Here are two companies that specifically work the area claimed to not allow solar.

http://solarsource.net/

http://www.sunbeltsolarenergy....

    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.

The parachute that brought the latest rover to Mars also disintegrated during testing. However NASA proceeded with the design knowing that the atmosphere on Mars is not nearly as dense as it is on Earth.

They got it working in testing after that initial failure - and even that failure provided extremely useful high-speed video of its deployment.

Note the colossal wind tunnel. This latest, flying saucer tested parachute is way larger than that Curiosity parachute - so they've figured out a whole new testing regime. One that helpfully more closely matches conditions in the Martian atmosphere, too.

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.

[sigh]

*gives up trying to reason. There's none so blind as those who don't want to see...

I think you're proving my point about the black-and-white nature of how people regard free speech in the USA. See, I'm very much in favour of free speech, it's been a fundamental right of UK society now for longer than the USA has existed in its current form, and pretty much any UK citizen would be equally for it.

Where we differ is in nuance. The UK approach is a shades-of-gray one, where the right to speak whatever you want, no matter how hurtful to others, is actually counter-balanced by how much what you say hurts the target of your invective; and this in turn is counter-balanced by the importance of what it is that you're saying to society as a whole. There's a whole spectrum of things to consider when making a judgement, which is why the UK position is that if a free-speech issue comes up, it ought to be decided by a judge rather than a black/white hard-and-fast rule.

Now does this matter, in day-to-day life ? No. People say and do pretty much the same thing on both sides of the pond; but when a big issue comes up and a judgement has to be rendered, the courts take a more reasoned view than "Is this free speech ? Yes ? Ok then, feel free to ".

I'll ignore the idiotic purposeful misreading of the Fire thing...

This is a very US-typical way of thinking.

In the UK, it's more of a "where is the harm" approach. If there is more perceived harm in the exercise of said speech than in allowing it, it won't be allowed. This is more difficult to administer (it means someone, usually a judge) has to make a decision about this rather than it just being black and white. It does make life more pleasant for more people.

Having lived in the UK and the US for over a decade each, I have some perspective on this, and personally I think it's worth it, worshipping at the altar of "Free Speech At All Costs[*]" is an absolute, and I tend to distrust absolutes.

Simon.

[*] It's not a real absolute in the USA, you can't shout "Fire!" in a crowded theatre in the US either, for example, but it's a massively more common mindset of US people compared to UK people in my experience.

It sounds like this transformer had its center tap grounded and was the path to ground on one side of a ground loop as the geomagnetic field moved under pressure from a CME, inducing a common-mode current in the long-distance power line. A gas pipeline in an area of poor ground conductivity in Russia was also destroyed, it is said, resulting in 500 deaths.

One can protect against this phenomenon by use of common-mode breakers and perhaps even overheat breakers. The system will not stay up but nor will it be destroyed. This is a high-current rather than high-voltage phenomenon and thus the various methods used to dissipate lightning currents might not be effective.

"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.

In March 1989 much of Quebec lost power for the same thing.

They lost power because the common-mode breakers tripped, not because their system was actually damaged.