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Comment My 3kw solar panels could even be worth $35,000 (Score 4, Informative) 352

I put panels up 6 years ago and they save roughly $2,000/year in electricity here in California ( my previous three years before panels were $6100; I've spent $300 over the last 6 years on electricity).

A prospective home owner knows they won't have to pay that $2000/year on electricity, so if they pour that into a 4% loan, they can borrow an extra $35,000 for that roughly $160/mo savings.

So to see a story say that my panels should be worth between $10K-$20K to a home buyer makes total sense.

Comment Re:Creator and Overseer of Android Responds (Score 1) 864

In fact, Rubin worked with Tony Fadell (head of iPod/iPhone reporting to Jobs) 1990-1995 on Droid 0.1/iPhone 0.1 in the form of the Personal Communicator at General Magic, along with Andy Hertzfeld, Bill Atkinson, and many others from Apple, most of whom eventually ended up on the iPhone and Droid teams. General Magic was a 1990 spin-out from Apple (code name Pocket Crystal) with John Sculley on the Board (along with Motorola, Sony and eventually AT&T, Matsushita, Philips, NTT, Mitsubishi, NorTel, Oki, Sanyo, and others). The DNA of both the iPhone and Droid contain elements from those initial General Magic products.

Comment c'mon, this fake respect is BOGUS (Score 1) 512

Look, the guy was 85 when he died. He's lived a good long life. My mom is 87 suffering from painful, agonizing terminal cancer and thanks to idiots like Stevens blabbing about death panels and such, there is no funded end of life counseling and no states allow you to end your life when it's time to do so. While perhaps he suffered for a few minutes before dying, I'm certain my mom would gladly trade that for the years of incredible pain and discomfort leading to her slow and lingering death. Meanwhile, this guy hijacked funds for all sorts of absurd, wasteful programs and did very little good. He fought for our country in WWII (as did most every male his age at that time, including my dad) and supported equality for women in sports, so good for him. But over all, he was not good for the country, and he is not someone to respect. I was very happy he finally left the senate, though there are still too many clueless boneheads there. So cut out all the empty BS because while all deaths are tragedies of a sort, some are far more than others. This rates very low on the scale. I lost my father to cancer at 69, and I would have been ecstatic for him to make it to 85. And it will be a relief to my mother to finally be at peace. Senator Stevens does not deserve my respect. And his family will be sad, but they don't have to rail at the injustice of it all, because he had a good run -- better than most.

Comment I'm in my 5th year and have statistics (Score 5, Informative) 541

I deployed solar panels when I replaced my roof in 2004; the total out of pocket cost after state rebates and federal and state taxes was $14,612. The system generates about 15 KwH on a good day; I live in a tract home in Mountain View, CA. So far, the panels have generated 19,225 KwH, which reduced my energy bill by $10,392 as of May, 2009. I've not seen the expected degradation in the power production, but it's difficult to measure due to changes in the weather -- it's entirely possible that 2004-2005 were cloudier than 2007-2008, or something like that. In any event, the system has delivered between 3819 and 3930 KwH every year. I'm extraordinarily happy with the way this has worked out.

Comment Re: Dogfood (Score 1) 366

But people in the Valley are constantly getting this wrong. The phrase is "see if the dogs eat the dogfood" and it is used when you put something up for sale and see if demand for the product develops. The other phrase is "eat your own cooking" and is used when your company has created something and you want to see if the employees will use it and love it before you put it up for sale to the general public. But for some reason, people keep mixing the two up and talking about eating their own dogfood and it makes no sense (because it makes the employees seem like dogs, for one thing).

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