Lots of Californians want to pay extra for green power, but do they really care who gets which power, as long as the green power is generated and used? I would guess that the vast majority of them would be fine with paying more to have green power generated and used elsewhere, but that isn't an option - when you opt into a green power program, it says you are getting that power.

The northwest already has plenty of hydropower that can be interrupted briefly while the reservoirs are allowed to fill, or at least not deplete as quickly. The wind power could be diverted to the aluminum potlines and other big users - there is still a grid issue, but much smaller than getting those big surges down to California.

A lot of this could be solved administratively, if the parties involved really wanted to solve it

This is ironic because Ulysses not only was the cause for stricter pornography laws in the United States, when it was first published not as a book but in serialized form, but it was also the book that was used to get the laws struck down. Although the Ulysses case itself never went to the Supreme Court, it did influence later cases that did wind up in the Supreme Court.

Maybe Apple could have an Ulysses app with all the nasty bits removed. Or better yet, a Bowdlerization filter that would transform any book into something absolutely harmless.

They didn't work at home. Well, I guess Mendel did in the sense that the monastary was his home, but he did most of his work when he was the abbot. Edison's "home" was a huge lab/factory, with his house on the grounds, but he had a huge machine shop and all sorts of other resources available to him.

Cows have magnets in their first stomach - farmers and ranchers throw them in there so that any metal the inadvertently swallow won't go any further and will get barfed up with the magnet.

Just put big coils of wire out in the fields or the dairy barns and have the cows constantly walking through them (in the same direction - that's the tricky part) and generate electricity.

Indeed, we can always use just IPs but that's loosing a lot of functionality. And google is definitely a worst alternative than the actual DNS system which is at least a bit decentralized :-)

Hell, once your party governs you can find all sorts of ways, some sophisticated, some not, of staying in power.

I guess the part where you were answering to a message about a family of clueless users must have confused me. I thought you were actually answering to that message ;)

I was answering that message. That's why I never said the clueless users themselves should perform the setup or administration of such a device. Had I said such a thing, that would be incompatible with the subject matter of clueless users. Instead, I originally left that part open-ended.

But at any rate, take a chill pill.

Chill pill? I can point out the fact that you made a false assumption without getting upset. In fact, that's what I did. Had I called you names etc. your response would make more sense.

Since I didn't, it looks like you're clutching at straws to find some objection to something I said now that your original one was shown to be invalid. Ego is amusing that way. I have one too, you know, so I'm aware of its petty and subtle little tendencies. I'm all too aware of the fact that these go totally unexamined in most people, who usually resent having them pointed out since they are so convinced it's some kind of contest.

If you think I actually care that much about your omissions, you're really overthinking it.

You made a false assumption and proceeded as though the assumption were valid. I pointed out that this had happened. Whether you care about that, or whether you wish to see that this is an easy mistake that is entirely preventable is entirely your business. I wouldn't dream of telling you what you should do with this information.

Just know that if you or anyone else makes false assumptions about me while conversing with me, I will correct them. My interest in accuracy is not a personal interest in you, how you feel, or how much you care. That again is your self-importance (aka ego) getting involved in a factual matter. It does provide a nice excuse to tell me how much thinking I am permitted to do before you judge that I am "really overthinking", but I disregard that the same way I'd expect you to (rightly) disregard any attempt of mine to tell you what you should do with information I provide.

Take your cue from the Slashdot logo for this section - use combination padlocks wherever you can.

A long time ago, I went to a locksmith and ordered a box of combination locks, all with the same combination. I memorized that one combination and now I'm set - anytime I can secure something with a padlock, I use one of those.

I realize this won't work for most of your keys, but maybe your bike?

If you want to share access with someone, don't give them the combination to all your locks - have him or her get another padlock and shackle them together, with a length of chain or cable, to secure the object. Anyone who can open either lock can get to it.

Before you all throw full bottles of beer at your computer screen, let me remind you of a post I made earlier today. About Valve and their steamworks software. Since they are not selling the goods, they are "Licensing" it out to you. This does mean you do not have certain rights to the product, but it also means you have certain other rights. For example, you won't have to pay Taxes. (and I've never paid taxes on any Steam Games).

So, yes, unless they are taxing you on some service, then you shouldn't be taxed at all. So make sure you read the fine print for some "Supplier services fee".

Steam: DRM done right - non intrusive, value added (auto patching, friends lists/voice/matchmaking etc., forget about juggling masses of CDs and cases), cheaper than boxed retail.

I can have all of those things without the DRM and a better experience too boot.

I can and do buy games online with auto patching, friends lists and no need to juggle CDs and I do it without any DRM, once you throw in the fact that the DRM-less version will likely be available on piratebay before I can buy it from steam you really have no actual advantage to Steam. Its nothing more than a Walmart to me, and when they add stupid restrictions I don't like I'll simply go to kmart, or piss me off enough and I'll just buy it out of my friends trunk instead so I don't have to deal with your bullshit DRM.

If you want to sell a used game then OK you are SOTL but thats the bargain you are making.

Bargin? What fucking bargin are you talking about? Most games cost the exact same in download only form as they do in box, and then I'm stuck relying on steam to allow me to play it rather than just putting the disk in and playing it whenever I want. There is no bargin in steam, you actually get less across the board for the same price.

What sets netbooks apart from laptops is that you sacrifice speed and screen size for battery life and portability. "Cheap" (as in shitty construction from shitty parts) is found in all form factors, and you tend to get what you pay for. For the same build quality, you'll tend to get netbooks cheaper than laptops primarily because the netbook requires fewer components, uses a slower processor, and has a smaller screen. But you can still find good quality netbooks just as easily as you can find crappy laptops, and vice versa.

"Netbook" may be a bullshit term, but it's here, and it accurately describes a niche of products. They used to be called "ultraportables" or "subnotebooks" when they first came out in the 90's, and there's still so much overlap between the "netbook" niche and the "subnotebook" niche to make any distinction pretty much meaningless. The basic theory is that a netbook will tend to sacrifice even more power than a subnotebook because it's designed to connect to servers to do most of the heavy lifting, and it really shouldn't have a lot of storage, but most have plenty of power to run local apps and tons of storage.

The build quality of my wife's Asus eee is quite good. It's plastic, of course, but it feels like durable stuff. It gets around 8 hours of real-life-real-use battery, it weighs almost nothing, and there are very few things it does noticeably slower than our dual-core 3GHZ desktop beast.

Yes, they've moved from a nice low-power SSD back to a spinning drive to save a few bucks, which was a bit disappointing, but it's still a solid little bugger, doesn't generate a lot of heat, and it still lasts all day with no need for a recharge. It's no replacement for a desktop or even a laptop, but it's not meant to be. It fills that niche between "portable as a cell phone" and "powerful as a laptop" quite nicely, and for a lot of people it's all the computer they really need on a day-in-day-out basis, and can be carried around a hell of a lot easier, and you're not constantly looking for a power plug when you do carry it.

I didn't buy it because it was cheaper than a laptop, I bought it because it is more portable and holds a charge longer, and because any laptop on the market today is to big, too clumsy, runs out of power too fast, heats up too much, and has more power than you need for what my wife wanted it for - casual surfing, maintaining a few HTML websites, and keeping up with Facebook.

"Too much of a good thing is not a good thing".

REAL ala carte pricing, where I can pick and choose the channels I want? I know there's some lame version of it available now, if you call your cable company between 4:30 and 4:35 and get that one girl who smokes a lot and actually knows they can do this even though it's like $29.99 per channel when purchased ala carte?

I know there's some bullshit reason they don't do this, something along the lines of the way they "buy" channels from the networks/content producers who insist they take 10 really lame channels to get one good one, and wouldn't you know, they pass the fruits of that bad deal right on down to the viewer.

Actually several lessons, none of which are likely to be learned. But the one I was thinking of is that you can't just rest on your laurels. The boom in cable took place in the 70s and 80s, and all the cable companies thought once they got the cable installed they would have a monopoly and wouldn't have to work again. The satellite companies rained on their parade, but the fact was they had that wire into everyone's house, and they didn't have to do very much to make money. Several times there were ideas floated about letting the customers buy services directly from the creators, paying the cable company a fee as a common carrier. The cable companies got that shot down, and went back to their comfortable life of doing almost nothing.

As ought to be clear by now, they had a huge, underutilized asset with a line into so many homes. They didn't care, as long as the money flowed in, but now they have been overtaken by events. The service that they offer is not only overpriced, but outmoded. Their network of cables will allow them to survive, but they ignored the new technology for many years and now they are paying the price.

They didn't miss it. The Islamic golden age significantly predated the age of enlightenment. They already had advance science and math long before Europe and the Christians. Arabic numbers? Algebra? However, the culture eventually turned towards religion and here lies the result. As opposed to the age of enlightenment, where people turned away from religion, and hence the civilization prospered.