I saw what you did there...

I like Minneapolis as a city... except for the winter. Around the end of Nov. it becomes a really brutal place to live.

2 phones, 2 kindles, 2 hand held game consoles, 2 tablets, 2 laptops, 1 netbook, 1 full size console and 1 TV.
Damn.

So you wrote this post on a mobile device or desktop? Exactly... The desktop is so "dead" except for the fact that everybody you know including yourself has a desktop at home and at work... Yeah, you've got a mobile device, but honestly how many people do you know who only have a mobile device?

I've handled one of these phones and holy crap... Until I dug down into it, I *thought* it was running iOS. It's a straight up, shameless copying on the entire interface, down to the configuration menus. Even then, unless you knew what you were looking for, an end user would just assume it was iOS.

I can't imagine Apple not going to the WTO and waving their hands ineffectively as the Chinese make a mockery of international copyrights.

That's great that you believe your own bullshit as well. Imagine you build two power plants, one nuclear and one that's a solar farm and they both cost $1bn. Which of those plants over its lifespan is going to have a higher cost? How much security is your solar farm going to need? The bigger question is... in 20 or 30 years when the nuclear power plant has reached it's effective lifespan, how much is it going to cost to decommission that plant? Vermont Yankee which Entergy said they'd be closing on 2014, they're talking about it costing more than a billion to decommission it. Even those costs don't include the long term storage costs of all the spent fuel that'll end up who knows where.

So great, you get your electricity for a couple cents cheaper per kwh now... at what cost later on? Both in environmental and in remediation.

Though ultimately, I see centralized power companies in the same light as I see newspapers. They will evolve or they will die. As the market economics for consumer power change and the TCO for solar combined with better storage options make going off grid more and more feasible, power companies are going to grasp harder and harder onto their dwindling customers, or come up a better model. Those companies who do, will end up eating those who don't.

Obligatory Uncle Ben quote here.. As someone who has access to everything, you need to exercise a certain level of discretion. However, at the same time you need to have some common sense.

If wiki is to believed this system will be able to launch heavier payloads to LEO then the Falcon 9 Heavy. However, SpaceX is currently building a reliable track record with the Falcon9. If the Merlin 2 engine concepts were to come to fruition and the Falcon XX was to become a real launch vehicle, Space X would have a system that would completely eclipse the SLS. The original posters argument is incoherent. There's no "deep space." Once in orbit you either have the capacity to increase your velocity to raise your orbit or escape orbit or you don't.

I'm still trying to understand whose going to grow all the food once all these rural peasants (you know the ones who've been on their land for generations farming) get moved into the city.

Honestly, I have no doubt that China can pull this off, but at what cost?

Frankly, I think NASA should be working with SpaceX to get the DragonRider off the ground as fast as possible and work on the Falcon Heavylift. This is basically a pork project to keep the people who where making the solid rocket boosters in business.

The reply is actually excellent. I was about to hate all over the page but actually read it first. Frankly, this is an individual states issue... Which only an act of congress can change, or have our local politicians change.

However, the auto dealership lobby is a serious nut to crack. With elections coming, I'm not sure many politicians are going to put their necks out so they can be labeled as against local businesses.

This is far more common then you would imagine... The fact it's being applied to a subway system in this manner is pretty novel.

How big is your house that it costs several million Euros? A buddy of mine (I'm the US fyi) bought a used fork lift battery. His system consists of panels on the roof, the battery(s) and a propane generator as an ultimate fallback. I'd like to say the battery cost him $2400 dollars. The way he uses it, it'll last indefinitely.