There is the problem of capacity and storage,

According to the same web site you quote, a reasonably optimistic target is 20% PV, 20% wind by 2030. The rest (60%) must be provided by something else. I don't think coal or nuclear is quite dead yet (unfortunately).

Very bad physicist then, then one who could not understand why lantern batteries wouldn't start his car. Any self-respecting physicist, even a theorist, knows about intensity and power.

A symphony is hard work, but many people can compose a song, not a very good one, mind you. Anybody can learn chess and even become reasonably proficient. Not grandmaster or anything, but decent. Basic algebra is taught to everybody in middle school, so I think you are a bit pessimistic.

By the way I think the policy of Apple to staff their store with Apple employees is excellent for the brand. Others would set up a kind of franchise, which would be cheaper but probably not as effective.

May be multiple issues. Perhaps better OpenMP support ? maybe NUMA ? Maybe Linux has a better virtual machine infrastructure ? maybe hardware support.

I love FreeBSD, I support them financially every year, and I use it daily but it is not uniformly better than Linux. Hardware support, in particular, is very far behind. Two random examples:

1- My NAS system does not recognise any USB storage when they are plugged in after boot (no hotplug). It does not support USB superspeed (USB 3.0) either (I have to boot in compatibility mode by disabling xHCI in the BIOS). This is a known issue with some Asus motherboards, still unfixed in 10.0
2- FreeBSD does not install on some of my HP G6 servers. The kernel simply segfaults. I really wanted FreeBSD on this hardware, so I run it in a VM under Linux (using KVM). Has been running brilliantly for about 2 years now.

Also security update in FreeBSD are really difficult. I haven't finished dealing with updating my ports since I moved from 9.2 to 9.3 last week.

I have to say this though: when it runs, it runs really well.

Did you build the ICs? Though so.

That's a good point, however driverless cars are still being used in very controlled situations, and for the moment require a huge, expensive array of sensors coupled with fragile, powerful and expensive computers. Even if we wanted we could not replace a significant number of cars on the road with driverless ones. The problem is not some kind of legal or administrative red tape, the problem is to make the technology simple enough, robust enough and cheap enough that it comes by default on most new cars like electronic injection did a few years back. Then it is a problem of waiting for a number of years for these cars to replace the old ones on the road.

This is still a ways off.

Actually, searching for "Reduction of inter-block artifact in DWT" should produce IEEE articles, most probably from the Transactions on Image Processing journal or Transactions on Signal Processing.

And indeed they do. My technical searches always include at the very top the most relevant academic papers from scholar.google.com

Blocking-artifact reduction in block-coded images using wavelet-based subband decomposition
H Choi, T Kim - Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, , 2000 - ieeexplore.ieee.org

Inter-frame wavelet transform coder for color video compression

S Zafar, YQ Zhang - US Patent 5,495,292, 1996 - Google Patents

Embedded image coding using zerotrees of wavelet coefficients
JM Shapiro - Signal Processing, IEEE Transactions on, 1993 - ieeexplore.ieee.org

Blocking artifact detection and reduction in compressed data
GA Triantafyllidis, D Tzovaras - Circuits and Systems for , 2002 - ieeexplore.ieee.org

Perhaps the solution is for you to make a Google Scholar profile and you will get those as well?

This is not so insightful.

1- Foreigners who do come to America and then leave after a short period (a few years) do not take long-term jobs away from Americans. Clearly the jobs these undertake are like internships, post docs and other temp positions, these jobs are not meant as career jobs who would be of interest to an American.
2- Foreigners who come to America, get some training and then leave are *good* for America. These people will know and like America, will speak english, will have a network of friends and people they know back in America. If they start companies, maybe these companies will be friendly to America as well: import stuff from there, rely on American technology, and whatnot. The importance of creating goodwill cannot be overestimated.

How people who come on a H1B for a non-training job, and then stay by being sponsored for a green card, this is a different story. But notice that these people eventually become American. This has been a recognised way to extend the power and importance of the USA for a long time, because the best and brightest come to America to the detriment of the country they leave.

In reality the job situation in the USA is not nearly as dire as some people make it, compared with most other countries around the world. What is not so nice is that unemployed people have it very tough, very quickly. Better not fall sick.

Exactly. Also the NSA doesn't even need warrants. How convenient for them that everyone is leaving these fine files in the same place for them to search...

So then what happened to your dad?

Won't work, because most employees would rather use the cash than save it. Then society would have a massive influx of destitute, retirement-age people, which *would be* a problem. It's been done in the past with catastrophic results.

1) Roulez p'tit bolide

2) En avant, Guingamp

Your reply is very interesting and outlines the fact that one should not stop learning after school, but instead revisit past and new subjects with a different eye and different tools. Also motivation is the prime mover here.