Do you know anything at all about cost/benefit analysis and payback period?
The Germans are doing this with tax dollars, effectively siphoned off of the other EU members. I'd have to do it with my own money.
> Look outside! Life is beautiful and full of wonder!
Typical Euro-socialist garbage.
>Is this a republicans vs democrats thread in disguise?
Isn't every thread on Slashdot a political one these days? I swear, sometimes I think this place has become a cesspool of political mudslinging. I miss the old days before politics took over.
> Home owners can't really lose with solar PV
Unless, of course, you happen to live somewhere other than Southern California or Arizona, where weather conditions don't permit the sun to shine at sufficient intensity over the whole year. Here in the mid/upper midwest, the payback period for a solar installation on my house works out to be 17 years. Wind, on the other hand, can be cost effective if you have sufficient land space to put up a tower. I see a few of my rural neighbors with wind turbines on their properties.
All those TVs and the antenna are owned by you.
That's the difference.
In 1976, Congress updated the telecommunications act to specify that communal antennas were essentially 'retransmissions' under the act. SCOTUS was merely pulling Aereo in line with that existing law.
We do have the Museum of Science and Industry right across the street - a geek mecca if there ever was one.
Your timeline for that is a bit optimistic, I think. Robot factories - sure. Simple stuff like individual parts and toys from 3d printers - ok. For things like durable goods, there are too many dissimilar, complex parts made from varying materials, each processed in a different way, to make this a reality any time soon. You'd need a universal constructor - and that's at least 150 years out. We need to master far too many high level concepts first, like quantum physics.
Those are a great read - thanks for this.
> Comcast's peering connection to Level 3 has been saturated (over 90% capacity) 24/7 for over a year now
Got a source on that? Not that I doubt you, just looking to back up that claim.
More reading:
The gold plated faucets comment was merely hyperbole for effect - intending to signify they were spending way more than they needed to. Really, they were just spending too much money on new buildings, perks for top administrators and football coaches, and other 'status' projects.
See, what happened to those days was that gradually, colleges realized they could keep raising prices past what the government could pay, because they knew families of students could pay more. Colleges built palaces to "education", dormitories with gold plated faucets, gymnasiums, new buildings that were completely unnecessary simply because they could. All the while, tuition kept going up - the government saw that tuition was increasing at universities, so they'd raise the amount of subsidy, then the college would raise tuition above that to the point where families were bled just as much as before. Eventually, the bottom dropped out, the government said enough is enough, and held or dropped subsidies. Colleges, so used to 10% pay raises for tenured professors and unwilling to live with 20 year old dorms, screamed - "they're cutting our funding!" - so they just saddle their students with the maximum loan allowance they can - because they know they can get it - just to keep the gravy train coming. The more the government allows students to borrow, the more money colleges will charge.
It's economics at work. It's called Rent Seeking Behavior. If there is money to be gotten, it will be.
> minimal burdens on the vast majority of law-abiding firearm owners
In your eyes perhaps, but not in the eyes of the gun holding public.
Are those the same countries that come crying to the US whenever Vladimir Putin decides to turn the gas off? Maybe if they'd spend some money defending their own countries rather than depending on the US to do it, the US could afford to pay for college tuition for its citizens as well.
Easier said than done.
I rarely agree with Krugman, but he's right in this case - in order to effect change here, we need an economic solution - we need to make it so that it's in their best interest to reduce emissions. Voluntary boycotts of Chinese goods would be ineffective at best. We'd have to make goods from non-polluting sources have price parity with goods from polluting countries.
For God's sake, stop researching for a while and begin to think!
