If you're thinking of a 4 year computer science or software engineering degree as job training, you're doing it wrong.
Then my CS advisors were lying to me even more than I thought? They are selling this as job training. The people that hire for software development look for computer science graduates. If it's not job training then what is it?
If you already have the foundational knowledge, you'd get far more bang for your buck getting a lesser degree in whatever applied field you want to work in and cutting your chops with internships and securing an entry level job.
If a CS degree leads to even an "entry level job" then it sounds like job training to me.
In the engineering school the students are told from the start that they are expected to be able to build things when they finish the program. That's what engineering is. In computer science it is what it is, a science. Recent trends have been to teach students how to develop software but that's not were it got started. People that graduated in computer science were expected to do science, not engineering. This shows in the course requirements. Any ABET accredited engineering program will have an "engineering" course in every year of the program. First year will have an intro to engineering class. The last year will have a design project. The years in between will have at least one class where students will do a group design project. In computer science, unless they are also accredited as an engineering program, will normally have just one required class dedicated to a group development project. Students can typically opt to take more coursework dedicated to engineering, but that's not required.
I'm not arguing that you cannot learn how to right good code in computer science, only that you are not forced to do so. In engineering there is a requirement that people do "engineering", or as close as they can in a university environment. So when people leave an engineering program they know how to do engineering, and the hiring managers have picked up on this fact. This shows in the conversations I've had with hiring managers, statements made by university staff, and others.
This is why the universities I've gone too, and others I've investigated while looking for a school to attend, will typically offer a software engineering program, track, certificate, or whatever. Where I go to school the software engineering "track" or "focus area" is open to students in engineering and computer science. People can study electrical/computer engineering and not be a "software engineer", just as computer science students can graduate with only taking the one required "software development" course. The CS departments nationwide have picked up on that there is a need for software engineering coursework in college and have begun to offer that to their students. If people want to study the science that is computer science then they can do that, and go on to teach, research, or learn the engineering process on the job as a software developer.
This also applies to other forms of engineering. I remember having a chat with an experienced engineer, days or weeks before his retirement, and made some joke about having learned something in "engineering school". He told me that he didn't have an engineering degree, he studied physics in college. He apparently learned on the job well since he retired from a job titled "senior engineer".
E-mail used to be very useful until people started to abuse it with unsolicited advertising. Now we see this with push notifications. If I get a weather app to give me notifications on severe weather in the area then I expect only that kind of notification. When it starts to give me notifications on sales for umbrellas and boots then the notifications become an annoyance instead of a useful tool.
Turning off notifications doesn't help, because that means stopping the notifications I don't want as well as the ones I do. I've already seen a lot of posts mocking this since disabling them is a simple solution but it's not. I want control of what notifications I get and if the people making the push notifications cannot be honest about the notifications then they become meaningless.
I want notifications for things *I* see as important. If *I* can't get that control then *YOU* (the person offering the notifications) can't use them at all. Not only do *YOU* not get to use them but you create the expectation that they will be abused by other people. Since *YOU* can't seem to control yourself then nobody gets to use it.
It seems push notifications got killed even before people made them useful. Good job people, you threw the baby out with the bathwater, and then ran the baby over with a lawnmower.
While your experience is interesting, I don't think you can conclude CE or CSE is what people should go for. I got my BS in Computer Science and got a great job offer before I even graduated. I have friends who went for CE and we were in the exact same classes. In the end, they had slightly more trouble finding jobs they liked than me, but it wasn't a huge difference.
My complaint isn't that of not finding a job, it's not finding an education. I knew I was marginal in programming in a modern language because my focus area of study was in hardware, not software, as an electrical/computer engineering student. I learned a lot of logic and circuits but not much about things like object oriented programming or memory management. I knew I have to do some learning on the job if I found work doing software, as opposed to firmware, but employers were not terribly willing to invest the time in me to learn on the job when there are others just graduating that learned the latest and greatest shiny new programming language as part of their object oriented programming class.
There's an endless ocean of tutorials, sample code, documentation and help forums that's just a Google search away. If you're passionate about software, CS classes, or a lack thereof, will not stop you. With enough practice, coding will eventually become second nature. For me at least, writing code can be easier than stringing together proper English sentences.
That would teach me how to code but, as others have pointed out, this is quite meaningless to many employers. Unless there is a piece of paper from a respected entity they cannot be sure you actually learned something as opposed to just sat in your basement and played video games. Going to college for me fills a whole in my resume that Googling away for code cannot do.
The problems in the CS department at my school, and it seems at many other schools, is partly a problem of their own creation. They know people want to learn to code so they recruit them to their school to get butts in seats, and the money that comes with them. These recruiters are not just competing with other universities but also other departments within their own university. The advisors I spoke with at the CS department could have told me the truth that the software engineering program they had was shared with the CS department and the ECE department, but they lied and said that if I wanted in the software engineering program I'd have to talk to them.
The advisors could have been truthful as well and told me that their advising staff was overwhelmed and suggested I speak with advisors in the engineering department. Or perhaps speak with the university advisors. (My school has a pool of advisors open to undeclared and nontraditional students under what they call the "university college" which is perhaps uncommon among other universities.) They knew I have an engineering background, they knew I am a nontraditional student, but they wanted me in their program very very badly even though there really wasn't room for me and even though I'd likely be more "comfortable" in another program.
My first year was a mix of courses too advanced for me and too simple for me, because the advisors don't know their own program, don't know engineering, and don't have the time to look over anyone's course plan in any detail. My first year was a bomb. After that I transferred to the university college, where they have the time to actually talk to the students. I got into some engineering classes, where the instructors actually know how to teach people to write good code.
I also found out that I could have gone to the business college to address some of my problems in finding classes that weren't chronically packed, overwhelmed advisors, and so on. This seems to be an industry wide problem, as the article under discussion here verifies, and so I suggest going outside of CS if one can to get a good education. Engineering is a great place to lea
I've heard people give similar recommendations but I just think that one should choose management or programming. I've looked into this and taking enough coursework to get a minor in management can mean adding another year to a computer science degree. Getting a bachelor in business administration (or whatever your school calls it) and adding a computer science minor would also likely add a year. There's not a lot of crossover in the two programs where one can apply coursework in one as electives in the other. Getting a degree in something like "business information systems" (or whatever your school calls it) has enough of both that one might be able to find work as a manager in a software development firm, or writing some high level code for software used internally in a large business, but it won't prepare one as both a "general purpose" manager and programmer.
For a student to do as you propose they must plan for five years of university, or have planned ahead in high school to get as much math, foreign language, and other coursework out of the way as possible so as to graduate in four years.
I've seen a trend for universities to offer a "degree in three" where students that took high level coursework in high school, or a year at a community college, to get their degree in three years. Add on what it takes to get your minor and then you are at the traditional four years in university. But then you are so close to getting a double major at that point that just another two classes and you'd be better off with getting that double major.
I will agree that the CS department has competing interests but not that a more "well rounded" education is needed.
The schools I've attended, and this seems to be the norm for other schools I've looked at, is that every program across the university must meet the same requirements on rhetoric, literature, speaking, history, and other arts. The big difference, and perhaps only difference, is that engineering does not have a foreign language requirement where liberal arts degrees (like computer science) does.
Depending on which program you choose and how much foreign language you had in high school (or community college, or perhaps other sources) the students had to have 12 to 21 hours of non-major work in being "well rounded" out of 130 hours to graduate. The courses people could choose from seemed to be pretty broad. But, again, everyone had to have coursework on reading, writing, and speaking. So, I'm not sure what kind of education you believe these people lacked. They may have done poorly in these classes but I'm quite certain they were taken.
The competing interests lie in that some students want a traditional computer science instruction for matters of instruction, research, and advanced programming, where others want to learn how to learn the skills to become a professional software developer. This lead to the software engineering "track" that the CS and engineering schools developed at the university I attend. It also lead to software engineering becoming a recognized degree granting discipline at many universities.
It seems many engineering schools now offer accredited "computer science" programs. These are programs for the kind of student that wants to learn how to write good code. They might not be called "computer science" programs but they meet the same industry recognized standards that computer science programs from liberal arts schools do. Where I go to school they just started offering such a program, and had it existed two years ago I'd be in it right now, or just as likely out of it since I had enough prerequisites and such that I'd have graduated by now.
In the end it is the student's burden to choose courses that will teach them the skills they need to write good code, as well as be a "well rounded" adult. It's just been in my personal experience, and the experience of many others I have spoken with, that a liberal arts computer science program rarely produces a skilled software engineer. A lot of this lies with the universities that have overburdened inexperienced advisors, which seems to be a problem that is wide spread. A lot lies with the schools that emphasize being "well rounded" over being skilled in their major. But it also lies with students with dollar signs in their eyes and focus on the degree as a ticket to wealth instead of as an opportunity to learn to be good at their job.
I'm now in college for my second time now, first I studied electrical and computer engineering and now software engineering (under a CS major). Due to the large crossover between computer science and engineering I'll get to talking to some computer science students. I've also got to talk to some job recruiters in some rare moments of honesty.
One thing is that many computer science majors want to go on to write code. There's nothing wrong with that, but then they have to take the courses that teach software development. Not many do, because those courses are hard and/or not very interesting. Seems to me that either these people were lied to by their CS advisors and recruiters (as I was) or they didn't have the grades to get into the engineering programs.
I've got to talk to some hiring managers and the like and I've heard them say that they prefer engineering students to computer science. This is because engineering has a more rigorous math requirements, students are required to learn the engineering process, and anyone able to get their engineering degree can pick up a new programming language quickly. These companies are willing to send a new hire to a week long "boot camp" to learn whatever language they are using but not so willing to have to teach someone that learned every language under the sun in their CS coursework how to write good code.
Now there seems to be something of a glut of software developers, at least where I live. I'll hear hiring recruiters say I need more programming experience. I happened into work doing firmware development but when layoffs happened I had trouble finding work again, so I used my GI Bill to go back to school. Having not learned my lesson yet from my experience studying engineering I went to a local university to look at their CS program that just started offering a software engineering "track".
The advisors told me that the CS department was the "lead department" on this software engineering program, that was the first lie, and that the advisors would be helpful in choosing the classes I'd need to complete this "track", the second lie I was told. The advisors are worthless because at any university where CS is in the liberal arts college their goal is the "well rounded adult". They know how to get students to take their foreign language, history, and so forth. What they don't know is how to advise students on what courses to take on actually learning how to write code.
I wasted a year in this stupid CS program because the advisors didn't know what courses actually applied to their own course prerequisites. They pushed me to take courses from the CS department instead of equivalent courses in the engineering school. Then there's the instructors in the CS department that simply cannot help but work political commentary into their lesson plans. A classic CS algorithm called the "stable marriage problem" included a disclaimer from the instructor that it was from a time when same sex marriage was illegal. It's not that 99.9% of the population would rather marry someone of the opposite sex, it's that it was illegal that was the problem, right?
My advice to people that want to get into software development is to get a major in software engineering from a school that has an actual engineering program. Lacking that go major in some engineering discipline and get a CS minor or just take as much programming coursework you can. I found out a year too late that I could have gone to the engineering college, talked to advisors that know what software engineering actually means, and not taken so much bullshit from the liberal arts instructors. I got screwed because now I've got some bad grades in courses that I was not prepared for, and didn't even apply to my CS major, and I can't just switch to engineering any more. Had I gone to the engineering school for their advice on the software engineering program earlier, or talked to the engineering advisors first, I might not be in this predicament. I should have graduated by now but instead I'm looking to take yet another year of classes before I get the education I wanted and that piece of paper that employers want to see.
What keeps an unattended car from getting stripped to the frame? You might have GPS on the car, so you know the locations, you might have cameras, but they rarely provide a clear enough picture to catch anyone. Even so, this is all to respond after the fact, the car can still be stripped before law enforcement arrives. In cases when people are not at risk the police put them at a low priority, as they should.
Not that many people care about getting caught, prisons are so overflowing in many parts of the nation that unless someone is seen slicing off someone's head on a live stream the "justice" system won't give them more than a few months it prison.
Then don't send a car to "bad" neighborhoods? Perhaps the car should keep moving unless picking up a person or dropping them off? We've seen in the news of criminals ripping off delivery and cargo trucks at stop lights, even in supposedly "good" neighborhoods. If a driverless Lyft car is stopped at a light then it's a target for theft.
Perhaps Lyft has this figured out, even if it means allowing some cars to get stripped and claiming insurance to save on having to pay drivers. Perhaps I overestimate the cases of this happening. If low skill people have trouble finding jobs then they turn to crime. Lyft might automate the driving but they might still need a person in the car to fend off thieves, thereby solving the unemployment problem.
I can imagine a day where Lyft will be advertising jobs for people with licenses to carry weapons, instead of licenses to drive.
We've all heard the joke, and it ends with, "but she has a great personality!"
Lots of ignorant, not-so-good-looking, and generally not talented people can find work in the service industry. People don't like talking to computers on the phone, even if the person on the other end is just punching the equivalent of a touch tome pad for them. I've worked at such places and the buildings that house such people are HUGE. I've often wondered why some of the jobs they had there weren't more automated. Lots of stuff was done on paper, and there were people where their job was to move paper from one end of the building to the other.
The reason is that it's cheaper to hire a handful of paper pushers than to hire someone to develop and maintain an automated system, and still have a paper pusher to handle the odd cases that fall outside of the automated system. We might have robots that can flip burgers, but none of them can serve them with a smile. If you have "a face fit for radio" then a happy voice on the phone can make for a lot of happy customers.
As more things get automated the price of labor goes down for the less talented. These people will have to learn some talents or learn to be nice. There will always be those that can't do either, and they tend to become criminals or politicians, but I repeat myself.
One word, liability. That is enough right there but interaction with people plays into it too.
For a car the cost of a driver is to hire one person for what? One passenger? Maybe four or ten? With a train you have hundreds of people to spread the cost of the driver and that person has the ability to do much more than any computer managing the train.
For example, a minor mechanical failure could render a train or car powerless to move. Maybe it's just a screw loose, maybe there is a flat tire, or whatever. A driver can perform on the spot maintenance that would require rolling out a repair truck, just to tighten a screw or change a flat.
Imagine a greater failure, power loss, an accident of some kind, a person having a heart attack. A driver can recognize such things with much greater speed and accuracy than any computer, and actually be able to do something about it.
A driver on the train isn't there just to manage the train, that person also manages the people. For a large portion of the time that driver might be able to get away with just pushing buttons George Jetson style but I can imagine as automation becomes more prevalent the drivers will have to become more capable to compete. They won't be just drivers, they will have to become reasonably competent paramedics, firefighters, security guards, mechanics, and perhaps more.
I've noticed a change in the skill set of people in the service industry. They don't just take your money as you pay your bill, they've become your instant friend. The new people are easy to spot since they all seem to ask the same questions, "Do you have any plans this weekend/evening?" or "Isn't that weather/heat/snow something fierce?" They must be getting training on how to interact with customers, and I'd feel more comfortable with it if it didn't seem so forced.
Along with the ability of a person to improvise and manage unusual situations better than any computer there is the need for people to interact with people. People don't like to talk to a computer even if the person they are talking to is only pushing buttons on a screen for them. The liability of having a lot of people on a train justifies the cost of having a person on the train. The desire of passengers to see and hear a real person "in charge" helps too, even if that person has no real authority.
I know what you meant. I'll help you with the math since you couldn't be bothered to do it yourself.
Let's take the earth average sun at 1000 W/m^2. A typical solar panel used on a car will convert about 10% of that power into electricity, so 100 watts. A typical cabin fan used in a car will draw somewhere between 10 amps and 30 amps depending on size of the car and such, at 12 volts this means 120 to 360 watts.
Assume that the solar panel shields the car from the heat by converting it to electricity you have 900 watts of heat into the cabin per square meter of roof and 100 watts to the fan. The total area doesn't matter much here since we assume that the larger the roof the more solar heating and more power to the fan. Assume now that the outside temperature is approaching 40C and you are trying to "cool" the cabin with that air. Or even at 25C that air is already quite warm, and you have nearly a kilowatt beating down on the roof and a teeny 100 watt fan to exchange the air with.
A quick look at Wikipedia tells me that a typical automotive A/C unit will draw 4HP or 3kW. That's a lot of solar panels.
This would also stop hot car deaths.
No, it wouldn't. Even a pretty moderate temp like 25C with humidity above 40% is dangerous. A quick Google search will tell you that even at 20C on a sunny day and windows open to the breeze could mean dangerous temperatures in minutes. It's going to take more than just a couple hundred watts of cooling fans to keep up with that.
why haven't countries been using solar panels on mass transit roofs before now?
Every time solar power comes up on Slashdot someone will mention how prices of solar panels have dropped in recent years. That could explain the reluctance to have solar panels on train car rooftops. It could be that the price of solar was too high until recently. Even if it was economically feasible years ago it could be that the people that plan such things saw how solar prices were falling and were just waiting until it hit bottom and stabilized.
If prices for solar panels were dropping by 13% (or whatever the rate actually was) per year then that might make some people a bit reluctant to invest in this technology. Assuming that 13% is correct then panels bought 5 years ago could be had for half the price today.
Do the math on how much actual power would be produced by those panels, compare it to the power needed to provide even a moderate level of climate control, and you will have your answer.
Compare this to previous weapons systems, like the Phalanx or Goalkeeper close in weapons systems. I don't know what those cost per shot but a.50 BMG will run about $5 per shot, and a 12 gauge slug is about $1 per shot. These systems will automatically fire a multiple shot burst upon finding a target. Assume $20 per shot, 10 shot burst, that's $200 gone in a fraction of a second. They don't always get their target on the first burst, so it goes again and again until the target is destroyed, ammunition is depleted, or the target impacts the ship.
I don't know what the maintenance differences would be between a Phalanx and LaWS but I can imagine based on the ammunition costs alone they likely have a cost saver on their hands.
Even if it's not a cost savings in real dollars per shot there is a lot to be said about a weapon system that will not run out of ammunition and can always land a hit on the first try. This will likely mean savings in not having damage to the ship from an enemy asset getting too close.
I also have to wonder about the psychological damage this weapon can do to the enemy. Imagine flying a dive bomb run on a ship and all of the sudden your wing is on fire. You saw no muzzle flash from a gun, no noise was made (assuming you'd hear it anyway), and you saw nothing approach on radar (even bullets will show up on modern radar).
You fail to understand that licensing is what is used to indicate that training has occurred. Without it, how does one know if training has occurred?
You know the training has occurred because the driver is staying in their lane, stopping at stop signs, using turning signals, and so on. Every day is a driver's education exam and the "proctors" drive in white cars, wear blue uniforms, and are willing to give you your failing grade if you make a mistake.
I'm not saying get rid of all licenses, just those for people not in the business of driving. I don't think professional drivers necessarily need licenses, I'd think that the businesses that hire them would develop their own means to assure people are trained. They do that already, showing up with a commercial driver license is good, since you've met a government minimum and they are legally required to check for these things but that's not saying much about their training. If you have a certificate from a school that specializes in training safe drivers then you have a much greater chance of landing the job.
I was thinking less of a problem for hospitals but for families, especially those that are poor or live in remote areas.
Imagine a growing family. So little Timmy has a cold, or an infection, or whatever. The parents get pediatric medications but not all of it is used, so it sits on a shelf. Little Timmy isn't so little any more, but his little sister Jenny gets something similar to what Timmy had five years ago. Will the medicine left on the shelf be safe for little Jenny?
For a lot of people this is of little concern. Just go to the corner store and get new medicine for Jenny and toss out the old stuff. There are cases when this is not a trivial matter.
Also, think of things like ships at sea. Large ships, like a cruise ship, will keep a pharmacy on board. They need to keep stuff on hand for things that might not come up very often but would be lifesaving if available. The people managing the ship might just choose to not carry these medications if they have to just keep throwing it away because it "expired". This could mean people die.
So, the public schools are bad, and your solution is to make everyone pay for education, rather than fix the system?
They are paying for their children's education, it's just hidden in their sales taxes and such. The problem is that the schools do not answer to the parents, they answer to the school board.
I bet fixing it wouldn't even be all that hard, for someone who wasn't afraid to pay teachers what they're really worth.
They get paid based on pleasing the government, not on pleasing the students or the parents. Paying them more won't fix that.
Once upon a time, teaching was considered to be a highly respected profession, and was renumerated accordingly.
What changed since then? I'll give you a hint, it's two words, it ends with "schools", and starts with "public".
Free, public education is a cornerstone of civilisation. Take it away, and replace it with private schooling for everyone, and see what suddenly only the rich can accomplish.
I've read history and my skin crawls at the abuse public schools have done to children in the past. In Depression era public schools German students were given math problems on how many able bodied workers it took to support the weak minded workers. This isn't an education, this is indoctrination. They were preparing these children for what was to come. I learned this in a Western Civilization class and in a later lesson the professor thought it was so great on how British children were provided free public education after the war. I asked him what kept British schools from repeating the "lessons" taught in the pre-war German schools. He didn't have an answer.
This is not a system that can be "fixed" because it is broken by its very nature. Public schools teach children and parents that the center of society rests with the government. It should not and cannot. The center of society should be the family.
My guess is that you are the product of public education, and you have learned your lessons well.
You think that only the rich would be able to educate their children? Books are cheap, people give them away, as are paper and pencils. Physics, chemistry, and art classes might need some materials but get creative, ask for donations, search through the junkyard. Children don't need the latest electronic gadgets to learn, they need teachers that give a damn. If all they are looking for is a bigger check from the government then that is the wrong person to have as a teacher.
Solar fails on a very important aspect, reliability. Without large storage devices and/or long wires to a place where the sun is still shining, solar power fails. These long wires and storage facilities add very critical points of failure, as well as carbon footprint and expense. If each nuclear power plant has 3 or 4 reactors on site, and some of that same storage that people propose for solar, then each power plant can provide reliable and inexpensive power to the community surrounding it. No big storage is needed to last through the night, just enough reserve for load following and emergency situations. If all else was equal then nuclear wins on being reliable.
Massive failures like Three Mile Island, Fukushima, and Chernobyl were because of a failure of design and operation. We don't build reactors like that any more and no one would be foolish enough to do so in the future. Nuclear power is only going to get cheaper, safer, and a lower carbon footprint as technology improves. Solar power is already hitting theoretical efficiency limits, and even though it may get cheaper and safer it will always be limited by the sun shining.
I've heard from some people that have studied this for a long time and they tell me that if wind and solar exceed 20% of grid production then bad things can happen. Sure, people have pushed this limit but at the cost of needing expensive gas turbine and diesel reciprocating engines to make it work. This is far from "green" or cheap. What makes up that other 80%? If you want to be "green" and cheap then it's nuclear.
The best you can do is show solar is very close to the price of nuclear. The best you can do is show that solar is very close to the carbon footprint of nuclear. What you cannot show is that solar is safer than nuclear.
There was no large scale solar or wind power plant accident so far... facepalm.
Irrelevant. Dead is dead and per gigawatt-hour produced more people died from solar power than nuclear power, and by a large margin.
I'm old enough to remember all the way back to yesterday when I wrote this:
People then tend to dispute the solar death numbers by claiming that trip and fall deaths "don't count" for some reason.
I knew you'd say this, I told you I knew you'd say this, and yet you still brought out this straw man.
You don't seem to be disputing that people have died from solar power, only that they "don't count" because their deaths don't make it beyond the obituary pages in the newspapers. Can we make solar power safer? Sure. Can we make nuclear power safer? Of course. As it is right now nuclear power is safer than solar power by a wide margin.
And regarding CO2 you have no numbers, as I pointed out solar cells/plants can be 100% CO2 neutral, and you pointed out nuclear plants build from concrete/cement: can't.
I gave numbers and I'll give you more. You gave nothing but an unsubstantiated claim.
So, you admit that people murder even though it is against the law?
In spite of what you might see in the movies no government entity issues licenses to kill.
Would you believe that there are 10 states in the USA that do not require a license to carry dangerous weapons like firearms? You shouldn't because the actual number is closer to 30. This wasn't always the case but people realized that the license did not make people safe, training did, enforcement did. People don't need a license to get training, and the police don't need people with pieces of plastic in their pockets to enforce the law.
Utility scale PV is cheaper than nuclear but that means taking up land that could be used for things like crops. Rooftop PV costs more that nuclear, but that also means the land used is effectively zero. So, pick one. If you want to claim that PV is cheaper than nuclear then the panels are stuck on poles out in a field. If you want to claim PV panels are on rooftops, where it takes no land, then it costs more than nuclear, potentially double the cost.
Saying that PV panels can be put on rooftops AND cost less than nuclear is a lie.
How many more times do you need an explanation that nuclear fuel has the lowest mining density of all fuels used by mankind
Nuclear is cheaper than solar, safer than solar, and smaller carbon footprint than solar, today. Why should I care if a bunch of dirt has to be moved around to do it?
building a nuclear power plant is very complicated and horribly expensive
And yet it's still cheaper than solar, right now.
and the problem of storage is not solved at all?
We'll figure it out. Storing it in cooling pools for now is cheap and safe, it's only getting less radioactive as time moves on.
By now even a bloody tree should have understood it, but you apparently don't.
Nuclear is cheaper than solar, safer than solar, and smaller carbon footprint than solar, today. Perhaps I have different priorities than you, like you not seeming to care if people die, or experience energy poverty, or if sea levels rise from carbon in the air. Everything else seems rather unimportant and solvable by comparison.
And when both are supported/maintained/fueled via non carbon producing ways, they both have zero.
Not quite. The production of steel, aluminum, and cement are all carbon intensive processes. Those solar panels are going to be put in an aluminum frame, on a steel post, anchored to ground with a concrete pad, and then connected to the grid using steel reinforced aluminum wiring. This takes carbon even if the energy made to produce it comes from a carbon neutral energy source.
So what was your point?
That nuclear is safer and cheaper than solar therefore we should prefer nuclear to solar. Did you even read my post before you replied?
Even if what you say is true, that both could be equal in carbon footprint, we still have nuclear at half the price and fewer dead bodies for the same energy. You can claim that future improvements in solar would make it cheaper and safer than nuclear but that just means we should build nuclear power now, and build up solar at some time in the future when it's safer and cheaper.
If you don't care about dead bodies but only about cost and/or carbon footprint then wind power would be a better choice than solar. At least we know how to recycle windmills, where photovoltaic cells are much more difficult to recycle.
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If you're thinking of a 4 year computer science or software engineering degree as job training, you're doing it wrong.
Then my CS advisors were lying to me even more than I thought? They are selling this as job training. The people that hire for software development look for computer science graduates. If it's not job training then what is it?
If you already have the foundational knowledge, you'd get far more bang for your buck getting a lesser degree in whatever applied field you want to work in and cutting your chops with internships and securing an entry level job.
If a CS degree leads to even an "entry level job" then it sounds like job training to me.
In the engineering school the students are told from the start that they are expected to be able to build things when they finish the program. That's what engineering is. In computer science it is what it is, a science. Recent trends have been to teach students how to develop software but that's not were it got started. People that graduated in computer science were expected to do science, not engineering. This shows in the course requirements. Any ABET accredited engineering program will have an "engineering" course in every year of the program. First year will have an intro to engineering class. The last year will have a design project. The years in between will have at least one class where students will do a group design project. In computer science, unless they are also accredited as an engineering program, will normally have just one required class dedicated to a group development project. Students can typically opt to take more coursework dedicated to engineering, but that's not required.
I'm not arguing that you cannot learn how to right good code in computer science, only that you are not forced to do so. In engineering there is a requirement that people do "engineering", or as close as they can in a university environment. So when people leave an engineering program they know how to do engineering, and the hiring managers have picked up on this fact. This shows in the conversations I've had with hiring managers, statements made by university staff, and others.
This is why the universities I've gone too, and others I've investigated while looking for a school to attend, will typically offer a software engineering program, track, certificate, or whatever. Where I go to school the software engineering "track" or "focus area" is open to students in engineering and computer science. People can study electrical/computer engineering and not be a "software engineer", just as computer science students can graduate with only taking the one required "software development" course. The CS departments nationwide have picked up on that there is a need for software engineering coursework in college and have begun to offer that to their students. If people want to study the science that is computer science then they can do that, and go on to teach, research, or learn the engineering process on the job as a software developer.
This also applies to other forms of engineering. I remember having a chat with an experienced engineer, days or weeks before his retirement, and made some joke about having learned something in "engineering school". He told me that he didn't have an engineering degree, he studied physics in college. He apparently learned on the job well since he retired from a job titled "senior engineer".
E-mail used to be very useful until people started to abuse it with unsolicited advertising. Now we see this with push notifications. If I get a weather app to give me notifications on severe weather in the area then I expect only that kind of notification. When it starts to give me notifications on sales for umbrellas and boots then the notifications become an annoyance instead of a useful tool.
Turning off notifications doesn't help, because that means stopping the notifications I don't want as well as the ones I do. I've already seen a lot of posts mocking this since disabling them is a simple solution but it's not. I want control of what notifications I get and if the people making the push notifications cannot be honest about the notifications then they become meaningless.
I want notifications for things *I* see as important. If *I* can't get that control then *YOU* (the person offering the notifications) can't use them at all. Not only do *YOU* not get to use them but you create the expectation that they will be abused by other people. Since *YOU* can't seem to control yourself then nobody gets to use it.
It seems push notifications got killed even before people made them useful. Good job people, you threw the baby out with the bathwater, and then ran the baby over with a lawnmower.
While your experience is interesting, I don't think you can conclude CE or CSE is what people should go for. I got my BS in Computer Science and got a great job offer before I even graduated. I have friends who went for CE and we were in the exact same classes. In the end, they had slightly more trouble finding jobs they liked than me, but it wasn't a huge difference.
My complaint isn't that of not finding a job, it's not finding an education. I knew I was marginal in programming in a modern language because my focus area of study was in hardware, not software, as an electrical/computer engineering student. I learned a lot of logic and circuits but not much about things like object oriented programming or memory management. I knew I have to do some learning on the job if I found work doing software, as opposed to firmware, but employers were not terribly willing to invest the time in me to learn on the job when there are others just graduating that learned the latest and greatest shiny new programming language as part of their object oriented programming class.
There's an endless ocean of tutorials, sample code, documentation and help forums that's just a Google search away. If you're passionate about software, CS classes, or a lack thereof, will not stop you. With enough practice, coding will eventually become second nature. For me at least, writing code can be easier than stringing together proper English sentences.
That would teach me how to code but, as others have pointed out, this is quite meaningless to many employers. Unless there is a piece of paper from a respected entity they cannot be sure you actually learned something as opposed to just sat in your basement and played video games. Going to college for me fills a whole in my resume that Googling away for code cannot do.
The problems in the CS department at my school, and it seems at many other schools, is partly a problem of their own creation. They know people want to learn to code so they recruit them to their school to get butts in seats, and the money that comes with them. These recruiters are not just competing with other universities but also other departments within their own university. The advisors I spoke with at the CS department could have told me the truth that the software engineering program they had was shared with the CS department and the ECE department, but they lied and said that if I wanted in the software engineering program I'd have to talk to them.
The advisors could have been truthful as well and told me that their advising staff was overwhelmed and suggested I speak with advisors in the engineering department. Or perhaps speak with the university advisors. (My school has a pool of advisors open to undeclared and nontraditional students under what they call the "university college" which is perhaps uncommon among other universities.) They knew I have an engineering background, they knew I am a nontraditional student, but they wanted me in their program very very badly even though there really wasn't room for me and even though I'd likely be more "comfortable" in another program.
My first year was a mix of courses too advanced for me and too simple for me, because the advisors don't know their own program, don't know engineering, and don't have the time to look over anyone's course plan in any detail. My first year was a bomb. After that I transferred to the university college, where they have the time to actually talk to the students. I got into some engineering classes, where the instructors actually know how to teach people to write good code.
I also found out that I could have gone to the business college to address some of my problems in finding classes that weren't chronically packed, overwhelmed advisors, and so on. This seems to be an industry wide problem, as the article under discussion here verifies, and so I suggest going outside of CS if one can to get a good education. Engineering is a great place to lea
I've heard people give similar recommendations but I just think that one should choose management or programming. I've looked into this and taking enough coursework to get a minor in management can mean adding another year to a computer science degree. Getting a bachelor in business administration (or whatever your school calls it) and adding a computer science minor would also likely add a year. There's not a lot of crossover in the two programs where one can apply coursework in one as electives in the other. Getting a degree in something like "business information systems" (or whatever your school calls it) has enough of both that one might be able to find work as a manager in a software development firm, or writing some high level code for software used internally in a large business, but it won't prepare one as both a "general purpose" manager and programmer.
For a student to do as you propose they must plan for five years of university, or have planned ahead in high school to get as much math, foreign language, and other coursework out of the way as possible so as to graduate in four years.
I've seen a trend for universities to offer a "degree in three" where students that took high level coursework in high school, or a year at a community college, to get their degree in three years. Add on what it takes to get your minor and then you are at the traditional four years in university. But then you are so close to getting a double major at that point that just another two classes and you'd be better off with getting that double major.
I will agree that the CS department has competing interests but not that a more "well rounded" education is needed.
The schools I've attended, and this seems to be the norm for other schools I've looked at, is that every program across the university must meet the same requirements on rhetoric, literature, speaking, history, and other arts. The big difference, and perhaps only difference, is that engineering does not have a foreign language requirement where liberal arts degrees (like computer science) does.
Depending on which program you choose and how much foreign language you had in high school (or community college, or perhaps other sources) the students had to have 12 to 21 hours of non-major work in being "well rounded" out of 130 hours to graduate. The courses people could choose from seemed to be pretty broad. But, again, everyone had to have coursework on reading, writing, and speaking. So, I'm not sure what kind of education you believe these people lacked. They may have done poorly in these classes but I'm quite certain they were taken.
The competing interests lie in that some students want a traditional computer science instruction for matters of instruction, research, and advanced programming, where others want to learn how to learn the skills to become a professional software developer. This lead to the software engineering "track" that the CS and engineering schools developed at the university I attend. It also lead to software engineering becoming a recognized degree granting discipline at many universities.
It seems many engineering schools now offer accredited "computer science" programs. These are programs for the kind of student that wants to learn how to write good code. They might not be called "computer science" programs but they meet the same industry recognized standards that computer science programs from liberal arts schools do. Where I go to school they just started offering such a program, and had it existed two years ago I'd be in it right now, or just as likely out of it since I had enough prerequisites and such that I'd have graduated by now.
In the end it is the student's burden to choose courses that will teach them the skills they need to write good code, as well as be a "well rounded" adult. It's just been in my personal experience, and the experience of many others I have spoken with, that a liberal arts computer science program rarely produces a skilled software engineer. A lot of this lies with the universities that have overburdened inexperienced advisors, which seems to be a problem that is wide spread. A lot lies with the schools that emphasize being "well rounded" over being skilled in their major. But it also lies with students with dollar signs in their eyes and focus on the degree as a ticket to wealth instead of as an opportunity to learn to be good at their job.
I'm now in college for my second time now, first I studied electrical and computer engineering and now software engineering (under a CS major). Due to the large crossover between computer science and engineering I'll get to talking to some computer science students. I've also got to talk to some job recruiters in some rare moments of honesty.
One thing is that many computer science majors want to go on to write code. There's nothing wrong with that, but then they have to take the courses that teach software development. Not many do, because those courses are hard and/or not very interesting. Seems to me that either these people were lied to by their CS advisors and recruiters (as I was) or they didn't have the grades to get into the engineering programs.
I've got to talk to some hiring managers and the like and I've heard them say that they prefer engineering students to computer science. This is because engineering has a more rigorous math requirements, students are required to learn the engineering process, and anyone able to get their engineering degree can pick up a new programming language quickly. These companies are willing to send a new hire to a week long "boot camp" to learn whatever language they are using but not so willing to have to teach someone that learned every language under the sun in their CS coursework how to write good code.
Now there seems to be something of a glut of software developers, at least where I live. I'll hear hiring recruiters say I need more programming experience. I happened into work doing firmware development but when layoffs happened I had trouble finding work again, so I used my GI Bill to go back to school. Having not learned my lesson yet from my experience studying engineering I went to a local university to look at their CS program that just started offering a software engineering "track".
The advisors told me that the CS department was the "lead department" on this software engineering program, that was the first lie, and that the advisors would be helpful in choosing the classes I'd need to complete this "track", the second lie I was told. The advisors are worthless because at any university where CS is in the liberal arts college their goal is the "well rounded adult". They know how to get students to take their foreign language, history, and so forth. What they don't know is how to advise students on what courses to take on actually learning how to write code.
I wasted a year in this stupid CS program because the advisors didn't know what courses actually applied to their own course prerequisites. They pushed me to take courses from the CS department instead of equivalent courses in the engineering school. Then there's the instructors in the CS department that simply cannot help but work political commentary into their lesson plans. A classic CS algorithm called the "stable marriage problem" included a disclaimer from the instructor that it was from a time when same sex marriage was illegal. It's not that 99.9% of the population would rather marry someone of the opposite sex, it's that it was illegal that was the problem, right?
My advice to people that want to get into software development is to get a major in software engineering from a school that has an actual engineering program. Lacking that go major in some engineering discipline and get a CS minor or just take as much programming coursework you can. I found out a year too late that I could have gone to the engineering college, talked to advisors that know what software engineering actually means, and not taken so much bullshit from the liberal arts instructors. I got screwed because now I've got some bad grades in courses that I was not prepared for, and didn't even apply to my CS major, and I can't just switch to engineering any more. Had I gone to the engineering school for their advice on the software engineering program earlier, or talked to the engineering advisors first, I might not be in this predicament. I should have graduated by now but instead I'm looking to take yet another year of classes before I get the education I wanted and that piece of paper that employers want to see.
What keeps an unattended car from getting stripped to the frame? You might have GPS on the car, so you know the locations, you might have cameras, but they rarely provide a clear enough picture to catch anyone. Even so, this is all to respond after the fact, the car can still be stripped before law enforcement arrives. In cases when people are not at risk the police put them at a low priority, as they should.
Not that many people care about getting caught, prisons are so overflowing in many parts of the nation that unless someone is seen slicing off someone's head on a live stream the "justice" system won't give them more than a few months it prison.
Then don't send a car to "bad" neighborhoods? Perhaps the car should keep moving unless picking up a person or dropping them off? We've seen in the news of criminals ripping off delivery and cargo trucks at stop lights, even in supposedly "good" neighborhoods. If a driverless Lyft car is stopped at a light then it's a target for theft.
Perhaps Lyft has this figured out, even if it means allowing some cars to get stripped and claiming insurance to save on having to pay drivers. Perhaps I overestimate the cases of this happening. If low skill people have trouble finding jobs then they turn to crime. Lyft might automate the driving but they might still need a person in the car to fend off thieves, thereby solving the unemployment problem.
I can imagine a day where Lyft will be advertising jobs for people with licenses to carry weapons, instead of licenses to drive.
We've all heard the joke, and it ends with, "but she has a great personality!"
Lots of ignorant, not-so-good-looking, and generally not talented people can find work in the service industry. People don't like talking to computers on the phone, even if the person on the other end is just punching the equivalent of a touch tome pad for them. I've worked at such places and the buildings that house such people are HUGE. I've often wondered why some of the jobs they had there weren't more automated. Lots of stuff was done on paper, and there were people where their job was to move paper from one end of the building to the other.
The reason is that it's cheaper to hire a handful of paper pushers than to hire someone to develop and maintain an automated system, and still have a paper pusher to handle the odd cases that fall outside of the automated system. We might have robots that can flip burgers, but none of them can serve them with a smile. If you have "a face fit for radio" then a happy voice on the phone can make for a lot of happy customers.
As more things get automated the price of labor goes down for the less talented. These people will have to learn some talents or learn to be nice. There will always be those that can't do either, and they tend to become criminals or politicians, but I repeat myself.
One word, liability. That is enough right there but interaction with people plays into it too.
For a car the cost of a driver is to hire one person for what? One passenger? Maybe four or ten? With a train you have hundreds of people to spread the cost of the driver and that person has the ability to do much more than any computer managing the train.
For example, a minor mechanical failure could render a train or car powerless to move. Maybe it's just a screw loose, maybe there is a flat tire, or whatever. A driver can perform on the spot maintenance that would require rolling out a repair truck, just to tighten a screw or change a flat.
Imagine a greater failure, power loss, an accident of some kind, a person having a heart attack. A driver can recognize such things with much greater speed and accuracy than any computer, and actually be able to do something about it.
A driver on the train isn't there just to manage the train, that person also manages the people. For a large portion of the time that driver might be able to get away with just pushing buttons George Jetson style but I can imagine as automation becomes more prevalent the drivers will have to become more capable to compete. They won't be just drivers, they will have to become reasonably competent paramedics, firefighters, security guards, mechanics, and perhaps more.
I've noticed a change in the skill set of people in the service industry. They don't just take your money as you pay your bill, they've become your instant friend. The new people are easy to spot since they all seem to ask the same questions, "Do you have any plans this weekend/evening?" or "Isn't that weather/heat/snow something fierce?" They must be getting training on how to interact with customers, and I'd feel more comfortable with it if it didn't seem so forced.
Along with the ability of a person to improvise and manage unusual situations better than any computer there is the need for people to interact with people. People don't like to talk to a computer even if the person they are talking to is only pushing buttons on a screen for them. The liability of having a lot of people on a train justifies the cost of having a person on the train. The desire of passengers to see and hear a real person "in charge" helps too, even if that person has no real authority.
I know what you meant. I'll help you with the math since you couldn't be bothered to do it yourself.
Let's take the earth average sun at 1000 W/m^2. A typical solar panel used on a car will convert about 10% of that power into electricity, so 100 watts. A typical cabin fan used in a car will draw somewhere between 10 amps and 30 amps depending on size of the car and such, at 12 volts this means 120 to 360 watts.
Assume that the solar panel shields the car from the heat by converting it to electricity you have 900 watts of heat into the cabin per square meter of roof and 100 watts to the fan. The total area doesn't matter much here since we assume that the larger the roof the more solar heating and more power to the fan. Assume now that the outside temperature is approaching 40C and you are trying to "cool" the cabin with that air. Or even at 25C that air is already quite warm, and you have nearly a kilowatt beating down on the roof and a teeny 100 watt fan to exchange the air with.
A quick look at Wikipedia tells me that a typical automotive A/C unit will draw 4HP or 3kW. That's a lot of solar panels.
This would also stop hot car deaths.
No, it wouldn't. Even a pretty moderate temp like 25C with humidity above 40% is dangerous. A quick Google search will tell you that even at 20C on a sunny day and windows open to the breeze could mean dangerous temperatures in minutes. It's going to take more than just a couple hundred watts of cooling fans to keep up with that.
For those that didn't get the joke I suggest reading a little history. This might help:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
why haven't countries been using solar panels on mass transit roofs before now?
Every time solar power comes up on Slashdot someone will mention how prices of solar panels have dropped in recent years. That could explain the reluctance to have solar panels on train car rooftops. It could be that the price of solar was too high until recently. Even if it was economically feasible years ago it could be that the people that plan such things saw how solar prices were falling and were just waiting until it hit bottom and stabilized.
If prices for solar panels were dropping by 13% (or whatever the rate actually was) per year then that might make some people a bit reluctant to invest in this technology. Assuming that 13% is correct then panels bought 5 years ago could be had for half the price today.
Do the math on how much actual power would be produced by those panels, compare it to the power needed to provide even a moderate level of climate control, and you will have your answer.
Compare this to previous weapons systems, like the Phalanx or Goalkeeper close in weapons systems. I don't know what those cost per shot but a .50 BMG will run about $5 per shot, and a 12 gauge slug is about $1 per shot. These systems will automatically fire a multiple shot burst upon finding a target. Assume $20 per shot, 10 shot burst, that's $200 gone in a fraction of a second. They don't always get their target on the first burst, so it goes again and again until the target is destroyed, ammunition is depleted, or the target impacts the ship.
I don't know what the maintenance differences would be between a Phalanx and LaWS but I can imagine based on the ammunition costs alone they likely have a cost saver on their hands.
Even if it's not a cost savings in real dollars per shot there is a lot to be said about a weapon system that will not run out of ammunition and can always land a hit on the first try. This will likely mean savings in not having damage to the ship from an enemy asset getting too close.
I also have to wonder about the psychological damage this weapon can do to the enemy. Imagine flying a dive bomb run on a ship and all of the sudden your wing is on fire. You saw no muzzle flash from a gun, no noise was made (assuming you'd hear it anyway), and you saw nothing approach on radar (even bullets will show up on modern radar).
You fail to understand that licensing is what is used to indicate that training has occurred. Without it, how does one know if training has occurred?
You know the training has occurred because the driver is staying in their lane, stopping at stop signs, using turning signals, and so on. Every day is a driver's education exam and the "proctors" drive in white cars, wear blue uniforms, and are willing to give you your failing grade if you make a mistake.
I'm not saying get rid of all licenses, just those for people not in the business of driving. I don't think professional drivers necessarily need licenses, I'd think that the businesses that hire them would develop their own means to assure people are trained. They do that already, showing up with a commercial driver license is good, since you've met a government minimum and they are legally required to check for these things but that's not saying much about their training. If you have a certificate from a school that specializes in training safe drivers then you have a much greater chance of landing the job.
I was thinking less of a problem for hospitals but for families, especially those that are poor or live in remote areas.
Imagine a growing family. So little Timmy has a cold, or an infection, or whatever. The parents get pediatric medications but not all of it is used, so it sits on a shelf. Little Timmy isn't so little any more, but his little sister Jenny gets something similar to what Timmy had five years ago. Will the medicine left on the shelf be safe for little Jenny?
For a lot of people this is of little concern. Just go to the corner store and get new medicine for Jenny and toss out the old stuff. There are cases when this is not a trivial matter.
Also, think of things like ships at sea. Large ships, like a cruise ship, will keep a pharmacy on board. They need to keep stuff on hand for things that might not come up very often but would be lifesaving if available. The people managing the ship might just choose to not carry these medications if they have to just keep throwing it away because it "expired". This could mean people die.
So, the public schools are bad, and your solution is to make everyone pay for education, rather than fix the system?
They are paying for their children's education, it's just hidden in their sales taxes and such. The problem is that the schools do not answer to the parents, they answer to the school board.
I bet fixing it wouldn't even be all that hard, for someone who wasn't afraid to pay teachers what they're really worth.
They get paid based on pleasing the government, not on pleasing the students or the parents. Paying them more won't fix that.
Once upon a time, teaching was considered to be a highly respected profession, and was renumerated accordingly.
What changed since then? I'll give you a hint, it's two words, it ends with "schools", and starts with "public".
Free, public education is a cornerstone of civilisation. Take it away, and replace it with private schooling for everyone, and see what suddenly only the rich can accomplish.
I've read history and my skin crawls at the abuse public schools have done to children in the past. In Depression era public schools German students were given math problems on how many able bodied workers it took to support the weak minded workers. This isn't an education, this is indoctrination. They were preparing these children for what was to come. I learned this in a Western Civilization class and in a later lesson the professor thought it was so great on how British children were provided free public education after the war. I asked him what kept British schools from repeating the "lessons" taught in the pre-war German schools. He didn't have an answer.
This is not a system that can be "fixed" because it is broken by its very nature. Public schools teach children and parents that the center of society rests with the government. It should not and cannot. The center of society should be the family.
My guess is that you are the product of public education, and you have learned your lessons well.
You think that only the rich would be able to educate their children? Books are cheap, people give them away, as are paper and pencils. Physics, chemistry, and art classes might need some materials but get creative, ask for donations, search through the junkyard. Children don't need the latest electronic gadgets to learn, they need teachers that give a damn. If all they are looking for is a bigger check from the government then that is the wrong person to have as a teacher.
ARE YOU SURE you are not supporting solar future "with a little bit of nuclear"?
Quite certain. Wind, solar, and hydro are not capable of supporting a modern economy.
http://dailycaller.com/2017/07...
Solar fails on a very important aspect, reliability. Without large storage devices and/or long wires to a place where the sun is still shining, solar power fails. These long wires and storage facilities add very critical points of failure, as well as carbon footprint and expense. If each nuclear power plant has 3 or 4 reactors on site, and some of that same storage that people propose for solar, then each power plant can provide reliable and inexpensive power to the community surrounding it. No big storage is needed to last through the night, just enough reserve for load following and emergency situations. If all else was equal then nuclear wins on being reliable.
Massive failures like Three Mile Island, Fukushima, and Chernobyl were because of a failure of design and operation. We don't build reactors like that any more and no one would be foolish enough to do so in the future. Nuclear power is only going to get cheaper, safer, and a lower carbon footprint as technology improves. Solar power is already hitting theoretical efficiency limits, and even though it may get cheaper and safer it will always be limited by the sun shining.
I've heard from some people that have studied this for a long time and they tell me that if wind and solar exceed 20% of grid production then bad things can happen. Sure, people have pushed this limit but at the cost of needing expensive gas turbine and diesel reciprocating engines to make it work. This is far from "green" or cheap. What makes up that other 80%? If you want to be "green" and cheap then it's nuclear.
More unsubstantiated claims.
The best you can do is show solar is very close to the price of nuclear. The best you can do is show that solar is very close to the carbon footprint of nuclear. What you cannot show is that solar is safer than nuclear.
There was no large scale solar or wind power plant accident so far ... facepalm.
Irrelevant. Dead is dead and per gigawatt-hour produced more people died from solar power than nuclear power, and by a large margin.
I'm old enough to remember all the way back to yesterday when I wrote this:
People then tend to dispute the solar death numbers by claiming that trip and fall deaths "don't count" for some reason.
I knew you'd say this, I told you I knew you'd say this, and yet you still brought out this straw man.
You don't seem to be disputing that people have died from solar power, only that they "don't count" because their deaths don't make it beyond the obituary pages in the newspapers. Can we make solar power safer? Sure. Can we make nuclear power safer? Of course. As it is right now nuclear power is safer than solar power by a wide margin.
And regarding CO2 you have no numbers, as I pointed out solar cells/plants can be 100% CO2 neutral, and you pointed out nuclear plants build from concrete/cement: can't.
I gave numbers and I'll give you more. You gave nothing but an unsubstantiated claim.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/u...
https://cleantechnica.com/2014...
So, you admit that people murder even though it is against the law?
In spite of what you might see in the movies no government entity issues licenses to kill.
Would you believe that there are 10 states in the USA that do not require a license to carry dangerous weapons like firearms? You shouldn't because the actual number is closer to 30. This wasn't always the case but people realized that the license did not make people safe, training did, enforcement did. People don't need a license to get training, and the police don't need people with pieces of plastic in their pockets to enforce the law.
https://www.lazard.com/media/4...
Utility scale PV is cheaper than nuclear but that means taking up land that could be used for things like crops. Rooftop PV costs more that nuclear, but that also means the land used is effectively zero. So, pick one. If you want to claim that PV is cheaper than nuclear then the panels are stuck on poles out in a field. If you want to claim PV panels are on rooftops, where it takes no land, then it costs more than nuclear, potentially double the cost.
Saying that PV panels can be put on rooftops AND cost less than nuclear is a lie.
The news is full that solar and wind are the cheapest power sources since 3 or 4 years.
Ah, so you agree that nuclear is safer and has a smaller carbon footprint than solar. Thank you.
How many more times do you need an explanation that nuclear fuel has the lowest mining density of all fuels used by mankind
Nuclear is cheaper than solar, safer than solar, and smaller carbon footprint than solar, today. Why should I care if a bunch of dirt has to be moved around to do it?
building a nuclear power plant is very complicated and horribly expensive
And yet it's still cheaper than solar, right now.
and the problem of storage is not solved at all?
We'll figure it out. Storing it in cooling pools for now is cheap and safe, it's only getting less radioactive as time moves on.
By now even a bloody tree should have understood it, but you apparently don't.
Nuclear is cheaper than solar, safer than solar, and smaller carbon footprint than solar, today. Perhaps I have different priorities than you, like you not seeming to care if people die, or experience energy poverty, or if sea levels rise from carbon in the air. Everything else seems rather unimportant and solvable by comparison.
And when both are supported/maintained/fueled via non carbon producing ways, they both have zero.
Not quite. The production of steel, aluminum, and cement are all carbon intensive processes. Those solar panels are going to be put in an aluminum frame, on a steel post, anchored to ground with a concrete pad, and then connected to the grid using steel reinforced aluminum wiring. This takes carbon even if the energy made to produce it comes from a carbon neutral energy source.
So what was your point?
That nuclear is safer and cheaper than solar therefore we should prefer nuclear to solar. Did you even read my post before you replied?
Even if what you say is true, that both could be equal in carbon footprint, we still have nuclear at half the price and fewer dead bodies for the same energy. You can claim that future improvements in solar would make it cheaper and safer than nuclear but that just means we should build nuclear power now, and build up solar at some time in the future when it's safer and cheaper.
If you don't care about dead bodies but only about cost and/or carbon footprint then wind power would be a better choice than solar. At least we know how to recycle windmills, where photovoltaic cells are much more difficult to recycle.