Yeap, this guy had a golden chance to make a cause and blew it by standing by people who kill other innocent people. Having a cause is one part knowing what to do and three parts getting the general public to like your cause. Using people who kill that general public tends to make them not like you all that much.

Holy crap! I want to be a cop that gets paid $100k a year when including benefits!!! Cops, especially beat cops, are like the lowest of the low in the police food chain. City I live in, the ones pointing a radar gun at you and responding to 911 calls typically make $24k a year. Include some of the crappiest health care (HSA for the fund yourself insurance type of person) and $10k life insurance policy (for when you eventually get shot, enough to put you in the ground, maybe)

No cities look at cops as the grunts to go out there and make them money, they are paid crap, worked till they're about to pass out, and given next to zero chances to actually excel in anything except maybe get more tickets. I'd say total box, a police officer in my neck of the apparent hood, makes about as much as your average shift leader at Wal-Mart plus with the added privilege of being shot at.

Also you can find that nation wide, the average is roughly $57k. Some cities actually treat their cops well with good benefits. The city I live in does have the up side of, if you make it to age 65, you can retire on pension. But also, many cops supplement their pay, by other things, like security, doing parades, funeral service, and stuff like that.

But hell, if there was a cop job being paid $100k, I would be seriously considering a field change.

You all use the help function? What company do you work for? Typically, if a user can't figure it out by just looking at it, then its a help desk issue. You can only imagine what it was like going from 2003 to 2007. Can I come work for you, it seems your users actually want to seek out help before jumping ship. Mine just tend to call my seven digits non-stop. Also, the MS Office help is on-line as well. So slow connection would be a problem there too.

Agreed, we are very bad at it because no one wants to be good at it. Just good enough to be profitable. A company can run a good plant and still make profit, just not the pie high in the sky kind. We've got little choice in the matter, we're going to either have to get good at nuclear or just accept insanely huge energy costs as norm in the next five to six decades.

I love solar and wind, but that's going to be an uphill battle with the coal and oil folks for at least the next 30 years. At least nuclear has already made it past the trail of fire. We just need to really focus on LFTR designs and how to overcome some of the still remaining challenges there.

"Please begin the ending process by beginning the ending process. Press the begin process button and select end process. This will begin the end process for your system." --imagine being read by some computerish female voice.

That honestly sounds like something IBM would have thought of, I love it!.

One of the things that people tend to overlook on these setups is the costly, filters that have to be put into place. Sea water contains a lot of life in it (microscopic all the way up to whale). Obviously, its pretty easy to take care of the stuff on either edge of that spectrum, boil the water and iodine for the microscopic; build an intake smaller than a whale. However, it is the between that is the bane of the plant. Not too long ago, a desalinization plant has to be shutdown for a few days because jelly fish had clogged the whole thing up.

While one could build filters and systems to prevent each kind of creature that tried to get into the plant, it would rise the cost past the breaking point for ROI.

You are smoking crack. The reason is because non-open drivers have had this implemented since word "go". That's what people wanted to use. Hence, the whole supply/demand thing kicking in. That someone is doing it in the open-source drivers means that they aren't getting the love they expected from the third party, and suddenly there is a business interest in having better support in the open driver.

To draw a parallel, would you use the default drivers that come "out of box" on a fresh install on Microsoft Windows whatever, or would you actually go to the vendor's website and download their specific drivers? I think we're done here.

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Berkshire Hathaway / RJR / PacifiCorp, please! Here I thought you'd come with something hard. Here I'll even toss you a bone. Warren Buffet cancelled some coal fire power plants because of environmental concerns. He also bought a butt load of solar plants out in Arizona, I mean like massive amounts. Like he's like super epic hero!!! However, he might have canned six coal plants but didn't stop him from selling the coal overseas at a premium and those solar panels, I'll let you guess how much he really paid for them and how much was paid by the public / compare that to the ratio of how much of the energy will actually stay in Arizona. I love Warren Buffet, he's like the high school example of making off good by doing good. But please, if you honestly think he's trying to make taxes fair for you, you are not in the right ballpark, you are not even in the right sport. Next time try someone like Bill Gates who honestly is healing people while only conducting the most massive tax evasion program ever. The worst thing he did was give us a shitty OS. Warren Buffet wants you to smoke it up!!

You know, I remember someone once saying to me about increased taxes the following, "Don't regulate me, don't audit me. Everything else I have people to handle it."

Not saying you cannot win, but know how to fight the battle. Idealism is great, but actually knowing how to engage is a wholly different thing.

Nope, didn't say they were bought because that would be illegal, they work for the public and there are equally many people in each special interest group. So honestly you are promoting a strategy of which side can be the loudest, which in the end doesn't work. Just saying. But I guess it's pretty entertaining.

Exactly, words are nice and cheap and with the advent of the Internet you can buy them them wholesale for a billion words on the penny. If you want change, you'll have to look elsewhere than words. Funding the "titans" so to say is one option that doesn't require a lot of bloodshed. Again, just saying, you're free to pick any other option you think is open to you.

You'll never get Joe six pack to buy into your "fight" talking in such big terms. You are going to need lots of small, easy to digest words (since that's what I guess you're going to go fight with anyway), or you'll never get anyone on your side just saying "think of all the children in 100 years." Most people are doing well thinking what they are going to do next week, much less their great-grandchildren. Your argument would go over like a lead balloon to most voters, you obviously aren't a politician (which that's a good thing, it means you have a heart).

I like how you keep saying bought, government, and what-not, but they are not the problem nor the solution. That's the perceived problem but it isn't the real problem. There's just no "unity" (massive quote fingers here) on the matter and there are a lot of non-government people out there that are getting paid to ensure there isn't unity. You think money (or whatever because at this point money is just like anything else) is being funneled to people on capitol hill and the reality of it is, yeah there is some, but nowhere near the amount that's put into the public's hand. Joe six pack's vote can be bought for a case of beer and its not illegal to buy his vote. Coca-cola can put a dozen vending machines in a school and buy the football team's supplies for the next few decades. Doctor's can buy drugs to save the lives of their patients with a Delta Express card and get a free trip to Maui in a few weeks and then turn around and bill your insurance for a profit. There's all kinds of avenues of using resources to get what you want done and the main issue isn't how you use them, but that you had them to begin with, that there be the problem. If the oil/coal companies thought they could survive the public backlash they'd send $50 to every single person in America (a drop in the bucket to them) and tell them that they, "highly urge you to vote 'no' on solar whatevers". Even if they had a 20% up-take on that, it's money well spent. What's more, the hoot and holler of this, it doesn't even have to be money! That's what is so awesome about all of that. Awesome, of course, meaning "like massively bad." People think money is the root of all evil and the fun fact is that this whole notion that we have needs that need to be met in order to live is a pretty active player in that whole evil thing.

You keep pointing at DC and the reality is you also need to point to the public (because it looks like you are looking for someone to blame here). You can keep pointing at DC, but don't forget the other players as well. That'll at least get you a glimmer of how humanity has shaped its own society and might impart some idea of why changing it isn't something that'll happen overnight or over the next century for that matter. Honestly, I think we ought to entertain at some level the notion that intelligence just leads to extinction and we just need to get over ourselves. Also, if you read all of this and think I'm just saying the problem is Joe six pack and/or the government and/or we should just give up, you're not paying attention.

Because rich people will want you to waste your time and money on trying to change that whole greed part of humanity, rather than give all that money to their opponents.

Well I can't speak for parent, but honestly this has been the case since political power overtook that whole tribal test of strength thing back in the days. Submit a single instance where those who held the highest concentration of resources (money, slaves, oil (crude or olive), land, etc...) didn't use them to get favorable status from those who represented the people and then we'll talk.

All the study proves is that which we've already known. Maybe it might incline some to give money to the underdogs, but to stir the population into change is way not on the plate. Even if a government is over thrown, eventually another props up and rich people (in resources not just money) just dig their claws in again. So since talking about something that's never going to go away no matter how much bug killer you spray on it, why not talk about something else?

The whole idea should be let's make the solar companies rich so that they can do attack ads on coal, oil, and all them other folks. The only way anyone will make headway is to play the same game that's been played for the last six to ten millennia. Maybe in another ten to twenty millennia we will be ready to address this whole facet of humanity.

The thing is, we'd have to assume then that the equipment you just stated was not damaged in the EMP. If that's the case, then yeah, they could just fly a freaking helicopter or drive a van to the fault. Also, I dislike people who just randomly quote binary search algorithm and toss nothing with it. If you thought someone would just have a single person walk the entire line, I have a bridge to sell to you. I apologize for assuming that both of those points would be obvious.

Oh well the military already has tried pacemakers versus EMPs. And typically during planned extended outages, like hurricanes, life support patients are typically taken elsewhere. You'll be surprised what you can find within the public domain from the US military.

No, not really. If you had an EMP that could cook via electromagnetic radiation the electrical grid of the US, you'd have worst problems than EMP caused black outs to deal with.

The whole idea of an effective EMP is to fry as much cooper/aluminum wire as one could. Think of really effective EMPs being more like lighting and less like nuclear detonations, since using a nuclear detonation is like trying to cut off the kitchen lights using a bulldozer and thirty tons of sand. If we're strictly talking EMP, lighting and all the static discharge family is your better bet.

So with that said, a lot of electrical companies are prepped for pretty bad EMPs with response teams, though I'm pretty sure most of America would find that hard to believe when their power does actually go out. One thing that is actually going to be slightly more difficult to deal with is first finding the point of failure, bring it down, and then put up the replacement. With a bomb, it's pretty easy to figure out where the failure is and the upshot is that the part to be replaced is already on the ground or missing completely so you can skip that whole removal step. Yeah, we might be talking several kilometers needing to be replaced with a nuclear device, but you know from the first second you need a couple of hundred kilometers of wire. A good EMP keeps you guessing and has a dozen or so employees walking hundreds of kilometers of wire trying to find the failure. Better sections of the US grid have more fine grain reporting points so maybe on a dozen or so kilometers need to be checked. However, the actual transmission lines are the key to a good EMP. That said, you don't need a big "bomb" to be effective, you just need coordinated attacks on major transmission lines. However, doing that alone is just more of a major disruption, rather than a major blow to the nation.

Additionally, power generating plants usually have a lot of counter measures for EMPs. So you really aren't going to take out the generators. It's silly to think that someone could without a massively coordinated attack. Especially if we're talking strictly EMP here. If we're talking a nuclear device, again, you've got bigger problems especially if you had enough to take out all the major plants in the US.

The real danger here, I guess, is consumers. Some EMPs can fry pacemakers and pretty much anyone on life support is dead in a massive EMP. However, it's not the end of society and more so, hardly the end of the US. You can take any example of when some large section of the US had power knocked out for several weeks. A massive EMP would be roughly equal to a hurricane without any advance notice that hit a large section of the US. If you were lucky enough to hit the entire US then multiply the figures in your head by that amount. However, the end of days for the US, hardily. EMP weapons in real life would cause some death but for the most part the US would be tired of martial law long before the US fell under the pressure of an EMP weapon.

The real tactical value of EMPs is not as some silver bullet, but as a disruptive force that is soon followed by other forms of attack. Additionally, you'd want your EMP to be as quiet as possible and look as much like a lighting strike as possible on the grid. Anything else and there would be way too much attention drawn that would get people ready for the obvious next strike. Thinking that an EMP would be a good primary strike is silly. Additionally, some have thought about EMPs in asymmetrical warfare contexts and while they would play a good role in the demoralizing aspect of that, it's just simpler to buy a ton of fertilizer and diesel fuel as opposed to trying to construct something massive enough to disrupt more than just a few dozen people. In other words, the reason low tech seems to win in asymmetrical warfare and terrorist operations is that you get more bang for buck so to say.

I think when you consider it carefully, those who would toss EMPs around like we are under some imminent threat of them, are doing nothing more but trying to push some agenda. EMPs just really aren't that great of a weapon and the technical curve to building ones that would be worth the time and money is just too high for your casual mayhem makers.