Actually, a greedy system will practice a LOT of thrift; prioritizing wants and needs to increase gain.
The problem is when people don't use both in the right proportions. We should be thrifty (save) as part of a long term plan to save resources for the times when they might not be as plentiful, and greed shouldn't be used to hoard resources beyond what is needed.
But then, it looks like you realize that. Another part I'd say is that much of our 'savings' today isn't in hoarded resources; it's a contribution to the infrastructure that increases our productivity.
I have, due to being thrifty, money to invest. I'm a fan of nuclear power, so let's buy bonds for opening a nuclear power plant. Due to my and other's investments, a new plant starts operating and paying those bonds back. The overall economy has increased, more power is being generated in an efficient manner enabling other companies to operate and expand. Same deal with a plant to make Widget XYZ.
A stock market is a very useful financial tool that helps modern economies function and larger businesses to operate once they exceed the wealth of a small group of very wealthy individuals.
Get rid of? No. Regulate? Certainly. Encourage them to not participate? Only for the uneducated; make sure people realize that they're not buying a lottery ticket with a good chance of winning; that they realize that they're buying a chunk of a company, and all that entails.
To which I say "Horseshit!" The day that American medicine finds a cure for cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes and Parkinson's is the day that American medicine goes out of business. Doctors, HMOs, big pharma and hospitals are too busy making money off the sick to fix these problems.
Then why hasn't Europe, Canada, or Australia, with national healthcare systems, found cures? Surely it'd be in their best interests to cure stuff?
We've successfully cured cancer lots of times. The problem is that there's millions of versions of cancer; heck, you could say everybody who gets cancer gets their own, personalized version. A person can get cancer, completely separate, unrelated cancers, multiple times. Alzheimer's is ultimately fatal. A living patient is more likely to pay money for healthcare in the future than a dead one. They actually cured type 1 diabetes a couple times; they're working on fixing a problematic side effect(90% of the test group got cancer from the treatment). I think they're working on some gene therapies for parkinson's, not sure, have to head to work.
Cancer's worse than the common cold for variants; surgery has gotten a lot better(laparoscope and such); welcome to evolution; vaccines still work great.
1. No way - we have enough problems with medical malpractice. I'd like to fire the worst 2% or so. 2. Agreed. Medical knowledge has significantly outpaced the ability of a MD to store it in his head 3. There's a limit to how much you can specialize; everything in the human body interrelates. I'm serious. Dentists need to know some heart stuff because messing around with your teeth can screw up your heart. 4. Good idea; goes along with my idea of firing the worst 2% or so.
I think the idea is that with a lot of research done with embryos that are dead* to begin with, that we'd learn more about the stem cell process and have a better idea of what to do with our adult stem cells to either transform them into 'younger' versions or turn them directly into cell types that we need.
I think it says something when Europe, with over double the population of the USA, can't simply bypass our refusal to federally fund one research path by allocating more funding to it and cornering the 'market'.
*IE never going to make it to implantation and potential babyhood. IVF rejects are more suitable than abortion remains.
I heard a couple years ago about a German experiment that cured a congenital heart disfunction with donor-supplied stem cells. This cost a total of 200 or 300 euros.
I'd really like to see an article on this, if I could.
You see, this sort of thing would require at least two medical procedures and lab work; extraction, lab modification/screening, implantation.
For the heart, I don't see implantation being cheap, I don't see the labwork being cheap, etc... Either they're talking about a very limited selection of the costs(national healthcare took care of the rest!), or there's a few zeros missing in there.
It it's true, and really that cheap, you'd think it'd have been trumpeted across the airwaves.
Actually grid-tie systems are REQUIRED to disconnect if the grid loses power.
There's a difference between disconnecting from grid power and shutting off when it comes to local power generation - whether green or traditional.
Conventional grid-tie systems shut off - IE if you lose grid power, there's no power to the house, even if you have plenty of power coming in from the solar panels or wind turbine to power everything. While safe for line workers, it's annoying for the home owner. Cheaper and easier to install though. All you need is to run the power into the breaker box.
What I'm talking about is a system that combines the features of a grid-tie inverter with an automatic transfer switch. There's a disconnect in there, it's just not dependent on shutting the house down, so the workers are still safe(and you aren't trying to power the neighborhood). It works pretty much identical to standby generators, just optimized for 'green' power. For even more money, you can get a system that can power/depower circuits based on actual power availability and demand. Even the option for a(presumably smaller) battery bank 'just in case'.
By keeping the grid tie even if you have batteries, you can avoid charge/discharge cycles and increase the longevity of the batteries. Not to mention system efficiency - you don't get as much power back from discharging batteries as you put in, but floating a charge is relatively cheap and the meter runs backwards at the same speed as forwards(100% effective charging efficiency).
As a consequence, you need to install the inverter/ATS in between the grid connection and any circuits you want to power during offline operation. More expensive/complicated install, but if the power goes out when it's sunny you still have electricity.
To keep it cheaper, you might set it up so that you need grid power to run the AC or washer, but not for the lights/refridgerator/computer/radio, assuming there's enough power.
Instead, These insurance companies are one of the evil ones. Yes, they do want to look for "effective treatments". Exactly the language. They want no cures. They instead, want your money each month so that they can profit on you by being sick.
Please, keep your conspiracy theories straight. The insurance companies do want effective treatments, preferably cures, for your condition. By preference they don't want you sick in the first place. Why? It costs them money if you have to go see a doc. It costs them more money if the doc can't fix the problem and you have to go to another doc. Think about it for a moment. Does the car insurance/warranty company make money if you're making a claim every month? Heck no! They want the guy who hasn't had an accident the last two decades.
I think you got the insurance companies confused with the drug companies. The drug companies gain money by you being 'sick' and having to take a medication each month to control it. Preferably a name brand new drug that there's no generic of yet.
Or worse yet, they simply take your money and deny coverage claiming "Experimental" or likewise. If you're that sick, you're not going to have a lawsuit do anything in any reasonable amount of time. We would call that Blood Money. Here in the USA, its business as usual.
Oddly enough, I know of nobody who's had that problem in the USA. If a treatment is Experimental, then there's probably a study out there willing to pay at least some of the costs, or maybe it's just a shot in the dark. This whole article is about how many treatments are unnecessary, over expensive, or ineffective.
And what exactly does these insurance companies and HMOs actually do, other than shuffle paper and suck massive amounts of money? What good is there that they put out that couldnt be gained greater from putting that money in other areas?
Well, they supposedly do collective bargaining to cut costs. They pay for healthcare under the terms of their contract.
Personally, I don't consider something that you're likely to use any given year to be insurance - thus I often call then healthcare plans, because I don't consider them insurance. They do unnecessarily increase paperwork costs and complicate collections for actual providers. Personally, I'm a fan of healthcare savings plans and high deductible insurance. Most people don't hit their auto insurance up for a little scratch; and often the car repair guys will cut the dude a deal, undercutting the insurance price. Same deal with the providers. If you can provide a 'no hassle to us' credit card to charge, they'll cut the price of the service - often 50%.
. The longer they live, the more healthcare they will need. For society, it is probably cheapest if people die of a heart attack just after they stop working. Reduce heart attacks and guess what, they have other illnesses.
You know all the anti-smoking stuff in the USA? Studies were done back in the '80s that showed that smokers ultimately cost pension funds far less, even just in medical care, because they died a decade sooner on average.
So, in an oddball way, the cessation of smoking is a partial reason for the big three going bankrupt.
Personally, this is why I like the idea of healthcare savings plans and high deductible insurance plans. Assuming a fairly healthy youth, they should have enough money to pay for that heart surgery when they're 70, and no interference by the government or healthcare plan.
NG isn't available, and given my usage and the cost to retrofit to propane, it wouldn't be any cheaper - electric water heaters are more efficient and leak less heat than most propane/NG units.
Not to mention that when I was looking to replace my water heater, propane was ramping steeply up in cost.
For the stove, well, I'm used to electrics, and with the dryer, well, again, I just don't use it enough to justify the cost, especially the running of the line over to the dryer area.
the assumption here is that wasteful procedures are due to the profit motives of physicians.
Not necessarily, a lot of it's probably from non-scientific collations of knowledge and anecdotes.
IE 'in their personal experience' procedure A is better than B, when in reality it's not, they never gave B a proper chance.
Along those lines, why do you blame HMOs? They tried to do the same thing the government is now pushing - figuring out the most cost effective procedures and methodologies to save costs. Remember - a Patient that isn't cured/fixed is going to keep seeking medical care, so an ineffective procedure is worse than nothing.
On lines of the legal system, I read somewhere that something like 3% of doctors are responsible for 90% of the malpractice suits. - Well, I exaggerate apparently. 5% responsible for 50%, 1.7% for 27.5%. Still, getting rid of the worst 2% of doctors would be the trick(those who can't, teach? Maybe). But who would replace them? We have something of a doctor shortage to begin with.
Back on the topic of lawsuits for malpractice, well, honest studies would help in lawsuits: Why didn't you do X? Because CER's study showed that X is ineffective for situation Y, that's why.
How could the 'rewinding' be any worse? From what I've seen, wanting to rewind for even a second requires a complete buffer dump and redownload of the content (IE I get to wait for ~10 seconds minimum for it to buffer again).
I often get a 'wait one' moment and want to go back ~10 seconds or so and see something again, so it really annoys me.
Keeping ~10-30 second of buffer data even after playing would be useful.
As would a non-browser player program, I'd like to get rid of the frames and such and have a 'force on top'- basically a PiP on my computer.
I've also had a number of audio synch issues like Draconix.
This stuff gets really annoying; I want to pay, I really do. That's why I got the netflix membership. Couldn't they make my viewing at least as pleasurable as downloading the video from some torrent site?
Only 5kw though. At $5k, it'd take 4 years of eliminating my electric bill to pay for the inverter alone, much less solar cells, wind turbine, or install.
By my back of hand figuring on the basis of using ~1000kwh a month, I'd need a 4-5kw inverter anyways. 1000kwh/month = 33kwh/day, 1.4 kwh/hour, 1400 watts average load. Times 3 for rough guess on usable/production periods vs max, 4.2kw minimum load needed. BTW, my water heater/stove/dryer are all electric, but heat is propane. I pay ~.10 cents per kwh, decreasing if I use a lot.
Most(and I mean MOST), grid-tie systems shut off when the grid power goes out. This is to protect the system and line workers.
For an extra $1k or so you can have a system that works more like an automatic transfer switch, when the main power goes out, the system will automatically power circuits depending on priority and available power. IE put the dryer last, the computer first.;)
http://www.oasismontana.com/Xantrex-xw-inverter.html - but I'd want to read the documentation carefully before getting one. It's listed as working in either mode, but not both at the same time, or being able to switch automatically.
I don't know if it's true everywhere, but I've heard several times that a PV system will cause your electric meter to run backwards.
It'd take a rather funky residential meter to NOT run backwards.
(Actually it'd be very cool if you could sell the power to ANYONE at a market rate rather than the crappy rate the electric company will buy it for).
They are buying it from you at market rate. They're selling it to you at retail though. The local coal plant gets like 3 cents per kwh, while I pay 10.
A lot of the money goes towards maintaining the transmission grid and such. It'd be a bit like going to the store and wanting to sell them homemade(but identical) products at their retail prices - how is the store going to cover it's infrastructure and labor expenses?
Assuming, of course, that the warranting company is still around to provide the replacements, and at least partially that the problem isn't systematic, thus driving the company out of business when serious replacement requests start to hit. Or that they're counting on most people to simply not notice.
Still, I'm more concerned about the occasional hail storm taking panels out than them degrading.
I keep looking at your figures, and they don't really make sense to me.
Ah - now I see. 800E, a 1kW panel producing a full 1kwh each hour. 4000 *.2 = 800
But you're forgetting about nighttime. In which case, that panel is going to take at least twice as long to produce enough power to pay itself off - on the order of a year, assuming you ultimately obtain a 50% capacity factor. 30-40% for a noticeably more sunny location than Germany.
And that doesn't include install, wiring, or inverter.
Note to developers: Work on getting the inverter cheaper!
I was thinking that as well, expanding for those that want to kill the F-22 for UAVs - The F22 can do stuff that UAVs can't, so UAVs can't replace the F22. The F35 isn't in production yet, and the F-15/16s are starting to have major issues.
I mean, their design is older than most of their pilots. Many of the planes as well, which isn't good for a high stress plane like fighters.
True, the F-22 hasn't done any missions in Iraq/Afghanistan yet. But then again, we're still doing work-up trials on them.
You can't just design and build a next generation combat aircraft in a year. For that reason alone there is no hope of another air force pulling out a surprise.
Current UAVs have effectively NO air to air capability. They work in Iraq/Afghanistan because we've already suppressed effectively 100% of their anti-air capabilities.
The US military complex is the last relic of the cold war.
Hardly the last; but yes, due to the lag time we're still seeing cold war weapons systems coming on line. Still, we've been developing new systems(with shorter lead times) that address the guerrilla/insurgent situations.
Now - I feel the need to point out that we can't just ignore cold war doctrine. Cold war doctrine worked, forcing potential and actual enemies to adapt to the efficient but only partially effective insurgent methods.
What am I getting at? We adapt too much to anti-insurgent methods and the old methods become effective again - and we find ourselves in a bloody meatgrinder of a straight-up fight.
It'd be like building a data center then only paying attention to internet attacks and not bothering to lock the door because the internet is the source of all your attacks.
Or perhaps you only lock the door. It's not like our military isn't going to be able to fight conventional threats anytime soon, after all.
As long as the robot can be jammed or suborned, you need some sort of backup. like human pilots. Further, F-22 can't be the last major air-superiority aircraft, if it isn't being built in volume.
I've said before that I figure the F-22 will be produced as/converted to a UAV form sometime during it's operational life, but I agree. We have methods that are far harder to jam than previous; still, that's a 'harder', not a 'impossible'.
Cruise missiles can only do so much, and we haven't gotten anywhere near the point of calling a UAV autonomous.
We're currently heading towards having about a tenth as many F-22s as we have F-15s. While not a concern at the moment - We've had major military reductions before; and they've been followed by actual wars.
I'm a believer in that being prepared for a war is the best way to prevent one - all sides look at the potential cost of a conflict and decide to trade instead.
As for the shuttle, Hubble, ect, I always feel like I'm betraying an old freind when I trade in my car but the smell of fresh leather more than compensates.
Even for multimillion to billion dollar vehicles, they eventually wear out and replacement becomes the safer and more economical choice.
There was talk on the radio today about Obama potentially canceling the F-22 - but said cancellation would put something like 90k people out of work.
A couple points that I think was missed is that 90+% of the expenses for the F-22, R&D, setting up manufacturing, have already been met. Shutting down acquisition of the planes wouldn't actually save you much money. Not even $23 million per plane canceled. Meanwhile, maintenance costs for F-15s and F-16s are starting to skyrocket due to age. One of the selling points for the F-22 is that it's supposed to be much, much easier/cheaper to maintain.
Consider that old '88 chevy. Parts are getting hard to find, the seats need to be reupholstered, the exhaust system is shot; the engine needs a rebuild, cylinder 4 only gets half pressure, etc...
At some point, it'd actually be cheaper to buy a new car.
Slashdot Mirror
Thrift doesn't produce anything useful.
Actually, a greedy system will practice a LOT of thrift; prioritizing wants and needs to increase gain.
The problem is when people don't use both in the right proportions. We should be thrifty (save) as part of a long term plan to save resources for the times when they might not be as plentiful, and greed shouldn't be used to hoard resources beyond what is needed.
But then, it looks like you realize that. Another part I'd say is that much of our 'savings' today isn't in hoarded resources; it's a contribution to the infrastructure that increases our productivity.
I have, due to being thrifty, money to invest. I'm a fan of nuclear power, so let's buy bonds for opening a nuclear power plant. Due to my and other's investments, a new plant starts operating and paying those bonds back. The overall economy has increased, more power is being generated in an efficient manner enabling other companies to operate and expand. Same deal with a plant to make Widget XYZ.
A stock market is a very useful financial tool that helps modern economies function and larger businesses to operate once they exceed the wealth of a small group of very wealthy individuals.
Get rid of? No. Regulate? Certainly. Encourage them to not participate? Only for the uneducated; make sure people realize that they're not buying a lottery ticket with a good chance of winning; that they realize that they're buying a chunk of a company, and all that entails.
I don't even know the precise nature of the ailment that was corrected, just that they stressed the difference in price tag to a traditional surgery.
Compared to most traditional heart surgury, the proceedure could be 20-30k Euros in price and still be a bargain.
It just sounds like something I would have heard about.
To which I say "Horseshit!" The day that American medicine finds a cure for cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes and Parkinson's is the day that American medicine goes out of business. Doctors, HMOs, big pharma and hospitals are too busy making money off the sick to fix these problems.
Then why hasn't Europe, Canada, or Australia, with national healthcare systems, found cures? Surely it'd be in their best interests to cure stuff?
We've successfully cured cancer lots of times. The problem is that there's millions of versions of cancer; heck, you could say everybody who gets cancer gets their own, personalized version. A person can get cancer, completely separate, unrelated cancers, multiple times. Alzheimer's is ultimately fatal. A living patient is more likely to pay money for healthcare in the future than a dead one. They actually cured type 1 diabetes a couple times; they're working on fixing a problematic side effect(90% of the test group got cancer from the treatment). I think they're working on some gene therapies for parkinson's, not sure, have to head to work.
Cancer's worse than the common cold for variants; surgery has gotten a lot better(laparoscope and such); welcome to evolution; vaccines still work great.
1. No way - we have enough problems with medical malpractice. I'd like to fire the worst 2% or so.
2. Agreed. Medical knowledge has significantly outpaced the ability of a MD to store it in his head
3. There's a limit to how much you can specialize; everything in the human body interrelates. I'm serious. Dentists need to know some heart stuff because messing around with your teeth can screw up your heart.
4. Good idea; goes along with my idea of firing the worst 2% or so.
I think the idea is that with a lot of research done with embryos that are dead* to begin with, that we'd learn more about the stem cell process and have a better idea of what to do with our adult stem cells to either transform them into 'younger' versions or turn them directly into cell types that we need.
I think it says something when Europe, with over double the population of the USA, can't simply bypass our refusal to federally fund one research path by allocating more funding to it and cornering the 'market'.
*IE never going to make it to implantation and potential babyhood. IVF rejects are more suitable than abortion remains.
I heard a couple years ago about a German experiment that cured a congenital heart disfunction with donor-supplied stem cells. This cost a total of 200 or 300 euros.
I'd really like to see an article on this, if I could.
You see, this sort of thing would require at least two medical procedures and lab work; extraction, lab modification/screening, implantation.
For the heart, I don't see implantation being cheap, I don't see the labwork being cheap, etc... Either they're talking about a very limited selection of the costs(national healthcare took care of the rest!), or there's a few zeros missing in there.
It it's true, and really that cheap, you'd think it'd have been trumpeted across the airwaves.
The idea here would be to use stem cells created from your own skin or other tissues; thus having identical genetics and avoiding rejection.
Though for research purposes, yes, that would work. But regardless, it looks like the issue will be moot soon anyways.
Actually grid-tie systems are REQUIRED to disconnect if the grid loses power.
There's a difference between disconnecting from grid power and shutting off when it comes to local power generation - whether green or traditional.
Conventional grid-tie systems shut off - IE if you lose grid power, there's no power to the house, even if you have plenty of power coming in from the solar panels or wind turbine to power everything. While safe for line workers, it's annoying for the home owner. Cheaper and easier to install though. All you need is to run the power into the breaker box.
What I'm talking about is a system that combines the features of a grid-tie inverter with an automatic transfer switch. There's a disconnect in there, it's just not dependent on shutting the house down, so the workers are still safe(and you aren't trying to power the neighborhood). It works pretty much identical to standby generators, just optimized for 'green' power. For even more money, you can get a system that can power/depower circuits based on actual power availability and demand. Even the option for a(presumably smaller) battery bank 'just in case'.
By keeping the grid tie even if you have batteries, you can avoid charge/discharge cycles and increase the longevity of the batteries. Not to mention system efficiency - you don't get as much power back from discharging batteries as you put in, but floating a charge is relatively cheap and the meter runs backwards at the same speed as forwards(100% effective charging efficiency).
As a consequence, you need to install the inverter/ATS in between the grid connection and any circuits you want to power during offline operation. More expensive/complicated install, but if the power goes out when it's sunny you still have electricity.
To keep it cheaper, you might set it up so that you need grid power to run the AC or washer, but not for the lights/refridgerator/computer/radio, assuming there's enough power.
Instead, These insurance companies are one of the evil ones. Yes, they do want to look for "effective treatments". Exactly the language. They want no cures. They instead, want your money each month so that they can profit on you by being sick.
Please, keep your conspiracy theories straight. The insurance companies do want effective treatments, preferably cures, for your condition. By preference they don't want you sick in the first place. Why? It costs them money if you have to go see a doc. It costs them more money if the doc can't fix the problem and you have to go to another doc. Think about it for a moment. Does the car insurance/warranty company make money if you're making a claim every month? Heck no! They want the guy who hasn't had an accident the last two decades.
I think you got the insurance companies confused with the drug companies. The drug companies gain money by you being 'sick' and having to take a medication each month to control it. Preferably a name brand new drug that there's no generic of yet.
Or worse yet, they simply take your money and deny coverage claiming "Experimental" or likewise. If you're that sick, you're not going to have a lawsuit do anything in any reasonable amount of time. We would call that Blood Money. Here in the USA, its business as usual.
Oddly enough, I know of nobody who's had that problem in the USA. If a treatment is Experimental, then there's probably a study out there willing to pay at least some of the costs, or maybe it's just a shot in the dark. This whole article is about how many treatments are unnecessary, over expensive, or ineffective.
And what exactly does these insurance companies and HMOs actually do, other than shuffle paper and suck massive amounts of money? What good is there that they put out that couldnt be gained greater from putting that money in other areas?
Well, they supposedly do collective bargaining to cut costs. They pay for healthcare under the terms of their contract.
Personally, I don't consider something that you're likely to use any given year to be insurance - thus I often call then healthcare plans, because I don't consider them insurance. They do unnecessarily increase paperwork costs and complicate collections for actual providers. Personally, I'm a fan of healthcare savings plans and high deductible insurance. Most people don't hit their auto insurance up for a little scratch; and often the car repair guys will cut the dude a deal, undercutting the insurance price. Same deal with the providers. If you can provide a 'no hassle to us' credit card to charge, they'll cut the price of the service - often 50%.
. The longer they live, the more healthcare they will need. For society, it is probably cheapest if people die of a heart attack just after they stop working. Reduce heart attacks and guess what, they have other illnesses.
You know all the anti-smoking stuff in the USA? Studies were done back in the '80s that showed that smokers ultimately cost pension funds far less, even just in medical care, because they died a decade sooner on average.
So, in an oddball way, the cessation of smoking is a partial reason for the big three going bankrupt.
Personally, this is why I like the idea of healthcare savings plans and high deductible insurance plans. Assuming a fairly healthy youth, they should have enough money to pay for that heart surgery when they're 70, and no interference by the government or healthcare plan.
NG isn't available, and given my usage and the cost to retrofit to propane, it wouldn't be any cheaper - electric water heaters are more efficient and leak less heat than most propane/NG units.
Not to mention that when I was looking to replace my water heater, propane was ramping steeply up in cost.
For the stove, well, I'm used to electrics, and with the dryer, well, again, I just don't use it enough to justify the cost, especially the running of the line over to the dryer area.
the assumption here is that wasteful procedures are due to the profit motives of physicians.
Not necessarily, a lot of it's probably from non-scientific collations of knowledge and anecdotes.
IE 'in their personal experience' procedure A is better than B, when in reality it's not, they never gave B a proper chance.
Along those lines, why do you blame HMOs? They tried to do the same thing the government is now pushing - figuring out the most cost effective procedures and methodologies to save costs. Remember - a Patient that isn't cured/fixed is going to keep seeking medical care, so an ineffective procedure is worse than nothing.
On lines of the legal system, I read somewhere that something like 3% of doctors are responsible for 90% of the malpractice suits. - Well, I exaggerate apparently. 5% responsible for 50%, 1.7% for 27.5%. Still, getting rid of the worst 2% of doctors would be the trick(those who can't, teach? Maybe). But who would replace them? We have something of a doctor shortage to begin with.
Back on the topic of lawsuits for malpractice, well, honest studies would help in lawsuits: Why didn't you do X? Because CER's study showed that X is ineffective for situation Y, that's why.
How could the 'rewinding' be any worse? From what I've seen, wanting to rewind for even a second requires a complete buffer dump and redownload of the content (IE I get to wait for ~10 seconds minimum for it to buffer again).
I often get a 'wait one' moment and want to go back ~10 seconds or so and see something again, so it really annoys me.
Keeping ~10-30 second of buffer data even after playing would be useful.
As would a non-browser player program, I'd like to get rid of the frames and such and have a 'force on top'- basically a PiP on my computer.
I've also had a number of audio synch issues like Draconix.
This stuff gets really annoying; I want to pay, I really do. That's why I got the netflix membership. Couldn't they make my viewing at least as pleasurable as downloading the video from some torrent site?
except that new accounts get no choice.
I recently signed up and never new about anything other than the silverlight player.
I was assuming net metering; but what happens with any power after that is up to the local company, yes.
with net metering you are still vulnerable to power failures.
There are systems today that, while more expensive, allow net metering and still provide power during blackouts.
I even saw one that would activate/deactivate circuits depending on load demands and power supply.
Found a better one, lists that capability as standard:
http://www.infinigi.com/beacon-power-m5-inverter-5-kw-gridtied-battery-backup-p-104.html?ref=100
Only 5kw though. At $5k, it'd take 4 years of eliminating my electric bill to pay for the inverter alone, much less solar cells, wind turbine, or install.
By my back of hand figuring on the basis of using ~1000kwh a month, I'd need a 4-5kw inverter anyways.
1000kwh/month = 33kwh/day, 1.4 kwh/hour, 1400 watts average load. Times 3 for rough guess on usable/production periods vs max, 4.2kw minimum load needed. BTW, my water heater/stove/dryer are all electric, but heat is propane. I pay ~.10 cents per kwh, decreasing if I use a lot.
Most(and I mean MOST), grid-tie systems shut off when the grid power goes out. This is to protect the system and line workers.
For an extra $1k or so you can have a system that works more like an automatic transfer switch, when the main power goes out, the system will automatically power circuits depending on priority and available power. IE put the dryer last, the computer first. ;)
http://www.oasismontana.com/Xantrex-xw-inverter.html - but I'd want to read the documentation carefully before getting one. It's listed as working in either mode, but not both at the same time, or being able to switch automatically.
I don't know if it's true everywhere, but I've heard several times that a PV system will cause your electric meter to run backwards.
It'd take a rather funky residential meter to NOT run backwards.
(Actually it'd be very cool if you could sell the power to ANYONE at a market rate rather than the crappy rate the electric company will buy it for).
They are buying it from you at market rate. They're selling it to you at retail though. The local coal plant gets like 3 cents per kwh, while I pay 10.
A lot of the money goes towards maintaining the transmission grid and such. It'd be a bit like going to the store and wanting to sell them homemade(but identical) products at their retail prices - how is the store going to cover it's infrastructure and labor expenses?
Assuming, of course, that the warranting company is still around to provide the replacements, and at least partially that the problem isn't systematic, thus driving the company out of business when serious replacement requests start to hit. Or that they're counting on most people to simply not notice.
Still, I'm more concerned about the occasional hail storm taking panels out than them degrading.
I keep looking at your figures, and they don't really make sense to me.
Ah - now I see. 800E, a 1kW panel producing a full 1kwh each hour. 4000 * .2 = 800
But you're forgetting about nighttime. In which case, that panel is going to take at least twice as long to produce enough power to pay itself off - on the order of a year, assuming you ultimately obtain a 50% capacity factor. 30-40% for a noticeably more sunny location than Germany.
And that doesn't include install, wiring, or inverter.
Note to developers: Work on getting the inverter cheaper!
I was thinking that as well, expanding for those that want to kill the F-22 for UAVs - The F22 can do stuff that UAVs can't, so UAVs can't replace the F22. The F35 isn't in production yet, and the F-15/16s are starting to have major issues.
I mean, their design is older than most of their pilots. Many of the planes as well, which isn't good for a high stress plane like fighters.
True, the F-22 hasn't done any missions in Iraq/Afghanistan yet. But then again, we're still doing work-up trials on them.
You can't just design and build a next generation combat aircraft in a year. For that reason alone there is no hope of another air force pulling out a surprise.
Current UAVs have effectively NO air to air capability. They work in Iraq/Afghanistan because we've already suppressed effectively 100% of their anti-air capabilities.
The US military complex is the last relic of the cold war.
Hardly the last; but yes, due to the lag time we're still seeing cold war weapons systems coming on line. Still, we've been developing new systems(with shorter lead times) that address the guerrilla/insurgent situations.
Now - I feel the need to point out that we can't just ignore cold war doctrine. Cold war doctrine worked, forcing potential and actual enemies to adapt to the efficient but only partially effective insurgent methods.
What am I getting at? We adapt too much to anti-insurgent methods and the old methods become effective again - and we find ourselves in a bloody meatgrinder of a straight-up fight.
It'd be like building a data center then only paying attention to internet attacks and not bothering to lock the door because the internet is the source of all your attacks.
Or perhaps you only lock the door. It's not like our military isn't going to be able to fight conventional threats anytime soon, after all.
As long as the robot can be jammed or suborned, you need some sort of backup. like human pilots. Further, F-22 can't be the last major air-superiority aircraft, if it isn't being built in volume.
I've said before that I figure the F-22 will be produced as/converted to a UAV form sometime during it's operational life, but I agree. We have methods that are far harder to jam than previous; still, that's a 'harder', not a 'impossible'.
Cruise missiles can only do so much, and we haven't gotten anywhere near the point of calling a UAV autonomous.
We're currently heading towards having about a tenth as many F-22s as we have F-15s. While not a concern at the moment - We've had major military reductions before; and they've been followed by actual wars.
I'm a believer in that being prepared for a war is the best way to prevent one - all sides look at the potential cost of a conflict and decide to trade instead.
As for the shuttle, Hubble, ect, I always feel like I'm betraying an old freind when I trade in my car but the smell of fresh leather more than compensates.
Even for multimillion to billion dollar vehicles, they eventually wear out and replacement becomes the safer and more economical choice.
There was talk on the radio today about Obama potentially canceling the F-22 - but said cancellation would put something like 90k people out of work.
A couple points that I think was missed is that 90+% of the expenses for the F-22, R&D, setting up manufacturing, have already been met. Shutting down acquisition of the planes wouldn't actually save you much money. Not even $23 million per plane canceled. Meanwhile, maintenance costs for F-15s and F-16s are starting to skyrocket due to age. One of the selling points for the F-22 is that it's supposed to be much, much easier/cheaper to maintain.
Consider that old '88 chevy. Parts are getting hard to find, the seats need to be reupholstered, the exhaust system is shot; the engine needs a rebuild, cylinder 4 only gets half pressure, etc...
At some point, it'd actually be cheaper to buy a new car.
I was mainly referring to inter-gang violence.
Violence within a gang, more 'law enforcement' and internal power struggles. Violence between different gangs, closer to wars, perhaps feuds.
The "War on Drugs" should be renamed "The Criminal Element and Law Enforcement Stimulus Plan".
Yep.
repealing current drug and prostitution laws would be a great start.
He could do drugs; but prostitution is actually legal on a federal level(for the most part). It'd have to be done at the state level.