What do people call alternative medicine that works? Medicine.

Alternative energy does not work because if it did we would not call it alternative energy any more. We've been subsidizing wind and solar for decades, at some point we have to make it sink or swim on its own.

I've been told many times by people here on Slashdot on how wind and solar are as cheap as anything else. If that is true then why does it need a subsidy any more? People would be building out wind and solar power because its profitable to do so.

We don't burn coal and natural gas because we are evil bastards that put money before our children. We burn fossil fuels because they make a profit, a profit we need to feed, clothe, shelter, and educate our children.

What subsidies do is take money from those that know how to make money and give it to people that don't. If people knew how to make money with wind and solar they wouldn't be lobbying government for subsidies, they'd be too busy making money so that they can feed the children to lobby for subsidies.

The problem I see is not subsidies but taxes. Prohibition of alcohol set back bio fuel research at least fifty years. Right now if you want to do research in alcohol as a fuel you have all kinds of legal hoops to jump through to prove that people aren't drinking it. Prohibition of alcohol is gone but we still have prohibitive taxes and regulation.

Regulation is killing all kinds of beneficial research. Anything nuclear gets killed before they can even get started. We can't even build solar panels in the USA because of EPA regulations.

Just mentioning this will likely get me modded into oblivion but I'll say it anyway. The NOAA has been caught altering historical temperature data. There is no global warming. The hottest period on record has been in the 1930s, all annual temperatures have been lower. The US federal government does not care about global warming either because they know its not happening or because they are too busy "spreading the wealth" to buy votes. My proof? The physical plant that heats the federal buildings in DC is powered by coal. If they we concerned about global warming then they'd be removing the plank from their own eye first.

The problem is subsidies, not the solution. Companies are rewarded for following the rules laid out by the government, not for actually solving the problem. A free market solves problems.

A worst case nuclear accident would kill a lot of people, assuming we continue to build nuclear power plants like we have in the 1950s. If we build modern nuclear power plants then a worst case nuclear accident would be no worse than that of a coal plant and certainly less than that of a hydro electric failure.

We need to build waste annihilating molten salt reactors. We get cheap and safe power while burning up the stockpiled nuclear "waste" from the solid fuel plants.

I look through the comments here and it seems a lot of people are unhappy, displeased, confused, or otherwise negative about the rankings of languages in the list. As someone that is seriously considering going to graduate school to update my programming skills I'd like to know where I could get the best return on my investment.

I did VHDL and Verilog primarily for a few years. As is the nature of the beast there was some mix of programming in a lot of other languages that went with that to make tools work, add in existing legacy code, or accommodate the preferences of co-workers and managers. Some that come to mind are C/C++, shell scripting, PHP, Python, Perl, XML/HTML, and JavaScript. I came across some MatLab, tk/TCL, and Fortran but I didn't have to know the language but know it was there, how to run the code, and who to talk to when it broke.

I did some development on MAMP, LAMP, and WIMP systems off and on over the years. This meant using SQL, PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and since the development platform I was using was a Mac I had to know some shell scripting, AppleScript, and probably one or two more I've since forgotten.

Wanting to get back into web development I'm considering classes on Python, Perl, Ruby, JavaScript, and HTML5. I'd probably also brush up my knowledge of C/C++ and Java since they see unavoidable as both a computer science student and someone in the real world of programming just about anything. Old code for web pages will very likely have C++ and Java in them that need to be reused or replaced with something newer, faster, and more compatible.

A masters in computer science program means taking about 10 three credit courses to get the degree. That means learning potentially 10 different languages. Which 10 would you choose? Which of those 10 are a must to learn, which would be merely advantageous to know?

I thought I had my mind made up on which classes to take but reading the fine article and some of the comments here leads me to think I may need to reconsider my priorities. What shold my priorities be?

A perfect example of why we need to dispense with the electric car subsidies. The argument for the subsidies was that they were a temporary measure to assist in the development of the electric car so that we could reduce our collective carbon footprint. Now that electric car prices have come down, and gasoline prices have gone up, electric cars just plain make sense for a significant portion of the population.

However, the closest thing we have to immortality is a government program. We'll see electric cars subsidized for decades after whatever new technology comes along to replace them.

I liked my old sedan. It got good gas mileage, it had plenty of power, was real easy to get around parking lots. Problem was that I live on a street that is a low priority for snow removal and I was expected to be at work in all kinds of weather and that sedan had a habit of getting stuck in even a light snow. I also didn't like that it didn't have a whole lot of room for my rifle case and such for when I went to the shooting range.

When it came time to get a new(er) vehicle I opted for a 4 wheel drive light SUV. The mileage is not as good, the turning radius a bit wider, and it does not accelerate like that sedan could. But I have not yet got stuck in the snow and I have all kinds of room for my stuff.

If I had a longer commute I'd consider getting a sedan again and drive the SUV only when the weather was bad or I had to carry a lot of stuff. If it came to that I'd consider also trading in the SUV for a big truck that you despise but for now I compromise.

When in college I was in the solar car club. I heard the car we were building was using a steel frame because the old car with an aluminum frame broke in half. The car was not in a competition at the time, it was being driven to train drivers or something. It hit a bump in the pavement and suddenly the car was in two pieces.

Other issues driving the decision to build a car with a steel frame instead of aluminum was time and money. The high chrome steel used was expensive but still much cheaper than the structural aluminum. it was also easier to find people willing to weld the steel.

All these green energy subsidies have to stop. I believe we've past the tipping point years ago that green energy technology needed government money for development. Perhaps it was five years ago, maybe it was fifty, but we don't need to give rich people money to buy solar panels they'd be buying anyway.

Solar panels reduce carbon released into the environment, we know that. Solar panels save money for those people that can afford to buy them. What we have now are tax avoidance schemes for rich people. This makes poor people bear a greater portion of the tax load.

What seems to be an issue lately is that people are buying solar panels too quickly. The electric grid in many places was not designed to handle residences putting energy into the grid, it was designed only for residences to draw from it. Solar power is good, we need more of it. Problem is that if the solar power is added too quickly to the system then it can become unstable. Giving people tax breaks to people for putting solar panels on the roof of their house means less tax money to improve the electric grid to accommodate the increased use of solar power.

Same goes for electric cars, CFL bulbs, windmills, and bio fuels. People would be making money with these technologies without the government subsidies. With the subsidies they are making more money by giving tax breaks to the people wealthy enough to buy them. It's rich people becoming richer by taking from the poor. Because solar panels are involved we're all supposed to feel good about ourselves. Everyone is going to feel real good when the power goes out because we gave tax money to rich people instead of improving an aging electric grid.

We don't need to encourage people to buy solar panels any more with tax money. The money saved in power produced is enough. The good feelings people have in saving the environment doesn't hurt either.

If the cops don't like dealing with people that keep asking if they are free to go then here's an idea, don't stop people without cause.

Now we have a federal court that says we have a right to travel by whatever means we choose. It is insufficient that there are other means to travel to prevent people from boarding a plane as the government has argued before. Where else might this apply? I could see a right to travel being applied to other cases.

What of a person that wishes to pilot a plane? We've seen people be denied getting flight lessons before because of actions by DHS and/or DOJ.

What of a person that wishes to drive a car? Pushing this a bit further can the government require a license to drive? Could the government be forced to issue a license to drive? People with vision problems would not likely have a case, an issue of being physically capable of controlling the vehicle would be obvious. What of a person that was perhaps found guilty of vehicular manslaughter? Or a long history of drunken driving?

We've seen all kinds of barriers to free travel, the ability to fly is just a small part. We've seen random searches of people walking on public streets for drugs and weapons, "safety" roadblocks where police will go fishing for drunk drivers and busted tail lights, ID checks on city buses, TSA pat downs to **leave** a train, which is just a few off the top of my head.

We've seen our freedom to travel get slowly eroded. The excuse seems to be to make us "safe". I seem to recall a wise man saying something about trading our liberty for the promise of safety.

The problem I have with global warming alarmists is not so much about the shaky evidence they have but the solutions they propose. These people are watermelons, "green" environmentalists on the outside but "red" communists on the inside. They're solution to every problem is more government, it's just that global warming is a convenient bogeyman to scare everyone into accepting more government.

Whether or not global warming is real is, IMHO, irrelevant. The problem is too much government. If the goal is reduced fossil fuel consumption then the solution is to get the government out of the way. I can get behind less fossil fuels because that means less reliance on foreign sources of oil. Many of the problems we have in this world is because of oil. Those that have the oil tend to be brutal dictators. Those the have the money to buy the oil tend to be in nations free from those dictators. Oil is the means by which wealthy free people can be convinced to give that wealth to murderous dictators.

What we need is nuclear power but, here in the USA at least, the government does not seem interested in an energy source that is low in carbon output, inexpensive, reliable, and safe. To those that will reflexively scream "NUCLEAR WASTE!" I suggest looking up waste annihilating molten salt reactors. With molten salt reactors we would not only not produce more nuclear waste we'd be able to destroy the waste we already have.

Not only does the government hold up nuclear power they hold up solar and wind. The subsidies to "help" solar and wind power do not help any more, they only hurt. We've been subsidizing wind and solar for decades to assist in its development. The problem with continued subsidies is that there is no incentive to improve. The people in these industries know that so long as they can prop up the global warming bogeyman that they will make a profit from government subsidy. At some point they have to sink or swim on their own. Allowing them to continue like this means they need oil and coal to make the money so they can skim off the top to line their pockets.

Subsidies on wind and solar are only holding them back. I don't believe that solar is a viable energy source, wind is something I can see as making a lot of people wealthy. Wind, nuclear, and hydro are what I see as the future. But the government is in the way. No more subsidies, that means for oil too. Get out of the way of nuclear power and let people build some nuclear power plants.

I don't care if the world is getting hotter. I want to see some solutions to the problem that does not involve more government involvement in my life. I don't want the government telling me what kind of light bulbs to buy or where to set my thermostat, I want my government to tell me that they are serious about the problems and will issue permits for the construction of some nuclear power plants.

Nancy Pelosi should be outraged but instead she uses the lost e-mails as an excuse for more spending. You see the IRS lost the e-mail because they did not have enough money to buy backup tapes or to hire enough IT staff. If we don't spend more money on backup systems now then we can expect more records to get "lost" in the future.

How do people like her get to stay in office? How do people like her get to be Speaker of the House?

Forget I asked. I know the answer. She gets to where she is because her answer to every problem is more government. We've created a feedback loop where more government creates more government. I'm not sure when this loop was created but I believe that the creation of the IRS has a lot to do with it.

That's a nice story but it does not explain why only e-mail to external people were lost and internal e-mail messages could be retrieved. Had it played out as you explained then all e-mail from some date in the past, where the e-mail had exceeded quotas, would have been lost. What smells the worst about this is that we are hearing about this just now. These people have been fighting over these e-mails for a long time and only when it looks like they might actually have to hand them over does it come out that they were lost.

I suppose someone can come up with another interesting anecdote on how things like this happen all the time but this sounds all too convenient. If I gave an excuse like this to the government they'd lock me up and throw away the key. I'd hope equality of the law would apply but some animals are more equal than others.

It seems you and I are in complete agreement. They claim good intentions but the way they go about it does not help anyone. It's all based on lies.

It seems a bit odd that every solution that these "greens" come up with involves more government. I think that many of them are "watermelons", green environmentalists on the outside but red communists on the inside. The rest are just useful idiots.

There is no such thing as nuclear waste. If it's radioactive it falls into one of four categories:
- Nuclear fuel
- Industrial material
- Medical material
- Nuclear shielding/moderators

I suppose one might make a fifth category for weapons but that's just a special case for any one of the four I mentioned. The only reason we're not reprocessing this "waste" into useful material is government policy.

NIMBYism is from ignorance. I also suspect that given the choice between freezing to death and living in the shadow of a nuclear power plant most people will choose to live in the shadow of a nuclear power plant. Those that fear nuclear power that much should be treated for mental illness.

Yep.

... and they cost three times as much as a gasoline powered car to produce. It's only because of taxation policy that the sticker price is only double.

Someone would have to drive the electric car for something like 200,000 miles before the total cost of ownership is equal to a gasoline powered car. Not many people are willing to make that commitment to keeping a car that long to save money and not be inconvenienced with periodic maintenance.

First, if carbon in the atmosphere is bad and you advocate the second best solution to solve that problem then, yes, I say you are the bad guy. Second, look up "waste annihilating molten salt reactors". Not only do they not create radioactive waste they "eat" the waste we have already. Third, nuclear NIMBYism can be fixed with education. Wind and solar also have their own NIMBY problems. Problems like windmills interfering with weather, navigation, and military radar cannot be easily fixed. Or having people getting headaches from having the windmill shadow making the sunlight blink in their windows. Solar panels like to reflect light into homes, aircraft, and what not, making people uncomfortable at a minimum and unsafe at worst.

I could be wrong, I'll admit that. For right now electric cars are a luxury that few can afford. Electric vehicles will remain a luxury until that cost comes down. It not only has to come down but it has to get to a price that's even close to gasoline before all but a small minority would even consider it.

It seems we agree on everything here except the comparative total cost of ownership of gas vs. electric cars. Even then you seem to agree with me that the cost of electric cars is currently much too high. You claim the cost of electric cars will come down. Time will tell.

What can affect the total cost of ownership on electric cars is the price of electricity. Wind and solar have very real limits on how cheap it can get because of what we know on physics. We are still figuring out how to squeeze the most energy from nuclear power at the lowest cost. Developing those waste annihilating molten salt reactors could prove to really drive down the cost of electricity. If electricity gets cheap enough then you win your argument and I'll be pleased I lost.