Well, if your production code is open source, then storing your code on GitHub seems like a reasonable approach ... for backup.

While you are correct, I defy you to come up with an example of a form of government (that has been in use) that doesn't/didn't lead to authoritarianism.

In the US it took less than 10 years (see "The Whiskey Rebellion"). The only thing that slowed down the process was the existence of an "open border" along the west. Closed borders foster authroitarianism, whatever the form of government.

Actually, I believe that there ARE forms of government that don't necessarily drift towards authoritarianism, but they would all have the characteristic that desiring power didn't increase your chance of getting it.

Unfortunately, bankruptcy law allows, and often requires, companies to break a lot of promises. I'm no lawyer, and all I know about bankruptcy law I learned from GrokLaw, but it has all kinds of wierd little "kludges" designed to allow the maximum amount of money to be pulled out of a corpse...usually for the benefit of the lawyers, as they get paid even before the creditors.

IIUC, bankruptcy laws require them to sell anything they can make money on unless it's illegal. And the people managing the bankruptcy aren't the people who were running the company before. (Usually, maybe they are in this case.)

Keep this in mind whenever a business asks you for information.

Real marriages are the ones that give you a tax advantage/ health care saving/etc.

Warning: I'm a prrogrammer, not a physicist.

IIUC, one interpretation is that "yes, it's a particle, but it only has a probable location/velocity/momentum/etc.". So it is simultaneously both a particle (as an object) and a distribution of probabilities as characteristics of the particle. It's the probabilities that move as a wave, but it's only the particle that we can detect.

N.B.: I studied this quite a long time ago, so not only are things a bit fuzzy, the "best" way of looking at them may have changed.

Also: Please note that this is just an interpretation of the data. The data appear to be such that multiple (wierd) interprations are possible, and no-"non-wierd" interpretation is possible. My favored interpretation is a variation of the Multi-World (EGW) interpretation modified to include multiple pasts as well a multiple futures so the the universe becomes a directed graph with a (possibly unique) origin and a (unknown) limit. But most state transitions though probabilistic don't make the universe larger because the multiple pasts of each instant-instance merge an (essentially) equally large number of world-lines to the divergence towards the future. So the number of world lines stays approximately constant. Think of it as a really huge state transition table with probabilistic transitions being processed on a system with a truly huge number of independent threads. And all exits from each state are taken with a weight equal to the probability. This is already pretty messy, but then you need to start worrying about the light cones, and the fact that information transmitted via light only experiences time when and absorbtion/re-emission even occurs. (I haven't yet figured out how to handle light slowing down when not traversing a vacuum but also not being absorbed. Does it start experiencing time?)

OK. Possibly I misunderstood what was required to allow a push connection to the electrical grid. OTOH, it was a couple of decades ago that we put in solar panels (with a grid connection, and, obviously, not Solar City), so also perhaps the rules have changed.

The bank would also want security for the loan, perhaps you could get better terms from them. If the Solar City salesman you contacted said they don't do "off the grid" installations...that doesn't seem to be what the company currently says. Maybe they didn't, maybe it's flim-flam, maybe your salesman didn't want to do it. From your description he was clearly lousy at his job.

OTOH, this http://www.greentechmedia.com/... might be related to your experience. However this http://blog.solarcity.com/put-... seems to bolster your point. But this http://cleantechnica.com/2012/... disagrees with that. These were all published at different points in time, so quite possibly the position is in flux. Their site doesn't seem to address the question directly for residential customers.

So I think you are basically correct, if you want an "off the grid" solar installation you should go with someone else until they are ready to make a clear statement. But for the larger installations that they are talking about in this Press Release, attaching to the grid appears to be an afterthought. (It couldn't really be an afterthought, but it seems designed for locations where good grid connections cannot be assumed.)

Thinking of them as a utility company is actually more accurate than thinking of them as an installer. But they aren't regulated the way most utility companies are (which has both good and bad points). They are a utility company because they own the generation plant that they install on your property. You are just the only customer of that plant. I'm sorry the salesman you dealt with was unpleasant, but that's not a basis for deciding that the *company* is a bunch of hucksters. (I'm not saying they aren't, they could be. I'm saying that isn't a valid basis for deciding.)

As for your "Any electrician..." comment, yes. But most electricians don't have agreements with the power company to allow them to connect their devices to feed power into the lines. Most solar companies do. Now if you want total grid independence that shouldn't matter to you. So in that case what matters is that Solar City supplies long term financing that most electricians won't give you. If you don't want it, fine. Some people do.

Your result clearly depends on local electric costs from the grid. For others it may well not make sense. And perhaps they have more than one package to choose from...with different contracts. (Also, perhaps they offer different such packages in different areas.)

I'm glad you've been having a good experience. I hope you continue to. But realistically you're dealing with a large corporation in a monopoly situation (i.e., you're locked into that contract for a long time). So be sure you understand what the contract says, and what your remedies are if they start defaulting on their obligations.

Perhaps not, but how long will the salt stay molten without additional energy input?

(OTOH, for a city sized plant that might well be a reasonable choice. Small packages have a higher surface/volume ratio. OTTH, last time I posted this someone told me that insulation was now good enough that this wasn't a major problem. Perhaps he's right.)

Weeelll....
Actually you should say "...because somebody's great-grandkids...". A lot of the original luddites died as the result of their jobs being eliminated...and so did their kids. (True, some of them took up other jobs, like thief, but they were only trained as weavers, so they weren't reall very good at them.) The same period gave us the french word "sabotage" which meant throwing your wooden shoes (sabots) into the machinery.

Most history isn't exactly bunk, it's more a massive white-wash job on the history of the wealthy and powerful.

It's all well and good to talk about supporting STEM education, but that doesn't do much good if everyone who considers investing their time and effort in that direction realizes that they'll be burdening themselves with intolerable debt, and that there's a very good chance they won't be able to get a job which will even let them keep up with accumulating interest.

This smells to me like a pure PR move.

Sorry, I was talking about the US income tax. I've no idea what the motivations behind British income tax were.

The GGGP post in the thread mentions *both* the US and the British governments, and I focused on the US, though either, or even both, are consistent with most of the intermediate posts.

I'm not even sure of that, unless the broadcast crosses state lines at a power which might reasonably impact transmissions originating in another state.

OTOH, it is definitely useful to have a standards agency that specifies encoding standards for, e.g., FM. But specifying standards shouldn't necessarily equate to enforcing compliance. Perhaps that should be separate, and only be enforceable on those claiming to adhere to the standard and not doing so.

This, however, is an argument about "should" and not about "historicly applied powers". Regulating ISPs as common carriers is within the FCCs hostoricly applied powers, in as much as they are interstate companies and there's the precedent of AT&T. (Not that the feds have been showing themselves shy about extending their powers beyond all reason without such a legal cloak, but in this case I think that they're on relatively reasonable [for them] footing.)

No. Withholding tax law may have been written for that purpose, but the purpose of the Income Tax was to weaken the power of the states relative to the federal government.