You're looking at it wrongly. I recently had solar power installed because - long term - it pays off.

Let's say your numbers are correct. $30k to install. $150/month saved. That's similar to my situation in the UK.

Your payback period is about 17 years (although potentially longer if you had to take out a loan to pay for them).

Most solar panels are guaranteed for 25 years (or, rather, their operating performance won't drop by more than a certain percentage per year).

So, for the remaining 8 years, you're earning $150 per month - that's $14k. That's not a terrible ROI.

However! What if there's an energy crisis? All of a sudden, you're saving $300 per month. Or, depending on where you live, you can sell your excess electricity back into the grid for a profit.

Worse case scenario, the cost of electricity plummets and you're left with an overprices UPS on your roof.

I say go for it!

http://shkspr.mobi/blog/index.php/2010/08/ebook-libraries-and-drm/
I wrote about this a few weeks ago.

It works in Linux if you can get Adobe Digital Editions to run under WINE.

But the whole concept of "borrowing" a digital file is nonsense.

The system for borrowing music is run on Overdrive Media Console. Linux unfriendly - but works on Android.... Go figure.

Nokia sell over 20 different models in the USA with built in FM - http://www.nokiausa.com/find-products/phones

The BBC's news is legally obliged to be impartial. You can argue how successful it has been and how much more work it needs to do. But given that the right-wing parties say it has a liberal bias and the left-wing parties say it is too conservative; I'd say it is probably doing a good job of staying neutral.

... How many Post-It Notes can I steal before I'm fired?
One? A pack? A crate?

Working overtime and not being paid is the equivalent of the company stealing your time.

Now, I'm a reasonable guy. I'll go home half an our late and not put in for overtime / TOIL. But you better believe that I'm taking some Post-Its with me.

The thing that stops me taking the Kindle is the huge upfront cost. I can buy 200 books for the price of one Kindle. Obviously, the Kindle has all sorts of advantages over regular books, but it's quite a steep cost.

I think Amazon should subsidise the books. Make the Kindle come with, say, $200 worth of vouchers redeemable in the Amazon store. Make it $100 worth of general vouchers and $100 worth of 2-for-1 deals. Anything to cut the apparent cost of the hardware.

Digital content has no intrinsic cost, so it's not much of a subsidy on their behalf.

What's odd is that Android not only allows the playing of .ogg files, all of the included ringtones are in the .ogg format.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Android+ogg

...well, actually, Robert Llewellyn (Kryten) announced it on Llewtube quite some time ago.

You can also get regular updates from him by following @bobbyllew on twitter.

He's a really good user of social media - he's very active on YouTube and twitter.

t

The case to which you are referring is Arkell vs Pressdram.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkell_vs_Pressdram#Litigation

The salient point is that Arkell's lawyers wrote to Private Eye saying "Our client's attitude to damages will depend on the nature of your reply". Private Eye's response was "We would be interested to know what your client's attitude to damages would be if the nature of our reply were as follows: Fuck off".

I recommend that people take this option more often. I *am* a lawyer - this is legal advice.

This happened to me.

I was stopped & searched by the police on the London Transport System. I streamed it live to Qik via an N95 8GB.
It was very interesting to see how quickly the video spread around.

Qik - and other live streaming services - could be a very important part of our society. I dislike the idea of a panopticon - but I'd rather have one controlled by "us" rather than "them".