I had the same thing happen to me (yet again) on Thursday. I was invited to lunch and asked to examine the idea, if it was possible and what I thought. Why not - after all it's a free lunch for me so I went. I have a simple criteria for evaluating someones idea, how much money they have invested or what's their "skin in the game". Most are zero dollars invested but have the attitude you'll make millions eventually so why don't you just code it up for me, I'll own the code and pay you when I start making a profit, yeah right.

But it doesn't mean all the ideas are crap so generally I just politely call them out to discover how serious they are. Do they have a business plan, a marketing plan, what's the value of the market, are you seeking funding, have you patented your idea, created a trademark or other branding? Usually these questions separate the wheat from the chaf as some actually have and they have real dollars to start shelling out. That's when I move on to the next phase about designing the software and how well they know the needs of the target market etc.

One of my colleagues summed this experience up quite neatly that if someone is bringing you this idea and haven't done all of this planning, they have finished serving their purpose in bringing the idea to life.

I'm going to assume from your comments that you're in the military.

They're not his comments. They are actually from the movie A Few Good Men and the point of the movie was to illustrate that people who spoke like that were a threat to freedom as much as anything else, I don't know whether the OP was trying to do that.

I'm well aware I'll probably get modded down since military worship is everywhere, but it doesn't matter. I'm not going to pretend like the armed thugs doing the ill will of corrupt politicians are somehow protecting us.

Our freedom is threatened by people that the military are not equipped to fight and the ignorant who are unwilling/unable to understand that the front line is everywhere. Wikileaks exposes the aggressors that pose a more potent threat than the military can deal with or even recognise. Those whose tactics make the population believe in a McFreedom that looks and tastes like a real meal but actually lacks nourishment and is inevitably unsatisfying. I fear for Mr Assange. To paraphrase, the difference between a citizen and a civilian is a citizen defends freedom by seeking the truth and recognising the danger.

The US Constitution specifically bans a standing army in a time of peace - makes you wonder why ever since WWII the US government has always found some bogus reason to perpetually be at war.

I never realised that about the US Constitution, are you able to cite which portion so I can get more detail? That certainly casts the Military more in the light of maintaining it's complex rather than it's primary function.

Thinking remains the hardest work and though that's a interesting truth to uncover it won't matter to those that "Can't handle the truth". They'll simply go back to their Faux News and apathetic version of what freedom should be before parroting the mantra of rhetoric they have been programmed with.

Uh, and he's an American citizen governed by the US Constitution since when? Oh wait, he's not.

Oh really, so it's all about American freedom and no-one else's freedom is it? Freedom needs to be defended *everywhere* and as far as I can see Mr Assange seems to be free of apathy and the illusion of freedom that afflicts most people enough to actually protect freedom. I doubt Mr Assange is under any doubt that he is now a prisoner of his actions living in hotels like a traveling performer.

I thought America was dedicated to protecting people like Mr Assange not matter what his nationality is, people with the courage enough to make our nations live up to the ideals they espouse to be based on. Instead we get this sad mockery of freedom and anyone who has the gaul to actually defend everyones freedom, like Mr Assange is doing, is decried as a traitor because they make the establishment uncomfortable.

Anyone who dislikes what Mr Assange is doing is either afraid of losing power or dislikes being reminded that they are an apathetic slave. I'm tired of being a slave and Mr Assange is reminding us all of what it means to be free and that Governments should be afraid of the people not the other way around.

If ((Easter || Christmas) && road==F3)

Ahhh I see, another suffering commuter from the Central Coast, I've refined your code.

if ((Easter || Christmas) || (random(truckCrash > 1)) && road==F3) {
delay = 6 hours;

if (fireSeason && random(bushfire.anytime) {
delay+=8 hours
}

if (gawkingTouristNotPayingAttentionWhilstTowingACaravan > 1) {
delay+=(gawkingTouristNotPayingAttentionWhilstTowingACaravan * 2hours)
}

if (Friday.northbound.afternoon || Saturday.northbound.morning || Sunday.southbound.afternoon ) {
delay+=3hours
}

if (police.booking || personChangingTyreOnSideOfF3 || debrisOnFreeway) {
delay+=.5hours
}

while (raining) {
accidentPotential++
if (random(accident+accidentPotential)) {
delay+=2hours
}
}

}
endif

Honestly, I wouldn't mind replacing X with something better. But something which doesn't provide network transparency is not better. And yes, it's a feature I frequently use.

Asides for "MOD PARENT UP" all I can do is agree.

If I see it working great but as far as I can tell from the article network transparency is one of the features that Wayland does NOT have. I haven't used the new interface so I clearly do not know but as I use Ubuntu at work it is something I am clearly concerned about.

Can you give details about how you know that the wire can only give 30% of the power?

Absolutely not. I can't predict the future uptake of electric vehicles and totally unqualified to make an estimation, that's why I said approximately which is a guess based on the current requirements at 240V (roughly between 35-75amps). The highest socket I have in my house is 15amps but most people have 10amps so I think that the cars cited in your article would be around 66amps so thats about 11amps for 6 - 8 hours for a full charge (but I drive twice that distance). The article you refer to cites *if* 10% of the houses on a street had electric cars and I'm thinking above 90% *have* electric vehicles.

There is no right or wrong here but what I'm saying is that somewhere between 10% and 90% uptake of electric vehicles grid capacity reaches saturation point even when you are fully utilising existing generation capacity.

Also, if you're counting part of that power the car will need as 'sitting in a traffic jam for hours'.. Of course, the electric car won't be using any power

The point I was making here was questioning the *sanity* of sitting in traffic all the time. I agree that an electric vehicle won't be using most of it's power when it is still. What I am saying is that this type of behavior would be better negated by having distributed places to work so that people to don't *have* to commute as far, leveraging communications infrastructure more than building more roads and charging stations. Effectively reducing the amount of cars on the road.

I am watching this just as close as you :-)

The Force will be with him, always.

If the power grid in California is going to evolve to meet the needs of the state, then one of two things need to happen: people need to pull their heads out of their asses and realize that coal power is nowhere near as dirty as it was even 15 years ago (and *that* was a far cry from the level of pollution produced 50 years ago by coal), or they need to understand that the wind generators need to go somewhere and find a way to build it into the landscape.

I think you are missing the point. All of this talk about building generating capacity is irrelevant if the power distribution grid cannot deliver the power to where it is required. That is what the article does not say, the piece of wire between the power plant and your house can only deliver approximately 30% of the power an electric car infrastructure will require.

For a moment think about what is happening. The kilowatts, per vehicle, once delivered by oil is delivered by wire. I however cannot speak to the sanity of sitting in a traffic jam for hours of the day but if we maintain this "way of life" ALL of that infrastructure HAS to be upgraded if people are to charge their cars at home and if parking stations are to be equipped with charging facilities.

Keeping in mind that I'm an environmentalist myself when I say this... the reason that the power industry in California hasn't moved at the rate it needs to is because of the enviro-nazis blocking the construction of nuclear and coal plants

Keep in mind that I am an advocate of deploying Nuclear Power responsibly when I say this ... the reason the Nuclear industry hasn't expanded is because it is rife with Basis Design Issues when deploying new plants. The NRC commissioned Nuclear plant manufacturers (Westinghouse, General Electric, Bechtel, Sargent & Lundy, Northern States Power and Commonwealth Edison) to come up design recommendations to improve the safety of the plants but the AP-1000 incorporates none of the design changes the industry *itself* recommends be applied to reactor facility design. This has nothing to do with anyone or anything other than economic reasons and design changes made to produce the AP-1000 design are there to make Nuclear plants cheaper to build, but they are still expensive. Coal plants are a completely different argument and can be built with the standard 40-50 year finance plan that these plants are built with as the risk affecting return is different. Yes a modern coal plant is more efficient but it still produced a lot of carbon externality.

If anything a decentralisation of the grid will reduce the *cost* of the upgrades required to deliver the current to charge electric vehicles. I doubt there is any party who won't benefit from evolving the grid as the time has certainly come to drive efficiency into it for many other reasons. Our society is encountering growing pains. Our society either adapts to these changes or it withers. The status quo has to change and the opportunity we have now is to create more balanced lifestyles that takes the pressure off our infrastructure.

Every transaction our society conducts costs energy and you must have the means to *deliver* that energy to where it is required. Until we reduce and balance the energetic costs required to run our society we will continue to encounter these types of problems and building new power plants is analogous to printing money in this respect. Quite simply humanity has choice of sustaining growth or growing sustainability.

We have assloads of CA shiteware,

but is it a metric assload?

I've used their ERWin product which seems pretty good but they have an actual database?!?!?!