Well, wouldn't it be cheaper if they instead had an air pocket inside, so they'd flow up to the surface for "factory recall"?:-) Better for the sea as well, isn't it?
Five years ago I was on a beach outside Malaga, Spain, about to take a swim in the sea. Diving under water I suddenly saw hundreds of more or less colored plastic bags floating around at different depths, like jellyfish. The sea was apparently full with those, at least along the coastline, to a degree. Some sort of tide bringing these I guess. Needless to say, the swimming experience was not particularly appealing suddenly and was cut short. It was disgusting. I am not really sure how to fix this problem today, but a price tag on each bag and a penalty for disposing of trash in inappropriate locations in general seem like a start to me.
Really? Are you sure? Absolutely positively certain without doubt?
> Bolt still beats Gay.
To a degree - yes, I haven't said the good old human factor doesn't apply. But the two probably are on different diets etc, which make much difference inside their bodies and minds, as their bodies approach "max Q", so to speak. It's not the biggest factor, but especially in sports, the decisive factor doesn't have to be the biggest one, it just needs to make all the difference during those seconds or minutes you perform. My original argument cab be re-told as: atheles are like cars these days, it's the driver that matters, but also the kind of fuel that the car runs on, the engine oil, and various other fluids and solids that affect performance.
You're being naive. First of all he is human, so technically if he bests other humans, then he is by definition "best human". But you are probably implying "best physically unaugmented human", which probably excludes doping too, etc. But you have to look at it this way: except doping and attaching carbon-fiber prosthetic to yourself, there's a myriad of ways to augment yourself and still get qualified for Olympics. Drinking funny drinks, eating funny food which contain numerous "good" doping drugs that the commitee doesn't (and cannot) disallow, exercising so much that it blurs the definition of "human" - in short, modern athletes are no more human than they are products of if not breeding then definitely "growing" where they live by strict diets and discipline. Heck, they avoid sex before the races. Is that average human to you? It's worlds apart from an average human. My point is, you should take it very easy on "human" definition.
I say I don't care whether it's fair or not, precisely because Olympics today is like football - athletes are bought and sold, managers manage, an entire industry that deals with "augmenting" athletes legally has been established. If Oscar wins, he actually makes the world a more interesting place to live, which is what counts. He will be studied further, conclusions will be drawn from facts and not hypothesis, we will know more about our bodies. Other non-augmented athletes will try to beat him, just like man has tried to outrun beast back in the day - didn't stop him because beast was different from man.
Bottomline: fair fight is actually very boring thing in the long ron, it tastes like water. You don't want to only drink water, you want some excitement in it. You want a temporary shift of power and balance. Oscar gives us an excitement, even to his fellow athletes. And at the end of the day, he fights himself. While we watch. Don't you love a good show?
In reference to your last paragraph, are you implying that he indeed has an advantage over non-amputees? Otherwise, why is it unfortunate that the study wasn't published earlier?
Well said sir. And I say this again: I don't own an Apple computer, I have used them minimally/casually over the years, I have only typed on a Macbook Air once or twice in my life, and I have my own set of grudges against the iOS.
But you gotta hand it to those unapologetic Apple engineers, who refuse to let the generic reputation of computers troubled by years of silly mistakes speak for them.
If we'd be going to Mars, Apple would be taking us there without telling us to breathe and eat in turns and use the lavatory only when strictly necessary, while everyone else would be in the meeting room explaining it's not possible because it's too far away, there's the nastiest cosmic radiation, and it costs too much.
That's where you're wrong. You think you know what you're talking about but you don't. The innovation is not using different components, a child can do that with LEGO, doesn't mean they have innovated necessarily. Innovation lies within taking a different look on a thing everybody is looking at and producing a different product. It's producing things that seemingly come from fantasy alone that do their job, that do what people like and want. Innovation is when you ask the question "I thought this was not possible, how did they do that? Why doesn't everyone else do that?"
Like Apples patented magnetic power connector, like "unibody" aluminum cover, like backlit keyboard, like EFI/OFI instead of BIOS, like AirPort. And others.
There have been dozens of 13" PC models without an optical drive for several years now, none of them comes close to being as light and as thin as Macbook Air. And again, this is coming from a person who doesn't use Apples products, out of different reasons. Doesn't stop me from acknowledging the obvious.
Nobody prevents other manufacturers from striking darling contracts with Flash memory manufacturers and what not. Where there's will there's way. Instead they appear to be happily watching in mild jealosy as Apple sweeps customers off their feet time and again, growing with impatience until it runs out as they see their profits fall to the point it's obvious something has to be done about it. And they do. But it looks obvious - there's no denying it and no need to hide it - if it were the Olympics, we wouldn't be talking about them. Apple is the winner.
Heck, if Apple offered Macbooks with Windows preinstalled at Apple Store, it would wreak nothing short of a havoc in the bulky PC industry.
You have the logo issue the other way around. Indeed, people buy stuff with Apple logo on it - but it's because previously other people bought stuff with then unknown Apple logo on it and were pleasantly surprised and told their friends. Yes, that's why Macbook Air sells. Blame it on the logo.
That's good mileage! As for standard CPU TDP, who knows. Are you sarcastic? TDP is the wattage ceiling, and I am sure what they said is some marketing drone speak. It probably means a CPU with 15 watts of TDP, period. Your Intel Core Duo Txxxx has probably 25 watts TDP, for comparison.
Status-quo for PCs as of lately - the entire lazy uninspiring market just trails Apple, who, as much as I dislike the whole flashy iDesign, have been the only true innovators for years now.
As much as I like my Thinkpad, it often amazes me why if it's thin and light, has everything you need, then it has to run that iOS thing.
It looks like Apple are thinking, while everyone else just tries to profit riding the wave. Like rich estate owners who cannot be bothered to actually work anymore, because it's been so long they did, they have no understanding nor desire to do so, but they do want the money they lay claim to.
We are sold "business" laptops that are supposed to be our road warriors, that have gamer graphics cards in them for some idiotic reason, that get not just warm but burning hot in our laps (while we thought we could actually use them as well LAPtops you know), that come with a shitload of software crap someone either thinks we need or doesn't give a damn about, and on top we have Microsoft aggressively pushing Windows to us, which is at best a patch on a suit full of holes and stains. My point is: the PC industry as a whole is a mess, there is no direction and definitely no respect for the multititude of jobs people who work with computers these days do - it's like we are sold toys that we are supposed to use and throw out after a year. Everybody sings their tune, software is pushed to interpreted languages and the cloud which negatively affect one of the most important usability factors out there - latency. It's amazing we are not told that we shouldn't multitask because the new JavaScript OS is too slow to do that on todays Intel Core CPU.
All the while Apple at least is innovating. Maybe because that's what they long wanted to get away from - the messy juggernaut of the PC industry that is like a landfill of throwouts someone somewhere tries to fit together to give us the next best thing, for their 15 minutes of fame.
Gee, Intel, is it a coincidence you thought of finally shaving off a centimeter off the average laptop height 2 years after Apple, and probably half a decade after it began to be possible and the users began wanting it really badly after complaining of carrying five pounds of machine on average with them every working day?
1. You rent a Linux host, point a domain name to it, and set up your own email accounts on that domain by means of installing the relevant email software stack like IMAP/POP3 service etc. You host - your rules - you can set up your own spam filters, rules, actually you can do so much my rambling cannot even cover half of it. You certainly can install some form of web interface to access your mail on it.
2. You do the same as above, but instead of renting, you just set up a box in wherever you live, make sure it stays always-on, make sure it's reachable to the world and use a public dynamic DNS service to make sure the domain name points to it so that you can set up the software as with point 1. The benefits are that it's for total control freaks, and it includes many benefits of point 1. The cons are well... it's your hardware, so you maintain and run it!
There are many hosting companies that will give you a nice virtual CentOS Linux with plenty of computing power for a fraction of average monthly income. If you think it costs too much, imagine that later on your box can be your face to the world - install a Diaspora POD on it (if it ships hehe), web server for you and your family, friends, projects, compute stuff, rent it out if it stays idle enough...
Eh, didn't someone remind us of this a couple of months ago? Seems like someone really has teeth to grind with modern coders. Get a life, you suspicious person!
Good explanations, but while I were waiting for an answer from you, I did some lookup of my own, and it seems there are figures all over the net giving me everything from effective 4 to 90 watts per mÂ, all quoting "average modern solar cell/panel". For instance, consider the following:
So, I am thinking that 4 watts and even 10 watts, are rather conservative figures. Then again, for the sake of my original argument, you are right indeed - if they'd go for cheap, really cheap and not necessarily very efficient arrays, they'd need to cover a lot of area with panels to cover our collective energy needs. Then again, I think Desertec Foundation are onto something with instead distributing the global array over several high-yield-sun places, and they also achieve 24-hour energy provision without storage, if they distribute along the timezones, which is what I think they plan to, more or less.
I also think that photovoltaics will outperform solar-thermal in years to come. And frankly, solar-thermal needs considerably more maintenance etc.
Hmm, it seems my math is completely wrong. I don't understand how can photovoltaics get you only 4W per square meter in Germany. It's around 150 watts of solar irradiation on average there, with 10% efficiency for modern photovoltaics (on average, again), it should yield about 15 watts, no?
First of all, most photovoltaic cells DO absorb heat as well, and by way of energy conservation, that same wave energy won't be reflected back. Second, compared to the amount of heat and other processes that contribute to global warming, even the combined dissipation of heat from solar energy installations giving us all the energy we need - is negligible. We can make do with photovoltaics array covering 300000 square kilometers of unused, unpopulated Sahara desert to give us close to 20 terawatt output average, which is almost twice as much as we use today. The difference between heat dissipated by that entire installation and what we dissipate today extracting usable energy, is a negative.
If nanoantennae research becomes a viable business, we'll have a way of extracting the actual heat from the Sun, as opposed to energy from the visible spectrum, which will reduce heat dissipation substantially. Nanoantennate are said to cost cheaper to produce than even thin-film photovoltaic arrays, the problems currently lie elsewhere, but it's gaining traction. I am just saying, so that you won't get the idea that our solar energy worldwide will fry us alive. It won't, not near as much as coal, oil etc cook us slowly today.
Also, you don't have to abstain from painting roofs white. It's a good thing to do in warmer places. In any case, a so-called passivhaus home is a better solution, at least for the wealthier countries.
Here we go with nuclear again. It is not viable. It is very cheap until something goes wrong, which it does, at which point it becomes so expensive you wish you hadn't built the damn thing. I am not saying it cannot be improved upon, but unlike many other sciences, when nuclear goes wrong, you cannot always measure the losses in dollars or yen. Heavy contaminated water, diseases and such - it's often a permanent damage, beyond repair that can simply be bought and from which you can move on.
I love nuclear power as much as the next guy did before Fukisima happened, but someone, somewhere has to present a strategy that can verify that either the design is 99.9999999 safe and won't bring half the planet down with it, or that in case it violently explodes, the disaster ends with firetrucks extinguishing the fires. When that strategy is used, then we can continue, but if the japanese messed up, I think we ought to take a break from the whole nuclear power festival.
At least solar power has not shown to produce such horrible disasters as Chernobyl and Fukusima malfunctioning plants have. And unless you run a goods tanker across the Atlantic (which uses as much fuel during its voyage as one million road vehicles during same time), solar power will sover all your household needs, if not entirely, then at least, substantially. And the costs repay themselves within several years, depending, leaving you with practically free energy.
Also, with thin-film from First Solar under a dollar per watt, the system returns your investment within two years at the longest, for a typical American household. From then on, it's free energy. FREE. Not bound to anything, but the Sun orbiting our planet. Now please tell me, except initial investment, how is burning coal and gas cheaper than THAT? You have yourself largely independent household, energy-wise. The little they will lack during the night (when most people sleep) when Sun is not there, they will either buy from the conventional grid or from a system of batteries, if spare could be allocated during the day. In case a household is 100% independent of a third-party energy supplier, you have yourself a nightmare of oil and coal companies. Independence is the cancer of trade and business. Can you imagine a world where people don't need anything from each other? Granted, that'll never happen in its entirety, but solar energy is one component of this utopia that can happen. Now tell me you wouldn't lobby against it if everything from your capital to your daily bread, depended on it?
A flawed argument, and surprised it still floats. You fail to realize that as much as indeed oil and coal are today far more viable alternatives (if arguably dooming us) than solar, even the "evil" (by your wording) oil and coal companies wouldn't simply let solar develop itself. They know that even though outgunned today, if given space to breathe, solar WILL replace oil and coal, also because of public opinion shifting, which you completely forgot to mention. Killing people and taking over their property is also cheaper than trading with them, but it is outlawed. It is outlawed because the public doesn't appreciate it. Same way, given enough time, oil and coal will, although staying far cheaper than solar, will be frowned upon. You can't burn coal if you're in the oven. That's why I believe there is lobbyism today - even though as you put it perhaps not needed, they don't take the risk of NOT lobbying. Because they too, as any good investor, predict that the public opinion shifts away from their choice of horse.
You really think the people that have their hands deep in oil extraction would just stand aside and look at how the solar guys develop their thing? I don't think subsidies have much to do with it, my friend.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with subsidizing solar energy companies. There are incentives there, and I'm not even going to waste my time listing them - as you seem to know so much about the topic, you should know this yourself. As for U.S., the entire country is subsidized. I am talking about the national debt.
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Well, wouldn't it be cheaper if they instead had an air pocket inside, so they'd flow up to the surface for "factory recall"? :-) Better for the sea as well, isn't it?
Five years ago I was on a beach outside Malaga, Spain, about to take a swim in the sea. Diving under water I suddenly saw hundreds of more or less colored plastic bags floating around at different depths, like jellyfish. The sea was apparently full with those, at least along the coastline, to a degree. Some sort of tide bringing these I guess. Needless to say, the swimming experience was not particularly appealing suddenly and was cut short. It was disgusting. I am not really sure how to fix this problem today, but a price tag on each bag and a penalty for disposing of trash in inappropriate locations in general seem like a start to me.
> No one watches athletics for entertainment.
Really? Are you sure? Absolutely positively certain without doubt?
> Bolt still beats Gay.
To a degree - yes, I haven't said the good old human factor doesn't apply. But the two probably are on different diets etc, which make much difference inside their bodies and minds, as their bodies approach "max Q", so to speak. It's not the biggest factor, but especially in sports, the decisive factor doesn't have to be the biggest one, it just needs to make all the difference during those seconds or minutes you perform. My original argument cab be re-told as: atheles are like cars these days, it's the driver that matters, but also the kind of fuel that the car runs on, the engine oil, and various other fluids and solids that affect performance.
You're being naive. First of all he is human, so technically if he bests other humans, then he is by definition "best human". But you are probably implying "best physically unaugmented human", which probably excludes doping too, etc. But you have to look at it this way: except doping and attaching carbon-fiber prosthetic to yourself, there's a myriad of ways to augment yourself and still get qualified for Olympics. Drinking funny drinks, eating funny food which contain numerous "good" doping drugs that the commitee doesn't (and cannot) disallow, exercising so much that it blurs the definition of "human" - in short, modern athletes are no more human than they are products of if not breeding then definitely "growing" where they live by strict diets and discipline. Heck, they avoid sex before the races. Is that average human to you? It's worlds apart from an average human. My point is, you should take it very easy on "human" definition.
I say I don't care whether it's fair or not, precisely because Olympics today is like football - athletes are bought and sold, managers manage, an entire industry that deals with "augmenting" athletes legally has been established. If Oscar wins, he actually makes the world a more interesting place to live, which is what counts. He will be studied further, conclusions will be drawn from facts and not hypothesis, we will know more about our bodies. Other non-augmented athletes will try to beat him, just like man has tried to outrun beast back in the day - didn't stop him because beast was different from man.
Bottomline: fair fight is actually very boring thing in the long ron, it tastes like water. You don't want to only drink water, you want some excitement in it. You want a temporary shift of power and balance. Oscar gives us an excitement, even to his fellow athletes. And at the end of the day, he fights himself. While we watch. Don't you love a good show?
In reference to your last paragraph, are you implying that he indeed has an advantage over non-amputees? Otherwise, why is it unfortunate that the study wasn't published earlier?
Well said sir. And I say this again: I don't own an Apple computer, I have used them minimally/casually over the years, I have only typed on a Macbook Air once or twice in my life, and I have my own set of grudges against the iOS.
But you gotta hand it to those unapologetic Apple engineers, who refuse to let the generic reputation of computers troubled by years of silly mistakes speak for them.
If we'd be going to Mars, Apple would be taking us there without telling us to breathe and eat in turns and use the lavatory only when strictly necessary, while everyone else would be in the meeting room explaining it's not possible because it's too far away, there's the nastiest cosmic radiation, and it costs too much.
That's where you're wrong. You think you know what you're talking about but you don't. The innovation is not using different components, a child can do that with LEGO, doesn't mean they have innovated necessarily. Innovation lies within taking a different look on a thing everybody is looking at and producing a different product. It's producing things that seemingly come from fantasy alone that do their job, that do what people like and want. Innovation is when you ask the question "I thought this was not possible, how did they do that? Why doesn't everyone else do that?"
Like Apples patented magnetic power connector, like "unibody" aluminum cover, like backlit keyboard, like EFI/OFI instead of BIOS, like AirPort. And others.
There have been dozens of 13" PC models without an optical drive for several years now, none of them comes close to being as light and as thin as Macbook Air. And again, this is coming from a person who doesn't use Apples products, out of different reasons. Doesn't stop me from acknowledging the obvious.
Nobody prevents other manufacturers from striking darling contracts with Flash memory manufacturers and what not. Where there's will there's way. Instead they appear to be happily watching in mild jealosy as Apple sweeps customers off their feet time and again, growing with impatience until it runs out as they see their profits fall to the point it's obvious something has to be done about it. And they do. But it looks obvious - there's no denying it and no need to hide it - if it were the Olympics, we wouldn't be talking about them. Apple is the winner.
Heck, if Apple offered Macbooks with Windows preinstalled at Apple Store, it would wreak nothing short of a havoc in the bulky PC industry.
You have the logo issue the other way around. Indeed, people buy stuff with Apple logo on it - but it's because previously other people bought stuff with then unknown Apple logo on it and were pleasantly surprised and told their friends. Yes, that's why Macbook Air sells. Blame it on the logo.
That's good mileage! As for standard CPU TDP, who knows. Are you sarcastic? TDP is the wattage ceiling, and I am sure what they said is some marketing drone speak. It probably means a CPU with 15 watts of TDP, period. Your Intel Core Duo Txxxx has probably 25 watts TDP, for comparison.
Status-quo for PCs as of lately - the entire lazy uninspiring market just trails Apple, who, as much as I dislike the whole flashy iDesign, have been the only true innovators for years now.
As much as I like my Thinkpad, it often amazes me why if it's thin and light, has everything you need, then it has to run that iOS thing.
It looks like Apple are thinking, while everyone else just tries to profit riding the wave. Like rich estate owners who cannot be bothered to actually work anymore, because it's been so long they did, they have no understanding nor desire to do so, but they do want the money they lay claim to.
We are sold "business" laptops that are supposed to be our road warriors, that have gamer graphics cards in them for some idiotic reason, that get not just warm but burning hot in our laps (while we thought we could actually use them as well LAPtops you know), that come with a shitload of software crap someone either thinks we need or doesn't give a damn about, and on top we have Microsoft aggressively pushing Windows to us, which is at best a patch on a suit full of holes and stains. My point is: the PC industry as a whole is a mess, there is no direction and definitely no respect for the multititude of jobs people who work with computers these days do - it's like we are sold toys that we are supposed to use and throw out after a year. Everybody sings their tune, software is pushed to interpreted languages and the cloud which negatively affect one of the most important usability factors out there - latency. It's amazing we are not told that we shouldn't multitask because the new JavaScript OS is too slow to do that on todays Intel Core CPU.
All the while Apple at least is innovating. Maybe because that's what they long wanted to get away from - the messy juggernaut of the PC industry that is like a landfill of throwouts someone somewhere tries to fit together to give us the next best thing, for their 15 minutes of fame.
Gee, Intel, is it a coincidence you thought of finally shaving off a centimeter off the average laptop height 2 years after Apple, and probably half a decade after it began to be possible and the users began wanting it really badly after complaining of carrying five pounds of machine on average with them every working day?
You have at least two good choices:
1. You rent a Linux host, point a domain name to it, and set up your own email accounts on that domain by means of installing the relevant email software stack like IMAP/POP3 service etc. You host - your rules - you can set up your own spam filters, rules, actually you can do so much my rambling cannot even cover half of it. You certainly can install some form of web interface to access your mail on it.
2. You do the same as above, but instead of renting, you just set up a box in wherever you live, make sure it stays always-on, make sure it's reachable to the world and use a public dynamic DNS service to make sure the domain name points to it so that you can set up the software as with point 1. The benefits are that it's for total control freaks, and it includes many benefits of point 1. The cons are well... it's your hardware, so you maintain and run it!
There are many hosting companies that will give you a nice virtual CentOS Linux with plenty of computing power for a fraction of average monthly income. If you think it costs too much, imagine that later on your box can be your face to the world - install a Diaspora POD on it (if it ships hehe), web server for you and your family, friends, projects, compute stuff, rent it out if it stays idle enough...
In America, you mow the lawn!
Eh, didn't someone remind us of this a couple of months ago? Seems like someone really has teeth to grind with modern coders. Get a life, you suspicious person!
> I want my money back.
Yeah, well so does NASA :/
I said it before and I will say it again (to the developers that listen):
Interfaces, not implementations. When will people learn?
It seems the girls are looking for something.... coming, leaving, coming again. What might it be? Girls are strange :P
Good explanations, but while I were waiting for an answer from you, I did some lookup of my own, and it seems there are figures all over the net giving me everything from effective 4 to 90 watts per mÂ, all quoting "average modern solar cell/panel". For instance, consider the following:
60 watts max for 76x67cm area commercially available panel:
http://eshop.sunriseenergy.co.uk/Photovoltaic-60-Watt-Monocrystalline-Solar-Panel
So, I am thinking that 4 watts and even 10 watts, are rather conservative figures. Then again, for the sake of my original argument, you are right indeed - if they'd go for cheap, really cheap and not necessarily very efficient arrays, they'd need to cover a lot of area with panels to cover our collective energy needs. Then again, I think Desertec Foundation are onto something with instead distributing the global array over several high-yield-sun places, and they also achieve 24-hour energy provision without storage, if they distribute along the timezones, which is what I think they plan to, more or less.
I also think that photovoltaics will outperform solar-thermal in years to come. And frankly, solar-thermal needs considerably more maintenance etc.
Hmm, it seems my math is completely wrong. I don't understand how can photovoltaics get you only 4W per square meter in Germany. It's around 150 watts of solar irradiation on average there, with 10% efficiency for modern photovoltaics (on average, again), it should yield about 15 watts, no?
Source please?
First of all, most photovoltaic cells DO absorb heat as well, and by way of energy conservation, that same wave energy won't be reflected back. Second, compared to the amount of heat and other processes that contribute to global warming, even the combined dissipation of heat from solar energy installations giving us all the energy we need - is negligible. We can make do with photovoltaics array covering 300000 square kilometers of unused, unpopulated Sahara desert to give us close to 20 terawatt output average, which is almost twice as much as we use today. The difference between heat dissipated by that entire installation and what we dissipate today extracting usable energy, is a negative.
If nanoantennae research becomes a viable business, we'll have a way of extracting the actual heat from the Sun, as opposed to energy from the visible spectrum, which will reduce heat dissipation substantially. Nanoantennate are said to cost cheaper to produce than even thin-film photovoltaic arrays, the problems currently lie elsewhere, but it's gaining traction. I am just saying, so that you won't get the idea that our solar energy worldwide will fry us alive. It won't, not near as much as coal, oil etc cook us slowly today.
Also, you don't have to abstain from painting roofs white. It's a good thing to do in warmer places. In any case, a so-called passivhaus home is a better solution, at least for the wealthier countries.
I am glad to see one of the more informative AND insightful posts here, above.
Here we go with nuclear again. It is not viable. It is very cheap until something goes wrong, which it does, at which point it becomes so expensive you wish you hadn't built the damn thing. I am not saying it cannot be improved upon, but unlike many other sciences, when nuclear goes wrong, you cannot always measure the losses in dollars or yen. Heavy contaminated water, diseases and such - it's often a permanent damage, beyond repair that can simply be bought and from which you can move on.
I love nuclear power as much as the next guy did before Fukisima happened, but someone, somewhere has to present a strategy that can verify that either the design is 99.9999999 safe and won't bring half the planet down with it, or that in case it violently explodes, the disaster ends with firetrucks extinguishing the fires. When that strategy is used, then we can continue, but if the japanese messed up, I think we ought to take a break from the whole nuclear power festival.
At least solar power has not shown to produce such horrible disasters as Chernobyl and Fukusima malfunctioning plants have. And unless you run a goods tanker across the Atlantic (which uses as much fuel during its voyage as one million road vehicles during same time), solar power will sover all your household needs, if not entirely, then at least, substantially. And the costs repay themselves within several years, depending, leaving you with practically free energy.
But yes, it does suck that PVs are made in China.
Also, with thin-film from First Solar under a dollar per watt, the system returns your investment within two years at the longest, for a typical American household. From then on, it's free energy. FREE. Not bound to anything, but the Sun orbiting our planet. Now please tell me, except initial investment, how is burning coal and gas cheaper than THAT? You have yourself largely independent household, energy-wise. The little they will lack during the night (when most people sleep) when Sun is not there, they will either buy from the conventional grid or from a system of batteries, if spare could be allocated during the day. In case a household is 100% independent of a third-party energy supplier, you have yourself a nightmare of oil and coal companies. Independence is the cancer of trade and business. Can you imagine a world where people don't need anything from each other? Granted, that'll never happen in its entirety, but solar energy is one component of this utopia that can happen. Now tell me you wouldn't lobby against it if everything from your capital to your daily bread, depended on it?
A flawed argument, and surprised it still floats. You fail to realize that as much as indeed oil and coal are today far more viable alternatives (if arguably dooming us) than solar, even the "evil" (by your wording) oil and coal companies wouldn't simply let solar develop itself. They know that even though outgunned today, if given space to breathe, solar WILL replace oil and coal, also because of public opinion shifting, which you completely forgot to mention. Killing people and taking over their property is also cheaper than trading with them, but it is outlawed. It is outlawed because the public doesn't appreciate it. Same way, given enough time, oil and coal will, although staying far cheaper than solar, will be frowned upon. You can't burn coal if you're in the oven. That's why I believe there is lobbyism today - even though as you put it perhaps not needed, they don't take the risk of NOT lobbying. Because they too, as any good investor, predict that the public opinion shifts away from their choice of horse.
You really think the people that have their hands deep in oil extraction would just stand aside and look at how the solar guys develop their thing? I don't think subsidies have much to do with it, my friend.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with subsidizing solar energy companies. There are incentives there, and I'm not even going to waste my time listing them - as you seem to know so much about the topic, you should know this yourself. As for U.S., the entire country is subsidized. I am talking about the national debt.