Looks like the linked site is a pay wall or something. Renders the article in low res, throws a lot of pop ups. It seems to be a bad mash up of javascript running flash and pdf. Malware purveyors dream.

Wonder why the editors let such bad sites and auto playing videos to be posted.

Typically the grid operates at full load on sunny days in the afternoon when all the airconditioners are at full blast. The spot price for electricity fluctuates a lot. And most utilities buy and sell power in this spot market where they make most of their profits. The base load is just 40% of the peak load and there is so much of excess capacity electricity basically sold at cost or at a loss.

Enter, Solar.

It provides power exactly when the demand peaks. If solar meets the peak power demand, the spot price for electricity will fall. For brief period an Australian utility had to sell power at *negative* prices at the peak! There was so much solar power feeding into the grid, they had to pay people to take their power, lest their generators overheat and burn.

The amount of solar electricity created might be small in terms of energy produced. But when it comes to profits, this probably cuts deep into the profits of the utilities.

Eventually the utilities will reduce their peak capacity to create an artificial shortage and trade. The net metered roof top solar energy is bought back at wholesale prices by law. They typically get sold instantly in the spot market at peak prices. The utilities are making tons of money on the net metering, all their talk about roof top solar being free loading is just bull shit.

The whole concept of Intellectual Property is created by the government, and you need government to enforce it. When regular real estate is subject to eminent domain, why patents, copyrights etc should be above it? If some drug company develops a drug that can cure Hep-C and is profitable enough to sell it in third world countries for 20$ a dose, but insists on charging 160,000$ per dose for USA, I think the government should just step in, take over the patent based on eminent domain, pay the company something along the lines of what is suggested in the summary. Take a billion or two, and the entire cost of development, testing and regulatory approval too. But we can't let the drug companies game our government and treat us like a milch cow.

Of course, we don't fully what the rules will do since they have been acting in secrecy!

They will be published when they are finalized.

We have to give the government the power to regulate the internet before we can know what they'll do to the internet.

Wait, this sounds sickeningly-familiar....

Oh well. I'm sure it'll be fine.

After all, it's only the same FCC that has pursued a "wardrobe malfunction" for nearly 8 years, pushed for the Fairness Doctrine, and whose "Diversity Czar" Mark Lloyd was quoted as admiring the way Chavez seized control of radio/TV/media and placed them under State control.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I'm sure porn and less mainstream media outlets, political blogs, forums, etc that the government may dislike will have nothing at all to fear. /s (for the clueless)

Strat

You know there is this well proven technology, that has been used for more than 200 years by the ranchers. Just punch a hole through the ear lobe and slip in a string and a token. We can modernize it by making the token RFID.

Why don't we ask the question, "Does putting RFID ear tags on the employees improve Business?

Looks like the Business will not rest till it turns every fiscal conservative who still believes in the free markets into foaming in the mouth rabid raving lunatic communist.

The abstract says:

The microbe lived in the damned rats for 400 years. The rats are responsible for black death. The article merely claims the microbe originated in Asia and was introduced to Europe via gerbils on the land route.

writing from memory, any errors mine, not the article's:

Original theory was that the microbes could not survive the cold climates and long distance travel of the silk road. But the direct sea route shortened the journey and provided a warmer passage. Thus the black death microbe traveled on rats on ships. This article moves the date of introduction of the microbe to 1347 CE, at least 130 years before Barthalomiyo (sp?) Diaz rounded cape of storms, and Vasco Da Gama reached India.

That's okay, for all the countries they care about (to keep tabs on their citizens), they'll have mutual agreements with. Just like Echelon works due to data sharing between USA, UK, Australia etc.

As for Snowden, he may be free from NSA, but he has Russian snoops keeping an eye on him. Google SORM-2 and see what they have in place for many years now. The same applies to pretty much any other country that would not be chums with USA.

Catholic priests and ISIS fighters are good examples of why male celibacy is a very bad thing.

Of course, being in a sexless marriage isn't much good either...

My solution to this: we need to genetically engineer people somehow so people don't have to be single.

I installed a recent version of Firefox in Google Nexus 5 phone. I could not install NoScript. Says not supported. I desperately need an alternative to Chrome in my phone. All kinds of pop-ups. Does this version support NoScript?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Wrong.

Government's job is to secure and protect the rights of the people. The government can decide/declare anything it wants, but if the overwhelming majority of people refuse to comply there is actually very little it can do, and it risks being abolished and replaced/restored.

Sorry, but that boat sailed with all the lawlessness and abuses that have been revealed regarding domestic data/comm interception/storage, the widespread use of parallel construction, and the mass compromise of encryption schemes.

History proves over and over that the biggest danger to life and liberty is and has always been one's own government. The kind of "trust" you advocate for in this context would be foolish.

Strat

Beta was not superior to VHS. No one liked having to change tapes in the middle of the movie. Your analogy is like saying the P4 was a better chip than AMD's offering at that time, if your criteria for "good" is "performance per watt". Beta was better in some ways, but not ways that consumers cared about.

There are tons of people from India, China and many other countries who do graduate studies in USA in student visa F1. Then they get to work for 12 months as "Practical Training" period. If they hold a STEM degree they get an additional 15 months. After that they get H1B and stay on it till they get their green cards. This group will get very competitive salaries and they are usually world class graduates demanding and getting world class salary.

Then there is a whole different set of H1Bs, fresh from India, no American degree or qualifications. The claimed Indian degree and qualifications are often unverifiable. Their quality of work is poor, their educating is poor, their English is poor. For them even a 45K a year is paying them too much.

Most slashdotters think the corporations lobby for H1B to depress wages for Americans. No, people. They don't care whatever pay you get. They are not paying for it out of their pocket. The real reason is corporate corruption. Many top executives of these American companies own shell companies through intermediaries. These shell companies get the contract to supply warm bodies to the corporations they manage. They sign both sides of the contract, one as the CIO of XYZ corporation and the other side as the owner of some shell company contracting with XYZ corporation. Indian companies like TCS, Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro get contracts from these shell companies. They knowingly supply substandard workers with fake resumes and fake work experience. They know it will not be scrutinized well. They know the H1-Bs will play along with the fake resume. Every step of the way the billing rate is padded up. It is them who actually spend tons of money to lobby the congress.

I'm not that young any more (which doesn't help); I'm about 40. I'm separated, not single, but that means I'm back in the dating game and looking to meet new women obviously. But I'm finding that, for me, nothing's changed much since my late 20s when I was last in the dating game. The biggest difference, I guess, is that my dating pool does seem to be a bit wider, in that there are a lot of late-20s women interested in dating men up to my age (but that's about the cut-off), so my range is from about 27 up to 47, whereas in my late 20s it was narrower, probably only about 23 to 31. And of course, I've now been through one marriage so I'm a bit paranoid about making sure I don't hook up with someone that I don't think is really right for me, as I feel I rushed into it before, so now if I see a woman's profile online and it has too much commonality with my current wife, I pass.

Your novel sounds really interesting, and does sound a lot like me (now, not when younger; I didn't consider the location factor much back then, which in retrospect I think was a big mistake; I was in a (different) big metro area then and thought that was good enough). I would be interested in reading it and providing feedback if you like. Thanks!