If I need it again in the future, you will allow me to get another copy of it for a nominal charge such as 10% of the original purchase price. This will be reasonably limited to one replacement copy per year. However, if I'm brought up on charges and have a copy of that version of the song in my possession, the license cover it and protect me from prosecution. I am not authorized to offer the song for upload but I can transfer my license to another person by paying you a reasonable transfer fee.
You may offer me upgraded versions but they will be at a discount reflecting that I already paid you for a license.
You may charge me a reasonable fee ($20 to $30) per year to keep records of and track my licenses.
You charge a reasonable price for the songs. Roughly 20% of minimum wage for new songs and 5% of minimum wage for songs older than 5 years.
Re:Are we sure it comes from work?
on
Understanding Burnout
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Trivial... http://www.lankaliberty.com/efforts/brief.html A party of powerful, extremist Buddhist monks are holding religious liberty hostage in Sri Lanka. Through politics, media, "fasts unto death," and violence, Buddhist extremists are pressuring the government to pass laws that would ban religious conversions and culminate in making Buddhism the official state religion.
Google: extremist Buddhist
If it is a belief system with enough followers, there will be extremists. Standard bell curve.
You can't be sure that production of solar power doesn't have some bad side effect. Producing them now makes a lot of nasty shit. Dealing with them as waste may release unknown pollutants into the environment.
You can't be certain that global warming won't produce a net gain of usable land.
You can't be certain that money *WASTED* on solar power today couldn't be spent much more effectively in a few years when it drops an order of magnitude in price.
You can't be certain that the average house price maintenance cost will be higher.
You sound to me like you have a religion of environmentalism and you need to realize that you have a lot of attitudes that you can't be certain of. Over the course of 30 years that I remember, I've seen a lot of people REALLY SURE and REALLY UPSET about FACTS that we now know are bullshit. COMPLETE BULLSHIT. So get off the high horse.
It used to be very expensive to build phone lines so they charged to make phone calls.
Since they charged a large amount of money, it was convenient to put a tax on that charge.
VoIP is basically free. If you want to pay someone for higher quality you can but there are so many ways to talk via voice over the internet now it's insane. I can't see how the indian government is going to do this against private individuals any more than they can stop porn, drugs, sex chat, etc.
I think they can make businesses use taxable voip, but data is data for private people.
Millions of our ancestors took much worse odds on wagon trains.
You just have to want to explore more than you want to live.
If NASA said, "we can settle the moon at 1% of the cost but 10% of the people will die" you would see thousands lining up for a shot to live on the moon.
They can often be fixed if you can get to a specialist.
I am merely a massage therapist but one of my happy memories of this year was fixing the local owner of a restaurants back. He was hitting himself with a hammer and I knew exactly what was wrong so I offered to fix it. And I did.
What I didn't know was that it had been bad for 10 YEARS. And now it's fixed! He'd apparently broken 3 of those rubber hammers on it and was finally using a steel hammer so it wouldn't break.
If you have never been, you might try going to a chiropractor just 2 or 3 times. It might be permanently fixed.
The guys back has now been fixed for 4 months. One thing I can point to when I'm old, is that I cured another person's chronic pain.
You have your LOGICAL mind that says you can safely jump 30' off the building into the water.
Then you have your emotional/hormonal mind. You can push it to jump off the building a few times, but if it doesn't enjoy jumping then it will find a way to stop you from doing that.
And my point...
Your emotional/hormonal mind is strongly influenced by your hormone levels.
Men who are taking high levels of testosterone can be come very aggressive and fearless. It's not that they conciously overcome their fear- they literally don't experience it- even enjoy the stimulation.
So pay attention now because this is important:
At 40 to 50 many men's hormone levels drop precipitously. They become whiny, anxious, unhappy, dissatisfied, need more extreme erotic stimulation to react (hence suddenly needing younger chicks). In the past, we've put this off to a mental/age process. But if you are experiencing this, get your free testosterone levels checked out. You might save your self an incredible amount of grief if you do this. In my case, mine were so low that I basically de-aged about 10 years when they got me back to normal levels. You don't need shots-- they have multiple brands of creams that soak through the skin.
If you still feel like your life sucks after you do this, then go ahead dump your family, buy a sports car, and start dating 20 year olds. But you may only feel like your life sucks because your hormone levels are sub 300 (270 is absolute minimum I believe).
The two biggest problems people can fix are hormones and thyroid. Both are fairly easy to diagnose and fix.
Re:Are we sure it comes from work?
on
Understanding Burnout
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Actually the conservative christian and the liberal buddhist will get along MUCH better than the conservative christian and the liberal christian. Or even the conservative christian who believes differently about some minor point of dogma.
The buddhist is safely far enough away that you can disconnect and ignore them. The person who believes almost the same is much more maddening to those who believe there is only one true way.
Re:Are we sure it comes from work?
on
Understanding Burnout
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Burnout happens any any activity.
Often the sign burnout is about to occur is an increase in intensity (which is really denial that they are burning out).
In my online gaming guilds, a person saying they love it so much that they are here for life is the surest sign that they will be gone within a month.
It's different than merely losing interest. It's an increase in interest and them a flameout.
When windows 95 came out, they said you needed to use standard OS calls if you wanted to be "CERTIFIED" for win95.
If you used those API's your product was very slow. If you didn't, you didn't get the sticker.
Word95 performed wonderfully and was certified and the developers had been able to work and test with the operating system all during it's development. As a bonus, it was much later that they proved that it wasn't using the official APIs but was in fact making illegal calls to inappropriate places in the operating system toget that performance. So it should never have been certified in the first place.
By the word perfect and others were no longer a factor.
---
They USE their OS to make THEIR NON OS products work better and competitors break or work worse. They purposely write their operating systems to break competitors products (proven twice at least by assembly review- for DR DOS it was blatant- basically "If DR DOS, FAIL".)
--- Sounds like google is doing something similar with a spin. They are using their SEARCH capabilities to produce a warped google centric view of the world.
Right off the top you get $29,000 from other oregon and city taxpayers to buy your system. In any state without subsidies, that means over THIRTY YEARS longer payout period. Most solar cells degrade substantially by 20 years (10-20% less power output). Likewise, I'm betting like MOST states, that not just anybody can get those $29k in credits in Oregan. There is probably a fairly limited budget (a few million) and once that is gone each year, there are no more subsidies until the next calendar year.
I'm unclear how I'm supposed to use Federal Depreciation if it is not for a business or rent house. Granting that I can somehow use it for personal income taxes tho... it sounds like it would be a deduction, not a credit. That would mean it would lower your INCOME by roughly $3 grand a year- which would mean it would lower your TAXES by $1 grand a year at most. That lowers your savings from $13,000 to $5,000. That means your system costs $8,000 more --- that's 10 years more to cover costs. So you are up to 16 years, using your figures, and assuming you are lucky/smart enough to be one of the people that gets the subsidies.
Using your figures, for the 40 some-odd states where we only get the federal credits, the payout period is longer than the likely lifespan of the item.
---
Now one thing we need to remember is this: Power is appreciating about as fast as inflation. That means your $813 bill today is going to be $1600 in 10 years and $3200 in 20 years. That works in your favor. It helps home buyers too. In 1995 my payment was $700 a month and rent was $655 a month. Today my payment is $700 a month and rent is $1100 a month. In 2015, my payment will be $700 a month and rent will be roughly $2200 a month.
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No.. It's not just an inverter. If you are connected to the grid you need a special circuit box that won't allow power to flow backwards into the grid unless the grid has power. I think it is called a reverse switchback circuit breaker.
The inverter converts DC - > AC. The charge controller keeps the batteries charged and cycled at the proper levels so they have optimum lifespan. The switchback? circuit box (can't remember the name exactly) keeps your 1.21 gigawatts of power from killing electric company linemen.
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No need to be insulting about the AC ideas. If solar power drops by an order of magnitude it is suddenly a very clever and reasonable way. $900 of solar power and a simple $200 window unit and you don't need to run your central AC during the day at all. No need to upgrade your electrical system. No need to have charge controllers, batteries, etc.
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There are several companies on the edge of dropping the price by an order of magnitude. Two of them basically print solar material with nano-particles. If any of them succeed and solar power does drop to 10% of the current price and becomes unbelievably easy to install (picture unrolling a 50'x3' long strip on your roof that costs about $3000 and produces 1.5 mw of power during the day with no clouds and it has a plug on one end to hook to another strip- no panels, no sun tracking arrays- nothing to break- no cells to be corrupted by water leakage. cool stuff)
As far as the other things- I'm already using efficient appliances, have a programmable thermostat, added radiant barrier, and use florescent lights.
---
I'm pro solar power. It just isn't practical yet unless you can get other people to help you buy it through subsidies. That's only an option in some states.
The payback is a bit longer than 4-5 years if you are paying for it. That payback is for states where everyone else is subsidizing your solar purchase heavily.
To sell power to the grid: With a new house, you build it with the appropriate power box so it won't feed solar power into the grid if the grid has no power. This is so you won't kill linemen when the "power is out" and they are trying to fix the lines. This is a minor expense ($1kish).
With an old house tho... you have change the power box ($3k) out. This also means that you must bring the house up up to code ($3k+).
Paying for a solar system yourself (with no help) will run you about $50k. You will have an ongoing cost of about $500 a year for batteries starting in your fifth year. If you were to put $50k in the bank, you could reasonably expect to make about $1800 risk free after taxes!
Solar power needs to drop in price to make it practical.
I check it annually. I'd really like to do it but there are no subsidies in my state except in one city and I live in an old house.
One other way I experimented was this. Smaller solar power system. Small AC unit. Run the AC unit to reduce the amount that your central AC runs. This avoids the need to connect the house to the grid. Unfortunately, it costs about $9000 for a system like that at this time. Again- just not practical. Interest on $9000 would likely be as much or more than my power savings.
If focus groups were the answer we would have a lot more good television shows.
The truth is 70% of what they put out fails/is cancelled (including a lot of good stuff*)
Television was historically a *LIMITED* resource. Given a choice between a show that makes you 2 million in profits and another show that makes you 10 million in profits, and you can ONLY show one, you cancel the less profitable show.
Friends was LUCKY. Many many shows started. Due South is an excellent example of another very funny, well written shows that ended way too soon (tho mainly because the star said, "I don't care bout money- I want to sing in my band".
Now. The cost of a show works in both directions. Again, you are an advertiser and there is *one* show on that has 90% of your target asses sitting in chairs watching it. This means you want on it. But again- there are only 8 slots for commercials. The show might be fabulously profitable at 300,000 per commercial but there are 150 companies bidding for those 8 minutes. So the most profitable (or stupid) companies get the commercial slots because they pay the most.
At this point, the cast and crew of the show says, "Hey, we are making you a lot of money and we want our cut"
Here is where "friends" diverges. Unlike say, Monk, where they let bitty shram go, the crew of friends negotiated together as a block. They never stabbed each other in the back and they all supported each other (a bit of a rarity). Unlike Monk, the show was a true ensemble- every one of the six characters was really needed so they could not lower costs by killing off several characters like they did on "Forever Night". With regard to forever night, they KILLED the show by doing this because they thought it was about a vampire named nick but actually it was an ensemble show but it was to late to repair their horrible mistake by the time they realized this.
Summing up: 90 shows start the season. There are only about 9 that "click" for whatever reason ( a lot of VERY good shows don't make it ). As a result, they build an audience. Advertisers pay for that audience. The most aggressive advertisers with the most money get the slots. The crew and cast renegotiates for a share of the profit (to the maximum value they can extract- in the case of friends, at the end they were really borrowing from future syndication profits to pay the salaries the last year).
Over time this has change expectations A popular TV star in the 1950's might have a decent house and car- be "well off" even tho they had an audience of 75 million and a 40% share of all TV's (only 4 stations too!) In modern day terms- they probably made $250,000 a year (adjusting for inflation). As a result, the networks made a fabulous profit and only had 6 commercials per half hour. Today a popular TV star is making $250,000 PER EPISODE multipled by the actors (directors, writers, etc. etc.) and they have to have 8 to10 minutes of commercials. The commercials which used to be a miner annoyance are now very intrusive and consume so much time that consumers are starting to avoid them in various ways or even give up watching shows until they come out on DVD (currently with out commercials)
In the end, the guy 8 cars ahead at best saves 2 minutes at the light when you all get off the freeway.
In some cases, they'll cut over into another lane to save time and you'll putter past them.
Driving is a fun and cool activity and isn't a race unless you are just a minute or two late for something. If you're later than that, who cares - you are late already and a minute or two won't matter. If you are running early, who cares again.
My only pet peeves is 1) being nice and waving people in (who have their signals on) and they hesitate and hesitate and...
2) People who drive to the very end of the merge lane and then basically ram the person there unless they stop. (and I guess the converse, being polite and trying to merge in and folks don't "zipper" with you but instead cut you off).
But life is good... your radio is working... you've got your health.
I owned a 98 durango. it was perfect. it was all rounded and muscular and would go through deep water, over large objects, off road (it lacked about 1" of the clearance of a jeep). It was hit 3 times. Twice from behind (while not moving at a stoplight- result, their cars messed up- my bumper not even moved) and once from the front while stopped (the guy 30' ahead of me suddenly put his truck in reverse, backed towards me at about 20mpg and changed backwards into my lane). That needed a new bumper ($530 but covered).
It got 13 to 20 mpg. Gas was.88 cents. It seated 7 adults comfortably with the rear seat open - and could have easily seated 2 adults and 6 children. It had a huge cargo capacity with the seats down.
Unfortunately when it came time to get a new one (after 7 years and extended warranty gone so repairs were $2grand each), they had restyled it to be boxy and lowered the headroom so my head hit the cieling.
So now I drive an Element (which only seats 4 but has nice high ceiling). I like it but it lacks the sheer MUSCLE the durango had.
No sex before marriage. No testing of alchohol before they are 18. No binge drinking (not even once!) in college. They'll never download, copy, or rip another song and won't accept free copies from friends who offer them (and they'll probably give stern lectures or even turn in their hooligan friends).
Programmers were viewed as exempt and so those unrealistic schedules allowed the companies to force unpaid overtime on to them.
I highly value our QA team. They save us from putting hideous bugs into production all the time.
OTH. I manage relations between them and programmers all the time. They can develop a "GOTCHA" attitude that is irritating. And programmers can become defensive when valid bugs are found in their code. You constantly have to sell "QA is your friend!"
In the end- if the bonus is only a couple grand- you have to ask yourself, is it worth being miserable for that little money? DO the math. Ask yourself what the hourly rate is.
And remember- a MINOR early failure can be very effective in managing your manager's expectations. They really have no clue how productive you are so they will just keep piling on. They can't tell from your complaints- whiners and slackers complain too (while loafing hours a day).
In some societies, knowing random people may have guns causes less people to feel they are safe in trying to steal or threaten others. As a result, there is less crime with more guns. We've seen this in some US towns.
In some societies, the people hate each other so much, that they don't care if they may be killed trying to hurt other people. As a result, there is more crime with more guns. We've seen this in iraq.
--- put another way.
If the population is basically on the brink of a civil war or doesn't put a high value on life (for whatever reason- economic, religious, tribal) , adding a lot of guns is going to be bad.
If the population is fairly homogenous and does put a high value on life, adding a lot of guns is sometimes good.
Do I get to report lost income on my lost starship? It was top of the line and fully upgraded.
How do you determine fair value for obtaining an epic weapon?
Inflation and deflation in online games is horrific. One day I might have a worthless blue diamond. The next, they introduce a new recipe that uses blue diamonds and it is suddenly worth about 25 dollars. A month later, everyone has farmed them so heavily that they are only worth about 25 cents again.
I don't see how they are going to get a handle on these things except at the point of transfer to real dollars.
If second life goes out of favor then that million dollars of virtual real estate could become worthless overnight.
We were not discussing using cell phone jammers in a medical office in this subthread. Your response is a tangent or reference back to the general topic.
Slashdot Mirror
You sell me the MP3.
You record that you sold a license to me.
If I need it again in the future, you will allow me to get another copy of it for a nominal charge such as 10% of the original purchase price. This will be reasonably limited to one replacement copy per year. However, if I'm brought up on charges and have a copy of that version of the song in my possession, the license cover it and protect me from prosecution. I am not authorized to offer the song for upload but I can transfer my license to another person by paying you a reasonable transfer fee.
You may offer me upgraded versions but they will be at a discount reflecting that I already paid you for a license.
You may charge me a reasonable fee ($20 to $30) per year to keep records of and track my licenses.
You charge a reasonable price for the songs. Roughly 20% of minimum wage for new songs and 5% of minimum wage for songs older than 5 years.
Trivial...
http://www.lankaliberty.com/efforts/brief.html
A party of powerful, extremist Buddhist monks are holding religious liberty hostage in Sri Lanka. Through politics, media, "fasts unto death," and violence, Buddhist extremists are pressuring the government to pass laws that would ban religious conversions and culminate in making Buddhism the official state religion.
Google: extremist Buddhist
If it is a belief system with enough followers, there will be extremists. Standard bell curve.
You can't be sure that production of solar power doesn't have some bad side effect. Producing them now makes a lot of nasty shit. Dealing with them as waste may release unknown pollutants into the environment.
You can't be certain that global warming won't produce a net gain of usable land.
You can't be certain that money *WASTED* on solar power today couldn't be spent much more effectively in a few years when it drops an order of magnitude in price.
You can't be certain that the average house price maintenance cost will be higher.
You sound to me like you have a religion of environmentalism and you need to realize that you have a lot of attitudes that you can't be certain of. Over the course of 30 years that I remember, I've seen a lot of people REALLY SURE and REALLY UPSET about FACTS that we now know are bullshit. COMPLETE BULLSHIT. So get off the high horse.
It used to be very expensive to build phone lines so they charged to make phone calls.
Since they charged a large amount of money, it was convenient to put a tax on that charge.
VoIP is basically free. If you want to pay someone for higher quality you can but there are so many ways to talk via voice over the internet now it's insane. I can't see how the indian government is going to do this against private individuals any more than they can stop porn, drugs, sex chat, etc.
I think they can make businesses use taxable voip, but data is data for private people.
Right now.
I'm sitting in everquest and listening to people from all over the world as well as we are on a raid.
Sam Malone Style, FREE!
How do you justify taxing something that's free?
So when people play everquest and chat it should be taxable to?
And the irony of the low cost labor provider of the world being mad because of low cost (FREE) products is priceless.
Millions of our ancestors took much worse odds on wagon trains.
You just have to want to explore more than you want to live.
If NASA said, "we can settle the moon at 1% of the cost but 10% of the people will die" you would see thousands lining up for a shot to live on the moon.
Bad backs really suck.
They can often be fixed if you can get to a specialist.
I am merely a massage therapist but one of my happy memories of this year was fixing the local owner of a restaurants back. He was hitting himself with a hammer and I knew exactly what was wrong so I offered to fix it. And I did.
What I didn't know was that it had been bad for 10 YEARS. And now it's fixed! He'd apparently broken 3 of those rubber hammers on it and was finally using a steel hammer so it wouldn't break.
If you have never been, you might try going to a chiropractor just 2 or 3 times. It might be permanently fixed.
The guys back has now been fixed for 4 months. One thing I can point to when I'm old, is that I cured another person's chronic pain.
Best of luck with the back.
Broken radio SUCKS tho.
I agree and I'll say this.
You have your LOGICAL mind that says you can safely jump 30' off the building into the water.
Then you have your emotional/hormonal mind. You can push it to jump off the building a few times, but if it doesn't enjoy jumping then it will find a way to stop you from doing that.
And my point...
Your emotional/hormonal mind is strongly influenced by your hormone levels.
Men who are taking high levels of testosterone can be come very aggressive and fearless. It's not that they conciously overcome their fear- they literally don't experience it- even enjoy the stimulation.
So pay attention now because this is important:
At 40 to 50 many men's hormone levels drop precipitously. They become whiny, anxious, unhappy, dissatisfied, need more extreme erotic stimulation to react (hence suddenly needing younger chicks). In the past, we've put this off to a mental/age process. But if you are experiencing this, get your free testosterone levels checked out. You might save your self an incredible amount of grief if you do this. In my case, mine were so low that I basically de-aged about 10 years when they got me back to normal levels. You don't need shots-- they have multiple brands of creams that soak through the skin.
If you still feel like your life sucks after you do this, then go ahead dump your family, buy a sports car, and start dating 20 year olds. But you may only feel like your life sucks because your hormone levels are sub 300 (270 is absolute minimum I believe).
The two biggest problems people can fix are hormones and thyroid. Both are fairly easy to diagnose and fix.
Actually the conservative christian and the liberal buddhist will get along MUCH better than the conservative christian and the liberal christian. Or even the conservative christian who believes differently about some minor point of dogma.
The buddhist is safely far enough away that you can disconnect and ignore them. The person who believes almost the same is much more maddening to those who believe there is only one true way.
Burnout happens any any activity.
Often the sign burnout is about to occur is an increase in intensity (which is really denial that they are burning out).
In my online gaming guilds, a person saying they love it so much that they are here for life is the surest sign that they will be gone within a month.
It's different than merely losing interest. It's an increase in interest and them a flameout.
Actually, what they did was fairly clever.
When windows 95 came out, they said you needed to use standard OS calls if you wanted to be "CERTIFIED" for win95.
If you used those API's your product was very slow. If you didn't, you didn't get the sticker.
Word95 performed wonderfully and was certified and the developers had been able to work and test with the operating system all during it's development. As a bonus, it was much later that they proved that it wasn't using the official APIs but was in fact making illegal calls to inappropriate places in the operating system toget that performance. So it should never have been certified in the first place.
By the word perfect and others were no longer a factor.
---
They USE their OS to make THEIR NON OS products work better and competitors break or work worse.
They purposely write their operating systems to break competitors products (proven twice at least by assembly review- for DR DOS it was blatant- basically "If DR DOS, FAIL".)
---
Sounds like google is doing something similar with a spin. They are using their SEARCH capabilities to produce a warped google centric view of the world.
Right off the top you get $29,000 from other oregon and city taxpayers to buy your system. In any state without subsidies, that means over THIRTY YEARS longer payout period. Most solar cells degrade substantially by 20 years (10-20% less power output). Likewise, I'm betting like MOST states, that not just anybody can get those $29k in credits in Oregan. There is probably a fairly limited budget (a few million) and once that is gone each year, there are no more subsidies until the next calendar year.
I'm unclear how I'm supposed to use Federal Depreciation if it is not for a business or rent house. Granting that I can somehow use it for personal income taxes tho... it sounds like it would be a deduction, not a credit. That would mean it would lower your INCOME by roughly $3 grand a year- which would mean it would lower your TAXES by $1 grand a year at most. That lowers your savings from $13,000 to $5,000. That means your system costs $8,000 more --- that's 10 years more to cover costs. So you are up to 16 years, using your figures, and assuming you are lucky/smart enough to be one of the people that gets the subsidies.
Using your figures, for the 40 some-odd states where we only get the federal credits, the payout period is longer than the likely lifespan of the item.
---
Now one thing we need to remember is this: Power is appreciating about as fast as inflation. That means your $813 bill today is going to be $1600 in 10 years and $3200 in 20 years. That works in your favor. It helps home buyers too. In 1995 my payment was $700 a month and rent was $655 a month. Today my payment is $700 a month and rent is $1100 a month. In 2015, my payment will be $700 a month and rent will be roughly $2200 a month.
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No.. It's not just an inverter. If you are connected to the grid you need a special circuit box that won't allow power to flow backwards into the grid unless the grid has power. I think it is called a reverse switchback circuit breaker.
The inverter converts DC - > AC.
The charge controller keeps the batteries charged and cycled at the proper levels so they have optimum lifespan.
The switchback? circuit box (can't remember the name exactly) keeps your 1.21 gigawatts of power from killing electric company linemen.
---
No need to be insulting about the AC ideas. If solar power drops by an order of magnitude it is suddenly a very clever and reasonable way. $900 of solar power and a simple $200 window unit and you don't need to run your central AC during the day at all. No need to upgrade your electrical system. No need to have charge controllers, batteries, etc.
---
There are several companies on the edge of dropping the price by an order of magnitude. Two of them basically print solar material with nano-particles. If any of them succeed and solar power does drop to 10% of the current price and becomes unbelievably easy to install (picture unrolling a 50'x3' long strip on your roof that costs about $3000 and produces 1.5 mw of power during the day with no clouds and it has a plug on one end to hook to another strip- no panels, no sun tracking arrays- nothing to break- no cells to be corrupted by water leakage. cool stuff)
As far as the other things- I'm already using efficient appliances, have a programmable thermostat, added radiant barrier, and use florescent lights.
---
I'm pro solar power. It just isn't practical yet unless you can get other people to help you buy it through subsidies. That's only an option in some states.
Yes and no.
The payback is a bit longer than 4-5 years if you are paying for it.
That payback is for states where everyone else is subsidizing your solar purchase heavily.
To sell power to the grid:
With a new house, you build it with the appropriate power box so it won't feed solar power into the grid if the grid has no power. This is so you won't kill linemen when the "power is out" and they are trying to fix the lines. This is a minor expense ($1kish).
With an old house tho... you have change the power box ($3k) out. This also means that you must bring the house up up to code ($3k+).
Paying for a solar system yourself (with no help) will run you about $50k. You will have an ongoing cost of about $500 a year for batteries starting in your fifth year. If you were to put $50k in the bank, you could reasonably expect to make about $1800 risk free after taxes!
Solar power needs to drop in price to make it practical.
I check it annually. I'd really like to do it but there are no subsidies in my state except in one city and I live in an old house.
One other way I experimented was this.
Smaller solar power system.
Small AC unit.
Run the AC unit to reduce the amount that your central AC runs.
This avoids the need to connect the house to the grid.
Unfortunately, it costs about $9000 for a system like that at this time.
Again- just not practical. Interest on $9000 would likely be as much or more than my power savings.
Actually you are both wrong.
If focus groups were the answer we would have a lot more good television shows.
The truth is 70% of what they put out fails/is cancelled (including a lot of good stuff*)
Television was historically a *LIMITED* resource. Given a choice between a show that makes you 2 million in profits and another show that makes you 10 million in profits, and you can ONLY show one, you cancel the less profitable show.
Friends was LUCKY. Many many shows started. Due South is an excellent example of another very funny, well written shows that ended way too soon (tho mainly because the star said, "I don't care bout money- I want to sing in my band".
Now. The cost of a show works in both directions. Again, you are an advertiser and there is *one* show on that has 90% of your target asses sitting in chairs watching it. This means you want on it. But again- there are only 8 slots for commercials. The show might be fabulously profitable at 300,000 per commercial but there are 150 companies bidding for those 8 minutes. So the most profitable (or stupid) companies get the commercial slots because they pay the most.
At this point, the cast and crew of the show says, "Hey, we are making you a lot of money and we want our cut"
Here is where "friends" diverges. Unlike say, Monk, where they let bitty shram go, the crew of friends negotiated together as a block. They never stabbed each other in the back and they all supported each other (a bit of a rarity). Unlike Monk, the show was a true ensemble- every one of the six characters was really needed so they could not lower costs by killing off several characters like they did on "Forever Night". With regard to forever night, they KILLED the show by doing this because they thought it was about a vampire named nick but actually it was an ensemble show but it was to late to repair their horrible mistake by the time they realized this.
Summing up:
90 shows start the season.
There are only about 9 that "click" for whatever reason ( a lot of VERY good shows don't make it ).
As a result, they build an audience.
Advertisers pay for that audience.
The most aggressive advertisers with the most money get the slots.
The crew and cast renegotiates for a share of the profit (to the maximum value they can extract- in the case of friends, at the end they were really borrowing from future syndication profits to pay the salaries the last year).
Over time this has change expectations
A popular TV star in the 1950's might have a decent house and car- be "well off" even tho they had an audience of 75 million and a 40% share of all TV's (only 4 stations too!) In modern day terms- they probably made $250,000 a year (adjusting for inflation). As a result, the networks made a fabulous profit and only had 6 commercials per half hour.
Today a popular TV star is making $250,000 PER EPISODE multipled by the actors (directors, writers, etc. etc.) and they have to have 8 to10 minutes of commercials. The commercials which used to be a miner annoyance are now very intrusive and consume so much time that consumers are starting to avoid them in various ways or even give up watching shows until they come out on DVD (currently with out commercials)
And then you just slow down and reopen the gap.
In the end, the guy 8 cars ahead at best saves 2 minutes at the light when you all get off the freeway.
In some cases, they'll cut over into another lane to save time and you'll putter past them.
Driving is a fun and cool activity and isn't a race unless you are just a minute or two late for something. If you're later than that, who cares - you are late already and a minute or two won't matter. If you are running early, who cares again.
My only pet peeves is
1) being nice and waving people in (who have their signals on) and they hesitate and hesitate and...
2) People who drive to the very end of the merge lane and then basically ram the person there unless they stop. (and I guess the converse, being polite and trying to merge in and folks don't "zipper" with you but instead cut you off).
But life is good... your radio is working... you've got your health.
I owned a 98 durango. it was perfect. it was all rounded and muscular and would go through deep water, over large objects, off road (it lacked about 1" of the clearance of a jeep). It was hit 3 times. Twice from behind (while not moving at a stoplight- result, their cars messed up- my bumper not even moved) and once from the front while stopped (the guy 30' ahead of me suddenly put his truck in reverse, backed towards me at about 20mpg and changed backwards into my lane). That needed a new bumper ($530 but covered).
.88 cents. It seated 7 adults comfortably with the rear seat open - and could have easily seated 2 adults and 6 children. It had a huge cargo capacity with the seats down.
It got 13 to 20 mpg. Gas was
Unfortunately when it came time to get a new one (after 7 years and extended warranty gone so repairs were $2grand each), they had restyled it to be boxy and lowered the headroom so my head hit the cieling.
So now I drive an Element (which only seats 4 but has nice high ceiling). I like it but it lacks the sheer MUSCLE the durango had.
No sex before marriage.
No testing of alchohol before they are 18.
No binge drinking (not even once!) in college.
They'll never download, copy, or rip another song and won't accept free copies from friends who offer them (and they'll probably give stern lectures or even turn in their hooligan friends).
The incentives were bad for a while.
Programmers were viewed as exempt and so those unrealistic schedules allowed the companies to force unpaid overtime on to them.
I highly value our QA team. They save us from putting hideous bugs into production all the time.
OTH. I manage relations between them and programmers all the time. They can develop a "GOTCHA" attitude that is irritating. And programmers can become defensive when valid bugs are found in their code. You constantly have to sell "QA is your friend!"
In the end- if the bonus is only a couple grand- you have to ask yourself, is it worth being miserable for that little money? DO the math. Ask yourself what the hourly rate is.
And remember- a MINOR early failure can be very effective in managing your manager's expectations. They really have no clue how productive you are so they will just keep piling on. They can't tell from your complaints- whiners and slackers complain too (while loafing hours a day).
And either way MS wins.
It is societal.
In some societies, knowing random people may have guns causes less people to feel they are safe in trying to steal or threaten others. As a result, there is less crime with more guns. We've seen this in some US towns.
In some societies, the people hate each other so much, that they don't care if they may be killed trying to hurt other people. As a result, there is more crime with more guns. We've seen this in iraq.
--- put another way.
If the population is basically on the brink of a civil war or doesn't put a high value on life (for whatever reason- economic, religious, tribal) , adding a lot of guns is going to be bad.
If the population is fairly homogenous and does put a high value on life, adding a lot of guns is sometimes good.
Earth & Beyond was shut down.
Do I get to report lost income on my lost starship? It was top of the line and fully upgraded.
How do you determine fair value for obtaining an epic weapon?
Inflation and deflation in online games is horrific. One day I might have a worthless blue diamond. The next, they introduce a new recipe that uses blue diamonds and it is suddenly worth about 25 dollars. A month later, everyone has farmed them so heavily that they are only worth about 25 cents again.
I don't see how they are going to get a handle on these things except at the point of transfer to real dollars.
If second life goes out of favor then that million dollars of virtual real estate could become worthless overnight.
We were not discussing using cell phone jammers in a medical office in this subthread. Your response is a tangent or reference back to the general topic.
Just so you know...
Your cell phone can interfere with other devices in the doctors office.
Heck, I can hear my current and previous cell phone recieving calls on my computer speakers before it starts to ring.
(it makes sort of a Bit bit bzzzz. and then about a second later starts ringing.)
Both at my office and at home.
So you are saying they needed a person without sin to start each pyramid by casting the first stone?