You bring up a very important point in how this is all going to develop in the future, which is Moore's second law. Capital costs to build a fab plant go UP exponentially. We're already at the point where it costs about $10 billion, the GDP of a country like Georgia or Brunei. You have to wonder if it will be earlier than 2020 when we stop building new ones if at that time they will cost more than the GDP of countries like Sweden or Taiwan.

Sounds similar to PLA.

This is referred to as the resource curse.

Well, this is their series C, but yeah, I'm kind of amazed at the amount.

The credits are not bought by the state. They're bought by utilities, which have state-imposed quotas to meet, if their production isn't clean enough. This is sensible, since utilities will otherwise have a relative market advantage from externalities in the form of pollution.

Nearly 5000 kWh/yr from a 3 kW system would be very high specific production. I think you're overestimating a bit.

You might want to check out PVWATTS, which is an online estimator, or if you really want to get into it, PVsyst is an excellent modeling application that has a free demo.

I am a solar installer. A typical 3 kW rooftop installation costs about $20k, nowhere near the 60k you came up with. Large utility-scale installations make money in the long run, selling power at market rates. This has been true for a couple years now (primarily because of new markets for renewable energy credits in many states). The challenge, as another commenter pointed out, is cash flow and financing.

What a milestone! It will be the first time ever that 100,000 people were sued for copyright infringement in 12.00913 months!

I heard Greene's interview on Fresh Air and it seems like he does a good job of explaining the theory and the controversy surrounding it, emphasizing that it is the most reasonable explanation he is aware of without yet being entirely convincing.
That said, I studied math and physics at Columbia, and have heard many stories about Greene. My best friend there took his mathematical physics course. And Brian Greene is pretty much universally described as an arrogant jerk. Even by Columbia standards.
It is a case of, fairly well respected theorist makes a name for himself doing pop-sci stuff, gets offered tenure in TWO departments and comes to think of himself as hot shit, then gets pissed off when because of his notoriety he has to teach courses to packed classrooms. So he would do his very best to get everyone to drop his course.
My friend got so pissed off after the first day that he never showed up to a single lecture, studied his ass off without having to listen to the guy talk, and aced the final!

It's not really very interesting whether the facts needed to give an answer are contained in the first page of Google or Bing search results. The difficulty is in understanding what the clue is actually asking, and answering in a way that isolates the relevant information (in the form of a question, of course). And doing so very quickly, even when there is often clever use of language going on. The difference between an "average human" at 60% and Ken Jennings at 79% is huge! And it's not just about how large a base of knowledge you're working from.

Heh. Perhaps I should have just said "nice soldering iron."

Get a Weller soldering iron, some of those Jameco parts kits for all your common components, an oscilloscope, a couple decent multimeters, maybe a logic analyzer. Solderless breadboards and lots of those plug-in wire jumpers are useful. You want to have all the usual hand tools, plus a third-hand tool or two, a heat gun and heat shrink supplies, maybe a molex pin crimper. Try to leave some of your budget left over for when you find new things that you really want to get.

I think other countries referred to in the cables are more likely to direct their anger at the US government for allowing the leak, and certainly the war-related disclosures pissed off the US primarily. I can recall some earlier leaks that no doubt infuriated other governments or corporations. The Daniel Moi thing comes to mind. But talk of assassination seems overblown and really just feeds the cult of personality. People expecting some extraordinary rendition probably watch too many movies.

That said, caveats: I really like what Wikileaks does and consider it necessary; I could see things getting a lot dicier in the future for Julian Assange, easily; and I like a good political thriller as much as the next guy :)

Most likely, in my opinion:
The justice department will get something started under the Espionage Act, the US will make some halfhearted attempts at extradition in order to appease those who want a tough stance, and Assange will have enough sense never to go to any country that would land him in a US federal courthouse.