Dumping on people does not make them better. Study after study has shown how fragile children's psychs are and how important positive reinforcement is. But hey, it's a lot more fun to be a dick and crush everyone you see. And if you think of human beings as a resource to be used and without any intrinsic value whatsoever you're way works too. You just have to be willing to grind your populace into dirt for the sake of profit and to buy one more Car Elevator and one more Private Jet. Yeah, I know I'm trolling, but damn if I'm not sick of this culture of disposable human beings.

the companies that are hiring electrical engineers either aren't doing it in America or they're importing their labor. EE is a dead end in America because of this. There's also practically no entry level jobs because there's no factories to cut your teeth in. It's kinda hard to compete when other countries can dump their toxic sludge into drinking water. It's not laziness, it's survival instinct. That skill is all but worthless in a country with zero protection for it's native industry and workers.

If I'm smart enough to go into STEM I'm also smart enough to know any career so overwhelmed with outsourcing onshoring and visa abuse is a dead end. This isn't rocket science. Rocket Science doesn't pay enough to make ends meet...

The fact that no attack occured gives the talking heads leeway to claim there was no "terrorist attack."

A terrorist is a person who attempts to bring about political change by "illegitimate" (i.e., non-state) violence.

Mass murder is only terrorism if it is an attack on a political entity, or is an attempt to scare a nation's population into something.

Unless someone says, "We're going to keep crash your planes until you do such-and-such", this isn't terrorism. There's no attempt to bring about political change involved, only murder, motive unknown.

it's incredibly expensive to deploy that last mile. You need to run cable through and over dozens of people's land. It's cost prohibitive. Yes, there's money to be made, but anyone who has the money to enter the market also has the money to invest in much less risky and more profitable ventures. That's where the monopoly came from in the first place. The gov't steps in to make sure the lines are run (and largely pays for them either directly or indirectly in the form of tax breaks and free services) then hands it all over to a private company in the name of "the incredible efficiency of the free market"... We did it with the railways too. Damn, but we never learn do we?

"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time," and that's all a politician needs.

I don't vote party, except that I avoid both D and R whenever there's a candidate who doesn't want to put half the people I know in prison for smoking pot.

If anyone but Bruce Rauner had run against Quinn I would have voted for the Republican, becuase Quinn just wasn't a good governor. I think Rauner will be even worse, maybe even as bad as Ryan(R) or Blago(D), both were crooks. I don't know if Rauner is a crook but his policies are terrible. There were only two named on the ballot, so it was indeed a choice between two evils.

Look, Republicans are against the Social Security I paid into all my life and am now enjoying, against unions, without which I would have no pension, against the single payer health care system which has countries with it in place enjoying half the costs we face with far less infant mortality and longer life spans (Obamacare is really Romneycare in disguise); against the Medicare I again paid into and will get in a couple of years; against food stamps (that's simply un-Christian, yet they claim to be Christians?); against taxes (again, an un-Christian stance). Tell me, what Democrat views that the Republicans don't share are detrimental to me, a middle class retired guy?

But both parties are against pot legalization, for our insanely long copyrights, and quite a few more where there really isn't a valid choice.

Well, when a child says bye-bye, it sounds like a contraction (b'bye), but bye-bye is not a contraction. It's more like Cory Doctorow spells sidewalk: side-walk. Wnat contraction uses a hyphen instead of an apostrophe? Not bye-bye, it isn't a contraction of anything.

As to "SyFy", that's a trademark, not a word. It only applies to that bad cable channel. Hi-fi and sci-fi aren't contractions of high fidelity and science fiction, but new words made out of old ones.

I guess that could argue the validity of e-mail and e-books, though.

By the time the utility-scale solution comes on line your average home owner will no longer be interested in being a customer as there will be really no reason not to generate your own power, unless of course if things like force shields and personal home hadron colliders become popular.

As it is for less than $3000 I have enough solar power to cover everything but the largest power hogs. (AC, heat, refrigerator.) All my personal devices, tv, lighting, and water heating do just fine off of solar. There is no reason why most of the rest will not be converted in that 20-30 year window.

I give not a single flying fuck about how stupid the Chinese and Europeans are behaving when it comes to their subsidies. If they want to subsidize my giant American capitalist swimming pool filled of course with the tears from baby seals killed with clubs made of nearly extinct hardware from the devistated South African jungles that's their problem.

As far as the "whole passel" of laws I don't have to pull permits that are not required. The entire solar water system is run off of 12vDC, no permits required. The panel installation and the solar pool pump is 1 permit and electrical inspection, instead of the 3 or 4 I needed before. I am also getting to skip the wire run and trenching and the extra electrical box work. That all adds up quickly to the price.

Sarcasm on the fritz and they still give me a shitload of mod points to dole out. Funny huh?

Couple reasons.

1. When the grid goes down, so does your little micro grid. If you have sensitive needs, say for example a server farm, climate control needs, or medical life support equipment you never want it to go down.
2. The utilities charge you to have connections to the grid even if you do nothing but generate electricity. They charge ALOT to businesses. (Pissess off the crony capitalists aka Republicans and Democrats.)
3. Also if you have utilities coming onto your property you start getting into property right of way nonsense that gives the gov't or the utilities a way to butt into your business. (Pisses off Statist Progressives)
4. If you are not connected to the grid your power generation can't be taxed because they have no way of monitoring it, and you won't be forced to pay subsidies to pay for electricity social programs. (Pissess off the Democrats)

So why just hold out for angering republicans? I say piss them all off.

Then why do I have solar panels running my outdoor lighting, pool heater (water), and pool filter (electrical), without said gov't subsidies? Oh that's right it was cheaper when you start factoring in all the things I didn't have to payout to the county gov't in the way of permits, electricians, trenching equipment, copper wiring and the conduit to run it from the house out into the yard, etc, etc.

For a utility yes solar generated electricity makes little sense, but for the home or business owner it makes a great deal of sense. The farther from the grid you go the more sense it makes. With equipment prices these days anything more than 30ft from the house solar is on parity with grid electricity if you are willing to do the work yourself.

Then maybe, just maybe I can stop typing exclusively in sarcasm.

I was getting worried (my sarcasm detector has been offline since 1987). I thought there for a minute you might be the one of 9 people in the US that has managed to miss every single article about Tesla/SpaceX and did not know who Musk was.

how does anyone not account for that when they price out some grand new adaptation?

Kind of like say building disaster proof micro grids that are not under control by government sanctioned utility monopolies? I never understood the whole low IQ concept of "we have to save it for something more important, so we shouldn't use it logic because it might get expensive".

No we should use the shit out of it to drive the price up to the stratosphere so that the market comes up with either a cheaper way to produce it or more effective technology to replace it and meet the demand.