For me, I had to find $350-$400/month for electricity, every month. I was lucky and got $10k inheritance. Various subsidies allowed me to install a $20k 3kw system (practical input about 2.3 kwh about 5 years ago. Legislature subsidy gave me 64c/kwh, dropping to 60c/kwh presently. As soon as my contract expires (any time now), I'll be paid 20c/kwh which is almost retail where I am (Australia). For the first few years it knocked 65% off my usage. Then when I got rid of the kids (sold for scientific experiments), I started to achieve credit in the summer months, almost evening out my winter usage, so I can say that I almost get a net 0 cost/year. It won't last though. When I get forced onto the reduced rate of 20c, my power bills will increase, but nowhere near what it was originally.

Now I didn't care too much *wasting* the $10k on the system because I didn't have to find $400/month, every month. That means that I had money for other things and much reduced stress on the family. After 5 years I worked out that I have almost paid the $10k back (there were 4 failures* in that time).
Doesn't matter about the capital expense! The long term savings in money and more importantly stress has paid for the system.

Failures:
The street voltage was too high for the inverter, so the inverter couldn't pump the power to the grid (2x). This was fixed by choking the street's line transformer.
The Inverter (cheap chinese shit) broke.
Birds ripped off the cover of a buss box on the roof and it filled with water.
Total cost to repair after insurance was about $500.
Loss of income from downtimes: $500 estimated.

lol Slashdot cognoscenti
That explains it all.

Dunno, but my cousin once was a member of Pornosheriff (band)

Ermmm... This guy should not be modded down. What he stated is default in most smaller shops. There are variations like the POS program talks to a CC swipe machine to send item totals and receives receipt information.
What got me was that in one particular case, they fired the whole IT support who set up the initial VPN Intranet and the new IT moved everything to internet. Really dumb.

Email is there in Win XP and later. These POS terminals are full computers with a cash drawer underneath, merchant banking device and card swipe periperhals. They are networked to a local printer and mainly controlled by IT through remote desktop. They are typically in smaller shops with 2 or more terminals. They do stock control, daily cash calculations etc as they replace traditional Z type cash registers.
Emails are sent by head office to all managers. Intranet and internet are available as well. So yes, they can be infected with spam emails.

That's an analog computer.
The first coding was done by Jacquard (1805) based on the work of another Frenchman Basile Bouchon (1725).
Babbage was a fan of Jacquard btw.

Fine. Be that way. I for one never go outside because strange things happen when I go outside.

Ahh yes. That takes me back. I think they were called 'Rugby Songs' and the only thing I remember was:

The men of this water
Had a charming little daughter
and the hairs on her dicky di-do
hung down to her knees.

The result of which was that I could never listen to Dido (the female singer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... without giggling,
and by now, that the charming little daughter would be a hairy Welsh BBW as you say.

A super iguana? It'll have to be god like.
I propose 'Godguana'

Ermmm... They won't be pink anymore.

So we get a bunch of gay mosquitos?
I did hear once that the female's buzz is there to attract males who don't buzz. Unfortunately the males are deaf.
On a more serious note, the egg, larva and pupa are eaten by fish, frogs, birds, spiders so their absence will be significant. Using genetic switches would only be local and thus effecting the local populations only.

Sure. Let the Brits only see their own porn!

Vojvodina - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
Apologies for suggesting that Yugoslavia was created after WWII - In my head at the time I was thinking of Vojvodina.

I've never read so much crap from the anti-microsoft brigade for a long time.
I bet that all of them hadn't tried Windows phone 8 and so they feel that they can run it into the ground because it's MS.
The phones are great. The OS is excellent and works well on low end phones too. The Windows store is better than you think and the gui and general operation is easy to use esp with One Drive. Cortana is brilliant. Hands off answers my sms-s with voice recognition.
It all a matter of choice and preference. You like android with all that confusing muddle of updates that stuff things up? Go for it. Like your Apple phone? Then make sure you've got an iPad or Mac to go with it to take full advantage.
Just look up the specs of the newest Lumia 640XL - all for around $300 unlocked. Manufactured in ex Nokia factories, great battery life and a whopping 5.7" screen.
MS will win this. Give them a few years.

They can sell Corfu. They've got lots of islands. Maybe the Japanese or even the Germans can buy it.