Nice post there.

That's interesting - the costs, I mean.
I wonder why it's a different story in the UK, where this has just been published in their 'The Independent' - note the comment about there being no 'public subsidy':
"The Government today dropped plans to build a 10-mile barrage across the Severn estuary to generate "green" electricity from tides.

An official study said there was currently no "strategic case" for investing public money in such a scheme, the costs of which could run to more than £30 billion, although it said it could be reconsidered as a longer-term option in the future.

But the Department of Energy and Climate Change paved the way for new nuclear power plants at eight sites - Bradwell, Essex; Hartlepool; Heysham, Lancashire; Hinkley Point, Somerset; Oldbury, South Gloucestershire; Sellafield, Cumbria; Sizewell, Suffolk and Wylfa, Anglesey.

The coalition Government has already said it will give the go-ahead to companies who want to build new nuclear plants, provided there is no public subsidy involved, despite the Lib Dems opposing new nuclear power stations in opposition. "

Just wondering if there is full transparency here: all accounts open to view, all costs of modern nuclear designs to be fresh & visible.
I don't doubt your word, I just doubt business to necessarily be open & I doubt government to be savvy.

Why wouldn't Constellation get a loan from the banks?
Don't banks kind of do that by way of its being their business?

For heaven's sake, think.

Fortuitously, here's a relevant news item, from the Guardian newspaper:
"Police lied to persuade CCTV staff to monitor drink-drive suspects"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/oct/06/devon-police-cctv-drink-driving

"Devon police admitted inventing information to induce CCTV operators to monitor drink-drive suspects.

Police were criticised today for inventing intelligence to persuade civilian CCTV operators to snoop on suspected drink-drivers outside pubs.

Officers in Devon were said to have regularly asked operators to watch for people who might be over the drink-drive limit by making up false information about them.

Campaign group Liberty said the disclosure was a reminder that there was scope for CCTV cameras to be abused. Adrian Sanders, the Liberal Democrat MP for Torbay, said the practice was unacceptable. "There are strict guidelines between the sharing of intelligence between police and other agencies and similar controls with what happens as a result of sharing that intelligence," he said.

The practice was revealed by the case of John Joseph, 54, of Torbay, after he parked his car outside a pub in 2007. A police officer asked CCTV operators to watch Joseph, also known as calypso, reggae and soca singer and performance poet Antigua Joe, who was later arrested on suspicion of drink-driving and put in handcuffs and leg restraints. A breath test proved negative.

Joseph was awarded £17,500 compensation after complaining about his arrest. A police standards investigation rejected Joseph's allegation that he was targeted because of his race. But a report into the case flagged up an admission by one officer involved that he invented intelligence about Joseph to get the CCTV operators to watch him.

"To get the council CCTV control room personnel to watch the vehicle he [the police officer] would have to give them a good reason for doing so. In order to do this he had told them he knew the occupant very well and knew he would be drinking," the report said.

"[The officer] admitted this was invented by him and a lie. He went on to say that he and his colleagues targeted vehicles outside public houses and regularly persuaded CCTV operators to watch vehicles by inventing intelligence."

Joseph was charged with resisting arrest and a public order offence but cleared on both counts. He was held for nine hours after his arrest in 2007. The report said Joseph's detention was unlawful.

A complaint against the officer of "falsehood and prevarication by making a false report to CCTV operators" was upheld.

A spokesman for Devon and Cornwall police's professional standards department said: "Mr Joseph did make a complaint against police following his arrest. Elements of his complaints were found to be proven and a number of officers received a range of sanctions as a result."

The force refused to comment on the use of CCTV."

"Such as?"

Mod me up for not replying to this defective question please.

Tasteless, juvenile. Well, I suppose you're actually juvenile.

Grub is a 4-letter word.

It sucks; I had similar problem & just wanted to wring some open-f***ing-source neck.

the prize for provoking the most "So Incredibly Boring" responses.

Good idea.

Well said. A little humanity goes a long way.

Those old languages were dealing with a different set of requirements than exists now -- Stock Control, Payroll, Accounts Pay/Receivable and so on. Mostly covered by SAP & the like nowadays, I think: anyway, development of essentially 'batch' programmimg has diminshed quite a bit.

If you're more comfortable with the 'back office' (i.e non-gui) side and you favor 'serious' development work, I'd hazard a guess that Java is the way to go. Not any of those noble recent languages, Perl (not so recent) or Ruby or Python. Not C# because, well, who does enterprise stuff using Windows anyway? - plus MS will not be porting it to any other o/s in our lifetime.

One thing about Java: it's a cinch to install. Eclipse is a v. good IDE & there are some 1st class video tutorials for it, where you'll also learn some not-bad Java. (http://eclipsetutorial.sourceforge.net/)
If you go for Java, steer clear of the various frameworks out there until you're good at Java; do get a good book on Design Patterns, whatever you do, Java or not.

One thing about C# -- it's a dog to install, as is SQL Server and the rest of the mongrel assortment of pieces you'll need.

You'll need an rdbms, too: Oracle comes free for PC & it's not a cut-down version. Sybase do the same. As do Berkley, MySQL and just about anyone else. Sybase installs in about 5 minutes.

If you end up learning Java & thinking of adopting some other serious language, you won't have lost out, because your knowledge of O-O will be valuable going forward.

Java + Sybase + Eclipse -- smells good to me!

Best of luck.

Please expand on & explain "back to" in this context.