I'm a Tesla owner AND I have PV solar on my roof. But I think it's pretty clear, once you really look at the facts, that all the subsidies aren't too practical.
We're still early enough in the technology curve for EVs so they cost a premium price to purchase, and have more "hidden costs" that are less often talked about. (EG. You probably need to upgrade the electrical power in your garage so you can charge one of these cars without it taking 2 days to charge back up.) If you compromise on the costs, buying a less capable EV, the trade-off is range and quite likely, battery longevity. (Your Nissan Leaf or Smart4Two electric has no cooling system for the battery pack.) That means, you're talking about a customer-base who can afford to buy one either with or without the tax breaks.
Meanwhile, the fact that government DOES offer the breaks or subsidies acts as a negative to some of the folks who haven't purchased one yet. They view it as indicating the technology isn't ready for prime-time yet, if it needs those breaks to make good economic sense.
As per usual, I think government needs to just step aside and stop trying to influence what consumers freely choose to buy with their money. I bought my used Tesla because I thought the performance was unbeatable in the price range (0-60MPH times on these are amazing) and because I liked all the technology in the car. Nobody else gives you an iPad sized LCD display in the dash, from the factory! It also makes your expenses a little more consistent and predictable. The monthly car payment is about 2x what I used to pay, but you know what to expect each month. You don't get dinged here and there, all month long, as you pay for gasoline you use, and oil changes are a thing of the past. It's not likely to go through more than maybe 1 set of brake pads during its whole life, since regen braking means they get used very lightly. There's no complex transmission to wear out or need maintenance either.
My workplace recently had a challenge. Our Finance dept. had been using a couple of Windows software applications made by EMC for the purpose of scanning in, indexing and providing view access to checks and invoices. Back when all of these were first set up, EMC allowed people to license them individually and use them as "building blocks" for your own document handling solutions. We hired a consulting firm to make them work in tandem with the Great Plains accounting package.
Since then, it seems that EMC has become more focused on selling them as a bundled document management solution. Problem is? As we've upgraded Windows past 7 and on to 10, it broke compatibility with these programs. On the server side, we can't even do all of the latest . NET upgrades or security patches without it causing problems. The cost to pay for the upgrades and support licenses to get current versions of the tools is way more than we can justify for what we do with them. So we decided to migrate to a new solution.
The first big stumbling block to migration was exporting all of our existing scanned images. Apparently, a really oddball version of TIFF was implemented in the EMC software and nothing else was able to open the files. We we able to contact GraphicsConverter's author and he took up the challenge of reverse engineering the file format and adding support to his software package. Thanks to that effort, we could finally set up a batch conversion using GraphicsConverter!
IMO, it really is the premiere application out there, regardless of OS platform, for viewing and working with just about ALL image formats out there. If his software can't work with it, he's willing to make it happen -- even this long after developing the product.
But it doesn't even HAVE to be NASA anymore. That's the real beauty of things. Every time Space-X launches another rocket, it helps emphasize that even space travel has become a technology that's not so difficult to manage, it requires government taking a big portion of the nation's taxes to fund it by mandate.
We're reaching the point where one of several private businesses might be the first to put people on Mars.
But overall, yeah -- people all know about NASA putting people on the moon back in the late 1960's and 70's -- so sending some unmanned probes out a little further isn't that amazing. It's going to take human beings making the trip to step things up past what was done previously.
I live in a small town that was absent a real grocery store for years. We had both a Family Dollar and a Dollar General though. Guess what? Grocery stores weren't deciding not to come here because those dollar stores were too difficult to compete with!
It was simply a matter of analyzing the economics. Our population is only around 6,000 -- and you don't add more than a few thousand others if you add the next town over from us, along with people on the other side of the river, who live in another small town, in another state.
We finally DID get a full size grocery store here, but only because it was part of a long-term plan for a planned community of new homes that have been getting built on the outer edge of town for 5 years or so. They waited out the economic depression before constructing it, but decided it was feasible to do now.
Both dollar stores are doing about as much business as ever, BTW. They're simply the cheaper places to go for your toiletries and household items. Plus, they're more flexible in adjusting their inventory to the local community's needs. Family Dollar, out here, turns into a pretty respectable toy store around Christmastime, and then scales that back afterwards. They'll turn into a one-stop shop for your basic gardening and outdoor BBQ needs when the weather gets nicer. They NEVER claimed to be a place to buy your fresh foods though. They're just convenient for the non-perishables like you might grab to put in your kid's school lunch, or when you need something in a pinch.
I've seen these rants before about "food deserts" and the usual insinuation that racism and "white privilege" has something to do with it. Sorry, but no.... This stuff happens when either A) you live in a more rural or smaller town and the total population isn't enough for the grocery chains to cost-justify coming in, or B) you live in a high crime neighborhood that runs out the large grocers because of all the extra burdens it places on them. (I used to live in one of those areas too, and things like the requirement to hire armed security guards to patrol the parking lot and entrance, plus the fact the crime scared a lot of people off from trying to shop there in the first place, made it unsustainable for them.)
Yeah.... ok. I still stick by my original opinion here, on this one.
If everyone is going to go all "ban crazy" because they have a fear of the very slight chance of a drone falling from the sky and landing on their head in some manner? I think we, as a society, need to re-evaluate our priorities and concerns!
It's probably just as likely someone will get injured by a parade vehicle that accidentally hits someone, or a person who falls off of a moving float.
And it's rather insulting to pretend that "professionals" are somehow immune to the small risks of drones causing problems in public settings. But sure, keep on kidding yourself that "adhering to strict guidelines" will prevent any battery or electrical failures in their drones, or prevent any bird attacks on them.
I figure if I fly a drone and the thing does malfunction and hits somebody? That's just one of those risks taken in the name of actually getting outdoors in public and doing things. It used to be, most people saw it that same way. (EG. If a drone hits ME and injures me in some freak accident, I would probably chalk it up to bad luck and go treat my injury. MAYBE I'd pursue asking the drone operator if they'd be willing to pay part of my medical expenses, if it came to that.) I guess these days, you risk some idiot trying to get lawyers involved, thinking he or she is owed your home, car, and all your belongings if said drone touches their body? I'm sure not going to support restricting activities just because of those people.....
I noticed you keep harping on the fact I wanted to "fly my drone over a parade with a crowd of people", as though such a thing is terrible behavior.
In reality, our town only has a total population of about 6,000 and it's far from the WHOLE town that shows up at these parades. Additionally, there is usually someone flying a drone at these events to capture them on video so people can enjoy viewing it later on Facebook. (Our city has its own Facebook group.)
It has never posed a problem, and most people in town know exactly who the drone operator is, because he's pretty much the only one here (besides me) who owns a decent quality drone you could use reliably for videography purposes.
If I flew mine at such an event, it would just be because I knew the other guy was out of town, sick, or otherwise unable to make it to video record it for us.
If you look at the small size and weight of a Mavic Pro or similar drone, they're not going to do any harm even if if they crash land into a crowd and hit someone on the head. And that's a total worst case scenario that really shouldn't happen anyway. (If these lose radio connectivity, they default to hovering in place, as opposed to continuing to follow any previous flight directions that might cause it to head into obstacles.) It's also not like I'd fly it right over everybody so it could fall straight down onto them. It's easily possible to fly along side the road, where a crash would just land it in someone's unoccupied back yard or an empty lot.
I wouldn't say the drones worth flying, today, are exactly cheap. Yes, they're smart enough to make takeoff and landing a "no brainer". Way easier than the R/C stuff of the past.
But you're still usually putting out around a $1000 investment by the time you buy your drone accessories and the drone itself. The real cheap stuff out there doesn't even have enough battery life to be relevant. Those are just toys to fly around your house for 5 minutes at a time, basically.
Considering the risk of your $600-1200 investment just suddenly dropping into a body of water, never to be recovered again, or crashing into trees and being destroyed, or ?? I think that, alone, should be a sobering enough thought so people exercise a little bit of sense in where and how they fly them....
It seems like the exceptions get all the media attention, because "it's not news until somebody gets hurt or angry". But a whole lot of drones have been sold, relative to the very random, occasional story of somebody really causing problems with one. I really think this is a case of a small minority of bad actors ruining things for 99% of the owners/users.
Except for coordinated events like "drone races" held at specific places, I've *never* seen drones just littering the sky by the dozens!
The reality is, the radio signals alone tend to limit how many can be operated well in a given space. I'm not going to even attempt to keep flying my drone if 12 other people, often flying other DJI branded products, are nearby with other ones! Too easy to lose control of it.
It saddens me that people can't seem to use common sense anymore. I mean, we're complaining that the drone owners aren't acting sensibly, but the people enforcing the rules at our parks and other public places are just as bad if their only solution is "Ban all of them!".
The sound of one or even two drones operating in a large open space in a national or state park is NOT going to be a real noise problem. If that's too much for people, they better damn well ban any cars or motorcycles from driving in too! All you need to do is have park rangers use *common sense* and put a stop to problems like a dozen drone operators stupidly trying to fly in the same spot, in the park.
Here in the U.S., it's getting harder and harder to enjoy flying a drone as a hobby, thanks to the combination of paranoia over drones and the legitimate problem of people flying them in places they obviously shouldn't be flying (around airports, for example!).
It's gotten so you can't even legally use one, period, if you live in Washington DC. They've marked off the entire area as restricted airspace for them.
And as a DJI Mavic Pro owner myself, one of my first thoughts was, "Well, surely I can take one of these to any park, at least. That's where everyone went to fly kites back when I was a kid. Lots of open space and often some good scenery worth capturing on video during a flight." But no! So many of the State and National parks are starting to ban drone usage too!
Even when our local community had their annual Veteran's Day Parade, I wanted to use my drone to capture an overhead view of all the floats and vehicles going down our main street. But I had second thoughts, because there was local chatter about a drone flying overhead possibly making war veterans in the parade nervous.
If my dad was still alive to see this, I'm sure he'd be really agitated about all the regulations. He grew up building gasoline powered model airplanes and later, got his pilot's license... and would NEVER go along with all of these restrictions on private individuals flying drones for fun.
I'm really just picking on IBM because they're so predictably known for either A) giving up on good, solid technologies they sold, or B) supporting legacy products past the length of time they make logical sense to keep using. (Again, a lot of places are going to do that because change is hard and brings uncertainty and a need to re-train people. But still -- when you look at situations like government offices suffering along with ancient systems? You think IBM, because they're one of the few companies who still supports that stuff.)
As long as I've really been into computing, IBM has been known for generating loads of patents and coming up with great ideas. It's just their follow-through that I often question. As a big OS/2 user, back in the day, that was an excellent example. All the OS/2 users LOVED the product *despite* the constant sense that IBM never did. IBM would sell new PCs that came pre-loaded with Windows NT but weren't even OS/2 compatible if you WANTED to run that on one instead!
One could also say that's where things went with Lotus Notes and the rest of the "SmartSuite" of theirs. Great, iconic applications there -- yet constantly relegated to "also ran" status, only because IBM management never seemed committed to continually refreshing the software and staying innovative with it. I used to love using the AMI Pro word processor. Just a better overall UI and feel than Microsoft Word. But they let it die on the vine....
And what about the (also iconic) IBM Thinkpad line of notebooks? They just decided they didn't want to sell that kind of hardware anymore and sold it all off to Lenovo. Well -- to date, it sure looks to me like Lenovo can still turn a profit making them. And that was truly the only IBM product line of PCs used by consumers that still had real respect. (Nobody I know was ever that excited by the IBM desktop PC lineups out there. But MANY still rave about all the design choices and durability of the Thinkpad line.)
I don't think you understand the difference between atheist and agnostic, to make that comment.....
Atheists, especially in recent times, are treating their belief in NO higher power as a religion of its own. Many actively try to "preach" it to others, to save them from their various religions.
I have a problem with all of that, because I think it's entirely possible that there either is or WAS a "higher power" of some sort involved in the creation of the universe as we know it. I don't have any way to prove that there isn't a god of some sort out there, so it's irresponsible of me to tell everyone else who thinks so that they're wrong.
I don't, however, like any of the organized religions because I don't find any of them compelling. So many of them were either created out of thin air or were spun off of other, older ones. Many hold beliefs that completely contradict others, too -- so at least some of them have to be wrong. (If you believe in, say, reincarnation? That conflicts with pretty much every Christian religion that tells you your soul transcends your body at death and goes to a "heaven", a "hell" or a "purgatory". You either get more chances on this Earth in new bodies/forms or you don't.)
Honestly, it's been years since I worked with a place that used Oracle as a database. Clearly, it's deployed in a lot of large scale operations out there. But my hunch is, many of them will keep using it as long as it remains a supported option - simply because you don't want to risk your business changing something established, that works.
It doesn't really matter if databases hosted via AWS are as good or better? What you have going on out there is a lot of people choosing AWS hosting for NEW projects that get deployed. If they're going to do something new and "cloudified", AWS is a primary candidate for the job.
Oracle's database is becoming a legacy product, much like a lot of IBM's offerings in the minicomputer days. When you're the size of an operation like eBay or a major airline and everything runs on Oracle databases, you're not going to be quick to tear that all out and try to reconstruct it on a different platform. So they have a nearly guaranteed revenue stream from it for years to come. But yeah, it's "90's tech" at this point and people aren't clamoring to roll out brand new projects that are powered by Oracle databases on the back end.
Since we just came out of an economic depression, you probably have a lot of people who got new/better jobs less than a full year ago, so they wouldn't be receiving a pay raise by the time this survey was taken.
But that said? I feel like much of this "recovery" was just a return to normal, coupled with a reactionary stock market that inflated the worth of businesses beyond what was rational, based on little more than political hyperbole or irrational fears by investors.
IMO, we're about to feel the negative results of that stock market generated valuation bubble as it undergoes a correction. That could, in turn, sink us into yet ANOTHER depression in 2019.
The big "elephant in the room" is the massively increasing debt our government is carrying. They're predicting by 2023, over 40% of all student loans issued will be in default. At some point, that's going to become such a contentious issue, I can see it causing a tipping point where Americans all demand loan forgiveness and free college educations for all citizens. There's no conceivable way the nation can sustain all of that debt while keeping taxation somewhat under control.
Our politicians and Federal Reserve banking folks seem like they're experts at kicking the can down the curb a little further, each time it looks like things are going to come to a head and implode, financially. But at SOME point, when the rest of the world realizes we owe more than we can even produce in exportable goods or services? We're going to hit a point of no return.
People constantly complain about the wage disparity and how MUCH money the rich business owners keep making. But the problem is, they're also the ones really holding things together. (If your nation is trying to justify going even deeper into debt to keep operating and providing all the things the public demands of it? You need to stay in close communication with all of these big corporation heads, who are promising to make the things that can be sold to justify it.) . The government can't convince other nations to keep using the US dollar as a valid currency, otherwise.
My wife is Jewish (while I'm agnostic -- former Roman Catholic).
One thing I've come to realize about Judaism is, they have a lot of rabbis and "fervently religious" who seem to believe a big part of the faith involves a lot of poring over scriptures and making philosophical declarations about what they do or don't mean for fellow Jews.
IMO, some of it borders on the ridiculous, with all the rituals they put themselves through to make sure they're not violating them.... But I suppose that's easy for me to say as an "outsider"? (I'm also convinced that part of the attraction to Judaism is the feeling that they're part of a closer-knit community BECAUSE they have so many strange customs. You know how HAM radio geeks seem to take a strange pride in knowing all sorts of esoteric stuff about radio waves and antenna design? Yeah... kinda like that.)
But frankly, the different factions of Jews (Conservative, Orthodox, Reform, etc.) appear to me to have come about because there were various levels of commitment people were willing to give to all of these rules, too. People still felt an identity as a Jew but didn't always agree on how much ritual they had to go through as part of it.....
So I'm sure this debate on "lab grown meat" will rage on and on for them, with no conclusive answer that all Jews accept.
There's another guy selling a modification that enhances the newer Tesla's camera systems so you can effectively get a camera view 360 degrees around the vehicle, including a "bird's eye" top down view.
The headline makes it sound like a bad thing. But in reality, I have a lot of Facebook friends who are into news related to science and tech, as well as politics and current events. They're often posting URLs linking back to relevant news articles of interest. And especially these days, they're all rather careful to pick and choose the sources because of all the "Fake news!" backlash.
(Even if I already know about something that happened that's clearly legitimate news, like a celebrity death or a new tech announcement from Apple or Intel, I try to find a respected news site with the article to link to, vs. some blog page that covered it.)
Facebook is just kind of an aggregator of knowledge people feel like sharing. It helps me find news items of interest without sitting through a whole night's TV news broadcast to get only 30 second summaries of things, and a whole lot of "fluff" I don't care about at all.
The problem in America is, people still don't see EVs as cost-effective, practical alternatives to internal combustion engine vehicles in most cases!
That's something you can't fix by waving a one time tax credit at people, and really shouldn't attempt to do by mandating purchasing behaviors.
It's just the fact that EV technology still has to mature, like ALL technologies do. Your early adopters pay the premium prices that help fund mass-market viability.
(I can remember back in the early 1990's, paying over $1,200 for an internal CD burner drive. It was an HP 4020i, and only burned media at a 2x maximum speed. Now, you can buy these things off the shelf for about $25 and they record single or dual layer DVD as well as CD media at speeds of up to 52x! But back then, I had a real need for it and could justify that price. Most people couldn't.)
Electric cars still present some big challenges, like practically none of them existing yet that in a pickup truck or van format. If you need to make longer road trips, you barely have any viable options EXCEPT for Tesla, because they're the only one with a fast supercharging network that's built out well enough. (The GPS in the car automatically takes you to the nearest one when you won't make it to a destination otherwise, etc.) And we still barely even have any of America's gas stations on-board with adding EV charging at their locations! If American adopted EVs in any serious way, all of a sudden? There would be huge lines and people stuck waiting hours to recharge their vehicles, and cars with dead batteries stranded all over our roads.
I predict open floor-plan office trends will drive a large percentage of workers to work from home whenever possible. That, in turn, will help solve the problem of sitting for too long a time -- as you're more likely to get up and move around when you're at home. You can do things like throw a load of clothes in the wash, etc. while you work.
That has to be one of the worst ideas ever, except for one segment of employees.... creative types who benefit greatly from constant collaboration and bouncing ideas off of those around them.
Even for those people, we've started having issues where I work where they can't have any privacy while making or taking phone calls. Therefore, they've stopped using their desk phones and are now pushing us to get rid of them completely. They just want all their calls forwarded to their cellphones, so they can step out to take most of them. Seems a bit crazy, since desk phones are supposed to be there to ensure you get clear calls as often as possible, vs all the call interruptions and dropped calls you can run into on a cell.
If you've read the history of Huawei in America, it's been clear for some time that they only wanted a foot-hold in the USA in order to spy and infiltrate things.
Some years back, they appointed an American citizen as the president of their U.S. operations, and picked a guy who lived out in the midwest. He didn't look anything like the type you'd expect was in charge of a telecom business at all, and I'm pretty certain he was just selected because he was happy to get paid big money to go along with whatever he was told.
As long as the company kept cranking out super low-cost "pay as you go" Android smartphones, I guess most people didn't care? But I'll bet everything they make has back doors in it for spying on something or other.
I heard, years ago, that Apple had certain rules of what employees should say/not say to customers. I wouldn't want to work under those conditions, myself. But I'm also a middle aged guy who isn't going to do retail anyway, unless things get REALLY bad for me.
At the end of the day? I don't see why it should affect anything, if the "Apple Genius" says "does not work with" vs. "incompatible"? What matters is if you can get answers to your questions when you go there, and if they're providing adequate service.
Considering most computer products have no way to visit a retail establishment owned by the manufacturer at all? Apple already has a edge in this regard. Yes, Sony had some stores and Microsoft did a copy-cat thing. But I've purchased PC gaming system gear from the likes of Gigabyte or ASUS and had zero help when things were defective. They'd go so far as costing me postage to repeatedly mail in things as RMA, only to hold them for weeks, not even touching them, before returning them as "fixed". There's no network of retail stores for a Dell or an HP.
Honestly though? Apple retail has taken pretty good care of my Mac issues over the years. Just recently, I brought in a keyboard cover for an original iPad Pro because it started causing the iPad to repeatedly say "accessory not found" while it was attached. They gave me a brand new replacement one free, once I explained the problem. (Apparently, it was a known quality issue.)
Personally, I think it's kind of a great equalizer. There's really no reason some celebrity sports person or Hollywood actor/actress should have the special privilege of getting paid big money to do product endorsements, while the "average Joe", who might actually use and like the products, gets paid nothing for making personal recommendations.
If you can't make buying decisions without blindly following what people say on their homemade YouTube videos, you have bigger problems than someone not being legally required to disclose that they got paid for promoting what they're talking about online. But hey -- I think it's awesome if average people can make some good money creating their own online content. It's not like they have a whole studio backing up the production for them.
We live in a 2,400 square feet, 2 story house that was built back around 1905. It's been renovated several times over the years, with the most recent rehab done around 2012 when the owner installed 2 electric heat pumps; one for downstairs and one for upstairs. We don't have natural gas here, so everything in the home is electric including the stove, electric dryer and water heater.
I do have an HP Proliant server that runs 24/7 as a NAS. It runs Plex and NextCloud, as well as serving as a Time Machine backup destination. We have several other computers in the house that are running pretty often. Also have an electric car that I charge from a regular 120 volt outlet out in a detached garage.
In the coldest winter months, an electric bill can easily get up in the $500-600 range for a month, WITH the solar panels I've got in place.
Honestly? I suspect with many power companies in America, you're getting billed at a rate that nicely averages the cost to generate each kilowatt during the day and at night, so you just pay one flat rate and they make the profits they're seeking, while keeping the billing from getting more complex.
Also, as more people install grid-tied solar, there's a lot of surplus energy getting fed back into the system during most of the "peak" hours when the sun is shining. I've heard where as a general rule, the power companies start having problems when more than about 15% of the homes in a given neighborhood install solar. The grid can't efficiently transmit power for miles and miles. So a lot of energy generation from say 10AM to 2PM in residential neighborhoods means there's more power on that part of the grid than they have customers wanting to use it. (A lot of people are away at work during the week during those hours, don't forget.)
So what happens is that excess power generation just goes to waste, but the utility company is still required by law you pay you back for it by way of discounting your bill at the same rate you normally pay for it.
I don't think my experiences are all that obsolete or inapplicable, considering my own solar system is only a few years old now -- and much of what I've cited are just facts that you've brushed aside as irrelevant, since "they don't apply to a lot of people".
That $34,000 price estimate is for name-brand SunPower panels and inverters... which do cost a premium over getting any old Asian made panel or no-name inverter. I've heard a lot of horror stories already about the cheaper panels having drastic dropoffs in power output after they've aged as little as 5 years though. So that doesn't sound like much of a bargain.
I'm surprised that survey shows Missouri as getting more sun than Maryland does. I can tell you that relatively few people I knew there were too excited about the prospects of going solar, though. I have one friend who did, but he admits he was only driven by the desire to say he had a more "Green" home, and didn't care if it saved him money or not. Maybe it's more a combination of people tending to have properties with more trees shading things and utility rates that are relatively cheap? But I just knew at least in the St. Louis area, PV solar was a tough sell compared to up here.
As far as ground mounted solar panels go? Maybe there's an issue with installers who are only trained to do the roof type installations? I actually had a chunk of space by my garage in back where I wanted to ground mount a row of panels to get more power generation. I couldn't get the installer remotely interested in entertaining doing it! I was told things like, "Those have to take things like high winds into account more than a panel firmly affixed to a roof, and there's extra work involved burying the cabling for them."
When I had my panels put up, I suspected they'd have that benefit too of prolonging the life of the shingles under them.
Problem I ran into was, they didn't want to install panels that covered the entire roof, like you describe. I was told that building codes prohibited that, in fact -- and a gap had to be left between the panels and the edges of the roof.
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I'm a Tesla owner AND I have PV solar on my roof. But I think it's pretty clear, once you really look at the facts, that all the subsidies aren't too practical.
We're still early enough in the technology curve for EVs so they cost a premium price to purchase, and have more "hidden costs" that are less often talked about. (EG. You probably need to upgrade the electrical power in your garage so you can charge one of these cars without it taking 2 days to charge back up.) If you compromise on the costs, buying a less capable EV, the trade-off is range and quite likely, battery longevity. (Your Nissan Leaf or Smart4Two electric has no cooling system for the battery pack.) That means, you're talking about a customer-base who can afford to buy one either with or without the tax breaks.
Meanwhile, the fact that government DOES offer the breaks or subsidies acts as a negative to some of the folks who haven't purchased one yet. They view it as indicating the technology isn't ready for prime-time yet, if it needs those breaks to make good economic sense.
As per usual, I think government needs to just step aside and stop trying to influence what consumers freely choose to buy with their money. I bought my used Tesla because I thought the performance was unbeatable in the price range (0-60MPH times on these are amazing) and because I liked all the technology in the car. Nobody else gives you an iPad sized LCD display in the dash, from the factory! It also makes your expenses a little more consistent and predictable. The monthly car payment is about 2x what I used to pay, but you know what to expect each month. You don't get dinged here and there, all month long, as you pay for gasoline you use, and oil changes are a thing of the past. It's not likely to go through more than maybe 1 set of brake pads during its whole life, since regen braking means they get used very lightly. There's no complex transmission to wear out or need maintenance either.
Interesting little recent story with that one....
My workplace recently had a challenge. Our Finance dept. had been using a couple of Windows software applications made by EMC for the purpose of scanning in, indexing and providing view access to checks and invoices. Back when all of these were first set up, EMC allowed people to license them individually and use them as "building blocks" for your own document handling solutions. We hired a consulting firm to make them work in tandem with the Great Plains accounting package.
Since then, it seems that EMC has become more focused on selling them as a bundled document management solution. Problem is? As we've upgraded Windows past 7 and on to 10, it broke compatibility with these programs. On the server side, we can't even do all of the latest . NET upgrades or security patches without it causing problems. The cost to pay for the upgrades and support licenses to get current versions of the tools is way more than we can justify for what we do with them. So we decided to migrate to a new solution.
The first big stumbling block to migration was exporting all of our existing scanned images. Apparently, a really oddball version of TIFF was implemented in the EMC software and nothing else was able to open the files. We we able to contact GraphicsConverter's author and he took up the challenge of reverse engineering the file format and adding support to his software package. Thanks to that effort, we could finally set up a batch conversion using GraphicsConverter!
IMO, it really is the premiere application out there, regardless of OS platform, for viewing and working with just about ALL image formats out there. If his software can't work with it, he's willing to make it happen -- even this long after developing the product.
But it doesn't even HAVE to be NASA anymore. That's the real beauty of things. Every time Space-X launches another rocket, it helps emphasize that even space travel has become a technology that's not so difficult to manage, it requires government taking a big portion of the nation's taxes to fund it by mandate.
We're reaching the point where one of several private businesses might be the first to put people on Mars.
But overall, yeah -- people all know about NASA putting people on the moon back in the late 1960's and 70's -- so sending some unmanned probes out a little further isn't that amazing. It's going to take human beings making the trip to step things up past what was done previously.
I live in a small town that was absent a real grocery store for years. We had both a Family Dollar and a Dollar General though.
Guess what? Grocery stores weren't deciding not to come here because those dollar stores were too difficult to compete with!
It was simply a matter of analyzing the economics. Our population is only around 6,000 -- and you don't add more than a few thousand others if you add the next town over from us, along with people on the other side of the river, who live in another small town, in another state.
We finally DID get a full size grocery store here, but only because it was part of a long-term plan for a planned community of new homes that have been getting built on the outer edge of town for 5 years or so. They waited out the economic depression before constructing it, but decided it was feasible to do now.
Both dollar stores are doing about as much business as ever, BTW. They're simply the cheaper places to go for your toiletries and household items. Plus, they're more flexible in adjusting their inventory to the local community's needs. Family Dollar, out here, turns into a pretty respectable toy store around Christmastime, and then scales that back afterwards. They'll turn into a one-stop shop for your basic gardening and outdoor BBQ needs when the weather gets nicer. They NEVER claimed to be a place to buy your fresh foods though. They're just convenient for the non-perishables like you might grab to put in your kid's school lunch, or when you need something in a pinch.
I've seen these rants before about "food deserts" and the usual insinuation that racism and "white privilege" has something to do with it. Sorry, but no.... This stuff happens when either A) you live in a more rural or smaller town and the total population isn't enough for the grocery chains to cost-justify coming in, or B) you live in a high crime neighborhood that runs out the large grocers because of all the extra burdens it places on them. (I used to live in one of those areas too, and things like the requirement to hire armed security guards to patrol the parking lot and entrance, plus the fact the crime scared a lot of people off from trying to shop there in the first place, made it unsustainable for them.)
Yeah.... ok. I still stick by my original opinion here, on this one.
If everyone is going to go all "ban crazy" because they have a fear of the very slight chance of a drone falling from the sky and landing on their head in some manner? I think we, as a society, need to re-evaluate our priorities and concerns!
It's probably just as likely someone will get injured by a parade vehicle that accidentally hits someone, or a person who falls off of a moving float.
And it's rather insulting to pretend that "professionals" are somehow immune to the small risks of drones causing problems in public settings. But sure, keep on kidding yourself that "adhering to strict guidelines" will prevent any battery or electrical failures in their drones, or prevent any bird attacks on them.
I figure if I fly a drone and the thing does malfunction and hits somebody? That's just one of those risks taken in the name of actually getting outdoors in public and doing things. It used to be, most people saw it that same way. (EG. If a drone hits ME and injures me in some freak accident, I would probably chalk it up to bad luck and go treat my injury. MAYBE I'd pursue asking the drone operator if they'd be willing to pay part of my medical expenses, if it came to that.) I guess these days, you risk some idiot trying to get lawyers involved, thinking he or she is owed your home, car, and all your belongings if said drone touches their body? I'm sure not going to support restricting activities just because of those people.....
I noticed you keep harping on the fact I wanted to "fly my drone over a parade with a crowd of people", as though such a thing is terrible behavior.
In reality, our town only has a total population of about 6,000 and it's far from the WHOLE town that shows up at these parades. Additionally, there is usually someone flying a drone at these events to capture them on video so people can enjoy viewing it later on Facebook. (Our city has its own Facebook group.)
It has never posed a problem, and most people in town know exactly who the drone operator is, because he's pretty much the only one here (besides me) who owns a decent quality drone you could use reliably for videography purposes.
If I flew mine at such an event, it would just be because I knew the other guy was out of town, sick, or otherwise unable to make it to video record it for us.
If you look at the small size and weight of a Mavic Pro or similar drone, they're not going to do any harm even if if they crash land into a crowd and hit someone on the head. And that's a total worst case scenario that really shouldn't happen anyway. (If these lose radio connectivity, they default to hovering in place, as opposed to continuing to follow any previous flight directions that might cause it to head into obstacles.) It's also not like I'd fly it right over everybody so it could fall straight down onto them. It's easily possible to fly along side the road, where a crash would just land it in someone's unoccupied back yard or an empty lot.
I wouldn't say the drones worth flying, today, are exactly cheap. Yes, they're smart enough to make takeoff and landing a "no brainer". Way easier than the R/C stuff of the past.
But you're still usually putting out around a $1000 investment by the time you buy your drone accessories and the drone itself. The real cheap stuff out there doesn't even have enough battery life to be relevant. Those are just toys to fly around your house for 5 minutes at a time, basically.
Considering the risk of your $600-1200 investment just suddenly dropping into a body of water, never to be recovered again, or crashing into trees and being destroyed, or ?? I think that, alone, should be a sobering enough thought so people exercise a little bit of sense in where and how they fly them....
It seems like the exceptions get all the media attention, because "it's not news until somebody gets hurt or angry". But a whole lot of drones have been sold, relative to the very random, occasional story of somebody really causing problems with one. I really think this is a case of a small minority of bad actors ruining things for 99% of the owners/users.
Except for coordinated events like "drone races" held at specific places, I've *never* seen drones just littering the sky by the dozens!
The reality is, the radio signals alone tend to limit how many can be operated well in a given space. I'm not going to even attempt to keep flying my drone if 12 other people, often flying other DJI branded products, are nearby with other ones! Too easy to lose control of it.
It saddens me that people can't seem to use common sense anymore. I mean, we're complaining that the drone owners aren't acting sensibly, but the people enforcing the rules at our parks and other public places are just as bad if their only solution is "Ban all of them!".
The sound of one or even two drones operating in a large open space in a national or state park is NOT going to be a real noise problem. If that's too much for people, they better damn well ban any cars or motorcycles from driving in too! All you need to do is have park rangers use *common sense* and put a stop to problems like a dozen drone operators stupidly trying to fly in the same spot, in the park.
Here in the U.S., it's getting harder and harder to enjoy flying a drone as a hobby, thanks to the combination of paranoia over drones and the legitimate problem of people flying them in places they obviously shouldn't be flying (around airports, for example!).
It's gotten so you can't even legally use one, period, if you live in Washington DC. They've marked off the entire area as restricted airspace for them.
And as a DJI Mavic Pro owner myself, one of my first thoughts was, "Well, surely I can take one of these to any park, at least. That's where everyone went to fly kites back when I was a kid. Lots of open space and often some good scenery worth capturing on video during a flight." But no! So many of the State and National parks are starting to ban drone usage too!
Even when our local community had their annual Veteran's Day Parade, I wanted to use my drone to capture an overhead view of all the floats and vehicles going down our main street. But I had second thoughts, because there was local chatter about a drone flying overhead possibly making war veterans in the parade nervous.
If my dad was still alive to see this, I'm sure he'd be really agitated about all the regulations. He grew up building gasoline powered model airplanes and later, got his pilot's license ... and would NEVER go along with all of these restrictions on private individuals flying drones for fun.
I'm really just picking on IBM because they're so predictably known for either A) giving up on good, solid technologies they sold, or B) supporting legacy products past the length of time they make logical sense to keep using. (Again, a lot of places are going to do that because change is hard and brings uncertainty and a need to re-train people. But still -- when you look at situations like government offices suffering along with ancient systems? You think IBM, because they're one of the few companies who still supports that stuff.)
As long as I've really been into computing, IBM has been known for generating loads of patents and coming up with great ideas. It's just their follow-through that I often question. As a big OS/2 user, back in the day, that was an excellent example. All the OS/2 users LOVED the product *despite* the constant sense that IBM never did. IBM would sell new PCs that came pre-loaded with Windows NT but weren't even OS/2 compatible if you WANTED to run that on one instead!
One could also say that's where things went with Lotus Notes and the rest of the "SmartSuite" of theirs. Great, iconic applications there -- yet constantly relegated to "also ran" status, only because IBM management never seemed committed to continually refreshing the software and staying innovative with it. I used to love using the AMI Pro word processor. Just a better overall UI and feel than Microsoft Word. But they let it die on the vine ....
And what about the (also iconic) IBM Thinkpad line of notebooks? They just decided they didn't want to sell that kind of hardware anymore and sold it all off to Lenovo. Well -- to date, it sure looks to me like Lenovo can still turn a profit making them. And that was truly the only IBM product line of PCs used by consumers that still had real respect. (Nobody I know was ever that excited by the IBM desktop PC lineups out there. But MANY still rave about all the design choices and durability of the Thinkpad line.)
I don't think you understand the difference between atheist and agnostic, to make that comment.....
Atheists, especially in recent times, are treating their belief in NO higher power as a religion of its own. Many actively try to "preach" it to others, to save them from their various religions.
I have a problem with all of that, because I think it's entirely possible that there either is or WAS a "higher power" of some sort involved in the creation of the universe as we know it. I don't have any way to prove that there isn't a god of some sort out there, so it's irresponsible of me to tell everyone else who thinks so that they're wrong.
I don't, however, like any of the organized religions because I don't find any of them compelling. So many of them were either created out of thin air or were spun off of other, older ones. Many hold beliefs that completely contradict others, too -- so at least some of them have to be wrong. (If you believe in, say, reincarnation? That conflicts with pretty much every Christian religion that tells you your soul transcends your body at death and goes to a "heaven", a "hell" or a "purgatory". You either get more chances on this Earth in new bodies/forms or you don't.)
Hence, agnostic.
Honestly, it's been years since I worked with a place that used Oracle as a database. Clearly, it's deployed in a lot of large scale operations out there. But my hunch is, many of them will keep using it as long as it remains a supported option - simply because you don't want to risk your business changing something established, that works.
It doesn't really matter if databases hosted via AWS are as good or better? What you have going on out there is a lot of people choosing AWS hosting for NEW projects that get deployed. If they're going to do something new and "cloudified", AWS is a primary candidate for the job.
Oracle's database is becoming a legacy product, much like a lot of IBM's offerings in the minicomputer days. When you're the size of an operation like eBay or a major airline and everything runs on Oracle databases, you're not going to be quick to tear that all out and try to reconstruct it on a different platform. So they have a nearly guaranteed revenue stream from it for years to come. But yeah, it's "90's tech" at this point and people aren't clamoring to roll out brand new projects that are powered by Oracle databases on the back end.
Since we just came out of an economic depression, you probably have a lot of people who got new/better jobs less than a full year ago, so they wouldn't be receiving a pay raise by the time this survey was taken.
But that said? I feel like much of this "recovery" was just a return to normal, coupled with a reactionary stock market that inflated the worth of businesses beyond what was rational, based on little more than political hyperbole or irrational fears by investors.
IMO, we're about to feel the negative results of that stock market generated valuation bubble as it undergoes a correction. That could, in turn, sink us into yet ANOTHER depression in 2019.
The big "elephant in the room" is the massively increasing debt our government is carrying. They're predicting by 2023, over 40% of all student loans issued will be in default. At some point, that's going to become such a contentious issue, I can see it causing a tipping point where Americans all demand loan forgiveness and free college educations for all citizens. There's no conceivable way the nation can sustain all of that debt while keeping taxation somewhat under control.
Our politicians and Federal Reserve banking folks seem like they're experts at kicking the can down the curb a little further, each time it looks like things are going to come to a head and implode, financially. But at SOME point, when the rest of the world realizes we owe more than we can even produce in exportable goods or services? We're going to hit a point of no return.
People constantly complain about the wage disparity and how MUCH money the rich business owners keep making. But the problem is, they're also the ones really holding things together. (If your nation is trying to justify going even deeper into debt to keep operating and providing all the things the public demands of it? You need to stay in close communication with all of these big corporation heads, who are promising to make the things that can be sold to justify it.) . The government can't convince other nations to keep using the US dollar as a valid currency, otherwise.
My wife is Jewish (while I'm agnostic -- former Roman Catholic).
One thing I've come to realize about Judaism is, they have a lot of rabbis and "fervently religious" who seem to believe a big part of the faith involves a lot of poring over scriptures and making philosophical declarations about what they do or don't mean for fellow Jews.
IMO, some of it borders on the ridiculous, with all the rituals they put themselves through to make sure they're not violating them.... But I suppose that's easy for me to say as an "outsider"? (I'm also convinced that part of the attraction to Judaism is the feeling that they're part of a closer-knit community BECAUSE they have so many strange customs. You know how HAM radio geeks seem to take a strange pride in knowing all sorts of esoteric stuff about radio waves and antenna design? Yeah ... kinda like that.)
But frankly, the different factions of Jews (Conservative, Orthodox, Reform, etc.) appear to me to have come about because there were various levels of commitment people were willing to give to all of these rules, too. People still felt an identity as a Jew but didn't always agree on how much ritual they had to go through as part of it .....
So I'm sure this debate on "lab grown meat" will rage on and on for them, with no conclusive answer that all Jews accept.
What one person called stupid is another's genius risk-taking.
For example, you have the autopilot hack here:
https://www.teslarati.com/tesl...
There's another guy selling a modification that enhances the newer Tesla's camera systems so you can effectively get a camera view 360 degrees around the vehicle, including a "bird's eye" top down view.
The headline makes it sound like a bad thing. But in reality, I have a lot of Facebook friends who are into news related to science and tech, as well as politics and current events. They're often posting URLs linking back to relevant news articles of interest. And especially these days, they're all rather careful to pick and choose the sources because of all the "Fake news!" backlash.
(Even if I already know about something that happened that's clearly legitimate news, like a celebrity death or a new tech announcement from Apple or Intel, I try to find a respected news site with the article to link to, vs. some blog page that covered it.)
Facebook is just kind of an aggregator of knowledge people feel like sharing. It helps me find news items of interest without sitting through a whole night's TV news broadcast to get only 30 second summaries of things, and a whole lot of "fluff" I don't care about at all.
The problem in America is, people still don't see EVs as cost-effective, practical alternatives to internal combustion engine vehicles in most cases!
That's something you can't fix by waving a one time tax credit at people, and really shouldn't attempt to do by mandating purchasing behaviors.
It's just the fact that EV technology still has to mature, like ALL technologies do. Your early adopters pay the premium prices that help fund mass-market viability.
(I can remember back in the early 1990's, paying over $1,200 for an internal CD burner drive. It was an HP 4020i, and only burned media at a 2x maximum speed. Now, you can buy these things off the shelf for about $25 and they record single or dual layer DVD as well as CD media at speeds of up to 52x! But back then, I had a real need for it and could justify that price. Most people couldn't.)
Electric cars still present some big challenges, like practically none of them existing yet that in a pickup truck or van format. If you need to make longer road trips, you barely have any viable options EXCEPT for Tesla, because they're the only one with a fast supercharging network that's built out well enough. (The GPS in the car automatically takes you to the nearest one when you won't make it to a destination otherwise, etc.) And we still barely even have any of America's gas stations on-board with adding EV charging at their locations! If American adopted EVs in any serious way, all of a sudden? There would be huge lines and people stuck waiting hours to recharge their vehicles, and cars with dead batteries stranded all over our roads.
I predict open floor-plan office trends will drive a large percentage of workers to work from home whenever possible. That, in turn, will help solve the problem of sitting for too long a time -- as you're more likely to get up and move around when you're at home. You can do things like throw a load of clothes in the wash, etc. while you work.
That has to be one of the worst ideas ever, except for one segment of employees .... creative types who benefit greatly from constant collaboration and bouncing ideas off of those around them.
Even for those people, we've started having issues where I work where they can't have any privacy while making or taking phone calls. Therefore, they've stopped using their desk phones and are now pushing us to get rid of them completely. They just want all their calls forwarded to their cellphones, so they can step out to take most of them. Seems a bit crazy, since desk phones are supposed to be there to ensure you get clear calls as often as possible, vs all the call interruptions and dropped calls you can run into on a cell.
If you've read the history of Huawei in America, it's been clear for some time that they only wanted a foot-hold in the USA in order to spy and infiltrate things.
Some years back, they appointed an American citizen as the president of their U.S. operations, and picked a guy who lived out in the midwest. He didn't look anything like the type you'd expect was in charge of a telecom business at all, and I'm pretty certain he was just selected because he was happy to get paid big money to go along with whatever he was told.
As long as the company kept cranking out super low-cost "pay as you go" Android smartphones, I guess most people didn't care? But I'll bet everything they make has back doors in it for spying on something or other.
I heard, years ago, that Apple had certain rules of what employees should say/not say to customers. I wouldn't want to work under those conditions, myself. But I'm also a middle aged guy who isn't going to do retail anyway, unless things get REALLY bad for me.
At the end of the day? I don't see why it should affect anything, if the "Apple Genius" says "does not work with" vs. "incompatible"? What matters is if you can get answers to your questions when you go there, and if they're providing adequate service.
Considering most computer products have no way to visit a retail establishment owned by the manufacturer at all? Apple already has a edge in this regard. Yes, Sony had some stores and Microsoft did a copy-cat thing. But I've purchased PC gaming system gear from the likes of Gigabyte or ASUS and had zero help when things were defective. They'd go so far as costing me postage to repeatedly mail in things as RMA, only to hold them for weeks, not even touching them, before returning them as "fixed". There's no network of retail stores for a Dell or an HP.
Honestly though? Apple retail has taken pretty good care of my Mac issues over the years. Just recently, I brought in a keyboard cover for an original iPad Pro because it started causing the iPad to repeatedly say "accessory not found" while it was attached. They gave me a brand new replacement one free, once I explained the problem. (Apparently, it was a known quality issue.)
You say that like you have an issue with it?
Personally, I think it's kind of a great equalizer. There's really no reason some celebrity sports person or Hollywood actor/actress should have the special privilege of getting paid big money to do product endorsements, while the "average Joe", who might actually use and like the products, gets paid nothing for making personal recommendations.
If you can't make buying decisions without blindly following what people say on their homemade YouTube videos, you have bigger problems than someone not being legally required to disclose that they got paid for promoting what they're talking about online. But hey -- I think it's awesome if average people can make some good money creating their own online content. It's not like they have a whole studio backing up the production for them.
We live in a 2,400 square feet, 2 story house that was built back around 1905. It's been renovated several times over the years, with the most recent rehab done around 2012 when the owner installed 2 electric heat pumps; one for downstairs and one for upstairs. We don't have natural gas here, so everything in the home is electric including the stove, electric dryer and water heater.
I do have an HP Proliant server that runs 24/7 as a NAS. It runs Plex and NextCloud, as well as serving as a Time Machine backup destination. We have several other computers in the house that are running pretty often. Also have an electric car that I charge from a regular 120 volt outlet out in a detached garage.
In the coldest winter months, an electric bill can easily get up in the $500-600 range for a month, WITH the solar panels I've got in place.
Honestly? I suspect with many power companies in America, you're getting billed at a rate that nicely averages the cost to generate each kilowatt during the day and at night, so you just pay one flat rate and they make the profits they're seeking, while keeping the billing from getting more complex.
Also, as more people install grid-tied solar, there's a lot of surplus energy getting fed back into the system during most of the "peak" hours when the sun is shining. I've heard where as a general rule, the power companies start having problems when more than about 15% of the homes in a given neighborhood install solar. The grid can't efficiently transmit power for miles and miles. So a lot of energy generation from say 10AM to 2PM in residential neighborhoods means there's more power on that part of the grid than they have customers wanting to use it. (A lot of people are away at work during the week during those hours, don't forget.)
So what happens is that excess power generation just goes to waste, but the utility company is still required by law you pay you back for it by way of discounting your bill at the same rate you normally pay for it.
I don't think my experiences are all that obsolete or inapplicable, considering my own solar system is only a few years old now -- and much of what I've cited are just facts that you've brushed aside as irrelevant, since "they don't apply to a lot of people".
That $34,000 price estimate is for name-brand SunPower panels and inverters ... which do cost a premium over getting any old Asian made panel or no-name inverter. I've heard a lot of horror stories already about the cheaper panels having drastic dropoffs in power output after they've aged as little as 5 years though. So that doesn't sound like much of a bargain.
I'm surprised that survey shows Missouri as getting more sun than Maryland does. I can tell you that relatively few people I knew there were too excited about the prospects of going solar, though. I have one friend who did, but he admits he was only driven by the desire to say he had a more "Green" home, and didn't care if it saved him money or not. Maybe it's more a combination of people tending to have properties with more trees shading things and utility rates that are relatively cheap? But I just knew at least in the St. Louis area, PV solar was a tough sell compared to up here.
As far as ground mounted solar panels go? Maybe there's an issue with installers who are only trained to do the roof type installations? I actually had a chunk of space by my garage in back where I wanted to ground mount a row of panels to get more power generation. I couldn't get the installer remotely interested in entertaining doing it! I was told things like, "Those have to take things like high winds into account more than a panel firmly affixed to a roof, and there's extra work involved burying the cabling for them."
When I had my panels put up, I suspected they'd have that benefit too of prolonging the life of the shingles under them.
Problem I ran into was, they didn't want to install panels that covered the entire roof, like you describe. I was told that building codes prohibited that, in fact -- and a gap had to be left between the panels and the edges of the roof.