Is the solar cell industry more "bloated" than the oil industry? The US government gives somewhere between $15B and $35B in subsidies to the oil industry. That doesn't include indirect benefits like our half-trillion-dollar-per-year military guaranteeing shipping, keeping some countries oil off the market for years, and then paving the way for American oil companies to break into distorted markets. Is it any wonder that solar "can't compete" with fossil fuels?
And for people complaining about 'confiscatory' taxes: raise the highest tax rate to 80%, and listen to people making over $2M/yr scream. I could find tens of millions of Americans who would love to make $2M/yr, even if 80% of it will be taken in taxes. Does that mean that you would endorse an 80% income tax rate for the highest bracket? Should the upper-income people stop bitching about higher tax rates, just because I can find people who would love to trade places with them?
Some people simply don't want you to have a choice. They want your mode of transportation to be viewed as 'freakish' and 'aberrant'. They oppose infrastructure construction to support your chosen mode of transportation, or laws that would establish that you have the same rights on your vehicle that they have in theirs. We must be WRONG, and the public coffers that gush a never-ending torrent of your tax dollars to support their infrastructure must never be allowed to divert a trickle into supporting your infrastructure.
It's a reference to a widely known Sam Kinnison (sp?) comedy bit from the '80s about the famine in Ethiopia, something like: "Ya know what this is? It's SAND! Ya know what its gonna be in a thousand years? SAND! You want to help these people? Don't send them another scrap of food. Send them U-Hauls and luggage. We have deserts in America, too. We just don't live in them!"
Sorry for the CAPS and exclamation points, but they are mandatory with Sam Kinnison content.
The hateful and oppressive will always outnumber the pacifistic and enlightened.
Gene Roddenberry disagrees with your forward-looking statement. But then, his church is small and, like the Shakers, reproduces at a lesser rate than that population at large.
Now, if you want to talk about government provided healthcare, the active-duty military HC is actually repectable, but the VA HC is abysmal, Walter Reed is not an isolated incident,
You've got that 100% backwards, starting with the fact that Walter Reed is a DoD facility, not a VA facility. I have personal experience with Army hospitals (not great, not terrible), and three family members working at VA hospitals. The VA system is far superior to the DoD system.
Unless you give them detailed instructions on how to do it, they can't do it?
It's not quite so 'bad' as that. You don't necessarily have to tell them exactly how to implement a function, but certainly careful requirements and a design perhaps down to the function prototype level (and you really want to specify the data model, too).
I'm used to someone shouting, "build me a four-bedroom house", and off we go. These programmers really needed someone else to create blueprints.
If this were an 'ethnicist' statement, I would be talking about the genetic capabilities of people from a certain ethnicity. If I say that people who attended the American education system tend to suck at reading and writing Russian, is that an 'ethnicist' statement?
the only way it would be racist is referring to the human race as a whole
Umm, you obviously are unfamiliar with the word 'racist'. It is never defined, nor used, in such a way that statments about the human species are 'racist'. Our concept of 'races' is not scientific, and cannot be supported through DNA testing, but they are part of our language, culture, and laws (less so today).
I've never met one of these "programmers" (who was native-born American). Every shop I've worked at was full of people who created systems based on discussions and just a hint of requirements. Some were stellar; others weren't. But none of them 'hit a brick wall' if they weren't spoonfed system design and/or requirements. In fact none of these shops (including the very large corporation where I work now) has ever created a DoD-class requirements document, the kind of thorough document that you would need if you're going to outsource a fixed-bid job (on-shore or off-shore).
paint the Indians as a group of imbeciles who can't code their way out of a paper bag.
In my experience, Indian programmers tend to be excellent coders, who know the corner-cases of language specs and behavior better than most Americans, but they are very weak in the area of 'design'. I'm used to being tossed a paper napkin (if I'm lucky) and told to create a system. The Indian coders I've worked with fare poorly in that kind of situation, and need a fairly detailed design, that they can then implement quite well (assuming the design and requirements are not crap). This is not a racist statement, different cultures and different education systems, produce different strengths and weaknesses, go figure.
So where is the "Unions 101" video to which we can point this kid? Hopefully this would be an honest video that covers warts and all. For instance, how much do union dues typically cost? Is it a percentage of wage/salary? What percentage is typical in each industry?
Because there are only two types of candidate for a person: perfect or absolutely unacceptable. Even though I consider GW Bush the worst US president ever, if it were Bush v Hitler, I would cherish the opportunity to vote for Bush. If you can differentiate the lesser of two evils (and who the hell can't), then voting for the "least harm" option is not a wasted vote.
As Heinlein said, "The difference between bad and worse is infinitely more important than the difference between good and better."
Nuclear is also not solar. But ultimately, all energy (including geothermal and nuclear) is of stellar origin.
Nuclear material is of stellar origin, but not solar origin. "Sol" is the name for our star (only), so materials from other stars are not "Solar". And since main series stars can only create elements up to iron (and even then, only toward the end of their 'lives'), Sol has not produced Uranium.
Nearly every systematic public alignment winds up the same way (think religious denominations
Politics is a different animal, however. Extremists may choose to create a religious schism, but religious matters are supposed to pertain to "ultimate reality", not decided by popular vote. In democratic politics, power is decided by vote. An extremist can choose to "follow his principles" and vote for a party that does not have, nor is likely to ever have, a chance of winning. Or an extremist can choose to join one of the parties that does have a chance of winning, but doesn't quite conform to his principles, and then work to change that party from the inside. One of these is the path to self-righteousness; the other is the path to effectiveness (or at least a chance thereof).
Democrats will always just say "we're the only way to stop another Bush from getting elected." But twice it didn't work out that way so why should we keep voting for them?
You can put your nest-egg in the stock market, or you can use it to buy lottery tickets. There's no guarantee that you won't lose your shirt when you put your money in the stock market, but that's where the smart money is. Nader doesn't even have the 1-in-53-million chance that a Lotto ticket does.
Slashdot Mirror
Is the solar cell industry more "bloated" than the oil industry? The US government gives somewhere between $15B and $35B in subsidies to the oil industry. That doesn't include indirect benefits like our half-trillion-dollar-per-year military guaranteeing shipping, keeping some countries oil off the market for years, and then paving the way for American oil companies to break into distorted markets. Is it any wonder that solar "can't compete" with fossil fuels?
And for people complaining about 'confiscatory' taxes: raise the highest tax rate to 80%, and listen to people making over $2M/yr scream. I could find tens of millions of Americans who would love to make $2M/yr, even if 80% of it will be taken in taxes. Does that mean that you would endorse an 80% income tax rate for the highest bracket? Should the upper-income people stop bitching about higher tax rates, just because I can find people who would love to trade places with them?
I sue dead people?
Ouch! It almost sounds like there are no consequences for perpetrating a successful genocide.
Not so fast; Georgia (USA) was a British penal colony. The Australians didn't get all of the criminals.
Some people simply don't want you to have a choice. They want your mode of transportation to be viewed as 'freakish' and 'aberrant'. They oppose infrastructure construction to support your chosen mode of transportation, or laws that would establish that you have the same rights on your vehicle that they have in theirs. We must be WRONG, and the public coffers that gush a never-ending torrent of your tax dollars to support their infrastructure must never be allowed to divert a trickle into supporting your infrastructure.
Are you kidding? Power without control is the be-all and end-all (of the pilot, anyway).
Sorry for the CAPS and exclamation points, but they are mandatory with Sam Kinnison content.
We have deserts in America too. We just don't live in them!
If your girlfriend had even 14.69 minutes of time per day for logical thought, she wouldn't stay with an insensitive clod such as yourself.
Gene Roddenberry disagrees with your forward-looking statement. But then, his church is small and, like the Shakers, reproduces at a lesser rate than that population at large.
You've got that 100% backwards, starting with the fact that Walter Reed is a DoD facility, not a VA facility. I have personal experience with Army hospitals (not great, not terrible), and three family members working at VA hospitals. The VA system is far superior to the DoD system.
If wanting to have missles equals wanting to launch missles, then the USA has been wanting to launch a whole lot more missles, for a whole lot longer.
Log Cabin Libertarians?
It's not quite so 'bad' as that. You don't necessarily have to tell them exactly how to implement a function, but certainly careful requirements and a design perhaps down to the function prototype level (and you really want to specify the data model, too).
I'm used to someone shouting, "build me a four-bedroom house", and off we go. These programmers really needed someone else to create blueprints.
If this were an 'ethnicist' statement, I would be talking about the genetic capabilities of people from a certain ethnicity. If I say that people who attended the American education system tend to suck at reading and writing Russian, is that an 'ethnicist' statement? the only way it would be racist is referring to the human race as a whole
Umm, you obviously are unfamiliar with the word 'racist'. It is never defined, nor used, in such a way that statments about the human species are 'racist'. Our concept of 'races' is not scientific, and cannot be supported through DNA testing, but they are part of our language, culture, and laws (less so today).
I've never met one of these "programmers" (who was native-born American). Every shop I've worked at was full of people who created systems based on discussions and just a hint of requirements. Some were stellar; others weren't. But none of them 'hit a brick wall' if they weren't spoonfed system design and/or requirements. In fact none of these shops (including the very large corporation where I work now) has ever created a DoD-class requirements document, the kind of thorough document that you would need if you're going to outsource a fixed-bid job (on-shore or off-shore).
In my experience, Indian programmers tend to be excellent coders, who know the corner-cases of language specs and behavior better than most Americans, but they are very weak in the area of 'design'. I'm used to being tossed a paper napkin (if I'm lucky) and told to create a system. The Indian coders I've worked with fare poorly in that kind of situation, and need a fairly detailed design, that they can then implement quite well (assuming the design and requirements are not crap). This is not a racist statement, different cultures and different education systems, produce different strengths and weaknesses, go figure.
So where is the "Unions 101" video to which we can point this kid? Hopefully this would be an honest video that covers warts and all. For instance, how much do union dues typically cost? Is it a percentage of wage/salary? What percentage is typical in each industry?
Thanks, good to know. Well, technically, "useless trivia", but I love this geeky stuff.
Because then they would be Catholics, and the only thing they worse than Wiccans and Satanists, is Catholics.
As Heinlein said, "The difference between bad and worse is infinitely more important than the difference between good and better."
Nuclear material is of stellar origin, but not solar origin. "Sol" is the name for our star (only), so materials from other stars are not "Solar". And since main series stars can only create elements up to iron (and even then, only toward the end of their 'lives'), Sol has not produced Uranium.
Politics is a different animal, however. Extremists may choose to create a religious schism, but religious matters are supposed to pertain to "ultimate reality", not decided by popular vote. In democratic politics, power is decided by vote. An extremist can choose to "follow his principles" and vote for a party that does not have, nor is likely to ever have, a chance of winning. Or an extremist can choose to join one of the parties that does have a chance of winning, but doesn't quite conform to his principles, and then work to change that party from the inside. One of these is the path to self-righteousness; the other is the path to effectiveness (or at least a chance thereof).
You can put your nest-egg in the stock market, or you can use it to buy lottery tickets. There's no guarantee that you won't lose your shirt when you put your money in the stock market, but that's where the smart money is. Nader doesn't even have the 1-in-53-million chance that a Lotto ticket does.