This may not apply to you, but any resident of California can get a San Francisco library card, which gives free access to Britannica online. When I was in high school (right before Wikipedia took off), I used to use Britannica all the time to look up facts.

Of course, I never use Britannica anymore, even for free. Using Google and Wikipedia is much faster than logging in and using Britannica search over a proxy. Without single-sign-on, micropayments, and the ability of crawlers to access the text, I don't see how Britannica can survive on their current business model.

If a company makes a hackable device, it's in everyone's interest for that company to be rewarded, so that more companies will make open devices. The question of whether the government is wasting vast sums of money on subsidies is independent. But given that thousands of Slashdotters will be using their subsidies (if they haven't already), let's direct those funds constructively.

I wish I had known of a geek-friendly device. Just to keep my old TV usable, I bought a random converter box, and now both of them are off for weeks at a time. I would use a more flexible computer-controlled one much more often. If you can kill two birds with one stone, why not?

Not if his concern is to ensure that his panels are "still worth the time and money." If he conserves enough to get a lower marginal rate, then it may no longer be worth it to have solar panels! A household's load on the grid is linear in its consumption or production of electricity, but the bill is nonlinear. And solar companies would do best to market their products to the most gluttonous consumers of energy, not the ones who conserve greatly. Perhaps the state should revisit the set of incentives it wants to provide with respect to net metering.

At least for PG&E, the minimum is $0.14784/kWh, but it rises as you use more than the "baseline usage" until the marginal rate for usage above 3 * baseline is $0.41049/kWh, according to the tariff book. On the coasts, the baseline usage for gas-heated houses is 9.8kWh/day=408W. So yes, if you turn on a 2kW electric heater or use a bunch of appliances it is quite easy to rack up a large bill. Great incentive to insulate.