No, Mr. Hannity, I would have no problem if the law were limited to enforcing contracts, like it is supposed to do, instead of trying to control every aspect of everyone's lives to the point that no one can make a move without banging on the City Council's doors demanding recognition of their group's desires.

Laws need not be just. Neither do they have to be for the benefit of the majority of the population.

Blind followers of laws have made dictatorships possible throughout the history of humanity. You think either Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia would have been possible without people who would just follow orders and uphold the law?

It's not that hard to punch that into Wikipedia, is it?

Ok, sorry for the knee-jerk reaction. Let's try to be more level headed.

You know what's most astonishing about an award to a "traitor", given by the very same country he "betrayed", really is? That it is given. Think back through history. Can you imagine an award for Julius Rosenberg, given by any kind of US institution? Or let's be less "dramatic", any idea how a criminal of any kind would be given an award by his own country?

Can you imagine what kind of support for a "crime" it takes that the "criminal" gets an award for it? And we're not talking about a spy having backing in the country he spies from. That the Rosenbergs were seen as heroes in the USSR is a given. But we're talking about support for what he has done, without a doubt against the interests of the US government, and the support that he gets for it within the US.

That alone tells me more about the US government and how well the US people feel represented by said government than about the "criminal".

A government should represent its people, and the will of the people. That's the only reason, the only right, a government has to exist if it is supposed to be just and justified. If a government does not do that and instead prosecutes someone who does actually execute what is identified as the will of the people, then I have to admit it is kinda hard to tell for me who is the criminal here, the whistleblower or the government.

*sigh* Yes, yes, we know Obama got a Nobel Peace Price and nobody knows why, can we finally drop it? Everyone knows those things are mostly for show by now anyway.

What's it got to do with the topic, anyway?

Just 'cause most humans are a waste of valuable oxygen molecules doesn't mean that this animal was.

You can look around yourself and honestly say that it "works"? With companies that do nothing anymore, let alone innovate, but "defend" their patents and use them to keep others from inventing?

That's a "working" environment for you? I guess Communism "worked" too...

Political correctness is mostly avoiding "loaded" terminology. I cannot think of any way how "nigger" would not be accurate and unmistakable. It's just not very polite and a word used in a racist context to describe a person. How is "cripple" not an apt definition of someone who is not fully capable of using every part of his body without impairment? These words have been used in the past to describe exactly the same kind of person that we now describe using other words. These words, the old, "incorrect", ones and the new, "correct", ones, are, essentially, synonyms. What changes when I call someone "someone with special needs" instead of "cripple"? If anything, the politically correct term is LESS accurate than the politically incorrect one.

Where it becomes flat out obvious to use a combination of a small wind far + solar power + some sort of power storage (a water tower works surprisingly well if you don't want to mess with different battery types and hydro-electric power plants are incredibly efficient) is in a rural area where you need to pay the power company to string miles of aluminum wire + power poles (and maintenance of all of those poles from hazards of nature & people) from the nearest distribution point. Going off the grid definitely makes sense when you aren't even on the grid in the first place. Just ask the folks at Black Rock City, Nevada.

As a supplement to power generation, home solar panels on a limited basis really do make sense though. You might want to check on the price of solar panels, as they've gone down in price in terms of $$$/watt so it might make sense to start building some on your roof to cut costs. Quite a bit of power consumption in a typical city happens during the day, which is precisely when solar panels are at their peak power production as well. The problem comes when you cross the threshold and are running the power meter backward, thus selling power back to the utility company.

Lead-acid batteries are used for automobiles for two huge reasons: 1) They are incredibly cheap 2) the long-term power storage requirements of an automobile aren't particularly high anyway. An automobile only needs a bunch of amps for power when the starter motor needs to crank the rest of the engine, then the generator takes over (which is when you would typically run the rest of the accessories). It is a completely different situation for a home power system, where you could certainly use other forms of power storage. This could include flywheels (something horrible to use on an automobile even though most internal combustion engines still have some smallish flywheel simply to operate) or some other kinetic energy storage system in addition to something like a battery pack.

At least we aren't using Leyden Jars for energy storage any more. There definitely have been some advances in electrical storage technologies over the years.

Finally, someone with a theology background to discuss with. I really appreciate your answer and the time you took to answer, and if I may I will tack on a few more questions.

Essentially, according to the creation myth, the decision for the apple was not made directly by mankind. Snake came and tempted them. Actually, IIRC Adam himself did not deliberately eat from the forbidden fruit, it was offered to him by Eve and he unknowingly ate it. That does indeed raise a few more questions.

1) Was snake sent by God, did it act on Gods orders, with his blessing, his knowledge or behind his back? The answer to that might seem trivial, unimportant at first, but it does entail a lot of follow up questions.
a) If God's intention was to test his subjects, he might have ordered snake to tempt them. That would make him a highly unfair God, though, since he punished snake for doing what it was told.
b) If not, well, what's snake's motivation? Was snake tricked itself by some other force, an adversary of god, or did that adversary take on the form of snake? You have answered the omniscient part already, so the "why didn't God know" section is answered. But I would expect a God like that to know WHETHER he has some kind of adversary who would try to mess up his experiment. But if we assume that God did not know about his adversary, and considered that snake acted on its own or that the adversary took the form of snake, wouldn't he err when punishing snake? Can God make mistakes? Can God be tricked?

2) Why was Adam punished? It is possible to trick man. We know that much, from experiment and experience. And while I know that it might not be very sensible to apply modern day sentiments towards legality and justice, isn't it highly unfair to punish someone for something he didn't want to do? To a Muslim it is no too big a problem if he happens to eat pork, provided that at the moment of eating it he did not know it was pork, and provided that he stopped the very instant he notices it. God's reaction tells us that he did know about Eve tricking Adam, because her punishment was a lot more severe, but he didn't get off with a swat on the back of his hand either.

I am of course aware that we're dealing with a creation myth, a myth that had an agenda, i.e. explaining why things are the way they are, and also instilling a certain basic respect, if not fear, towards God. That's a given. Still, it should be consistent. Respect towards an entity, being or organization requires that you accept his superiority. And to be granted respect and not merely fear, being "more powerful" does not suffice. You also need to be at the very least as wise, just and knowledgeable as me. Otherwise, you might get my fear, but you may dream of getting my respect.

And I do think the makers of the bible wanted the people to respect God.

I think the GP poster was pretty spot on, and it was sort of tongue in cheek in terms of the idea of buying Microsoft.

Of course nobody in "the real world" would bother to loan some random homeless dude off the street and give them a few billion dollars to make a leveraged buyout of Microsoft. That is because no average person has the talent nor the ability to operate a company like Microsoft and have it continue to earn money for its investors (which in this case would be the bank). Besides, if the bank had that kind of money burning a hole it its pocket where a random dude could be put in charge of the company and run it, that bank would have purchased the company a long time ago and would have cut you out of the deal a long time ago.

Also, most banks like loans for investment purposes to also have the person involved having some "skin in the game". In other words, even if you are using a bank to assist in a major financial purchase, you also need to have a substantial fraction of the company (at the bare minimum 10% of the investment capital... likely in this case more like 50%-80% for Microsoft). It isn't strictly required (sort of what you are suggesting), but it depends on how much risk the bank is willing to take with such an investment.

On the other hand, if you were able to convince them that a leveraged buy-out of Microsoft could get you running the company and allow them to repay the loans with substantial interest + extra profits, there is no doubt that a reasonable bank would jump on the chance. The trick is convincing the loan officer (and for that kind of money, the board of directors for the bank and likely the local Federal Reserve Bank board too) that you really are the kind of person who could get the company producing profits like when Bill Gates was running the company. That has the proverbial chance of a snowball surviving inside of the Sun's photosphere for any length of time.

Getting back onto topic, the question is if one of the other major automobile companies could do a better job of running an electric automobile manufacturing company? It should be apparent that there are some very experienced and capable people at Toyota, GM, Daimler, and Ford that could in theory run Tesla, possibly even better than Elon Musk seems to be doing so at the moment. The question then becomes one of cash flow for these major companies and if they can leverage the money needed for the purchase.

Tesla stock prices are high enough that a hostile take-over is now simply out of the question. If Toyota was to advertise that they were willing to pay $200 per share for the company (this does happen... usually in the New York Times or Wall Street Journal when it is so blatant), odds are likely that the exchange prices will soar to $250 or more. By the time the chase is over, it is likely that Tesla would buy out Toyota instead. Sort of like what happened when Pixar bought out Disney.

You say that like it should be that way.

First, that the automotive aftermarket is a thorn in the side of automakers is a good thing. The law is not there to protect the monopoly of a manufacturer. Quite the opposite, the law is supposed to protect plurality on both sides of the fence (supply AND demand) to ensure the market can work. There are very, very few cases where monopolies are beneficial to the market, and none of them include a for-profit organization in a monopoly position.

So the maker of a product is allowed to tell me just how long I may use his product?

I wouldn't call it a scam, but most of the electricity infrastructure is based on the model that you have a massive central power plant and a series of ever decreasing stages for smaller consumption purposes that ultimately terminate with a consumer electronic device or a light bulb (still a major consumer of electrical power). What this kind of arrangement requires is for the infrastructure to be able to feed power within that small sub-grid from one producer to one consumer, or better yet feed the power back upstream to other users. This is where the real problem lies.

There is also the problem of power companies selling power at retail prices (which accounts for all of that infrastructure... some of which isn't needed for major industries who legitimately get a price break by consuming large quantities of electrical power at wholesale prices as that industrial plant deals with the infrastructure needed to run the lights or other individual appliances), and then having those same companies expected to buy back power at the same retail price level. It is possible that simply to be connected to a power grid there might be a monthly fee dedicated to paying for the distribution infrastructure, and that different tiers of payment for power generated could be established for residential power generation vs. large plants (including solar & wind farms).

Legitimately there are many neighborhoods in California that the neighborhood as a whole is a net electricity producer, so that whole centralized distribution also needs to deal with what happens when too much power is being generated. It is entirely possible that a power company may have to shut down every power plant in their distribution system and then still need to dump the power generated somewhere.... usually into some massive resistors that simply generate a whole bunch of excess heat that does nothing useful. While not entirely a brand new problem (some very long distance distribution lines can also generate electricity simply by having the Earth spin on its axis during a solar storm, pick up the power from the high power long distance lines), this is something that definitely needs a different kind of infrastructure in place.

The battery packs can help in this situation too, or some other power storage system. A utility company near where I live wants to pump water from a large lake into a reservoir as a form of energy storage, and then use hydro-electric power generation to retrieve the power when needed. It is meeting some huge resistance from local residents mainly because the power storage isn't being used locally not to mention that it will do some massive environmental damage, but the idea is being floated around as an alternative to the Li-ion cells. That also is a kind of infrastructure cost that needs to be considered, where you might be able to have a centralized power storage system instead.

There are no simple answers to any of the problems being offered, and I think it is disingenuous to suggest that it is a scam. Even companies like Solar City or others that offer home solar power aren't scams, but there definitely are some political considerations to be made.... including some concessions by the major utility companies that their distribution model is not needed any more and instead something different needs to be developed at the same time the existing grid is maintained.

This really is more like the transition from horse-drawn vehicles and massive canal works to something more like paved roads leading to the Autobahn or Interstate Highways. The basic infrastructure how it was used in the past can still be used that way but new things are now connecting to the power grid in ways that it wasn't intended when it was built... and the infrastructure needs to cope with the changes. That takes some effort on the part of the public, legislators, utility companies, and a legitimate need to address the very real problems that are happening so buck passing on the problems doesn't keep going on.

Again, if all cars need to be electric and there is a huge love for a model the maker doesn't want to support anymore, the aftermarket will instantly take over and provide a kit that allows you to replace your ICE with an electric one.

Try that with an operating system and you'll be swarmed by lawyers who'd like to know how you could do that without reverse engineering the system, which is forbidden...