They probably assemble them there, but I highly doubt they have a LCD panel factory there. They can buy the raw panels, then put them into TVs in the country, but no one is going to sell them panels anymore without dollars (or yen) up front.
I made the mistake of doing this a few weeks ago actually, my server has 2 sets of four 3TB drives in it, setup as S and T stripped arrays (12TB each).
I turned the computer off for the first time in over a year and left it off over the weekend.
The T drive failed within an hour of turning it back one, one of the four drive is just clicking.
Thankfully, I have backups, so no data loss, just a PITA.
Slightly more than 5% of the planet has at least one of those services, or something similar to it.
In any case, more than half the planet is more concerned with clean drinking water and electricity, so frankly the whole planet isn't the target.
As for bandwidth, actually Netflix doesn't require as much as you'd think, they have local machines they put in busy ISPs to keep the backbone as clear as possible of video traffic.
Netflix will install their server for free right in the ISP datacenter. This means that movies don't have to use the backbone, saving a ton of bandwidth.
Lord, $1 a watt? That is cheap! $15K for all those panels? Are you saying the $20-30K cost is on top of the cost of the panels? If so, that puts it closer to $2.50 a watt, not counting installation.
Of course, I didn't get a break down on the $4 a watt cost, but of course that included installation and hooking it up to the grid, when I produce over what I require, my local electric co-op buys back the power. What they really do is just have 2 meters, one for my power and one for theirs, they subtract the two and charge me the difference.
Frankly, if I could get the panels installed for $2.50 a watt, I'd probably do it, but that is just not what the companies in this area are charging right now, and it isn't something I can (or want to) do myself.
Hey, you knocking GM? Ford? Good frame, lousy engines... Call me back when they get a decent engine.:) GM has much better engines than Ford does, but Ford has a stiffer frame and probably a stronger one. If you tow heavy loads (5th wheel) I can understand why you'd buy one, but a F350 probably has a diesel, and those are probably fine, Ford's gas engines suck and have sucked for a long time.
I used to own a Suburban, but my wife liked the look of the Denali, it has a heated wood steering wheel.:) She likes that in the winter. Happy wife, happy life...
I don't need a pickup, would never use it. We often end up hauling our kid's friends, and sometimes we have to take both trucks because everyone won't fit in one. If they made a truck that was a foot longer, I'd be happy, I could use the cargo space.:)
Looking forward to the new designs coming out next year, waiting for my dealer to open up ordering, I'll get a 2015 model, finally they have fold flat 3rd row seats, that has been a long time in coming.
Keep in mind that we live smack in the middle of suburbia, we don't drive to the country, so this works for us.
Oh, and back on topic, I already replaced my light bulbs with CFLs a few years ago, I'm waiting for LED lights to come down in price a bit, then I'll probably replace again in a few years.
Hmm, if it came across as "20 months and I'm rich", then I must have mistyped or something.
The break even difference in terms of money out of pocket vs. power saved for the upgrade from the 13 SEER units to the 16 SEER units is 20 months.
The break even difference in terms of money out of pocket for the whole system is about 86 months, based on what I'm seeing in my power bills (I did this replacement in July).
Solar makes no sense whatsoever, even as a "green" option, at least from my math, the payback is 15 years, and that is after the various tax credits.
I don't drive a Prius, I drive a GMC Yukon XL Denali. It sucks down gas like no tomorrow. But 400hp (and tons of torque) and the rumble of that beautiful 6.2L V8 engine, and it sure is a nice truck to drive. Of course, I also have 3 kids and we use every bit of it, so it isn't like I'm just driving it around empty. And on a selfish note, it has air conditioned seats, which in the Texas heat, are *really* nice. If you've never had AC in your seats, you should try it.:)
BTW, before you say I should drive a minivan, consider that a fully loaded Honda Odyssey is about $47K, my truck was $58K, so not really that much more, and it hauls more stuff (and I use it). Plus the Odyssey doesn't offer air conditioned seats!:)
Back on topic, what did your 15KW of solar cost to install? That is a pretty big system. My roof will support a 8KW system and when I had that priced out, I about fell out of my chair at the price. Right now installed systems are running about $4 a watt, so you can do the math there. An 8KW system will provide about half of my annual electric power needs (which is about 1/3 of my power bill, since some of it is natural gas that solar wouldn't replace).
I would get more return on my investment by upgrading my windows and attic insulation than by putting solar on the house.
The problem with that idea is that the easy to download stuff on TPB is current popular stuff.
If I want to download The Hunger Games, that is easy.
If I want to download some rare TV movie from the 80's, my odds are very low that I'll find it.
The hoarders don't keep their entire collections up all the time. That is the great limitation of torrents, you can't really keep 5,000 torrents running all the time.
Isn't that what the Internet Archive is doing? If not, they should be.
I give Wikipedia a few bucks each year, I'd give such a service some money every year to keep all the old stuff online. It is a benefit to future generations to not lose all of that.
What is the cost in time and money to maintain 100 TB of videos?
I used to have eight 3TB hard drives in my home server, storing all my downloaded and ripped videos.
Back when I started in 2006, it was 1TB drives, then 1.5TB drives (Frys had a deal on them back then, $115!). Then 2TB, then 3TB.
I looked at upgrading to 4TB drives, then something caused me to do the math. All the money spent to keep up with it? I could have just bought most of it on Blu-Ray and been done with it.
My local media storage is down to 6.8TB, I've deleted about 10TB worth in the past few months, waste of time, space, and money.
You know what? I don't miss any of it.
What I did keep was stuff that isn't easy to find on the popular services. I have a number of old war movies and documentaries that aren't on the various services, those I kept. I have the complete rip of 10 seasons of Modern Marvels, that is pretty cool and nice for the kids.
Blockbuster movies? Blah, I can stream those, Amazon Prime Video these days looks darn good on the big TV.
Those steam sales are addicting! But you know what? I no longer pirate games. I used to have hundreds and hundreds of games stashed away for the day I *might* play them, and I did play some of them.
I haven't pirated a game in years, just wait a year (sometimes 3 months), Steam will have that $50 game on sale for $20 (or less).
As of this minute, my Steam account has 1,638 games in my "all games list".
I've probably actually played 10% of them, but some of them were *deals!*.:) A lot of them were $1-3 games or were part of one of those $5 bundles for 8-10 games. Some of them of course were Humble Bundle games as well.
I did pay full price for CoD: Ghosts, one of the very, very few games I really wanted to play at launch, but my general rule is I won't pay over $10 for most games, I just add them to my wishlist, I figure they'll go on sale sooner or later.
I have FIOS and can confirm that sometimes YouTube sucks.
Sometimes it works great, but there are times I do end up giving up on it.
I can confirm that Netflix and Amazon Prime Video work perfectly, first time, every time, no buffering.
150 meg down, 65 meg up, and thankfully no caps. I VPN my home to my office with it (and keep the files synced between them) and I also backup online with two different services (Crashplan and Backblaze), plus use streaming services every day, I actually don't know what my bandwidth use is each month, but I'm sure it is into the terabyte range at least.
All of your points and concerns are fair and reasonable, I totally understand them.
In my comment, I said that the services today aren't perfect, they are missing some things (like off-line viewing).
But for most people, they are good enough.
People like you will always exist, that's fine, the fact that most people just pay Netflix $8 a month means that the media companies might actually start ignoring you at some point, rather than fighting a pointless crusade against you (that they can't win).
I agree re: the music, I never bought any music back when it was DRM, but I've bought my fair share of music since they dropped it. Amazon has offered a number of cheap deals on MP3s, I probably have over 100 albums purchased via Amazon now, because they are cheap and because they'll play anywhere.
I don't require my digital copies to play anywhere quite so much, we watch movies on the TV, not the iPad, but I can see how some people might want to do that.
I suspect it will come, 5-10 years from now, we might get DRM free movies and TV shows. I suspect sales will go up and piracy will actually go down, if the prices are reasonable.
A buck an episode, 3-5 bucks for a movie, at those prices, I'll just buy everything, and I suspect most people would too.
Well... it won't crap out in 9 years, it has a 10 year warranty on it.
I expect it to last 15 years, give or take a bit.
As for the payback, it is true that I could have "invested" the money for 5% return, but there is no guarentee you'll get 5%. What I do have a guarentee is that my power bill is now quite a bit lower.
The way I figure it, it will take 7-8 years to "break even", and that assumes that there is no rise in power prices during that time.
Plus the new system works better, and it is unlikely that my old system would last 10 more years, plus it reduces my carbon footprint (all my electricity comes from coal power plants).
If you can't see that it is a good deal, then I don't know what to say, it was an easy decision from my point of view. Not doing it would have been foolish.
I support a Judiciary that has no fear of re-election since that insulates them from exactly the same bias that our elected officials have. I would support them a whole lot more if they would stop allowing the constitution to be shredded in front of our eyes in favor of what large corporations want, but I'm not sure how that change would fix it.
Simple, offer them $1 Million a year for retirement, so that while they serve, they have no concerns over what powerful companies they piss off since they will have no need for a job when they leave their position.
Right now, way too many people leave Congress and go to work for companies that they used to pass laws for, I'm sure some of those jobs are "favors".
While it would cost a lot more to give every Congress person $1 Million a year in retirement, at least it would have them bribed by the people rather than the rich and powerful. Frankly, it might be a cheap use of taxpayer dollars. The only rule? They actually have to retire, no going to work for people in retirement that they passed favorable laws for.
What's the difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist?
How successful they were. The American Founding Fathers were branded "terrorists" in that day and age (traitors really), but history has recorded them as it has because they won.
Slashdot Mirror
But you should know it won't last, being a USSR survivor... since you can't go to the USSR anymore...
It rather doesn't exist anymore, just like Venezuela in the near future unless something changes...
They probably assemble them there, but I highly doubt they have a LCD panel factory there. They can buy the raw panels, then put them into TVs in the country, but no one is going to sell them panels anymore without dollars (or yen) up front.
I made the mistake of doing this a few weeks ago actually, my server has 2 sets of four 3TB drives in it, setup as S and T stripped arrays (12TB each).
I turned the computer off for the first time in over a year and left it off over the weekend.
The T drive failed within an hour of turning it back one, one of the four drive is just clicking.
Thankfully, I have backups, so no data loss, just a PITA.
That would violate the Netflix terms of service.
Well, yes, it might, but then so does piracy. :)
I was just curious if it worked or not.
In any case, more than half the planet is more concerned with clean drinking water and electricity, so frankly the whole planet isn't the target.
As for bandwidth, actually Netflix doesn't require as much as you'd think, they have local machines they put in busy ISPs to keep the backbone as clear as possible of video traffic.
https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect
Netflix will install their server for free right in the ISP datacenter. This means that movies don't have to use the backbone, saving a ton of bandwidth.
What is wrong with those choices? Frankly, they sound good to me...
Of course, I didn't get a break down on the $4 a watt cost, but of course that included installation and hooking it up to the grid, when I produce over what I require, my local electric co-op buys back the power. What they really do is just have 2 meters, one for my power and one for theirs, they subtract the two and charge me the difference.
Frankly, if I could get the panels installed for $2.50 a watt, I'd probably do it, but that is just not what the companies in this area are charging right now, and it isn't something I can (or want to) do myself.
Hey, you knocking GM? Ford? Good frame, lousy engines... Call me back when they get a decent engine. :) GM has much better engines than Ford does, but Ford has a stiffer frame and probably a stronger one. If you tow heavy loads (5th wheel) I can understand why you'd buy one, but a F350 probably has a diesel, and those are probably fine, Ford's gas engines suck and have sucked for a long time.
I used to own a Suburban, but my wife liked the look of the Denali, it has a heated wood steering wheel. :) She likes that in the winter. Happy wife, happy life...
I don't need a pickup, would never use it. We often end up hauling our kid's friends, and sometimes we have to take both trucks because everyone won't fit in one. If they made a truck that was a foot longer, I'd be happy, I could use the cargo space. :)
Looking forward to the new designs coming out next year, waiting for my dealer to open up ordering, I'll get a 2015 model, finally they have fold flat 3rd row seats, that has been a long time in coming.
Keep in mind that we live smack in the middle of suburbia, we don't drive to the country, so this works for us.
Oh, and back on topic, I already replaced my light bulbs with CFLs a few years ago, I'm waiting for LED lights to come down in price a bit, then I'll probably replace again in a few years.
The break even difference in terms of money out of pocket vs. power saved for the upgrade from the 13 SEER units to the 16 SEER units is 20 months.
The break even difference in terms of money out of pocket for the whole system is about 86 months, based on what I'm seeing in my power bills (I did this replacement in July).
Solar makes no sense whatsoever, even as a "green" option, at least from my math, the payback is 15 years, and that is after the various tax credits.
I don't drive a Prius, I drive a GMC Yukon XL Denali. It sucks down gas like no tomorrow. But 400hp (and tons of torque) and the rumble of that beautiful 6.2L V8 engine, and it sure is a nice truck to drive. Of course, I also have 3 kids and we use every bit of it, so it isn't like I'm just driving it around empty. And on a selfish note, it has air conditioned seats, which in the Texas heat, are *really* nice. If you've never had AC in your seats, you should try it. :)
BTW, before you say I should drive a minivan, consider that a fully loaded Honda Odyssey is about $47K, my truck was $58K, so not really that much more, and it hauls more stuff (and I use it). Plus the Odyssey doesn't offer air conditioned seats! :)
Back on topic, what did your 15KW of solar cost to install? That is a pretty big system. My roof will support a 8KW system and when I had that priced out, I about fell out of my chair at the price. Right now installed systems are running about $4 a watt, so you can do the math there. An 8KW system will provide about half of my annual electric power needs (which is about 1/3 of my power bill, since some of it is natural gas that solar wouldn't replace).
I would get more return on my investment by upgrading my windows and attic insulation than by putting solar on the house.
Er, um... so I've seen, ahh heard... well, been told... um, what were we talking about again?
That is true, but it will come...
It won't be next week, but it is possible within our lifetime.
Sending data FTL will be much easier than sending people FTL, far less mass to contend with.
Someone smart will figure it out.
How many Library's of Congress is that?
I should start the "Netflix of Porn", just turn it into an $8/month service where you can stream almost anything. :)
If I want to download The Hunger Games, that is easy.
If I want to download some rare TV movie from the 80's, my odds are very low that I'll find it.
The hoarders don't keep their entire collections up all the time. That is the great limitation of torrents, you can't really keep 5,000 torrents running all the time.
I give Wikipedia a few bucks each year, I'd give such a service some money every year to keep all the old stuff online. It is a benefit to future generations to not lose all of that.
I used to have eight 3TB hard drives in my home server, storing all my downloaded and ripped videos.
Back when I started in 2006, it was 1TB drives, then 1.5TB drives (Frys had a deal on them back then, $115!). Then 2TB, then 3TB.
I looked at upgrading to 4TB drives, then something caused me to do the math. All the money spent to keep up with it? I could have just bought most of it on Blu-Ray and been done with it.
My local media storage is down to 6.8TB, I've deleted about 10TB worth in the past few months, waste of time, space, and money.
You know what? I don't miss any of it.
What I did keep was stuff that isn't easy to find on the popular services. I have a number of old war movies and documentaries that aren't on the various services, those I kept. I have the complete rip of 10 seasons of Modern Marvels, that is pretty cool and nice for the kids.
Blockbuster movies? Blah, I can stream those, Amazon Prime Video these days looks darn good on the big TV.
Give them a few years, it will be back when WB fails at that.
Those steam sales are addicting! But you know what? I no longer pirate games. I used to have hundreds and hundreds of games stashed away for the day I *might* play them, and I did play some of them.
I haven't pirated a game in years, just wait a year (sometimes 3 months), Steam will have that $50 game on sale for $20 (or less).
As of this minute, my Steam account has 1,638 games in my "all games list".
I've probably actually played 10% of them, but some of them were *deals!*. :) A lot of them were $1-3 games or were part of one of those $5 bundles for 8-10 games. Some of them of course were Humble Bundle games as well.
I did pay full price for CoD: Ghosts, one of the very, very few games I really wanted to play at launch, but my general rule is I won't pay over $10 for most games, I just add them to my wishlist, I figure they'll go on sale sooner or later.
In your case, I think most of us understand why you'd torrent it...
Question... can you use a proxy server to access Netflix in the USA? That would be my first thought.
Sometimes it works great, but there are times I do end up giving up on it.
I can confirm that Netflix and Amazon Prime Video work perfectly, first time, every time, no buffering.
150 meg down, 65 meg up, and thankfully no caps. I VPN my home to my office with it (and keep the files synced between them) and I also backup online with two different services (Crashplan and Backblaze), plus use streaming services every day, I actually don't know what my bandwidth use is each month, but I'm sure it is into the terabyte range at least.
In my comment, I said that the services today aren't perfect, they are missing some things (like off-line viewing).
But for most people, they are good enough.
People like you will always exist, that's fine, the fact that most people just pay Netflix $8 a month means that the media companies might actually start ignoring you at some point, rather than fighting a pointless crusade against you (that they can't win).
I agree re: the music, I never bought any music back when it was DRM, but I've bought my fair share of music since they dropped it. Amazon has offered a number of cheap deals on MP3s, I probably have over 100 albums purchased via Amazon now, because they are cheap and because they'll play anywhere.
I don't require my digital copies to play anywhere quite so much, we watch movies on the TV, not the iPad, but I can see how some people might want to do that.
I suspect it will come, 5-10 years from now, we might get DRM free movies and TV shows. I suspect sales will go up and piracy will actually go down, if the prices are reasonable.
A buck an episode, 3-5 bucks for a movie, at those prices, I'll just buy everything, and I suspect most people would too.
Why does Argentina continue to assert that the island is theirs at all?
Oil...
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-04/the-falkland-islands-brace-for-oil-wealth
I expect it to last 15 years, give or take a bit.
As for the payback, it is true that I could have "invested" the money for 5% return, but there is no guarentee you'll get 5%. What I do have a guarentee is that my power bill is now quite a bit lower.
The way I figure it, it will take 7-8 years to "break even", and that assumes that there is no rise in power prices during that time.
Plus the new system works better, and it is unlikely that my old system would last 10 more years, plus it reduces my carbon footprint (all my electricity comes from coal power plants).
If you can't see that it is a good deal, then I don't know what to say, it was an easy decision from my point of view. Not doing it would have been foolish.
I support a Judiciary that has no fear of re-election since that insulates them from exactly the same bias that our elected officials have. I would support them a whole lot more if they would stop allowing the constitution to be shredded in front of our eyes in favor of what large corporations want, but I'm not sure how that change would fix it.
Simple, offer them $1 Million a year for retirement, so that while they serve, they have no concerns over what powerful companies they piss off since they will have no need for a job when they leave their position.
Right now, way too many people leave Congress and go to work for companies that they used to pass laws for, I'm sure some of those jobs are "favors".
While it would cost a lot more to give every Congress person $1 Million a year in retirement, at least it would have them bribed by the people rather than the rich and powerful. Frankly, it might be a cheap use of taxpayer dollars. The only rule? They actually have to retire, no going to work for people in retirement that they passed favorable laws for.
What's the difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist?
How successful they were. The American Founding Fathers were branded "terrorists" in that day and age (traitors really), but history has recorded them as it has because they won.
History is written by the victors.
Amazon Prime has all of Downtown Abbey for free...
Amazon Prime is $6.58 a month, cheaper than Netflix, plus you get the benefit of free 2 day shipping with no minimum purchase to boot.