Don't worry. Tobacco is well on its way to being banned. Also, we tried the alcohol and I hope you know how well that turned out. In the last 5-10 years, tobacco use has been so restricted, it is getting to the point where it can only be a "closet" drug. You have to be sitting at your home or in your car if you want to enjoy it. At the same time we are restricting tobacco, we are loosening the restrictions on marijuana. It was rare to hear about "medical marijuana" just 10 years ago. Now we have a thriving legal marijuana industry in some states. Eventually, I suppose we will eventually reach an equilibrium. You can expect a backlash though if marijuana use reaches a high enough percentage of population when people start to show the same long term health problems that you will get inhaling any type of smoke.

The Amp rating of the panel does not mean you consume that much power all the time. The estimates are based on avg power usage over time. It also should include average power output over time. I.E. solar only produces power during the day. A suburban home probably uses 1-2kWhr per month (depending on weather).

Wind is probably the most recent energy related example where the subsidy worked. In the 2000's, wind got a big boost in gov incentives in the US. As such, people started buying turbines as fast as they could be created. More competitors entered the market to cash in and by the time 2008 rolled around there were lots of producers and lots of competition. Of course, we needed an economic downturn to convert the sellers market to a buyers market. That's when the competition really heated up as turbine suppliers are fighting not just for huge profits, but now for survival. In the last 2-3 years, the cost/kW of wind power has come down (from the perspective of turbine base cost) because of competition and improved technology that was initiated by government subsidy. It will be interesting to see how it continues past 2012 when the PTC expires and gov tries to cut costs now that wind has become less popular with joe voter. We'll see also if logistics can improve to prevent the upward trend in installation cost.

You assume microsoft wants to recoup the cost on this generation of console release. Sounds like this is a good way to debut a new technology such that it can be refined and improved for the next generation console. 360 is already 5yrs old. The next iteration is due

Consumers are paying to beta test a technology that will really hit the big time in the next console generation.

Ugh, what a terrible article. There's no firm conclusions at all, just mindless speculation. Here's some gems: "The only thing I can say is that it is something designed to go bang" and "'If I had to guess what it was, yes that's a logical target' he said, 'but that's just speculation'"

This could be an interesting topic, but unfortunately, it is turned into a pointless article spewing wild guesses. And the findings are to be submitted in a closed door security meeting? WTF? I guess we'll never know.

I have programmed many PLC's in my day, but unfortunately not Siemens. Does anyone have experience with siemens that can comment on the mysterious operational block 35?

You certainly have a valid opinion, and there are plenty of examples I'm sure of people acting outside the defined ethics and laws. However, this is a true statement with most subjects. You can certainly CHOOSE to oppose hunting, and actively CHOOSE not to hunt. At the same time another party can CHOOSE to hunt within the relatively tight guidlines of the hobby. The status quo allows both parties to continue to choose for themselves. Banning hunting (instead of regulating it) will then remove that choice from one party. Not exactly fair. Plus, the people who don't follow the rules will continue to not follow them (although likely in lower quantity). A difficult decision perhaps, but I would rather keep individual choice than let the poorly behaved members of the community ruin for the rest.

Using wind as a base-load generation source is never the intention. Most RPS of states in the US max out around 20% of overall capacity. Of course, out of that 20% a good deal is hydro. So the wind power is only a small portion of the total capacity of the system. Therefore, wind is intended as a supplement to the big base load nuclear and coal. There is an upper limit to the amount of wind power we can use reliably (and it is somewhere in the 20% range). However, in most places outside of europe, there is a long way to go before we reach it.

If you like Ohms law and Maxwell's equations, you must have some interest in electrical engineering. As such, don't forget the graphics. I highly recommend the right hand rule ripped off directly from , IEEE,

Loud? Not really. I've been to many wind sites. I actually have to focus to notice the noise. At worst it's equivalent to a car driving down some distant highway. I would concede that offshore designs I've seen are a bit loud, but they don't have the constraints here because they are separated by miles to any population.

Disrupt Wind Patterns? What is the problem with this? Wind turbines certainly don't change weather patterns. Are you sad you can't fly a kite? I guess that could be a problem.

Natural View? I can't win this argument. A person's opinion on the look of a wind turbine is exactly that; an opinion.

Not really. Wind turbines have a cut-out speed. This is usually 20m/s or so. The cannot continue to produce power at higher wind speeds because the loads on the tower and blades will be too much to handle. Also, the speed of the turbine is surprisingly variable. There is a "rated speed", but the turbines operate outside this level much of the time. For offshore applications, the wind must blow up to 15m/s before rated speed is reached. That means any wind speeds below have a nearly linear relationship to the rotational speed of the turbine.

Hurricane wind speeds are 33m/s or more.Turbines also have max survivable wind speed. Not sure exactly what this is, but for land based, I seem to recall 50m/s or so. Level 3 or more hurricanes would surpass this.... The wind turbine companies though understand the maximum ratings or their product and would not allow installation in an environment that exceeds the survivability of the turbine.

They didn't NEED to sensor all that (the end speech, the word muhammed, etc). They censored it as part of the humor. They said, we can't show this because of fundamentalist muslim threats so let's censor it in such a way as we are satirizing our own censorship! If the creators originally created the show this way, it would be a funny and clever irony, but because comedy central made the choice, it is now heresy to the free speech crowd.

The same argument you use for the bible can be used for Koran. Actually any religious text MUST have some human intervention in it's development by logical analysis. However, many christians DO believe the Bible is the True Word of God and the text of the Bible itself confirms this in many instances. Yet for some reason, christians have a more reasonable approach at the moment to practicing their beliefs (although in the past Christians were equally violent and fundamentalist).

Anyway, I'm not sure where this conversation is going. I guess the GP was making the point that muslims are so unreasonable in their beliefs because they believe that the Koran is true word of god. However, That cannot be true because other faiths especially christians believe the same with thier own holy books.

You know what haggling leads to? Overblown prices to begin with! Case Study: Enter a Chinese marketplace and observe asking price for any item on the shelf. Then compare actual paid price after haggling. Something like 30% right? Well, if retailers know they will be haggled to 30% of asking price, then they'll raise asking price by 230%! You want me to spend $100 for that cheap bronze statue? I'm expected to haggle down the price. I tell you it is MUCH better if the retailer simply asks for the lowest reasonable price to begin with. This doesn't always happen, but with good competition, and expectation of firm pricing, the asking price does tend to remain reasonable. I'll haggle for big dollar items, but save $2 on a piece of candy? I'd rather not.

Ummm, you realize that the software was giving a replacement warning for a YEAR. In other words, there was not a significant problem. A warning should not be given "all the time" unless death of the device is imminent and certain. Warn once, twice, or thrice and let it be until a more critical threshold is met. A good model is the battery monitor (not battery health but battery charge). It will warn once at 10% or whatever that you had better save or face a shutdown on low battery. It will then take a more drastic action either with a stricter warning or an auto-standby to protect the system from creating errors.

Harddrive warning 1 = "Harddrive has failures. Performance is decreased. Consider backing up data"

Harddrive warning 2 = "Harddrive is significantly damaged. Consider immediate replacement"

Harddrive warning 3 = "Harddrive WILL FAIL TOMORROW!"

Agreed that this is a good use, but I already do that with my iphone. All the things you just mentioned can be done with it. As such, the device becomes redundant. Maybe if my eyesight was poor I would need the bigger screen, but I'm quite happy with doing some basic browsing on the iphone.