The popular web frameworks these days have a little bit of wrapper code which maps DB values to native values. So for instance it's impossible to insert an incorrect date as it would not be possible to construct it with the API you have to go through. So in practice, it's not really an issue for new systems.

Also, while it's lame if MySQL doesn't catch those and I've certainly seen enough legacy DB systems to appreciate the RDBMS-consistency-rules-as-last-iine-of-defence idea, I do think that these days, if you actually encounter such a date in a new system, you've got bigger issues than just data consistency.

That's true, but it will probably only happen if the capital costs of new reactors falls - a lot. Meanwhile, various renewables are falling in price. And while those generally have high capital expenditures too, the marginal costs are usually really low. So it's going to be a tough market for new reactors.

I'm from Denmark, and no, we're not. You are quoting figures with a tax that has nothing to do with production of electricity from renewables.

Breakdown here for all of Europe.

Please stop spreading misinformation.

Hey, dude. Read up on capacity factors as opposed to peak capacity. There's no conspiracy.

Capacity factors are a well-understood phenomenon in energy production, although, may I add, not really sufficient to understand that much about the energy source anyway as reality in a grid with varying consumption rates is much more complicated. Many journalists don't really understand it, though.

The Financial Times editor is unfortunately either misinformed or is deliberately trying to frame this into a particular agenda (or more likely just trying to make up a story to make headlines).

Those costs only appear if you include taxes. E.g. in Denmark there's a really hefty tax on energy in general, partly to induce people to save energy, partly as just a means of taxing - instead of taxing income which according to prevailing economic theory reduces the incentive to work. It's not the renewables that are the cause of the high price.

You're the third guy on the Internet I've had to explain this to. That Financial Time writer really needs a kick in his/her butt.

You sound like a guy who doesn't eat many potatoes, and doesn't know the metric system. :)

If you are ordering potatoes in 5 kg bags (~10 lbs), 4 small potatoes aren't helpful.

No, he's not. I read his blog post and it was not terribly convincing - because he's using numbers derived from rail road, and he's ignoring the fact that the dude he's bad-mouthing (and he is bad-mouthing him, it's by no means an objective blog post) actually has a history of delivering on hard technical problems.

It's a logical fallacy to compare the unit cost of (not a lot of) viaducts that need to carry heavy trains and more than 500 km of pylons + steel tubes.

It's a logical fallacy to compare acceleration forces and regulatives for a train and a capsule floating in a steel tube where the latter have people are fastened to the seats.

Note: I'm not saying Elon Musk is right (and I don't think he's himself either, it's an alpha plan afterall) - I'm saying that Alan Levy is definitely not right. :)

I don't think that's true. As far as I know, depending on the sort of apple, you can store them on a commercial scale for maybe up to 9-12 months. Many sorts can't be stored more than a couple of months before the quality loss makes them distasteful.

No, I'm not an apple producer myself, but I do own a (somewhat old) book on commercial apple production.

Also, regarding the gas - the trick is to remove most of the oxygen. The easiest way to do that is simply letting the apples use up the available oxygen through normal respiration by closing the storage room off. But there can't be too much CO2 either, so I imagine commercial facilities these days have some more active means of controlling the atmosphere.

Anyway, there's no special gas - you just control the levels of oxygen, CO2 and nitrogen. And water vapor, of course, to prevent fungus.

You mean, like, morse code? What would do the morsing with? Oh, wait.

He's not a 1000 years off, he's living in the middle ages.

Is that before or after receiving a coating of gunk from a human hand?

Or perhaps the dude is just old enough to remember what he's been promised before:

Furthermore, he's not saying it can't be done. He's saying one shouldn't eat the corporate BS raw. It sounds like you disagree. You're postulating that smaller flexible designs would be cost-effective, but maybe they're just more expensive - things always look better on the drawing board, we all know that.

In the EU it is using less power.

Energy labels have been mandatory for some years now with a big label that must be shown to the consumer. The result are actually pretty stunning. A couple of years ago C or B would be considered fine, and you'd have to shell out a lot of extra cash to get an A-rated fridge. These days, A is the standard, really low-end ones are B and the best are A+++:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_energy_label

No, it's not. Changing the world often starts with yourself.

If you don't get this - fair enough. But don't ridicule people who do.

I agree, but actually my sister had a cat, and it did in fact sometimes run by walking really, really fast. If you see a not too scared cat run away from you on the street, it's often doing the fast walk rather than the galloping. It looks pretty funny at top speed because the legs are moving so fast. Here's an example on Youtube.