Comment Re: What use? (Score 1) 138
If they have only your public keys, what is the harm in them running a keyserver?
b) It's worth encrypting everything. This protects your data not only from the spooks, but from gmail/live/your ISP/whatever free client you may use.
It is not difficult to be "clever" at all. Look at various "bean" frameworks. Use their object marshaling features. Throw in some of their aspect-oriented programming features.
Now you usually have a bloated, incomprehensible mess. Sure you can easily read any couple of lines of code in isolation. But the system as a whole is a huge pile of gratuitous redundant layers of abstraction and confusing action-at-a-distance creepiness.
It was revealed that the FTC's biggest concern is Radio Shack's subterranean cache of over 35,000 tons of yellow slips of carbon paper dating as far back as the 1960s, which correlate names, addresses and phone numbers to detailed lists of discreet electronic components. Who knows what kind of embarrassments would ensue if all of those dots got connected with modern data mining techniques.
And what do you think ALL THE PLANTS ON EARTH photosynthesise with?
They use the carbon given off by decaying plants and animals. They do not consume all the carbon dug up from geological deposits, and even if they did, they would give it back up as they decay. Redepositing that carbon into geological strata is an exceedingly slow process that has been totally overwhelmed by the rate of our mining it.
None of those taxes begins to account for the lack of disposal fees for fossil fuels.
If all fossil fuel users were required to collect and safely sequester the CO2 that they're allowed to spew into the air free of charge, fossil fuels would not be even close to competitive with solar energy. As it stands, the rampant use of fossil fuels is saddling future generations with hundreds of $Trillions of remediation costs. It only looks cheaper because you're kicking the can down the road.
Ok, I'll grant that I could understand your first sentence. However, if it were really a problem, installing a heating loop under the array would fix the problem at the touch of a button. For the DIYer, some plastic tubing, antifreeze, and aquarium pump, and a 5 gallon tank of propane would do the job. I'll also point out that although it snows frequently, that's not typically a disaster. It's also only been 200 years since a mammoth earthquake that would, if it happened today, paralyze this nation for months. That's only three lifespans, so the odds of witnessing that again may not be as low as you assume.
Your entire second paragraph is an incomprehensible bowl of word soup. You seem to be advocating that 50 million people without gas hop in their cars and find a hotel in a different region of the continent.
Your last paragraph disregards the whole point of the damned thread: that you can recharge the batteries indefinitely without fuel. Even when keeping a dangerous amount of volatile gasoline on your premises, you get a couple days max of electricity generation, and as I pointed out, natural gas generators are no panacea either.
WTF? Every sentence in that argument makes zero sense.
How about a large earthquake on the New Madrid fault in Missouri takes out most of the gas pipelines in the central US. There could very well be precious little electricity or gasoline available for an extended period of time.
I don't know why everyone who replied is so focused on snow. If the blizzard is that bad, you'll be sitting around with nothing better to do than figure out how to clear snow off a few dozen square feet of slippery surface. If you do a half-assed job with a roof rake, the sun hitting a south sloping roof would generally finish the task quickly.
Most of the country doesn't even get hurricanes. However, if a hurricane has ripped the roof off of your house, then you've got bigger fish to fry than a lack of electricity.
OTOH, in a real crisis, that might be the last 20 gallons of gas you get your hands on for a good while. The solar powered system refuels itself.
He who steps on others to reach the top has good balance.
