Probably from the fact it was offtopic.

Yeah, and good luck importing from Germany once they shut down all of their nuke plants and think solar plants are going to do any good on a cold January night in France :)

Germany is getting rid of all of their nuclear power and replacing it with solar (and this article was pointing out how "great" that solar power is doing).

The point was eliminating direct fossil fuel burning like natural gas or oil (which long term needs to happen regardless of how electricity is generated) in exchange for electrical heating makes the electricity needs even higher when solar power production is at a low.

Did you even RTFA or the GP post?

CO2 is the least of your worries, it's the particulate matter that gets released in the air. In some parts of CA almost 90% of the particulate air pollution is due to wood burning. Even a "clean" pellet stove generates 100x the particulate air pollution of natural gas. It just doesn't scale to 100% home usage unless you want metropolitan valleys to look like Beijing on a bad day.

Given that I have used the BD drive on my *desktop* about 3 times in the last year (one of those was to install the OS, the other two were to install games I probably wouldn't put on a laptop anyway) I personally think a thinner, lighter weight, longer lasting (especially with a "retina" display which I'm sure will eat battery) laptop at the expense of an optical drive is a great trade off.

You can get an external DVD-RW drive for less than $40 or a BD-RW for about $120. We are talking about a $2-3k MBP so that's a pretty trivial expense if you ever need it. I'm so ready to replace my bulky-ass, 8lbs+ with the extended battery, can-barely-open-on-an-airplane Dell Latitude with the new MBP when it comes out...

People were all pissed at Apple when they were the first to remove the floppy drive from their computers, as well. Didn't seem to hurt them too much.

Are you suggesting wood or coal heating in the HOME!?

At least in a large power plant coal burning byproducts can be relatively efficiently scrubbed, but in a home that's not realistic.

Wood is even worse- its byproducts are just plain horrible for the environment/air quality in large quantities. It's the single biggest source of air pollution in Northern California in the winter, and most people are just doing it for FUN. It's already severely restricted in the last couple years, and will probably be outlawed entirely sometime this decade.

First, you seriously overestimate the US government control of the energy industry - ever heard of ENRON?

Second, in general government controls are fine. Meta-government, hah. The EU would be about as successful at regulating energy policy among 27 nations as the UN is regulating... well, just about anything of importance.

It sounds trite, but there is a kernel of wisdom there. Buy a Macbook Pro if you can afford it.

For someone with limited computer literacy, that's probably just overkill in price and features. a 13" Macbook Air is probably fine.

Or if you are going to get a Macbook Pro, definitely don't buy one NOW. Apple is almost definitely going to release an update in a month, with rumors saying it will be 30% thinner, lighter, and probably with a "retina" (ie. stupid marketing speak for MUCH higher resolution) screen.

That's what she said.

(sorry, couldn't resist)

The power network of Europe only work as a whole, which is why the switch to green energies better would have been organized on the level of the EU.

Yeah, the EU has shown giant multinational government bureaucracies have been a great idea for organizing economies. Give them control over power generation as well and then people can end up both poor *and* in the dark...

However, this does highlight solar PV's strength - you get the most power when you need it.

People have to remember that many parts of the world (Germany, especially) actually uses *more* energy in the winter (and it's more important that it be available - AC for the most part is a modern convenience, but heat it necessary to survive), it's just not traditionally via electricity generation. Natural gas and heating oil are also non-renewable hydrocarbon-based energy sources. A long term solution to power needs to replace *all* form of non-renewable, CO2-generating energy...

And that *concept* is exactly what the GP post said it is. Free speech as a concept originated to protect your right to express your opinion about the government without prosecution, and it has NOTHING to do with allowing trolls to harass people on a PRIVATELY RUN service.

Go stand up in a movie theater some time and try to exercise your free speech, and see how fast you get kicked out of their privately owned building. And good luck trying to sue them for impinging your right to "free speech".

If people were willing to pay more for goods we wouldn't have destroyed our domestic manufacturing industry in the first place.

Well... though I live in a larger city now, I grew up in a town of 20k, and my girlfriend grew up in a town of 4k - in fact, she grew up across the street from my grandparents. Which made it slightly less weird (given we live 2000 miles from said town) when the chief of police in her hometown messaged her on Facebook just to check if *my* grandmother was on vacation because he noticed her newspaper hadn't been picked up in 2 days.

Anyway - I have seen *real* small town police who care about (and know) the residents (and, honestly, don't have all that much to do sometimes) which is why I was wondering :)

Those people who actually solve crimes on TV shows are detectives and forensics

Sorry, couldn't resist - there I fixed it for you :)