The real numbers:

If you figure out what the "just enough" solar panel count would be for your max power needs during the shortest day of the year in full sunlight at whatever angle(s) you'll be able to manage, you'll need five to seven times that many to make sure that on non-sunny days you're good to go.

This is because solar panels produce between 15% and 20% of rated capacity on non-sunny days. Non-sunny days are not "dark", they are only "dim." It is a very rare day indeed where it is so dark as to drive a solar panel below 15% output (major snowstorm which has the atmosphere nearly opaque, that kind of thing.) But dim days can come in very long strings, so that's the target to aim at.

For a reliable system that will never let you down, you do tend to need considerably more space than you would initially think. But it is possible, given that you have the space (lots) and the budget (also lots) required. Panel-wise, it's a quantity issue.

But there's a wolverine in the woodpile: Batteries. To be blunt, they suck, as in, expensive to replace and very short lifetimes compared to the rest of the system.

Until or unless ultracaps reach a point where they are on par with batteries for the service you need, reasonable full-on solar installations remain quite expensive.

Installations that use batteries are regarded highly by their owners only until the first battery replacement. Then their wallets straighten them right out.

I have a lowish-power setup, with an unfortunate number of ultracaps (because capacity is very low, about 1/10th that of a battery right now) as the energy storage medium. I did it both to give my ham gear a constant supply, and to explore what would actually work. It took a custom controller design -- ultracaps don't act even remotely like batteries -- and it took me quite some time to put it all together and make it work like I wanted it to. There are way more panels than you'd expect because of that 15% number (my panels are cheap ones), and there are way more ultracaps than I wanted to expend room for, but I did have the room, so I kept at it. It works great, and it isn't going to need service for decades unless there is an actual component failure or a severe weather event (large hail, for instance.)

Trying to do this for a full house load? A typical US house? Not yet, I'm afraid. There will be tons of compromises to make in appliances, lights, and lifestyle, and in the end, you're not likely to have the same lifestyle you had prior to your switchover.

The battery problem will probably be solved. One way or another. Eventually. I have no idea if solar panel efficiency will get up into a range where the costs and space will fall within the range needed to go truly off grid. That's a physics question in an area where I have nowhere near enough knowledge. But right now? No.

Which brings us to on-grid, grid power use mitigation. Now that is an interesting area, and we can leave batteries right out of it, as peak power also comes during peak power use (right now... electric cars may change that.) But it involves all kinds of compromises for the utilities if it is adopted in any kind of mass manner. They will need power storage, as I understand it at the moment.

Full-on solar is a great, great thing with huge potential (ha, a pun, hooray), but it's not a panacea by any means except in very rare sets of circumstances that involve very large amounts of money and large areas of space for the panels.

If you trust all that, and you believe it isn't vulnerable to the NSA and hackers, that's your call to make.

What about when you need a huge bunch of CPUs to compute something? That's an aspect of "the cloud" that actually seems reasonable. As long as you don't put anything you want kept secure out there, of course.

the first responsability of the CEO is to protect the money of the shareholders and make it profitable

Exactly right. Add just a smidgen of shortsightedness and some pressure from the board, and you have the perfect storm of next-quarter-itis.

After a few quarters like that, the CEO takes off for the next company, as the company tries to put out the fires they left behind them -- fired experts, cheapened and crippled products, new hires that don't know much about the domain, insufficiently-tested but out-the-door-anyway products...

Yeah, responsibility to the shareholders. Which means: Short term thinking and cannibalistic profiteering. That's the US corporate mantra, right there.

Might not be bad as a kids film.

That entire series had recurring villains too so you have a little bit to work with.

I just can't see anything compelling for adults.

If Marvel does it, it will be done well. Otherwise, it's going to be crap.

I've played since Greyhawk was in 3rd edition (1977ish). It's a great game, but it has a lot of artificiality to it because of the Vance material.

They need good characters. It would be better to tell the story of Drizzt or some other character with a lot of storyline than to make a "dnd" movie.

Speaking as a DND fan who still runs for 12 players in the level 20 range.

Which is like saying "sitting on my couch is as much a sport as the 100 meter dash."

A flop is simply a movie that fails to attract an audience because it isn't good, Jupiter Ascending is a flop. The 2000 D&D movie was so god awful that it alone stands out in my mind as easily as something so bad I'd rather be in a meeting than attend. My girlfriend and I laughed so hard at the unintentionally funny parts of the movie that our judgement was so impaired, we got married. The damage was so severe, we have never recovered from this bad judgement and remain married.

The movie was an unmitigated disaster, and honestly if this were my property I'd never again let someone try to make a movie based on it.

Their front page has turned into a mud pit of ads, it's all content from other sites, I can't see any compelling reason to go there in the first place and then they become an attack vector.

"The only appropriate sexual dialogue between tech workers" IS none at all, as long as there's just a slim chance someone might be offended, and it's stupidly immature not to get that in one's head, and as long a such immature offenders constitute a significant portion of tech workers, organizations like the Ada Institute are totally needed.

Or..they could actually grow a bit thicker skin, and ignore people and their words that don't mean a damned thing, and be professional and get their job done.....like most people do.

Quit crying and deal with the real world that isn't all sunshine, rainbows, unicorns and people at are at all concerned about your self esteem.

This is the real world, deal with it....I'm talking to BOTH men and women.

And don't forget, the rich assholes who refuse to spend money to fix social problems

Seriously?

Spending money does not and CAN not fix social problems. We've seen the beautifully exemplified by the non-success of the War on Poverty we've been waging for decades.

You can't buy your way out of immoral, uneducated, violent social problems that many of our US sub-cultures embrace. It has to come FROM the community itself.

If nothing else, the throwing of $$ at it and many programs meant to give help, have become ways of life for many that became generational cultures of dependence, and anger....and the loss of family and family values being passed onto the kids.

It has to come from within the people of the community themselves, you can buy it or legislate it.

Hitchbot is a robot. Hitchbot has no gender.

ROBOT LIVES MATTER!!!

;)

And you know what, nobody cares. I don't mean to sound rude, but whatever BB's benefits as an Android device, even BB doesn't believe them anymore as it plans to release actual Android devices. And really, it's irrelevant, as the company is basically running on fumes now. Chen's keeping it afloat by selling off assets and firing people. No wonder they have to build an Android phone, their R&D department probably isn't capable of keeping the QNX-based OS going.