"What that means is that if most people had solar panels, from 10:00-2:00 they could generate as much power as they use the rest of the day. Their electric bill under net metering would be zero. However, the power company still has to provide power to them the other 20 hours per day - for free. See how that could be a problem for the utility, having to provide power for everyone, but nobody has to pay for it?"

well, your post was fairly good, except the part about 4 hours a day. from my link set the day to the 28th of September 2014, starting at 8:30 am decent thousands of megawatts, by 11:30am power is nearing it's peak for the day which levels off until about 2:30 pm and doesn't fall to the thousand megawatt until 5pm. and please realize this is solar generation in germany, a fairly far north country anything that works at germany's elevation is going to work even better in further south regions. so really you get 25% or better of power generation for six hours a day not four hours, and you get a trickle of power for 12-13 hours a day, if you call 100 megawatts 'trickle' 2.5% or better of peak capacity.

http://www.transparency.eex.com/en/Statutory%20Publication%20Requirements%20of%20the%20Transmission%20System%20Operators/Power%20generation/Actual%20solar%20power%20generation

proprietary software has been reinventing the wheel since people figured out you could build machines to count instead of people having to use math skills.

the rich get very rich off this planned obsolescence and reinvention process. those people rarely have morals or ethics.

case in point VR goggles. the idea of them is old, there are several ways to design and deploy these devices and yet the 'occulus rift' is just now coming out? i realize multi thousand dollar devices have been around, but most of them don't do what the rift will do, and none of them were able to use a ultra high def display device such as some cell phones are able to do.

secondly graphic processors which are on almost always 1-2 generations ahead of desktop processors. there is a gpu sitting in my desktop with 32 render output units. that is like a 32 core desktop chip and it has the speed and with gddr5 memory speeds to do what it needs to. it's not even the 64 ROPs of the top card. to even push my card to its limits requires 3 or more screens.

i realize graphics cards and desktop cpus are different markets, but the desktop chips always have some reason for scaling back performance while the gpus push a little. soon there may be an open hardware ASIC processor which at hash processing is way ahead of anything else on the market, and the little game the desktop and gpu makers are playing will all collapse as the chinese flood the market with open source asics the way they did with android tablets.

"Of course I would like to see what wind loading a 40 m dish would take, in terms of thunderstorms and the like."

since the device is made from concrete i would imagine it is nice and stable if properly installed. that is instead of glass in the mirrors which are just aluminum with a silvered surface... and yes that was from the fine article.

and virtually every city has 'clubs' where people do various things, and find inside connections to get jobs. kiwanis, the lions club and a zillion more on wikipedia if you look for them there.

For the first time since I started w/the iPhone (the 3G was my first one), I see absolutely nothing of value with this major release version which makes me want to upgrade to it.

I'll be paying $99 for the 5S and be happy w/it. Sorry but unnecessarily bigger sizes and a better camera is not worth $200+contract renewal.

servers aren't all unique, some need to provide the internet archive with 50 petabytes of storage(on 7 TB/disc spinning rust if they are using raid 1+0), some need to be secure against outside hacks and obvious indoor hacks, some need to host the 'cloud', some need to be able to route 3000 petabytes of data a day(route not store)....

I totally understand what they're doing and that's fine if they want to operate in that way. Its people just need to realize this and use the name and prestige its name on their resume brings when they hop to a smaller but potentially more enjoyable organization.

The IT world is certainly competitive; however, ALL companies should see the internal benefits to training employees and working to ensure they do not leave. Companies with the mindset you laid out above are doing themselves a double disservice by not training their employees and leveraging the benefits and immediate returns provided by investments in their human capital. In some fields and with some resources, professional development is seen as a bigger happiness motivator and retention tool than more salary.

What you have outlined above is a company which is not interested in its people and only its immediate bottom line and one where it's clear its people should move on regardless of payscale and internal short-term opportunity provided.

As someone who has repeatedly attended and presented at conferences in my field, I make it a point during negotiations for any new job to ensure these are funded fully but only if I am presenting; otherwise, I opt to share in the costs associated in attending with my employer.

Each and every company I have worked at in the past (and current) has a budget for training and professional development of its employees, some more than others; however, by making a case that I am giving back to a community of like-minded professionals and putting our name and brand out there during presentations, I have found this is an easy sell for companies for which I want to work.

I work extensively w/SAS and utilize a lot of the conference (SAS Global Forum/SUGI prior) materials in my day to day both for myself and our entire organization. By making it clear to my employers that I want to give back by presenting, I have opened organization's view on how the sharing of information benefits the business while benefiting the entire industry.

Make your determination and desires known when you sign on and, if that is not an option, make it clear to your management that you want to do the same thing. While I have received a variety of different types of pushback over the years for this view, they have all relented and ended up changing their world view when the benefits are presented as they are.

Conferences are not inexpensive (SAS Global Forum is usually around $3000 - $3500 for a single person encompassing travel, conference registration, lodging, meals, etc) but the ROI can be HUGE beyond that depending on the knowledge transfers that occur, the networking opportunities, and the new business development which I have seen from these conferences.

While I did not attend SASGF 2014 this year, it was solely due to my available time to develop a presentation topic, not because my company would not send me (this was my first missed attendance since I became involved in the SAS world) and I look forward to contributing to and learning from others in the future.

Best of luck.

the real reason republicans hate obama care is simple. it eliminates two very important metrics for keeping people poor.

first off it means buisnesses can't 'manipulate' cash strapped people to make artificial job growth or contraction simply by hiring more or less people for the same total work hours. this no longer works when you are required to provide heathcare then they have no choice but to give people the hours wages needed to live a good life, instead of making them work to boost or contract the economy.

prior to obama care the working poor had only quacks peddling fake insurance houses constantly shifting locations and doing many unscrupulus methods to keep the poor from being able to pay for care via insurance. if you were poor enough you could hit the jackpot of qualifying for medicare, for the rest it means payday loans to buy meds and such, and the unscrupulis con artists insurance is slowly beginning to fade away, because of the new law.

why don't you grep the source? the equasion for m and m2 should all be open source...

minor point but ISIS is a company looking for a new name...
ISIL is the actual terrorist group funded and trained by americans to make syria's leaders have a war with someone.

once released under public domain some hacker somewhere builds a website shows tons of content under public domain, links to youtube then claims ownership and DMCA takedowns original content and runs with as much cash as they can turn over from people who paid for access to what content they provided.

it's happened before... to http://theoatmeal.com/ and he didn't even release as public domain.

the best way to do this is to make a basic user account for normal mode, and an administrator account for accessing everything. all the settings for WM can be made so that admin can see everything wile basic user sees only a custom menubar and desktop and can't actually do anything. if their desktop icons are made immutable they won't be able to remove them, and if you find cheap hardware to run it all on they won't be a target anymore except to spammers/con artists.

http://linuxgizmos.com/fanless-x86-mini-pc-runs-debian-on-2-3-watts/

is a $100 device you could work with and just tell them it's their new pc. since it has a serial port many hardware modems will work, and need no drivers, usb modems may or may not work i don't know...

i don't know where to go with Linux recommendations but pppd on freebsd will allow dialup on demand, but if you don't want that a manual link can be put on the desktop. chflags run as root (chattr if you don't like bsd and insist on linux) can make files immutable then not even root can delete, or move without running the chflags program first. if you want parts of the os to be protected feel free to make immutable files anywhere you feel like it to 'harden' the system the freebsd handbook has a walkthrough on compiling the kernel which is highly recommended for removing features and making the system harder to hack. disable or remove everything you or they don't need to further harden the system, and use a customizable WM and edit it so that only the functions you or they need are present i don't know what the people use these days, though.
freebsd is easily configured to run on slow computers. keep in mind software modems may be a real pain to configure and there are usb modems that might work good, further research is required. i don't know what hardware you're running for them, but if you've got them on an arm board there are way more people working on linux based ARM support while FreeBSD warns they aren't end user ready... however a basic browser and email virtually anything x86 is usable for a modern browser which may not work right on dialup requires at least 256MB of ram with 1GB or better recommended by me.