I'm sending in more trains!

I assume the technology is for export, because line of sight in China should be good for, oh, about twenty feet or so.

That depends on how you account for the strip mining, fracking, CO2 and things like radiation (from coal plants) spewing into the atmosphere (which we all share). There aren't low carbon sources that are both cheaper than nuclear and suitable for base load.

And for perspective, coal plants emit more radiation when working normally, 24x7.

Are possible, and much safer technology (than was in place at any of the high-profile incidents) exists today.

Actually, it also confirms that the GP is wrong about the financial arguments, since it's exceedingly well documented that executing prisoners costs about an order of magnitude more than the alternative.

Alas, it was an open-faced sandwich.

Pedophiles are mentally ill, and while it's common to equate mental illness with criminality, I don't understand it. Pedophiles find children attractive, and they need to be stopped, but this is a social problem and not a criminal one.

The rest of us who don't "molest" children don't refrain because we're simply in better control of our urges, it's that we don't find children sexually attractive.

Agreed. Mini-USB, on the other hand, is way more robust, and is not significantly larger.

This was a discussion about the costs of solar thermal vs. solar photovoltaic, so you're correct: I'm not much interested in your oil/coal tangent. You're way off topic.

The answer is "irrelevant" because we're not within a factor of 100 of having more solar energy online than we can use in real time. The only people who back their PV with battery systems are 1) fools willing to pay a fortune for the privilege of thinking they're giving the utility company "the finger", and 2) people who absolutely can't get a grid connection (and are thus paying a fortune for their battery-backed PV).

It's also "irrelevant with prejudice" because the $7/watt thermal plant in question most obviously does not come with a 30-year warranty either. In fact, no one seems to want to talk about its operating costs, which are probably staggering.

I'm thinking and typing. And you're acting like an asshole in public.

How much and by what means? It's pretty well accepted that PV will be at $2/watt in 3-4 years. Thermal needs at least a 4x improvement in power/$ to be even worth considering unless it provides some unique benefits. (Storage is not one of them--we're not within a factor of 100 of having more solar online than we can use in real time.)

And at three square miles it's not exactly small, either. PV has the advantage of being arbitrarily scalable, and not requiring dedicated land, which means it can be sited closer to the point of use.

It might make sense under some very specific criteria, but that is far from conclusively established. And using the brain for critical thinking and asking reasonable questions is not "bitching".

Yeah, people keep saying that, while sidestepping the fact that this thermal plant cost >$7/watt, while photovoltaics are around $4/watt and falling fast.

Absolutely. The whole thing about the sun not shining at night is a total red herring, because that's not a problem until the day we produce more solar energy than we can use in real time, and we're a couple orders of magnitude away from that good problem too have.

No, not really. The energy available is directly proportional to the collector area, be it PV or thermal.

Besides, installed PV is around $4/watt (and falling fast), while this thermal plant was over $7/watt.

Code that's successful tends to last a lot longer than its creators anticipated, so lay that foundation carefully. It's usually worth investing effort to do it as right as possible the first time. Doing it "quick and dirty" is the equivalent of mailing somebody a bomb, and often the recipient of that bomb will be you.

That said, there are some fantastic programmers in the quick-n-dirty catagory. Use them effectively--to throw together proofs of concept and demos, to explore alternate implementations, etc. Just don't let them manage the whole damn project.

As the codebase gets larger and older, collecting dependencies along the way, it gets exponentially more expensive to redesign/rework components. Sometimes those are the only good ways to fix bugs, so you'll end up with not-so-good band-aid fixes instead. Then, your technical debt is growing exponentially along with your codebase.

What, prepare to die?