Except violating a NSL gag order is a *criminal* offense punishable by 5 years in prison, and regardless of whether bonds can be paid for bail the executives who would be responsible have no more interest or "moral duty" to risk a conviction and significant federal prison sentence than you or I.
That of course is the *reason* people have not been fighting these with that strategy, but instead following the law and challenging them in court (which was the whole point of TFA). And as far a minimal service and PR, unless you specifically *know* how much Google or Microsoft are spending to challenge the orders, your post is just made up assumptions and anti-corporate FUD. In fact, they have been challenging these for a while now, and started as soon as a federal judge ruled they might be Unconstitutional (go look it up, they are plenty of articles about their challenge dating back 5-6 month ago).
That's a fine position to take when you are an armchair commentator not risking years in prison (regardless of whether a potential conviction and/or years of appeals stand). If people were actually innocent until proven guilty under a Constitutionally approved law that might be a position someone might take, but that's not the case, and few people (I assume including you) are truly ready to sacrifice their life for a cause like this...
The driver in this case was not a professional "truck driver", he was a teenager driving a pickup truck. RTFA next time before going off on wild tangents;)
But in any case, in your example it's not specifically sending a text that would make the employer liable, it's a policy of requiring that drivers read texts/calls as a part of their job. Trying to force an employee to do an illegal act is illegal, obviously. He could just as well required drivers to run red lights, the texting part of it is mostly irrelevant.
Except that's a bad analogy. Your analogy would only make sense if the texter knowingly incited the driver to intentionally crash the car, not *accidentally* crash it while texting.
A better one would be if you convinced someone to buy a sharp kitchen knife and they subsequently cut a finger off while cooking. If you knew they were a klutz, does that make you to blame for the injury?
Yeah. Too bad that idiots can spread diseases before they die of their stupidity (Yeah, they're not going to die, but it applies generally). Herd immunity doesn't work if a bunch of idiots decides that vaccines are evil/dangerous/demonstrative of a lack of faith/useless/*insert absurd argument here*.
Given measles vaccinations are over 99% effective, they can only spread it to other idiots, so who cares?
Let's also thank the media, for creating hysteria where there should be none, and not having the guts to admit they were just spreading FUD after it becomes obvious that their latest sensationalist bullshit is just that.
The article linked clearly stated that 98% percent of the people in the affected county are vaccinated, and this is an isolated pocket due to their anti-vaccination stance (also that 90% of those exposed get it, since it's HIGHLY contagious). Not only was it accurate and not FUD, it was a pretty good example of combating FUD. In fact the only thing resembling FUD here is your post...
It appears that, by your definition, a business could say copy an innovative OS from a competitor, slap a new name on it and it is, by your definition, "innovation"...if it sells.
Well, like you said in your earlier post, innovation is not just technology. Your comment is obviously referring to MS's early success with DOS... which of course wasn't their innovation, but the way they sold it (ie. license an OS for a fairly small per unit cost on a cheap computer that would sell in the millions) sure was!;) Before DOS, software was usually sold by IBM with a hugely expensive support contract or as near one-offs by hobbyists...
So define this in the negative for me: What can a tech company do that is **not** innovation if a new product makes a profit?
Well, I was very specific about the things I claimed were innovation with the Xbox, and by no means have all of them directly led to a profit. As far as something that (to me) doesn't seem innovative in pretty much any way... how about take the exact same product and make it cheaper by paying your employees 20% of the company that invented it (our outsourcing your own products for the same increased margin). There isn't a lot of innovation coming out of China at the moment (well, beyond innovations in industrial espionage and malware...) There are tons of middlemen who just take someone's risks and ideas and build them - it's not sexy or innovative, but often profitable...
Taking existing concepts or technology and applying them in new ways or to new businesses or markets is also innovation. There are dozens of examples in science, engineering, philosophy, literature, etc where someone was able to use their different perspective (mostly with existing ideas and techniques) and apply them to other (often intellectually stagnant) fields with great results. One fun example is Freakonomics...
The **concept** is not new!!! Power Glove!!!
This is a good example of what I mean - saying the concept of Kinect isn't innovative because someone in the past created a device that can (sort of) control a game via moving around is about as accurate as saying the automobile wasn't innovative because people had been getting around in horse drawn carriages for centuries. Innovation, research, writing, art, etc - most endeavors requiring creativity and thought theses are not giant new concepts created from whole cloth, they are small but important adaptations on the huge existing body of human work. Innovation isn't dead, it's just become very specialized.
M$ doesn't get credit for innovation done **in spite of** it's corporate policy and behavior!!!
Of course they do. It is what it is, and opinions (however justified) about their (mis)management shouldn't change that.
Parent makes a great point, and your Xbox exception is interesting but I must disagree with the notion that Microsoft has 'innovated' with Xbox.
Profitable, yes. Fun to play, yes. 'Innovation'....no.
Overall, M$ made Xbox the same way they got Windows and DOS...they copied something successful and Wal-Mart-ized it, using their market share as leverage.
Xbox came along at a time when the speed wars of the 80s and 90s were plateauing, product differentiation decreased, the demand for games to be easier to develop across platforms was getting hard to ignore.
I'm not saying deciding to sell a console in itself was innovative, and I'm not pro-Microsoft or Xbox... I buy a game console when there is something I want to use it for/play that none of the others have... in fact, right now given how similar the XBOne and PS4 look, until there are some amazing XB exclusives I'll probably just get the PS4 for now. But there were clearly a number of innovative things MS has done for Xbox over the years... a few of them:
* since they approached it as a software company, they made the development tools, APIs, and dev process MUCH easier to work with (if you want to debate me on this, note I have developed for 360, PS3, and have a PS4 and XBOne in the office now - I don't need to hear second hand opinions). Ironically this is not so much an issue with the latest gen, there are some things about Sony's dev env I like better now)
* they really pushed online console gameplay and community/friends/etc - whatever you think about its monthly fees, XBox Live is hugely successful and popular... they have in fact done a pretty good job on party chat, game matchmaking/invites, sharing, etc.
* also XBox Live related, they really pushed DLC into the mainstream - and it's paid off, it's made XBLive a lot of money over the last few years
* Kinect, while still flawed in many ways, was definitely innovative - in fact, as an almost stunning move on MS's part (given how bad they are at this usually), they actually took something interesting being developed in their MS Research group and productized it. And now with XBOne they have fixed many of the issues - the new Kinect does some crazy cool things, I'm looking forward to some GOOD apps that use it, not the crap that was made for XB 360 Kinect.
* We'll have to see how it works out, but they have really bet a lot of the XBOne's success on it being a complete entertainment hub in the living room. Like you said, innovation != profit - in this case we'll see if their bet pays off.
Anyway - I'd argue they came into the fairly stagnant console industry and approached it from a different perspective, resulting in some interesting developments. Which again ironically is what is hurting them in other markets like desktop and mobile - others are coming in with new perspectives and MS can't figure out how to change theirs.
If you mean "profitable after 5 years" you'd at least have an argument (with plenty of exceptions). If you really mean *net* profit over 5 years then I guess pretty much the entire tech industry is just a bunch of hobbyists...
They are definitely not net positive over the *entire* Xbox 360 run, but the Xbox 360 hardware, software licensing, and Xbox Live are a very profitable business in the last couple years.
If MS was planning on closing down the whole Xbox/entertainment business unit tomorrow, that would be a failure, but they aren't - they are building a long term business, and MANY long term businesses (and almost all companies in general) spend more than they make for some period of time.
There is a reason MS and Sony are using lower cost AMD x86 CPU/GPUs, etc - that combined with dirt cheap prices for RAM, BD drives, and 500GB HDDs these days means the estimated BOM costs for both consoles is less then their MSRP, so neither company is planning on selling them for a loss this time.
And as far as innovation... I have to admit the new Kinect is pretty impressive. And I say that having developed software for the first generation Kinect, which for the most part was a piece of crap (basically a really cool combination of technology that just wasn't good enough in practice to be useful).
Since I graduated from college in 1986, Microsoft has been a place where great minds go to die. They were the hottest employer, and it sickens me to see how little Microsoft has allowed their amazing talent to produce.
That's so true... except in one business: Xbox. It seems that's the only area of the company right now where they are really letting people innovate. Of course, we'll see how that works out for the XBOne - not all innovations turn out to be *good* ideas... but at least they have in fact listened to their customers and reversed their decisions on several unpopular features, as embarrassing as that was for them...
Seriously, man, take a deep breath and relax. How is my comment a troll? This is a discussion, and calling anyone who disagrees with anything you say a troll is pretty childish. If anything, you were the one who made a one line response to the OP with no evidence it was helpful or true...
I'm fine with running a few conventional plants for what is then left as baseload.
Repeating myself *again*... unless you think wind power is going to somehow provide 90% of the power load at night some day, it's not *a few conventional plants", it's as many needed to run MOST of the power load for 16 hours in the winter. Not sure if you live on the equator or something, but power usage sure does NOT drop between the hours of 4:30pm-8pm when there is no sunlight, and you need FULL load then, too (not to mention if you replaced all cars with electric that charging load would be mostly added at night). You can't shut down most of the plants when you need them ALL at certain times of the day! Unless we somehow come up with ridiculous batteries to store TWh of electricity, it's still mostly an instantaneous thing - you always need enough generation capability to supply the whole required load.
I'm not saying clean energy is a bad thing, don't try to put words in my mouth. There's a pretty good chance my next car will be electric, and I'm considering solar panels on my house (in mostly sunny CA, where it actually may make financial sense some day). But I'm not deluding myself that I will save money doing this right now.
There is still way too much hype and politics in the clean energy industry and too much handwaving over the issues that remain, and clearly too many people (like you) who have a shit fit whenever anyone points that out. That shortsighted attitude (ignoring the negatives) doesn't get the problem fixed in the long run. Having reasonable, logical, non political/opinionated discussions does.
Designed, but not built or proven cost effective for huge load.
What people seem to fail to understand here is that a power source like solar provides a lot of energy in the day but ZERO at night. While that's still a great thing we need to take advantage of, it doesn't make non-solar plants just become peaking generation plants - they need to be used for base load power generation (actually, almost *all* generation) at "night", which in Germany in the winter is about 4pm-8am, i.e.. 16 hours. So it still has to be cheap and efficient, ie. NOT what any current gas turbine design can provide.
Before that happens, energy at nighttime will be in high enough demand to have those plants make money again. We probably should trust those "magic correcting forces" of a market at least that far.
Actually, no - not the current plants. They are designed to be profitable at full capacity, not idling half the day - and are not even capable of stopping and restarting every night. You would have to convince someone to redesign and build new sources of non-solar energy production capable of running part of the time and quickly and cheaply stopping and started every day. While giving their competitors over 10B euros a year in subsidies, and outright telling everyone they hope to replace them ASAP. Good luck with that...
Are you joking? Energy production is by no means necessarily a zero sum game. It requires large amounts of energy to build and maintain all of the energy production facilities. Those solar facilities will sit idle at night, partially idle in the day when highly overcast and up to 16+ hours in the winter in Northern Germany - are they even paying off their investment? How would you know?
Likewise, the coal/gas/nuclear facilities will sit idle during the day, even though they were originally budgeted to run much closer to capacity, which is why the companies running them are saying they are considering shutting them down for good or moving production to another country. And good luck stopping and restarting all of these plants efficiently every night - baseload-type power plants run most efficiently at full capacity and can take a lot of time and expense to stop and restart - especially nuclear, which takes several days to start up after being shut down. You have no idea how power generation and distribution really works, clearly...
It's the same thing people are questioning with electric cars - is the high energy and resource cost of production more than offset by the gains? It's not a clear answer at this point.
I'm not against solar power at all (or electric cars) - just people who jump on bandwagons fed by government subsidies without actually doing any real research. I really hope some day both of these things will succeed without massive subsidies, because that's the only way they will scale. For example, Germany imports 2/3 of its power, and solar only accounts for 3% of the total consumption after Germany has spent $100 BILLION EUROS on solar power subsidies. That's not "sustainable" sustainable energy...
Uh, except solar power doesn't replace fossil fuels, it just reduces their use in daylight. Not saying that is not a great thing to reduce fossil fuel use wherever possible, but if all of the gas, coal, and nuclear plants in Germany shut down because they aren't making money, there are going to be some very dark winter nights in the Vaterland.
As a moderator, I'm not sure what you mean by "/. mods have all that info".
I should have been more specific/accurate: "the slashdot editors/programmers have all of that info". Of course I know anyone who had moderated a comment doesn't have full access to the slashdot user database:)
Ok, so data points - at 900k that was a decade ago - say ~'03? (I think @ 300k I joined somewhere in '99?) Maybe we can create a chart, I think it would be interesting... (and I'm sure the/. mods have all that info but am wondering if they would find it as interesting to divulge...)
Slashdot Mirror
Except violating a NSL gag order is a *criminal* offense punishable by 5 years in prison, and regardless of whether bonds can be paid for bail the executives who would be responsible have no more interest or "moral duty" to risk a conviction and significant federal prison sentence than you or I.
That of course is the *reason* people have not been fighting these with that strategy, but instead following the law and challenging them in court (which was the whole point of TFA). And as far a minimal service and PR, unless you specifically *know* how much Google or Microsoft are spending to challenge the orders, your post is just made up assumptions and anti-corporate FUD. In fact, they have been challenging these for a while now, and started as soon as a federal judge ruled they might be Unconstitutional (go look it up, they are plenty of articles about their challenge dating back 5-6 month ago).
That's a fine position to take when you are an armchair commentator not risking years in prison (regardless of whether a potential conviction and/or years of appeals stand). If people were actually innocent until proven guilty under a Constitutionally approved law that might be a position someone might take, but that's not the case, and few people (I assume including you) are truly ready to sacrifice their life for a cause like this...
The driver in this case was not a professional "truck driver", he was a teenager driving a pickup truck. RTFA next time before going off on wild tangents ;)
But in any case, in your example it's not specifically sending a text that would make the employer liable, it's a policy of requiring that drivers read texts/calls as a part of their job. Trying to force an employee to do an illegal act is illegal, obviously. He could just as well required drivers to run red lights, the texting part of it is mostly irrelevant.
Except that's a bad analogy. Your analogy would only make sense if the texter knowingly incited the driver to intentionally crash the car, not *accidentally* crash it while texting.
A better one would be if you convinced someone to buy a sharp kitchen knife and they subsequently cut a finger off while cooking. If you knew they were a klutz, does that make you to blame for the injury?
*if* they live in murica... but they could just as well live somewhere in the *rest* of the world.
Whoosh! Thanks for clarifying the point of my joke :) You haven't been keeping up on the news much lately, have you?
Religions one of the conspicuous counter examples to "you get what you pay for" - in fact, it's almost *always* the opposite...
Wouldn't that only be applicable if:
a> these people were "End users"
b> it was enforceable in their jurisdiction
Actually, yes, but if they *aren't* it falls under the DMCA, which is much, MUCH worse...
And jurisdiction... well... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOJNs5YPR4g
But I was wondering about liability too. If your child catches it but doesn't die, is this grounds for a lawsuit?
Against who, the minister who advised against it? You might as well try to sue because you died and there was no heaven...
Yeah. Too bad that idiots can spread diseases before they die of their stupidity (Yeah, they're not going to die, but it applies generally).
Herd immunity doesn't work if a bunch of idiots decides that vaccines are evil/dangerous/demonstrative of a lack of faith/useless/*insert absurd argument here*.
Given measles vaccinations are over 99% effective, they can only spread it to other idiots, so who cares?
Let's also thank the media, for creating hysteria where there should be none, and not having the guts to admit they were just spreading FUD after it becomes obvious that their latest sensationalist bullshit is just that.
The article linked clearly stated that 98% percent of the people in the affected county are vaccinated, and this is an isolated pocket due to their anti-vaccination stance (also that 90% of those exposed get it, since it's HIGHLY contagious). Not only was it accurate and not FUD, it was a pretty good example of combating FUD. In fact the only thing resembling FUD here is your post...
It appears that, by your definition, a business could say copy an innovative OS from a competitor, slap a new name on it and it is, by your definition, "innovation"...if it sells.
Well, like you said in your earlier post, innovation is not just technology. Your comment is obviously referring to MS's early success with DOS... which of course wasn't their innovation, but the way they sold it (ie. license an OS for a fairly small per unit cost on a cheap computer that would sell in the millions) sure was! ;) Before DOS, software was usually sold by IBM with a hugely expensive support contract or as near one-offs by hobbyists...
So define this in the negative for me: What can a tech company do that is **not** innovation if a new product makes a profit?
Well, I was very specific about the things I claimed were innovation with the Xbox, and by no means have all of them directly led to a profit. As far as something that (to me) doesn't seem innovative in pretty much any way... how about take the exact same product and make it cheaper by paying your employees 20% of the company that invented it (our outsourcing your own products for the same increased margin). There isn't a lot of innovation coming out of China at the moment (well, beyond innovations in industrial espionage and malware...) There are tons of middlemen who just take someone's risks and ideas and build them - it's not sexy or innovative, but often profitable...
Taking existing concepts or technology and applying them in new ways or to new businesses or markets is also innovation. There are dozens of examples in science, engineering, philosophy, literature, etc where someone was able to use their different perspective (mostly with existing ideas and techniques) and apply them to other (often intellectually stagnant) fields with great results. One fun example is Freakonomics...
The **concept** is not new!!! Power Glove!!!
This is a good example of what I mean - saying the concept of Kinect isn't innovative because someone in the past created a device that can (sort of) control a game via moving around is about as accurate as saying the automobile wasn't innovative because people had been getting around in horse drawn carriages for centuries. Innovation, research, writing, art, etc - most endeavors requiring creativity and thought theses are not giant new concepts created from whole cloth, they are small but important adaptations on the huge existing body of human work. Innovation isn't dead, it's just become very specialized.
M$ doesn't get credit for innovation done **in spite of** it's corporate policy and behavior!!!
Of course they do. It is what it is, and opinions (however justified) about their (mis)management shouldn't change that.
Parent makes a great point, and your Xbox exception is interesting but I must disagree with the notion that Microsoft has 'innovated' with Xbox.
Profitable, yes. Fun to play, yes. 'Innovation'....no.
Overall, M$ made Xbox the same way they got Windows and DOS...they copied something successful and Wal-Mart-ized it, using their market share as leverage.
Xbox came along at a time when the speed wars of the 80s and 90s were plateauing, product differentiation decreased, the demand for games to be easier to develop across platforms was getting hard to ignore.
I'm not saying deciding to sell a console in itself was innovative, and I'm not pro-Microsoft or Xbox... I buy a game console when there is something I want to use it for/play that none of the others have... in fact, right now given how similar the XBOne and PS4 look, until there are some amazing XB exclusives I'll probably just get the PS4 for now. But there were clearly a number of innovative things MS has done for Xbox over the years... a few of them:
* since they approached it as a software company, they made the development tools, APIs, and dev process MUCH easier to work with (if you want to debate me on this, note I have developed for 360, PS3, and have a PS4 and XBOne in the office now - I don't need to hear second hand opinions). Ironically this is not so much an issue with the latest gen, there are some things about Sony's dev env I like better now)
* they really pushed online console gameplay and community/friends/etc - whatever you think about its monthly fees, XBox Live is hugely successful and popular... they have in fact done a pretty good job on party chat, game matchmaking/invites, sharing, etc.
* also XBox Live related, they really pushed DLC into the mainstream - and it's paid off, it's made XBLive a lot of money over the last few years
* Kinect, while still flawed in many ways, was definitely innovative - in fact, as an almost stunning move on MS's part (given how bad they are at this usually), they actually took something interesting being developed in their MS Research group and productized it. And now with XBOne they have fixed many of the issues - the new Kinect does some crazy cool things, I'm looking forward to some GOOD apps that use it, not the crap that was made for XB 360 Kinect.
* We'll have to see how it works out, but they have really bet a lot of the XBOne's success on it being a complete entertainment hub in the living room. Like you said, innovation != profit - in this case we'll see if their bet pays off.
Anyway - I'd argue they came into the fairly stagnant console industry and approached it from a different perspective, resulting in some interesting developments. Which again ironically is what is hurting them in other markets like desktop and mobile - others are coming in with new perspectives and MS can't figure out how to change theirs.
If you mean "profitable after 5 years" you'd at least have an argument (with plenty of exceptions). If you really mean *net* profit over 5 years then I guess pretty much the entire tech industry is just a bunch of hobbyists...
They are definitely not net positive over the *entire* Xbox 360 run, but the Xbox 360 hardware, software licensing, and Xbox Live are a very profitable business in the last couple years.
If MS was planning on closing down the whole Xbox/entertainment business unit tomorrow, that would be a failure, but they aren't - they are building a long term business, and MANY long term businesses (and almost all companies in general) spend more than they make for some period of time.
There is a reason MS and Sony are using lower cost AMD x86 CPU/GPUs, etc - that combined with dirt cheap prices for RAM, BD drives, and 500GB HDDs these days means the estimated BOM costs for both consoles is less then their MSRP, so neither company is planning on selling them for a loss this time.
And as far as innovation... I have to admit the new Kinect is pretty impressive. And I say that having developed software for the first generation Kinect, which for the most part was a piece of crap (basically a really cool combination of technology that just wasn't good enough in practice to be useful).
Since I graduated from college in 1986, Microsoft has been a place where great minds go to die. They were the hottest employer, and it sickens me to see how little Microsoft has allowed their amazing talent to produce.
That's so true... except in one business: Xbox. It seems that's the only area of the company right now where they are really letting people innovate. Of course, we'll see how that works out for the XBOne - not all innovations turn out to be *good* ideas... but at least they have in fact listened to their customers and reversed their decisions on several unpopular features, as embarrassing as that was for them...
Seriously, man, take a deep breath and relax. How is my comment a troll? This is a discussion, and calling anyone who disagrees with anything you say a troll is pretty childish. If anything, you were the one who made a one line response to the OP with no evidence it was helpful or true...
I'm fine with running a few conventional plants for what is then left as baseload.
Repeating myself *again*... unless you think wind power is going to somehow provide 90% of the power load at night some day, it's not *a few conventional plants", it's as many needed to run MOST of the power load for 16 hours in the winter. Not sure if you live on the equator or something, but power usage sure does NOT drop between the hours of 4:30pm-8pm when there is no sunlight, and you need FULL load then, too (not to mention if you replaced all cars with electric that charging load would be mostly added at night). You can't shut down most of the plants when you need them ALL at certain times of the day! Unless we somehow come up with ridiculous batteries to store TWh of electricity, it's still mostly an instantaneous thing - you always need enough generation capability to supply the whole required load.
I'm not saying clean energy is a bad thing, don't try to put words in my mouth. There's a pretty good chance my next car will be electric, and I'm considering solar panels on my house (in mostly sunny CA, where it actually may make financial sense some day). But I'm not deluding myself that I will save money doing this right now.
There is still way too much hype and politics in the clean energy industry and too much handwaving over the issues that remain, and clearly too many people (like you) who have a shit fit whenever anyone points that out. That shortsighted attitude (ignoring the negatives) doesn't get the problem fixed in the long run. Having reasonable, logical, non political/opinionated discussions does.
Designed, but not built or proven cost effective for huge load.
What people seem to fail to understand here is that a power source like solar provides a lot of energy in the day but ZERO at night. While that's still a great thing we need to take advantage of, it doesn't make non-solar plants just become peaking generation plants - they need to be used for base load power generation (actually, almost *all* generation) at "night", which in Germany in the winter is about 4pm-8am, i.e.. 16 hours. So it still has to be cheap and efficient, ie. NOT what any current gas turbine design can provide.
What, are you *serious*? One word for you: "super-injunction".
Before that happens, energy at nighttime will be in high enough demand to have those plants make money again. We probably should trust those "magic correcting forces" of a market at least that far.
Actually, no - not the current plants. They are designed to be profitable at full capacity, not idling half the day - and are not even capable of stopping and restarting every night. You would have to convince someone to redesign and build new sources of non-solar energy production capable of running part of the time and quickly and cheaply stopping and started every day. While giving their competitors over 10B euros a year in subsidies, and outright telling everyone they hope to replace them ASAP. Good luck with that...
Are you joking? Energy production is by no means necessarily a zero sum game. It requires large amounts of energy to build and maintain all of the energy production facilities. Those solar facilities will sit idle at night, partially idle in the day when highly overcast and up to 16+ hours in the winter in Northern Germany - are they even paying off their investment? How would you know?
Likewise, the coal/gas/nuclear facilities will sit idle during the day, even though they were originally budgeted to run much closer to capacity, which is why the companies running them are saying they are considering shutting them down for good or moving production to another country. And good luck stopping and restarting all of these plants efficiently every night - baseload-type power plants run most efficiently at full capacity and can take a lot of time and expense to stop and restart - especially nuclear, which takes several days to start up after being shut down. You have no idea how power generation and distribution really works, clearly...
It's the same thing people are questioning with electric cars - is the high energy and resource cost of production more than offset by the gains? It's not a clear answer at this point.
I'm not against solar power at all (or electric cars) - just people who jump on bandwagons fed by government subsidies without actually doing any real research. I really hope some day both of these things will succeed without massive subsidies, because that's the only way they will scale. For example, Germany imports 2/3 of its power, and solar only accounts for 3% of the total consumption after Germany has spent $100 BILLION EUROS on solar power subsidies. That's not "sustainable" sustainable energy...
Uh, except solar power doesn't replace fossil fuels, it just reduces their use in daylight. Not saying that is not a great thing to reduce fossil fuel use wherever possible, but if all of the gas, coal, and nuclear plants in Germany shut down because they aren't making money, there are going to be some very dark winter nights in the Vaterland.
If you get $250 someone was a moron, since that's the MSRP.
As a moderator, I'm not sure what you mean by "/. mods have all that info".
I should have been more specific/accurate: "the slashdot editors/programmers have all of that info". Of course I know anyone who had moderated a comment doesn't have full access to the slashdot user database :)
Or it failed in its mission...
Ok, so data points - at 900k that was a decade ago - say ~'03? (I think @ 300k I joined somewhere in '99?) Maybe we can create a chart, I think it would be interesting... (and I'm sure the /. mods have all that info but am wondering if they would find it as interesting to divulge...)