The rooftop solar households do sell their excess electricity back to the utility. It is called net metering. If I consume X units and generate and feedback Y units I get billed for only (X-Y) units. If Y is greater than X the utility cuts you a check. By law the utility is required to buy the electricity back exactly at the same rate it is selling to everyone. It is required to pay retail. 5$ a month is not unreasonable. But it is going to throw off all the break-even point calculations for solar installations. And it will slowdown some marginal installations. But given the solar costs are falling, it will still be profitable to install solar panels. And once the tipping point is reached the utility will be losing tons and tons of customers.
The best battery storage technology in the horizon is the mechanical battery. Flywheels spinning in vaccuum canisters at 200,000 to 400,000 rpm, connected to motor/generators. These things can accelerate a fully loaded light rail vehicles from dead stop to running speed as efficiently and speedily as a fully grid connected set up. Look at UT Austin web sites for it. But such batteries face catastrophic containment issues to be used in transportation (car/rail) applications. But in fixed installations like homes/data centers etc they can be buried in the ground with concrete enclosures. They can easily store three days worth of electricity for a typical household. Arizona has plenty of sunshine, and home lots are large and cheap. Most likely Arizona is the place where urban homes will choose to go off the grid first in America.
For some insane reason the pdf document thinks it is a web page and has tons and tons of stuff for javascript and hyperlinks etc etc. In fact the holes in pdf is on of the biggest vulnerabilities and if you strictly follow the standard, the same hole would exist in all the platforms. One of the main reasons for not using Adobe reader is to force it to stop following the links. Adobe for some reason resets all those security settings every time I am forced to upgrade Adobe viewer by some insane company policy.
Google stops Fox-it or it absorbs and assimilates Foxit I don't care. But I don't want Chrome to follow hyper links in any pdf document. Will it follow? Can I force it not to follow?
Seems like it would take a while. How many numbers is that, exactly?
Well, last time I checked there are infinite number of numbers between 1 and 507. And they say there are more rational numbers between 1 and 2 than there are natural numbers. Well, should ask the Superstar Rajnikant. He is the only one who has counted all the way to infinity (twice) and divided by zero too.
What's wrong with this guy. He keeps launching and suggesting new ideas every other week, without actually delivering something most of his fans are begging for.
Enough pie in the sky and train in the tube already.
Haul your tail in and make and deliver a decent 40K Tesla sedan.
But hazardous chemicals do not reproduce on their own, mutate on their own, they don't have an innate mechanism to go forth and multiply by commandeering resources from nature...
Unlike conventional fabrication methods, which involve energy-intensive high temperatures and hazardous chemicals, this process can be carried out at room temperature using a water-based process."
Pray tell, why these hazardous biota are better than hazardous chemicals. What can go wrong?
The main source of revenue was the late fees and did not rewind fees. So they really hated the DVDs for robbing them of the did not rewind fees. And no late fee model? Anathema. They could not wrap their silly head to the notion, it is possible to build a profitable business without nickel and diming the customers and without pissing them off.
Good riddance Blockbuster, hope you rot in hell with all the late fees you chiseled from us.
There was this guy who used to write etymology column in the NYT, William Safire. Used to a decent column. Later I learnt that he was a speech writer for Nixon, and a suck up to the christian fundies. He was bragging how he managed to slip in AD 1970 into the gold plates carried by Voyager I and how the reference to Christian lord went totally unnoticed by the scientists on NASA. He was very proud and bragging about how he was instrumental in spreading the name of his god beyond this solar system.
Frankly he sounded totally crazy. His God is supposed to he Lord of the Universe. And no one else had heard about Him, and this nattering nabob of a nitwit Safire spread His name to some distant galaxy? Idiot.
Well, someday, if a bunch of Janus worshipers get some political mileage and seem to threaten my religious liberty, I will do my bit to rename the name of the month of January.
Carl Sagan's book Cosmos, theorizes that sometime within the last 10 or 20 thousand years, a comet with four bright tails, came to wards the Earth in an end-on view. That would look like a Swastika. That shape has been recorded in Chinese manuscripts of comet descriptions. It must have made profound impact on human psyche because of so many associations of the Swastika symbol with supernatural and power.
So I was looking for some spectacular six tailed swastika there, but, meh, some smokey trails.
These line widths of 22 nm or 28 nm etc are some 50 times narrower than the wavelength of visible light. Making the lines thinner is difficult and it is approaching quanum mechanics limit. Unless people start immersing the entire etching machines in water or some such medium, we cant make the lines thinner.
Even if we did, there are not enough electrons in these lines to make the "law of large numbers" work. So this time we are bumping against a real barrier.
Anyway, there are not any mass market killer apps based on computation anymore. All the action is in connectivity and bandwidth enhancement. Given the computer market has been split into makers vs takers (or content produces vs content consumers) this is changing the funding models. Earlier the large number of passive consumers buying computers way more powerful computationally than what the typical consumer needs, was subsidizing the cost of computers for the few who actually need that much of computational power. Now the passive consumers are buying simpler devices needing less computation and more connectivity. We can expect coders like us can expect our hardware to get more expensive, like the old line of unix workstations like micro-vaxes or sun-solaris or hp-ux or SG-Iris.
Very clearly etched in my memory. I was walking down the street in Bangalore, unpaved gravel street. Light breeze on. The wind rustled a long piece of dried coconut palm leaf frond. It slithered in the wind just as a snake would. I had encountered snakes in the wild may be a dozen times in my life previously, but none that long, nor slithering like that palm leaf. It was in the peripheral vision, suddenly almost everything else in my field of vision vanished, except for that snake/palm frond. Eyes pivoted to it, I was startled and instinctively jumped, startling a few near by who too reacted as though they had seen a snake! My body language was so clear they thought they saw a snake too. It was sheepish grin, we all laughed and moved on. I had always known our brains process slithering long things in the peripheral vision differently.
The bubble chamber was invented by a scientist who was watching how the bubbles in a beer mug always come from the same spot. He won a Nobel prize for it. Imagine! A Novbel. For staring into a beer stein.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_chamber
Of course, the people who suffered because of the destabilization of the markets caused by such cavalier trading algorithms can sue to collect compensation for damages. But the same people who valiant rise to the defense of free markets, and "let people do what they want with their money and if they lose it, its their problem" are the same ones who rail against the trial lawyers and push for "tort" reform to reduce penalties.
Remember this folks, when you are pushing for complete free markets, trial lawyers and courts are the only form of defense against the big players. And once the government has been shrunk small enough to be drowned in a bath tub, will the courts have any power to enforce judgements?
Look at how toothless SEC is against powerful traders. That would exactly be the situation in the libertarian paradise where everyone acts anyway they want, and any harm they cause would have to be proved in court and compensation claimed. In that world taxes are so low and the Government would be so powerless and the courts would be so overloaded, the common man will have absolutely no protection. That is the side most libertarians refuse to see.
Do you wonder what happened after all the Atlases shrugged, ditched the world of moochers and moved to Galt's Gulch? The biggest Atlas there called himself Zeus and screwed all of them.
Given the cronyism masquerading as capitalism in USA, you should be glad this behavior is considered bad enough to be punished. Be glad they did not get the contract to "improve" healthcare.gov
Automakers have a heavy mark up on these infotainment systems. And they salivate at the thought of recording and keeping all the info people are searching for. Situation not unlike car makers using proprietary connections to sell their radios and cassette decks at heavy mark up by avoiding price competition with thirdparty products. Eventually they all settled on SAE standard connectors.
Same way, we need to get SAE or some such body, at least nominally independent from the car makers, to specify the interface and the dock and the functions that will be handled by the attached tablet or smartphone.
It is particularly irritating to buy a brand new BMW and then find out their mp3 player can not play my files from the thumb drive and has so many issues pairing with blue tooth phones. Google Nexus 4 is not in the "approved list of phones" for a 2014 model year SUV. It is inexcusable. All the computers (mac, win, android, sansa), smartphones, tablets play these tracks correctly. But BMW claims the files are not strictly standard compliant so it is not their fault they don't play.
If any one of you are planning to buy a BMW, take your own phone and a thumbdrive full of your mp3 tracks. Make sure it plays for at least 20 minutes in the car before you sign the papers. But when the car forgets the pairing after three days, or when the mp3 track issues show up after five tracks, it is difficult to test. Just stay away from BMW.
They have a plastic tube coming out of the stomach wall connected to a mylar balloon. It is as shocking as that cow with a glass window in its side that allows the scientist to reach in and take samples of semi digested stuff from the cow's stomach.
Forget the belches and farts, cowshit has enough methane. It is far easier to sweep all the solid waste from the cow to retention ponds, cover it with a plastic sheet and collect the methane. It reduces odor pollution, gets methane fuel, and produces non-smelly organic fertilizer. But alas, now that natural gas prices has fallen to through the floor due to fracking, there is no incentive to do it for fuel. Organic fertilizer and odor pollution abatement are the only incentives for this now.
Documentation goes out of synch with the code very quickly. The only thing worse than working on someone else's code without documentation is working on someone else's code with incorrect documentation. The problem is so old Dijkstra allegedly said, "Always debug code, not the comments".
Oh, yeah someone will tell me I am doing documentation wrong. How come "you are not doing agile right" is a valid response but "you are not doing watefall right" is not?
Let us use the 3D printing technology to create papyrus rolls. And use an email to a post-office which will print it and deliver it to the customer's home.
Or we can speak into a smart phone, use an app to convert it to text, send it via SMS, the receiving app will use a synthesizer to read it out aloud. If the receiving phone has stored the profile of your voice, the receiver can actually hear the sender's voice, on a phone, no less! Oh, wait, some already did this. It is called What's App.
All the games are killer apps, in some sense. The player kills. And the games are full of explosions. So one more killer app? That is going to make linux explode?
John Boehner just released a statement: "This incident clearly proves pilots are not essential and we can get by without them. Let us furlough them, profit destroying, union joining, commie socialistic, moochers."
Most upscale hotel customers are business travelers and their corporate employer is picking up the tab. They don't even look at the bill. If they do it is to make sure the correct euphemism is used for the porn bill. So in some sense they get everything free.
Again the real big businesses get into large contracts with the hotel chains and they get a different rate. But then the hotels get smart and add "service" fees. And the next round of contract talks things get negotiated. The cycle goes on.
In all our travel, if there is no free parking, free breakfast and free wi-fi, I am not even looking at the hotel. They get filtered out.
Slashdot Mirror
The best battery storage technology in the horizon is the mechanical battery. Flywheels spinning in vaccuum canisters at 200,000 to 400,000 rpm, connected to motor /generators. These things can accelerate a fully loaded light rail vehicles from dead stop to running speed as efficiently and speedily as a fully grid connected set up. Look at UT Austin web sites for it. But such batteries face catastrophic containment issues to be used in transportation (car/rail) applications. But in fixed installations like homes/data centers etc they can be buried in the ground with concrete enclosures. They can easily store three days worth of electricity for a typical household. Arizona has plenty of sunshine, and home lots are large and cheap. Most likely Arizona is the place where urban homes will choose to go off the grid first in America.
Google stops Fox-it or it absorbs and assimilates Foxit I don't care. But I don't want Chrome to follow hyper links in any pdf document. Will it follow? Can I force it not to follow?
Seems like it would take a while. How many numbers is that, exactly?
Well, last time I checked there are infinite number of numbers between 1 and 507. And they say there are more rational numbers between 1 and 2 than there are natural numbers. Well, should ask the Superstar Rajnikant. He is the only one who has counted all the way to infinity (twice) and divided by zero too.
Enough pie in the sky and train in the tube already.
Haul your tail in and make and deliver a decent 40K Tesla sedan.
But hazardous chemicals do not reproduce on their own, mutate on their own, they don't have an innate mechanism to go forth and multiply by commandeering resources from nature...
Unlike conventional fabrication methods, which involve energy-intensive high temperatures and hazardous chemicals, this process can be carried out at room temperature using a water-based process."
Pray tell, why these hazardous biota are better than hazardous chemicals. What can go wrong?
Good riddance Blockbuster, hope you rot in hell with all the late fees you chiseled from us.
Patent does not good to you, if you are hawking some vaporware.
You are right. I would just replace "educated" with "bought a diploma from", that is all.
Frankly he sounded totally crazy. His God is supposed to he Lord of the Universe. And no one else had heard about Him, and this nattering nabob of a nitwit Safire spread His name to some distant galaxy? Idiot.
Well, someday, if a bunch of Janus worshipers get some political mileage and seem to threaten my religious liberty, I will do my bit to rename the name of the month of January.
Fun fact: Saudi Arabia prohibits women from driving cars, has imported some half million Pakistanis, Indians and Bangladeshis drivers.
So I was looking for some spectacular six tailed swastika there, but, meh, some smokey trails.
Even if we did, there are not enough electrons in these lines to make the "law of large numbers" work. So this time we are bumping against a real barrier.
Anyway, there are not any mass market killer apps based on computation anymore. All the action is in connectivity and bandwidth enhancement. Given the computer market has been split into makers vs takers (or content produces vs content consumers) this is changing the funding models. Earlier the large number of passive consumers buying computers way more powerful computationally than what the typical consumer needs, was subsidizing the cost of computers for the few who actually need that much of computational power. Now the passive consumers are buying simpler devices needing less computation and more connectivity. We can expect coders like us can expect our hardware to get more expensive, like the old line of unix workstations like micro-vaxes or sun-solaris or hp-ux or SG-Iris.
Yes it is so big, you would type 120 when you mean 210.
Very clearly etched in my memory. I was walking down the street in Bangalore, unpaved gravel street. Light breeze on. The wind rustled a long piece of dried coconut palm leaf frond. It slithered in the wind just as a snake would. I had encountered snakes in the wild may be a dozen times in my life previously, but none that long, nor slithering like that palm leaf. It was in the peripheral vision, suddenly almost everything else in my field of vision vanished, except for that snake/palm frond. Eyes pivoted to it, I was startled and instinctively jumped, startling a few near by who too reacted as though they had seen a snake! My body language was so clear they thought they saw a snake too. It was sheepish grin, we all laughed and moved on. I had always known our brains process slithering long things in the peripheral vision differently.
The bubble chamber was invented by a scientist who was watching how the bubbles in a beer mug always come from the same spot. He won a Nobel prize for it. Imagine! A Novbel. For staring into a beer stein. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_chamber
Remember this folks, when you are pushing for complete free markets, trial lawyers and courts are the only form of defense against the big players. And once the government has been shrunk small enough to be drowned in a bath tub, will the courts have any power to enforce judgements?
Look at how toothless SEC is against powerful traders. That would exactly be the situation in the libertarian paradise where everyone acts anyway they want, and any harm they cause would have to be proved in court and compensation claimed. In that world taxes are so low and the Government would be so powerless and the courts would be so overloaded, the common man will have absolutely no protection. That is the side most libertarians refuse to see.
Do you wonder what happened after all the Atlases shrugged, ditched the world of moochers and moved to Galt's Gulch? The biggest Atlas there called himself Zeus and screwed all of them.
Given the cronyism masquerading as capitalism in USA, you should be glad this behavior is considered bad enough to be punished. Be glad they did not get the contract to "improve" healthcare.gov
Same way, we need to get SAE or some such body, at least nominally independent from the car makers, to specify the interface and the dock and the functions that will be handled by the attached tablet or smartphone.
It is particularly irritating to buy a brand new BMW and then find out their mp3 player can not play my files from the thumb drive and has so many issues pairing with blue tooth phones. Google Nexus 4 is not in the "approved list of phones" for a 2014 model year SUV. It is inexcusable. All the computers (mac, win, android, sansa), smartphones, tablets play these tracks correctly. But BMW claims the files are not strictly standard compliant so it is not their fault they don't play.
If any one of you are planning to buy a BMW, take your own phone and a thumbdrive full of your mp3 tracks. Make sure it plays for at least 20 minutes in the car before you sign the papers. But when the car forgets the pairing after three days, or when the mp3 track issues show up after five tracks, it is difficult to test. Just stay away from BMW.
Forget the belches and farts, cowshit has enough methane. It is far easier to sweep all the solid waste from the cow to retention ponds, cover it with a plastic sheet and collect the methane. It reduces odor pollution, gets methane fuel, and produces non-smelly organic fertilizer. But alas, now that natural gas prices has fallen to through the floor due to fracking, there is no incentive to do it for fuel. Organic fertilizer and odor pollution abatement are the only incentives for this now.
Oh, yeah someone will tell me I am doing documentation wrong. How come "you are not doing agile right" is a valid response but "you are not doing watefall right" is not?
Or we can speak into a smart phone, use an app to convert it to text, send it via SMS, the receiving app will use a synthesizer to read it out aloud. If the receiving phone has stored the profile of your voice, the receiver can actually hear the sender's voice, on a phone, no less! Oh, wait, some already did this. It is called What's App.
All the games are killer apps, in some sense. The player kills. And the games are full of explosions. So one more killer app? That is going to make linux explode?
John Boehner just released a statement: "This incident clearly proves pilots are not essential and we can get by without them. Let us furlough them, profit destroying, union joining, commie socialistic, moochers."
Again the real big businesses get into large contracts with the hotel chains and they get a different rate. But then the hotels get smart and add "service" fees. And the next round of contract talks things get negotiated. The cycle goes on.
In all our travel, if there is no free parking, free breakfast and free wi-fi, I am not even looking at the hotel. They get filtered out.