Giving people a reasonable sense of job security is definitely a step in the right direction, but you still have to be ready for the rare nut-job (employee or otherwise). While that includes onsite backup equipment (which they apparently had) it must also include off site backup facilities. I work with my local PD a bit and from what I understand even they have contingency plans for if the 911 dispatch center is evacuated/destroyed. If something happens the entire call load for the county can be redirected to one of several other sites in a few minutes. If a mid sized county (less than 100,000) can manage that kind of capability you would think a multimillion dollar air traffic control facility would be able to.
Aren't these kinds of critical systems supposed to have backups? I see DHS/TSA is too busy strip searching children/grandmas, securing chicken farms & writing up justifications for their abuse of authority to bother with the "unimportant" things like securing/fortifying the transportation infrastructure.
The big car manufacturers have been trying to use the dealership laws to prevent a competitor from bring a product to market, dealerships have been trying to use the laws to force Tesla to cut them in on their sales. This court ruling bloodies both of their noses for their foolishness, now if only more courts follow in this ones footsteps. I wonder how these laws even came into being in a society that claims to embrace free market mentality in the first place. I realize that Ford once tried to bypass the franchise model, but if they were able to provide their product to customers cheaper then what was the issue? Replace "car manufacturer" with any number of other products (corn, light bulb, TV, desk) in these laws and it becomes quite clear how foolish the whole thing is.
I don't think this individual has much of any real experience with firearms. I've seen flashlights and lasers, basically a light source with a battery and a switch, literally shake themselves apart after a few dozen rounds. While I am sure that you could harden the electronics to survive the beating, oil, water, etc that your average firearm has to deal with getting all manufacturers to follow the stringent manufacturing levels that would be required is unlikely. That and it would add at least $50, possibly a couple hundred dollars to the price of each gun (tens of millions of dollars per year). All to stop incidents barely show as a rounding error in the overall child mortality statistics (less than 100 accidental child deaths or about 0.3%). When we've fixed all of the other preventable causes of child death that are orders of magnitude more hazardous to their health (falls, pools, buckets, infections, allergic reactions, etc) maybe we can focus on accidental firearms discharge.
They may be the first to actually begin development of such a exosuit but this kind of application has been imagined in multiple fictional accounts(Spriggan movie & Crisis game series off the top of my head). It'll be interesting to see a full fledged pro-type (most of the stuff in the videos looked like non functional demo gear) but last I heard our artificial muscle tech was pretty pitiful. There was a big claim a while back that a breakthrough had been made using modified sewing thread and fishing line that was actually more efficient/powerful than natural muscle but I don't know if anything came of it. Also their designs seem to put the full brunt of the load on a persons own skeletal/joint system, possibly resulting in injury. While I am sure there is a way to add in some kind of exterior joints/"bones" to take some of the load off the wearer that technology and the muscle technology will take a LOT of advanced research to make a reality.
And treaties are written in stone? History is repeat with treaties that are no longer enforced or even acknowledged by any current country. The day someone starts shipping down millions of dollars in precious metals from an asteroid is the day that either countries simply start ignoring the Outer Space Treaty en mass or the day it is "reinterpreted" to allow such pursuits.
And what exactly is the legal basis for the FAA's denying commercial operation of "drones"? I don't mean the arbitrarily created regulations that they're quoting but the actual LAW passed by congress and the president? I have a sneaking suspicion that its some vague "ensuring public/air safety" law that they are stretching WAY past its original intent. Something on the order of a hypothetical USDA law to "ensure commercial food safety" being used outlaw all roadside vegetable stands.
Theres no one source for the information, but below are a few links to some of it. They have apparently made about $6 Billion in revenue since their inception and in 2010 at least they made $700 Million in licensing fees. I did include their "investments" along with what I could call "licensing fees" because they seem to be effectively the same thing. A good chunk of their revenue is via "Patent Funds" where they offer companies a chance to join in to buy a block of patents, apparently with a thinly veiled threat that if they don't buy in IV will sue them if any of the patents in the block apply to prospective investors.
It should be noted that, at least from what I can gather, most of IV's revenue isn't from actual lawsuits. A vast bulk of it is from "license fees" (in the billions of dollars apparently) they grant to companies for using "their technology". Given, they probably illicit those fees via threats of lawsuits. The company had a peak of 700 employees (I think its down into the 500 range now) with revenues close to a $1 Billion a year, and few if any real products to show for it.
Oh my, a member of a recently created government (appointed by coup), who is facing unrest from their own citizens, and is upset about outside assistance by another power (And US, Europe, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel don't?) is posting to his Facebook page that said outside force is planning mass murder. Stop the presses! This "story" has all of the validity of a small time drug dealer scrawling a message on a bathroom wall about the cities drug kingpin planning to release a plague in the city because..... well..... he can?
The species seems to have been susceptible to extinction from the get-go. Its not like humans wiped them out down to a last few flocks. People did over hunt them to be sure, but a species that required flock groups of tens to hundreds of thousands to propagate would seem to me to be living on borrowed time. Attempts to breed them in captivity failed because of the massive numbers that seem to be required. So this effort to reintroduce the population will require quite an effort, they will need a first generation in the tens of thousands at a minimum.
Your sarcasm tag makes things obvious so don't take this the wrong way, but that is one of the things that general society needs to realize, police work IS NOT very dangerous. There are I believe well over a dozen professions that make police work look safe (farmer, lumberjack, fisherman, etc.). It is a complete fallacy that police officers are in constant danger, most never have to even draw their gun. I think last year there were something like 100 on duty officer fatalities, 47 of those were accidental deaths (car/motorcycle/aircraft accidents, falls, etc).
"its value as an investigative tool would be severely compromised."
I'd be interested to see how these same police departments would respond if identical ALPRs were placed near police stations, government buildings & affluent neighborhoods by private individuals. I imagine it ending quite quickly in threats, arrests & even possibly injuries. Its funny how a surveillance tool is so great until the general public turns it on those in authority (tape recorders, video cameras, cell phone cameras, drones), then it miraculously needs "common sense" restrictions that those in authority are almost always exempt from.
Sadly you're completely right, a bag of flour thrown off a building or put a few Lite-Brite signs out and you throw a city into chaos. All at the cost of a few bucks and one or two nuts willing to do it. You don't have to look far to see how crazy things have gotten, there have been what, two aircraft diverted in the past week because of minor incidents on-board at least one of which "required" a fighter escort because of a few drunk women having a fight? I can't recall where it came from but there is one statement that pretty well sums it up "the terrorists said "boo" and our reaction was to shoot ourselves in the head". We simply can't sustain this idiocy, eventually we'll end up like Russia at the end of the Cold War, throwing so much money into buying bullets (security) that we can't afford bread (the economy).
We don't have to wait for "one day", it happens quite often right now. I can recall at least a dozen cases off the top of my head where footage from dash cams, personal phones/computers/cameras & CCTV systems was deleted, obscured, modified or "failed to record". Unfortunately I can't recall a single case of an officer being meaningfully punished for destruction of evidence, at most a few were fired.
So far SLS isn't setting itself far enough apart from the boondoggle which was Constellation for my tastes. Its budget has grown from 10 Billion to, by many estimates, $41 Billion by the time it has actually launched a few prototypes. And its per launch estimates are up in the air at the moment, NASA's "$500 Million" per launch is laughable. For the money we're burning on the development of SLS alone we could launch the mass of a Naval frigate into orbit on commercial launchers. Just think of what could be done with that kind of payload capacity.
Why would they want to brick your phone? For the same reason they'll hold you for a few hours and then release you without charge, for the same reason they will confiscate your property without arrest, for the same reason they'll rough you up and then not charge you with anything. They are ways to punish people who come into their field of view for real or perceived transgressions without going through that pesky process of proving that something illegal actually happened. If this capability is realized I wouldn't be surprised if phones within a block or so of a protest are bricked, if phones that were near a case of police misconduct suddenly don't work, all of course "for the safety of the public".
He's insane. Choreographing that kind of balance across a national power network would be prone to instability and likely vulnerable to attack/accidental cascade failures. Virtually every heavy load device and a lot of lower load devices would need to be remotely controllable, that communications system would need to be highly secure, extremely reliable and not too imposing on customers. Load balancing definitely has a place in both residential & industrial areas, but there needs to be a significant storage/load redundancy built into the system as well to handle unexpected peaks and valleys in demand inherent to a real world electrical grid.
No one with half a brain is suggesting that police shouldn't have a few high powered rifles, body armor and other items for dealing with extreme situations. But 99.9999% of police work involves minor theft, non violent drug use, traffic violations, domestic violence & scuffles. Most departments probably only need a few officers equipped and trained for use of such equipment, maybe 2% of on duty officers for large departments and 3 or 4 people for smaller departments. What we're seeing today however are entire police departments being outfitted with military gear. Departments with only a dozen or so officers are getting their own Armored personnel carriers, every squad car has ARs in the trunk, etc. It doesn't make any sense when most departments maybe have a single incident in a generation where those tools/tactics would be significantly needed (barricaded hostage situation, heavily armed bank robbery, sniper, etc) and even then you're likely only going to need a small tactical team with regular officers as support. It makes even less sense when you consider that the standard tactic these days is to "surround and hold" until a SWAT team is brought in.
Recent history has shown that even if you throw massive amounts of money at something (Constellation program, Healthcare.gov, F35, VA/DoD Health Database, etc) you don't necessarily get a decent product. One of the reasons why I mentioned "concrete milestones", which would be independently verified by government auditors & engineers. The biggest difficulty of course would be keeping the lobbyists & lawyers for the companies in question from getting the power to designate those auditors & engineers.
Oh wonderful, at least three of my area police departments are participating in the program. It would be nice to see what they're getting, I wouldn't complain about most of the stuff on the materials list (coats, hydration kits, rope, etc), even a few guns wouldn't be out of the question. But if your local PD begins equipping all of their officers with riot shields/assault rifles, body armor, & armored vehicles they've ceased to be "peace officers". If these records went back a few more years I could be sure of one thing, from what I understand one of the local departments received a treaded APC a few years back through this program. It was only brought out for parades and I think one or two minor incidents. It became a major boondoggle when it broke down several times, caused damage to a road, didn't have a trailer to transport it, and was burning through $10,000 a year in insurance. I don't think they have gotten rid of it yet but they've also kept it out of sight, probably because it's broken down again.
Arg..... a "cost plus" contract, they are always a bad idea when not dealing with bleeding edge tech or extremely critical projects. They give companies a significant incentive to milk a project for as long and for as much as possible. Bid projects out at a fixed price, companies don't get a dime until they reach concrete milestones. If they don't reach those milestones on time and on budget they eat the costs and that part of the project is rebid. It should also be noted that the bill giving them the extra taxing authority was rushed through with disturbing speed and with rather blatant palm greasing, $14,000 dollars was used to wine and dine government officials in the three months leading up to the vote in addition to copious amounts of lobbying.
On demand TV is nice, but I wish there were some nice (Chrome compatible) channels available (Discovery, SyFi, History, etc). Sometimes just tuning to a channel and letting it run with whatever is on is enjoyable. And I'd be willing to pay a bit more a month for it as well, what I'm not willing to do is pay $40-80 a month for a over a hundred channels that I'll never watch just to get the dozen or so that I do when I can get most of what I want with Hulu/Netflix subscriptions for less than $20 a month (though Hulu really needs to work on their Chrome compatibility).
To scientifically prove/disprove something you need experimental data, which is exactly what NASA seems to be doing in this case. The results are less than stellar but as long as they are not burning any significant amount of money whats the issue? If we really want to know if this thing works or not just put it in a small cubesat and piggyback it on another satellite launch, if it can change its orbit then we know it works, if it can't we know its useless. Again no significant amount of resources should be expended and the inventors shouldn't profit in any way until the effect is proven, but sometimes the most astounding discoveries start out as a little unexplained quirk that someone plays around with.
" there needs to be ways to move the electricity generated by the solar panels to batteries you want to use"
Why do you need to move it? You simply have multiple sets of batteries. Using your example if you have a solar install at your home you have a set of batteries at home to collect that energy when you are away at work, when you get home you plug your car into that battery pack and it charges your car. Sure you're going to lose some power in the transfer but we already do that, roughly 6% of generated grid electricity is lost due to transmission. The only real issue at the moment is cost, fossil fuels are still far cheaper to use than existing battery tech. Your average household spends roughly $3k on gasoline, your average solar/battery system right now I think runs into the tens of thousands. Its definitely getting close (at least on the collection/storage end, electric cars are still too expensive), even with the replacement issues of current battery systems as long as you have the up front money and nothing unexpectedly breaks down your probably about the same overall cost as gas if not a little cheaper.
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Giving people a reasonable sense of job security is definitely a step in the right direction, but you still have to be ready for the rare nut-job (employee or otherwise). While that includes onsite backup equipment (which they apparently had) it must also include off site backup facilities. I work with my local PD a bit and from what I understand even they have contingency plans for if the 911 dispatch center is evacuated/destroyed. If something happens the entire call load for the county can be redirected to one of several other sites in a few minutes. If a mid sized county (less than 100,000) can manage that kind of capability you would think a multimillion dollar air traffic control facility would be able to.
Aren't these kinds of critical systems supposed to have backups? I see DHS/TSA is too busy strip searching children/grandmas, securing chicken farms & writing up justifications for their abuse of authority to bother with the "unimportant" things like securing/fortifying the transportation infrastructure.
The big car manufacturers have been trying to use the dealership laws to prevent a competitor from bring a product to market, dealerships have been trying to use the laws to force Tesla to cut them in on their sales. This court ruling bloodies both of their noses for their foolishness, now if only more courts follow in this ones footsteps. I wonder how these laws even came into being in a society that claims to embrace free market mentality in the first place. I realize that Ford once tried to bypass the franchise model, but if they were able to provide their product to customers cheaper then what was the issue? Replace "car manufacturer" with any number of other products (corn, light bulb, TV, desk) in these laws and it becomes quite clear how foolish the whole thing is.
I don't think this individual has much of any real experience with firearms. I've seen flashlights and lasers, basically a light source with a battery and a switch, literally shake themselves apart after a few dozen rounds. While I am sure that you could harden the electronics to survive the beating, oil, water, etc that your average firearm has to deal with getting all manufacturers to follow the stringent manufacturing levels that would be required is unlikely. That and it would add at least $50, possibly a couple hundred dollars to the price of each gun (tens of millions of dollars per year). All to stop incidents barely show as a rounding error in the overall child mortality statistics (less than 100 accidental child deaths or about 0.3%). When we've fixed all of the other preventable causes of child death that are orders of magnitude more hazardous to their health (falls, pools, buckets, infections, allergic reactions, etc) maybe we can focus on accidental firearms discharge.
They may be the first to actually begin development of such a exosuit but this kind of application has been imagined in multiple fictional accounts(Spriggan movie & Crisis game series off the top of my head). It'll be interesting to see a full fledged pro-type (most of the stuff in the videos looked like non functional demo gear) but last I heard our artificial muscle tech was pretty pitiful. There was a big claim a while back that a breakthrough had been made using modified sewing thread and fishing line that was actually more efficient/powerful than natural muscle but I don't know if anything came of it. Also their designs seem to put the full brunt of the load on a persons own skeletal/joint system, possibly resulting in injury. While I am sure there is a way to add in some kind of exterior joints/"bones" to take some of the load off the wearer that technology and the muscle technology will take a LOT of advanced research to make a reality.
And treaties are written in stone? History is repeat with treaties that are no longer enforced or even acknowledged by any current country. The day someone starts shipping down millions of dollars in precious metals from an asteroid is the day that either countries simply start ignoring the Outer Space Treaty en mass or the day it is "reinterpreted" to allow such pursuits.
And what exactly is the legal basis for the FAA's denying commercial operation of "drones"? I don't mean the arbitrarily created regulations that they're quoting but the actual LAW passed by congress and the president? I have a sneaking suspicion that its some vague "ensuring public/air safety" law that they are stretching WAY past its original intent. Something on the order of a hypothetical USDA law to "ensure commercial food safety" being used outlaw all roadside vegetable stands.
Theres no one source for the information, but below are a few links to some of it. They have apparently made about $6 Billion in revenue since their inception and in 2010 at least they made $700 Million in licensing fees. I did include their "investments" along with what I could call "licensing fees" because they seem to be effectively the same thing. A good chunk of their revenue is via "Patent Funds" where they offer companies a chance to join in to buy a block of patents, apparently with a thinly veiled threat that if they don't buy in IV will sue them if any of the patents in the block apply to prospective investors.
http://www.businessinsider.com...
http://www.businessweek.com/ar...
http://www.cnet.com/news/insid...
https://news.yahoo.com/exclusi...
It should be noted that, at least from what I can gather, most of IV's revenue isn't from actual lawsuits. A vast bulk of it is from "license fees" (in the billions of dollars apparently) they grant to companies for using "their technology". Given, they probably illicit those fees via threats of lawsuits. The company had a peak of 700 employees (I think its down into the 500 range now) with revenues close to a $1 Billion a year, and few if any real products to show for it.
Oh my, a member of a recently created government (appointed by coup), who is facing unrest from their own citizens, and is upset about outside assistance by another power (And US, Europe, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel don't?) is posting to his Facebook page that said outside force is planning mass murder. Stop the presses! This "story" has all of the validity of a small time drug dealer scrawling a message on a bathroom wall about the cities drug kingpin planning to release a plague in the city because..... well..... he can?
The species seems to have been susceptible to extinction from the get-go. Its not like humans wiped them out down to a last few flocks. People did over hunt them to be sure, but a species that required flock groups of tens to hundreds of thousands to propagate would seem to me to be living on borrowed time. Attempts to breed them in captivity failed because of the massive numbers that seem to be required. So this effort to reintroduce the population will require quite an effort, they will need a first generation in the tens of thousands at a minimum.
Your sarcasm tag makes things obvious so don't take this the wrong way, but that is one of the things that general society needs to realize, police work IS NOT very dangerous. There are I believe well over a dozen professions that make police work look safe (farmer, lumberjack, fisherman, etc.). It is a complete fallacy that police officers are in constant danger, most never have to even draw their gun. I think last year there were something like 100 on duty officer fatalities, 47 of those were accidental deaths (car/motorcycle/aircraft accidents, falls, etc).
"its value as an investigative tool would be severely compromised."
I'd be interested to see how these same police departments would respond if identical ALPRs were placed near police stations, government buildings & affluent neighborhoods by private individuals. I imagine it ending quite quickly in threats, arrests & even possibly injuries. Its funny how a surveillance tool is so great until the general public turns it on those in authority (tape recorders, video cameras, cell phone cameras, drones), then it miraculously needs "common sense" restrictions that those in authority are almost always exempt from.
Sadly you're completely right, a bag of flour thrown off a building or put a few Lite-Brite signs out and you throw a city into chaos. All at the cost of a few bucks and one or two nuts willing to do it. You don't have to look far to see how crazy things have gotten, there have been what, two aircraft diverted in the past week because of minor incidents on-board at least one of which "required" a fighter escort because of a few drunk women having a fight? I can't recall where it came from but there is one statement that pretty well sums it up "the terrorists said "boo" and our reaction was to shoot ourselves in the head". We simply can't sustain this idiocy, eventually we'll end up like Russia at the end of the Cold War, throwing so much money into buying bullets (security) that we can't afford bread (the economy).
We don't have to wait for "one day", it happens quite often right now. I can recall at least a dozen cases off the top of my head where footage from dash cams, personal phones/computers/cameras & CCTV systems was deleted, obscured, modified or "failed to record". Unfortunately I can't recall a single case of an officer being meaningfully punished for destruction of evidence, at most a few were fired.
http://www.today.com/id/322668...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.dailytech.com/Cops+...
So far SLS isn't setting itself far enough apart from the boondoggle which was Constellation for my tastes. Its budget has grown from 10 Billion to, by many estimates, $41 Billion by the time it has actually launched a few prototypes. And its per launch estimates are up in the air at the moment, NASA's "$500 Million" per launch is laughable. For the money we're burning on the development of SLS alone we could launch the mass of a Naval frigate into orbit on commercial launchers. Just think of what could be done with that kind of payload capacity.
Why would they want to brick your phone? For the same reason they'll hold you for a few hours and then release you without charge, for the same reason they will confiscate your property without arrest, for the same reason they'll rough you up and then not charge you with anything. They are ways to punish people who come into their field of view for real or perceived transgressions without going through that pesky process of proving that something illegal actually happened. If this capability is realized I wouldn't be surprised if phones within a block or so of a protest are bricked, if phones that were near a case of police misconduct suddenly don't work, all of course "for the safety of the public".
He's insane. Choreographing that kind of balance across a national power network would be prone to instability and likely vulnerable to attack/accidental cascade failures. Virtually every heavy load device and a lot of lower load devices would need to be remotely controllable, that communications system would need to be highly secure, extremely reliable and not too imposing on customers. Load balancing definitely has a place in both residential & industrial areas, but there needs to be a significant storage/load redundancy built into the system as well to handle unexpected peaks and valleys in demand inherent to a real world electrical grid.
No one with half a brain is suggesting that police shouldn't have a few high powered rifles, body armor and other items for dealing with extreme situations. But 99.9999% of police work involves minor theft, non violent drug use, traffic violations, domestic violence & scuffles. Most departments probably only need a few officers equipped and trained for use of such equipment, maybe 2% of on duty officers for large departments and 3 or 4 people for smaller departments. What we're seeing today however are entire police departments being outfitted with military gear. Departments with only a dozen or so officers are getting their own Armored personnel carriers, every squad car has ARs in the trunk, etc. It doesn't make any sense when most departments maybe have a single incident in a generation where those tools/tactics would be significantly needed (barricaded hostage situation, heavily armed bank robbery, sniper, etc) and even then you're likely only going to need a small tactical team with regular officers as support. It makes even less sense when you consider that the standard tactic these days is to "surround and hold" until a SWAT team is brought in.
Recent history has shown that even if you throw massive amounts of money at something (Constellation program, Healthcare.gov, F35, VA/DoD Health Database, etc) you don't necessarily get a decent product. One of the reasons why I mentioned "concrete milestones", which would be independently verified by government auditors & engineers. The biggest difficulty of course would be keeping the lobbyists & lawyers for the companies in question from getting the power to designate those auditors & engineers.
Oh wonderful, at least three of my area police departments are participating in the program. It would be nice to see what they're getting, I wouldn't complain about most of the stuff on the materials list (coats, hydration kits, rope, etc), even a few guns wouldn't be out of the question. But if your local PD begins equipping all of their officers with riot shields/assault rifles, body armor, & armored vehicles they've ceased to be "peace officers". If these records went back a few more years I could be sure of one thing, from what I understand one of the local departments received a treaded APC a few years back through this program. It was only brought out for parades and I think one or two minor incidents. It became a major boondoggle when it broke down several times, caused damage to a road, didn't have a trailer to transport it, and was burning through $10,000 a year in insurance. I don't think they have gotten rid of it yet but they've also kept it out of sight, probably because it's broken down again.
Arg..... a "cost plus" contract, they are always a bad idea when not dealing with bleeding edge tech or extremely critical projects. They give companies a significant incentive to milk a project for as long and for as much as possible. Bid projects out at a fixed price, companies don't get a dime until they reach concrete milestones. If they don't reach those milestones on time and on budget they eat the costs and that part of the project is rebid. It should also be noted that the bill giving them the extra taxing authority was rushed through with disturbing speed and with rather blatant palm greasing, $14,000 dollars was used to wine and dine government officials in the three months leading up to the vote in addition to copious amounts of lobbying.
http://www.troutmansandersstra...
On demand TV is nice, but I wish there were some nice (Chrome compatible) channels available (Discovery, SyFi, History, etc). Sometimes just tuning to a channel and letting it run with whatever is on is enjoyable. And I'd be willing to pay a bit more a month for it as well, what I'm not willing to do is pay $40-80 a month for a over a hundred channels that I'll never watch just to get the dozen or so that I do when I can get most of what I want with Hulu/Netflix subscriptions for less than $20 a month (though Hulu really needs to work on their Chrome compatibility).
To scientifically prove/disprove something you need experimental data, which is exactly what NASA seems to be doing in this case. The results are less than stellar but as long as they are not burning any significant amount of money whats the issue? If we really want to know if this thing works or not just put it in a small cubesat and piggyback it on another satellite launch, if it can change its orbit then we know it works, if it can't we know its useless. Again no significant amount of resources should be expended and the inventors shouldn't profit in any way until the effect is proven, but sometimes the most astounding discoveries start out as a little unexplained quirk that someone plays around with.
" there needs to be ways to move the electricity generated by the solar panels to batteries you want to use"
Why do you need to move it? You simply have multiple sets of batteries. Using your example if you have a solar install at your home you have a set of batteries at home to collect that energy when you are away at work, when you get home you plug your car into that battery pack and it charges your car. Sure you're going to lose some power in the transfer but we already do that, roughly 6% of generated grid electricity is lost due to transmission. The only real issue at the moment is cost, fossil fuels are still far cheaper to use than existing battery tech. Your average household spends roughly $3k on gasoline, your average solar/battery system right now I think runs into the tens of thousands. Its definitely getting close (at least on the collection/storage end, electric cars are still too expensive), even with the replacement issues of current battery systems as long as you have the up front money and nothing unexpectedly breaks down your probably about the same overall cost as gas if not a little cheaper.