I think slashdot needs a way to mark stories 'Troll' too.

Beautiful work BeauHD.

I do sometimes find it cute how parochial the crowd on slashdot gets. I understand your point but do you realise how small a component of the market (defined in 10 - 50 years) of transportation you are? So, you stay outside a major population center in the US, population under a million?, now let's go and look at :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
or
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

and see the areas where people would prefer good public transport infrastructure rather than private ownership of cars. These would be densely populated metropolitan areas, which represent high economic activity and demand. At a rough glance, that's 500 million to a billion people who depend upon public transport in their daily economic activity (even if they own a personal vehicle). That's the market that exists *today* which is only going to increase in the future.

Outside the US, Canada, Europe and Australia, personal vehicles are not common in non metropolitan areas. I have no figures but I think that'd be another 4 - 5 billion people. I'm pretty sure they'd welcome such services if the price drops enough and the technological problems are solved (this will take much longer but will be solved eventually).

This is the market at stake being addressed, it's by any accounts sizeable enough. The problems exist.

Look. The basic income essentially implies some amount of basic purchasing power. So if you say, there's not enough money. What you are saying is that there is not enough goods to go around for everyone. Now this hold true for Lamborghinis. But would you say it holds true for nutritious food? Would you say it holds true for education? Would you say it holds true for transportation (I don't mean only cars here.) What about medicine? Are there insufficient doctors, nurses or Medicines to go around? I'd say all these are more problems of distribution rather than production.

Given that, wouldn't you say the current economics are not solving this problem very well. The argument being made here is that a Basic Income would solve these problems well.

OK Damn, hadn't logged in so can't edit it for spelling / grammar mistakes now.

Why the hell is this modded down. That's as insightful a post as any.

Err, I think you meant 'discreet', not 'discrete'.

Hmm, so how proud are you of any of your achievements? and how high was the barrier to achieve them for all 7 billion people on this earth?

Just a thought, but as has been pointed out, I do believe he is very well know, widely recognised as successful and picking an arbitrary criteria the first CEO of such a big firm to come out as gay. For some (large enough section) people who still think that homosexuality is unacceptable, he provides a good counter-example. That it is nothing to be ashamed of. That he has to buttress this with: that being in the face of any expectation to be ashamed of it, he feels proud of it (perhaps to counter the expectation) is surely a fault of the times and such expectations. Hopefully, his publicly declaring will help other people with facing these issues.

In this context, why should he not say he is proud?

http://www.nationalgeographic.co.in/adventure/0509/whats_new/helicopter_everest.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didier_Delsalle

To gauge the extent of the alienation, check out this advert for IE 10 from Microsoft's own marketing department:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD9FAOPBiDk

The problem is because it's a grid failure, high priority endpoints like railways and metro which would normally not lose power in regular load shedding are down. Homes and offices are less affected ofcourse due to backup generators.

But hundreds of trains have been cancelled, power was out in big government hospitals like AIIMS and Safdarjung (which would not normally be targeted during load-shedding).

Delhi Metro was not working causing traffic chaos as commuters took to private vehicles, taxis, autos and buses.

So all in all was a big deal

Difference between first world and third world country. But I'll explain somewhat.

Imagine the following scenario:

1 Fridge, 1 TV and 2 Fluorescent lights in a family of 7-8. Not that unusual for somebody doing manual labour. This is infact better than family of somebody doing manual labour in unorganised sector. Such a family would be living in a temporary shelter like a tarpaulin tent or a hutment even in the middle of a city or a slum. Possibly using no electricity and cooking with foraged firewood.

Ofcourse the middle class would be much more comfortable though still using less energy per-capita than the developed world. For eg. washing machines have a spin dry not a heat dry because that uses much more energy.

Background:

I'm an Indian, presently in Gurgaon (within National Capital Region) and yes, there has been a blackout since past few hours.

As to homes and office, situation is not so bad because blackouts are such an everyday occurrence that diesel generators in apartment complexes and offices are *very* common. The immediate real effects are to infrastructure i.e. Railways and Delhi Metro (mass transport).

Now to address the system, a good reading : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_India

relevant parts from first paragraph:

We do have a major problem on our hands.
1. Demand *far* outstrips supply.
2. Distribution losses are high. Illegal tapping, faulty meters, old equipment and corruption being leading causes.
3. Free/cheap electricity provided to agriculture sector and collection of dues waived due to vote-bank politics.

But we are working on it:
1. Looking into renewable energy like wind and hydro in a major way. (see quote above and wiki)
2. Major investment into Nuclear energy.

Environmental groups are slowing down development of the above though.