The benefit of pirating in the case of many NFPA, ASHRAE, IEEE, etc standards is for them to actually be in a useable form compared to what you can get elsewhere.

I am begrudgingly an NFPA member. What they offer now is a huge step forward from where they were 5 years ago; at least the information is there. I have purchased dozens of different standards for the office.

One of my favorite possessions though (well, maybe not really) is my pirated PDF copy of the handbook. I strongly suggest anyone with an interest get it. I understand the need to protect the publishing revenue, but for non commercial use, or if you own a copy, go for it!

The origin of the strain would be, but as long as there is a resivior for it, or it is actively spread between humans then it can go anywhere.

True, but there are a couple substantial differences: Ford has thin gross profit margins and lacks the vertical integration between manufacturing, sales, and service. It also has substantial legacy costs which limit its flexibility.

Long term, Tesla's P/E should be closer to 15, not the 20 that Musk seems to think. They have a future, but there is plenty of risk.

Tesla has some self-driving attributes, and is likely capable of switching to full autonomy well before Ford could produce 50k cars per year with the technology. What Tesla can't do is handle things that would require 5-10 different models to be in parallel development. They don't do "platforms" that let you cheat that development and just make a new body and interior for each version.

Tesla has not seen saturation levels yet for their $100k automobile; their very real challenge is in sustaining that production while rolling out the Model X and ramping up production there. Frankly, I am significantly more worried about the longshoremen and ports impacting Tesla than Ford, Apple, Google, or Microsoft.

Speaking as a generalist and fast learner, it is not an attribute that is easy to interview for, just something that builds success over time. I have been mis-led by plenty of people I have hired over the years that are clearly smart, grounded, and can pick up and apply an abstract concept in the course of an interview. I have decided they (we) are all con men; I usually have to fire them after 6 months.

It is the actual, concrete skills that tell an employer how quickly you can come up to speed, which is generally why they are more highly valued in an interview phase. If you have that foundation, the other skills are what make you stand out and succeed.

My advice is to be able to speak to the specifics, but also explain how deeper skills apply them; that highlights the best of both.

In areas where there is already a gap, it gives a huge leg up. In areas with both telephone and cable high speed options it is less of an issue at the moment. But, if you wanted to build a gigabit municipal or coop network, this would give you some reprieve.

Yes, I would wish that there was a longer period of lock-out, but it does at least price in the costs for the deal.

Exactly. It makes it quite easy, at least in relative terms, to start a competing local carrier. The five years gives you time to build business and fund your own backbone over time.

Right now, today, if you have an area in California without FIOS or Uverse this makes it possible to secure pockets of interest, build things out at a small scale, and develop a long term business.

While I don't think all the consolidations are in consumer interests, at least ensuring that new competitors aren't locked out of the market is a huge start.

I bought a Schlage cipher lock and took it apart to decide if I was comfortable with it security-wise. I was disappointed to find out you could horn the door with nothing more than an x-acto knife. I wish there was something with the electronics reasonably well protected, and better integration with secondary locks and sensors.

At a certain level you have grid stability issues with highly variable and unpredictable loads; this necessitates system designs that can be fast response-- effectively batteries at the generation level. The traditional approach to grid stability was called "Spinning Reserve;" the grid would have about 10% excess capacity online and running such that load pickup could be quick. With things like solid state voltage regulators and more precise engine control-- and due to economics-- spinning reserve today is down closer to 4-5%.

Wind power is very hard on the grid. For an off-grid solution, you need to have a "load dump" resistor to burn up excess energy; with grid-connected systems you just assume the grid can buffer it.

For solar to work effectively as a high percentage of base load, you need to be able to have local energy storage. This energy storage can handle shifting load towards periods of peak consumption. Batteries tend to not be cost-effective for 100% offset. In addition to that, you need to have means to reduce your building demand when capacity is low. The cheapest way to do this is to cause discomfort-- turn off the air conditioning, reduce lighting levels to minimums, etc.

I use Atomic Browser for ad-heavy sites. It has some nice features and could do several things Safari couldn't. You can also download pages if you are going to fly or want a ready reference.

You might want to google "adaptive comfort."

Comfort is a function of temperature, humidity, air movement, radiant temperatures, clothing, and metabolism. There are a fair number of variables to play with, enthalpy is just the easiest to look at.

The other interesting thing about deserts is monsoons. Swamp coolers don't do much good then.

Logically they would go for something around 4%O2/96%N2. SF6 is ozone depleting and controlled by epa even for medium voltage switches.

You can survive with low exertion levels down to around 2.5%; with a non sealed mask an oxygen or even compressed air bottle would be plenty to get you to a comfortable PPO2 at 8,000 feet.

2002. They saw what we preached and acted on it. They did it with fiber because of the nature of their governments rather than the utilities.

10-100Mb wasn't uncommon in Sweden then in the cities, although rural may have taken longer.

Technically SCBA like the fire department uses, unless they use rebreathers.