It's not the red tape that makes it so expensive, it's the construction delays caused by the constant injunctions filed against them that really drives up the costs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... I used to live about 2 miles from this site about 20 years ago.

Keep in mind that the Chinese do business with other people than just the Americans. There's a whole world for them to make deals with. Case in point, when the Americans hit them with the first round of tarriffs, they cancelled all their agricultural import contracts and talked to the Argentinos and Russians to make up the shortfall. It didn't even slow them down. And American agribizz got left holding the bag with unsellable soy and corn. As long as they're willing to cut free of the dollar, they can make it when the dollar collapses. Euros, anyone?

No, it doesn't fix anything except for being able to put a buck or 12 in Zuck's pocket somehow. I'd say, look at the fine print in the TOS, there's bound to be a rakeoff there somewhere.

Sounds like the HURD team. If it ain't invented here, it ain't real...

Dude. Really??? FIRST rule of Debate Club is, NEVER talk about debate club!

That is, if you're near a large supply of readily accessible water. Even with scavanging the water vapor off the fuel cells, there will be losses. And it's likely to use a lot of water to start up. Here in the desert, water is a BIG issue.

50 kw per hour is 36 megawatts a month. Enough to power a small town. And this tech scales easily? It could be an answer for said small towns, a few 50-400kw plants should do them. I like decentralised energy generation. Less choke points. Less transmission infrastructure to maintain.

Yeah, that wasn't one of Slick Willy's brightest moves. Prob is, he signed off on it to get other shit done and didn't think about the repercussions.

And then defunded by the Republican House in 2011 & 2012. Had it been proposed by a Republican, it would have been funded til the 2nd Coming of Elvis. 230 mil over 5 years, all in? Hell, that's coffee and donut money for the Pentagon.

I thought 15.10 was going to be a LTS release. They push it back to every two years now instead of 18 months?

Almost a mathematical certainty. It's not a question of if, it's a question of WHEN. And the invisible sky friends aren't gonna stop it.

Earth isn't the most pleasant environment in the universe, either. The atmosphere is corrosive, the microfauna deadly, and the weather unpredictable at present. But it's where we evolved, so we consider it 'normal'.

Couple things to keep in mind.

The civilian aircraft control system has been chronically underfunded for decades, since Reagan fired PATCO. One of the things they were on strike for was for better equipment to do their jobs better, easier, and with less stress. Even in the 80's, the computers and radars were dinosaurs best kept in a museum. Upgrades since then have always been a day late and a dollar short.

The airspace above the US is the busiest in the world, and it's just getting worse. They don't even report near-misses anymore to the media unless the pilots can see each other giving them the finger. They're that common.

Nothing will be done until 3 or 4 planes do a mid-air and the public outcry is so bad that people are ready to march on the FAA's office with torches and pitchforks. Then there will be a massive round of public firings to appease the crowd, a slight boost in funding to the FAA, followed by further deregulation of the airlines.

Personally, with all the deregulation already, I'm surprised more planes don't shed parts along the way.

Only thing I use Windows for these days is Kindle for PC. And once I figure out where they stash the serial number for it, I'll probably stop even using my XP under Virtualbox. See, I get a lotta books off Amazon, but I don't use a real live Kindle here, I pull the books down with Kindle for PC, run them through Calibre, and load them on my 'Ebay special' Aluratek reader. Some of those I gotta strip the DRM from in Calibre, and that takes the K4PC serial number.

I expect the enterprise version will have one king hell hefty pricetag. I also expect all the data collected by the consumer version to be mined, resold, remined, resold again, repackaged, once more resold, ad nauseum. MS is going to have to make up for that revenue stream somehow or the stockholders will shitcan the front office fucks and install a new set that will. 'Free upgrade'? From Microsoft?

Not since Millenium, eh?