Thanks - that led to some interesting links.

So it's actually 1600 square miles of solar panels, at an estimated cost of about $1T.

The reason I did the calculation was a result of wondering: suppose we had an automated robotic factory that made and installed solar panels. At what point is the system self-sustaining?

In other words, could we have a self-assembling system that kept building ever more solar panels, and after a time allocate a portion of the output to the rest of the country?

If you could do that, you could have a huge self-sustaining automated factory and allocate a monthly allowance of the production to every person in the country. Each month everyone gets to order $1000 worth of the factory goods.

Over time, the system ramps up production to cover all the consumption in the country, and do recycling as well.

It's an interesting concept.

I once tried to calculate the total solar panel area needed to supply the entire US, and decided that it would fix comfortably in a square 20 miles on a side. Hence, 400 square miles. For the entire country.

Was my calculation off? I'm pretty sure that 1000s of square miles is an exaggeration.

(This was a "back of the envelope" calculation, so didn't take into consideration transmission lines. And as to "where to put it", I'll note that there's lots of area in Nevada East of Reno and the west side of Utah (valleys in the "Great Basin" section of the US, and uninhabitable salt flats) whose ecosystem would benefit from shade. Also, there's plenty of area in the medians of our national highway system (only counting areas protected by guard-rails, of course). And those medians run straight to the areas where power is most needed.)

I'm all for sensible precautions, but is this really a problem?

We can imagine all sorts of things happening and require enormous levels of bureaucratic process and safety procedure for just about everything, but without evidence of likelihood that'll just be wasted effort.

In the manner of Bruce Schneier's movie plot security, this is "movie plot safety". We *imagine* what *might* happen, then burden it up with preventive measures.

What we should be doing is looking at what *actually happens*, and then analyzing *why* it happens and making sensible requirements from that.

Cue the idiots who have personally seen one ("I've actually seen two, so it's definitely a problem") tied-down item come loose, thus proving that excess bureaucracy is required.

As nice as communism sounds, there's an inherent problem with rentals.

Anyone who's been a landlord knows that people don't take care stuff they don't own. Rental cars are abused, apartments are damaged and left uncleaned, taxis are smelly, public toilets are filthy and broken down.

I can't think of any rental system off the top that consistently presents clean and well-maintained equipment without enormous amounts of time and effort.

There's a thing in economics called "unequal knowledge" which explains why used cars have little value. The seller knows whether the vehicle is robust, but the buyer has no realistic way to tell. You can't tell whether the transmission needs replacing or the engine oil was ever changed or if other expensive repairs are needed. Because the buyer can't verify whether the vehicle is good, he will only pay "average" price. Because buyers will only pay average price, sellers won't sell vehicles which have above-average value. This in turn drives down the average price and eventually the expectation drops to zero.

Rentals are the same. You can never know whether someone damaged the rental until it's too late, and renters have no incentive to tell.

Construction equipment costs upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars. I can't see someone renting out a bulldozer and taking a chance that the renter didn't run it without oil for a weekend.

(To be fair, a more interesting statistic would be the percent of files in each language that contain ugly hacks.)

Perl was last on that list?

For those people who say that Perl coders only write incomprehensible gibberish, I say:

BWA HA HA HA HA!

But but... I was just scolded a couple of days ago about the differences between languages!

I was told that different languages will force me into different modes of thought!!!

I'm so confudded, I don't know *what* to think any more.

That's a pretty-good description of what an *adult* brain does, but it's not a good description of intelligence - artificial or otherwise. Your adult brain learned the rules from its environment with no assumptions about what those rules were.

Try writing an algorithm that can learn to play either chess or checkers, depending on what game it sees.

Make that same algorithm be able to play asteroids, or drive a car, or OCR.

Make that same algorithm be able to recognize a tune ("row row row your boat") even if it's played in a different key, at a different speed, with variations in tempo, and even variations in key.

Any time you know beforehand what the rules are you are not simulating intelligence - you are simulating the *results* of intelligence. You are just writing down whatever it is that the intelligence in your head has decided.

The intelligence never makes it into the program - it stays in your head.

Well, let's see here.

Firstly, there's no immediate feedback on phone charges. A running faucet or light left on will get noticed and turned off - people *want* to be sensible about their expenses.

Imagine a running faucet going unnoticed for 4 weeks. Phone services are like that.

Secondly, when the user does nothing different and suddenly gets these charges, can you really blame the user?

Imagine you work adjacent to the waterfront district, the Queen Mary happens to be docked there, and your phone calls are picked up by their tower and considered an international call - you've just racked up several hundred dollars for no apparent reason. Is it the user's fault?

Thirdly, there's no safeguards or limit switches in the system. You can't say to the phone company "I want service capped at $100 per month, alert me if it goes over".

You put the phone back in the cradle and the plunger switch doesn't disengage properly, the phone is still "off hook", and you go away for the weekend. When you get back, you've had a line open for 76 hours and will be billed accordingly (depending on your service plan).

And finally, and the one that gives people a burn about these issues, there's the issue of elites and the plebes.

You see, he *only* was able to get things straightened out because an elite was kind enough to help him. When he tried to straighten it out the phone company blew him off, but when an elite got involved it was sorted out immediately.

This sort of customer service - where the customer doesn't have to fight tooth-and-nail for everyday consideration from a big company, isn't available to you and me.

It's a perk of the elites.

I've got a 'kind of bingo card that I use to keep track of languages. I place checkmarks for each language depending on how it's different from all the other languages.

Help me out. Does Haskell require or not require a block after an "if" statement? Is the block introduced by brace, bracket, "then" or something else?

Or... does it use some completely lateral way to specify an "if" statement?

I may have to update my bingo card to accommodate.

Apropos of nothing, I note that we are in a deflationary cycle right now, for the first quarter of 2015.

Surprisingly, this little tidbit made hardly a ripple in the mainstream news outlets.

So... is this the recession that causes the crash, or will that be after the next recession?

It's sad how entire families can be torn apart by something as simple as wild dogs.

You're assuming nothing else will change. If this bill goes through, there will be an enormous push to make the private data public, and probably most of it will.

So... you're assuming the worst possible situation based on this change and everything else staying the same.

One might also argue that this change will encourage other changes, and the end result would be better.

I'm in favor of having information publicly available (for all departments, not just the EPA) and the argument about policy being made on secret information is compelling.

I think that's a false association. You might just as well say "well, my anti-tiger rock seems to be working".

I've already noted that it's the aircraft manufacturers who ensure safety, at great expense and effort in addition to the certification process.

Considering the expense of certification and that it's largely needless, don't you think the expense and effort should be directed towards a more useful goal? At the least, don't you think the regs should be changed to encourage safety?

And from a completely economic perspective, since the cost of compliance is so high, are useful solutions which would make us safer being ignored because the price of entry is so high? (For the longest time there were no updated Cessna designs because they couldn't afford the certifications. The older designs went for *decades* without modern updated electronics.)

I complain about the FAA because their system is worthless. You support them because their pointless system hasn't caused an accident.

Your anti-tiger rock could be put to better use.