This I do not understand: you are not required to purchase anything. You can elect not to purchase health care. However, there is a tax consequence.
Moreover, I don't understand why otherwise pro-market folks are opposed to this. The more you contribute to governmental healthcare costs, the higher your taxes go. It's a pretty straightforward cause/effect analysis.
Just FYI, Takoma Park's liberalness (which includes a bead store, vegan restaurants and the rest) has little to do with the Adventists, who aren't really a force in town. Instead, Takoma Park has a long hippy tradition and is filled with aging boomers who moved to the community because of its reputation as a liberal enclave. It's often referred to as the "Berkely of the East" and other such monickers.
My favorite nuclear free story growing up was that the police department looked for a while like it was going to have to buy Volvo squad cars, because every other major manufacturer had some toe hold in nuclear weapons. Not sure how they managed to avoid that, but they did. Similarly, when the transit authority wanted to build a major highway right through the middle of Takoma Park (which at that point was a sleepy middle class suburb full of WWII bungallos), the local community rallied together and killed the massive highway plan on the Maryland side of Washington, DC. Those techies in Northern Virginia who enjoy the Mixed Bowl during their morning commute see what could have happened to Maryland. Of course, nothing's that simple -- but it's refreshing that there's still a place that combates global warming by banning gasoline-powered lawn mowers.....
Takoma Park was a great place to grow up. Crazy as they are, it's refreshing to have such a community of idealists. Even though it seems like the whole community has gentrified over the last few years, I still love it, even as I've transitioned to the Dark Side (business! Eeek!)
Garak was a traitor?? Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Stopped watchign after a few seasons, always knew he was a double/triple agent, but it never occurred to me he would have real allegiance to one side or the other. *sigh*
But probably not for the reasons you think.... I have been a subscriber to the Sunday dead-tree edition of the paper for several years now. This, in theory, gives me free access to all online content. But the login system never remembers me. Not on my work computer, not on my iPad, not on my home computer. And the login is often squirrely too.
So I typically use my "20 free articles a month" rather than login each and every freak'n time. I know, this doesn't exactly rise to the level of suffering that really warrants a post - but it's pretty damn annoying. Going to 10 just makes the site even less user-friendly than it already is. Is it really that hard to develop a login system that works???
The summary of this article is just wrong. The Supreme Court has not said that the issue is unclear - it has merely agreed to hear a case about whether a specific decision made by the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Columbia conflicts with existing Supreme Court precedent.
To the extent that you can infer anything from the Supreme Court's grant of certiorari, it is equally likely to conclude that they took the case in order to slap down the D.C. Circuit's novel approach to the 4th Amendment.
The existing precedent, by the way, is that we have no reasonable expectation of privacy in our cars. As a result, it is not an "unreasonable" search or seizure to attach beepers or other devices to our cars in order to monitor our movements.
In fact, the judge in this case does an excellent job summarizing and applying the relevant case law. He points to a case from the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals (which is the relevant circuit for St. Louis) clearly stating that putting a tracker on a car and then later retreiving it is not a constitutionally prohibited search or seizure.
Agree or disagree on whether we have a reasonable expectation of privacy in our cars - the judge in this case acted properly. It would have violated another constitutional right - the one to a speedy trial - if he had simply delayed the issuance of his opinion until after the Supreme Court issues its (entirely discretionary) opinion.
Blackberry 10 is so much a better name than BBX. I mean, really - what the ****! That's a terrible name! Why would you engage in litigation over it?
Maybe if they start losing more cases, they'll start doing better....
I can't tell whether you are serious or not.... Just as one example, building those wind farms is very expensive. Averaged over the expected life time of the turbines, it probably costs around 10 cents per watt - which, depending on where in the country you live - is probably more than you are paying now.
I won't even talk about the cost of transmission lines, distribution lines, or the price of backup power when the wind doesn't blow. They said nuclear would be too cheap to meter too... They were wrong. Nothing in this life is free, my friend.....
I filled out the survey, but I will share my major concerns here as well. I use IE 7. My company mandates its use and locks things down fairly well. I am a lawyer interested in science and tech policy, but with no actual computer skills (i.e., I programmed a few lines of HTML in my youth, but that's about it).
Over the past few years, my user experience has gone into the gutter, with very few corresponding benefits. Boxes often overlap, and the whole site freezes on a regular basis. Most other sites are fine.
As a result, I show up less. Sure, I could read it on my home computer, but eh. What's the point if you can't sit on a conference call while reading?
Wait a second - people are faulting HP from diagnosing a problem and then (god forbid) taking time to put together a business plan and roll out the anouncement of said business plan?!? God forfend!
No, instead they should continue on their pre-annointed course, never deviating, regardless of market conditions. (Iceberg dead-ahead? Pshaw. That's not what we decided three weeks ago!)
Any major company-shaping (or company-shaking) decision + short-term loss in stock value = Law suit. My reasonably large company takes many bold positions/reinventions as the industry changes. Companies like mine get sued all the time. They are all frivolous (just like this one). They all allege massive insider conspiracies (just like this one). They allege you-made-a-decision-a-certified-moron-wouldn't-make (just like this one).
The only news here is who is doing publicity for the law firm - they are apparently good at their job and maybe should be hired in the future. Otherwise, what a joke - carry on.
The entry/non-entry of Dr. King's speech into the public domain is a famous case in copyright circles - and in fact, was one reason the copyright laws were changed. It's a fascinating story.
First you need to realize that prior to 1976, unless you put a copyright mark on a document and properly registed it, it was presumed to be in the public domain as soon as it was made public. This led to a number of problems and disputes, and today is widely viewed as being overly punative to people who simply forget to put the mark on a document before releasing it. Today's copyright laws eliminate the "all or nothing" nature of the 1909 Act, and sensibly declare that copyright rests with the author, regardless of whether they properly marked it.
Second, there's an interesting history behind the I Have a Dream speech. While the factual accounts of exactly what happened differ, Dr. King and his associates apparently distributed advance copies of the speech without the copyright mark on them to a group of journalists. Recognizing that this was a serious error, others within Dr. King's circle reportedly re-collected each of the advance copies, and then redistributed them with the copyright mark hand written on the document. So there was a factual question as to whether the textual copy of the speech was put into the public domain or not registered with the copyright office correctly.
There was less dispute over the video and audio. As others have noted, Dr. King improvised/departed from the prepared text a number of times. So there was an argument that, even if Dr. King had lost the copyright on the original text (which is itself debatable), he maintained the copyright on the "performance" of the speach, and was thus entitled to a separate copyright (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estate_of_Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.,_Inc._v._CBS,_Inc.).
I also believe that the speech is freely licensed to anyone engaging in educational activities - so it's not quite as eggregious on the part of the family as many have suggested.
Let's stop conflating the whether an emissions market is mechanically sound from the politically-charged question of whether it is wise to have established an emissions market for carbon. Emissions markets are common and typically function well. There are established markets in the United States for SOx, NOx, Particulate Matter and other various pollutants emitted from large stationary sources (i.e., power plants, cement factories, etc).
These markets are an excellent way of determining the marginal cost of complying with a particular regulatory regime. I emphasize that last statement because that is what we are really asking is what is the marginal cost of complying with a particular set of rules? Emissions markets are very effective at determining that marginal price.
Of course, the function of the market says nothing about (i) the social utility of complying with the particular rules or (ii) whether the market will actually limit the non-desirable behavior regulators are attempting to stiffle. Whether the market is going to increase that social good depends on on your base-case assumptions. Is global climate change real? Is it exascerbated by CO2 emissions? What is your assumption of CO2 emissions today? What type of compliance regime is utilized to police participation in the market? How strong is the evidence that purchasing and retiring a ton of CO2 from the market actually leads to a ton of CO2 not being put ito the atmosphere?
Personally, I think the evidence suggests that global climate change is happening, and that it is highly likely that man-made emissions are driving the process. But regardless of whether you share my opinion of the science -- you should agree that an emissions exchange is an excellent way of setting the marginal price of complying with a specific set of rules. In short -- just because you are a climate change skeptic doesn't mean you should ignore the rules of economics as well as chemisty.
Not advertised: the utility can replace fast-response generators like natural gas with slower response generators like coal, because they don't need as much fast response generation capacity to deal with their now smaller peaks. Of course, coal has a bigger carbon footprint than gas. Too bad.
Wow. So much wrong. It's hard to know where to start. The output of a coal plant does not vary over the course of the day -- and no amount of smart meter activity is going to change this.
Electric markets dispatch on a least-cost basis; that is, they turn on the cheapest power plants first, and the next most expensive next, etc. A picture is worth a thousand words in this case. Here you can find a typical dispatch stack -- with nuclear on the bottom, coal just above that, natural gas combined cycles above that, peaking natural gas turbines above that, and other technologies like fuel oil and karosene above that. http://www.treepower.org/outreach/stackdispatch.jpeg. (By the way, wind, hydro and solar would be down there by the nuclear, but don't change this analysis.)
The key point that the AC misses, is that the energy usage on any given day fluctuates between the high priced and low priced natural gas plants; in utility parlance, a natural gas unit is the "marginal unit" on the system. Every once and a rare while, the system will run out of natural gas, and have to move up the price stack and dispatch fuel oil -- but that is rare. Likewise, every once in a great while, load will be so low that coal dispatches are decreased.
In short: no amount of smart meter activity is going to decrease (or increase) the amount of power coming from a coal plant. That would imply that someone had an underutilized coal plant just sitting around.... Just doesn't work that way. (Even that ignores the fact that coal plants aren't designed to move up and down; doing so creates a host of technical problems with the plant.)
The second bit of moronity:
One. Advertised: if the utility company is having trouble delivering the demanded power, they can reduce the voltage a little bit and buy/generate a little bit less (expensive) peak power. Your lights will burn a little less brightly, but you probably won't notice.Not advertised: if the utility company is having trouble making money or needs a place to sink their spinning reserves during off-peak demand, they can use SG to raise the delivered voltage to end customers. Your lights will burn a little brighter, but you probably won't notice. It will also cost you a little bit more. Too bad.
This is half true -- but has nothing to do with smart meters. Yes, the operator of the electric grid will fool with the voltage to avoid a cascading failure of the transmission system. Voltage stability, by law, is kept within extremely tight tolerances. During times of over- or under-generation, the voltage may flicker slightly. However, any serious deviation represents a threat to system reliability -- which is paramount to grid operators -- and is simply not allowed. Again, nothing to do with smart meters.
Um.... I believe they already do. It's called the "lease option." You buy the car; you own it. You lease the car, you are effectively given a non-transferable end-user license. What's so strange about that?
As far as I can tell, they assert that it is legal, therefore they think it is legal. Come on folks -- just because you aren't breaking or entering, or murdering someone does not make what you are doing "legal." There are all sorts of privacy laws that come into play here -- and I strongly suspect that I can find at least one prosecutor/judge/jury combo in this country that disagrees. I can't even begin to describe how many laws could be implicated by breaking into someone's voice mail!
I can't imagine any warning would end the love affair people have with their cell phones. On the train. On the plane. Sitting on the can. People are obsessed.
Leaving qualified experts outside the company is an excellent strategy for fighting off anti-trust concerns. I guarantee one of the fundamental arguments Google will raise in response to any future anti-trust lawsuit will be that it does not have a monopoly on smart people. A little silly when written down, but something that I guarantee Google's attorneys have thought about.
How long ago was this talk? Only in the past year or so have power plants been subject to mandatory Cyber Infrastructure Protection standards (CIP standards -- another acroynm to impress your friends with). Another set of standards is set to take effect January 1, 2010. The new standards require maintenance of a physical permimeter around all critical cyber assets, as well as controlled computer access. My experience (with a large company owning generation stations) is that cyber security has come a long way in even the past six months, and that your auditor talk may be slightly out of date.
Also, my own personal opinion is that several of the DHS "studies" of grid vulnerability are not entirely reliable, and in some cases were fairly overblown. It's one thing to "attack" a power plant in a controlled laboratory environment, and another to execute such a scheme in the real world.
That being said, there is always room for improvement, and it's something we take seriously. And all of the incentives are to improve security. First, the plant loses money every time it don't operate. And not just immediate revenues, but future revenues are often based on past on-line performance metrics. Second, a cyber attack could cause millions in physical hardware damage -- these are incredibly complicated machines, and one little disturbance could cause serious damage that could keep it off-line for weeks or months. Third, in some cases, power plants are subject to up to $1 million a day per incident in fines if we don't comply with cyber regulations.
Yes, this certainly sounds like a classis under-frequency event caused by the unexpected loss of a generator station. When you have unexpected loss of a station or a transmission line, the frequency on the grid can drop precipitously. Key to frequency is that every (conventional) power plant provides some level of frequency response built-in, while operating under Automatic Governor Control (AGC).
Other power plants under AGC are supposed to put the breaks on an uncontrolled voltage drop. Sounds like the system wasn't able to recover in this case -- either because there weren't enough other plants online to absorb the frequency deviation, or the backup plants that should have been ready to respond weren't quite so ready after all. Here's a link to the National Electric Reliability Counsel (NERC) whitepaper describing such an event and how to prevent it: http://www.nerc.com/docs/standards/sar/Frequency_Response_White_Paper.pdf (NERC is the United States quasi-governmental agency responsible for electric reliability rules.)
I don't necessarily agree -- the types of documents PACER provides are highly technical, and are really only of use to attorneys and other litigants. Given the very limited distribution of these documents, I don't think it makes sense that everyone (a.k.a. the taxpayers at large) should pay for something that is, at heart, a tool to save litigants and lawyers money. Instead, PACER is designed to allow the government to recoup the costs of digitizing these documents, and pass those costs on to users of the system. A beneficiary-pays model.
Further, anyone who wants to compete with PACER is perfectly free to do so. These are government documents, with no copyright restrictions attached! I suspect that most companies are in no hurry to digitize millions of obscure documents that are generally only of use to a half-dozen people for less than 8 cents per page, but I could be wrong.
Just to be clear, the opinions issued by the Federal Courts of Appeal are all available free of charge from the various court web pages. You never have to pay to understand the law of the land or see the latest court opinion.
However, docketing sheets, procedural orders, etc. are available (i) free of charge in hard copy format at the court house, or (ii) electronically through the PACER system at a nominal per-page cost (currently 8 cents).
I just want people to be clear that court opinions are, and always have been, available free of charge.
I guess I have this idealistic vision of what should happen here. Conregate the students and ask, "Who's took Algebra last year?" Take the first 20 (okay, 30) student who raise their hand, lead them to math class. "Who's in 9th Grade and hasn't had English yet?" Lead another group away. "Who took chemistry....? Biology...?" I know, it would never be that easy, but I still have some idealistic vision that a group of adults could really teach something; after all, the teachers are just as much victims of this as the students.
Also, keep in mind, this is Prince George's County -- a jurisdiction that in the 1970s capped property taxes at then-existing levels, and allowed only minimal increases since. Combine that with a high population of at-risk students, large pockets of poverty, serious struggles with drugs and crime in the community -- and you have a recipe for disaster. At some level, the people of Prince George's County get the educational system they pay for. And they are cheap, so the fact that they don't have the computer resources that they need is entirely par for the course (sadly).
As one of those non-techies who enjoys reading/. for the brilliant article summaries, insightful commentary and the sterling sense of humor of many posters, this little tale explains exactly why I am not willing to switch away from a mainstream operating system. I think I'm reasonably tech savy for someone who's never taken a computer programming class, but wow -- none of this makes the slightest degree of sense to someone like me. Can anyone explain why my initial gut sense is an over-reaction? Should my replacement computer (another laptop) be Linux (other than Apple)?
Maybe a silly question, but how do you record a call? I mean, I have recorded lines on the trading desk at work, but short of that.... hold up a small mic to the phone? Does that actually work?
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This I do not understand: you are not required to purchase anything. You can elect not to purchase health care. However, there is a tax consequence.
Moreover, I don't understand why otherwise pro-market folks are opposed to this. The more you contribute to governmental healthcare costs, the higher your taxes go. It's a pretty straightforward cause/effect analysis.
Takoma Park has long been a center for the Seventh Day Adventist Church, and 7DAs tend to be pacifists.
Just FYI, Takoma Park's liberalness (which includes a bead store, vegan restaurants and the rest) has little to do with the Adventists, who aren't really a force in town. Instead, Takoma Park has a long hippy tradition and is filled with aging boomers who moved to the community because of its reputation as a liberal enclave. It's often referred to as the "Berkely of the East" and other such monickers.
My favorite nuclear free story growing up was that the police department looked for a while like it was going to have to buy Volvo squad cars, because every other major manufacturer had some toe hold in nuclear weapons. Not sure how they managed to avoid that, but they did. Similarly, when the transit authority wanted to build a major highway right through the middle of Takoma Park (which at that point was a sleepy middle class suburb full of WWII bungallos), the local community rallied together and killed the massive highway plan on the Maryland side of Washington, DC. Those techies in Northern Virginia who enjoy the Mixed Bowl during their morning commute see what could have happened to Maryland. Of course, nothing's that simple -- but it's refreshing that there's still a place that combates global warming by banning gasoline-powered lawn mowers.....
Takoma Park was a great place to grow up. Crazy as they are, it's refreshing to have such a community of idealists. Even though it seems like the whole community has gentrified over the last few years, I still love it, even as I've transitioned to the Dark Side (business! Eeek!)
Garak was a traitor?? Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Stopped watchign after a few seasons, always knew he was a double/triple agent, but it never occurred to me he would have real allegiance to one side or the other. *sigh*
But probably not for the reasons you think.... I have been a subscriber to the Sunday dead-tree edition of the paper for several years now. This, in theory, gives me free access to all online content. But the login system never remembers me. Not on my work computer, not on my iPad, not on my home computer. And the login is often squirrely too.
So I typically use my "20 free articles a month" rather than login each and every freak'n time. I know, this doesn't exactly rise to the level of suffering that really warrants a post - but it's pretty damn annoying. Going to 10 just makes the site even less user-friendly than it already is. Is it really that hard to develop a login system that works???
The summary of this article is just wrong. The Supreme Court has not said that the issue is unclear - it has merely agreed to hear a case about whether a specific decision made by the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Columbia conflicts with existing Supreme Court precedent.
To the extent that you can infer anything from the Supreme Court's grant of certiorari, it is equally likely to conclude that they took the case in order to slap down the D.C. Circuit's novel approach to the 4th Amendment.
The existing precedent, by the way, is that we have no reasonable expectation of privacy in our cars. As a result, it is not an "unreasonable" search or seizure to attach beepers or other devices to our cars in order to monitor our movements.
In fact, the judge in this case does an excellent job summarizing and applying the relevant case law. He points to a case from the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals (which is the relevant circuit for St. Louis) clearly stating that putting a tracker on a car and then later retreiving it is not a constitutionally prohibited search or seizure.
Agree or disagree on whether we have a reasonable expectation of privacy in our cars - the judge in this case acted properly. It would have violated another constitutional right - the one to a speedy trial - if he had simply delayed the issuance of his opinion until after the Supreme Court issues its (entirely discretionary) opinion.
What a silly article.
Blackberry 10 is so much a better name than BBX. I mean, really - what the ****! That's a terrible name! Why would you engage in litigation over it? Maybe if they start losing more cases, they'll start doing better....
I can't tell whether you are serious or not.... Just as one example, building those wind farms is very expensive. Averaged over the expected life time of the turbines, it probably costs around 10 cents per watt - which, depending on where in the country you live - is probably more than you are paying now.
I won't even talk about the cost of transmission lines, distribution lines, or the price of backup power when the wind doesn't blow. They said nuclear would be too cheap to meter too... They were wrong. Nothing in this life is free, my friend.....
We are also paid to have a sense of humor about when we read /.....
But more to the point - do you really think burger flippers, on their feet 24/7, have more downtime than lawyers?!? Now that's funny.
I filled out the survey, but I will share my major concerns here as well. I use IE 7. My company mandates its use and locks things down fairly well. I am a lawyer interested in science and tech policy, but with no actual computer skills (i.e., I programmed a few lines of HTML in my youth, but that's about it).
Over the past few years, my user experience has gone into the gutter, with very few corresponding benefits. Boxes often overlap, and the whole site freezes on a regular basis. Most other sites are fine.
As a result, I show up less. Sure, I could read it on my home computer, but eh. What's the point if you can't sit on a conference call while reading?
Wait a second - people are faulting HP from diagnosing a problem and then (god forbid) taking time to put together a business plan and roll out the anouncement of said business plan?!? God forfend! No, instead they should continue on their pre-annointed course, never deviating, regardless of market conditions. (Iceberg dead-ahead? Pshaw. That's not what we decided three weeks ago!) Any major company-shaping (or company-shaking) decision + short-term loss in stock value = Law suit. My reasonably large company takes many bold positions/reinventions as the industry changes. Companies like mine get sued all the time. They are all frivolous (just like this one). They all allege massive insider conspiracies (just like this one). They allege you-made-a-decision-a-certified-moron-wouldn't-make (just like this one). The only news here is who is doing publicity for the law firm - they are apparently good at their job and maybe should be hired in the future. Otherwise, what a joke - carry on.
The entry/non-entry of Dr. King's speech into the public domain is a famous case in copyright circles - and in fact, was one reason the copyright laws were changed. It's a fascinating story.
First you need to realize that prior to 1976, unless you put a copyright mark on a document and properly registed it, it was presumed to be in the public domain as soon as it was made public. This led to a number of problems and disputes, and today is widely viewed as being overly punative to people who simply forget to put the mark on a document before releasing it. Today's copyright laws eliminate the "all or nothing" nature of the 1909 Act, and sensibly declare that copyright rests with the author, regardless of whether they properly marked it.
Second, there's an interesting history behind the I Have a Dream speech. While the factual accounts of exactly what happened differ, Dr. King and his associates apparently distributed advance copies of the speech without the copyright mark on them to a group of journalists. Recognizing that this was a serious error, others within Dr. King's circle reportedly re-collected each of the advance copies, and then redistributed them with the copyright mark hand written on the document. So there was a factual question as to whether the textual copy of the speech was put into the public domain or not registered with the copyright office correctly.
There was less dispute over the video and audio. As others have noted, Dr. King improvised/departed from the prepared text a number of times. So there was an argument that, even if Dr. King had lost the copyright on the original text (which is itself debatable), he maintained the copyright on the "performance" of the speach, and was thus entitled to a separate copyright (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estate_of_Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.,_Inc._v._CBS,_Inc.).
I also believe that the speech is freely licensed to anyone engaging in educational activities - so it's not quite as eggregious on the part of the family as many have suggested.
Let's stop conflating the whether an emissions market is mechanically sound from the politically-charged question of whether it is wise to have established an emissions market for carbon. Emissions markets are common and typically function well. There are established markets in the United States for SOx, NOx, Particulate Matter and other various pollutants emitted from large stationary sources (i.e., power plants, cement factories, etc).
These markets are an excellent way of determining the marginal cost of complying with a particular regulatory regime. I emphasize that last statement because that is what we are really asking is what is the marginal cost of complying with a particular set of rules? Emissions markets are very effective at determining that marginal price.
Of course, the function of the market says nothing about (i) the social utility of complying with the particular rules or (ii) whether the market will actually limit the non-desirable behavior regulators are attempting to stiffle. Whether the market is going to increase that social good depends on on your base-case assumptions. Is global climate change real? Is it exascerbated by CO2 emissions? What is your assumption of CO2 emissions today? What type of compliance regime is utilized to police participation in the market? How strong is the evidence that purchasing and retiring a ton of CO2 from the market actually leads to a ton of CO2 not being put ito the atmosphere?
Personally, I think the evidence suggests that global climate change is happening, and that it is highly likely that man-made emissions are driving the process. But regardless of whether you share my opinion of the science -- you should agree that an emissions exchange is an excellent way of setting the marginal price of complying with a specific set of rules. In short -- just because you are a climate change skeptic doesn't mean you should ignore the rules of economics as well as chemisty.
Not advertised: the utility can replace fast-response generators like natural gas with slower response generators like coal, because they don't need as much fast response generation capacity to deal with their now smaller peaks. Of course, coal has a bigger carbon footprint than gas. Too bad.
Wow. So much wrong. It's hard to know where to start. The output of a coal plant does not vary over the course of the day -- and no amount of smart meter activity is going to change this. Electric markets dispatch on a least-cost basis; that is, they turn on the cheapest power plants first, and the next most expensive next, etc. A picture is worth a thousand words in this case. Here you can find a typical dispatch stack -- with nuclear on the bottom, coal just above that, natural gas combined cycles above that, peaking natural gas turbines above that, and other technologies like fuel oil and karosene above that. http://www.treepower.org/outreach/stackdispatch.jpeg. (By the way, wind, hydro and solar would be down there by the nuclear, but don't change this analysis.)
The key point that the AC misses, is that the energy usage on any given day fluctuates between the high priced and low priced natural gas plants; in utility parlance, a natural gas unit is the "marginal unit" on the system. Every once and a rare while, the system will run out of natural gas, and have to move up the price stack and dispatch fuel oil -- but that is rare. Likewise, every once in a great while, load will be so low that coal dispatches are decreased.
In short: no amount of smart meter activity is going to decrease (or increase) the amount of power coming from a coal plant. That would imply that someone had an underutilized coal plant just sitting around.... Just doesn't work that way. (Even that ignores the fact that coal plants aren't designed to move up and down; doing so creates a host of technical problems with the plant.)
The second bit of moronity:
One. Advertised: if the utility company is having trouble delivering the demanded power, they can reduce the voltage a little bit and buy/generate a little bit less (expensive) peak power. Your lights will burn a little less brightly, but you probably won't notice.Not advertised: if the utility company is having trouble making money or needs a place to sink their spinning reserves during off-peak demand, they can use SG to raise the delivered voltage to end customers. Your lights will burn a little brighter, but you probably won't notice. It will also cost you a little bit more. Too bad.
This is half true -- but has nothing to do with smart meters. Yes, the operator of the electric grid will fool with the voltage to avoid a cascading failure of the transmission system. Voltage stability, by law, is kept within extremely tight tolerances. During times of over- or under-generation, the voltage may flicker slightly. However, any serious deviation represents a threat to system reliability -- which is paramount to grid operators -- and is simply not allowed. Again, nothing to do with smart meters.
Um.... I believe they already do. It's called the "lease option." You buy the car; you own it. You lease the car, you are effectively given a non-transferable end-user license. What's so strange about that?
Good point. Yes, IAAL, and I could be Your lawyer.... if the price is right :)
As far as I can tell, they assert that it is legal, therefore they think it is legal. Come on folks -- just because you aren't breaking or entering, or murdering someone does not make what you are doing "legal." There are all sorts of privacy laws that come into play here -- and I strongly suspect that I can find at least one prosecutor/judge/jury combo in this country that disagrees. I can't even begin to describe how many laws could be implicated by breaking into someone's voice mail!
Yes, IAAL, but IANYL.
I can't imagine any warning would end the love affair people have with their cell phones. On the train. On the plane. Sitting on the can. People are obsessed.
Leaving qualified experts outside the company is an excellent strategy for fighting off anti-trust concerns. I guarantee one of the fundamental arguments Google will raise in response to any future anti-trust lawsuit will be that it does not have a monopoly on smart people. A little silly when written down, but something that I guarantee Google's attorneys have thought about.
How long ago was this talk? Only in the past year or so have power plants been subject to mandatory Cyber Infrastructure Protection standards (CIP standards -- another acroynm to impress your friends with). Another set of standards is set to take effect January 1, 2010. The new standards require maintenance of a physical permimeter around all critical cyber assets, as well as controlled computer access. My experience (with a large company owning generation stations) is that cyber security has come a long way in even the past six months, and that your auditor talk may be slightly out of date.
Also, my own personal opinion is that several of the DHS "studies" of grid vulnerability are not entirely reliable, and in some cases were fairly overblown. It's one thing to "attack" a power plant in a controlled laboratory environment, and another to execute such a scheme in the real world.
That being said, there is always room for improvement, and it's something we take seriously. And all of the incentives are to improve security. First, the plant loses money every time it don't operate. And not just immediate revenues, but future revenues are often based on past on-line performance metrics. Second, a cyber attack could cause millions in physical hardware damage -- these are incredibly complicated machines, and one little disturbance could cause serious damage that could keep it off-line for weeks or months. Third, in some cases, power plants are subject to up to $1 million a day per incident in fines if we don't comply with cyber regulations.
Yes, this certainly sounds like a classis under-frequency event caused by the unexpected loss of a generator station. When you have unexpected loss of a station or a transmission line, the frequency on the grid can drop precipitously. Key to frequency is that every (conventional) power plant provides some level of frequency response built-in, while operating under Automatic Governor Control (AGC).
Other power plants under AGC are supposed to put the breaks on an uncontrolled voltage drop. Sounds like the system wasn't able to recover in this case -- either because there weren't enough other plants online to absorb the frequency deviation, or the backup plants that should have been ready to respond weren't quite so ready after all. Here's a link to the National Electric Reliability Counsel (NERC) whitepaper describing such an event and how to prevent it: http://www.nerc.com/docs/standards/sar/Frequency_Response_White_Paper.pdf (NERC is the United States quasi-governmental agency responsible for electric reliability rules.)
I don't necessarily agree -- the types of documents PACER provides are highly technical, and are really only of use to attorneys and other litigants. Given the very limited distribution of these documents, I don't think it makes sense that everyone (a.k.a. the taxpayers at large) should pay for something that is, at heart, a tool to save litigants and lawyers money. Instead, PACER is designed to allow the government to recoup the costs of digitizing these documents, and pass those costs on to users of the system. A beneficiary-pays model.
Further, anyone who wants to compete with PACER is perfectly free to do so. These are government documents, with no copyright restrictions attached! I suspect that most companies are in no hurry to digitize millions of obscure documents that are generally only of use to a half-dozen people for less than 8 cents per page, but I could be wrong.
Just to be clear, the opinions issued by the Federal Courts of Appeal are all available free of charge from the various court web pages. You never have to pay to understand the law of the land or see the latest court opinion.
However, docketing sheets, procedural orders, etc. are available (i) free of charge in hard copy format at the court house, or (ii) electronically through the PACER system at a nominal per-page cost (currently 8 cents).
I just want people to be clear that court opinions are, and always have been, available free of charge.
I guess I have this idealistic vision of what should happen here. Conregate the students and ask, "Who's took Algebra last year?" Take the first 20 (okay, 30) student who raise their hand, lead them to math class. "Who's in 9th Grade and hasn't had English yet?" Lead another group away. "Who took chemistry....? Biology...?" I know, it would never be that easy, but I still have some idealistic vision that a group of adults could really teach something; after all, the teachers are just as much victims of this as the students.
Also, keep in mind, this is Prince George's County -- a jurisdiction that in the 1970s capped property taxes at then-existing levels, and allowed only minimal increases since. Combine that with a high population of at-risk students, large pockets of poverty, serious struggles with drugs and crime in the community -- and you have a recipe for disaster. At some level, the people of Prince George's County get the educational system they pay for. And they are cheap, so the fact that they don't have the computer resources that they need is entirely par for the course (sadly).
As one of those non-techies who enjoys reading /. for the brilliant article summaries, insightful commentary and the sterling sense of humor of many posters, this little tale explains exactly why I am not willing to switch away from a mainstream operating system. I think I'm reasonably tech savy for someone who's never taken a computer programming class, but wow -- none of this makes the slightest degree of sense to someone like me. Can anyone explain why my initial gut sense is an over-reaction? Should my replacement computer (another laptop) be Linux (other than Apple)?
Maybe a silly question, but how do you record a call? I mean, I have recorded lines on the trading desk at work, but short of that.... hold up a small mic to the phone? Does that actually work?