It's not quite that simple. What has happened ( and is happening ) here in Australia is that those who can afford the considerable up-front costs of solar are doing so, and are getting close to not paying for power. In some cases, they are actually making money from exporting back into the grid. This is somewhat due to a stupid government rule that means they get overpaid, but that aside, it's only the wealthy and middle-to-upper class users who can take advantage of it.

Because utilities are trying to maintain profits, it's not as simple as saying "well, they get more power and just resell it" - They are still paying for infrastructure and stuff to the people who have lots of solar, but who don't consume electricity enough to cover the costs of that infrastructure.

So as a result, their biggest customer base becomes low-income earners, who can't afford to pay for solar and who can't afford to carry the infrastructure costs for wealthy people either. The result is that the ability of the power utility to increase charges is suddenly curtailed because the less wealthier customers can no longer afford to support them.

This is known as the "Solar Power Death Spiral" - because the more that the costs go up for the remaining market, the larger the adoption rate of solar and, again, it's the wealthier part of the remaining market that makes the move first.

eg: http://monetaryrealism.com/the-solar-powered-death-spiral-for-utilities-begins-in-hawaii/

And yes, it is very real and the utilities are terrified of it... It's not a threat to electricity generation or other things - it's a threat to profits and to the utilities ability to incrementally charge for their costs with a customer base no longer able to pay for it. Sure, greed is a huge factor, perhaps the only real factor, but the utilities will defend their market vigorously. The likely solution is that they will change their charging model, where you end up paying an "infrastructure cost charge" regardless of whether you use power or not, and a usage tariff on top of that. This will redistribute the cost again and make solar uncompetitive. And they will quite likely make "opting out" illegal too... So expect to pay an "infrastructure cost charge" even if you don't have a connection to the grid, so long as it's possible to connect where you are.

That's how they did it in Australia with water, except they also made water tanks illegal in parts of Australia before drought and dwindling infrastructure became such a constant problem.

GrpA.

LoL! I did say bleeding edge with emphasis on the bleeding. And the older models supported multi-band 3G as well. This is the result of moving to a modem chipset for that model that only supports 2100 and it's generally considered a poor move. ( Same circuit board as the cheaper F2 model but a different modem chip ). It also has problems in 3G, but for those who can use it, we're hopeful that moving to Cyanogenmod will get the problems out of it. In the mean time, check out their forum if you want details of the problems their users are getting.

But overall, it's still a pretty positive move and will be the first Mediatek 6589T chipset with native Cyanogenmod. Only a fool would rush in at the moment, but there's no shortage of us fools on their support forum. :)

GrpA

This is why a lot of us are buying the Faea F2S already - it's going native Cyanogenmod and fully open-source with factory assistance, now that Cyanogenmod and Faea have teamed up and released the F2S source code.

Given that something like the F2S only costs around $250 and has pretty much every feature that the current bleeding-edge phones have, it's going to be interesting to see how this affects the other phones on the market.

Mind you, emphasis on the bleeding there. It really is at the edge of technological development - and isn't the sort of phone you buy if you don't enjoy tinkering, frequent reboots and weekly flashing the firmware :)

GrpA

This is true, but it's unfair to generalize all Science Fiction in this way. It doesn't really matter if what you write about is plausible or even possible. It doesn't even matter if it's already happened. A good story doesn't need to be completely fictional to work, because the strength is in the story you tell, not the technology in the world you've created.

As a writer of science fiction myself, having originally set most of the developments in my story to occur and mature over the next century, I was surprised when told that my book was being used as a technology primer for the military to explain the level of technology development of existing applications with respect to virtual world military testing and AI development.

I don't see this as "Well, there's no point writing this anymore, because I got it right" - I see this as more "I'm glad I got it right and now I can concentrate more on plot development in subsequent stories and less on the technology".

And just because what I write is based on factual technology, it doesn't mean it isn't science fiction. The exact genre is "Technothriller" but it's still science fiction. :)

GrpA

Why do you think network security engineers always have headphones on? They're not listening to music, they're packet-sniffing.

GrpA

The problem that the PC faces is giving consumers too much choice....

Clearly that hasn't worked for the PC, or it would be the 100% dominant platform, rather than just the 99% dominant platform...

And for PCs the be able to run OS-X, Microsoft or Linux operating systems? Clearly wayyyy to much choice...

GrpA.

You can tell me what to do, or how to do it, but not both... This is a lesson most micromanagers forget. The truth is that there is no such think as effective micromanagement. By it's very nature, the project that micromanagers run can never grow bigger than what can be achieved by a single person. They are limited entirely by that person's ability and intelligence, and people with either of those two attributes usually realize it well enough to leave micromanagement alone.

Micromanagement, while sometimes necessary, is anything but effective. Any good manager will always realize this and will usually step out of the micromanagement role very shortly after taking it on.

The exceptions to the rule are always companies where the intended outcome *is* for the company or project to never grow further than one person can manage it. Sometimes ( eg Apple ) - this is the desired outcome - to remain small and very narrow in focus. Generally, though, that goes counter to modern business principles.

GrpA

This is something I agree with. It did feel like a "graphic adventure" game, but the puzzles were made somewhat frustrating. I might have enjoyed the puzzles if they were something I could have played with outside of the game.

I never quite got into myst. Being a FPS player from far earlier than Myst ( Ultima Underworld ) - the openness of a vast free-form 3D world had already demonstrated far greater appeal, but only on the PC platform. The Mac was, at that time, very poorly supported and had none of the games that the PC players were experiencing at that time.

As such, I recall the "excitement" of anyone who had a Mac and could play Myst and while the graphics were pretty for the era ( look at the old screenshots ), the gameplay wasn't very exciting and took too long. Still, people played it, because those of us who had CD rom's needed something to show others that was different to the floppy-loaded games of the time. And at the time, it really was "eye candy".

The 7th guest was similar ( we used to call it the "7th guess" because of the guesswork in solving puzzles ) and arguably more enjoyable, but the concept of being alone in a 3D world was probably recaptured beautifully by the game "portal" which introduced a dynamic element to the puzzles, so if anyone is looking to what happened to games like "Myst" and "Riven" and "The Seventh Guest", they finally came of age in "Portal" in my opinion.

GrpA

It would be nice if they could use the existing one as a site-office to begin building an even bigger one with a longer life expectancy. Use better materials, a piece at a time, and start building a replacement.

14 years isn't far from now. So what then? Start from scratch again? Seems a shame when they could begin stockpiling for the next generation and have it well underway by the time it comes to decommission the existing ISS.

GrpA

It is possible to create practical tests for autonomous killing machines. Primarily, you create them human then evaluate their capacity to do the right thing in combat situations. However, AI are still a long, long way from meeting that goal. Such ideas are not covered by copyright, but CC.

GrpA

Yes, smoke sometimes curls from the printhead. No surprises there. Usually, there's not much, but hey, ABS chemicals aren't exactly a health-product.

What I would have liked to have known though is whether the use of covers ( eg, stabilising temperature and keeping the workpiece enclosed ) make any difference.

There is actually benefit to using covered printers, so it wouldn't be that difficult to add some filters to them would it? It's an entirely practical approach too, since plastic fumes are always worth avoiding.

And the use of less emotive terms for smoke would have been nano-appreciated.

GrpA

If you want the "Best" books, just use Amazon's "Best Products Based On Reviews" feature.

It takes into account momentum, average and weighted reviews and they even do a pretty reasonable job of removing most fake reviews ( eventually ).

It's also genre-specific with a much larger sample than the OP uses... This is far more important to me as an author ( "Turing Evolved" - #1 Best Technothriller on Amazon, December 2012 to May 2013 - 4.6 average review ) because despite being #1 in the "best" list, the book only sells about 200 copies a month.

In comparison, there are a lot of best-selling technothrillers that don't even rank in the top 100 best list.

Science fiction books tend to have a very small, specialized market and most publishers won't even touch them now. On the other hand, JK Rowland's books have a very wide appeal and many fans. People don't read a book because it's the *best*. They read it because it has a story they want to read, and if it has wide popularity, sales will increase, because it doesn't require such a narrow.

But if they are looking for a very narrow genre? Then they can look for the "best" as a guide - it's far more useful than using the bestselling lists.

GrpA

Take a look at Shapeways.com - I guess Ebay see long-term business there.

GrpA

If his actions and limited motivation are a result of his autism, then I really feel for you, because there is almost nothing you can do to force him to change. I'd guess that the only action that does work is to slowly introduce small change (eg, give him tasks that he can complete readily easily ) until those tasks lead him to desensitise to whatever is keeping him from changing. If it's related to money, then it sounds like you've already taken a good first-step.

Perhaps you can get him into trading things online? Get him into the idea of buying and selling. It's not all that different to a game when you think about it and the often-difficult parts of being self employed ( paperwork, accounts ) are things that autistic natures often lend themselves to. Help him with some small amount of stock to sell, and an online shop (eg, eBay) and a little support in business skills and he might take off?

My own autistic son wants to have a toyshop one day, so that's in the back of my mind as a way to get him started. He's quite capable and through a lot of work and early intervention programs, he lives a pretty normal life, but I worry about how he will do when he gets a job.

If you can help him find something that his autistic tendencies make him want to do, he'll easily outperform normal people in that role and do it perfectly.

I wish you the both the best and hope you can help him find something he really wants to do -

GrpA,

+1 - I use the UP! Mini regularly ( weekly and often daily ) and it's about as simply as clicking "print" most of the time.

Failure rate: About 1 in 20, though I have had a few problems with ABS filament quality of late reducing that to about 1 in 10.

Just because Makerbot doesn't meet the OP's requirements, it's a little arrogant to declare the death of all 3D printers isn't it?

GrpA