Discarding scientific knowledge because of a book written originally for a nomadic group of shepherds is ridiculous.
Discarding the moral teachings that have been handed down over thousands of years is equally ridiculous.
There is one very, very, VERY important difference here. One of these is subject to review, testing and change when new facts emerge. The other is still stuck in 1000 BC.
Moral teachings that may have been appropriate for nomads in the middle east three millenia ago may or may not apply to modern day society. Some certainly still do (not killing sounds like a good general rule), some are utter bullshit in todays society - we've since abolished slavery, consider women equals, the role of parents isn't as important anymore, we're not all homophobes, magicians are entertainers not people we fear and want to put to death, and let's not even talk about the dietary guidelines.
People often point out the bible as a "source of moral teachings", but when you look at it, basically any of the actual rules that matter are independent of the bible and can be found in many other teachings as well, or are so obvious (again, killing) that it really doesn't put a good light on Moses people that it needed explicit mentioning.
No, friend, the bible is a horrible source of moral teachings. The good parts are massively drowned by crap, nonsense and dangerous psycho stuff. Only by ignoring the vast majority of it can you come to a worthy subset. And frankly, when you go to that effort, you can just as well write the same subset from scratch, and find much better reasons for it, in the same time.
Read your bible! You should kill only the men and the children, the women you are supposed to "take for yourself" (and if you think that meant anything but mass-rape, you're deluding yourself).
There is no such thing really as "other sites." Your browser loads bits and pieces from all over the place on practically every page you visit, such as ads, 'like' and 'share' buttons, etc.
There are millions of honest, real sites out there that don't work like that. I still remember browsers with a configuration option to not load images or other content from sites other than the one you were currently witnessing. For a while, that was an excellent ad-blocking mechanism.
It's a shame such interesting technical possibilities as a "site" being constructed from all over the web are used mainly for advertisement (and let's face it, Facebook is in the advertisement business, just like Google.
"Class warfare may make for really good politics but it makes for rotten economics."
He's damn right.
So let's stop the class warfare of the rich vs. the poor. You can do that without "socialism" - but you can't explain why the income of the wealthy 5% grows much stronger than the economy, while the income of the lower 50% grows much less than the economy. You can still be rich, I really don't mind. But you're taking more than your share and that is what pisses people off who are not into socialism at all.
tl;dr In Germany, "Pirate" is a meaningless, valueless (or bad) word when used in politics.
It's not the best word, but then again most of the other party names are just as meaningless. Whether or not you can give them meaning is what counts, and the Pirates have done a pretty good job at that, sticking with the pirate theme but adding word-plays to it that makes it political. For example, one of their slogans is "klarmachen zum Ãndern" (get ready for change), which is a word-play on "klarmachen zum entern" (ready to board enemy ship), but also clearly states that the Pirate Party wants to make many changes to the current political system.
And with this success, they will be all over the news, and after that it really doesn't matter anymore.
Compared to the industry-bought-and-paid-for other parties, yes they are extremists.
Then you remember that our current copyright laws would have been deemed insane by the inventors of the original system, in terms of length and controls and punishments.
Non-commercial copying of music was quite common when I was young. It was called bootlegging and many of those were on sale in record stores. Some bands like the Grateful Dead even supported the fans making them.
In Germany, until very recently, it was perfectly legal to create a low number (the courts generally said up to about 5) of copies for friends (it had to be friends, not strangers) non-commercially. This priviledge was called "Privatkopie" (private copy) and even the music industry acknowledges it, though grudgingly. For the past years, it's been under attack and there are now several restrictions, but it's still there.
And it's a sane thing to do, because otherwise you make every teenager who has ever created a Mix-CD for his first big love into a criminal. The courts realize that, the politicians don't.
So basically, what the PP want is much closer to current legal reality than what the major parties want, just in the opposite direction.
Not likely. The US has a two-party system and a majority or first-past-the-post voting system. Germany has 4-7 major parties (depending on how you count) and a proportional voting system.
This is a huge win for the german Pirate Party, as it puts it on the radar of all the mainstream press, even those that tried to ignore it so far.
By this time tomorrow, everyone in Germany will have heard about the Pirate Party. That one of the old, established parties has been decisively kicked from parliament (~2% of the votes, with 5% being required to enter parliament) only strengthens this perception, as the Pirate Party is called a "replacement" in some circles - the party kicked out is the Liberal party, which aside from being strictly capitalistic also used to ride on the tickets of things like freedom, liberty, individualism - stuff that is close to the Pirates as well.
Also, the PP has gotten through other important barriers straight away: They're officially a faction, with all the rights (an office in the parliament building, etc.) of the old parties. It will be receiving campaign money (Germany has a system where the parties receive tax money to cover their expenses during the campaigns, based on the number of votes they got, but you need a certain amount to receive any at all. The purpose of the system is to make sure not only the rich can afford campaigns, and parties don't need to rely on contributions from lobbyists/companies/etc. to campaign).
If you had actually read the statements of the german Pirate Party, you'd know their position is not one of "screw the creators, everything free for everyone", but quite a bit more thought-out. Go read it.
If you think that exploits don't exist until someone discloses the vulnerability, you live in lalaland. More often than not, when a 0day is published, a whole lot of bad guys already knew and actively exploited it for quite a while. In fact, if you read carefully, you'll notice that suspicious activity is sometimes what caused the investigation that lead to the discovery of the vulnerability.
We've had the "responsible disclosure" discussion, and although some of you may disagree, I'm not the only one who thinks it was a bust. Looke a lot like lazy companies wanted ahead notice, without living up to their share of the "responsible" part, namely actually fixing the bugs in a timely manner.
And then there was legal and other actions against people who told the manufacturers ahead of time that they were going to disclose a vulnerability at this conference or that publication.
If you can think of a better way to make sure people don't tell you in advance about what they found wrong with your crap, I'd like to hear it.:-)
Sorry, but while I would give most Free Software and small/hobby projects the benefit of the doubt and be kind to them, anything manufactured by a large company needs immediate full disclosure. Pain is the only way these MBAssholes learn. If you try to be "responsible" with them, they'll consider it an opportunity to fuck you over and still do nothing about the quality of their stuff.
Actually, why the Peter Principle is a good laugh and we all know we've felt that way at one time or the other, the main reason is that manager is one of those jobs that we put on people without anyone having, say, received the equivalent of a diploma. And no, the MBA doesn't count, check out its usual contents and then ask yourself how much will be useful for the day-to-day activities of that a middle manager.
It really is a lot like politics. You can study politics, but actually running a country is not something where there's a HOWTO anywhere. Since we don't have nobility (at least in power) anymore, we don't have people who were educated in how to run the place. So they make it up as they go, which I think pretty much sums up most current governments in the western world.
And the same is true for managers. Most people promoted to a management position have no clue about what it is they should be doing, so they're making it up as they go. That includes many CEOs. And yes, I have worked closely with several, I've not come to that conclusion from "down in the trenches".
That's great news if you're a CEO only concerned with the short-term profitability of your brief stint as CEO
Even if you are there for a long term, it's still a good strategy. Because "long term" these days means something like 10 years.
Companies that are run by their owners, instead of some managers, are usually build to last, because the guys want to live until retirement and then some off the profits of the company, and hopefully leave it for his kids afterwards.
And managers... well, I'll just point out that there are quite a few scientific studies that show that the average manager is not really any better at managing than any average joe picked off the street. There are - and that's important - exceptions. People who really shape a company or a division, department, team around them and without whom it wouldn't be the same. But when you have a random manager in front of you, your chances are much better than average that you could literally exchange him for anyone else in the company and the result would be the same. Interesting, isn't it? You'd think that there is something in their jobs that requires some kind of expertise. Turns out networking and politics may be the only areas. Really much like todays politicians - good at getting into power, getting elected, etc. - no idea what to do with that power once they got it, no vision, no plans no nothing. Again, there are exceptions. But if you can name half a dozen for your country, you're probably deluding yourself.
There was a TV show about a guy like that here in Germany a couple years ago.
I felt so horrible. This bullshit is told to the masses, some of them too young and many too stupid to realize what a load of nonsense they are being fed.
A responsible show would have done what the guy himself should have done years ago, before moving out into the wilderness: Run a double-blind test.
Here's what I would have done for the show (not a double-blind test, but good TV):
Bring him into a school to tell children about his "disease" (he really did that, and they filmed him). Instead of standing there passively and waiting for him to break down with his shivers and what not and whine that he needs to get back to his retreat, in one of the schools, turn the room into a faraday cage and ask all the kids to hand in their mobile phones, iPods, everything - but don't tell him. Let him run his hour of bullshit-telling, until he starts to whine about how it's all making him sick, all those phones in the room, and the outside... let him whine for a while. Then, when he is about to leave, tell him that for the past hour, the only electronic device that could even theoretically have any effect whatsoever on him was the TV camera.
We need that shit tested, and once debunked, debunk it publicly.
There was a time when media and politics liked science and supported it. When did that change? Why have they become enemies of progress? And yes, getting rid of superstitious nonsense is one part of progress.
Anyone surprised? Haven't you noticed how governments these days rely almost entirely on theft? Left and right, they sell off state (i.e. our(!)) property to generate some cash, they steal from the public domain, from past generations (who worked to create those state-owned properties you assholes sell off at firesale prices!) even from future generations (debt, environmental problems).
Greed means not being happy with what you have.
This is one step beyond greed. These guys can't even make do anymore with what they have.
If we get our arabic revolutions, I'll be there when they write the new constitution, and I'll lobby for putting an unchangeable clause in there that the government can not spend more money than it has. Emergency or not, you and I have to live our lives that way (you think you can borrow from the bank, yes? Wrong, you can't. They want collaterals. If you don't have any, you won't get credit).
Again, there is no clinging to a concept there, it is straight economics.
Fortunately, we're slowly coming to the realization (again), that economics is a part of society, not its king and pope. Economically, it makes sense to ruin the health of workers, the environment and anything that doesn't cut into your bottom line. As a society, we often disagree, which is why we have laws against some things.
Small and local likely means they are tethered to and balanced by something larger and traditional...
That would be the government, in this case. Many years ago, turning all the juicy, local monopoly companies that we had built up into private companies was all the hype in Germany. Turned out that it didn't take long for the larger power companies to snatch up the local power companies (many german states had created their own) at firesale prices. For the past few years, especially the large cities have realized it was a very stupid thing to do to sell the companies that generated positive cash flow for the government budget. Buying them back would have been prohibitively expensive (now that you had to pay market prices for what you sold considerably below value), so some of them have turned to re-creating their local power companies. Most of the cases I've heard about are a big success, people sign up in droves because they're tired about what is essentially our equivalent to the Baby Bells, just in other sectors.
the practical question of where the hell Germany is going to get all the coal. Are there any significant deposits left inside the country after over 100 years of exploitation, or is it all going to be imported?
Germany is keeping up its coal mines (actually, mostly surface mining) for strategical reasons only. Most of our local coal is low quality and way more expensive than importing it. But there are many jobs there, and there's the aspect of strategic independence, i.e. keeping things running at least so much that if the shit hits the fan you can turn it up instead of having to rebuild an industry.
wind and solar plants cannot support heavy industry or large population centers at this time
you've been sold a bridge. The bridge is "there is fossil, nuclear, wind and solar".
But that's not true. And that breaks your entire argument apart. Because I live in Germanys 2nd largest city, and we have a local power company offering a 100% coal-and-nuclear-free product. Now you can argue all you want - if the reality simply doesn't conform to your musings, I think reality wins.
I'll be the first to agree that we aren't there yet - if we were to turn off the nuclear plants today, big parts of the country would go dark. But a few close looks is enough to realize that the fear-mongering of some people is bullshit. After Fukushima, seven of Germanys 19 nuclear power stations went temporarily offline for checks. And nothing whatsoever happened.
The "it's not always sunny/windy" argument is always brought, and it's always easily debunked by actual numbers. Look them up. Also, it's funny how people like you don't realize how your arguments are disconnected in your head, but connect nicely in reality - when it is overcast, it is usually windy, did you ever notice that? And that you can statistically predict with pretty good accuracy how much wind and sun you get in a particular area.
Your 1-2 solution is nonsense on both parts. Germany is a bit bigger than a towel. Power can be transported from where it is generated to where it is used. And then there are the other sources, like hydro, geothermal, etc.
All the enemies of renewable energy have been running off the same lines for many years, like how power generation would fluctuate so widely, etc. - but we have statistics on that power generation, and it doesn't look like a heartbeat. There are changes, by weather, time-of-day, etc. - but they are far less dramatic, and are already being taken care off today. Drive through northern Germany on a windy day and you'll notice quite a few wind turbines standing still. Those aren't in maintainance, they have been shut down because they're generating too much power...
See my other reply - it's simply not true, and many of the serious discussions I've followed don't just substitute coal with gas. There are more intelligent solutions.
I can understand the energy companies not wanting to let their investments go to waste. After all, we're talking billions of Euros here. I'd totally hate anyone telling me to shut that down as well.
But that doesn't mean it may not be the right thing to do.
At the present time, the answer would be very f-ing expensively.
Not true. I am with a small, local power company that generates 100% of the energy it sells without coal and nuclear. The price is slightly, but not all that much higher than the market average.
I live in Germany, and I've been following this closely.
First of all, a former government had already decided on a stop on nuclear power, at a much earlier date. The current government reversed that as one of the first major things. It took Fukushima and a huge public outcry for them to reconsider.
So that's the first scam - those who are now hailed as the ones leading Germany into a brighter, greener future had to be forced to walk that path.
The main replacements for the nuclear plants will be coal plants. Which, as everyone familiar with the subject, put out not only more CO2, but also more radiation. Their advantage is that they are less likely to fail catastrophically with nuclear fallout. That's the second scam - energy generation in Germany will actually be a lot less clean and less green.
The choice to go with coal is mostly due to the responsible people clinging to the "baseline" concept, which says you need a certain amount of power stations that output the same amount of electrical energy no matter what the time of day, climate, temperature, season, etc. That's the third scam, because it is an outdated model. With 21st century technology and systems, the variability of alternative energy sources can be compensated over types or distances and easily create a reliable baseline equivalent. However, those are distributed, decentralized systems, and the technology and business models of big power corporations are designed for large, centralized power stations. They need time to change (if they even want to), and the government has been nice to give them that time. Did anyone yell "campaign contributions"? Please... you have such a bad image of politicians...
Viewed as a whole, the entire thing is a game to stay in power and to find a middle way to please both the corporate sponsors and the voting public. But it has no vision, no conviction and no drive. With the next election, or if public opinion changes, everything will be up for grabs again.
When you read something about politics that mentions a far-future date, always count how many elections are inbetween now and then...
Slashdot Mirror
Discarding scientific knowledge because of a book written originally for a nomadic group of shepherds is ridiculous.
Discarding the moral teachings that have been handed down over thousands of years is equally ridiculous.
There is one very, very, VERY important difference here. One of these is subject to review, testing and change when new facts emerge. The other is still stuck in 1000 BC.
Moral teachings that may have been appropriate for nomads in the middle east three millenia ago may or may not apply to modern day society. Some certainly still do (not killing sounds like a good general rule), some are utter bullshit in todays society - we've since abolished slavery, consider women equals, the role of parents isn't as important anymore, we're not all homophobes, magicians are entertainers not people we fear and want to put to death, and let's not even talk about the dietary guidelines.
People often point out the bible as a "source of moral teachings", but when you look at it, basically any of the actual rules that matter are independent of the bible and can be found in many other teachings as well, or are so obvious (again, killing) that it really doesn't put a good light on Moses people that it needed explicit mentioning.
No, friend, the bible is a horrible source of moral teachings. The good parts are massively drowned by crap, nonsense and dangerous psycho stuff. Only by ignoring the vast majority of it can you come to a worthy subset. And frankly, when you go to that effort, you can just as well write the same subset from scratch, and find much better reasons for it, in the same time.
Read your bible! You should kill only the men and the children, the women you are supposed to "take for yourself" (and if you think that meant anything but mass-rape, you're deluding yourself).
There is no such thing really as "other sites." Your browser loads bits and pieces from all over the place on practically every page you visit, such as ads, 'like' and 'share' buttons, etc.
There are millions of honest, real sites out there that don't work like that. I still remember browsers with a configuration option to not load images or other content from sites other than the one you were currently witnessing. For a while, that was an excellent ad-blocking mechanism.
It's a shame such interesting technical possibilities as a "site" being constructed from all over the web are used mainly for advertisement (and let's face it, Facebook is in the advertisement business, just like Google.
A german magazine has developed an answer to that about a month ago:
http://www.heise.de/extras/socialshareprivacy/
Absolutely worth a read, and if you use a "like" button on your page and you're a geek, you should definitely use this.
I found the infographics that illustrates the split nicely:
https://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/09/04/opinion/04reich-graphic.html
"Class warfare may make for really good politics but it makes for rotten economics."
He's damn right.
So let's stop the class warfare of the rich vs. the poor. You can do that without "socialism" - but you can't explain why the income of the wealthy 5% grows much stronger than the economy, while the income of the lower 50% grows much less than the economy. You can still be rich, I really don't mind. But you're taking more than your share and that is what pisses people off who are not into socialism at all.
tl;dr In Germany, "Pirate" is a meaningless, valueless (or bad) word when used in politics.
It's not the best word, but then again most of the other party names are just as meaningless. Whether or not you can give them meaning is what counts, and the Pirates have done a pretty good job at that, sticking with the pirate theme but adding word-plays to it that makes it political.
For example, one of their slogans is "klarmachen zum Ãndern" (get ready for change), which is a word-play on "klarmachen zum entern" (ready to board enemy ship), but also clearly states that the Pirate Party wants to make many changes to the current political system.
And with this success, they will be all over the news, and after that it really doesn't matter anymore.
Compared to the industry-bought-and-paid-for other parties, yes they are extremists.
Then you remember that our current copyright laws would have been deemed insane by the inventors of the original system, in terms of length and controls and punishments.
Non-commercial copying of music was quite common when I was young. It was called bootlegging and many of those were on sale in record stores. Some bands like the Grateful Dead even supported the fans making them.
In Germany, until very recently, it was perfectly legal to create a low number (the courts generally said up to about 5) of copies for friends (it had to be friends, not strangers) non-commercially. This priviledge was called "Privatkopie" (private copy) and even the music industry acknowledges it, though grudgingly. For the past years, it's been under attack and there are now several restrictions, but it's still there.
And it's a sane thing to do, because otherwise you make every teenager who has ever created a Mix-CD for his first big love into a criminal. The courts realize that, the politicians don't.
So basically, what the PP want is much closer to current legal reality than what the major parties want, just in the opposite direction.
Not likely. The US has a two-party system and a majority or first-past-the-post voting system. Germany has 4-7 major parties (depending on how you count) and a proportional voting system.
This is a huge win for the german Pirate Party, as it puts it on the radar of all the mainstream press, even those that tried to ignore it so far.
By this time tomorrow, everyone in Germany will have heard about the Pirate Party. That one of the old, established parties has been decisively kicked from parliament (~2% of the votes, with 5% being required to enter parliament) only strengthens this perception, as the Pirate Party is called a "replacement" in some circles - the party kicked out is the Liberal party, which aside from being strictly capitalistic also used to ride on the tickets of things like freedom, liberty, individualism - stuff that is close to the Pirates as well.
Also, the PP has gotten through other important barriers straight away: They're officially a faction, with all the rights (an office in the parliament building, etc.) of the old parties. It will be receiving campaign money (Germany has a system where the parties receive tax money to cover their expenses during the campaigns, based on the number of votes they got, but you need a certain amount to receive any at all. The purpose of the system is to make sure not only the rich can afford campaigns, and parties don't need to rely on contributions from lobbyists/companies/etc. to campaign).
If you had actually read the statements of the german Pirate Party, you'd know their position is not one of "screw the creators, everything free for everyone", but quite a bit more thought-out. Go read it.
Oh yes, I forgot:
If you think that exploits don't exist until someone discloses the vulnerability, you live in lalaland. More often than not, when a 0day is published, a whole lot of bad guys already knew and actively exploited it for quite a while. In fact, if you read carefully, you'll notice that suspicious activity is sometimes what caused the investigation that lead to the discovery of the vulnerability.
Of course he is.
We've had the "responsible disclosure" discussion, and although some of you may disagree, I'm not the only one who thinks it was a bust. Looke a lot like lazy companies wanted ahead notice, without living up to their share of the "responsible" part, namely actually fixing the bugs in a timely manner.
And then there was legal and other actions against people who told the manufacturers ahead of time that they were going to disclose a vulnerability at this conference or that publication.
If you can think of a better way to make sure people don't tell you in advance about what they found wrong with your crap, I'd like to hear it. :-)
Sorry, but while I would give most Free Software and small/hobby projects the benefit of the doubt and be kind to them, anything manufactured by a large company needs immediate full disclosure. Pain is the only way these MBAssholes learn. If you try to be "responsible" with them, they'll consider it an opportunity to fuck you over and still do nothing about the quality of their stuff.
Actually, why the Peter Principle is a good laugh and we all know we've felt that way at one time or the other, the main reason is that manager is one of those jobs that we put on people without anyone having, say, received the equivalent of a diploma. And no, the MBA doesn't count, check out its usual contents and then ask yourself how much will be useful for the day-to-day activities of that a middle manager.
It really is a lot like politics. You can study politics, but actually running a country is not something where there's a HOWTO anywhere. Since we don't have nobility (at least in power) anymore, we don't have people who were educated in how to run the place. So they make it up as they go, which I think pretty much sums up most current governments in the western world.
And the same is true for managers. Most people promoted to a management position have no clue about what it is they should be doing, so they're making it up as they go. That includes many CEOs. And yes, I have worked closely with several, I've not come to that conclusion from "down in the trenches".
That's great news if you're a CEO only concerned with the short-term profitability of your brief stint as CEO
Even if you are there for a long term, it's still a good strategy. Because "long term" these days means something like 10 years.
Companies that are run by their owners, instead of some managers, are usually build to last, because the guys want to live until retirement and then some off the profits of the company, and hopefully leave it for his kids afterwards.
And managers... well, I'll just point out that there are quite a few scientific studies that show that the average manager is not really any better at managing than any average joe picked off the street. There are - and that's important - exceptions. People who really shape a company or a division, department, team around them and without whom it wouldn't be the same.
But when you have a random manager in front of you, your chances are much better than average that you could literally exchange him for anyone else in the company and the result would be the same. Interesting, isn't it? You'd think that there is something in their jobs that requires some kind of expertise. Turns out networking and politics may be the only areas. Really much like todays politicians - good at getting into power, getting elected, etc. - no idea what to do with that power once they got it, no vision, no plans no nothing. Again, there are exceptions. But if you can name half a dozen for your country, you're probably deluding yourself.
There was a TV show about a guy like that here in Germany a couple years ago.
I felt so horrible. This bullshit is told to the masses, some of them too young and many too stupid to realize what a load of nonsense they are being fed.
A responsible show would have done what the guy himself should have done years ago, before moving out into the wilderness: Run a double-blind test.
Here's what I would have done for the show (not a double-blind test, but good TV):
Bring him into a school to tell children about his "disease" (he really did that, and they filmed him). Instead of standing there passively and waiting for him to break down with his shivers and what not and whine that he needs to get back to his retreat, in one of the schools, turn the room into a faraday cage and ask all the kids to hand in their mobile phones, iPods, everything - but don't tell him. Let him run his hour of bullshit-telling, until he starts to whine about how it's all making him sick, all those phones in the room, and the outside... let him whine for a while. Then, when he is about to leave, tell him that for the past hour, the only electronic device that could even theoretically have any effect whatsoever on him was the TV camera.
We need that shit tested, and once debunked, debunk it publicly.
There was a time when media and politics liked science and supported it. When did that change? Why have they become enemies of progress? And yes, getting rid of superstitious nonsense is one part of progress.
Because the music industry has learnt that the way to get their desired "forever minus one day" is step-by-step.
Rest assured, before those additional 20 years are up, there will be another extension.
Yes, it is theft.
Anyone surprised? Haven't you noticed how governments these days rely almost entirely on theft? Left and right, they sell off state (i.e. our(!)) property to generate some cash, they steal from the public domain, from past generations (who worked to create those state-owned properties you assholes sell off at firesale prices!) even from future generations (debt, environmental problems).
Greed means not being happy with what you have.
This is one step beyond greed. These guys can't even make do anymore with what they have.
If we get our arabic revolutions, I'll be there when they write the new constitution, and I'll lobby for putting an unchangeable clause in there that the government can not spend more money than it has. Emergency or not, you and I have to live our lives that way (you think you can borrow from the bank, yes? Wrong, you can't. They want collaterals. If you don't have any, you won't get credit).
The concept is "baseload"
Thanks, yes that's what I meant.
Again, there is no clinging to a concept there, it is straight economics.
Fortunately, we're slowly coming to the realization (again), that economics is a part of society, not its king and pope.
Economically, it makes sense to ruin the health of workers, the environment and anything that doesn't cut into your bottom line. As a society, we often disagree, which is why we have laws against some things.
Small and local likely means they are tethered to and balanced by something larger and traditional...
That would be the government, in this case. Many years ago, turning all the juicy, local monopoly companies that we had built up into private companies was all the hype in Germany. Turned out that it didn't take long for the larger power companies to snatch up the local power companies (many german states had created their own) at firesale prices. For the past few years, especially the large cities have realized it was a very stupid thing to do to sell the companies that generated positive cash flow for the government budget. Buying them back would have been prohibitively expensive (now that you had to pay market prices for what you sold considerably below value), so some of them have turned to re-creating their local power companies. Most of the cases I've heard about are a big success, people sign up in droves because they're tired about what is essentially our equivalent to the Baby Bells, just in other sectors.
the practical question of where the hell Germany is going to get all the coal. Are there any significant deposits left inside the country after over 100 years of exploitation, or is it all going to be imported?
Germany is keeping up its coal mines (actually, mostly surface mining) for strategical reasons only. Most of our local coal is low quality and way more expensive than importing it. But there are many jobs there, and there's the aspect of strategic independence, i.e. keeping things running at least so much that if the shit hits the fan you can turn it up instead of having to rebuild an industry.
wind and solar plants cannot support heavy industry or large population centers at this time
you've been sold a bridge. The bridge is "there is fossil, nuclear, wind and solar".
But that's not true. And that breaks your entire argument apart. Because I live in Germanys 2nd largest city, and we have a local power company offering a 100% coal-and-nuclear-free product. Now you can argue all you want - if the reality simply doesn't conform to your musings, I think reality wins.
I'll be the first to agree that we aren't there yet - if we were to turn off the nuclear plants today, big parts of the country would go dark.
But a few close looks is enough to realize that the fear-mongering of some people is bullshit. After Fukushima, seven of Germanys 19 nuclear power stations went temporarily offline for checks. And nothing whatsoever happened.
The "it's not always sunny/windy" argument is always brought, and it's always easily debunked by actual numbers. Look them up. Also, it's funny how people like you don't realize how your arguments are disconnected in your head, but connect nicely in reality - when it is overcast, it is usually windy, did you ever notice that? And that you can statistically predict with pretty good accuracy how much wind and sun you get in a particular area.
Your 1-2 solution is nonsense on both parts. Germany is a bit bigger than a towel. Power can be transported from where it is generated to where it is used. And then there are the other sources, like hydro, geothermal, etc.
All the enemies of renewable energy have been running off the same lines for many years, like how power generation would fluctuate so widely, etc. - but we have statistics on that power generation, and it doesn't look like a heartbeat. There are changes, by weather, time-of-day, etc. - but they are far less dramatic, and are already being taken care off today. Drive through northern Germany on a windy day and you'll notice quite a few wind turbines standing still. Those aren't in maintainance, they have been shut down because they're generating too much power...
Perhaps Cleverbot would consent to taking part in a Slashdot interview, to be extra-convincing.
For it. Bring it on. This could really be interesting.
See my other reply - it's simply not true, and many of the serious discussions I've followed don't just substitute coal with gas. There are more intelligent solutions.
I can understand the energy companies not wanting to let their investments go to waste. After all, we're talking billions of Euros here. I'd totally hate anyone telling me to shut that down as well.
But that doesn't mean it may not be the right thing to do.
At the present time, the answer would be very f-ing expensively.
Not true. I am with a small, local power company that generates 100% of the energy it sells without coal and nuclear. The price is slightly, but not all that much higher than the market average.
So it can be done.
I live in Germany, and I've been following this closely.
First of all, a former government had already decided on a stop on nuclear power, at a much earlier date. The current government reversed that as one of the first major things. It took Fukushima and a huge public outcry for them to reconsider.
So that's the first scam - those who are now hailed as the ones leading Germany into a brighter, greener future had to be forced to walk that path.
The main replacements for the nuclear plants will be coal plants. Which, as everyone familiar with the subject, put out not only more CO2, but also more radiation. Their advantage is that they are less likely to fail catastrophically with nuclear fallout. That's the second scam - energy generation in Germany will actually be a lot less clean and less green.
The choice to go with coal is mostly due to the responsible people clinging to the "baseline" concept, which says you need a certain amount of power stations that output the same amount of electrical energy no matter what the time of day, climate, temperature, season, etc.
That's the third scam, because it is an outdated model. With 21st century technology and systems, the variability of alternative energy sources can be compensated over types or distances and easily create a reliable baseline equivalent. However, those are distributed, decentralized systems, and the technology and business models of big power corporations are designed for large, centralized power stations. They need time to change (if they even want to), and the government has been nice to give them that time. Did anyone yell "campaign contributions"? Please... you have such a bad image of politicians...
Viewed as a whole, the entire thing is a game to stay in power and to find a middle way to please both the corporate sponsors and the voting public. But it has no vision, no conviction and no drive. With the next election, or if public opinion changes, everything will be up for grabs again.
When you read something about politics that mentions a far-future date, always count how many elections are inbetween now and then...