The article is a bit misleading. I don't know about that specific house, and the article sure isn't clear other than "Indian Rocks Beach". I know of people in the area who do use solar panels, and are grid-tied.

    I see a few potential problems.

    First, she rents the property, so the owner may not want it.

    Second, the property may be deed restricted as part of a HOA. For example, my house is in a HOA but enforces nothing. My mom's house is also, but they are strict down to how many plants you can have on your front porch (6), and screening in the porch is forbidden unless it happened before the current management took over. We can have satellite TV, solar water heater, or whatever we want. My mom can't even have a digital satellite dish or even a small mast antenna.

    And finally, the article clearly states "vintage cottages". It may fall under some local rules imposed on historic properties. That "city" is only about 1.5 miles by 0.5 miles, and I haven't lived in it so I don't know the specific rules. I did work in the county, and I did see homes and businesses with solar panels installed. So, it's not a county or state issue, it's a local government or HOA issue.

    I know there *is* work for solar. We need some electrical work done on our house, and when I was looking for contractors about half of them specialized in solar. That has a higher profit than just coming in and repairing basic electrical problems.

Really, it's not more intensive to use https. There are lots of people who have analyzed the difference.

A few more packets are sent. It's really trivial. While it is measurable, it can be recovered by removing one little picture, and/or compressing one of those pictures.

A trivial amount of CPU time is taken. Most of the measurements saying it was significant was when CPUs were single core 200Mhz or less, and memory was measured in MB rather than GB.

I've been offering or forcing users to SSL, depending on the site. Sometimes I just do it because I can.

There's no good reason to not use SSL now. I've forced it on hobby sites, and huge load sites.

There is a risk of serving even simple elements insecure. It would be mistakes or silly things that don't seem to make a difference. I've seen lots of little mistakes when packet sniffing networks (with explicit permission, of course). Once in a while, someone will make the little mistake developing a site, and I'll see a request like http://example.org/images/logo... .

Your site could be totally perfect today, and you've gone over it every which way to make sure of that. But next week or next year when you make a "simple" change, it could make a huge difference.

They're not $50/ea though. ssls.com sells Comodo PositiveSSL for $8.95/yr. If they set up as a reseller and do enough volume, the price drops to $6.15/yr.

If they aren't making enough to cover those costs (or even the $50), their link farms really aren't worth having.

Unfortunately, it could only get you to one star in your lifetime, and we have a pretty decent view of it from here.

Right. The "irregularity" may be that the dates are showing in the wrong format on the monthly report. Or that it's 90% less than what it should be. It could be assumed that because there are emails going around, it's already being investigated by the appropriate people.

It's not up to the IT people, even if you're a Chief- or Director- level, to follow up on problems in other departments. You could find your employment rather limited if you go to the CEO or CFO about the "irregularities".

I don't see how ignoring is a hard thing.

I've had access to countless mailboxes, confidential files, and sat down at executive's computers to fix problems. The magic secret is, don't read it. If someone's mail isn't working, so I repair the problem and check it, I see that there are words. I don't read the words. It's nothing more than a passing glance.

When I have been specifically (and legally) tasked with reading email, I can say that it is amazingly boring.

Usually, just as you said, if I'm testing functionality of a server, I make something to test with. If I'm testing a mail server, there's no reason to spam a real user's box with. I'll create my own test account, do whatever testing needs to be done, and then when I'm satisfied with the resolution, delete the account.

I have a client who does have confidential data. They are contractually bound not to release that data to any third parties, which could include me. I create my own test files, and move them around. If I only need a small file, it may just be a file that contains the string "testing". It may be a huge file created with dd.

He also asks about eavesdropping. Simple enough, don't do it. If someone is talking about something to you that you probably shouldn't know about, just say it. "Don't tell me about that." It's been both a joke, and good for covering my own ass.

"spazzies"? Really? You know, before the car accident that screwed me up, I was perfectly normal. Now that they've done surgery to correct the issue, I'm perfectly normal, with a little extra titanium hardware. We're all one car accident away from having the same issues. That is, unless you never leave your mother's basement.

Ya.. There are are a bunch of whiny bitches here. :) The same ones who complain about kids, or the fact that I bypassed the lines in the courtesy wheelchair, because I couldn't walk through an airport.

Thanks. I am so delighted it got fixed. It only took about 1.5 years and a half dozen "expert" doctors to find one who knew what he was doing. I had sympathy for people who couldn't get around before. Now I have a *lot* more.

Only if you're lucky. Well, I think SW does that. No other airlines I fly do. I don't really care about kids. My ears have never really tolerated flying much, so I have to use the pressure relieving earplugs. Wearing noise cancelling headphones over them, I can barely tell the engines are running, much less screaming children. :)

No, you really want them to board first.

For the last year, up until last month, I was barely able to walk. I still had to fly for work. I boarded flights with the kids and anyone else that needed help.

The parent doesn't just stow their stuff and sit down. They stow the kids bags, get the kids to sit down, shut up, buckles on, no you can't go to the bathroom, blah, blah, blah.

For me, it took me about 4x as long just to get down the airway. A guy barely walking down the ramp with passengers walking normal speed definitely held up the flow, no matter how much room I tried to leave. I still got held up by the parents with kids, and I didn't care. I'd just sit on the nearest armrest until they were done.

You don't want me, or the parents with kids slowing you down. People are assholes enough boarding planes.

If you wait for them to board last, now you'll have parents trying to stow bags in the last few spots (if there are any), trying to get the kids in their seats at the same time, and having the kid(s) climbing over other passengers.

For me, barely able to walk, if I had to take the window seat, that would mean everyone in the other seat(s) would have to move. Walking on a cane, I wasn't able to just squeeze by anyone, especially if there were no good seats available. It was still hard just to get *to* the window seat.

And before any of you complain, since surgery I can walk fine. The cane is retired at least for another 30 years.

Level 3 Communications is (or at least was) a really great company to work with. When the company I worked for was a huge customer of theirs, they did anything and everything to satisfy us. The claim of them volunteering to install 10GE cards really does sound like something they'd just do to make a large customer happy.

I really miss working with them.

I was wondering why someone would buy 20 crappy phones from me on eBay.

Just kidding. I take all my dirty pictures with a Polaroid. :)

I'd love to see something like that functional. It could really change what we're doing there. quadcopter or quadcopter/fixed wing hybrids, could do really well exploring the surface of Mars. It's not like there's a rush to get anywhere. They could lay out with solar panels extended for weeks to charge, and then fly for miles. It wouldn't be practical for moving lots of equipment, but it could grab samples and bring them back to the rover/base.

They'd need to take into consideration those pesky sandstorms though. It's not a great place for an aircraft, unless they can automatically secure it. Like have a screw anchor it to the ground (like a tent screw or dog tiedown), and a cover to extend over it and secure itself. Then there's the matter of digging itself out after the storm without killing the batteries.

That would be a cool trick. I think it will be a long long time before we see that.

GPS, and GLONASS have 24 satellites for global coverage. Galileo has 27. Beidou has 10 right now, but has limited coverage. It will have 35 when it's fully operational.

Most (all?) require ground stations to keep them updated, so it isn't just a matter of throwing some satellites up and having GPS on another planet. As I recall, GPS satellite service will degrade to unusable somewhere between 90 to 180 days. [insert obligatory apocalypse reference]

Theoretically with GPS, you can lock with 3, but that assumes a highly clock on the receiver. Our phones and GPS receivers aren't that accurate, so we require 4 satellites.

But I believe this was dumbed down for the casual reader, so they said "GPS". Using the known location of the orbital vehicle, gravitational center of mars, magnetic poles, and stars optically with a sextant, and using inertial sensors, they could put it down on a precise target.

They might use GPS for test flights here, since we have the luxury on this rock. They aren't accounting for other things with their tests right now. Like the Mars average ground level air pressure is 0.087psi. The summit of Mount Everest is 4.89psi. The highest surface air pressure they'll get on Marswould be Hellas Planitia at 0.168psi.

They're going to need some *huge* propellers on their quadcopter. Flying on Mars is like flying at just over 100,000 feet on Earth. The record for any propeller aircraft is the Boeing Condor UAV with no payload, at 67,028 feet.

The record altitude for a helicopter in Earth's atmosphere is 40,820 feet, and it also got the record for the longest autorotation when the helicopter stopped flying. :)

But other than navigation, and lack of atmospheric pressure, it could work fine. :)

Unfortunately, it's a fairly standard business tactic.

Corp X has assets and debts. They sell the assets to Corp Y, which includes products, staff, equipment, etc. Corp X holds the debts. Wen they declare bankruptcy, there's no way to recover the debt, so it's gone.

Corp Y may be operating in the same office, with the same people at the same desks, doing the same jobs. The only real difference is that employee paychecks now say the new name, as does all new marketing materials and letterhead.

So what about the people owed money from Corp X? They get nothing. Or if they're lucky there's something left and they'll get pennies on the dollar.

Sometimes it's done for the right reasons, and they will work out deals with those owed. For examine (if I read the article right), 2600 is owed $100K. That may be broken up to $10K/mo over 10 months, or $1K/mo over 100 months. In the end, they get their money. Unfortunately when they already have high dollar events scheduled, it hurts.