The cross-contamination comes from high-speed counting devices in banks becoming contaminated. They then spread the cocaine to other bills as they're counted. This isn't anything new. I think I first heard about this at least 15 years ago.
The article is about the contamination rate going up. The implication is drug use is up. The other possibility is the spreading mechanism is more efficient for whatever reason. (Different machines, less machines? Stickier cocaine?). Assuming drug usage is up without knowing if anything else has changed in this uncontrolled experiment is potentially very misleading.
Today's guilty plea should have a lasting effect because Kaplan was not only the founder of BetOnSports, he was also one of the pioneers of illegal online gambling.'"
Yup.. the lasting effect will be operations that are entirely offshore and run by people not U.S. citizens will take over the online gambling industry.
The only effect here is to kill off the U.S. businesses that do this. Does the Federal Government really think it's going to stop every country with an internet connection from hosting a freaking gambling website?
I suspect that, since this is a plug-in, they're "fudging" (more like "outright lying about") the figures by only counting actual gasoline used in day-to-day use.
Of course that's the way they're doing it. What else would you expect? Electrical usage isn't measured in "gallons". It's only deceptive if you really thought someone could magically convert electrical energy into gallons of gasoline.
You'd also be surprised at how much society relies on the ability of its people to trust each other. This is what pranksters and scammers rely on.
I don't really agree that this is about trusting strangers. All these pranks are about instilling fear and then providing a means to alleviate that fear. That's really a lot more about the fear and panic than it is about trust. I'd like a society where we trust and help each other.
I guess.. It's a nice thought, but little more than that. Blindly trusting people you don't know is just a bad idea in general. They might not even be "scammers", but just someone who puts their own interests far and above any of yours.
The thing we don't hear is how many people these douche-bags had to go through to get a sucker. The article makes it sound like they pick up the phone and immediately get a sucker willing to do anything they tell them.
At competitive rates you'd have to sell tens of thousands just to keep a single person employed to maintain the TLD, never mind having some money to give away.
Competitive rates compared to what?.com? I just don't think that's a competitor. In this case there's really no competitory, it's a monopoly.
All these new TLDs serve nothing more than either vanity, or marketing purposes..com.net and.org don't provide that same marketing/vanity. I do think you're right that this is a niche market and they won't sell a lot of domains. That means the price is going to be higher.
The efficiency of converting gas into kinetic energy is relatively high, as far as energy conversions go. Converting fuels into electricity is far less efficient
No really. A power plant is far more efficient at converting energy into a usable form than a gas-combustion engine. Power plants are in the range of 36-40% efficient. An internal combustion engine is around 18-20% efficient. That's a factor of 2 times more efficient for a power plant. Power plants are essentially always going to be more efficient than a gas/diesel engine simply because you can have much higher temperatures in a large scale plant than you can ever achieve in a small engine. You're right that you'll lose a bit in the batteries, but that's made up for in the greater power plant efficiencies.
Also try to remember the energy problem isn't simply one of "energy efficiency". It's about the source of the fuel, the CO2 emitted, and how centralized the emissions source is. Gasoline or diesel comes from oil. We've likely reached peak oil production right now. Power plants producing electricity can use any number of different sources of energy. Many of the sources of oil in the world aren't exactly the places we should be throwing tons of money at.
I don't know about the grids ability to support electric cars, though I've seen some studies suggesting that it could if people charged over-night and not at peak times.
No thanks. If I didn't care about my safety I'd just buy a motorcycle rather than something that looks like it came from an issue of Popular Mechanics 20 years ago.
I would feel better if they were making an AFFORDABLE economical vehicle that would benefit the majority of Americans
I'd feel better too. But look at price for any new technology, and then look at them again 10 years later. In general prices go down drastically. The hope is that the same is true for electric cars.
Think about it this way though. We spent billions of dollars in WWII to make things that literally destroyed themselves and other things, people, and infra-structure. Then we spent billions of dollars AFTER WWII to rebuild all the shit in Europe we blew up. What was the ultimate economic benefit from making all the shit to blow stuff up, then paying again to fix all the shit we blew up? (Ignoring all the obvious good of destroying Nazi Germany, ending the Holocaust, and stopping the Japanese from taking over much of Asia).
I don't completely disagree with you, but you might want to take price into consideration as well. The Model S is supposed to retail for $57,000. The Volt is supposed to retail for $40,000. Both have a $7500 tax credit attached to them.
Which do you think is more affordable for the average person? A $33,000 car, or a $50,000 car? Neither is an acceptable answer, but at least the Volt is in the ballpark.
A 40 mile electric charge range ain't bad. On most days I don't drive more than 40 miles, and I commute to work every workday. If I were making the choice between them, I'd easily choose the Volt over the Model S and do something else with the $17,000 in savings (hell, you could buy a whole other car for that if you were so inclined). In reality I'll buy neither of them, but at least it's a start.
How does a company that makes $1,000,000 in profit over 1 full year, get 465 Million dollars in loans from our government?
The same way the banks got billions of dollars of loans that LOST billions of dollars. A failing economy.
You're right that it doesn't make a lot of sense from a loan perspective. But I at least feel better about money going towards developing a product that may help out ongoing energy problems than it going towards lining the pockets of investors and million dollar bonuses for bank executives.
The whole thing is part of the economic stimulus of the economy. The idea being that in a down economy nobody wants to spend money.. because the economy is down (so the process self-perpetuates). The only entity that can afford to spend a lot of money in a down economy is The Government. The massive government spending that occurred to produce all the crap for WWII is the only thing that got us out of the depression.
Is there additional exposure through using Google? Are Google internal security practices likely to be better than yours?
I think these are ultimately the real questions to answer.
Unfortunately getting a REAL answer for them is likely impossible. Sure, Google could give you an answer, but what assurances do you have it's right? What assurances do you have that it will continue to be a correct answer? At least your internal practices can be identified and quantified. With Google, all you have is Google's word, and possibly an auditor paid by Google.
So since we're unlikely to get any real answers we make stuff up and rely on intuition.
Frankly, I think IT people are just way to paranoid about security in general. Data is almost always completely useless to all but a few people. Sorry guys, but a hard drive just isn't the same thing as a bank. Criminals care about money, not your cholesterol level or appendectomy. In other words the guy storing large amounts of credit card numbers is much more at threat than your doctor. Thinking about security without thinking about the actual threats involved is pointless.
Perhaps you should stop sighing, and start actually presenting real evidence rather than just assuming everyone knows about your experiences with solar panels.
Anyway, did you ever suspect that maybe you aren't a very good installer, you're using an inferior product, or you're just "unlucky"? Sorry, but your experiences are anecdotal at best. I'm not exactly sure why you think you NEED an EROI of at least 10-20 (perhaps this is another moment where you'll sigh because not everyone thinks the same things as you).
I'm really tired of this argument that hasn't stood up to experiment. Tax rates for the very wealthy are the lowest they've been in decades.. yet here we sit in the middle of a recession. Tax rates for the wealthy were astronomical in the 50s and 60s, yet these were economic boom times. Tax rates were higher for the wealthy in the 90s than they are now, yet we had very low unemployment.
So I'd just like to know how you can explain the data with your theory. You can argue about what you think people WOULD do all day long. I could argue against you just as effectively. The truth is we've already run these experiments over long periods of time. The "raise taxes and you'll kill jobs" argument is just a lot of bullshit designed to scare people without historical knowledge.
How many times do we have to try the same thing over and over before we realize it ain't working? Lower taxes and you'll create jobs! De-regulate everything and everyone will be rich! Then just repeat the word socialism a thousand times. Rinse, repeat.
If that isn't an elitist and offensive attitude, i don't know what is.
Heh. I find this very funny. So when a liberal offends a conservative, the liberal is an "elitist". What do we call a conservative who's offending the liberal? (I'd really like to know so I can start throwing it out their and accusing people of it).
I'd also like to know when "elitist" entered the vocabulary as a huge insult and largely applies to "liberals" (and strangely not the super-rich wing of the Republican party).
What a great way to fix a recession caused by people who got into too much debt buying houses they could not afford! Let's make them get rid of their cars and buy new ones for more debt!
As a long term policy, I couldn't agree more. The recession is a short term problem however. In the short term it makes sense for the government to borrow money to stimulate the economy to prevent it from collapsing. In the long term we have to fix the underlying problems of people borrowing too much and living beyond their means.
The other problem you don't mention (and which is the REAL problem IMO) is the financial institutions who lent the money in the first place to people they shouldn't have. The conservatives get all snooty about "personal responsibility", fairness and morality and such. Unfortunately you can't run a country on "personal responsibility" (which seems to be defined by whomever is uttering the phrase). What you can do is define a set of rules that protect the economy from people betting their gains against everyone elses losses. Re-enacting some of the controls on financial institutions that went up after the depression, and were slowly dismantled over the last 20 years might be a good start.
So your argument is that people aren't going to be around in 4 years, the solar panel will be destroyed in 4 years, or we won't need electricity in 4 years? Complaining about the calculation being at the equator is silly without a real calculation of the payback in North America.
Baloney. The cars being traded in aren't long for this world anyway. The glass in a window essentially lasts forever. The broken window fallacy simply doesn't apply here. There's several other problems with this fallacy, outlined below.
Funny you should mention windows though. There's another stimulus plan for tax credits on energy efficient windows. I happen to have 6 windows that are all rotten and in need of replacement. I likely would have bought the cheapest window I could get that'd last, but with a 30% tax credit I chose the energy efficient model. Also, I likely could have waited another few years to replace them if I wanted t, but the stimulus plan means I have to do it this year or next.
The point being, I have to replace my windows ANYWAY. Doing it NOW rather than in a few years helps the economy when it needs help. I also gain the economic benefit of more energy efficient windows, which puts more money in my pocket to spend on other things. The broken window fallacy addresses none of these economic benefits.
I'm still not in favor of this "stimulus". Not only is it for a group of people that have older cars. But it rewards those who were too irresponsible to buy "fuel efficient" cars to begin with.
Do you really think the original owners of these vehicles are the ones cashing them in? Unlikely. Not everyone has the luxury of making decisions based on long-term savings. Also, life isn't fair. Get over it. Honestly, 5 years ago you could have gone out and bought a Hummer, and now you can trade it in, and get a discount on your next purchase.
Well, technically you're right, but it'd be an economically foolish thing to do. You'd only get $3500 for it. The trade in value for a 2004 Hummer is somewhere around $18,000. Frankly if someone is willing to eat almost $15,000 of loss to crush a Hummer I'll forgive them for being the douche-bag that bought the thing in the first place. Hell, I'd contribute a couple bucks if I could see the thing being crushed.
So you note a source for what essentially refutes your point (a site that debunks the "no energy gain from solar panels", but you have no source of information for this NEW claim you seem to be making, nor even any actual calculations or numbers.
Not exactly a bulletproof argument you have their.
That's just a LOT of worry and speculation about something that we don't even know about yet. I haven't heard anything about dealerships not getting the cash for their voucher. I haven't even heard that this is a real possibility. Can you provide a reference that this is either happening, or a real possibility? Otherwise it sounds like you're just making this up.
The plan is primarily designed to stimulate the auto-industry, not save on fuel. The plan has two effects. A new car is purchased, and an old car is crushed. By taking an old car off the market it creates a shortage in the used car market for cars. This will likely raise the price of used cars, and make buying new cars more attractive.
The fuel economy part is really just a way to sell it and get it passed. It might not have a huge impact on lowering oil consumption as people might just drive more because it's cheaper and they now have a new more reliable car.
And CentOS relying on one person for as much as seemingly their very existence (by their own tone over this issue) has absolutely guaranteed that I will never use CentOS for anything important.
If by "CentOS" you're talking about the Centos.org domain and some IRC channels, you're right. If by "CentOS" you mean updating and developing the operating system, you're wrong. Any open source project is always about the developers behind it. There are many developers involved in this project, and the project itself isn't dependent any any one of them.
My guess is the thing you care about is the OS and not a domain name. Drawing conclusions from tone and not facts is just a bad practice in general.
Many electric providers charge a base "connection" fee to all customers to cover the costs of maintaining the connection, billing, etc.
I'd be surprised if all providers didn't already do that. Every utility bill I receive has a base charge on it.
What you're missing is that the article doesn't say if Denver residents are already paying a base fee or not. If they are, this is a special added fee just for solar households. It's a poor article. I wouldn't try to draw many conclusions from the lack of facts available.
Slashdot Mirror
The cross-contamination comes from high-speed counting devices in banks becoming contaminated. They then spread the cocaine to other bills as they're counted. This isn't anything new. I think I first heard about this at least 15 years ago.
The article is about the contamination rate going up. The implication is drug use is up. The other possibility is the spreading mechanism is more efficient for whatever reason. (Different machines, less machines? Stickier cocaine?). Assuming drug usage is up without knowing if anything else has changed in this uncontrolled experiment is potentially very misleading.
Today's guilty plea should have a lasting effect because Kaplan was not only the founder of BetOnSports, he was also one of the pioneers of illegal online gambling.'"
Yup.. the lasting effect will be operations that are entirely offshore and run by people not U.S. citizens will take over the online gambling industry.
The only effect here is to kill off the U.S. businesses that do this. Does the Federal Government really think it's going to stop every country with an internet connection from hosting a freaking gambling website?
I suspect that, since this is a plug-in, they're "fudging" (more like "outright lying about") the figures by only counting actual gasoline used in day-to-day use.
Of course that's the way they're doing it. What else would you expect? Electrical usage isn't measured in "gallons". It's only deceptive if you really thought someone could magically convert electrical energy into gallons of gasoline.
You'd also be surprised at how much society relies on the ability of its people to trust each other. This is what pranksters and scammers rely on.
I don't really agree that this is about trusting strangers. All these pranks are about instilling fear and then providing a means to alleviate that fear. That's really a lot more about the fear and panic than it is about trust.
I'd like a society where we trust and help each other.
I guess.. It's a nice thought, but little more than that. Blindly trusting people you don't know is just a bad idea in general. They might not even be "scammers", but just someone who puts their own interests far and above any of yours.
The thing we don't hear is how many people these douche-bags had to go through to get a sucker. The article makes it sound like they pick up the phone and immediately get a sucker willing to do anything they tell them.
At competitive rates you'd have to sell tens of thousands just to keep a single person employed to maintain the TLD, never mind having some money to give away.
Competitive rates compared to what?
All these new TLDs serve nothing more than either vanity, or marketing purposes. .com .net and .org don't provide that same marketing/vanity. I do think you're right that this is a niche market and they won't sell a lot of domains. That means the price is going to be higher.
The efficiency of converting gas into kinetic energy is relatively high, as far as energy conversions go. Converting fuels into electricity is far less efficient
No really. A power plant is far more efficient at converting energy into a usable form than a gas-combustion engine. Power plants are in the range of 36-40% efficient. An internal combustion engine is around 18-20% efficient. That's a factor of 2 times more efficient for a power plant. Power plants are essentially always going to be more efficient than a gas/diesel engine simply because you can have much higher temperatures in a large scale plant than you can ever achieve in a small engine. You're right that you'll lose a bit in the batteries, but that's made up for in the greater power plant efficiencies.
A couple references about effiency:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_combustion_engine#Energy_efficiency
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_power_plant
Also try to remember the energy problem isn't simply one of "energy efficiency". It's about the source of the fuel, the CO2 emitted, and how centralized the emissions source is. Gasoline or diesel comes from oil. We've likely reached peak oil production right now. Power plants producing electricity can use any number of different sources of energy. Many of the sources of oil in the world aren't exactly the places we should be throwing tons of money at.
I don't know about the grids ability to support electric cars, though I've seen some studies suggesting that it could if people charged over-night and not at peak times.
No thanks. If I didn't care about my safety I'd just buy a motorcycle rather than something that looks like it came from an issue of Popular Mechanics 20 years ago.
I would feel better if they were making an AFFORDABLE economical vehicle that would benefit the majority of Americans
I'd feel better too. But look at price for any new technology, and then look at them again 10 years later. In general prices go down drastically. The hope is that the same is true for electric cars.
Think about it this way though. We spent billions of dollars in WWII to make things that literally destroyed themselves and other things, people, and infra-structure. Then we spent billions of dollars AFTER WWII to rebuild all the shit in Europe we blew up. What was the ultimate economic benefit from making all the shit to blow stuff up, then paying again to fix all the shit we blew up? (Ignoring all the obvious good of destroying Nazi Germany, ending the Holocaust, and stopping the Japanese from taking over much of Asia).
I don't completely disagree with you, but you might want to take price into consideration as well. The Model S is supposed to retail for $57,000. The Volt is supposed to retail for $40,000. Both have a $7500 tax credit attached to them.
Which do you think is more affordable for the average person? A $33,000 car, or a $50,000 car? Neither is an acceptable answer, but at least the Volt is in the ballpark.
A 40 mile electric charge range ain't bad. On most days I don't drive more than 40 miles, and I commute to work every workday. If I were making the choice between them, I'd easily choose the Volt over the Model S and do something else with the $17,000 in savings (hell, you could buy a whole other car for that if you were so inclined). In reality I'll buy neither of them, but at least it's a start.
How does a company that makes $1,000,000 in profit over 1 full year, get 465 Million dollars in loans from our government?
The same way the banks got billions of dollars of loans that LOST billions of dollars. A failing economy.
You're right that it doesn't make a lot of sense from a loan perspective. But I at least feel better about money going towards developing a product that may help out ongoing energy problems than it going towards lining the pockets of investors and million dollar bonuses for bank executives.
The whole thing is part of the economic stimulus of the economy. The idea being that in a down economy nobody wants to spend money.. because the economy is down (so the process self-perpetuates). The only entity that can afford to spend a lot of money in a down economy is The Government. The massive government spending that occurred to produce all the crap for WWII is the only thing that got us out of the depression.
How about "STOP FUCKING PEOPLE WHO AREN'T YOUR WIFE/GIRLFRIED/SIGNIFIGANT OTHER!"
Translation: If only people would act the way I want them to act instead of the way they actually DO act, there wouldn't be a problem.
Uh huh. You've just given a non-solution to every problem in the world.
Is there additional exposure through using Google? Are Google internal security practices likely to be better than yours?
I think these are ultimately the real questions to answer.
Unfortunately getting a REAL answer for them is likely impossible. Sure, Google could give you an answer, but what assurances do you have it's right? What assurances do you have that it will continue to be a correct answer? At least your internal practices can be identified and quantified. With Google, all you have is Google's word, and possibly an auditor paid by Google.
So since we're unlikely to get any real answers we make stuff up and rely on intuition.
Frankly, I think IT people are just way to paranoid about security in general. Data is almost always completely useless to all but a few people. Sorry guys, but a hard drive just isn't the same thing as a bank. Criminals care about money, not your cholesterol level or appendectomy. In other words the guy storing large amounts of credit card numbers is much more at threat than your doctor. Thinking about security without thinking about the actual threats involved is pointless.
Perhaps you should stop sighing, and start actually presenting real evidence rather than just assuming everyone knows about your experiences with solar panels.
Anyway, did you ever suspect that maybe you aren't a very good installer, you're using an inferior product, or you're just "unlucky"? Sorry, but your experiences are anecdotal at best. I'm not exactly sure why you think you NEED an EROI of at least 10-20 (perhaps this is another moment where you'll sigh because not everyone thinks the same things as you).
I'm really tired of this argument that hasn't stood up to experiment. Tax rates for the very wealthy are the lowest they've been in decades.. yet here we sit in the middle of a recession. Tax rates for the wealthy were astronomical in the 50s and 60s, yet these were economic boom times. Tax rates were higher for the wealthy in the 90s than they are now, yet we had very low unemployment.
So I'd just like to know how you can explain the data with your theory. You can argue about what you think people WOULD do all day long. I could argue against you just as effectively. The truth is we've already run these experiments over long periods of time. The "raise taxes and you'll kill jobs" argument is just a lot of bullshit designed to scare people without historical knowledge.
How many times do we have to try the same thing over and over before we realize it ain't working? Lower taxes and you'll create jobs! De-regulate everything and everyone will be rich! Then just repeat the word socialism a thousand times. Rinse, repeat.
If that isn't an elitist and offensive attitude, i don't know what is.
Heh. I find this very funny. So when a liberal offends a conservative, the liberal is an "elitist". What do we call a conservative who's offending the liberal? (I'd really like to know so I can start throwing it out their and accusing people of it).
I'd also like to know when "elitist" entered the vocabulary as a huge insult and largely applies to "liberals" (and strangely not the super-rich wing of the Republican party).
What a great way to fix a recession caused by people who got into too much debt buying houses they could not afford! Let's make them get rid of their cars and buy new ones for more debt!
As a long term policy, I couldn't agree more. The recession is a short term problem however. In the short term it makes sense for the government to borrow money to stimulate the economy to prevent it from collapsing. In the long term we have to fix the underlying problems of people borrowing too much and living beyond their means.
The other problem you don't mention (and which is the REAL problem IMO) is the financial institutions who lent the money in the first place to people they shouldn't have. The conservatives get all snooty about "personal responsibility", fairness and morality and such. Unfortunately you can't run a country on "personal responsibility" (which seems to be defined by whomever is uttering the phrase). What you can do is define a set of rules that protect the economy from people betting their gains against everyone elses losses. Re-enacting some of the controls on financial institutions that went up after the depression, and were slowly dismantled over the last 20 years might be a good start.
So your argument is that people aren't going to be around in 4 years, the solar panel will be destroyed in 4 years, or we won't need electricity in 4 years? Complaining about the calculation being at the equator is silly without a real calculation of the payback in North America.
Baloney. The cars being traded in aren't long for this world anyway. The glass in a window essentially lasts forever. The broken window fallacy simply doesn't apply here. There's several other problems with this fallacy, outlined below.
Funny you should mention windows though. There's another stimulus plan for tax credits on energy efficient windows. I happen to have 6 windows that are all rotten and in need of replacement. I likely would have bought the cheapest window I could get that'd last, but with a 30% tax credit I chose the energy efficient model. Also, I likely could have waited another few years to replace them if I wanted t, but the stimulus plan means I have to do it this year or next.
The point being, I have to replace my windows ANYWAY. Doing it NOW rather than in a few years helps the economy when it needs help. I also gain the economic benefit of more energy efficient windows, which puts more money in my pocket to spend on other things. The broken window fallacy addresses none of these economic benefits.
I'm still not in favor of this "stimulus". Not only is it for a group of people that have older cars. But it rewards those who were too irresponsible to buy "fuel efficient" cars to begin with.
Do you really think the original owners of these vehicles are the ones cashing them in? Unlikely. Not everyone has the luxury of making decisions based on long-term savings. Also, life isn't fair. Get over it.
Honestly, 5 years ago you could have gone out and bought a Hummer, and now you can trade it in, and get a discount on your next purchase.
Well, technically you're right, but it'd be an economically foolish thing to do. You'd only get $3500 for it. The trade in value for a 2004 Hummer is somewhere around $18,000. Frankly if someone is willing to eat almost $15,000 of loss to crush a Hummer I'll forgive them for being the douche-bag that bought the thing in the first place. Hell, I'd contribute a couple bucks if I could see the thing being crushed.
So you note a source for what essentially refutes your point (a site that debunks the "no energy gain from solar panels", but you have no source of information for this NEW claim you seem to be making, nor even any actual calculations or numbers.
Not exactly a bulletproof argument you have their.
That's likely true as well. It'll hurt the oil industry a little, but I don't think they really need a lot of help at the moment.
That's just a LOT of worry and speculation about something that we don't even know about yet. I haven't heard anything about dealerships not getting the cash for their voucher. I haven't even heard that this is a real possibility. Can you provide a reference that this is either happening, or a real possibility? Otherwise it sounds like you're just making this up.
The plan is primarily designed to stimulate the auto-industry, not save on fuel. The plan has two effects. A new car is purchased, and an old car is crushed. By taking an old car off the market it creates a shortage in the used car market for cars. This will likely raise the price of used cars, and make buying new cars more attractive.
The fuel economy part is really just a way to sell it and get it passed. It might not have a huge impact on lowering oil consumption as people might just drive more because it's cheaper and they now have a new more reliable car.
And CentOS relying on one person for as much as seemingly their very existence (by their own tone over this issue) has absolutely guaranteed that I will never use CentOS for anything important.
If by "CentOS" you're talking about the Centos.org domain and some IRC channels, you're right. If by "CentOS" you mean updating and developing the operating system, you're wrong. Any open source project is always about the developers behind it. There are many developers involved in this project, and the project itself isn't dependent any any one of them.
My guess is the thing you care about is the OS and not a domain name. Drawing conclusions from tone and not facts is just a bad practice in general.
Many electric providers charge a base "connection" fee to all customers to cover the costs of maintaining the connection, billing, etc.
I'd be surprised if all providers didn't already do that. Every utility bill I receive has a base charge on it.
What you're missing is that the article doesn't say if Denver residents are already paying a base fee or not. If they are, this is a special added fee just for solar households. It's a poor article. I wouldn't try to draw many conclusions from the lack of facts available.