You could determine your 3D position with three satellites if you had an atomic clock. Since you don't, you need a fourth satellite to solve for four unknowns: x, y, z, and time.

Years ago, a friend told me that the word consensus should only be used by Quakers; they were the only ones who knew what it meant. I scoffed. No, it was far too useful a concept and not that difficult to understand. The global warming debate has changed my mind. Only Quakers may use the word consensus.

I don't think so. Basic scientific research has been privately funded for most of those centuries. Government funding is a relatively recent change.

The things is, as far as I can tell there are no actual cuts in spending. It's simply that they're going to get a 5% increase in spending instead of an 8% increase and they're calling that a 3% cut and claiming the sky will fall. It shouldn't surprise me that we fall for this but it does.

It's probably pointless to repeat this since accuracy in language is likely lost, but I'll try anyway.

"Assault rifle" is a technical term and means a rifle that has select-fire. For instance, the M16 that you refer to.

"Assault weapon" is a legal term and while its exact definition varies some from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, it basically means a semi-automatic rifle that looks like an assault rifle.

So you can see that there is, in fact, no such thing as a semi-automatic assault rifle. If it's semi-automatic, it's not an assault rifle because it doesn't have select-fire. And if it's an assault rifle, it's not semi-automatic, it's full automatic.

Yeah, no kidding. If you're old and infirm, you're not going to live much longer. At base, that's what old and infirm means. The only way to live longer is to eliminate old and infirm or at least push it out to later. I'm all for that and it baffles me that most others are not.

You can hardly blame Emacs that programs which came years later chose different keyboard commands.

As for not being keyboard-centric rather than mouse-centric, some of us consider that a feature. Being created before mice has something to do with that of course but having to pull your hands off the keyboard to find the mouse is terribly slow. Yes, there's a bit of effort needed to learn enough to make running Emacs comfortable but when you're there you'll find how painful mice are. By the way, C-/ is only harder than C-z if your right hand is stuck over on the mouse.

And finally variable-width fonts. I sort-of agree with you there. They'd be useful for some thing.

I've never heard of that. As far as I know, the word means what it means from physics even if you're talking about energy sources. A 3kW generator can deliver 3kW for as long as its energy source holds out. In other words, saying it's a 3kW source really is not a complete description of the energy you can get out of it. You need to know how big the fuel tank is.

A 3kW hydro-generator can deliver 3kW for so long as the water keeps flowing. A 3kW diesel generator can produce 3kW of electrical power so long as the diesel tank is not empty (and it doesn't break). And a 3kW battery . . . Oops. That would be exactly the error we're all trying to explain to you. Battery capacity is measured in kW-hours or amp-hours (with the battery voltage implied to convert it to an energy unit). In other words, when you want to talk about energy capacity you need to switch to units of energy not units of power.

Interesting how you can get all this right and be completely wrong everywhere else.

Yes, 1 kWh is 1,000 J/s for 3,600 s. Notice if you multiply those together, including the units, the seconds in the numerator and denominator cancel and you end up with 3.6 million Joules. 1kWh = 3.6MJ.

Joules is a unit of energy just like kWh and unlike kW, which is a unit of power. Power is how fast energy is being used (consumed or generated).

Yes, I'd noticed the order of magnitude disparity in pricing between his large system and his small. I think he's claiming that since he'll mass produce the small units, they'll come out 10 times cheaper per kW than a large installation.

Hey, I didn't say I believed any of this. I just wanted to point out the common error of confusing kW (unit of power) with kW-hr (unit of energy). Saying that $150/kW is a lot more than the cents/kW-hr you buy electricity off the grid is a nonsensical comparison until you start taking in a lot of other factors, as you did in your post.