Publicly, it is very important to Japan that their innovations and applications are seen as being civil rather than military, for political and cultural reasons going back decades.
No. It's a practical matter rather than a cultural one. The Japanese Military, such as it is, never goes to war, and soldiers are banned from firing their weapons, unless under life-threatening attack, and even then, they are expected to attempt to non-lethally disable the aggressor, if possible.
In other words, Japan has no military.
There is no possible benefit to spending lots of money on military weapons, since there are no lives nor outcomes on the line. The US military fights Japan's wars for them (or rather, threatens to do so, which has eliminated any and all aggression). Hence the US having a need for weaponry the Japanese do not.
1.) "cytokine storm" Instead of the sickest, it (seemed) to be the healthiest that had the highest mortality risk.
2.) It's historically been very bad when diseases jump from one animal to another. It can be so very different than anything else we've seen that it does immense damage for years, until we catch-up (and all those with some genetic susceptibility trait die off). See: HIV
3.) It's only now that there's a large enough population infected that we have any idea what it can do. Fears were high for good reason (if a bit TOO HIGH), and we're only now calming down as it starts looking manageable.
When you consider the state of materials science and controls technology in 1968, when construction started on the TMI reactor, it's a wonder that anything as complicated as a power plant worked at all, let alone safely.
That same logical fallacy has been used since the beginning of recorded human history. It's easy to forget that our predecessors weren't cave men, given how often people say such things...
In truth, progress moves sideways, more often than forward. Most "progress" involves reducing labor, capital costs, man-hours, etc. So, while the only methods we know how to use today, wouldn't have worked decades ago, it doesn't mean we couldn't have gotten the same result with the methods used back then. In fact mankind almost immediately forgets any methods which are no longer in demand, only to rediscover them many years later.
It's usually that calculation and simulation replaces trial-and-error testing, but often the methods which made that trial and error testing possible, or at least practical, have been forgotten by most, if not everyone. It's easy to forget.
Even without further technological advance, nuclear power will suffice for several millennia.
If you could build a new nuclear power plant in this country every week, it may suffice for the next century. Short of that, you just can't make them fast enough... And a millennia is right-out.
Just because X = Y hasn't been adequately proved, doesn't PROVE that X != Y.
In this country, you're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty.
For purposes of criminal punishment, that's true. However, that doesn't apply to civil cases, and NOBODY (except trolls feigning ignorance) actually believes not being convicted necessarily means someone must NOT have committed a crime. The justice system doesn't work that way at all.
The fact that you're posting to/. rather than in the hospital, fighting smallpox.
Because there has never been a free market freemarkets have not been disproved.
There have been innumerable nearly-free markets, and even today, in nearly-lawless countries like Somalia, there is nothing to stop the market from being free. Immigrate and enjoy!
They have the resources to make sure they stay within regulations but someone who wants to start their own business may not unless they are already wealthy.
Natural market forces, like economies of scale, do VASTLY MORE to restrict small players from entering the market than any regulations you can name. In fact it's the government PREVENTING those established players from becomming monopolies that even allows the possibility of a 3rd party entering the game.
Now I ask you is it better to allow a business who employee 10 people to fire or lay off 1 person or go out of business putting the owner as well as all ten employees out of work?
I can't imagine any scenario in which a business owner can pay 9 employees, but the 10th will bankrupt the company.
The science was completely invalid. The prosecutor's proposed theory of the arson was physically impossible. The "rest of the trial," as you put it, is completely irrelevant.
Some of the evidence was wrong. Others had plausible alternative causes (than arson), but aren't necessarily incorrect (eg. either natural flashover, OR arson could have caused the "pool" burn marks). The prosecution's theory of arson is most certainly NOT physically impossible.
So far, my CPU's have never melted, my power supplies are still purring, and my mice haven't keeled over and died.
Of course nothing catastrophic happens. You just get horrendous performance, and have to wait quite a bit longer to get anything done.
Wonder what rigs these people run? 386DX 40mhz's?
Me, I'm just trying to keep my 2GHz Athlon system working as well as it used-to. In fact, it's lightning fast for everything BUT web browsing. How did rendering a web page become more computationally intensive than brute-forcing crypto? What could possibly need hundreds of MBs of RAM? I'm anxiously awaiting Dillo-1.0, with all the necessary modern features for web browsing, to thoroughly put Moz, Konq, Opera, etc. to shame on performance, if nothing else.
Seems to me could recoup the loss by, oh I don't know, cutting 3 billion from defense spending? Seems to me a lot of things could get done by diverting money from Defense.
When you are completely ignorant of something, it is quite easy to come to believe it could be partially or completely removed without adverse effects.
I know when minimum wages go up small business owners may either have to fire employees or go out of business, both of which reduces demand for employees are therefore lowers wages.
That's great circular reasoning there. Wages go up, which lowers wages...
Why should I work my ass off to make more money, and increase demand for employees, if I have to pay more taxes on what I make?
First, because you've clearly benefited GREATLY from the society in which you live, and all the government programs in place to provide you with those educated and healthy employees.
Second, because you'll still be making much more money, there will just be another percent or two taken off to pay for government programs which benefit you, as well as everyone else.
That's robbing Peter to pay Paul.
No, it's the tragedy of the commons in reverse. We ALL pay into the pool, and we all benefit from the services provided. What you pay in taxes isn't going into the pocket of some other CEO. It's going to protect you, help you, help your employees, and help you to continue making a profit.
Without government interference markets will improve employee pay and labor conditions.
Completely disproven by all of human history... Proper government regulation has vastly improved employee pay and labor conditions in most countries in the 3rd world, immediately, directly and undeniably
Look at China and India for examples.
BAD government regulation, keeping people in poverty, is a bad thing. When conditions are bad enough, there's nowhere to go but up.
If I go to France and want to start my own business employing people can I do so easily?
Who said that making it easier to start a business is better for the economy? We would certainly be better without the millions of fly-by-night companies that are out and out scams? If you have a reason to start a business, you can bear a little regulation to get it going... It won't be a blip on the radar compared to the harder parts of starting a company...
It's in my own, and society's, interests to be able [...] get rid of them when they aren't needed.
Why should individual employees always bear the brunt of a bad economy, or your own poor planning? How can you claim it's in society's interests that the business owner NOT have to bear the ups and downs instead?
What will Ares V achieve which will be worth its development and flight cost? Do we really need to build a huge launcher which will fly maybe once a year if we can launch the same payload on four or five flights of a smaller launcher which will see the cost-benefits of mass production?
Several NASA engineers have commented before that having only the shuttle, rather than a Saturn V, drastically increases the cost of any large mission (specifically, ISS). Requiring that each piece be split into 10 chunks, rendezvous in space, get put together by astronauts doing slow, difficult, expensive spacewalks, etc., ends up costing much more than a simple bit of math would suggest. In addition, other contingencies have to be planned for. Each of the 5 pieces has to be self-sufficient since they have to wait months to be joined up, and plenty of contingencies have to be planned for, because it's not okay if all your work burns up in the atmosphere because launch #5 had to be delayed by a month to fix a safety issue somebody noticed while it was on the pad...
See Skylab, where the space station was put up in one launch, versus ISS, which has been a work in progress for how many years now??
And finally, the number of smaller flights needed is closer to 10, not 5. Ares V is planned for 188,000kg to LEO. That's 8X the capacity heavy lifters like the shuttle or the Delta IV can provide...
it's slowly coming to light that Texas almost definitely executed an innocent man in 2004.
I read the article before, and it certainly is of concern. However, it's a horrendously one-sided article, which covers only the incriminating facts that they can later refute, ignoring the rest of the trial as if it didn't exist, in order to make a point.
Secondly, just because someone shouldn't have been convicted on the evidence (reasonable doubt), isn't proof of innocence by a long shot.
With any luck, this case will have far-reaching implications. At the very least, the judges and governor need to be put on trial for negligent homicide.
The governor does NOT serve any role in the court system. The fact that he has the opportunity to pardon someone doesn't translate into an obligation for him to determine guilt or innocence.
And while I'm here, I'd just like to point out my endless frustration with this idiotic mindset that, if you don't execute someone, you can "make it right". It's a load of crap. People on death row are in prison for years, DECADES, before being executed... Releasing someone for a crime they didn't commit after 30 years of torture in prison isn't exactly a "take back" that's going to make it all better. You've still utterly destroyed a person's life, not just for the time they were in prison, but also for all the time after they're released. I'd like to keep the death penalty around, if only for motivating people to improve the rigor of the legal system. Clearly, they wouldn't be nearly as motivated if people were "just" facing a lifetime locked away...
And what ever will going serial into the bootloader help you if you do not have a working kernel on the target?
You can select a different (non-default) kernel to boot. If you've intentionally deleted your previously-working kernel, you're an idiot, and beyond help.
you need a second computer RIGHT BESIDES the first one.
I have RS-232 going well in excess of 100' on a regular basis. I'm not sure exactly what the practical maximum is, but I haven't run into it yet.
And you seem to completely forget that this is about a low-low-cost solution, as the OP wants to reuse its P4 computer.
A conserver can be had for under $100.
In adition to your poor attention to detail, you also seem to have emotional control issues and I advise you to seek professional help.
I assume EVERYONE who ever points out your mistakes has "emotional control issues," right?
those consumers are being forced at the threat of gunpoint to fund a "cell phone cost calculator,"
I doubt anyone will come after you with guns drawn for failure to pay $1 of the taxes you owe.
interactions with cell phone companies are entirely voluntarily.
Phone service is a modern necessity. Not necessarily cell phones, but I've found that cell phones are, in fact, cheaper than their wired counterparts, so it's a moot point.
So, saving a program which helps people select a lower-cost phone service plan, would in fact benefit all, which is in fact exactly what taxes are for.
The benefit of the majority is well worth a small financial loss for the individual. In the end, the small benefits to all add up to large benefits to all individuals.
I know there's a type of card that will push the serial interface through the network, [...] That should allow you to get to the bios without having the monitor plugged in-- that's the theory, at least.
Yes, if you've given-up on your goal of saving electricity, you can plug-in another card that will do this...
AND it will cost more than buying a slightly older SERVER which has real, actual serial-port management built-in...
Right now, an old P4-era Xeon will run you under $100 for a dual socket motherboard with serial management built-in, 3+GHz Xeon CPUs, and a couple gigs of ECC ram.
It also needs a second computer to connect the serial line to.
Yes, and managing the system over the network needs a second computer to make the connection as well... What's your point?
With serial-port management, you can have a single PC connecting to an unlimited number of headless machines. On the low-end, a few USB-Serial adapters can give even a low-end PC dozens of serial ports these days. A bit higher-end are console servers (which you telnet/ssh into), or serial port muxes (which give a machine dozens, if not hundreds of REAL serial ports to use).
I have been doing something similar for half a decade now
How very sad that in all those years you couldn't spend a couple minutes searching the web, or asking anyone who knows ANYTHING about the subject. Either one of which would have quickly resolved your problem. This is beginner stuff.
I must suggest you refrain from giving advice to anyone, ever again, since you apparently speak authoritatively on subjects you know next to NOTHING about...
I agree, 10 years ago no one was going to try and sell a all-electric car, it wasn't commercially viable.
The EV1 is more than 10 years old. If not for California (CARB) eventually backing down on it's extremely stringent regulations, we'd have many millions of full-featured electric vehicles on US roadways, including GM's EV1 and Ford's Th1nk. In fact the development of hybrids was spawned by exactly the same regulations, Toyota simply chose to move their designs to market, rather than scrapping the whole thing.
without them we probably wouldn't have the battery tech, regenerative braking, and weight reduction techniques required for all-electrics today.
I'm sure Toyota and Honda would like to sell you that marketing tripe, but it's completely baseless. All-electric vehicles, long before the modern hybrids, had regenerative braking, much lower car-body weight, better aerodynamics, etc.
And battery technology has been thrust forward NOT by hybrids, but by laptops and more importantly, cell phones. Current hybrids use Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMH) batteries, technology which was available in the EV1 before hybrids even began development.
And of the all-electric cars either currently out on the market, or planned for the near future, NONE of them use the NiMH battery technology found in hybrids. They all use LiIon (for good reason) as found in laptops and cell phones.
And frankly, the technology for all-electric vehicles has been around for over a century. A battery turning an electric motor is about a simple as it gets... So much so that some of the earliest cars were electric, rather than gasoline. The improvements to the underlying technology has happened entirely independent of their use in vehicles, as other purposes for them vastly outnumber their use in transportation.
If continuing to burn some coal develops the solar-thermal tech so that it is commercially viable then it is a win-win.
As above, solar power is a very simple problem. It's vastly unlikely that anyone will figure out some way to improve upon "I want heat over there, point a mirror at it." Developments in turbines and liquid-sodium have, and will continue to progress completely independent of their benefits to solar-thermal use.
In time these plants will be phased out, and by then, we should have a better long-distance transmission grid and cheaper power storage.
Doesn't work that way. Power plants are very rarely phased out. The ability to nickel-and-dime old power plants on maintenance and newer regulations has kept the vast majority alive far longer than they reasonably should have been...
Oil refineries are a better example, because the situation is completely unambiguous. There simply hasn't been a new oil refinery built in the US in DECADES, despite numerous failures due to age, safety and environmental issues, immense profit for oil companies, and an endless cycle of refining capacity shortages in the US driving prices ever higher.
This is yet another example as to why the BBC is the finest broadcasting and journalistic organisation on the planet
"The grass is always greener" as the saying goes, so I'd naturally love to believe that. But sadly, I can't, because I have extensive experience watching, listening, and reading the BBC.
The BBC's news reports are almost always moderately-shallow fluff, VERY light on facts relative to their US counterparts, and rarely researched more than summarily, and constantly providing unconfirmed 3rd party information without so much as a footnote.
The levels of journalistic integrity displayed by the BBC would become a scandal at any (real*) major US news provider, either print or the major 3 TV networks.
The US seriously needs something that questions vested interests and rubbish statistics as much as the BBC. Jon Stewart and Bill Maher are just comedians and FoxNews is just comedy.
None of the above are serious US news sources. Try comparing the BBC to the New York Times, or to the morning/nightly news broadcasts by the major 3 US TV networks (NBC, ABC, CBS). For more in-depth issues, try comparing the BBC to Frontline, 60 Minutes, etc., and then come back and attempt to justify your US-bashing... The BBC does a reasonable job, but they can
No, the "local news" that's on several hours a day isn't up to par with the BBC, but the two have completely different purposes and scope, so they're hardly comparable. Nor the "early shows" which resemble talk shows vastly more than a serious attempt at news reporting.
And no, the existence of all the crappy, non-news sources that you (or I) can (and have) point to don't detract from the fact that there are many extremely GOOD news sources in the US. If you want to go that route, the UK is in an even sorrier state... Even the most dedicated tabloid readers in the US would be aghast at the tabloids on the UK news stands. Never-mind the heavy-handed, unbelievably biased pieces of trash which get passed off as documentaries (even on BBC TV/Radio, though not the worst of it).
Now with providers rolling out Fibre To The Home and Fibre To The Neighborhood and the availability of commodity components, it becomes affordable to do it yourself. It is also preferrable because more of the control is put into your hands.
Yes, and when that Fiber goes out for a week, you'll have plenty of opportunity to revel in just how much "control" you have.
Good luck getting you ISP to allow BGP updates, for multihoming.
And your UPSes and generators are in good shape, right?
If that's practical for your environment, fine, but I COMPLETELY fail to see the utility of their use of RAID6, if they are in fact maintaining data redundancy at a much higher level. That's just increasing the cost by about 1/3rd, reducing the speed, and honestly providing no more reliability.
Slashdot Mirror
No. It's a practical matter rather than a cultural one. The Japanese Military, such as it is, never goes to war, and soldiers are banned from firing their weapons, unless under life-threatening attack, and even then, they are expected to attempt to non-lethally disable the aggressor, if possible.
In other words, Japan has no military.
There is no possible benefit to spending lots of money on military weapons, since there are no lives nor outcomes on the line. The US military fights Japan's wars for them (or rather, threatens to do so, which has eliminated any and all aggression). Hence the US having a need for weaponry the Japanese do not.
1.) "cytokine storm" Instead of the sickest, it (seemed) to be the healthiest that had the highest mortality risk.
2.) It's historically been very bad when diseases jump from one animal to another. It can be so very different than anything else we've seen that it does immense damage for years, until we catch-up (and all those with some genetic susceptibility trait die off). See: HIV
3.) It's only now that there's a large enough population infected that we have any idea what it can do. Fears were high for good reason (if a bit TOO HIGH), and we're only now calming down as it starts looking manageable.
CSS support is basic and not very accurate. Javascript is nonexistent. Hence, not "1.0".
Yes, it is unbelievably fast.
Motherboard $60: http://www.ascendtech.us/itemdesc.asp?ic=MBTAS2729G2NR
http://www.gearxs.com/gearxs/product_info.php?products_id=11075
2.7Ghz Xeon $12: http://www.starmicro.net/detail.aspx?ID=632 (3GHz+ CPUs went up, stock may be low right now)
512MB ECC PC2100 $7: http://www.trustprice.com/651566/hp-genuine-512mb-ddr-266.html
Note: All from a 5 minute quick search. A little effort would find better prices and alternate equipment.
That same logical fallacy has been used since the beginning of recorded human history. It's easy to forget that our predecessors weren't cave men, given how often people say such things...
In truth, progress moves sideways, more often than forward. Most "progress" involves reducing labor, capital costs, man-hours, etc. So, while the only methods we know how to use today, wouldn't have worked decades ago, it doesn't mean we couldn't have gotten the same result with the methods used back then. In fact mankind almost immediately forgets any methods which are no longer in demand, only to rediscover them many years later.
It's usually that calculation and simulation replaces trial-and-error testing, but often the methods which made that trial and error testing possible, or at least practical, have been forgotten by most, if not everyone. It's easy to forget.
If you could build a new nuclear power plant in this country every week, it may suffice for the next century. Short of that, you just can't make them fast enough... And a millennia is right-out.
Not at all. It's a simple fact.
Just because X = Y hasn't been adequately proved, doesn't PROVE that X != Y.
For purposes of criminal punishment, that's true. However, that doesn't apply to civil cases, and NOBODY (except trolls feigning ignorance) actually believes not being convicted necessarily means someone must NOT have committed a crime. The justice system doesn't work that way at all.
The fact that you're posting to /. rather than in the hospital, fighting smallpox.
There have been innumerable nearly-free markets, and even today, in nearly-lawless countries like Somalia, there is nothing to stop the market from being free. Immigrate and enjoy!
Natural market forces, like economies of scale, do VASTLY MORE to restrict small players from entering the market than any regulations you can name. In fact it's the government PREVENTING those established players from becomming monopolies that even allows the possibility of a 3rd party entering the game.
I can't imagine any scenario in which a business owner can pay 9 employees, but the 10th will bankrupt the company.
Some of the evidence was wrong. Others had plausible alternative causes (than arson), but aren't necessarily incorrect (eg. either natural flashover, OR arson could have caused the "pool" burn marks). The prosecution's theory of arson is most certainly NOT physically impossible.
Of course nothing catastrophic happens. You just get horrendous performance, and have to wait quite a bit longer to get anything done.
Me, I'm just trying to keep my 2GHz Athlon system working as well as it used-to. In fact, it's lightning fast for everything BUT web browsing. How did rendering a web page become more computationally intensive than brute-forcing crypto? What could possibly need hundreds of MBs of RAM? I'm anxiously awaiting Dillo-1.0, with all the necessary modern features for web browsing, to thoroughly put Moz, Konq, Opera, etc. to shame on performance, if nothing else.
When you are completely ignorant of something, it is quite easy to come to believe it could be partially or completely removed without adverse effects.
That's great circular reasoning there. Wages go up, which lowers wages...
First, because you've clearly benefited GREATLY from the society in which you live, and all the government programs in place to provide you with those educated and healthy employees.
Second, because you'll still be making much more money, there will just be another percent or two taken off to pay for government programs which benefit you, as well as everyone else.
No, it's the tragedy of the commons in reverse. We ALL pay into the pool, and we all benefit from the services provided. What you pay in taxes isn't going into the pocket of some other CEO. It's going to protect you, help you, help your employees, and help you to continue making a profit.
Completely disproven by all of human history... Proper government regulation has vastly improved employee pay and labor conditions in most countries in the 3rd world, immediately, directly and undeniably
BAD government regulation, keeping people in poverty, is a bad thing. When conditions are bad enough, there's nowhere to go but up.
Who said that making it easier to start a business is better for the economy? We would certainly be better without the millions of fly-by-night companies that are out and out scams? If you have a reason to start a business, you can bear a little regulation to get it going... It won't be a blip on the radar compared to the harder parts of starting a company...
Why should individual employees always bear the brunt of a bad economy, or your own poor planning? How can you claim it's in society's interests that the business owner NOT have to bear the ups and downs instead?
Several NASA engineers have commented before that having only the shuttle, rather than a Saturn V, drastically increases the cost of any large mission (specifically, ISS). Requiring that each piece be split into 10 chunks, rendezvous in space, get put together by astronauts doing slow, difficult, expensive spacewalks, etc., ends up costing much more than a simple bit of math would suggest. In addition, other contingencies have to be planned for. Each of the 5 pieces has to be self-sufficient since they have to wait months to be joined up, and plenty of contingencies have to be planned for, because it's not okay if all your work burns up in the atmosphere because launch #5 had to be delayed by a month to fix a safety issue somebody noticed while it was on the pad...
See Skylab, where the space station was put up in one launch, versus ISS, which has been a work in progress for how many years now??
And finally, the number of smaller flights needed is closer to 10, not 5. Ares V is planned for 188,000kg to LEO. That's 8X the capacity heavy lifters like the shuttle or the Delta IV can provide...
I read the article before, and it certainly is of concern. However, it's a horrendously one-sided article, which covers only the incriminating facts that they can later refute, ignoring the rest of the trial as if it didn't exist, in order to make a point.
Secondly, just because someone shouldn't have been convicted on the evidence (reasonable doubt), isn't proof of innocence by a long shot.
The governor does NOT serve any role in the court system. The fact that he has the opportunity to pardon someone doesn't translate into an obligation for him to determine guilt or innocence.
And while I'm here, I'd just like to point out my endless frustration with this idiotic mindset that, if you don't execute someone, you can "make it right". It's a load of crap. People on death row are in prison for years, DECADES, before being executed... Releasing someone for a crime they didn't commit after 30 years of torture in prison isn't exactly a "take back" that's going to make it all better. You've still utterly destroyed a person's life, not just for the time they were in prison, but also for all the time after they're released. I'd like to keep the death penalty around, if only for motivating people to improve the rigor of the legal system. Clearly, they wouldn't be nearly as motivated if people were "just" facing a lifetime locked away...
You can select a different (non-default) kernel to boot. If you've intentionally deleted your previously-working kernel, you're an idiot, and beyond help.
I have RS-232 going well in excess of 100' on a regular basis. I'm not sure exactly what the practical maximum is, but I haven't run into it yet.
A conserver can be had for under $100.
I assume EVERYONE who ever points out your mistakes has "emotional control issues," right?
I doubt anyone will come after you with guns drawn for failure to pay $1 of the taxes you owe.
Phone service is a modern necessity. Not necessarily cell phones, but I've found that cell phones are, in fact, cheaper than their wired counterparts, so it's a moot point.
So, saving a program which helps people select a lower-cost phone service plan, would in fact benefit all, which is in fact exactly what taxes are for.
The benefit of the majority is well worth a small financial loss for the individual. In the end, the small benefits to all add up to large benefits to all individuals.
Actually, it should be: "for all intensive porpoises".
Yes, if you've given-up on your goal of saving electricity, you can plug-in another card that will do this...
AND it will cost more than buying a slightly older SERVER which has real, actual serial-port management built-in...
Right now, an old P4-era Xeon will run you under $100 for a dual socket motherboard with serial management built-in, 3+GHz Xeon CPUs, and a couple gigs of ECC ram.
That's horrendously idiotic.
You don't configure the kernel for a serial console, you CONFIGURE THE BOOT LOADER for it:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Remote-Serial-Console-HOWTO/configure-boot-loader.html
Yes, and managing the system over the network needs a second computer to make the connection as well... What's your point?
With serial-port management, you can have a single PC connecting to an unlimited number of headless machines. On the low-end, a few USB-Serial adapters can give even a low-end PC dozens of serial ports these days. A bit higher-end are console servers (which you telnet/ssh into), or serial port muxes (which give a machine dozens, if not hundreds of REAL serial ports to use).
How very sad that in all those years you couldn't spend a couple minutes searching the web, or asking anyone who knows ANYTHING about the subject. Either one of which would have quickly resolved your problem. This is beginner stuff.
I must suggest you refrain from giving advice to anyone, ever again, since you apparently speak authoritatively on subjects you know next to NOTHING about...
The EV1 is more than 10 years old. If not for California (CARB) eventually backing down on it's extremely stringent regulations, we'd have many millions of full-featured electric vehicles on US roadways, including GM's EV1 and Ford's Th1nk. In fact the development of hybrids was spawned by exactly the same regulations, Toyota simply chose to move their designs to market, rather than scrapping the whole thing.
I'm sure Toyota and Honda would like to sell you that marketing tripe, but it's completely baseless. All-electric vehicles, long before the modern hybrids, had regenerative braking, much lower car-body weight, better aerodynamics, etc.
And battery technology has been thrust forward NOT by hybrids, but by laptops and more importantly, cell phones. Current hybrids use Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMH) batteries, technology which was available in the EV1 before hybrids even began development.
And of the all-electric cars either currently out on the market, or planned for the near future, NONE of them use the NiMH battery technology found in hybrids. They all use LiIon (for good reason) as found in laptops and cell phones.
And frankly, the technology for all-electric vehicles has been around for over a century. A battery turning an electric motor is about a simple as it gets... So much so that some of the earliest cars were electric, rather than gasoline. The improvements to the underlying technology has happened entirely independent of their use in vehicles, as other purposes for them vastly outnumber their use in transportation.
As above, solar power is a very simple problem. It's vastly unlikely that anyone will figure out some way to improve upon "I want heat over there, point a mirror at it." Developments in turbines and liquid-sodium have, and will continue to progress completely independent of their benefits to solar-thermal use.
Doesn't work that way. Power plants are very rarely phased out. The ability to nickel-and-dime old power plants on maintenance and newer regulations has kept the vast majority alive far longer than they reasonably should have been...
Oil refineries are a better example, because the situation is completely unambiguous. There simply hasn't been a new oil refinery built in the US in DECADES, despite numerous failures due to age, safety and environmental issues, immense profit for oil companies, and an endless cycle of refining capacity shortages in the US driving prices ever higher.
"The grass is always greener" as the saying goes, so I'd naturally love to believe that. But sadly, I can't, because I have extensive experience watching, listening, and reading the BBC.
The BBC's news reports are almost always moderately-shallow fluff, VERY light on facts relative to their US counterparts, and rarely researched more than summarily, and constantly providing unconfirmed 3rd party information without so much as a footnote.
The levels of journalistic integrity displayed by the BBC would become a scandal at any (real*) major US news provider, either print or the major 3 TV networks.
None of the above are serious US news sources. Try comparing the BBC to the New York Times, or to the morning/nightly news broadcasts by the major 3 US TV networks (NBC, ABC, CBS). For more in-depth issues, try comparing the BBC to Frontline, 60 Minutes, etc., and then come back and attempt to justify your US-bashing... The BBC does a reasonable job, but they can
No, the "local news" that's on several hours a day isn't up to par with the BBC, but the two have completely different purposes and scope, so they're hardly comparable. Nor the "early shows" which resemble talk shows vastly more than a serious attempt at news reporting.
And no, the existence of all the crappy, non-news sources that you (or I) can (and have) point to don't detract from the fact that there are many extremely GOOD news sources in the US. If you want to go that route, the UK is in an even sorrier state... Even the most dedicated tabloid readers in the US would be aghast at the tabloids on the UK news stands. Never-mind the heavy-handed, unbelievably biased pieces of trash which get passed off as documentaries (even on BBC TV/Radio, though not the worst of it).
Yes, and when that Fiber goes out for a week, you'll have plenty of opportunity to revel in just how much "control" you have.
Good luck getting you ISP to allow BGP updates, for multihoming.
And your UPSes and generators are in good shape, right?
Okay. Somebody fork over the $15, upload a dozen Linux ISOs, and get added to the primary websites as a mirror site...
I'm betting it'll take just a couple days before you find out just how "unlimited" your service is.
If that's practical for your environment, fine, but I COMPLETELY fail to see the utility of their use of RAID6, if they are in fact maintaining data redundancy at a much higher level. That's just increasing the cost by about 1/3rd, reducing the speed, and honestly providing no more reliability.