I looked at several ethanol proposals back in the 2000's, every single one I took a pass on investing in because it was obvious that I would loose my shirt the second the government pulled the rug. These things, just like wind, have never been or never could be profitable without the subsidy. Anyone who was dumb enough to invest in these things deserves to lose their shirt. I completely gave up on renewable energy in 2008 when it was clear to me that no one wanted real solutions, just government handouts. I saw several technologies and processes never built because they were profitable on their own and everyone wanted something with a government handout attached.

Another major issue is with renewable power generation that isn't wind or solar. I can list off 10 projects that the utilities conspired to kill because they would be able to drive down the price of electricity in an area forcing them to shut down their legacy generation due to oversupply. The wind/solar mandate is the culprit in many of these cases as they have no choice but to buy X amount of wind/solar and they have to buy at the public market (electricity is traded electricity on a market based system in regional markets) so anything other than what they have and the feds require is a major threat for them.

People need to stop projecting their values and worldview on valueless lying politicians whose worldview is you could never imagine. Many smart and decent people assume that politicians (usually the ones on the team they support) are also smart, decent, and share their values. Where in fact they may be smart, they are not decent and care nothing for the greater good, only their own good disguised as the greater good, open your eyes.

Just imagine a person who looks completely normal but uses google glass as an assistive device for a cognitive disability. This will be the case sooner the later, are you going to support bans of legitimate assistive devices for the disabled? Such a person should visit this restaurant first.

Without *somebody* subsidizing new forms of energy development, we'd still be heating our homes and cooking with wood.

Truth by assertion and ad hominem responses are fallacies you should avoid in your arguments.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=XOM+Income+Statement&annual

Exxon Mobil 2012 profit margin ~9%, tax rate ~6%, fairly common numbers across the industry. I bet I could find a case were it was inverted.

9% profit margin is hand over fist?

All production subsidies are bad.

Letting someone write off a oil well in one year (due to high failure rates) or adjusting the depreciation schedule as production declines (Depletion) are not subsidies they are needed parts of our tax system. Just as the other so called subsidies keep the price under pressure keeping oil profits (9% margin is considered great in that business) up by filling the strategic petroleum reserve and low income heating assistance, are really helping someone other than the oil co's.

Whenever someone says the GOP or the Dems are/dont/* it is usually clear they have no idea whats going on and are only interested in a false right/left paradigm and have failed to see that there is no difference between the two except the exact same set of lies.

If solar is doing so great then why does it need subsidies? Thats what the GOP doesn't like, not that such a thing exists, but that the government creates distortions in the economy by picking winners before the race starts. Old school republicans and libertarians both distaste government intervention. Solar will eventually become cost effective without subsidies, lets wait for that to happen.

Isn't it time slashdot implemented ssl? Perhaps a self signed key that is widely publicised ahead of time. Also, sue them in US Federal court for violation of US laws. This type of thing happens all the time.

In the US telco companies are required to lease their plant at wholesale rates to competitive exchange carriers. This deregulation is what gave us unlimited long distance and voip. In most areas of the country DSL that can be leased on a wholesale basis is quite slow based in technology issues. CLEC's are mostly stuck buying bare wires from the customer premise to the local telco exchange, putting the loop distance in the ADSL range. They have kept CLEC's out of their VDSL and fiber products due to how the telco deregulation law was written. If we want faster broadband we need to modernize the telco deregulations to include cable companies and vdsl/fiber products. There is no reason who comcast can not lease several blocks of 12 channels to competitors on a wholesale basis to run docsis 3 over. Comcast and other cable co's are very inefficient with their bandwidth and with SDV and an all digital cable system there should be no issues.

The cost of 10G vs 10M is closer then one may think, 100M runs about $2/meg 10G is about $0.75/meg. At Comcast's 250gb soft quota you are paying for ~6 meg or $4.50 in wholesale bandwidth. I am sure Comcast's bandwidth costs are even lower then HE.net's published pricing so we can say thats generous. But the 6 meg is what they originally offered before they started claiming to up the speed endlessly.

The real answer is to force deregulation on them like the telco's and make them offer channels to their competitors at cost. We never would have gotten unlimited long distance and low cost data transit without telco deregulation. We need to do the same for cable, 60mhz of their 1ghz system is all a competitor needs to give them a honest run for their money. It will get companies like Comast to upgrade to 2ghz systems and deploy more SDV, all efficiently using their distribution resource and allowing for more competition.

You must never go on road trips, there are few options for gourmet food, you are just eating whatever you can so you can continue to function, regardless of what you drive or how much money you have.

I don’t think you understand what range anxiety is, you do not appear to have a lifestyle that is impacted by it. I drive 3 hours away and back in the same day for visits with my ageing parents. If i had a tesla, I would have to spend the night at their house (at the cost of my sanity) as the car slow charges. I drive 40k miles a year with family visits, cross country trips for work when its cheaper or more practical the flying, etc. That is what range anxiety is, not fearing a trip around town. I do 20 hr trips regularly, they could not be done with 1hr recharge times. This is why lithium battery auto's will be limited to a slice of urban folks until charge time is no longer an issue or it is replaced by more effective tech.

Musk's business model for building power-trains is safe but the whole cars based on lithium batteries is rocky at best. Tesla's charging system is a joke, having to go park in some far off small town and wait a hour for your car to recharge is not a solution to range anxiety. Maybe ultra capacitors could solve the recharge time/lithium battery issue, but I am unaware of anyone pursuing that. Hydrogen fuel cell powered electric vehicles have fast refill and long term will have better performance. As fuel cells are in continued development, I am unaware of any new game changing battery tech that will solve its limitations.

Most commercial hydrogen is produced by reformation of natural gas (similar source as electricity). Personally I would rather just have natural gas powered cars until more cost effective methods of producing hydrogen are developed. The real game changer by Musk is showing how cheaply a car can be built in a modern automated facility, the majors and their unions should take notice.