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Comment Re:what's wrong with cherry picking? (Score 2) 110

This goes back a hundred years when we built "universal access" into our phone system monopoly. Comcast is using it to beat it's competitor over the head — two government created monopolies squabbling with each other over their regulatory obligations.

Now... pan around the responses to this story and count how many times this all gets blamed on "capitalists" and "free market," and how by damned we need the government to Do Something!!!!1

Comment LOL (Score 2, Interesting) 521

This has been going on for months and months. I wondered how long it would take Slashdot to finally surface it.

This is Brightsource in Mohave. Feinstein et. al. held it up for years to protect turtles that were supposedly endangered.

Now it's frying birds. Certain species could be wiped out because they happen to inhabit the area.

This is the no. 1 best contemporary example of exactly why renewables will never displace more than a trivially small fraction of electric supply in the Western world; land use and its effects on ecology. Every form of wind or solar consume vast amounts of land, permanently altering the ecology of the region. Whether it's the "wind farm [that] imperils rare grass" (no, really — rare grass) or desert birds igniting in mid-air, the same greens that demand renewables will insure its failure.

Windandsolar is a pipe dream.

Hey, mdsolar ... you there man? Why you want to kill all the birds man? Quick! Go find a scary Fukushima leak story and post it!

Go ahead, pick "troll" or whatever. I have karma for the ages.

Comment Basis? (Score 1) 475

From the story:

Research shows that sticking to the speed limit when other cars are going much faster actually can be dangerous, Dolgov says, so its autonomous car can go up to 10 mph (16 kph) above the speed limit when traffic conditions warrant.

Anyone know what "research" Dolgov is referring to? It's always been self evident to me that a car travelling slower than the flow of speeding traffic is a danger, but actual evidence would be nice.

Not that it matters. We don't really prioritize safety. We pay lip service to safety and then pursue other agenda. If safety was our first priority small cars wouldn't be allowed on roads; mortality and injury severity is substantially higher for light vehicles. And no, it's not because SUVs are slaughtering Prius owners. It's physics; all else being equal a small, light vehicle will more often kill or more severely injure you in a crash.

Comment Munich Schmunich (Score 4, Insightful) 579

Please, stop posting blather about Munich adopting Linux. This drama has been going on for years and years and I'm tired of it. There are stories going back past 2004; "City of Munich Freezes Its Linux Migration", "Munich to Go Ahead with Linux After All", blah blah blah.

Munich uses Linux to pressure Microsoft for better deals, which is just fine, but not interesting to me or most of the rest of us I imagine. Linux is not some struggling underdog begging for attention. So much computing today is Linux, from super computers to $90 smartphones, set tops, huge cloud infrastructures, corporate data centers, weapons systems, etc. — what Munich's government clerks happen to use to print emails or whatever just doesn't matter anymore, if it ever did, and I don't care either way.

Submission + - Solar plant scorches birds in mid air (foxnews.com) 4

Obscene_CNN writes: The new solar energy plant that is owned by Google and two energy companies is killing birds in mid air. The plant which works by concentrating the suns rays is killing and igniting the birds as they fall out of the sky. BrightSource Energy, NRG Solar, and Google say they are studying methods of reducing the bird deaths.

Comment Re:Just red tape? (Score 3, Informative) 142

The links provided in the story are the usual, information free sort one expects from mdsolar as he plies his anti-nook trade around Slashdot. There are better news stories written about this and the bottom line is a subcontractor is falling behind making "submodules." This story from yesterday points the finger at Chicago Bridge & Iron in Louisiana, and this story actually provides a little detail about the submodules that CB&I are trying to make. The builders are moving some of this work to other facilities and contractors because of CB&I failures. Another story a year ago also names CB&I as the culprit for delays.

So it's a manufacturing problem and not a regulator hold up. Manufacturing problems are solvable (we've built stuff like this many times) and not as appealing to mdsolar as a nasty regulatory tangle, so he deliberately avoided stories with specifics.

Comment Re:100 percent bullshit (Score 1) 200

What do you propose we do for kids who do not fit the standard model and are therefore thrown to the wolves without pharmaceutical help?

Does your question have as a premise that all those treated are supposed to be treated? I think it does and I don't believe that, so I wont address your question. I believe most shouldn't be treated because their behavior isn't wrong; it just fails to fit well into a badly distorted culture. So if you accept my premise of widespread over medication we're left with these alternatives; stop the abuse of drugs and let the wolves, as you say, have them or continue this sick spiral of pseudoscience and physco-engineering until we have secured our Stepford future.

There was an important word used above; "most." Most being "treated" today shouldn't. That means "some" should. Some, however, should not mean little Johnny spends his teens and early adulthood on medical grade speed because he got in a fist fight at eight and the libtard, kumbaya world view that runs everything involving children can't tolerate it.

Comment La la land (Score 2, Insightful) 97

CA makes fantasy laws that have to be papered over when the dates arrive. News at 11.

The ZEV (zero emissions vehicles) mandates they've been backpedaling on for twenty years are another fine example. Physics and CA voters frequently do not agree on reality. When that happens physics wins. Every time.

Comment Re:100 percent bullshit (Score 2, Insightful) 200

He was right except for the part about "interactions with technology." We've built up some sort of model kid and heavily medicate those that fail to follow the model closely. That model kid happens to be highly risk adverse, entirely compatible with quiet suburban life and profoundly concerned with the sensitivities of its elders, their jet set lifestyles and half dozen credit lines. It's got little to do with stimulating boxes and everything to do with shoehorning kids into compliant slots in their parents world.

His skepticism of this supposed new diagnostic method is spot on. This is pseudo-science used to rationalize drugging people that don't fit the model, employ vast numbers of highly paid specialists and sink wealth into "health care."

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