That makes some sense, and I concede that if the substation is saturated by solar generation, there are additional costs that (for now), the generating solar stations should subsidize upgrading. It should not be a full 100% subsidy.

Or perhaps pay for storage devices (e.g. huge flywheels) that are used by the substation at night and for smoothing.

I also submit that all new substations in sunny or windy areas should be built with this eventuality in mind. I live in a very sunny area, and new housing is required to have roof wiring for future solar installations done by the homeowner. We're still at a point where there is no way substations are saturated, however the marketing attitude that somehow these generating stations are "freeloaders" needs to be nipped in the bud. That's simply a lie. At a 90% efficiency from the generating station, I can get electrons to a neighbor at 97% efficiency with zero emissions. No, it's the power companies that are freeloading MY clean air (and yours!).

You could not be more wrong. Peak power use is largely when the sun is shining.

Air conditioning and office lights and the majority of meals is during the time the sun is shining.

Stop saying "free storage". It's not. There are two things. First, the power co doesn't "store" those electrons, they SELL THEM. It's more like a loan, and you're the bank. They should pay interest.
Second, they power co benefits from your electrons. During peak times, which is generally when the sun is shining and people have their AC cranked, the power co would normally have to send tons of power out, losing a TON in the transmission due to capacitance and resistance loss. Until we get superconducting wiring to the transformers, they suffer loss. But when someone sends power to a nearby neighbor, far fewer electrons are lost and the power company charges them the full amount, yet would have to send far more energy from the power plant if not for that neighbor.

Well stated and less scathing than I would've been.

One additional thing you left out is transmission loss, which small generators solve. Getting 1kwh to my house over the grid goes over high tension lines from 80 mi away to a distribution point 1mi away. I don't know the exact loss, but I'd be surprised if it were above 80%. It's pretty high compared to me sending excess energy back into the grid for my neighbors to use 300 feet away.

When these tweens driving this "new revolution/resolution" start losing their eyesight, retina display will be the work of the devil.

Of course, 4k will be outmoded by then, and if it's anything like the past 20 years, laptops will probably be relegated to the likes of 300 baud modems are today.

*sniff* I miss my eyesight :-)

That's not how you compute and remove outliers, although that was an interesting comparison. None of those examples are outliers.

Normally you would use something similar to removing data 3 std deviations from the mean, although that's pretty simplified. There are better ways.

Cities tend toward voting democrat as people believe the infrastructure works well for quality of life. Gun violence tends towards concentrations of people, otherwise known as cities.

Save your BS propaganda for facebook. It's not welcome here.

Plain and simple, keep your old emails, offline. If you get cornered for a conversation in person or phone, no problem... just dash off an email stating "You know how you were telling me at lunch not to worry about the security vulns? This still really bothers me. There's got to be a way to mitigate it without affecting deadlines. Imagine the missed deadlines if we lose our infrastructure to an easy hack."

Don't sound like a troublemaker, but rather, a concerned worker.

Make it clear you're the professional, and in your professional opinion and that of industry standards, security is sorely lacking. Itemize the issues you have in an email. Keep that email.

Support their decisions, and live with it.

Finally, if the shit hits the fan and anyone points fingers at you, refer them to that email. If they fire you for it, that's when you become a troublemaker.

It's called a "public accommodation", and it is indeed open to the GENERAL public during business hours, unless the place is rented out. You are conflating "public" as in publicly-owned (such as sidewalks that aren't actually owned by private individuals) with "public" as in public accommodation such as privately-owned restaurants. There is not an expectation of privacy in any general area except bathrooms and marked rooms. If there was, you could be sued (or even jailed) for taking a selfie in a restaurant and picking up anyone else in the background. If you had an expectation of privacy, security cameras would be illegal (like they are in bathrooms and hotel rooms, where there's an actual expectation).

You're simply out of your mind if you think there's a general expectation of privacy in any public accommodation. There are exceptions, e.g., privately-owned places open to the public can be marked as photography-free zones, such as museums and art galleries. Public places can have private events with their own rules, including renting out a public park. Entry may come with a contract, such as sports tickets and concerts. Some public places may prohibit all recording, such as SCOTUS.

As far as photography goes, entering the general areas of a public accommodation is the same as walking down the sidewalk. The only difference is that the owner can throw you out, as long as it's not based on your race or something. A restaurant is in public, you can be recorded, and you have no "right" or expectation of privacy or "right" to the recording. The photographer, in contrast, has a "right" to record you in public (with some limitations... some states prevent surreptitious recording and some have tried to prevent sound recording, recording of boondoggle animal-cruel farms even from public places, etc, and of course if you're told by the property owner not to record, you can't -- that's what TFA is whining about, because he got thrown out for carrying a recording device.) If you have to have privacy when you dine, then you have to dine in a private room or house where others are not allowed to enter, with the curtains drawn. Or, you can dine in a bathroom or locker room. Yum.

Privacy is not the reason photojournalists cannot enter these public accommodations. It's because the business owner won't let them harass their guests, since it's bad for business. If a photographer enters or lingers after being (legitimately) denied entry, they are trespassing, and can be hauled off.

But I also know that restaurants are not public spaces. They are private and different rules apply. If they tell you you cannot photograph there, they have that right and personally I agree that they should be able to dictate that.

It is private only in that it is not owned by the state.

It is, however, public because it is open to the public and there is clearly no expectation of privacy. The only place where such an expectation exists is in the bathrooms, areas marked "private", rented rooms, and so forth.

They have every right to tell him not to photograph. In fact, they can tell him not to wear blue. Or that he smells funny so he can't come in, or basically anything that is not based on being in a protected class (including those of your state, which can be different than the civil rights act listing). And if he remains there, he's trespassing.

But I highly doubt they've ever told ANYONE taking pictures with a cellphone that they can't photograph. In fact, I would bet if someone had videorecorded with a cellphone while the guy was getting thrown out, there would've been no threats or repercussions from the restaurant whatsoever.

Can I have a job that pays no less than 1/50th of your salary please?

Me. In fact, I bet a lot of people would want that.

How do Guild Wars 2, RIFT, World of Warcraft and all the other MMORPGs stack up these days?

Plain and simply, wow has the best boss and quest mechanics, and is essentially required to be fairly balanced. Few bugs. No mmo has come close to the wealth of mechanics they have, from riding vehicles, reverse gravity, several stages of fights, dual-phases where people teleport around, special abilities gained to help defeat a boss, etc. And they have some clever people who balance things out to make sure the challenge is appropriate.

GW2 has attempted to get away from the holy trinity of tank/healer/dps, and introduced working area quests. Yes, they're not the first, but it works. It also has many exploration quests, which I find awesome. Even unmarked platform jumping challenge "quests" of sorts.

Sad to hear about lotro. But as I've always said, "The best, and the worst, thing about MMOs is the people."

Your enjoyment might hinge on having a good social construct in-game. If you're moving with your guild, move to whatever game they go to. If you're off to solo, find a game that's soloable. If you have limited playtime, find a game that you can dabble in and still be successful. But just saying "I need a game that requires more than 2 buttons" doesn't give much insight on how you actually prefer to play. There are tons of different games out there, from things like group-oriented Puzzle Pirates to soloable Asheron's Call to Star Wars to Neverwinter. But it's not possible to make a good recommendation without better info.

You might even be happy playing a single-player game, depending what you want.

Have it play against itself, then we'll see some small values of 100%.

Thanks Gary... so it is actually sequestering the carbon even when used as a fertilizer.

The OP was based on plants pulling carbon out of the ground in addition to the air, but it's obviously a much lower rate that doesn't creep for centuries.