If you have been following Egypt even a little bit then you should be worried about any U.S. plan to implement an internet kill switch. So the question is: who is going to administer this nationwide 4G and will it have a kill switch built into it? Will there be market competition in the form of multiple carriers or will you only be able to get it in one place and therefore be subject to whatever useless rules they come up with? Law enforcement can already triangulate your cellphone's position with little effort.
It doesn't take a DARPA grant to know that lots of people believe every film that Michael Moore and Oliver Stone make is factual and without bias. On second thought, Step 1: Take the grant money. Step 2: Spend five minutes debunking those films. Step 3: Profit.
This sort of thing has me raising eyebrows. Toyota was crucified in the court of public opinion and hauled up before a congressional inquisition (NO ONE EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!!!) with few real facts to back it up. IMHO, those congressmen who went on a witch hunt owe Toyota an apology. Sure, companies need to admit and rectify problems but government and the media regularly get away with firebombing companies and regular people and they get away with it.
There are really two problems that ruin a 3D film. The first is that most cinematographers will use the blurring of the image known as depth of field to convey the third dimension. In the real world, your eyes don't do that per se so it jumps out at you on screen. This goes hand in hand with the human ability and need to look at everything in the real world but on screen a specific subject/actor is what the director wants you to look at so as long as you stay focused on that the 3D holds up. Once you start looking elsewhere on the screen it falls apart. Cameron did a decent job of maintaining the direction of your gaze which is why Avatar is the gold standard.
No, it's not the airlock, it's the sound of the American space program sucking. We should be putting all our space research efforts on a real manned mission to Mars or at least returning to the Moon. Instead we've built a space station which few people give a crap about. We've mothballed our shuttles without a replacement. And we've killed off other manned vehicle programs and slashed the budgets all so that we can have an outreach program to make Muslims feel better about their contributions to science all of which happened centuries ago. Scott Adams could write several books on this.
Assuming that you have the ability to save the image. See, I'm developing what is essentially a Linux-based appliance that can be faceless (no user-interface) and uses a simple toggle switch on the battery so there is no facility for a graceful shutdown which it sounds like you'd need to do the suspended image. Plus I'm using a read-only file system for the OS to guard against corruption and tiny read/write partition for settings.
One reason why fast boot is important to me is since it's faceless, the user will think something is wrong if it takes longer than about 10 seconds to be up and running. From the factory, the SBC boots to a shell prompt in about 2 seconds. Pretty good. But, as soon as you add mdev (or udev) into the equation, it slows down quite a bit. Configuring USB devices increases the boot time to almost 10 seconds. Then if I want to get WIFI up and running, that takes even longer.
The one thing about his presentation that's interesting is the use of SquashFS over JFFS2 which appears to give quite a performance boost.
No, it's not about the Knights who say Ni. Does this thing have USB support? Does it have Wifi support? Products by Technogic Systems boot to a shell prompt in less than 2 seconds but if you need to load USB drivers and populate a/dev it drops to about 6-10 seconds. Wifi takes longer.
Puhleeze. If you think this can't be hacked, think again. If you think it can't be forged, think again. If you think it can't be stolen and used to impersonate someone, think again.
Platitude of the Day: Any concept can be used for both good and evil.
This would be a monumentally stupid move. Far too many people use their computers where there is no Internet access let alone one with enough bandwidth to do something like this. Furthermore, this will only lead to renting software every effing month.
You have two choices: 1) Test now or 2) Fix the bugs later. Okay, technically you could blow them off entirely but you won't be in business much longer. But I digress. The choice between 1 or 2 could depend on your business model. If your company charges for maintenance releases then it's in the company's best interest to not fix them and wait until it's getting paid to fix them. This could also apply to the annual major release business model since you can blow off bug fixes until next year. If you subscribe to the older method of software releases, one could argue that releasing a bulletproof app boosts your perception in the marketplace. The tradeoff is taking forever to actually release a product.
These days it seems that major software companies have adopted the annual release model (with minimal real new features I might add). And more companies are sticking you for maintenance every year. And some companies are trending and would dearly love to run software over the net or in the cloud because then the customer never owns it but instead rents it in perpetuity which means the company is guaranteed a steady stream of income instead of getting a big spike after a major release and tapering off until the next one.
I think the only exception to stalling on bug fixes would be showstoppers. Bugs that really piss of the majority of your customers.
All you need to know at this point is the fact that Congress (yes, with Democrats in control of it) told the FCC that they don't have the authority to do what they're doing and the FCC told Congress "Screw you, we're doing it anyway." This is not Venezuela, boys and girls, this is America and we have a representative government here.
Beyond that, if you haven't read the nearly 200 pages the FCC put out, and I mean ALL of it, you can't talk intelligently about it. Same thing with AZ SB 1070 except that people were too effing lazy to read 16 pages which was really only 8 pages because the same language was duplicated with the words "knowingly" and "willfully". You may think Net Neutrality is great because the only thing that's been promoted in the media are things you want to hear which really amounts to about a page of text. So what the hell is in the rest of it?
I've said it before and I'll say it again: business never bends over and takes government regulation up the a$$. The consumer gets the sh*t end of the regulation stick. Always.
Missing the point here. Wireless technology eliminates the need and value of rights-of-way. In theory, if you extrapolate mesh technology out several orders of magnitude, you may not ever need the "last mile" again. One big reason why Tesla's wireless power transmission was killed off is because JP Morgan knew he couldn't put a meter on the consumer's end and bill him for the power.
Government systems are rarely if ever efficient often because of the thousands of people involved each with an enormous ego and tiny brain. The US Patent system is a classic example. Just it's presence on the internet alone has got to be at least ten years behind what could be done.
Telephone isn't much of a monopoly anymore. You can tell your land-line provider to go pound sand and switch to one of several cellphone providers or VOIP providers. Cable at the moment only has two satellite competitors but with increasing access to internet-based video, this won't last too much longer.
With increased government regulation comes a lot more lobbyist activity to give targets of the regulation an exemption to the regulation. Witness the number of companies that already have exemptions to major provisions of Obamacare.
Government regulation is like trying to squeeze one of those water-filled sausage doodads. The tighter government squeezes, the more likely it is to shoot out of your hand across the room, out the open window and down on to an innocent passerby who ends up suing you, the building owner, the sausage doodad maker and a dozen other parties who witnessed the squeezing and did nothing about it all for getting his suit wet.
Government regulation/intervention never works out the way people think it should. Take class-action lawsuits for example. The consumers think "Yeah! Stick it to those bastards selling coffee that is actually hot because some innocent moron spilled it in his/her lap! Make them pay dearly for it!!!" Ten years later you get something in the mail telling you that you've been awarded coupons for discounts on accessories for your phone which you've long since discarded.
And the lawyers walk away with billions.
Meanwhile, as a member of the disenfranchised proletariat, you wonder why everything is more expensive than it was ten years ago when you're not getting anything better or different than you used to be. These days companies are forced to build in future lawsuit expenses into the cost of their products even though they're perfectly fine as long as you're not stupid enough to think that Apple was being literal when they said reading a book on the iPad is just like reading a real book.
Most people don't realize that draconian rules and totalitarian environments don't happen overnight. They happen over several years of incremental changes that fly below the radar until there comes a point when people wake up and cry "How the hell did this happen?!?!" What's worse is that these incremental measures are instituted "for our own good" and those who place a higher value on emotional reasons for doing things rather than the practicality of the measures and blindly accept these measures. They rarely see the unintended consequences of a policy. Net Neutrality sounds like a good idea: Cool, all traffic will be equal! My ISP won't be allowed to filter my torrent downloads!! WOOT!! Yeah, um, no. Your ISP is going to scale back or cancel any rollout of faster service or they will lower everyone's speeds or they will charge everyone more money. The targets of government regulation never bend over and take it up the ass. They always pass on the ass-f*cking to someone lower in the food chain.
If you think government control over the Internet is a good idea, ask yourself how you would feel when the party opposing your personal political beliefs gets control and does things you don't like. I guarantee that you'll wish you were back in the good old days.
There are always unintended consequences to increased government control. You may think that Net Neutrality is a good thing in that your precious Bittorrent traffic and cat videos will now run faster but no matter how the government tries to put the screws to industry, industry never bends over and takes it up the a$$. In this case, the ISPs who are suppliers of the infrastructure will simply stop upgrading it because they can't make any money on it. It's no different than the government control over healthcare. You will never get top-of-the-line products or services unless the providers can make money on it. Mark my words: broadband development in the U.S. will grind to a halt. There will be no more rollouts of high end services such as FIOS. There will be no more rollout of 4G services.
Particularly for science and engineering it's about access. People who went to MIT had access to facilities that those of us across the river could only dream about.
Dennis: Oh, King, eh? Oh, very nice... And how'd you get that, eh? By exploiting the workers! By hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society! If there's ever gonna be any progress in our society... Woman: Denny, there's some lovely filth down here! [Noticing Arthur] Oh! How d'you do? Arthur: How do you do, good lady. I am Arthur, King of the Britons. Whose castle is that? Woman: King of the who? Arthur: The Britons. Woman: Who are the Britons? Arthur: Well we all are... We are all Britons... And I am your king. Woman: I didn't know we had a king... I thought we were an autonomous collective. Dennis: You're foolin' yourself. We're livin' in a dictatorship! A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes... Woman: (interrupting) Oh there you go, bringing class into it again... Dennis: That's what it's all about! If only people would... Arthur: Please, please, good people, I am in haste. Who lives in that castle? Woman: No one lives there. Arthur: Then who is your lord? Woman: We don't have a lord. Arthur: What? Dennis: I told you. We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to sort of act as a sort of executive officer for the week. Arthur: Yes. Dennis: But all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting... Arthur: Yes I see. Dennis:...by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs... Arthur: Be quiet! Dennis: But by a two-thirds majority in the case of more major... Arthur: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet! Woman: Order, eh? Who does he think he is? Arthur: I am your king! Woman: Well I didn't vote for you! Arthur: You don't vote for kings. Woman: Well how'd you become king then? [Angelic music plays...] Arthur: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. THAT is why I am your king! Dennis: (interrupting) Listen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government! Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcicial aquatic ceremony! Arthur: Be quiet! Dennis: Oh but you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you! Arthur: SHUT UP! Dennis: Oh but if I went 'round sayin' I was Emperor, just because some moistened bink lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away! Arthur: SHUT UP! WILL YOU SHUT UP! [Grabs Dennis] Dennis: Ah! Now we see the violence inherent in the system! Arthur: SHUT UP! Dennis: Oh, come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I'm being repressed! Arthur: (muttering) Bloody peasant! Dennis: Oh, what a giveaway! Did you hear that? Did you hear that, eh? That's what I'm on about! Did you see him repressin' me? You saw it, didn't you?
Here's what I want to know: Will the money be put to use creating major research organizations or will it be pissed away on something nebulous such as foreign aid which inevitably winds up in some warlord's plethora of palaces? Imagine how many start-ups could be created with $500 million. Imagine how many people they would employ. Imagine how many people suppliers to those start-ups would employ. Imagine how many people would be employed by companies offering services and infrastructure required to make it all work. Imagine how many spin-offs would be created. Then multiply that by 17.
But even if you don't like that idea, why would you piss the money away on third-world countries when there are a lot of people on welfare and food stamps here in this country.
Make no mistake, folks, a new level of tiered service will be coming. Utility companies will find a way to stick it to you because of your abnormally high demand just as the ISPs want to be able to charge you more for serving up craploads of cat videos and bittorrents. Hell, they already want to put smart meters and smart thermostats to give them more control over your life. Don't think that they won't find a way to tell you "Oh, well, you need a higher level of service for which we are going to charge you to install new wiring and charge you a higher rate because you're plugging your car into the grid." They already charge you a higher basic rate if you get 3-phase power installed in your house regardless of how many kWh you use.
What does belief in anthropogenic global warming have to do with politics?
Absolutely nothing. But rather let the engineers and scientists solve the problem (after determining that a problem exists and what the causes really are), politicians step in and inevitably make it worse all while taking advantage of the situation.
There is an organization called The Order of The Engineer. It was created after a bridge collapsed while under construction. The reason it collapsed is because the original designs were modified because politicians wanted to make it a bit longer so that it would have been the longest span of that type at the time. Engineering students at a local college created the Order as a reminder that they have responsibilities.
Slashdot Mirror
If you have been following Egypt even a little bit then you should be worried about any U.S. plan to implement an internet kill switch. So the question is: who is going to administer this nationwide 4G and will it have a kill switch built into it? Will there be market competition in the form of multiple carriers or will you only be able to get it in one place and therefore be subject to whatever useless rules they come up with? Law enforcement can already triangulate your cellphone's position with little effort.
It doesn't take a DARPA grant to know that lots of people believe every film that Michael Moore and Oliver Stone make is factual and without bias. On second thought, Step 1: Take the grant money. Step 2: Spend five minutes debunking those films. Step 3: Profit.
This sort of thing has me raising eyebrows. Toyota was crucified in the court of public opinion and hauled up before a congressional inquisition (NO ONE EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!!!) with few real facts to back it up. IMHO, those congressmen who went on a witch hunt owe Toyota an apology. Sure, companies need to admit and rectify problems but government and the media regularly get away with firebombing companies and regular people and they get away with it.
Problem exists between head and ass. Solution: remove head from ass, then drive.
Imagine a little box with a mesh router in it, lithium power supply and solar panels. Then you fly over Cuba scattering thousands of them.
There are really two problems that ruin a 3D film. The first is that most cinematographers will use the blurring of the image known as depth of field to convey the third dimension. In the real world, your eyes don't do that per se so it jumps out at you on screen. This goes hand in hand with the human ability and need to look at everything in the real world but on screen a specific subject/actor is what the director wants you to look at so as long as you stay focused on that the 3D holds up. Once you start looking elsewhere on the screen it falls apart. Cameron did a decent job of maintaining the direction of your gaze which is why Avatar is the gold standard.
No, it's not the airlock, it's the sound of the American space program sucking. We should be putting all our space research efforts on a real manned mission to Mars or at least returning to the Moon. Instead we've built a space station which few people give a crap about. We've mothballed our shuttles without a replacement. And we've killed off other manned vehicle programs and slashed the budgets all so that we can have an outreach program to make Muslims feel better about their contributions to science all of which happened centuries ago. Scott Adams could write several books on this.
Assuming that you have the ability to save the image. See, I'm developing what is essentially a Linux-based appliance that can be faceless (no user-interface) and uses a simple toggle switch on the battery so there is no facility for a graceful shutdown which it sounds like you'd need to do the suspended image. Plus I'm using a read-only file system for the OS to guard against corruption and tiny read/write partition for settings.
One reason why fast boot is important to me is since it's faceless, the user will think something is wrong if it takes longer than about 10 seconds to be up and running. From the factory, the SBC boots to a shell prompt in about 2 seconds. Pretty good. But, as soon as you add mdev (or udev) into the equation, it slows down quite a bit. Configuring USB devices increases the boot time to almost 10 seconds. Then if I want to get WIFI up and running, that takes even longer.
The one thing about his presentation that's interesting is the use of SquashFS over JFFS2 which appears to give quite a performance boost.
No, it's not about the Knights who say Ni. Does this thing have USB support? Does it have Wifi support? Products by Technogic Systems boot to a shell prompt in less than 2 seconds but if you need to load USB drivers and populate a /dev it drops to about 6-10 seconds. Wifi takes longer.
Puhleeze. If you think this can't be hacked, think again. If you think it can't be forged, think again. If you think it can't be stolen and used to impersonate someone, think again.
Platitude of the Day: Any concept can be used for both good and evil.
NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!
This would be a monumentally stupid move. Far too many people use their computers where there is no Internet access let alone one with enough bandwidth to do something like this.
Furthermore, this will only lead to renting software every effing month.
You have two choices: 1) Test now or 2) Fix the bugs later. Okay, technically you could blow them off entirely but you won't be in business much longer. But I digress. The choice between 1 or 2 could depend on your business model. If your company charges for maintenance releases then it's in the company's best interest to not fix them and wait until it's getting paid to fix them. This could also apply to the annual major release business model since you can blow off bug fixes until next year. If you subscribe to the older method of software releases, one could argue that releasing a bulletproof app boosts your perception in the marketplace. The tradeoff is taking forever to actually release a product.
These days it seems that major software companies have adopted the annual release model (with minimal real new features I might add). And more companies are sticking you for maintenance every year. And some companies are trending and would dearly love to run software over the net or in the cloud because then the customer never owns it but instead rents it in perpetuity which means the company is guaranteed a steady stream of income instead of getting a big spike after a major release and tapering off until the next one.
I think the only exception to stalling on bug fixes would be showstoppers. Bugs that really piss of the majority of your customers.
All you need to know at this point is the fact that Congress (yes, with Democrats in control of it) told the FCC that they don't have the authority to do what they're doing and the FCC told Congress "Screw you, we're doing it anyway." This is not Venezuela, boys and girls, this is America and we have a representative government here.
Beyond that, if you haven't read the nearly 200 pages the FCC put out, and I mean ALL of it, you can't talk intelligently about it. Same thing with AZ SB 1070 except that people were too effing lazy to read 16 pages which was really only 8 pages because the same language was duplicated with the words "knowingly" and "willfully". You may think Net Neutrality is great because the only thing that's been promoted in the media are things you want to hear which really amounts to about a page of text. So what the hell is in the rest of it?
I've said it before and I'll say it again: business never bends over and takes government regulation up the a$$. The consumer gets the sh*t end of the regulation stick. Always.
Missing the point here. Wireless technology eliminates the need and value of rights-of-way. In theory, if you extrapolate mesh technology out several orders of magnitude, you may not ever need the "last mile" again. One big reason why Tesla's wireless power transmission was killed off is because JP Morgan knew he couldn't put a meter on the consumer's end and bill him for the power.
Government systems are rarely if ever efficient often because of the thousands of people involved each with an enormous ego and tiny brain. The US Patent system is a classic example. Just it's presence on the internet alone has got to be at least ten years behind what could be done.
Telephone isn't much of a monopoly anymore. You can tell your land-line provider to go pound sand and switch to one of several cellphone providers or VOIP providers. Cable at the moment only has two satellite competitors but with increasing access to internet-based video, this won't last too much longer.
With increased government regulation comes a lot more lobbyist activity to give targets of the regulation an exemption to the regulation. Witness the number of companies that already have exemptions to major provisions of Obamacare.
Government regulation is like trying to squeeze one of those water-filled sausage doodads. The tighter government squeezes, the more likely it is to shoot out of your hand across the room, out the open window and down on to an innocent passerby who ends up suing you, the building owner, the sausage doodad maker and a dozen other parties who witnessed the squeezing and did nothing about it all for getting his suit wet.
Government regulation/intervention never works out the way people think it should. Take class-action lawsuits for example. The consumers think "Yeah! Stick it to those bastards selling coffee that is actually hot because some innocent moron spilled it in his/her lap! Make them pay dearly for it!!!" Ten years later you get something in the mail telling you that you've been awarded coupons for discounts on accessories for your phone which you've long since discarded.
And the lawyers walk away with billions.
Meanwhile, as a member of the disenfranchised proletariat, you wonder why everything is more expensive than it was ten years ago when you're not getting anything better or different than you used to be. These days companies are forced to build in future lawsuit expenses into the cost of their products even though they're perfectly fine as long as you're not stupid enough to think that Apple was being literal when they said reading a book on the iPad is just like reading a real book.
Most people don't realize that draconian rules and totalitarian environments don't happen overnight. They happen over several years of incremental changes that fly below the radar until there comes a point when people wake up and cry "How the hell did this happen?!?!" What's worse is that these incremental measures are instituted "for our own good" and those who place a higher value on emotional reasons for doing things rather than the practicality of the measures and blindly accept these measures. They rarely see the unintended consequences of a policy. Net Neutrality sounds like a good idea: Cool, all traffic will be equal! My ISP won't be allowed to filter my torrent downloads!! WOOT!! Yeah, um, no. Your ISP is going to scale back or cancel any rollout of faster service or they will lower everyone's speeds or they will charge everyone more money. The targets of government regulation never bend over and take it up the ass. They always pass on the ass-f*cking to someone lower in the food chain.
If you think government control over the Internet is a good idea, ask yourself how you would feel when the party opposing your personal political beliefs gets control and does things you don't like. I guarantee that you'll wish you were back in the good old days.
There are always unintended consequences to increased government control. You may think that Net Neutrality is a good thing in that your precious Bittorrent traffic and cat videos will now run faster but no matter how the government tries to put the screws to industry, industry never bends over and takes it up the a$$. In this case, the ISPs who are suppliers of the infrastructure will simply stop upgrading it because they can't make any money on it. It's no different than the government control over healthcare. You will never get top-of-the-line products or services unless the providers can make money on it. Mark my words: broadband development in the U.S. will grind to a halt. There will be no more rollouts of high end services such as FIOS. There will be no more rollout of 4G services.
Particularly for science and engineering it's about access. People who went to MIT had access to facilities that those of us across the river could only dream about.
Dennis: Oh, King, eh? Oh, very nice... And how'd you get that, eh? By exploiting the workers! By hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society! If there's ever gonna be any progress in our society... ...by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs...
Woman: Denny, there's some lovely filth down here!
[Noticing Arthur] Oh! How d'you do?
Arthur: How do you do, good lady. I am Arthur, King of the Britons. Whose castle is that?
Woman: King of the who?
Arthur: The Britons.
Woman: Who are the Britons?
Arthur: Well we all are... We are all Britons... And I am your king.
Woman: I didn't know we had a king... I thought we were an autonomous collective.
Dennis: You're foolin' yourself. We're livin' in a dictatorship! A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes...
Woman: (interrupting) Oh there you go, bringing class into it again...
Dennis: That's what it's all about! If only people would...
Arthur: Please, please, good people, I am in haste. Who lives in that castle?
Woman: No one lives there.
Arthur: Then who is your lord?
Woman: We don't have a lord.
Arthur: What?
Dennis: I told you. We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to sort of act as a sort of executive officer for the week.
Arthur: Yes.
Dennis: But all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting...
Arthur: Yes I see.
Dennis:
Arthur: Be quiet!
Dennis: But by a two-thirds majority in the case of more major...
Arthur: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!
Woman: Order, eh? Who does he think he is?
Arthur: I am your king!
Woman: Well I didn't vote for you!
Arthur: You don't vote for kings.
Woman: Well how'd you become king then?
[Angelic music plays...]
Arthur: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. THAT is why I am your king!
Dennis: (interrupting) Listen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government! Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcicial aquatic ceremony!
Arthur: Be quiet!
Dennis: Oh but you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you!
Arthur: SHUT UP!
Dennis: Oh but if I went 'round sayin' I was Emperor, just because some moistened bink lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!
Arthur: SHUT UP! WILL YOU SHUT UP! [Grabs Dennis]
Dennis: Ah! Now we see the violence inherent in the system!
Arthur: SHUT UP!
Dennis: Oh, come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
Arthur: (muttering) Bloody peasant!
Dennis: Oh, what a giveaway! Did you hear that? Did you hear that, eh? That's what I'm on about! Did you see him repressin' me? You saw it, didn't you?
An include the boneheads who think the U.N. should regulate the Internet too. Everything the U.N. does gets totally borked.
Is there a cross-compiler for it yet?
Here's what I want to know: Will the money be put to use creating major research organizations or will it be pissed away on something nebulous such as foreign aid which inevitably winds up in some warlord's plethora of palaces? Imagine how many start-ups could be created with $500 million. Imagine how many people they would employ. Imagine how many people suppliers to those start-ups would employ. Imagine how many people would be employed by companies offering services and infrastructure required to make it all work. Imagine how many spin-offs would be created. Then multiply that by 17.
But even if you don't like that idea, why would you piss the money away on third-world countries when there are a lot of people on welfare and food stamps here in this country.
Make no mistake, folks, a new level of tiered service will be coming. Utility companies will find a way to stick it to you because of your abnormally high demand just as the ISPs want to be able to charge you more for serving up craploads of cat videos and bittorrents. Hell, they already want to put smart meters and smart thermostats to give them more control over your life. Don't think that they won't find a way to tell you "Oh, well, you need a higher level of service for which we are going to charge you to install new wiring and charge you a higher rate because you're plugging your car into the grid." They already charge you a higher basic rate if you get 3-phase power installed in your house regardless of how many kWh you use.
What does belief in anthropogenic global warming have to do with politics?
Absolutely nothing. But rather let the engineers and scientists solve the problem (after determining that a problem exists and what the causes really are), politicians step in and inevitably make it worse all while taking advantage of the situation.
There is an organization called The Order of The Engineer. It was created after a bridge collapsed while under construction. The reason it collapsed is because the original designs were modified because politicians wanted to make it a bit longer so that it would have been the longest span of that type at the time. Engineering students at a local college created the Order as a reminder that they have responsibilities.
http://www.order-of-the-engineer.org/