Hi,

So thankfully you're wrong. Society won't collapse. The prices of solar and wind are falling very rapidly and we have about a century of oil (or two) in the ground left before we'll need to start charging car batteries from the grid or producing fuel cells. Solar and wind can provide for ALL of our energy needs even if you don't take energy storage into account (you'd just have to build more plants to cover the gaps in generation caused by night time/ windless days) but WITH storage (pumped hydro, compressed air, sodium thermal) then they just generate electricity 24/7 a day anyway. Here's the worlds first big Solar Sodium Thermal Power Plant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... a 150MW plant. Costs for these types of plants are expensive now but will come down over time due to economies of scale and mass production. China already generates more power via wind than they do via Nuclear.

Here is some information on storage methods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Just wanted to update your information. My money's on the sodium thermal storage. Just giant containers of salt heated up and stored for when sunlight/wind is not available. Then when needed the heat from the sodium is used to boil water to turn a turbine.

Thanks

Choice will always exist. Most people CHOOSE not to use open source products. So respect that choice and move on with your life.

All of the fields you mentioned are possible to enter and excel at without a university degree of any kind, including a liberal arts one. So that pretty much discredits your point that liberal arts majors are useful.

.....or you just want to feel like you didn't waste a ton of money and time on subjects that have absolutely no relevance to most people's daily lives. After all, even if what you say about it being relevant to AI development is true, how many people are going to be building AIs?

Don't kid yourself. Android is outselling the iPhone because you can get Android phones for cheaper. The whole 'I don't own the device' 1. Isn't true and 2. Goes over the head of anyone who's not a geek. By the way, the market of people who aren't geeks makes up most of humanity.

The only way your dream government could ever come into being AND survive over the long term is if all the citizens living in it were genetically engineered to be incredibly anal, detail oriented and highly intellectual.

Thats not the current populace of earth.

Anti-spywareand anti-virus as well. MS Security Essentials does both and so does AVG Free.
So that plus uninstalling crappy software is all you need to do in a lot of cases. Just ask the customer about
each software before you remove it.

Can't hurt to give it a shot.

Removing Malware is easy though. You give the customer 3 choices. 1. You can try and fix XP as it is. 2. You can wipe it clean and re-install XP and all their programs from scratch. 3. Or if they don't have the discs you can offer to install Linux for them.

The vast majority of problems will be malware related. For anything beyond your abilities just say so, people appreciate honesty. The next job will come along that you are able to handle, and as you get better you'll be able to do more. Hang out in IRC chat rooms (channels) and web forums to pickup tips and learn new things about the work you'd be doing.

Sometimes a job is as simple as uninstalling a bunch of crappy Toolbars that a lot of companies like to rudely install on people's computers these days, removing games from work PCs that workers kids install and slapping on the free Microsoft Security Essentials and using it to run a complete Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware scan. If you do end up having to wipe someone's computer clean, just carry a large capacity external HD with you to save their documents, music, videos before you proceed and then re-install their system. Make sure to check to see they have the install CDs for all their other software as well. Keeping the customer informed as to what you need will make the job go better and faster.

You don't have to be an MIT graduate to do this. Its easier than you think.

Post some ads on Craigslist and hand out some flyers and business cards around town advertising yourself as low cost IT Consultant. Fix people's computers and networks. I bill $35/hr. Its slow going at first but as you gain a good rep your business will grow. Depending on your area you may even be able to charge more starting out but I recommend from personal experience that you charge low and keep the same rates for your first customers and when you start getting really really busy go up $10-15/hr in your rates.

Work around your restauraunt hours for now, and work weekends. I'm doing it now so I know it can be done.

There is no one size fits all product in any industry. Apple products work great for non-geeks, Android works great for geeks. So no, fanboys aren't pissed at Geeks pointing out anything that makes them appear foolish because they AREN'T foolish. They already own the product that works best for them. What IS foolish is a geek not being content with what THEY own and feeling a need to put down others to make them feel better about the multitude of areas in their lives where regular people ignore or mock them.

Only a geek could have trouble seeing why an iPhone is considered superior to other smartphone platforms.

Geeks care about feature counts. A device with 100 features is considered superior to a device with say 75 features (lets ignore the issue where you could count each available app as a feature because then Apple would win hands down, we wouldn't have anything to argue about and well where's the fun in that?)

For non-geeks, just being able to use the device in the first place is a huge feature. This is where Apple wins. They make the user interface not only so easy but enjoyable to use that people stick with the device long enough to learn how to do other things on it. Back when Smartphones were new I knew some real estate agents and other professionals who had Treo's, Blackberries and Windows Mobile phones because they thought it would make them look more professional but they were never actually able to figure out how to use the devices beyond the phone and contact functions. Everything else on the devices was just too difficult for them to use, including installing 3rd party apps. Then here comes Apple with the first iPhone and its like the first Smartphone for normal people. To non-geeks the other devices really don't count as smartphones because they're so hard to use.

Android is actually pretty easy to use compared to Palm OS, Blackberry OS, Symbian and Windows Mobile. The problem for Android is the iPhone OS is still easier to use. That being said I fully expect Android to eclipse Apple in marketshare because its free for OEM's to slap on a phone and thus you can literally throw a free or low cost Android phone at people whereas Apple will probably never have an iPhone below $150 or $100 if they ever get down to that price point. Windows Phone 7 is also surprisingly promising but we need actual shipping product before any real verdicts can be said about that.

Why is that considered a defect to you instead of an advantage? Traits that help the species are selected for, not against. The fact that its still around suggests that it is beneficial, not harmful.

Linux can easily cost hundreds or thousands of dollars in support costs to train users who grew up on Macs or Windows PCs on how to use it properly. So Linux may actually end up being the most expensive option.

Actually yes it does as there are limits to everything, including lemming like behavior.