I don't doubt your terrible experience. But when looking at their web site, they claim that the contracts are open.
I assume you are referring to the MyPower product and that, in your location, the rates are higher than traditional grid electricity in which case it wouldn't make much sense. They do offer a standard solar product as well. I'm not endorsing SolarCity or the My Power project but it does seem reasonable. You are locked into a long-term contract with fixed prices for electricity. You're putting no money down and they are taking mpst of the risk. So I'm not surprised that they are getting most of the benefit. Seems too complicated for me; people are bound to be unhappy. I wouldn't touch the My Power project. I would take an interest if they starting offering solar systems with a used Tesla battery pack so that I would hardly ever need grid electricity. But I'd purchase the equipment up-front, not enter into a complicated contract.
In any event, this is a long response, but the point is that you can see the contracts before talking to a person. They may or may not be a good deal.
http://www.solarcity.com/resid...
Indeed. Most of us just aren't that important. In another post, I suggested a security measure that might work. In most cases, if you get out of a bad situation with only the loss of a piece of small electronics, you made out wonderfully. A low-tech security measure that would work would be to have a hole (like some laptops do) where you can attach a lock. Then you could handcuff the phone to your wrist. I don't suggest this.
I once considered getting one of those brief cases that handcuff to your wrist so I could look cool and important. I decided against it. First, I might get the thing stuck in the door of a transit system. Second, it's an invitation to rob me for my otherwise low value stuff. Worse, once the person who robs me sees that I don't have anything of value, they might get so upset that they beat the snot out of me!
Already most of the comments indicate that this is less secure than having to reenter a pass code after a half a second of inactivity. Different users have different levels of security needs. My guess is that most people don't even need a pass code. It really doesn't provide security against anything other than casual eavesdropping. If you have *real* security needs, you have to have tamper-reactive devices.
What *would* be a good solution (probably effective against all but state actors) would be a way of detecting proximity to a smart watch. If the phone gets too far, it automatically shuts down. With full disk encryption (now optional but available) this would solve almost all cases. In a mugging you could also be required to hand over the watch, but that's easily solved too. If the watch is taken off, it has the same effect. No need for fancy biometrics. Just a watch band that conducts electricity when on the wrist. If the clasp is opened or the band is cut, same as the phone going out of range.
Most big companies have conflicts of interest. The Google search team wants to present the best possible results. Other parts of Google want their results on top. Either answer is acceptable. What is not allowed is to *claim* that the search team is acting in an unbiased way (just happen to select other parts of Google) when, in fact, they are picking other Google products regardless of quality. In every business transaction, conflicts of interest have to be disclosed. The results are presented as objective, but they're not. It's a garden variety fraud. It probably didn't fool any of us on/. But that's not the test the FTC uses. It's the impact on the least sophisticated users that matters the most as they are the ones needing the most protection.
Only because they abused a monopoly position. iOS is not a monopoly (less than 50% market share). Neither is Google. There's no issue with Google placing there results at the top of a list. The issue would be if they misrepresented the results as being the most relevant based on an unbiased algorithm. Clearly most of us on/. *suspected* that the algorithm was biased, but they never disclosed it and it's fair to say that a least *some* people may have been confused by the misleading practice.
I guess I'm confused. I know that when you bought a Chevy Leaf, included in the cost was somebody coming to your house to do the electrical work so you could have a high-amperage charger in your garage. Does Tesla not offer a similar service?
If I hadn't posted, I would have modded this up. This is probably the proof that we should add at least some impediments to suicide. People who would have killed themselves impulsively end up not doing it if they have to put some time and thought into it.
This is a legitimate moral dilemma and they usually cover it in sociology and/or psychology classes. (Those subject areas tend not to be the forte of those of us on/.) After all if somebody's life really is that bad, it seems reasonable to give them the opportunity to end it. From what studies exist, though, most people who were suicidal end up, a few years later, being glad that somebody stopped them. Not all of them do. But it's not a black and white question. It does seem that, overall, we (as a society) are better off with suicide prevention measures.
When you deal in illegal goods, this is a risk/cost of doing business. It's not like one person lost all $12 million. Its $12 million in aggregate.
I watched a documentary recently on the illegal drug trade. If you want to ship a $50k brick from Mexico to Chicago for distribution, you're unlikely to find a willing distributor who can put up the $50k. So you basically have to ship it on credit. Once in a while you don't get paid and you have to put a bullet in somebody's head to teach the rest a lesson.
Law enforcement may not have caught up with these guys, but their 'customers' still might. Honor among thieves tends to work best when enforced with firearms.
When we were growing up, unemployed mothers spent an average of 11 hours a week directly engaged with their kids. Now unemployed mothers spend 17 hours a week with their kids on average and moms with full time jobs... spend an average of 11 hours a week with their kids. I don't know statistics for dads. The numbers are from Sheryl Sandberg's book. I haven't personally validated them. But the answer to who can spend the necessary amount of time with a female child.... you can!
We know that the technology isn't quite there for something like this. I'd love to be proven wrong, but nothing has passed the Turing test. Maybe coming close is good enough for small children, though. However, we know that the marketing is *there* so the initial reaction is pretty creepy. I'm glad to be proven wrong. Also electronic security has just been awful. It's more likely than not that this will get hacked in a negative way. Although I'm not sure how big of a risk that is in terms of the value of the data.
The permissions system on Android is such that you can't really install any apps at all without compromising all of the data on the device. Every app asks for permission to everything. Why would anybody even bother going after an OS-level attack. Just create some marginally useful app, put it in the app store, and you have control over just about every Android device out there. And if I'm not going to install any apps, I might as well get a Blackberry. I have a Nexus tablet and like it. But I don't keep any data on there that I wouldn't be willing to share with the world. Like my contact list. I use a Blackberry Z10 for my phone. Corporate IT doesn't want to support BB anymore since it's apparently too much work. So I had the choice iPhone or Android. Without a doubt I took iPhone. At least I can install an app without having to give it access to my contact list! There's no point of talking about Android security until you can set permissions the same way as iOS. It's an oxymoron. The is the first time I've ever felt bad for somebody who works at a big-brand tech company like Google.
If I'm good enough to write a sophisticated and successful piece of malware, maybe I could change the time stamps and plant some not-so-secret codeword in order to trick people into thinking it was created by my adversary. ("False flag.")
I hate to take the side of management, but I don't think it's lack of "balls." If you have 10k LoC function, it's pretty much impossible to test and/or maintain so it seems like a great idea to "clean it up." But since nobody an possibly really know all of the boundary cases for a 10k LoC function, chances are that, when you "clean it up" you introduce regressions. There probably are some interesting things that you could do in this situation, but would probably be a project in and of itself. Something that wouldn't be "cleaning it up." It might even be a good idea to do, but you're still looking at a significant undertaking and it seems that the tools we have today just aren't up to the task.
Who says that anybody is re-inventing. For all we know, they read the patents. With a patent, you get a period of exclusivity. In exchange you disclose your invention such that anybody skilled in the art could reproduce it. And clearly the OP did contribute because he was 10 years ahead of these companies. If companies did re-invent, they are fairly inefficient when they could have just bought it. Innovation is not reinventing the wheel.
But we take reasonable precautions in reality. When kids have to cross a busy street to get to school, there is often a crossing guard. That's a reasonable precaution. Also the speed limits are lowered during those times of day. We don't rip up the road or prohibit all traffic, though. Nobody wants to find sexually explicit material accidentally when looking for informational content.
Programming jobs and IT jobs aren't the same thing. There is a shortage of really good programmers out there where by really good I don't mean knowing everything about C/C++ syntax but rather being able to understand the business needs and respond. The value of IT skills is, for better or worse, going down because the systems that we use are getting better. Companies used to have whole departments dedicated to making re-imagine Windows machines less painful. Now the installations seem to last as long as the hardware. And the hardware is much cheaper.
There is implicit devaluation in technology in that, even if "real wages" stay the same, the problems that we are expected to solve keep getting harder. Other problems have been at least partially solved and there isn't as much value in 'operationalizing' things.
Whether this is good or bad socially or economically is a nuanced discussion. But until we can talk about what is actually happening, it's hard to really have any opinions.
We have this discussion every time these issues come up on Slashdot. You paid for a certain bandwidth connection to your premises, but you know full well that the upstream is oversubscribed. If everybody were simultaneously attempting to use their full bandwidth, everybody would get only a small fraction. The same is true for every utility. I have 200 Amp service into my house, but about 1000 Amps of breakers in the box. If I turned on every appliance, I'd blow the main. Also if every house in my neighborhood tried to draw 200 Amps at a time, likely an upstream electric line would trip.
You can get connections with a specified bandwidth where the upstream is not oversubscribed. But it would cost an order of magnitude more. If I run a factory, the electric company will sell me a different grade of power. You hear of wood kilns having $100k/month electric bills. And they get great customer service.
We have high-bandwidth connections where the upstream is oversubscribed so that our interactive traffic is really fast. If we are doing "background" things, that traffic can and should be throttled so that the overall network quality is better for everybody.
And at the risk of replying to myself, why does it have to be WiFi only? Why not allow an Ethernet dongle on the phone that also charges. I think that SlimPort devices can do this. Then all I need is good Ethernet managed by somebody competent. Not realistic in a coffee shop, I realize. But at airports, hotels, or offices this would be ubiquitous.
I believe that T-Mobile still charges you for the minutes even if you go over WiFi. That's what I think the fine print at the bottom of their TV advertisements say. I can't exactly read it fast enough when the commercial is playing.
And the quality is horrible even if you find one. This is inevitable. Even if the solution was WiFi first only when I'm at home or the office, it's still a good solution. No more home and office numbers and people calling my cell phone when I'm at my desk. It may not be tomorrow, but this type of solution is overdue. Voice is a low bandwidth application.
Slashdot Mirror
I rescind my post. Clicking on the contract links doesn't get you to a contract, it gets you a form to fill out to request information.
I don't doubt your terrible experience. But when looking at their web site, they claim that the contracts are open. I assume you are referring to the MyPower product and that, in your location, the rates are higher than traditional grid electricity in which case it wouldn't make much sense. They do offer a standard solar product as well. I'm not endorsing SolarCity or the My Power project but it does seem reasonable. You are locked into a long-term contract with fixed prices for electricity. You're putting no money down and they are taking mpst of the risk. So I'm not surprised that they are getting most of the benefit. Seems too complicated for me; people are bound to be unhappy. I wouldn't touch the My Power project. I would take an interest if they starting offering solar systems with a used Tesla battery pack so that I would hardly ever need grid electricity. But I'd purchase the equipment up-front, not enter into a complicated contract. In any event, this is a long response, but the point is that you can see the contracts before talking to a person. They may or may not be a good deal. http://www.solarcity.com/resid...
Indeed. Most of us just aren't that important. In another post, I suggested a security measure that might work. In most cases, if you get out of a bad situation with only the loss of a piece of small electronics, you made out wonderfully. A low-tech security measure that would work would be to have a hole (like some laptops do) where you can attach a lock. Then you could handcuff the phone to your wrist. I don't suggest this. I once considered getting one of those brief cases that handcuff to your wrist so I could look cool and important. I decided against it. First, I might get the thing stuck in the door of a transit system. Second, it's an invitation to rob me for my otherwise low value stuff. Worse, once the person who robs me sees that I don't have anything of value, they might get so upset that they beat the snot out of me!
Already most of the comments indicate that this is less secure than having to reenter a pass code after a half a second of inactivity. Different users have different levels of security needs. My guess is that most people don't even need a pass code. It really doesn't provide security against anything other than casual eavesdropping. If you have *real* security needs, you have to have tamper-reactive devices. What *would* be a good solution (probably effective against all but state actors) would be a way of detecting proximity to a smart watch. If the phone gets too far, it automatically shuts down. With full disk encryption (now optional but available) this would solve almost all cases. In a mugging you could also be required to hand over the watch, but that's easily solved too. If the watch is taken off, it has the same effect. No need for fancy biometrics. Just a watch band that conducts electricity when on the wrist. If the clasp is opened or the band is cut, same as the phone going out of range.
Most big companies have conflicts of interest. The Google search team wants to present the best possible results. Other parts of Google want their results on top. Either answer is acceptable. What is not allowed is to *claim* that the search team is acting in an unbiased way (just happen to select other parts of Google) when, in fact, they are picking other Google products regardless of quality. In every business transaction, conflicts of interest have to be disclosed. The results are presented as objective, but they're not. It's a garden variety fraud. It probably didn't fool any of us on /. But that's not the test the FTC uses. It's the impact on the least sophisticated users that matters the most as they are the ones needing the most protection.
Only because they abused a monopoly position. iOS is not a monopoly (less than 50% market share). Neither is Google. There's no issue with Google placing there results at the top of a list. The issue would be if they misrepresented the results as being the most relevant based on an unbiased algorithm. Clearly most of us on /. *suspected* that the algorithm was biased, but they never disclosed it and it's fair to say that a least *some* people may have been confused by the misleading practice.
I guess I'm confused. I know that when you bought a Chevy Leaf, included in the cost was somebody coming to your house to do the electrical work so you could have a high-amperage charger in your garage. Does Tesla not offer a similar service?
Probably because, unless something changes drastically, most people can't imagine how they will eat without a job!
If I hadn't posted, I would have modded this up. This is probably the proof that we should add at least some impediments to suicide. People who would have killed themselves impulsively end up not doing it if they have to put some time and thought into it.
This is a legitimate moral dilemma and they usually cover it in sociology and/or psychology classes. (Those subject areas tend not to be the forte of those of us on /.) After all if somebody's life really is that bad, it seems reasonable to give them the opportunity to end it. From what studies exist, though, most people who were suicidal end up, a few years later, being glad that somebody stopped them. Not all of them do. But it's not a black and white question. It does seem that, overall, we (as a society) are better off with suicide prevention measures.
When you deal in illegal goods, this is a risk/cost of doing business. It's not like one person lost all $12 million. Its $12 million in aggregate. I watched a documentary recently on the illegal drug trade. If you want to ship a $50k brick from Mexico to Chicago for distribution, you're unlikely to find a willing distributor who can put up the $50k. So you basically have to ship it on credit. Once in a while you don't get paid and you have to put a bullet in somebody's head to teach the rest a lesson. Law enforcement may not have caught up with these guys, but their 'customers' still might. Honor among thieves tends to work best when enforced with firearms.
When we were growing up, unemployed mothers spent an average of 11 hours a week directly engaged with their kids. Now unemployed mothers spend 17 hours a week with their kids on average and moms with full time jobs... spend an average of 11 hours a week with their kids. I don't know statistics for dads. The numbers are from Sheryl Sandberg's book. I haven't personally validated them. But the answer to who can spend the necessary amount of time with a female child.... you can!
We know that the technology isn't quite there for something like this. I'd love to be proven wrong, but nothing has passed the Turing test. Maybe coming close is good enough for small children, though. However, we know that the marketing is *there* so the initial reaction is pretty creepy. I'm glad to be proven wrong. Also electronic security has just been awful. It's more likely than not that this will get hacked in a negative way. Although I'm not sure how big of a risk that is in terms of the value of the data.
The permissions system on Android is such that you can't really install any apps at all without compromising all of the data on the device. Every app asks for permission to everything. Why would anybody even bother going after an OS-level attack. Just create some marginally useful app, put it in the app store, and you have control over just about every Android device out there. And if I'm not going to install any apps, I might as well get a Blackberry. I have a Nexus tablet and like it. But I don't keep any data on there that I wouldn't be willing to share with the world. Like my contact list. I use a Blackberry Z10 for my phone. Corporate IT doesn't want to support BB anymore since it's apparently too much work. So I had the choice iPhone or Android. Without a doubt I took iPhone. At least I can install an app without having to give it access to my contact list! There's no point of talking about Android security until you can set permissions the same way as iOS. It's an oxymoron. The is the first time I've ever felt bad for somebody who works at a big-brand tech company like Google.
If I'm good enough to write a sophisticated and successful piece of malware, maybe I could change the time stamps and plant some not-so-secret codeword in order to trick people into thinking it was created by my adversary. ("False flag.")
I wish I could mod you up, but I basically already posted the same thing only in a less succinct way.
I hate to take the side of management, but I don't think it's lack of "balls." If you have 10k LoC function, it's pretty much impossible to test and/or maintain so it seems like a great idea to "clean it up." But since nobody an possibly really know all of the boundary cases for a 10k LoC function, chances are that, when you "clean it up" you introduce regressions. There probably are some interesting things that you could do in this situation, but would probably be a project in and of itself. Something that wouldn't be "cleaning it up." It might even be a good idea to do, but you're still looking at a significant undertaking and it seems that the tools we have today just aren't up to the task.
Who says that anybody is re-inventing. For all we know, they read the patents. With a patent, you get a period of exclusivity. In exchange you disclose your invention such that anybody skilled in the art could reproduce it. And clearly the OP did contribute because he was 10 years ahead of these companies. If companies did re-invent, they are fairly inefficient when they could have just bought it. Innovation is not reinventing the wheel.
But we take reasonable precautions in reality. When kids have to cross a busy street to get to school, there is often a crossing guard. That's a reasonable precaution. Also the speed limits are lowered during those times of day. We don't rip up the road or prohibit all traffic, though. Nobody wants to find sexually explicit material accidentally when looking for informational content.
Programming jobs and IT jobs aren't the same thing. There is a shortage of really good programmers out there where by really good I don't mean knowing everything about C/C++ syntax but rather being able to understand the business needs and respond. The value of IT skills is, for better or worse, going down because the systems that we use are getting better. Companies used to have whole departments dedicated to making re-imagine Windows machines less painful. Now the installations seem to last as long as the hardware. And the hardware is much cheaper. There is implicit devaluation in technology in that, even if "real wages" stay the same, the problems that we are expected to solve keep getting harder. Other problems have been at least partially solved and there isn't as much value in 'operationalizing' things. Whether this is good or bad socially or economically is a nuanced discussion. But until we can talk about what is actually happening, it's hard to really have any opinions.
We have this discussion every time these issues come up on Slashdot. You paid for a certain bandwidth connection to your premises, but you know full well that the upstream is oversubscribed. If everybody were simultaneously attempting to use their full bandwidth, everybody would get only a small fraction. The same is true for every utility. I have 200 Amp service into my house, but about 1000 Amps of breakers in the box. If I turned on every appliance, I'd blow the main. Also if every house in my neighborhood tried to draw 200 Amps at a time, likely an upstream electric line would trip. You can get connections with a specified bandwidth where the upstream is not oversubscribed. But it would cost an order of magnitude more. If I run a factory, the electric company will sell me a different grade of power. You hear of wood kilns having $100k/month electric bills. And they get great customer service. We have high-bandwidth connections where the upstream is oversubscribed so that our interactive traffic is really fast. If we are doing "background" things, that traffic can and should be throttled so that the overall network quality is better for everybody.
And at the risk of replying to myself, why does it have to be WiFi only? Why not allow an Ethernet dongle on the phone that also charges. I think that SlimPort devices can do this. Then all I need is good Ethernet managed by somebody competent. Not realistic in a coffee shop, I realize. But at airports, hotels, or offices this would be ubiquitous.
I believe that T-Mobile still charges you for the minutes even if you go over WiFi. That's what I think the fine print at the bottom of their TV advertisements say. I can't exactly read it fast enough when the commercial is playing.
And the quality is horrible even if you find one. This is inevitable. Even if the solution was WiFi first only when I'm at home or the office, it's still a good solution. No more home and office numbers and people calling my cell phone when I'm at my desk. It may not be tomorrow, but this type of solution is overdue. Voice is a low bandwidth application.
Actually I assume you mean the Cialdini book.