I am in a good area for it, Florida, and I just have a few things. I've researched the equipment costs a few times and yet I keep seeing these big numbers, 15-25k for everything fully installed, for grid tie back system. I don't know where these costs are coming from.
On our roof we get a TON of direct bake you silly sun in the afternoon. Right when our grid gets hit the hardest but everyone's AC during the summer and then maybe a few heaters/heat pumps in the winter. There is also our fall/late winter when we don't have to run anything and there is still plenty of sunshine.
For our condo unit where there are 5 units total in our one building we have a fair amount of working capital that we can use for upgrades and maintenance. Also as I said our unit in particular is in a prime location where there is nothing but direct sunlight for a large part of the day. Even if we just did say 8 panels at say $300 each, then the inverter to turn the DC into AC for lets say 3k. That is a total $5,400. Not cheap but not that much between 5 condos. Where does the cost then triple or more!?
I can't conceive that putting up some panels and having an electrician wire it all up being more than a grand for all the work. Then my power co comes out and does there thing and we are getting solar for under 7k. (I mean hell I could do the wiring but I'm sure the power co would prefer some local electrician do it and that is fine.)
So someone please tell me why 15-25k per install is the number people are quoting.
I would tend to agree. Most head units, be they OEM or aftermarket, seem to still be DIN or Double-DIN layouts. There often is a need for a new face plate even if the sizes match but an oldschool aftermarket seller like Crutchfield includes those typically.
Speaking as someone who's dad worked for AMC for many years, look it up and get off my lawn you damn kids!, I also agree with the following caveats:
- Chrysler while often plagued with gross financial mismanagement got a good shot in the arm with some German engineering skills. The 300 line is a great example of a car that is pretty damn good. Also their mini-van line has always been very rock solid.
- Ford by in large was at least OK while GM and Chrysler got very very lazy. And then they were the 1st to get off their asses and realize that they were getting pwned and have started to be better than OK for a bit now.
I personally mostly will drive a Honda now. And I look forward to the day I can want to buy American again. The look of the new Camero has me very tempted as I personally love it but I know that the engineering under that look is going to be sub-standard to any Honda I own.
The right wing, the far right wing, captured the republican party. (With a lot of help from far right 'christians'.) And then used the modern day media to crank the fear machine up to 11.
And yes the left (Or what passes for the left these days.) also does some fear mongering on some issues as well. But not only are they rank amateurs when it comes to it, but they also have to try to be the voice of reason in the face of the military grade propaganda that is fed to the public every day from the right.
And yes yes, that is a pretty vast oversimplification of the issue but I think at heart it is true.
A little off topic, but there's no such thing as a filler class.
Your point has been pretty well covered but when I read the discussion about it I remembered something. Hamlet.
I had to formally study, ie for a graded class not on my own time, Hamlet no less than 4 times during my schooling. Four, motherfucking, times. I mean I dig me some Shakespeare but...damn.
Once in a early level high school gifted English class and hey that was ok. We were the smart kids and you are not going to get very far teaching the smart kids the standard bullshit short stories that you get in some 9th or 10th grade reader. Then again in senior year gifted English. Oookkk. By this time I at least had likely read more stuff over all than some adults do their whole lives but whatever.
Then again in English 101. Fuck. Me. Really? I was reading, for 'fun' mind you at the time, The Brothers Karamazov. I would have been thrilled to have a chance to analyze Crime and Punishment in a college setting. Or how about some really hard hitting and awsome sci-fi like the Foundation trilogy? Nope, I clearly needed to learn Hamlet...er some more.
And then finally to add insult to injury I remember filling out one of my elective requirement with English Lit or something like that and guess what was on tap?! Hamlet! Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him...and even I wished for death at times then as well.
Seriously, hyperbole much? Google has deep pockets, a lot of geeks, and a lot of infrastructure too. MS is indeed a 500lb gorilla but so is Google. Nobody is doomed at this point IT...well maybe HP, Nokia, and RIM but just them!
Not really. I mean old HDs have some value in that they do work on obsolete hardware but that is it. There has never been any value in old tech for computers that I can remember save for historical purposes. I saved my//e for many years thinking it would somehow age in value. It just likely ended up costing me money as I had to lug it around and find a space for that big box of stuff.
If you have the space keeping old hardware around can save you some hassle. Or if you are constantly working on old computers then yeah, it's not a bad idea to keep it around. But old tech is always old tech.
And this, sadly, is the end result of our 'War on Drugs'. We lose on many different fronts and yet still think that we are 'winning'.
Even with marijuana almost mainstream and many states virtually legalizing it we have that nonsense bullshit answer from the White House about how it's an 'additive' drug that needs to stay category 1 illegal.
We are a long way from winning the 'War on Drugs'. And by that I mean ending the war on ourselves.
The only butt-hurt here seems to be your anger at people pointing out the obvious and saying "after the government took it over, it sucked".
The problem comes in when, and you have not said but you very likely are, people who hate the idea that the gov can do anything right would just gloss over when...
X company is doing something for the gov and then loses the contract for lets say cost issues and it goes over to company Y. Company Y has some issues getting everything back to the level of functionality that was provided by a company that had been doing the job for a while. And for less money! But company Y eventually gets everything all set and then you praise the 'free market' for how great company Y is.
Meanwhile anything the gov does must always be awful...save for the actual military. They are great...except when they come home and maybe want some health care...screw em then right?
Slashdot has a vocal and near radical atheist group.
I could quote more of how you are in your own way hating on atheism but let me rather just make this argument:
Religion, in its many forms has done good things but along with that it HAS done many many many awful things and continues to do so. There are those that thing the evil that religion does is outweighed by the good it does. Many of us who are atheists do not. Thus when we are pressed on religion we view it as a net evil and not dance around that fact.
Further those who believe in some form of mythology, can and do demonize those who are atheists. In the US right now there are many studies that show it is much easier to be freaking gay than an atheist. Thus when we are confronted with 'believers' we are naturally on guard because of the fact that we are very likely to be attacked.
Of all the objections to the name of LO this is the one I think is most valid from a pragmatic standpoint.
However given the nature of who got OO's rights, with the fork the new project needed to have a clearly different name lest there be...trouble. Could they have done a better job with the name? For us westerners yeah they sure could have. My guess is the name is the result of someone who did not know or care that LO was not going to be a great name.
I personally think that it will not be that bad in the long run. It could fork again, change names, be usurped by something new and better. For now what counts is that there is a FOSS office package that is not terrible and is being actively worked on.
For what it is worth I personally DID have an Apple//e. I tricked it out too: Cider II 10M HD, High speed CPU upgrade (the Apple//e's original clock was 1.6mhz IIRC, the card that I had had high speed RAM and a 3.6 mhz 6502c), big RAM 80col card (the Apple//e's normal screen was 40 column wide, a normal upgrade was to get a card that let you run your word processor/spreadsheet apps wider), a number of modems from my original Hayes Micromodem 300 to my Hayes 1200. I could go on but I think you all get the idea.
I learned to program 6502, good ol' Applesoft BASIC, and even fun stuff like Pascal and Forth. I learned how to manage space on what was at the time a hard drive that not a lot of people had. I learned a bit about networking from running a BBS. I also met a lot of people who also used the computers of the time like the C64, the Atari's of the day (the ST line was really a nice computer) and even those early PC guys. And then while I stepped away from computers for a few years when I came back and turned into the modern PC guy I am today I think a lot about how my early days with my Apple, and TI99 4a, shaped what I know about computers.
I remember reading about Waz and how he had basically designed the computers and how when I would run into something frustrating in having to do with programming the machine that it was likely because Waz had to take a few shortcuts to make the thing, which owning a computer like that was still silly expensive at the time, was because he had to keep costs down.
And then I remember reading about the guy Jobs who helped Waz make Apple into an actual business. And I was like oh, ok cool. I'm glad Waz has someone like Jobs to help him out. Little did we know at the time that Jobs was more than just some accountant (which is what I view mostly as the people with titles like CEO, glorified accountants) and could build stuff too.
Being a computer guy I of course have been working with Apple stuff for a while now; even before the iPods. And so even with the modern rise of Apple into what most people know about it now my personal history has me with a lot more to say about it than just the iStuff that they do now. And with all that I wish Steve well into that good night. We will not see the likes of him yet again for some time.
Why take the network out of the requirement? Opera has gone so far as to build it's own server network to compress web pages such that when you want to view them with Mobile Opera you don't have to wait as long.
Further if that is the best you can do to refute my points then I think I'll call this one a win.
Did TFA do any mobile browser comparisons? If so your point is rather moot.
The platforms are different, the specs on individual phones are different, the networks are different (never mind location performance on each network can and will be different), and the goal for mobile browsing is different.
I think it is more that Lucas is more a control freak rather than simply money greedy. Yeah it is a bit of a nuanced difference but it seems to fit in this case.
Wow, speaking of drinking can you pass me some of what you have?
And here I was thinking that the FOSS people were drinking the Kool-Aid. In 15 years, Linux has guaranteed its survival, nothing more. Continuing to rail against the company that did all those evil things and succeeded looks like FOSS people are immature and impulsive.
Yeah, shame on all of us who want to continue to point out all of the freaking evil things that MS has done and continues to do.
What really happens is when this type of thing comes up it shows who is ignorant about what MS does and why there are where they are today.
I could go on but once I have a feeling that you are a Fox News watching drone who feels might makes right.
After watching the video, I know I know almost as bad as reading the articles!, I had a few thoughts:
- Well done video. - Kinda cute. - And clearly designed to show MS as the adult in any conversation as well as making not mention about how freaking evil they are.
Every bit of that video was about as condescending as you can get. If they thought to win over anyone in the FOSS camp with that kinda crap they must really be drinking some very special KoolAid.
It is a little scary and sad to see the parallels in these two once giants make so many mistakes. Not that they are making the same mistakes but they both clearly have one thing in common: inept top level leadership.
Evil. If corporations are evil, and Murdoch's empire were to rate a 10 on the evil scale, then I'd have to put Google somewhere around.1 to.5.
As evil as Murdoch's empire is I think that unless we give bonus points to Exxon, BP, and all the subsidary corps that form the current oil cartels that his empire would have to take 2nd place to them.
After watching non-stop lies about the latest oil spill I can't see how they are not the current 10 standard for corporate evil.
For every bad example of things 'the gov does wrong' that someone wants to trot out there are at least as many, if not more thanks to them being more likely to be successfully covered up, 'things that priv companies do wrong' examples. But of course that does not phase those who like to scream free market! as the ultimate answer to everything.
However I really want to know how 'free' a market it would be. Would we have multiple companies at each airport? Would they compete to see who gives the best customer service, quickness, and price to each gate? Or if Company X was cutting corners on their screening process and as such their screeners were groping people worse than the TSA now would that company risk losing it's gate to Company Y?
Or! Would be more like the 'free market' cable/telco market we have now where a single company gets to own the whole airport (last mile) and they do whatever the fuck they want because the cost to change both in real money and politics would be far too high for it ever to happen.
I'm fairly certain that this was common knowledge among enthusiasts.
You cite a lot of ATI stuff and yes, indeed that ATI drivers have had issues for a long time is indeed common knowledge. But that is all you seem to cite. And further your OP talked about large installs where games would not be an issue. So bringing up discrete GPUs to back up your point about AMD mobos vs Intel mobos kinda sends up a red flag to me. In that you might be kinda an Intel fanboy (even thou you say you are not) who will just hate on AMD for anything.
To repeat what I've said before. In large installs where the systems are almost always using onboard video these days there is no real difference between AMD or Intel to get the basics working: video, sound, and network. Further the larger issue is the mobo make and what chipset it is using. If a Intel CPU working with a NVidia chipset is harder to work with than a AMD CPU working with an NVidia chipset does that really reflect back on either Intel or AMD? Or back on NVidia?
Slashdot Mirror
I am in a good area for it, Florida, and I just have a few things. I've researched the equipment costs a few times and yet I keep seeing these big numbers, 15-25k for everything fully installed, for grid tie back system. I don't know where these costs are coming from.
On our roof we get a TON of direct bake you silly sun in the afternoon. Right when our grid gets hit the hardest but everyone's AC during the summer and then maybe a few heaters/heat pumps in the winter. There is also our fall/late winter when we don't have to run anything and there is still plenty of sunshine.
For our condo unit where there are 5 units total in our one building we have a fair amount of working capital that we can use for upgrades and maintenance. Also as I said our unit in particular is in a prime location where there is nothing but direct sunlight for a large part of the day. Even if we just did say 8 panels at say $300 each, then the inverter to turn the DC into AC for lets say 3k. That is a total $5,400. Not cheap but not that much between 5 condos. Where does the cost then triple or more!?
I can't conceive that putting up some panels and having an electrician wire it all up being more than a grand for all the work. Then my power co comes out and does there thing and we are getting solar for under 7k. (I mean hell I could do the wiring but I'm sure the power co would prefer some local electrician do it and that is fine.)
So someone please tell me why 15-25k per install is the number people are quoting.
I just read the thread and while there were a lot of good comments I am still struck with a question.
What do we use instead of a car analogy for such a story?
I would tend to agree. Most head units, be they OEM or aftermarket, seem to still be DIN or Double-DIN layouts. There often is a need for a new face plate even if the sizes match but an oldschool aftermarket seller like Crutchfield includes those typically.
Speaking as someone who's dad worked for AMC for many years, look it up and get off my lawn you damn kids!, I also agree with the following caveats:
- Chrysler while often plagued with gross financial mismanagement got a good shot in the arm with some German engineering skills. The 300 line is a great example of a car that is pretty damn good. Also their mini-van line has always been very rock solid.
- Ford by in large was at least OK while GM and Chrysler got very very lazy. And then they were the 1st to get off their asses and realize that they were getting pwned and have started to be better than OK for a bit now.
I personally mostly will drive a Honda now. And I look forward to the day I can want to buy American again. The look of the new Camero has me very tempted as I personally love it but I know that the engineering under that look is going to be sub-standard to any Honda I own.
I would tend to agree. And the reason why?
The right wing, the far right wing, captured the republican party. (With a lot of help from far right 'christians'.) And then used the modern day media to crank the fear machine up to 11.
And yes the left (Or what passes for the left these days.) also does some fear mongering on some issues as well. But not only are they rank amateurs when it comes to it, but they also have to try to be the voice of reason in the face of the military grade propaganda that is fed to the public every day from the right.
And yes yes, that is a pretty vast oversimplification of the issue but I think at heart it is true.
Wow, what a great Fox News like twisting of the OPs point.
90% of US bills carry traces of cocaine:
http://articles.cnn.com/2009-08-14/health/cocaine.traces.money_1_cocaine-dollar-bills-paper-bills?_s=PM:HEALTH [cnn.com]
Now, let's suppose that you are a cashier, and it's a sweaty day.
After a long tiring day, you got arrested by the police.
Still doesn't make my point invalid. And if you can cash out for drugs, you can sure afford a lawyer...
I'll wait for you to apologize for your failure in following the point...oh who am I kidding.
A little off topic, but there's no such thing as a filler class.
Your point has been pretty well covered but when I read the discussion about it I remembered something. Hamlet.
I had to formally study, ie for a graded class not on my own time, Hamlet no less than 4 times during my schooling. Four, motherfucking, times. I mean I dig me some Shakespeare but...damn.
Once in a early level high school gifted English class and hey that was ok. We were the smart kids and you are not going to get very far teaching the smart kids the standard bullshit short stories that you get in some 9th or 10th grade reader. Then again in senior year gifted English. Oookkk. By this time I at least had likely read more stuff over all than some adults do their whole lives but whatever.
Then again in English 101. Fuck. Me. Really? I was reading, for 'fun' mind you at the time, The Brothers Karamazov. I would have been thrilled to have a chance to analyze Crime and Punishment in a college setting. Or how about some really hard hitting and awsome sci-fi like the Foundation trilogy? Nope, I clearly needed to learn Hamlet...er some more.
And then finally to add insult to injury I remember filling out one of my elective requirement with English Lit or something like that and guess what was on tap?! Hamlet! Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him...and even I wished for death at times then as well.
Doooooooooomed!
Seriously, hyperbole much? Google has deep pockets, a lot of geeks, and a lot of infrastructure too. MS is indeed a 500lb gorilla but so is Google. Nobody is doomed at this point IT...well maybe HP, Nokia, and RIM but just them!
Oh yeah. Keep in mind that SATA is on it's 3rd version of the spec. SATA has been the standard for a long time now.
Not really. I mean old HDs have some value in that they do work on obsolete hardware but that is it. There has never been any value in old tech for computers that I can remember save for historical purposes. I saved my //e for many years thinking it would somehow age in value. It just likely ended up costing me money as I had to lug it around and find a space for that big box of stuff.
If you have the space keeping old hardware around can save you some hassle. Or if you are constantly working on old computers then yeah, it's not a bad idea to keep it around. But old tech is always old tech.
And this, sadly, is the end result of our 'War on Drugs'. We lose on many different fronts and yet still think that we are 'winning'.
Even with marijuana almost mainstream and many states virtually legalizing it we have that nonsense bullshit answer from the White House about how it's an 'additive' drug that needs to stay category 1 illegal.
We are a long way from winning the 'War on Drugs'. And by that I mean ending the war on ourselves.
The only butt-hurt here seems to be your anger at people pointing out the obvious and saying "after the government took it over, it sucked".
The problem comes in when, and you have not said but you very likely are, people who hate the idea that the gov can do anything right would just gloss over when...
X company is doing something for the gov and then loses the contract for lets say cost issues and it goes over to company Y. Company Y has some issues getting everything back to the level of functionality that was provided by a company that had been doing the job for a while. And for less money! But company Y eventually gets everything all set and then you praise the 'free market' for how great company Y is.
Meanwhile anything the gov does must always be awful...save for the actual military. They are great...except when they come home and maybe want some health care...screw em then right?
Slashdot has a vocal and near radical atheist group.
I could quote more of how you are in your own way hating on atheism but let me rather just make this argument:
Religion, in its many forms has done good things but along with that it HAS done many many many awful things and continues to do so. There are those that thing the evil that religion does is outweighed by the good it does. Many of us who are atheists do not. Thus when we are pressed on religion we view it as a net evil and not dance around that fact.
Further those who believe in some form of mythology, can and do demonize those who are atheists. In the US right now there are many studies that show it is much easier to be freaking gay than an atheist. Thus when we are confronted with 'believers' we are naturally on guard because of the fact that we are very likely to be attacked.
Of all the objections to the name of LO this is the one I think is most valid from a pragmatic standpoint.
However given the nature of who got OO's rights, with the fork the new project needed to have a clearly different name lest there be...trouble. Could they have done a better job with the name? For us westerners yeah they sure could have. My guess is the name is the result of someone who did not know or care that LO was not going to be a great name.
I personally think that it will not be that bad in the long run. It could fork again, change names, be usurped by something new and better. For now what counts is that there is a FOSS office package that is not terrible and is being actively worked on.
For what it is worth I personally DID have an Apple //e. I tricked it out too: Cider II 10M HD, High speed CPU upgrade (the Apple //e's original clock was 1.6mhz IIRC, the card that I had had high speed RAM and a 3.6 mhz 6502c), big RAM 80col card (the Apple //e's normal screen was 40 column wide, a normal upgrade was to get a card that let you run your word processor/spreadsheet apps wider), a number of modems from my original Hayes Micromodem 300 to my Hayes 1200. I could go on but I think you all get the idea.
I learned to program 6502, good ol' Applesoft BASIC, and even fun stuff like Pascal and Forth. I learned how to manage space on what was at the time a hard drive that not a lot of people had. I learned a bit about networking from running a BBS. I also met a lot of people who also used the computers of the time like the C64, the Atari's of the day (the ST line was really a nice computer) and even those early PC guys. And then while I stepped away from computers for a few years when I came back and turned into the modern PC guy I am today I think a lot about how my early days with my Apple, and TI99 4a, shaped what I know about computers.
I remember reading about Waz and how he had basically designed the computers and how when I would run into something frustrating in having to do with programming the machine that it was likely because Waz had to take a few shortcuts to make the thing, which owning a computer like that was still silly expensive at the time, was because he had to keep costs down.
And then I remember reading about the guy Jobs who helped Waz make Apple into an actual business. And I was like oh, ok cool. I'm glad Waz has someone like Jobs to help him out. Little did we know at the time that Jobs was more than just some accountant (which is what I view mostly as the people with titles like CEO, glorified accountants) and could build stuff too.
Being a computer guy I of course have been working with Apple stuff for a while now; even before the iPods. And so even with the modern rise of Apple into what most people know about it now my personal history has me with a lot more to say about it than just the iStuff that they do now. And with all that I wish Steve well into that good night. We will not see the likes of him yet again for some time.
Why take the network out of the requirement? Opera has gone so far as to build it's own server network to compress web pages such that when you want to view them with Mobile Opera you don't have to wait as long.
Further if that is the best you can do to refute my points then I think I'll call this one a win.
Did TFA do any mobile browser comparisons? If so your point is rather moot.
The platforms are different, the specs on individual phones are different, the networks are different (never mind location performance on each network can and will be different), and the goal for mobile browsing is different.
I think it is more that Lucas is more a control freak rather than simply money greedy. Yeah it is a bit of a nuanced difference but it seems to fit in this case.
Wow, speaking of drinking can you pass me some of what you have?
And here I was thinking that the FOSS people were drinking the Kool-Aid. In 15 years, Linux has guaranteed its survival, nothing more. Continuing to rail against the company that did all those evil things and succeeded looks like FOSS people are immature and impulsive.
Yeah, shame on all of us who want to continue to point out all of the freaking evil things that MS has done and continues to do.
What really happens is when this type of thing comes up it shows who is ignorant about what MS does and why there are where they are today.
I could go on but once I have a feeling that you are a Fox News watching drone who feels might makes right.
After watching the video, I know I know almost as bad as reading the articles!, I had a few thoughts:
- Well done video.
- Kinda cute.
- And clearly designed to show MS as the adult in any conversation as well as making not mention about how freaking evil they are.
Every bit of that video was about as condescending as you can get. If they thought to win over anyone in the FOSS camp with that kinda crap they must really be drinking some very special KoolAid.
Totally off topic but wow, of all the images to put up when they show off something like that the Bing homepage?
Kickbacks ho!
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2011/7/5/wanna-be-the-ceo-of-nokia-take-the-simple-quiz.aspx
It is a little scary and sad to see the parallels in these two once giants make so many mistakes. Not that they are making the same mistakes but they both clearly have one thing in common: inept top level leadership.
Evil. If corporations are evil, and Murdoch's empire were to rate a 10 on the evil scale, then I'd have to put Google somewhere around .1 to .5.
As evil as Murdoch's empire is I think that unless we give bonus points to Exxon, BP, and all the subsidary corps that form the current oil cartels that his empire would have to take 2nd place to them.
After watching non-stop lies about the latest oil spill I can't see how they are not the current 10 standard for corporate evil.
For every bad example of things 'the gov does wrong' that someone wants to trot out there are at least as many, if not more thanks to them being more likely to be successfully covered up, 'things that priv companies do wrong' examples. But of course that does not phase those who like to scream free market! as the ultimate answer to everything.
However I really want to know how 'free' a market it would be. Would we have multiple companies at each airport? Would they compete to see who gives the best customer service, quickness, and price to each gate? Or if Company X was cutting corners on their screening process and as such their screeners were groping people worse than the TSA now would that company risk losing it's gate to Company Y?
Or! Would be more like the 'free market' cable/telco market we have now where a single company gets to own the whole airport (last mile) and they do whatever the fuck they want because the cost to change both in real money and politics would be far too high for it ever to happen.
I'm fairly certain that this was common knowledge among enthusiasts.
You cite a lot of ATI stuff and yes, indeed that ATI drivers have had issues for a long time is indeed common knowledge. But that is all you seem to cite. And further your OP talked about large installs where games would not be an issue. So bringing up discrete GPUs to back up your point about AMD mobos vs Intel mobos kinda sends up a red flag to me. In that you might be kinda an Intel fanboy (even thou you say you are not) who will just hate on AMD for anything.
To repeat what I've said before. In large installs where the systems are almost always using onboard video these days there is no real difference between AMD or Intel to get the basics working: video, sound, and network. Further the larger issue is the mobo make and what chipset it is using. If a Intel CPU working with a NVidia chipset is harder to work with than a AMD CPU working with an NVidia chipset does that really reflect back on either Intel or AMD? Or back on NVidia?