Yup, Open Source is the reason things changed. ...
But Open Source was NOT the driving force behind inovation the past decade, sorry but it just wasn't.
Nicely constructed, but still just a strawman. Let's get back to the source:
'Not really,' said Vinton Cerf, Google's chief Internet evangelist, 'It has to do with the fact that open source has become such a strong force in the software world.'"
Now, tell me where it does say open source was the driving force of inovation?
Because I can imagine that even if your competitor doesn't invent, it's very presence may drive you to innovate. How else can you stay relevant if your competitor creates a "clone" (not a "pirated copy" but a replica of the functionality) of what you are offering? Moreover, how can you stay in business if the work of your competitor is totally open and enables other of your competitors to invent at a lower cost (e.g. Google/Android. OpenBSD/MacOS.)?
On the sheer awesomeness factor, this rates pretty damned high. The only thing cooler would be a submarine in Europea's ocean, but that one, I imagine, is decades off.
A thing that would rate higher in awesomeness: building a pipe from Titan to sell LPG as a fuel for gas-guzzling 4WD on Earth. This would be something to excite even a red-neck in Alabama.
p>But, IF - and I stress IF - Binny was shot down like a rabid dog, then the US should have announced it in just those terms. There's no need to pull punches, gloss over the truth, or to sugar coat it. Just tell the world, "We killed the bastard, end of story!"
What do you mean? That the "bring him to justice" and "justice has been done" is Obama's BS?
And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice.
And on nights like this one, we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to al Qaeda's terror, justice has been done.
If positive, then it's refreshing to see that no quite everyone agree that assasination (justified or not) is what the american people consider (or should consider) "their pursuit to justice". In other words: present it as an act of war, assasination, whatever, but don't sell it as "justice".
Tonight we give thanks to the countless intelligence and counterterrorism professionals who've worked tirelessly to achieve this outcome. The American people do not see their work nor know their names, but tonight they feel the satisfaction of their work and the result of their pursuit of justice.
I seriously doubt that this is where smart-phone technology is headed.
Smart-phone? I always wanted that shoe which acts like as a phone, except that I never liked the idea to slide the sole out. With this, maybe I don't have to.
It sounds so weird when you put it like that. "Lunar capable space program".
Gosh, way more weird:
1. Mark Whittington submits stories related to space faring, NASA, Moon and such. Clearly a person that has a strong passion and strange attraction for space (given the fact that his education is a BA in History)
2. the majority of his feet-on-the-ground posts are rejected, however less so for stories like: "Former Senator Wants to Mine The Moon", "The Prospects for Lunar Mining", "Does the Moon Have Military Value?"
The result? I was almost about to believe Mark Whittington a lunatic dreamer, with nothing in his mind but to start mining the Moon and install military bases there.
Re:I thought this was a good idea..
on
Real Life Farmville
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
30 pounds times 10,000 participants is 300,000 GBP a year on subscription fees alone. That should help a lot.
If I'm not seeing that my suggestions are set in practice (but overridden by the majority), why would I pay for it? Isn't the "Virtual Farmville" good enough, as it doesn't required any money, etc?
If I'm seeing the results of my decision set in practice and succeeding... I'd ask for my share and be quite disappointed if I don't get it. After all, this is how the "virtual Farmville" tough me to expect - some gold, the more the merrier even if it is "virtual gold".
If I'm seeing the results of my decision set in practice and failing... not very satisfying for a game. Should I pay for it?
Or are you saying that this is actually a scam to finance a farming operation? Or some sort of a reality show in which the agro-business is put 24/7 on display in to be delivered in daily installments (some sort of "Big brother" with pigs, cows and veggies and other crops) - if so, where's the fun?
Ummm... didja mean repeal, or was that a deliberate poke at semantics?
Sincerely - a typo. But it turned well in the context, didn't it?
Re:I thought this was a good idea..
on
Real Life Farmville
·
· Score: 1, Informative
It is a win-win situation for everyone.
Win? Except for the real-life farm which will go under fast (if not subsidized from, say, education funds)
However, it is crucial that the trolls be weeded out by some means.
You mean: weed-out the un-educated (in the subject of agri-business)? Weed them out and the experiment is pointless.
If social experiments in Facebook, Twitter and Anonymous have shown us anything, it is that the general public likes to participate in making major decisions (which makes then feel important), and are willing for this.
Hell, yeah. I remember a few years back, the White House/UK govt set up some sites for "public participation", meant for the populace to suggest reforms they'd see as high priority. I can't remember now the sites, but I do remember that one of the highest ranked idea in US was "legalize drugs", while the UK suggested to repel the gravitation law. After that, the economic crisis set in... and Wikileaks inoculated the idea that the "raw data" fed by the "open govt" initiatives may not be that relevant as they'd like us to believe.
I would't call ERP software (like SAP or Oracle financials) poorly designed, however setting up an installation up also takes years.
... can take a while (a few months) but a few years? I would love to be on that type of project I could do with an extra mansion:) With SAP we have a 2, 5, 7 proportion that being "2" for the hardware, "5" for the software and "7" for the consulting and we will tell you when you can close your cheque book
As TFA says: installing and configuring a DLP is not very hard in itself, but
DLP is the "most disappointing" portion of the security market primarily because of the amount of time it takes companies to identify the data they want to protect, create profiles and taxonomies to categorize it.
I imagine that is where most of the time (and consulting paychecks) go into.
In other words, alot of enterprise software is poorly designed.
Well designed software is easy to use.
I would't call ERP software (like SAP or Oracle financials) poorly designed, however setting up an installation up also takes years.
Looking into the specific differences between an ERP and DLP system may offer some explanation how come configuring an ERP is budgeted/paid for by the company while a DLP isn't.
1. Without an ERP, the guys that have the final say in approving a budget cannot work (CFO is blind): the impact is immediate and obvious. Without DLP, not so.
2. Even more, a ill-configured DLP (or even a well-configured one) is restrictive for all the users - sociopathic managers included - do I need to say more?.
3. Moreover, even if both of the system are in the "support for the process" category (not inherently on the direct line that gets income to the company), the ERP is "operational cost" (need it every day) while a DLP is a "risk prevention cost" (money someone will pay for "just in case"). Risk management is more specialized, more complicated and requiring more imagination than financial management: the difference between "how and what can go wrong in various and possibly obscure points of my business? Who would benefit of something going wrong for me; who's the possible attacker?" and "How much was spend and what revenue you think you'll get in the next FQ or FY from this-and-that well-known market segments"?
One on top of the other, the CEO/CFO and the minions will need to leave their mental-warm-and-comfy-place to understand the need for a well-configured DLP and approve/pay-for a 1-2 years contract with a specialized team of contractors to set the security systems (DLP included) in place. Its akin requesting an accountant to show imagination - an almost oxymoronic concept. That until something extremely bad happens (think Sony)...
Unlike MySql, there seems not to be a single entity that owns the copyright for PostgreSQL. Meaning: Oracle would have trouble to buy all the copyrights, probably it will think twice before doing trying to do it (and at the secind round of thinking, will actually stop of even attempting).
"If you don't like the facts presented on the sites of established news organizations, you simply keep clicking until you find one whose "facts" accord with your beliefs."
That's the way it has always been. People choose the newspaper or TV channel that selects / presents / distorts / invents the news in the way most fitting to their own world view. All that has changed is that the number of available publications has increased.
The "Cole's axiom": the sum of intelligence on this planet is constant (and population increases).
I think that the "Cole's axiom" is enough to explain what's happening. Over a certain population threshold, there will be just enough intellectually impaired people to believe that pseudo-reality creation is rational and beneficial and more than enough people to believe the created BS-reality.
Despite the egregious lack of corporate responsibility, perhaps there could be some useful application of the data for traffic safety and road engineering.. for instance, if traffic engineers can see what roads are congested which have too low of a speed limit imposed, they could propose raising them? A pipe dream, but I have to believe someone looking to optimize traffic flows would consider the design upside as well as the police simply considering how to generate revenue.
What's in that pipe you used for dreamin'? The most probable behavior is for the cops to lower the speed limits on other roads and install some new speed traps there.
You think he's gonna wave a white flag and take a trip to the Hague because a SEAL team comes knocking on his door?
Knocking, indeed. Using 4 helicopters. And some say the reasons the home was not bombed is that Obama wanted a proof and wanted to avoid civilians killed unnecessary - which is commendable indeed.
Now, commendable as it is and also an undeniable success, the story itself is at best a war story, and not about bringing one to justice. My objection is mixing the two in presentation: war is and will be war, a beast totally different from justice.
(did I mention some egotistical motives? Yes, I did)
Even in a purely purely egotistical approach, it should be clear that the PV cell's price is heavily subsided by the cheaply available fossil fuel, which is used intensively in mining and manufacturing. There's no way to "go solar" without a large electric storage, which will degrade much more quickly than 25 years. A technology which is borderline profitable now will become prohibitively expensive assuming a high oil price.
I'm mildly objecting to the "subsidized" term (assuming that's what you actually wanted to say): it is not that PV cells are favored more than, say, any smart phone or, actually, anything else that uses energy/minerals in the fabrication process (including cement - I'll come to it later). Otherwise, you are right: the PV prices will be affected by the current prices of energy, hard to predict if the PV prices will go down (entering "mainstream" economics) or up (because the price of energy going up).
Now, about cement: you'll find it in most of the buildings (think: concrete). Some bad mouths say that, energetically and CO2 footprint, cement is really bad (900 kg CO2 per every 1000 kg cement. 360 kg CO2 is the footprint of the burnt fuel). I don't know yet, but... in the context of covering a building with PV panels... I somehow feel that the concrete in the building has had a worse CO2/energy footprint than the PV-es.
Now, all the above/below are good questions indeed! I'm serous when saying it. Even if you won't reply with some extra information (I'll appreciate if you will), I'll look for it myself. Without invalidating the legitimacy of the questions, I'll try to give you another perspective on possible reasons for "going solar", please see if they don't make a valid PoV.
But why do you want to buy photovoltaic (PV) panels in the first place? Do you think it's just intrinsically good for some reason?
Yes, the very intrinsic and personal (egotistical) reason: potentially independence from the power grid for me as a person - one less thing I need to depend on a corporation. Without the smell, the noise and the price of fuel and whatnot associated with burning fossil fuel.
Suppose we cover every available architectural surface in our cities and towns with solar panels. Does this have any non-obvious downsides?
You talk about amortizing the cost of the solar panels to you. But what about the environmental impact of manufacturing the panels? Does it create pollutants? What are the consequences of exploiting the raw materials to make the panels? Does mining them cause pollution? What are the costs of rectifying these effects?
(did I mention some egotistical motives? Yes, I did). I really don't know. Do you? Can you share some estimation with us?
Presumably, it takes energy to mine the raw materials and to make the panels. Where does this energy come from? Again, this is not usually considered in calculating the amortization costs of the panels. If oil was burned to do any of this, aren't you adding to your "carbon footprint" by buying so many panels?
(did I mention some egotistical motives? Yes, I did). Do I add to the carbon footprint? I don't know, can you please share with us any estimation between "carbon saved"/"carbon expended" for the current level of technology?
These panels have a finite lifespan (I believe it's about a decade)
They use to advertise them for 25-30 years.
What is the environmental impact of disposing of them? Can the components be recycled?
Mainly silicon/silicon dioxide. Inert. Even if not recycled, not more harmful than non-recycled glass bottles or broken windows.
What are the energy requirements of doing this? And again, how does it add to your "carbon footprint" to expend the energy to handle the dead panels?
(did I mention some egotistical motives? Yes, I did).
People are happier if they don't think about this, so I don't suppose many will. They will just buy PV panels and feel all warm about themselves...or make governments and corporations do it, to have more of those warm fuzzy feelings floating around.
Not that it matters, but I just bought a PV panel because I'm going to be spending a few months in an isolated area, and need a little electricity to power my personal gadgets.
Now, suppose that you would need more than a little. Are you quite sure the PV are not a solution? (because I see questions, but no attempt for answers, even partial).
But then the only alternative would be a petro-powered generator, and I'm not putting up with the noise or smell. I might even stick a few panels on my house; not because it's intrinsically good, but as a backup for those times when the grid fails.
Slashdot Mirror
Yup, Open Source is the reason things changed.
...
But Open Source was NOT the driving force behind inovation the past decade, sorry but it just wasn't.
Nicely constructed, but still just a strawman. Let's get back to the source:
'Not really,' said Vinton Cerf, Google's chief Internet evangelist, 'It has to do with the fact that open source has become such a strong force in the software world.'"
Now, tell me where it does say open source was the driving force of inovation?
Because I can imagine that even if your competitor doesn't invent, it's very presence may drive you to innovate.
How else can you stay relevant if your competitor creates a "clone" (not a "pirated copy" but a replica of the functionality) of what you are offering?
Moreover, how can you stay in business if the work of your competitor is totally open and enables other of your competitors to invent at a lower cost (e.g. Google/Android. OpenBSD/MacOS.)?
Now, please wake me up when they finally get to the point of having a pilot for which the vehicle is optional.
On the sheer awesomeness factor, this rates pretty damned high. The only thing cooler would be a submarine in Europea's ocean, but that one, I imagine, is decades off.
A thing that would rate higher in awesomeness: building a pipe from Titan to sell LPG as a fuel for gas-guzzling 4WD on Earth. This would be something to excite even a red-neck in Alabama.
p>But, IF - and I stress IF - Binny was shot down like a rabid dog, then the US should have announced it in just those terms. There's no need to pull punches, gloss over the truth, or to sugar coat it. Just tell the world, "We killed the bastard, end of story!"
What do you mean? That the "bring him to justice" and "justice has been done" is Obama's BS?
And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice.
And on nights like this one, we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to al Qaeda's terror, justice has been done.
If positive, then it's refreshing to see that no quite everyone agree that assasination (justified or not) is what the american people consider (or should consider) "their pursuit to justice". In other words: present it as an act of war, assasination, whatever, but don't sell it as "justice".
Tonight we give thanks to the countless intelligence and counterterrorism professionals who've worked tirelessly to achieve this outcome. The American people do not see their work nor know their names, but tonight they feel the satisfaction of their work and the result of their pursuit of justice.
Are any of those movies and music made in the US? Could you, you know.. pay for that, please? We're kind of broke over here . . .
No wonder you are broke! Why did you let Hollywood waste money on Expendables?
I seriously doubt that this is where smart-phone technology is headed.
Smart-phone? I always wanted that shoe which acts like as a phone, except that I never liked the idea to slide the sole out. With this, maybe I don't have to.
Converting a jar to an exe is difficult. I wish I could do it reliably on Linux, but I can't (gcj doesn't really work)
If you really-really need it, and need it so badly you can give away the distaste for commercial software, see here
It sounds so weird when you put it like that. "Lunar capable space program".
Gosh, way more weird:
1. Mark Whittington submits stories related to space faring, NASA, Moon and such. Clearly a person that has a strong passion and strange attraction for space (given the fact that his education is a BA in History)
2. the majority of his feet-on-the-ground posts are rejected, however less so for stories like: "Former Senator Wants to Mine The Moon", "The Prospects for Lunar Mining", "Does the Moon Have Military Value?"
The result? I was almost about to believe Mark Whittington a lunatic dreamer, with nothing in his mind but to start mining the Moon and install military bases there.
30 pounds times 10,000 participants is 300,000 GBP a year on subscription fees alone. That should help a lot.
If I'm not seeing that my suggestions are set in practice (but overridden by the majority), why would I pay for it? Isn't the "Virtual Farmville" good enough, as it doesn't required any money, etc?
If I'm seeing the results of my decision set in practice and succeeding... I'd ask for my share and be quite disappointed if I don't get it. After all, this is how the "virtual Farmville" tough me to expect - some gold, the more the merrier even if it is "virtual gold".
If I'm seeing the results of my decision set in practice and failing... not very satisfying for a game. Should I pay for it?
Or are you saying that this is actually a scam to finance a farming operation?
Or some sort of a reality show in which the agro-business is put 24/7 on display in to be delivered in daily installments (some sort of "Big brother" with pigs, cows and veggies and other crops) - if so, where's the fun?
Ummm... didja mean repeal, or was that a deliberate poke at semantics?
Sincerely - a typo. But it turned well in the context, didn't it?
It is a win-win situation for everyone.
Win? Except for the real-life farm which will go under fast (if not subsidized from, say, education funds)
However, it is crucial that the trolls be weeded out by some means.
You mean: weed-out the un-educated (in the subject of agri-business)? Weed them out and the experiment is pointless.
If social experiments in Facebook, Twitter and Anonymous have shown us anything, it is that the general public likes to participate in making major decisions (which makes then feel important), and are willing for this.
Hell, yeah. I remember a few years back, the White House/UK govt set up some sites for "public participation", meant for the populace to suggest reforms they'd see as high priority. I can't remember now the sites, but I do remember that one of the highest ranked idea in US was "legalize drugs", while the UK suggested to repel the gravitation law.
After that, the economic crisis set in... and Wikileaks inoculated the idea that the "raw data" fed by the "open govt" initiatives may not be that relevant as they'd like us to believe.
it hurts with the stupid.
None of us is as dumb as all of us. Wanna proof? How about the last economical crisis?
I assumed the only black hole left was the one sucking all the brains from Donald Trump.
Blackhole sucking void? That is a new concept.
I would't call ERP software (like SAP or Oracle financials) poorly designed, however setting up an installation up also takes years.
... can take a while (a few months) but a few years? I would love to be on that type of project I could do with an extra mansion :) With SAP we have a 2, 5, 7 proportion that being "2" for the hardware, "5" for the software and "7" for the consulting and we will tell you when you can close your cheque book
As TFA says: installing and configuring a DLP is not very hard in itself, but
DLP is the "most disappointing" portion of the security market primarily because of the amount of time it takes companies to identify the data they want to protect, create profiles and taxonomies to categorize it .
I imagine that is where most of the time (and consulting paychecks) go into.
I wonder what good it would do them if they stick their toaster oven into my Nokia 6303c?
Speaking of Nokia, in the near future, they may need to! Coding in C# won't necessary result in low power footprint apps, I imagine.
In other words, alot of enterprise software is poorly designed.
Well designed software is easy to use.
I would't call ERP software (like SAP or Oracle financials) poorly designed, however setting up an installation up also takes years.
Looking into the specific differences between an ERP and DLP system may offer some explanation how come configuring an ERP is budgeted/paid for by the company while a DLP isn't.
1. Without an ERP, the guys that have the final say in approving a budget cannot work (CFO is blind): the impact is immediate and obvious. Without DLP, not so.
2. Even more, a ill-configured DLP (or even a well-configured one) is restrictive for all the users - sociopathic managers included - do I need to say more?.
3. Moreover, even if both of the system are in the "support for the process" category (not inherently on the direct line that gets income to the company), the ERP is "operational cost" (need it every day) while a DLP is a "risk prevention cost" (money someone will pay for "just in case").
Risk management is more specialized, more complicated and requiring more imagination than financial management: the difference between "how and what can go wrong in various and possibly obscure points of my business? Who would benefit of something going wrong for me; who's the possible attacker?" and "How much was spend and what revenue you think you'll get in the next FQ or FY from this-and-that well-known market segments"?
One on top of the other, the CEO/CFO and the minions will need to leave their mental-warm-and-comfy-place to understand the need for a well-configured DLP and approve/pay-for a 1-2 years contract with a specialized team of contractors to set the security systems (DLP included) in place. Its akin requesting an accountant to show imagination - an almost oxymoronic concept.
That until something extremely bad happens (think Sony)...
I'm a PostgreSQL contributor. Oracle can't buy my copyright.
It may consider buying the rest of it and replacing your contribution.
So even if a company did start gobbling up developers one at a time, they would face increasing resistance at obtaining the remaining ones.
It would be when the "second thought" kicks in.
Anyway, thanks for the reply and, even more, thanks for contributing to PostgreSQL.
PostgreSQL will stay open, and stay strong.
Until Oracle buys them up too.
Unlike MySql, there seems not to be a single entity that owns the copyright for PostgreSQL. Meaning: Oracle would have trouble to buy all the copyrights, probably it will think twice before doing trying to do it (and at the secind round of thinking, will actually stop of even attempting).
"If you don't like the facts presented on the sites of established news organizations, you simply keep clicking until you find one whose "facts" accord with your beliefs."
That's the way it has always been. People choose the newspaper or TV channel that selects / presents / distorts / invents the news in the way most fitting to their own world view. All that has changed is that the number of available publications has increased.
The "Cole's axiom": the sum of intelligence on this planet is constant (and population increases).
I think that the "Cole's axiom" is enough to explain what's happening. Over a certain population threshold, there will be just enough intellectually impaired people to believe that pseudo-reality creation is rational and beneficial and more than enough people to believe the created BS-reality.
Despite the egregious lack of corporate responsibility, perhaps there could be some useful application of the data for traffic safety and road engineering.. for instance, if traffic engineers can see what roads are congested which have too low of a speed limit imposed, they could propose raising them? A pipe dream, but I have to believe someone looking to optimize traffic flows would consider the design upside as well as the police simply considering how to generate revenue.
What's in that pipe you used for dreamin'?
The most probable behavior is for the cops to lower the speed limits on other roads and install some new speed traps there.
Did this story come from the Department of Redundundancy Department?
FTFY
investigation revealed a deeper "intrusion" than expected
Parapraxis or did they actually expected to be hacked, only not that "deep"?
If the second, then Suck Fony (actually, doesn't matter if the first or the second, thuck fem anyway).
You think he's gonna wave a white flag and take a trip to the Hague because a SEAL team comes knocking on his door?
Knocking, indeed. Using 4 helicopters. And some say the reasons the home was not bombed is that Obama wanted a proof and wanted to avoid civilians killed unnecessary - which is commendable indeed.
Now, commendable as it is and also an undeniable success, the story itself is at best a war story, and not about bringing one to justice. My objection is mixing the two in presentation: war is and will be war, a beast totally different from justice.
(did I mention some egotistical motives? Yes, I did)
Even in a purely purely egotistical approach, it should be clear that the PV cell's price is heavily subsided by the cheaply available fossil fuel, which is used intensively in mining and manufacturing. There's no way to "go solar" without a large electric storage, which will degrade much more quickly than 25 years. A technology which is borderline profitable now will become prohibitively expensive assuming a high oil price.
I'm mildly objecting to the "subsidized" term (assuming that's what you actually wanted to say): it is not that PV cells are favored more than, say, any smart phone or, actually, anything else that uses energy/minerals in the fabrication process (including cement - I'll come to it later). Otherwise, you are right: the PV prices will be affected by the current prices of energy, hard to predict if the PV prices will go down (entering "mainstream" economics) or up (because the price of energy going up).
Now, about cement: you'll find it in most of the buildings (think: concrete). Some bad mouths say that, energetically and CO2 footprint, cement is really bad (900 kg CO2 per every 1000 kg cement. 360 kg CO2 is the footprint of the burnt fuel). I don't know yet, but... in the context of covering a building with PV panels... I somehow feel that the concrete in the building has had a worse CO2/energy footprint than the PV-es.
Without invalidating the legitimacy of the questions, I'll try to give you another perspective on possible reasons for "going solar", please see if they don't make a valid PoV.
But why do you want to buy photovoltaic (PV) panels in the first place? Do you think it's just intrinsically good for some reason?
Yes, the very intrinsic and personal (egotistical) reason: potentially independence from the power grid for me as a person - one less thing I need to depend on a corporation. Without the smell, the noise and the price of fuel and whatnot associated with burning fossil fuel.
Suppose we cover every available architectural surface in our cities and towns with solar panels. Does this have any non-obvious downsides?
You talk about amortizing the cost of the solar panels to you. But what about the environmental impact of manufacturing the panels? Does it create pollutants? What are the consequences of exploiting the raw materials to make the panels? Does mining them cause pollution? What are the costs of rectifying these effects?
(did I mention some egotistical motives? Yes, I did). I really don't know. Do you? Can you share some estimation with us?
Presumably, it takes energy to mine the raw materials and to make the panels. Where does this energy come from? Again, this is not usually considered in calculating the amortization costs of the panels. If oil was burned to do any of this, aren't you adding to your "carbon footprint" by buying so many panels?
(did I mention some egotistical motives? Yes, I did). Do I add to the carbon footprint? I don't know, can you please share with us any estimation between "carbon saved"/"carbon expended" for the current level of technology?
These panels have a finite lifespan (I believe it's about a decade)
They use to advertise them for 25-30 years.
What is the environmental impact of disposing of them? Can the components be recycled?
Mainly silicon/silicon dioxide. Inert. Even if not recycled, not more harmful than non-recycled glass bottles or broken windows.
What are the energy requirements of doing this? And again, how does it add to your "carbon footprint" to expend the energy to handle the dead panels?
(did I mention some egotistical motives? Yes, I did).
People are happier if they don't think about this, so I don't suppose many will. They will just buy PV panels and feel all warm about themselves...or make governments and corporations do it, to have more of those warm fuzzy feelings floating around.
Not that it matters, but I just bought a PV panel because I'm going to be spending a few months in an isolated area, and need a little electricity to power my personal gadgets.
Now, suppose that you would need more than a little. Are you quite sure the PV are not a solution? (because I see questions, but no attempt for answers, even partial).
But then the only alternative would be a petro-powered generator, and I'm not putting up with the noise or smell. I might even stick a few panels on my house; not because it's intrinsically good, but as a backup for those times when the grid fails.