Harming every day California State workers by lowering their salaries to minimum wage is a cheap trick and a disgraceful attempt to win political points.
And holding out on a proposed budget long after it's over-due because it doesn't include your particular bit of pork is, what exactly?
Sounds to me like the difference between "cheap trick" and "moral stand" depends on which side of the issue the observer is on.
Oh, and never mind that all non-salaried California state contract employees have their salaries lowered to ZERO, automatically, until the budget is passed. I bet they don't feel too bad for the salaried employees who are "only" going to get paid minimum-wage until the contract is agreed to.
Suppose replacing salaries is a trivial programming task. Would you accept a job to change everyone's salary to minimum wage? Including yourself?
Yes.
What the State Controller is doing is in the best tradition of civil disobediance.
Civil disobedience doesn't include lying under oath to your boss. Unless he admits it's possible, but refuses to do so, you have NO point at all.
He is an elected official answering to over 12 million California votes.
As opposed to the Governor...
Rather than trigger a constitutional crisis by outright refusing to follow the order, he's taken the very principle stand that it is impossible *cough* to enter these changes in a timely manner.
If he believes, as he's said, that his interpretation of the court ruling does not allow what the Governor is asking, he's welcome to go to court with his concerns, just as every other affected employee is. I don't see a constitutional crisis.
I thought that the price advantage of using mass-market components would outweigh any savings made by using primitive technologies.
Many very "primitive technologies" continue to be "mass-market components," even today.
When a CPU ceases to be fast enough to compete with modern CPUs... it becomes a "controller"... You probably have several "primitive" CPUs in your current computer, as controller chips for your NIC, sound card, etc.
Z-80s continue to sell very well. 6502 microcontrollers are still being produced to handle the limited demands of VCRs, T-1000 production, girder Bending Units, and the like.
I can say the text quality on a CRT television is absolutely horrible, totally unusable for browsing or programming.
That's an idiotic assertion to make.
Analog TV monitors are interlaced, which causes flicker with fine vertical details. HOWEVER, that is directly proportional to the size of the font you are using. You need about a 24-pt font to be readable, but that is still far more dense than the 80x24 displays of a terminal.
Certainly, a TV monitor compares poorly to even a 640x480 monitor, but it compares VERY favorably to a TTY, monochrome terminals, etc. In addition, numerous methods of flicker reduction are possible to eliminate the problem, even with finer fonts, at the expense of lower resolution and therefore blurring. NVidia's "TV Flicker Filter" setting does exactly that.
It's not like you even need a computer hooked up to a TV to know this. Billions of people around the world watch DVDs every day, while reading the text subtitles on their "totally unusable" TVs.
Where are you going to get a laptop-sized (readable) flat screen, plus the control module(s) and even a minimal GPU, for less than the remaining $9? Not to mention a keyboard, pointing device, wired or (preferably) wireless NIC, case, and assorted essential glue hardware?
Note the 5-line backlit display with "GPU" controller, full Qwerty keyboard, case, and assorted "glue" hardware. Although less visible, be sure to also note the high retail mark-up, extra unnecessary features that could be eliminated to reduce costs (buttons, styling, etc.) and the like.
A low-end CPU and (substantially) more memory is really all you need to make it a real computer.
Not to mention a keyboard, pointing device, wired or (preferably) wireless NIC,
A pointing device is completely unnecessary. It's used with desktops only because better input methods never caught on. I'd look at something like the Links browser for the way keyboard input should properly be handled. Psion's EPOC/Symbian OS and associated applications also showed how very well input can work without requiring a pointer.
Wired networking is trivial and proven tech... RS-232 controllers cost pennies in bulk, and can provide 2Mbps throughput. Network cabling is basically any two wires you can get your hands on (a pair of screws or clips might be preferable to DB-9 ports). This would be ideal out in the field, where two people want to exchange files. For classrooms, admittedly I don't know of any existing, purpose-built RS-232 hubs/switches, but it would be very simple and very cheap to make. Perhaps a $5 device.
Wireless wouldn't be quite so off-the-shelf simple, but it could still be quite cheap. Think of something like IrDA, but with 900MHz RF instead of an Ir diode... If you don't want to go the RS-232 route, all you really need for basic (slow) A.M. networking is a single transistor getting a line of binary input from the CPU, and the output line to an antenna. Software could take care of all the other bits like modulation at the proper frequency and CSMA/CD. It would be an RF nightmare, but at such low power I don't think it will pose much problem. For receiving such a single, you'll also need a couple basic components (diode, capacitor, etc.), wired to an interrupt, but that is similarly cheap and fairly trivial.
It requires a much more specialized skill set to code anything worthwhile for a 50MHz 8-bit CPU than for even a low-end PowerPC or XScale processor.
Umm, no. Assembler or C on an 8-bit CPU is no more difficult than any other chip. What's confusing you is the fact that there's no IDEs or libraries to make it quick to put a high-level program together. That matters if you want to port Firefox, but not at all if you want to format and display text, do low-level networking, or even play compressed audio.
In Denmark I'm able to get a 1.6 GHz AMD Sempron for 29 US$ INCLUDING a 25% sales tax.
Those kinds of prices are only available because of surplus stock. ie. AMD couldn't possibly have produced that chip for that price, it's just selling below cost because it's already been made, and keeping it for any longer would make it even less valuable on the open market. It's the same reason people can buy food that is perhaps a few days from it's expiration date, nearly for free... that doesn't mean it was that cheap to produce in the first place, it's just an attempt to reduce a loss.
But this doesn't scale-up. There aren't enough surplus parts to start building a line of systems. In short order, you eat up the cheap surplus stocks of certain hardware, and have to switch to something else, which is more expensive, and probably requires more money modifying the production line than you save using the surplus parts.
Maybe it's just an overlap. ie. the 27% wrapping also happens to contain 10% of the over-all fat content... To get the full caloric values listed on the label, you have to eat the wrapper.
I have several years of hard-copies of bank statements, and I make sure I don't go over the FDIC limit, so I'm not losing any money, no matter how incompetent my bank may be.
If you're talking about privacy, there are extremely strict laws that govern banks, while there are none at all for Microsoft and Google. I know exactly what my bank is allowed to do with my information, and should any leak, they'll be facing serious penalties.
If you bought a house, there is a stunning amount of personal data stored with your realtor and title agency. Schools contain your entire academic record.
Should that data be destroyed in a fire, I really won't care in the slightest. I have copies of everything I might need. There are also laws restricting how they can use that information.
But it's all an apples and oranges comparison, anyhow. I don't trust my bank to keep my money physically secure, nor their abilities to keep their computers up and running. I just trust that I'll still get the equivalent amount of money back even if something bad happens.
With online data storage, you can't present a receipt that shows a list of what files you had, and require them to present you with replacements... Money isn't so unique as data.
Additionally, if my bank closes for a few weeks after a natural disaster or similar, I will do just fine with the money I have on hand. With online data storage, there's no such margin of safety. My data is either available to me and functioning, or it's not. In the later case, I'm rather screwed.
people who have committed crimes over state borders, eg, serial killer who's killed in one state will go to state prison, but one who's killed in multiple states will go federal.
Erm... Not really.
If you've committed crimes, across several different states, you are typically tried for your crimes in each individual state. Prosecutors will typically agree to extradite the criminal to the state with the strongest case, and/or harshest penalties, first.
To end up in federal prison for murder, you generally have to have committed the crime on federal property, such as on an airline, Indian Reservation lands, a train, territorial waters, mailing a bomb through the USPS (even in-state) etc. There's also the "civil rights" cases, when the state cannot prosecute for some reason, giving the feds the a chance.
Again, tax evasion, computer hacking, within single state = state prison, across state borders will get you to federal.
In the US, we pay both state and federal taxes. If you lie on your federal (IRS) income-tax returns, you're going to federal prison, even if you've never been outside your home state. If you lie on your state income tax, and then flee the state, the feds still don't have any particular jurisdiction (though you probably risk extradition if you are found).
If you have bothered to watch the news there have been more than a few murder/rapist types that have been going there.
"a few" is right. The vast majority of criminals in federal prison are still non-violent offenders, while state prisons have a much higher percentage of violent criminals.
I don't know where you get the idea that Federal prison is soft or how you managed to get modded informative for that patently false nonsense.
Maybe the fact that it's true? The fact that federal prison is filled with people who can't be charged under state laws, which includes lots of tax-related crimes, and the like. That's not to say there aren't major criminals, but they are in small enough numbers that federal prisons don't become one big balkanized gang-war zone, like state prisons.
And for the record, I work down the street from (what used to be until recently) the highest-security federal prison anywhere.
By the time it got to the customer, the customer was paying markup on markup on duty plus regular retail-wholesale markups.
Since the fees are so high, why not bypass it all, and just have the discs pressed locally in Europe? You'll still pay some taxes, but far less than shipping, with all the included fees.
The solar constant is the total EM radiation from the Sun, not just visible light!
Since when does solar power require visible-spectrum light?
you're losing a bunch more in that conversion efficiency of solar panels is quite narrow in bandwidth.
You're talking about the cheapest photo-voltaic panels, which are the most inefficient method known. Why you insist on pretending that other, better technologies do not exist is beyond me.
Good job satellites don't have satellite dishes mounted to face the earth...
Umm... What?
Couldn'tthe surface of a satellite (cylindrical or spherical) reflect radio waves....
It potentially could... IF it didn't have an LNBF directly at the focal point of the dish, designed specifically to block (or "collect") all signals received. Also, it really isn't the ideal shape for a signal reflector.
.. at ~160 watts average per square meter, what you will get out of an ideal 100% efficient solar cell..
160W/sq.M is a pretty low value for most of the population centers of the world, and it is also merely the average over day/night. Since people do almost all their driving during the day, you can simply double that. Additionally, a day/night average simply isn't useful, unless you're talking about a battery pack that can hold enough charge to run for 24 hours+. Either you are generating energy (day), or your not (night). In the former case, you can drive on the 320W/sq.M+. In the latter case, you won't be driving anywhere at all. And yes, in the latter case, assuming a vehicle that is on the road only 1/10th of the day, that's plenty of power.
Also, people do more driving during the summer than the winter, so solar power scales up quite nicely, exactly when it is most needed.
you will have to reduce the weight of cars significantly for you to power them "indefinitely"
Reducing weight does not significantly improve range. It improves acceleration, and MAY reduce rolling friction, but that's all. Any extra energy added into accelerating a larger mass will be recovered by regenerative braking when you slow/stop the vehicle again.
It's just unfortunate we don't have 100% efficient PV panels, and most important of all: batteries.
A fascinating assertion, coming from someone who doesn't even know the basic facts of the issue.
Huge swaths of the spectrum are filtered away by the atmosphere.
No, only a very, very small amount of the light is lost. The amount of power at Earth's surface is lower because of the angle of light hitting. That reduces the amount by half when averaged across the entire globe. That loss can be reduced significantly, because we can safely say solar power plants at the poles are simply not going to happen, so the "average" doesn't matter. It's also reduced by half due to the fact that the earth rotates, and is only in sunlight half the time.
Still, during sunlight hours, across most of the globe, you're talking about 350W/sq.M., which is a vast amount of power, and much more than is used by all of humanity, in any form.
I have nothing against solar, except when it's suggested it can ever provide a large fraction of the world's energy need
That's because you've made no effort to look into the issue, nor check the numbers for yourself. In fact it would be EXTREMELY EASY to meet the world's current and growing future energy needs for the next several centuries with current technology and modest investment.
(Alas, even covering a car with 100% efficient solar cells (impossible, of course) wouldn't provide enough energy to power that car even in full sunlight. At least not at car speeds
No, but a car doesn't spend most of it's time on the road. It spends most of its time sitting, idle. With a large enough bank of batteries, and low-speed city driving, solar power could theoretically keep such a car powered indefinitely.
PV will only be practical for mass generation when it comes from vastly different technology. Wind is more viable, in some areas.
This is a blatant straw man. Solar power is NOT PV, and PVs are NOT solar power. Solar-thermal is substantially cheaper, far less energy intensive, and much more efficient.
The solar power plants being built all over the US? They're not fields of PV panels, they're just about all solar-thermal.
if either did support such a plan, it would net them a HUGE amount of voters from both political parties.
That theory isn't very strongly backed up by reality, I'm afraid.
Do you know who would have been a good presidential candidate to implement Al Gore's energy plan? That's right: Al Gore. He still lost the election, however, so it provably wasn't remotely as big of a voting block as you believe.
Advanced breeder reactors, and longer term, fusion projects like ITER, are the only solution that can provide for a long time the amounts of energy needed to sustain progress and accommodate the exploding energy needs of underdeveloped and third world countries as they start industrializing. You'd have to cover the planet in solar panels and windmills if you wanted to use those technologies instead.
That's utter nonsense. The solar constant is 1.740×10^17 Watts, which is VASTLY more than all the energy consumed by humanity. In fact, barring any breakthroughs in fusion reactors, solar power is the ONLY technology that can hope to completely supply the world's growing power needs.
Assuming 30% efficient conversion (which is easily doable with cheap solar-thermal plants), you can get an average of 100W/sq.M. In a more realistic scenario (eg. deserts/tropics, higher altitudes, low latitudes, etc.--Excluding the North/South poles) you can expect twice that easily.
What's more, the economics of solar power are much rosier in the 3rd world than they are in the 1st. Terribly low labor costs, and solar-thermal technologies that can be built with mostly local materials, means it's a very inexpensive initial investment, which pays off generously over time as they don't have to pay for (relatively) expensive fuels. This is rather the opposite of the west, where initial costs of labor and materials are high requiring a substantial investment that may not pay off as quickly as inflation, and where ongoing fuel costs are relatively inexpensive (relative to per-capita income).
so, putting them around homes and what not would in fact be better,
Several studies have proven otherwise.
because a desert area is not an urbanized area
WTF? One of the biggest cities in the world is Los Angeles California, right in the freaking desert. And the megalopolis of cities sprawling hundreds of miles in every direction away from it? Also desert. As a matter of fact, California, the most populous state, is about half desert all-together... And it's generally not the forested areas of California that are plowed to make way for a new sprawling city.
Phoenix AZ, Las Vegas NV, Albuquerque NM, Amarillo TX, Salt Lake City UT, etc. Many of the largest cities in the country are built wholly in the middle of the desert.
The solution to what? Trees don't output electricity, or gasoline for that matter.
More shade is more tolerance to higher temperatures (90 degrees in the shade feels cooler than 72 degrees in the sun).
Tolerance? If you're outdoors, you're not going to be using any electricity to cool yourself down. If you're indoors, there's already a little something called a ROOF which does a good job keeping you out of direct sunlight.
Trees / plants also absorb sunlight, reducing the greenhouse effect.
Umm, Trees absorb sunlight, INCREASING the greenhouse effect. Would you care to explain how something can absorb more energy, and yet somehow end up cooler?
Parking lots are a good place for trees, and having them for shade would help keep our cars cool as well.
Why should we care how hot are cars are, while parked all day? About a minute of driving with your windows rolled down, or running the A/C, will completely change the temperature of your car, and quickly eliminate any advantage or disadvantages of where it was parked for the previous several hours.
Trees are nature's natural climate stabilizer.
No. Trees are just simple plants. They do nothing in particular to affect climate.
Everything you've mentioned so far is a basic human comfort issue, having no effect at all on global climate nor energy needs.
Both posts happen to be factually incorrect. There is no "sliding scale" of due process. There are only a couple instances enshrined in law where the burden of proof is of a different level. On the low-end, if you are accused of a crime of less than a certain dollar amount (about $1,000) you aren't allowed the right of a trial by jury. On the high-end, treason explicitly requires TWO independent witnesses to testify to the crime. But between those two extremes, due process is completely consistent. A shoplifting trial has the same burden of proof as a murder trial, and caries with it the same rights and processes.
The second post, being modded "troll" instead of, say, "overrated" seems a fairly minor error, and even IF it was blatant moderation abuse, it's a transitive issue that isn't worth wasting time on (the next time you post the same thing, the moderation will likely be different), and still wouldn't excuse wasting time on an off-topic comment complaining about it.
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And holding out on a proposed budget long after it's over-due because it doesn't include your particular bit of pork is, what exactly?
Sounds to me like the difference between "cheap trick" and "moral stand" depends on which side of the issue the observer is on.
Oh, and never mind that all non-salaried California state contract employees have their salaries lowered to ZERO, automatically, until the budget is passed. I bet they don't feel too bad for the salaried employees who are "only" going to get paid minimum-wage until the contract is agreed to.
Yes.
Civil disobedience doesn't include lying under oath to your boss. Unless he admits it's possible, but refuses to do so, you have NO point at all.
As opposed to the Governor...
If he believes, as he's said, that his interpretation of the court ruling does not allow what the Governor is asking, he's welcome to go to court with his concerns, just as every other affected employee is. I don't see a constitutional crisis.
Many very "primitive technologies" continue to be "mass-market components," even today.
When a CPU ceases to be fast enough to compete with modern CPUs... it becomes a "controller"... You probably have several "primitive" CPUs in your current computer, as controller chips for your NIC, sound card, etc.
Z-80s continue to sell very well. 6502 microcontrollers are still being produced to handle the limited demands of VCRs, T-1000 production, girder Bending Units, and the like.
That's an idiotic assertion to make.
Analog TV monitors are interlaced, which causes flicker with fine vertical details. HOWEVER, that is directly proportional to the size of the font you are using. You need about a 24-pt font to be readable, but that is still far more dense than the 80x24 displays of a terminal.
Certainly, a TV monitor compares poorly to even a 640x480 monitor, but it compares VERY favorably to a TTY, monochrome terminals, etc. In addition, numerous methods of flicker reduction are possible to eliminate the problem, even with finer fonts, at the expense of lower resolution and therefore blurring. NVidia's "TV Flicker Filter" setting does exactly that.
It's not like you even need a computer hooked up to a TV to know this. Billions of people around the world watch DVDs every day, while reading the text subtitles on their "totally unusable" TVs.
Yes. Because every 3rd world country is predominately Roman Catholic... Clearly, fear of contraception is the cause of poverty.
See: x87 FPUs, cryptographic accelerators, video decoding, GPUs, etc.
Introducing, the $15 laptop:
http://www.target.com/Royal-dm7070r-Personal-Organizer/dp/B000PDJ8Q4/sr=1-1/qid=1217520355/ref=sr_1_1/601-6053863-3987344
Note the 5-line backlit display with "GPU" controller, full Qwerty keyboard, case, and assorted "glue" hardware. Although less visible, be sure to also note the high retail mark-up, extra unnecessary features that could be eliminated to reduce costs (buttons, styling, etc.) and the like.
A low-end CPU and (substantially) more memory is really all you need to make it a real computer.
A pointing device is completely unnecessary. It's used with desktops only because better input methods never caught on. I'd look at something like the Links browser for the way keyboard input should properly be handled. Psion's EPOC/Symbian OS and associated applications also showed how very well input can work without requiring a pointer.
Wired networking is trivial and proven tech... RS-232 controllers cost pennies in bulk, and can provide 2Mbps throughput. Network cabling is basically any two wires you can get your hands on (a pair of screws or clips might be preferable to DB-9 ports). This would be ideal out in the field, where two people want to exchange files. For classrooms, admittedly I don't know of any existing, purpose-built RS-232 hubs/switches, but it would be very simple and very cheap to make. Perhaps a $5 device.
Wireless wouldn't be quite so off-the-shelf simple, but it could still be quite cheap. Think of something like IrDA, but with 900MHz RF instead of an Ir diode... If you don't want to go the RS-232 route, all you really need for basic (slow) A.M. networking is a single transistor getting a line of binary input from the CPU, and the output line to an antenna. Software could take care of all the other bits like modulation at the proper frequency and CSMA/CD. It would be an RF nightmare, but at such low power I don't think it will pose much problem. For receiving such a single, you'll also need a couple basic components (diode, capacitor, etc.), wired to an interrupt, but that is similarly cheap and fairly trivial.
Umm, no. Assembler or C on an 8-bit CPU is no more difficult than any other chip. What's confusing you is the fact that there's no IDEs or libraries to make it quick to put a high-level program together. That matters if you want to port Firefox, but not at all if you want to format and display text, do low-level networking, or even play compressed audio.
Those kinds of prices are only available because of surplus stock. ie. AMD couldn't possibly have produced that chip for that price, it's just selling below cost because it's already been made, and keeping it for any longer would make it even less valuable on the open market. It's the same reason people can buy food that is perhaps a few days from it's expiration date, nearly for free... that doesn't mean it was that cheap to produce in the first place, it's just an attempt to reduce a loss.
But this doesn't scale-up. There aren't enough surplus parts to start building a line of systems. In short order, you eat up the cheap surplus stocks of certain hardware, and have to switch to something else, which is more expensive, and probably requires more money modifying the production line than you save using the surplus parts.
Maybe it's just an overlap. ie. the 27% wrapping also happens to contain 10% of the over-all fat content... To get the full caloric values listed on the label, you have to eat the wrapper.
I have several years of hard-copies of bank statements, and I make sure I don't go over the FDIC limit, so I'm not losing any money, no matter how incompetent my bank may be.
If you're talking about privacy, there are extremely strict laws that govern banks, while there are none at all for Microsoft and Google. I know exactly what my bank is allowed to do with my information, and should any leak, they'll be facing serious penalties.
Should that data be destroyed in a fire, I really won't care in the slightest. I have copies of everything I might need. There are also laws restricting how they can use that information.
But it's all an apples and oranges comparison, anyhow. I don't trust my bank to keep my money physically secure, nor their abilities to keep their computers up and running. I just trust that I'll still get the equivalent amount of money back even if something bad happens.
With online data storage, you can't present a receipt that shows a list of what files you had, and require them to present you with replacements... Money isn't so unique as data.
Additionally, if my bank closes for a few weeks after a natural disaster or similar, I will do just fine with the money I have on hand. With online data storage, there's no such margin of safety. My data is either available to me and functioning, or it's not. In the later case, I'm rather screwed.
Erm... Not really.
If you've committed crimes, across several different states, you are typically tried for your crimes in each individual state. Prosecutors will typically agree to extradite the criminal to the state with the strongest case, and/or harshest penalties, first.
To end up in federal prison for murder, you generally have to have committed the crime on federal property, such as on an airline, Indian Reservation lands, a train, territorial waters, mailing a bomb through the USPS (even in-state) etc. There's also the "civil rights" cases, when the state cannot prosecute for some reason, giving the feds the a chance.
In the US, we pay both state and federal taxes. If you lie on your federal (IRS) income-tax returns, you're going to federal prison, even if you've never been outside your home state. If you lie on your state income tax, and then flee the state, the feds still don't have any particular jurisdiction (though you probably risk extradition if you are found).
"a few" is right. The vast majority of criminals in federal prison are still non-violent offenders, while state prisons have a much higher percentage of violent criminals.
Maybe the fact that it's true? The fact that federal prison is filled with people who can't be charged under state laws, which includes lots of tax-related crimes, and the like. That's not to say there aren't major criminals, but they are in small enough numbers that federal prisons don't become one big balkanized gang-war zone, like state prisons.
And for the record, I work down the street from (what used to be until recently) the highest-security federal prison anywhere.
Except that's backwards.
Federal prison is the non-PMITA version (mainly big bucks tax cheats).
State prison is the PMITA variety (murders, rapists, etc.).
Perhaps that's to cover all the moose-related damages...
Since the fees are so high, why not bypass it all, and just have the discs pressed locally in Europe? You'll still pay some taxes, but far less than shipping, with all the included fees.
Since when does solar power require visible-spectrum light?
You're talking about the cheapest photo-voltaic panels, which are the most inefficient method known. Why you insist on pretending that other, better technologies do not exist is beyond me.
Umm... What?
It potentially could... IF it didn't have an LNBF directly at the focal point of the dish, designed specifically to block (or "collect") all signals received. Also, it really isn't the ideal shape for a signal reflector.
160W/sq.M is a pretty low value for most of the population centers of the world, and it is also merely the average over day/night. Since people do almost all their driving during the day, you can simply double that. Additionally, a day/night average simply isn't useful, unless you're talking about a battery pack that can hold enough charge to run for 24 hours+. Either you are generating energy (day), or your not (night). In the former case, you can drive on the 320W/sq.M+. In the latter case, you won't be driving anywhere at all. And yes, in the latter case, assuming a vehicle that is on the road only 1/10th of the day, that's plenty of power.
Also, people do more driving during the summer than the winter, so solar power scales up quite nicely, exactly when it is most needed.
Reducing weight does not significantly improve range. It improves acceleration, and MAY reduce rolling friction, but that's all. Any extra energy added into accelerating a larger mass will be recovered by regenerative braking when you slow/stop the vehicle again.
It's just unfortunate we don't have 100% efficient PV panels, and most important of all: batteries.
A fascinating assertion, coming from someone who doesn't even know the basic facts of the issue.
No, only a very, very small amount of the light is lost. The amount of power at Earth's surface is lower because of the angle of light hitting. That reduces the amount by half when averaged across the entire globe. That loss can be reduced significantly, because we can safely say solar power plants at the poles are simply not going to happen, so the "average" doesn't matter. It's also reduced by half due to the fact that the earth rotates, and is only in sunlight half the time.
Still, during sunlight hours, across most of the globe, you're talking about 350W/sq.M., which is a vast amount of power, and much more than is used by all of humanity, in any form.
That's because you've made no effort to look into the issue, nor check the numbers for yourself. In fact it would be EXTREMELY EASY to meet the world's current and growing future energy needs for the next several centuries with current technology and modest investment.
No, but a car doesn't spend most of it's time on the road. It spends most of its time sitting, idle. With a large enough bank of batteries, and low-speed city driving, solar power could theoretically keep such a car powered indefinitely.
This is a blatant straw man. Solar power is NOT PV, and PVs are NOT solar power. Solar-thermal is substantially cheaper, far less energy intensive, and much more efficient.
The solar power plants being built all over the US? They're not fields of PV panels, they're just about all solar-thermal.
That theory isn't very strongly backed up by reality, I'm afraid.
Do you know who would have been a good presidential candidate to implement Al Gore's energy plan? That's right: Al Gore. He still lost the election, however, so it provably wasn't remotely as big of a voting block as you believe.
That's utter nonsense. The solar constant is 1.740×10^17 Watts, which is VASTLY more than all the energy consumed by humanity. In fact, barring any breakthroughs in fusion reactors, solar power is the ONLY technology that can hope to completely supply the world's growing power needs.
Assuming 30% efficient conversion (which is easily doable with cheap solar-thermal plants), you can get an average of 100W/sq.M. In a more realistic scenario (eg. deserts/tropics, higher altitudes, low latitudes, etc.--Excluding the North/South poles) you can expect twice that easily.
What's more, the economics of solar power are much rosier in the 3rd world than they are in the 1st. Terribly low labor costs, and solar-thermal technologies that can be built with mostly local materials, means it's a very inexpensive initial investment, which pays off generously over time as they don't have to pay for (relatively) expensive fuels. This is rather the opposite of the west, where initial costs of labor and materials are high requiring a substantial investment that may not pay off as quickly as inflation, and where ongoing fuel costs are relatively inexpensive (relative to per-capita income).
Several studies have proven otherwise.
WTF? One of the biggest cities in the world is Los Angeles California, right in the freaking desert. And the megalopolis of cities sprawling hundreds of miles in every direction away from it? Also desert. As a matter of fact, California, the most populous state, is about half desert all-together... And it's generally not the forested areas of California that are plowed to make way for a new sprawling city.
Phoenix AZ, Las Vegas NV, Albuquerque NM, Amarillo TX, Salt Lake City UT, etc. Many of the largest cities in the country are built wholly in the middle of the desert.
The solution to what? Trees don't output electricity, or gasoline for that matter.
Tolerance? If you're outdoors, you're not going to be using any electricity to cool yourself down. If you're indoors, there's already a little something called a ROOF which does a good job keeping you out of direct sunlight.
Umm, Trees absorb sunlight, INCREASING the greenhouse effect. Would you care to explain how something can absorb more energy, and yet somehow end up cooler?
Why should we care how hot are cars are, while parked all day? About a minute of driving with your windows rolled down, or running the A/C, will completely change the temperature of your car, and quickly eliminate any advantage or disadvantages of where it was parked for the previous several hours.
No. Trees are just simple plants. They do nothing in particular to affect climate.
Everything you've mentioned so far is a basic human comfort issue, having no effect at all on global climate nor energy needs.
Both posts happen to be factually incorrect. There is no "sliding scale" of due process. There are only a couple instances enshrined in law where the burden of proof is of a different level. On the low-end, if you are accused of a crime of less than a certain dollar amount (about $1,000) you aren't allowed the right of a trial by jury. On the high-end, treason explicitly requires TWO independent witnesses to testify to the crime. But between those two extremes, due process is completely consistent. A shoplifting trial has the same burden of proof as a murder trial, and caries with it the same rights and processes.
The second post, being modded "troll" instead of, say, "overrated" seems a fairly minor error, and even IF it was blatant moderation abuse, it's a transitive issue that isn't worth wasting time on (the next time you post the same thing, the moderation will likely be different), and still wouldn't excuse wasting time on an off-topic comment complaining about it.