> They come with free overheating problems. Solar panels need the airflow behind them to keep cool

Using conventional Si cells, yes. Using CdTe, CIGS or other thin-film tech, no. Which is why...

http://www.myplant.com/doc/solar-pamphlet.pdf

> "about 10 cents a watt..."

Watt hour. So would you like you re-state your invective in light of that mistyping on my part?

Here, I'll just point you to the calculator so you can do it yourself... http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/tech_lcoe.html

Any estimates on how much power will be needed to run the crypto so a bunch of static web sites can put an S in the URL?

> Client-side code (WPF) in .NET is utterly dependent on DirectX

Which is why they...

1) allow you to use the platform's native UI, and...
2) developed the new "modern" UI that has no (or few) such dependancies

> That's being either mistaken or misleading.

Really? Huh. You see, I'm on the Mono dev list, and they're all saying the exact opposite. "They" including Miguel de Icaza, of course. I think I'll take his word over yours, AC.

> People don't just want to write websites with C#

That's a weird statement. Who cares what they "want"? I know lots and lots of people doing C# websites whether they want to or not.

> It was easy and I will never come back

Here too. And when you see comments to the contrary, it's always got something to do with it being OSS. "It's slower, and not OSS". But it's not slower, and now it is OSS. It's like listing to people try to convince me that vaccinations are bad for you, you wonder how they can stare bald facts in the face and then say the opposite is true.

> sticking to Xamarin's toolset

Which, unfortunately, is a serious subset of Mono. I found that every program I tried to port used some code that wasn't supported, and most of our code simply does XML file handling.

Actually, it's difficult to even tell what you have due to MS's totally bizarre naming practices. Why is System.IO.Packaging, which deals with ZIPped XML files, part of WindowsBase? It's practically impossible to go from a namespace to the assembly that contains it. This has always bugged me.

> Even the bloated Eclipse is faster than VC++ on Windows - at least if you run Eclipse on Linux

I've run Eclipse on OS X, Windows and Linux. None of those are *remotely* as fast to work with as VS. The fact that Google is trashing Eclipse in favour of Android Studio is proof positive of the problems with Eclipse, and the compile-to-the-metal that both MS and Google are adopting is an indictment of the entire byte code regime, IMHO.

I've also used Xcode and VS head-to-head, and VS is definitely the superior platform. Although Xcode offers many of the same features, and outright superior GIT integration (it's like two clicks and one url to get it working), the indexing system is completely broken so you can't even do things like "find all references". When running one of the CLR languages the superiority of VS is magnified through on-the-fly compiles and such. Xcode claims to offer this, but it's horribly broken, and the late-stage operations like code signing and packaging make it a moot point anyway.

I don't know if you'll ever *really* be able to write iOS apps on VS, but if that day comes, I'd switch in a heartbeat.

> What we do know is that the plane was downed with multiple, small, high velocity projectiles

Yes, it's called "shrapnel".

> even entertain the possibility that this was cannon fire

Because cannon fire has a minimum size of the puncture it can make, the size of the shell. The resulting marks on the aircraft will be a circle of that size, given a nice face-on strike, or elongations if the angle was more glancing. It can get much larger if the metal tears.

Now look at the image. There are many, many holes in the aircraft that are much smaller than a cannon shell. In fact, there are quite a few that are exactly the size of a piece of shrapnel.

So that's why "west no one seems to want to even entertain" the idea, it's clearly false.

> that the airplane was hit by a continuous rod warhead

It absolutely was not. The images of the fragments *clearly* show shrapnel, and there isn't any evidence of anything hitting the plane that's longer than maybe an inch.

> modern aircraft stay airborne for a long time even without any active controls because of fly-by-wire

Perhaps, but they don't stay airborne at all when the front of the aircraft is missing. And since the controls are on or around the flight deck, losing that would take the FBW offline anyway.

> The goal was apparently to silence the crew and prevent calls for help

Pffft. Nothing silences a crew like blowing them up with a missile. Just ask KAL 007.

> They note that BUK missile makes a very brightly visible plume

No it doesn't. The booster is very smoky but the upper stage is pretty clean firing. Here's what a missile actually looks like:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:F-105_dodging_SA-2_over_Vietnam.jpg

Note that even though the engine is still firing in this case, there is no visible trail. That's not always the case, but just like any aircraft, the trail is caused mostly by physical effects on the atmosphere and thus highly dependant on the state of the weather.

> does sound odd that no one got any footage of the missile

Oh come on. Next time you're walking around, see how many people are looking up at planes. And how many of them are taking pictures?

> Overall, the case is getting stranger with every relevation

Sure, if you know nothing about aircraft, missiles, photography and are prone to believing conspiracy theories.

> essentially an afterburner, and does not start with stationary electrons

No major accelerator does. Most of them start with something simple like a Crockoff-Walton or even a van-degraff, then inject them into a series of ever larger synchrotrons. LCH has something like four or five "injectors" in a chain.

In any event, plasma wake accelerators have been around for years. They don't work. This one won't either. Plasma just doesn't work the way any of our ever increasingly complex computer simulations say it should. Just as the $4 billion they dumped into NIF.

Is anyone else amused by the rapidity of this race to the bottom?

Enjoy bankruptcy.

> The experts are not saying that it is 100% from her plane

You're of course referring to the "experts" from Gillespie's TIGHAR group, which contains no actual experts.

They did, however, contact *actual experts* shortly after they found the piece in 1991.

Those *actual experts* flatly stated it is 100% NOT from her aircraft.

http://articles.latimes.com/1992-03-30/news/vw-278_1_amelia-earhart

"Not by any stretch of measurement or the imagination, they claim, could the piece be from Earhart's airplane."

> 1500km? that'd be barely enough to cross France

But you don't have to. There's lots and lots of networks already in place. What's still needed is a group of relatively shorter but very high capacity backbones to get the power from one regional grid to another. And a lot of THOSE are already in place too.

> Miami to Houston and Dallas won't give you a US wide HVDC grid

For sure, and yet one can already get power between those places already.