What level are we talking about? If you really want to learn about the world, the world of fiction is not enough IMHO.

My sister graduated with a Master's in biology a decade ago, and I've recently started borrowing some of her books. They assume a basic understanding of chemistry, but otherwise target high-school student knowledge so aren't too hard to get into. Really recommended. For instance, you could pick up a college-level general introduction book on zoology or animal physiology and learn more about the world around you and your own body than you'd learn in a lifetime.

That, and a book about physics, but I actually think those are bit harder for the uninitiated because they tend to spend a lot of time on the math, which is fine if you're into it (like me) or actually need to figure out something in practice, but probably boring if you're just after the knowledge.

I remain sceptical of the idea of classics when it comes to fiction. You need to figure out what kind of stuff you like and go from there.

PS: now you mention communist book-burning - if you're up for an ideological challenge, I would suggest you try getting your hands on a short intro book on the economic ideas of Marx (basically a take on an analysis of the capitalistic system). I found that pretty interesting, because, well, that's the way our societies still work (the framing is of course a little dated).

That and his ideas on historical materialism - in the words of Wikipedia: "It is a theory of socioeconomic development according to which changes in material conditions (technology and productive capacity) are the primary influence on how society and the economy are organised."

This is opposed to most of the history I was taught in primary school which focused on individuals to a large degree - king B took power from king A and then did X. When he died, king C did Y. When you think about it, that level of focus is just absurd. Societies are shaped by the masses. E.g. the primary driver behind the French revolution wasn't intellectual ideas - people were hungry and the system collapsed.

Regarding code reviews: why do you think they are about finding bugs? While you can probably discover some problems through code reviews, a far more important goal is making sure that people are not turning out shitty code that will blow up the first time someone has to do any maintenance on it. You really want to make sure that people write understandable code.

You, sir, are a confused person. The protocol is open and free for any other OS to implement, and will remain so.

If the BSDs are left in the dust, it's because they're lacking the manpower to do the things a new GUI needs. This was not a big problem for GNOME 2, which is architecturally more than a decade old. But things have changed.

I can understand if people disagree with the path the GNOME developers have chosen because it does not fit with their ideals - but you have to understand that these developers are not your serfs you can command. There are still plenty of GUI environments with modest requirements of the OS, and while they may not do the same things you can choose from any of them as you wish. So quit the whining.

You are taking a pessimistic view on the wind power side here.

In Denmark, we just completed a 400 MW offshore site which gets a non-inflation-adjusted strike price at 0.19 USD/kWh for the first 10-12 years. After that it operates on market terms. The capacity factor is expected to be around 45-55% as far as I know (other offshore sites have similar factors - the numbers are publicly available in an open catalogue of all Danish turbines). Modern turbines have much improved capacity factors compared to the old smaller ones.

Now in Denmark, 0.19 USD/kWh was considered a far too high price. The bidding round was hastened through so we only got one bidder. An earlier site received less than half of that in strike price. The latter one would be around £59 per MWh.

I don't know why you are paying so big subsidies in England, but it seems fishy.

While it is true that offshore turbines have a harsh environment, it's also true that the industry has learned from some of its early mistakes. Even if you don't believe that, you need to take into account that the foundation is the most expensive part of an offshore turbine, so even if you have to replace the generator and blades, it's going to be a lot cheaper than building a new farm.

PS: I don't think it really makes sense to quote EPR costs from China. The costs of things in China just aren't comparable to the costs in a Western country.

No. They are lower. At least for modern wind farms.

I just have to comment this as I see it repeated often: I am sorry, but that's not really true. It's true they got a (big) foot in the door (about 1/3 of the votes in a background of a crisis), but that's about where democracy stopped and Hitler took over. If you're interested, I suggest you read a history book on the Germany and the Weimar Republic. Here's a couple of quick links with more info:

http://www.lobelog.com/no-hitler-did-not-come-to-power-democratically/
http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/1150/is-the-claim-that-hitler-came-to-power-democratically-justified

Even if you can perhaps argue about the 1933 election, there's no doubt that by 1939 Germany was not a democracy. In 1939 you had to be a fool to think otherwise, the nazis weren't exactly quiet about their authoritarian philosophy. I live in a neighbouring country, and by 1939 a lot of people here were certainly reading the signs, nervously.

Sure, but that's not really what you want. Far from it. You want output that follows the consumption. Many existing hydro plants can do this by virtue of the storage in the dam.

On a related note, cost/kWh figures can be deceptive. For instance, say the cost is 0,20 USD/kWh 24/7. That's great - except at night consumption is low so you may not be able to sell the energy, or will have to sell at a much reduced price; you can still do that if the marginal costs of keeping the plan running are lower than competitors. But in reality, you may only have say 12 hours/day to really turn a profit, not 24 hours.

Or perhaps you could just do what any long section of text does on the web - structure things in a hierarchy so you start off by seeing the hierarchy, then visit the first node, then go back to the hierarchy, then visit the second, etc. (or see part of the hierarchy as you traverse the leaf nodes, or whatever). And color code links to stuff you've already visited.

Really, navigation should be a solved problem by now if you think just a little bit beyond the limitations of paper books.

Watch the QuakeCon talks he gave this year and in 2012. He's been involved in the development of the Rift from the beginning one way or another.

The problem in this instance is that MATE is basically a fork of GNOME which was already in the repository. It's my understanding that a lot of stuff had to be sorted out to prevent clashes and to ensure that Debian doesn't end up with a bunch of garbage packages that will have to be maintained for the next Debian release.

It seems to me there are two schools of thought. One is that people have an inherent right to ideas they invent. That's the American dream - to rise from poverty and get rich.

The other is that patents are there to help society, period. In this case, it seems that without patent protection, society was better off with these Chinese knockoffs you mention - let the most competitive production facility win. If he had spent ten years and lots of development resources researching how to build this, there may be a point that society is better off granting him a patent so others aren't discouraged from investing in R&D. However, this argument only holds water in so far that this R&D wouldn't have happened anyway.

The problem with the first school of thought is that it appears the patent system in practice is actually rigged against individuals and small companies.

I personally know one inventor who was basically had no output for 10 years in order to pay off debt he'd accrued because he went out and patented a really good idea for a household appliance - and then never got anything out of it because the manufacturers found another way to build the appliance. Lawyers seem to me to be the only real winners in this game.

I was waiting for the moment you would suggest to strap the old CRT onto your head for the Only True VR Experience.

Yes, you can. You just can't keep licensing the result as BSD, because that would circumvent the GPL license - someone could take the BSD-licensed result and put it into a proprietary code base, something that people licensing their works under the GPL are not okay with.

But I'll grant that you that these days, it would perhaps be a good idea if you could keep the result licensed under two licenses, so the GPL-part under GPL and the rest under BSD. As long as the rest of the project is under a GPL-compatible free license, I don't really see the problem.

Of course, that could quickly turn into a mess. May not be workable in practice.

From the photos, the platform doesn't look like a WindFloat.

Mitsubishi and Vestas recently announced a joint venture in offshore turbines, though.

It's probably not going to be cheap, not in our lifetime, and it produces radioactive material comparable to a fission plant (although of course with some differences) so I'm not sure how it qualifies as safe either.

The truth is that we already have access to close to limitless energy in renewable sources. And the tech for harvesting it is falling in price year by year.