted from anywhere in the world. That's what any arch-villain would do, why to even ask?
You can also read Clive Cussler's Dragon .
Actually, the U.S. and NATO offered to include Russia in the missile defense shield in the form of sharing early warning data (I don't believe they intended to share the actual missile intercept systems) around Fall 2010.
Russia has no nuclear-capable "potential enemies" except the USA. China is very safe, and Israel's arsenal is purely defensive. Russia has good relations with both. Europe is not interested in wars. India and Pakistan are focused on each other. However the USA habitually wages wars and throws its weight around; in part that's necessary to sustain the dying economy and falling dollar and the armies of unemployed. Therefore sharing the early warning data would be useless. Russia would need some sufficient control over interceptor sites to be sure that they are not targeting Russian launch sites. But NATO would want to cover Russia as well, even though it is not very effective. The danger here is that what is not sufficiently effective for a general might be sufficiently effective for an ignorant, half-crazy President (like John McCain, for example.) US voters are perfectly capable of electing such a person.
The latest talk is that Obama gives Russia the specs on interceptors (as if Russia doesn't have them already, which I presume.) I do not believe there will be any agreement unless Russia can know for a fact that its territory is not covered by the shield, one way or another. The need for that is caused by existence of WMD in all involved countries. If we look at the history, the Mad Fuehrer rose to absolute power in Germany within about a decade. The same unfortunate event can, theoretically, happen in any nuclear country - and therefore MAD has to remain for now, to keep such a budding dictator of the world in check.
Of course, all of this is extremely hypothetical: the ROI on a first strike is so far in the negative that you'd need a telescope to see the bottom of the pit. Nobody benefits from a first strike.
You don't need to actually do the first strike. You only need to threaten to do it - or just to be able to do it. This gives huge advantages to the country that owns the shield.
If a country refuses the pressure then it can be given some punishment - for example, some unimportant village can be mysteriously destroyed, and an errant warplane of the victim country would be blamed. The politicians will then be privately told that if they don't behave then the same happens to their own cities. What can they do? At that point they are a conquered country with no other shots fired.
That scenario was considered after sinking of Cheonan. Of course North Koreans are not saints, and there were some remnants of a NK torpedo found... perhaps NK did it after all, in that particular case. But in principle a false flag attack can be carried out anywhere, by anyone, deniably.
Bush was a neocon (remember that "feels good!" ?)
Obama, however, loves golf; he simply doesn't care what else is happening. There are plenty of very capable people to carry out the neocon agenda in the name of the President while the President is otherwise occupied. Obama himself is most likely not qualified to hold any opinion on any important subject; his dependency on teleprompters is well known (even when he visited children at some school.)
That is true only if the US Army is willing to nuke NYC or go full Fallujah on Atlanta. Which isn't going to happen; the generals won't do it, and the soldiers will frag officers who dare to order such a thing.
If so, what you have is a Syrian situation where the army has armor but doesn't have enough men to control all the important locations ... and there are plenty of such locations in this country. There aren't even enough soldiers in the standing army to hold major cities, let alone thousands of smaller towns. Those soldiers will be also targets of potshots from every walk of life, from ultra-racist militia to gangs, each for their own reason. It is not possible to be safe from snipers in a US city.
Most importantly, the US Army will be losing soldiers by tens of thousands per day. After the initial period the soldiers will understand that they are just cannon fodder, a buffer that their superiors are using to delay the inevitable. It is not possible for an army (any army) to conquer this country - not without nuking it all. Soldiers will be deserting, which is extremely easy in their own country.
Citizens of the USA amassed a large number of firearms and ammo. If each armed citizen just walks up to a soldier, kills him and then gets killed himself (making it an equal exchange) then the US army will be wiped out to the last man.
You can see how that works in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US military was able to defeat organized troops but it has no defense against militants. Why do you think it will fare any better here, against a better trained and better armed opponent? Why would it even want to fight? The President will be arrested as soon as the generals decide that the game is lost and a sacrificial victim is necessary.
Doesn't 3x = x imply x = 0?
Not any more than a belief that 3D objects do not exist.
I don't subscribe to any religion, but from purely mathematical POV this God thing can be easily explained by God existing also in another dimension. Then that God could have multiple projections (3D sections) and each section would be a manifestation of the same being. However at the same time each section would have individuality. If you, a 3D person, are stuck through Flatland, your head will be a circle and it can speak. Your hands' section would be able to grab things, your feet's section would be able to move around. But each section will be a part of you. So this ancient tale is quite reasonable, and many a SciFi writer posited a similar higher-dimensional being.
If you're going to bring up what's natural, it's also natural to be ashamed of being naked.
People started wearing clothes to protect themselves from cold, as they migrated from equatorial regions of Earth into colder ones. Some of modern equatorial indian tribes do not bother with clothes. You do not need them, technically, if the climate is warm enough; clothes then only consume money to be purchased, repaired, cleaned.
I have been raising hell about getting critical problems fixed for 20 years or so, occasionally WINNING those fights, and guess what? There have been NO destructive consequences to my life. None. Zero.
Perhaps you are winning fights, but you have lost the war. I do not blame Anrego for his lack of desire to swim in molasses. The country's problems are rooted in democracy - however paradoxical it may sound. Democracy doesn't guarantee good decisions; it only guarantees that decisions, good or bad, are made by the majority. If you have smart voters then you have smart decisions; if the voters are idiots then the decisions will be idiotic. Today the majority of voters will gladly vote against their own interests - and they do. There are of course tricks that help them make the necessary vote. Inconvenient candidates are villified or set up; only those remain who are equally acceptable and equally ready to sell the country.
Go whimper in your little corner, terrified of any word or act that might challenge the absolute dominance of your Rightful Lords And Masters.
A captured animal may throw itself against the bars of the cage, but it is rarely a productive strategy. It only tells the capturer which animal is dangerous and should be destroyed. A wise animal would ascertain the situation, wait for an opportune moment (or, even better, would create it), and only then it tries to run away.
In other words, OWS and other anarchists who burn cars and break store windows during WTO meetings are not helping. They aren't helping themselves, and they aren't helping anyone else. They only make themselves into convenient targets. They throw themselves at the bars while their Lords and Masters are laughing from safety of their offices: their beloved enemy, Emmanuel Goldstein, finally decided to show up!
If you are curious how I see it all, here is a screen capture.
I see the dots in my comment, but not in the parent.
However the style of dots depends on the root comment. If the root is my own comment then I see two levels (first with hollow dots, second with black squares.) If the root is the parent comment I see his emphasized text in italics, and both levels of my comment are adorned with black squares. The hollow dots are gone.
All in all, Slashdot finally succeeded to break everything that is holy in CSS. I'm reading /. in "Basic Page Style," and something (NoScript, probably, years ago) ate all the Javascript and other things that make Slashdot green and slow and more useless. I see only minimal HTML-formatted text, but all the fluff is gone.
honestly I'd still rather just hand the card over and maintain eye contact.
In this aspect some people in a large meeting full of strangers (visitors) like to arrange their business cards according to the seats those visitors took, so that they know who is who without any extra effort.
I thought the "ul" and "li" tags would work.
The only other way to transfer money out of a country is by converting it to something physical that you can stuff in a suit case and carry across the border.
SWIFT is nothing but a trusted communication system. It was created in days before everyone and their dog had easy access to unbreakable ciphers. Things changed. Today you can create a GnuPG message that will be encrypted only to designated recipients and that can't be broken by any existing or theorized hardware. (The best way to break the GnuPG message is by breaking fingers of the guy who has the keyring and passwords.)
If SWIFT is unavailable then any alternative messaging network will do. You can even send IOUs back and forth through the mail. Denominate them in gold, for example. Iran sells 100 barrels of gold, gets an IOU for one ounce of gold. Iran buys a container of TVs and sends that IOU back. Nothing can be simpler. That's how banks were operating from the early days.
Any new system won't be able to connect to the major currency markets or any of the major financial institutions is doomed to fail.
Why would Iran even need to connect to "major currency markets?" They need to pay and be paid in deals with their international partners; those are countries, not markets. Those "major financial institutions" are a liability since the USA has full control over them and can arrest the money at any time.
In the end Iran becomes a major oil producer that doesn't sell its oil for USD. This is very bad news for Uncle Sam.