So could someone put more energy on the grid with their sunny AZ, CA weather and then at night have to use power and get charged a buy the back rate even though the amount of power they put on the grid is more than they are using?

They it seems likely that in those places solar at times might be adding energy to the grid. Do people get paid when they are putting extra energy on the grid or does that energy just flow onto the grid for free?

That is a fantastic idea Skater!!!

Are solar users using zero net energy? I haven't seen that this is the case for most people I know with solar.
They also use energy. I think there are few who actually produce more energy than they use.

During the day, their solar arrays add energy to the grid when the need for energy is the highest so it seems that those with solar arrays are providing a service by supplying energy to the grid when energy use is at peak.
Then, at night solar users pull energy off of the grid. But it comes at reduced rates since they added energy to the grid all day.

This is all negotiated into the rates one receives.
Seems to me that in this instance the power companies just want to discourage people from getting solar arrays by being allowed to add a nice hefty tax to solar users. If they were having problems with maintaining infrastructure for solar users, why not just adjust the buy-back rate???
This to me looks like a special up-front tax make people think twice before installing solar. Nobody wants to install solar and then have energy bill go up too. Especially, when solar users are providing free energy to the energy companies for some reduced rates on the energy they are using.

I was thinking more of the Colbert Report which has been on since 2005 or 2006 or something in terms of his own show. But I guess you are right about him being on TV for decades. Thanks for the clarification.

Has Colbert been on for decades?
He looks too new to have been on for decades.

Supposed to run PLEX that would be nice.

What about 4 5TB mirrored drives in a fireproof safe?

"You admitted, nay boasted, in your last post, that your question was a statement"

I boasted no such thing. I acknowledged that asking a question and making a statement with that question is great technique. Doing so is an optimal thing in sales when closing a deal and such. However, I did not boast that my question was a statement. It isn't, nor was intended to be, a statement. Below is what I typed in regards to the part of my response to which you may be referring.

[Firstly, asking a question and making the question a statement is a great technique. Very useful in lots of types of discussions, debates and other sorts of communication. Nevertheless my question is a question first and foremost. That was its intention.]

Probing for more information about someones statement is not an optimal time for asking questions which are also statements. It certainly wouldn't be out of bounds, but neither would it be the best approach per se. That is why I asked an open ended question to the OP's post.

Anyhow it has been fun to exercise my brain. You definitely have a certain adroitness of mind and I look forward to future posts by you.
I wish you and yours all the best in this exciting year of 2014.

"Downward slide could be of losses, profits, marketshare, negative marketshare, wavelength of dominant colour of product logo etc. Since it was unqualified, your statements about Apples finances were presumptuous in the context. That is all."

Downhill slide could have something to do with losses, the flip side of them aka profits, marketshare or any other in metrics us for a discussion about a business's economic performance.
Negative markeshare has no bearing on such a discussion since it is not a real metric that is pertinent in analyzing business performance that I am aware of.
Likewise, measuring the wavelength of the dominant color of a product logo although interesting does not in an of itself lend weight to such a discussion without some hypothesis of how it relates to a particular companies success or not. Wavelength of the color on the company logo is not generally a metric used in analysis of business performance.
What is fairly obvious is that by downhill slide, the OP is not talking about Apples corporate sledding party, the rains possibly effecting the position of the corporate headquarters, or any other such nonsense one might wish to pull out of the air. But when I asked my original question it was for clarification about the OP's meaning of downhill slide as related to Apple.

It is precisely because I was wanting characterization of the downhill slide of the OP that I asked my original question. Once more, asking a question and trying to elicit information is reasonable step and not presumptuous. That is what forums are for. discussion.

"Yes, but then it makes it impossible to avail of the defence that the comment was only a question and not a statement"

I can't even relate to what you are saying by this.. Question/Statement in the context of a forums is what a forums are all about. The sentence above doesn't even make sense. You will have to construct it more adeptly or I will only be able to guess at what you mean.
In the spirit of forging ahead with our converstaion I will guess again at your meaning.
Likely, you think that my question is a statement. It wasn't it was a question. You somehow seem obsessed with saying my question was a statement. If one asks a question and then goes on to have further discussion with other people in the context of a forum with questions and statements, that does not make the original question a statement because the original question gets modified to a statement by subsequent discourse somehow. You have an interesting way of thinking about these things I will give you that. The tenacity with which you are trying to turn my question into a statement is quite extraordinary really. To what ends? For what purpose?
I can only guess at that as well. It seem possible that in your mind, if you somehow turn this simple question into a statement, then it magically invalidates any discussion I was having. Why you would wish to hold fast to trying to invalidate when I am saying is perplexing and I cannot even quess what your ultimate motivation is. Nonetheless, my commentary is out there and anyone can read it, not read it, challenge what i am saying, agree with what I am saying or whatever. The discussion is on the web and will continue to be in our small little corner of the inter webs.
But what end is there to debating whether something I said was correctly formed or not, Especially, when it is completely a simple point to understand. That is what is interesting to me about our little back an forth right now. A forums is people discuss things all the time using a vast range of writing and using all kinds of words and approaches to communicate. Why exactly fixate on a pretty mundane question and mount such a monumental effort to turn it into something it is not. That is fascinating to me.

Another thought just popped into my head in my attempt to quess at what is going on here. Perhaps you are attempting to setup a false dilemma whereby a question is ok to ask, but a question that is somehow a statement is invalid. Then you could thread the needle to extend you point by further by saying that my subsequent discussion after my initial question qualified my question in a different light and invalidated what I was saying. Hmmmm..
That might be why you said:
"you were completely hiding behind the facade of your first post here that I replied to being a "question"."
Just guessing though. Could you attempt to clarify you motivations? It might help my understanding of what set you off about my particular commentary on this vast forums.

"You can make a replacement post that does not harp on "question", and I will gladly consider it.

Are you trying to get me to post something different about the issue at hand that you brought up? What sort of replacement post are you hoping for exactly?

"But I refuse to play in this ping-pong between "it was just a question not a statement" and "nothing wrong in making a statement".""
Are either of my above quotes not so?

Interesting you don't want to delve into this more since you brought up the idea that my question was a statement and seem insistent that this is the case.
Do you have the same issue with other peoples questions and statements that litter this forum? What is the particular sticking point with my commentary that has gotten you fixated exactly. I feel like there is something more that you are not really talking about. Instead you are hiding behind trying to make sure I understand that what I have said may in some way not be valid or pertinent to what was being discussed.

Does this happen to be something particular with conversations of Apple and Android? Why does this discussion interest you to such a degree?
Are there other examples of peoples comments where you have made similar points?

I am frankly fascinated by what you have been trying to do. It is somewhat unique and so I would enjoy continuing the discussion. Perhaps we would need to move off the trying to make my question a statement ping pong as you say.

"Followed by straight statements, undisguised as questions, like "People like to say Apple is declining, but there really isn't any financial indication this is so"."

Do you have a problem with people stating things? Both Statements and Questions are often used in discussions. It helps elucidate where someone is coming from and lets others know what they think and what the reasoning behind their statements and questions is. It is called discussion. Language after all is the mechanism we communicate with.

"So your post to which I originally replied did not come across as a question at all and was full of statements made in the forms of explicit statements or questions."

Who says I need to account for how you interpret something. I cannot account for how everyone will interpret what I say nor should anyone really. Perhaps you didn't like what I was saying, perhaps you were skimming and didn't really pick up on what I said correctly, perhaps you disapprove of my statements/questions. I cannot say which of those things is true, but the form in which the words were delivered, regardless of being a statement, or a question was pertinent and directly replying to what others were posting. i.e. appropriate application of language to elicit elaboration of the poster's statements.

"In short, no, you cannot pretend you were asking a question."
I was not pretending. I was asking questions. I was making statements. That is what a person does when engaging in dialog.
"If you actually just asked a question to the commenter, you would have let the question remain wide open, but you are not correct in retrospective conversion of your own post as a question."

As much as I appreciate you efforts to police my questions, statements, or comment, I will say this:
1) The OP made a statement.
2) I responded with a question
3) Another poster chimed in.
4) I responded with a bunch of statements
5) The same poster brought up Blackberry in response to my statements
6) I asked more questions and made some more statements
7) You chimed in with your bit about negative marketshare and an offhand assessment of my imagination.
8).and I have been replying to what you have been saying in the best way I can since.
It has been an interesting and fruitful conversation for me at least even if we don't seem to be agreeing on things.

Proof ?
"[on multiplying marketshare by the number -1 to achieve negative marketshare]
1. It is true.2. Proof that unqualified downward slide need not mean financial woes, or any woes in general. "
Multiplying Marketshare by -1 and calling it negative marktshare when there is no such thing is a illogical. You cannot arbitrarily multiply something such as -1 and marketshare of 35% for example and say it signifies anything other than the mere calculation you performed. By creating this calculation there is no formation of a deductive relationship with with the financial woes or non-woes. The calculation by itself is not connected to anything.
There is no actual purpose or tie-in in terms of anything economic for merely selecting a random number [any economic marketshare] and multiplying it by -1. So although -1 x .35= -.35 is mathematically correct, you cannot extrapolate this mathematical proof and say anything other than I chose to randomly multiply these two numbers.
Your use of the word proof seems flippant at best to me.
Your "negative marketplace calculation" says nothing about upward or downward slide. It doesn't say anything in terms of the economic condition of the company. Hence it is a meaningless exercise in my view. Not a proof in other words.

"Remember you were asking people for evidence of Apple's financial woes when they said Apple was on a downward slide?"
Yes evidence that has relevance in actual market or economic terms. If someone detects a downward slide I would like to know what metrics they are using to make such a statement.
Such things as supply chain interruptions, profit margin decreases, increased sales competition, rising costs, future sales projections, market saturation, decreasing market share, or even the negative market share/customer satisfaction interaction and etc. These are some of the metrics someone would logically use discuss downward slide of a company. These are the things I expect people making statements about companies to talk about.

"2. Proof that unqualified downward slide need not mean financial woes, or any woes in general"
I for one never said an unqualified slide means financial woes or woes in general. By my question I was asking about what metrics the OP are basing their statements of an Apple slide on. The person who originally said Apple is on a downward slide may or may not believe Apple has financial woes. It was this I was trying to get at when I asked the OP my question. My suspicion is that the OP was saying in the statement that it is the beginning of Apple following the natural path of companies like Blackberry. I don't currently see evidence for it, but the OP might have other information especially about their own thoughts.

"No. Profit and loss are definitely aspects of (slides of) Apple. If downward slide is of profits, it is by definition, an upward slide of losses. Losses could be negative in a particular instance, but unquestionably, slides of profits and losses must be in the opposite directions. Hence all aspects, which include both profit and loss, cannot have a downward slide. QED."

The "all aspects" you speak of although interesting for you don't really address the type of information I am seeking from the OP or subsequent posters. Your "all aspects" is a nice mechanism for once more injecting a concept to setup your own scenario that hamstrings conversation I suppose. I doubt your definition 'Apple on a downhill slide' dovetails with that of the OP. It could, but I doubt it.
For one, I don't recall the OP or anyone qualifying Apples slide with "all aspects" including profit and loss. You have set up a tidy scenario where definitionally a downward slide of Apple cannot exist. Interesting and impressive mental gymnastics. Not certain what the point is though.

Now where were we. Oh yeah the downward slide of Apple the OP was talking about and not your version of a downward slide.
It would be nice to know what metrics the OP was referring to.
It would equally be nice to know what the other poster was meaning by comparing Apple to Blackberry which is definitively on a "downhill slide". Most 'aspects' of Blackberry are trending poorly as it slides progressively downhill. Profits down, marketshare down, negative revenue growth, negative earnings growth, market penetration in decline ouch.
But hey.. luckily for them, one aspect out of "all their aspects" is decidedly positive!!!! Their losses are on an upward slide!!!!????

Loaded question tutorial:
1) For my question to be a loaded question, there would have to be a false presupposition and there isn't. Apple will ultimately go into the red and this is an absolute certainty based on empirical data from history. All companies eventually fail if one looks to history. Perhaps there could be a paradigm shift for the Apples and Googles of the world and they will be able to strive on in perpetuity thousands of years. Thus far there is no evidence this will become true. Therefore, there is no falsity in question I put forth. The question is both legitimate and pertinent to the discussion and decidedly not a loaded question by the very tutorial on the subject you linked.

2) You seem to be trying to make a point that my question is somehow false or setting up a scenario where the poster couldn't reply without saying something they didn't intend. This is not so.

Since the intent of the poster was pre-stated (i.e Blackberry and Apple might be comparable), and since Blackberry has lost both marketshare and is in the red, then poster could not have been tricked into commenting in a way they didn't mean to since they brought up the comparison to begin with. An answer by the poster to my strait forward question would further elucidate the comment they made on the topic at hand. With my question, they had the opportunity to elaborate in any manner they wanted.

a. It is important to understand that loaded questions are not fallacious arguments.

b. The key thing to loaded questions is that they are used to trick people into implying something they did not intend. Not possible with an open question that doesn't set up opposing statements.
Fact is Blackberry is in the red. The comparison was Blackberry to Apple. All companies will eventually go in the red. Question was when the poster expected Apple to do so. Very straight forward.

3) per 2b. When someone compares Blackberry and Apple in the context of a downward slide of any kind it is perfectly legitimate question to ask when they think such a thing might occur.

Conclusion on the loaded question:
My question doesn't pass the loaded question test in any way.

"Ok, so you harp about your "question"."
It is important to start with the original question to define what we are talking. We will work our way patiently out from there if you don't mind. If you call this harping that cannot be helped I suppose, but I don't think it adds any point to the discussion really. Let us forge ahead with the rest of our discussion, but perhaps we can continue without distracting phrases like "harp" or personal assignations like "stupid" which may flavor but also detract from our interesting back and forth.
"I was not replying to your question."
Obviously since you seemed to not really have responded to it. Instead you created a false scenario using a mathematical technique to create something which doesn't exist.
Then you kick it up a notch and try to say this made up proof speaks to something else regarding a companies financial situation.
The mountain upon you wish to build some structure is not really there. Certainly there is no correlation to the ongoing discussion about Apple and the nature of a downward slide postulated the the OP.

"You said "When exactly do you expect Apple to suddenly go into the red?", which aside from being a question, is a statement that the commenter expects Apple to suddenly go into the red now or in the future. (Read this [fallacyfiles.org] for how it is wrong)."

Firsty, asking a question and making the question a statement is a great technique. Very useful in lots of types of discussions, debates and other sorts of communication. Nevertheless my question is a question first and foremost. That was its intention.
Secondly, the question as asked can be answered openly in any way the poster would care to reply. Your assertion that my question creates a boxed canyon of sorts is not accurate.

By your link, you are referring too this particular question as a loaded question. As phrased, my question was not designed to trick anyone into answering in a way they didn't intend. It was not the type of question which would make someone incriminate themselves or say anything they did not mean. It was rather open and straightforward. Just like the previous question of mine we were discussing, this question is direct and straightforward.

For reference: This next poster said, i.e. "Blackberry didn't lose sales for a long time. Look where they are now."
This is important to my question because Blackberry is actually in the red, having lost billions in dollars an a large chunk of marketshare since their downward slide began. The above statement by the poster statement linking Blackberry's decline to Apples perceived position and possible decline.

My question of when exactly the poster expected Apple to suddenly go into the red gave the poster the ability to fortify their statement or clear up any misunderstanding.

An arbitrary point although possibly true does not necessarily answer the question at hand which was what metrics was the OP using to say Apple was on a downhill slide.

In the case of saying android has a negative marketshare... because you decide to make up something called a negative marketshare by multiplying marketshare by -1 doesn't pertain to anything about the question I was asking which was what metrics was the OP using to make the determination that Apple is on a downhill slide.
Additionally it is meaningless in real terms unless you can explain how it relates specifically to anything relating to the topic at hand.

"Yes, you being stupid, would do this even if it proved nothing."
Personal attack doesn't help you explain anything.

What does arbitrarily multiplying things by -1 prove exactly? What does defining the result you get as negative prove exactly? That seems to not relate to what I was asking of the OP."

"Downward slide of what?"
Since the OP used Apple in the comment "Apple is on the downhill slide" I will insert Apple.

Therefore if you say the answer to the above question is Apple. Then the qualifier to your statement must be 'downward can never apply to all aspects (of Apple)?
First off this could be false and so your statement has a fallacy.
Second, my question never involved all aspects of Apple, but was a simply question of what metrics led the OP to make the statement Apple is on downhill slide.

Is a question to a person an interpretation suddenly? I think we have different views on what interpretation means.
I never asked the OP for evidence of Apple's financial problems. I asked for the metrics which would be used in making a statement about apple being on a downhill slide.

  "How about letting it remain wide open general ?"
How more wide open can a question be than what metrics are you using to come to the conclusion you have stated?
What would be a better question for me to use to seek the information I was asking about?

But what is the point of arbitrarily multiplying marketshare by -1 and then saying Android is declining in negative marketshare?
It is meaningless in an economic sense.
It is meaningless from a marketing perspective.
I could arbitrarily multiply Apple marketshare by Pi and Android marketshare by Pi and say Android's share of the Pi x Marketplace is bigger than Apples.
That also would say nothing about anything.

You say downward slide can never apply to all aspects?
Aspects of what?
Then you say when downward slide applies to marketshare, it does not apply to negative marketshare?.What?. a negative marketshare you invent by arbitrarily multiplying marketshare by -1?
Then you say the only conclusion is that a downward slide unqualified applies to at least one aspect. One aspect of what exactly?

You must be yanking my chain my friend.
Remember this all started with my asking a simple question in response the person who posted that apple was on a downward slide. ( a wide open general statement)
All I said was:
Which are the important metrics you are using to come to the conclusion Apple is on a downward slide?
I haven't seemed to have any coherent answer to this particular question since I asked.
Anyway have fun multiplying everything by -1 to create negative this' and thats'.