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This is the same crap as the drug seizure laws. Everyone thought--great, take the houses, cars, property of the drug dealers. However, what's ended up happening is people are having their cars seized because a friend had a small amount of pot. Worse yet people are having large amounts of cash seized with the attitude that you must prove yourself innocent. It doesn't matter that no drugs were found or any evidence of drug dealing, just the fact that you're carrying a large amount of cash is considered a crime. And good luck getting it back!

Friends, our freedoms are being eroded away while we stand by. According to the Supreme Court, municipalities can grab your land under imminent domain to sell to Wal-Mart or someone building condos. Police can seize your cash for no reason other than you're carrying it and now they want the right to seize you computers on the claim that you might have illegally downloaded something. It's got to stop or this really will be a police state.

I think the variations you are seeing at the Watson house are seasonal: http://256.com/solar/graphs/kwh_prod_mon.gif. Solar panels degrade over long periods mostly owing to cosmic ray induced defects. They can be recycled though. I expect panels built today to be in service 30 years from now and on slate or tile roofs much longer. When people reshingle though, I think there will be a good chance that they will put on new panels, just for peace of mind, and it will be a toss up if the old panels end up producing somewhere else or end up getting refurbished first. I was really just winking at the joke about exponential growth. We will surely see $0.50/Watt silicon at least with refurbished stock because the energy costs will be so much lower compared to fabricating it from scratch and there is still much room for improvement of the efficiency of thin films so they may get to $0.25/Watt. That is a tenth of the cost of nuclear plant construction. As solar pushes prices for energy down, its own fabrication cost goes down so there is a bit of a virtuous circle as well.

Solar Panels don't wear out. They decrease in production capacity nominally up to 15% after 25 years of use. Why do you think Solar Panels ship with 25 year warranties that guarantee 80% production or more?

Many people have mentioned increases in solar production with the aging of their panels: Watson Solar House, albeit for less than longer durations.

It'd probably be better if our armed forces stopped inovating, and just waited for the rest of the world to advance beyond our own capabiilty to respond, eh? Because, if we stop concerning ourselves with war, the whole world will instantly fall into a state of peace and be covered with pretty flowers.

Obviously, any students who learn more about effectively automate vehicles will *never* find a way to apply that technology in a non-lethal environment...

http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/News/articleI d=107011
http://www.jaguarusa.com/us/en/vehicles/s-type/pri ces_and_specs/opt_equipment.htm (look at the first available option)

Yes, anything that can potentially be used to kill someone should be off-limits for research, regardless of its usefulness in other arenas. Especially if, heaven forbid, the *military* encourages development!

Build your OBSD firewall in a Soekris box. Low power, low noise, runs from a CF card (or boots via PXE). Some models accept power-over-ethernet. And Soekris directly supports FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and Linux.

However, when the government attempts to protect individual privacy by preventing an entire category of unsolicited commercial solicitations from being sent through the mail on the ground that the solicitation is offensive, the government violates the First Amendment.[49] The First Amendment does not permit the government to prohibit speech as intrusive unless the "captive" audience cannot avoid objectionable speech.[50] Recipients of junk mail can avoid offensive speech because the "`short, though regular, journey from mail box to trash can . . . is an acceptable burden . . . so far as the Constitution is concerned.'"[51] Moreover, there may be some willing junk mail recipients whose interests in communication also would be frustrated by a government ban on certain classes of junk mail.

However, when the government attempts to protect individual privacy by preventing an entire category of unsolicited commercial solicitations from being sent through the mail on the ground that the solicitation is offensive, the government violates the First Amendment.[49] The First Amendment does not permit the government to prohibit speech as intrusive unless the "captive" audience cannot avoid objectionable speech.[50] Recipients of junk mail can avoid offensive speech because the "`short, though regular, journey from mail box to trash can . . . is an acceptable burden . . . so far as the Constitution is concerned.'"[51] Moreover, there may be some willing junk mail recipients whose interests in communication also would be frustrated by a government ban on certain classes of junk mail.

You KNOW you WANT IT!

Meanwhile, previous Long-EZ customer's will love this the Rocket-EZ. John Denver could've killed himself much quicker in one of these. And James Gleick could make another - high speed - attempt on his own life too.

Regards, Ralph.

Here's photos, photos, and more photos.