Even if you have solar, and even if you use zero net KWH of energy, your bill is still full of a bunch of different charges that you cannot avoid. These various fixed and distribution-based charges are what pay for the grid infrastructure. Solar only lets you avoid (some of) the supply charges, I.e. the charges for the actual KWH. I have several neighbors with efficient homes and solar arrays who generate all their net energy and even send extra energy back to the grid, but they still have to pay nearly $17 per month in these unavoidable fees. That's fair--they pay for the benefits of having the grid to buy from and sell to as needed. But please can you shills for the power company lobby stop pretending that solar folks are not paying their share of grid expenses.

I actually logged into Slashdot again for the first time in years to post on Apple's products:

The iPad Pro is the Surface done right, and I say this as much as I admire the Surface. Apple has copied liberally from MS; stylus, side-by-side windowing, folding keyboard, and it's done well. The keyboard eliminates the need for a kickstand, the stylus is good enough for artists and the 12" display means you don't need a laptop anymore along with the windowing improvements. Sucks for those who bought a MacBook.

The new iPhone finally has a resolution that is usable in low light. Apple has always had very good cameras on its iPhones and this takes it one step further. It's still a mobile camera with a tiny sensor and a fixed lens, but those have gotten very good in recent years. Not yet quite as good as Samsung S6, Motorola X Style, LG G4 or Sony Z5, but Apple is not usually about choice. The force touch is a very useful addition, but will be mostly useful for 3rd party apps, gaming etc. However, since the Huawei Mate S has it as well, it's only a matter of time before it's standard on all mobile platforms.

The new Apple TV that now offers an SDK for developers is something that will be extremely useful. The Apple TV is already the best device for screen sharing in terms of quality. It even works well with Windows with 3rd party AirSquirrel. The devkit will enable developers to make even more useful presentation tools, which is where the Apple TV really shines. For home, there are many other options that are just as useful.

Of course you would still be locked into Apple's ecosystem, which is the main reason I avoid Apple's iOS products.

While occasional formatting inconsistencies when editing Word files can be problematic, the main thing that prevents me from using LibreOffice is the absence of a final view mode with markup when tracked changes are turned on. This has been a feature request for ages, submitted by numerous people. Apple managed to implement it in Pages, so I'm not sure why LibreOffice hasn't been able to after 10 years.

I'm surprised I didn't see Privoxy mentioned in the comments. It may not be as effective or updated as regularly as many browser plugins, but it's the only way to block ads across your entire network, on ANY device. This is one of the reasons I never encounter ads in iOS apps/games with iAds. I've been using it since the days of Internet Junkbuster, before ad-blocking plugins even existed. Aside from blocking ads, Privoxy has some other privacy enhancing features as well.

The first browser that allowed PDFs to be displayed inline without a plugin was Safari since its beta stages. That's because OS X has had the ability to display PDFs built in to it since its Nextstep days. So, it all stems from a desire to duplicate a feature in Safari that was actually a native feature of OS X . . .

My 3TB Seagate drive was spotty from the beginning, but where I live getting a warranty replacement might end up costing you more than just buying a new drive. The latter is certainly faster and more convenient. It kept going for two years and finally died last week. The fifteen year old drive in my G3 iMac, however, refuses to die.

Don't point out errors in any software then, since someone you might not like could benefit from fixing them. A mistake like this is a lesson for everyone.

Auto loan terms are getting longer these days with the average length up to 66 months and around 25% having a term between 6 years and 7 years. The interest paid on a seven year loan vs. a 5 year loan can be as much as 50% higher.

This, and the the previous poster's point about using a temporary shift in fuel price as a basis for a long-term decision, show that there is a kind of desperate denial in place for many Americans.

They were sold the big dream and are unwilling to see the simple truth; the dream of an easy, middle class life for most Americans is gone. The SUV is their symbol that they still have the kind of economic freedom that a widely-shared national prosperity used to offer. The inconvenient truths that it will cost them outrageous amounts of money to fuel, and that it will probably need major repairs long before the 7 year loan is paid off are comfortably far away when they are in the showroom buying their toy.

Why is the dream gone? That is a whole nother' thread that covers many parallel trends.

But one overarching factor is that the overall pie is stagnant or shrinking. Aside from the unproductive shenanigans of the finance parasites, and a similar milking of trillions of dollars through the for-profit health care system, plus the temporary fracking bubble that drills most of its wells at a loss using other sucker's money, there really aren't many growing sectors of the economy. We've lost many of the productive activities that had broadly-shared economic multipliers.

I'm not sure why that is exactly, but I suspect that it is driven by the inexorable decline in the ease of extraction of energy and all forms of raw materials. The easy oil and gas, the rich deposits of minerals, the virgin forests holding hundreds of years worth of stored growth, the teeming fisheries are all nearly gone. And the easy wealth goes with it.

So rather than clinging to the illusion that our lives will continue to be about which status-enhancing consumer product we should buy next, we probably should start looking at what elements are actually required to have a satisfying life without the pumped-up economic circus.

I'll give a hint--it's not about what you buy, its more about who you love and who can trust you to do what you say you will.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki...

Go buy this book and stop spouting crap you know nothing about: ``This New Ocean: The story of the First Space Race,'' by William E. Burrows. You'll learn a lot.

So? Apple was smart enough to move off of OpenSSL and started telling developers to do so in 2007. iOS doesn't support it. Apple's new frameworks are the reason OS X and iOS are not susceptible to this, unless someone intentionally installs OpenSSL from Ports or other 3rd party add-ons which applications installed require using it. I'm thinking FreeBSD will be modeling OS X's solution sooner, rather than later.

Product Placement. All my time at Apple we never placed or paid to place a single product. In fact, Hollywood constantly contacts Apple to place Apple products. It costs Apple NOTHING.

I recently had the opportunity to compare modern American comics with Franco-Belgian comics( "Bandes Dessinées"), and one thing that struck me almost from the beginning was the way that the majority of American comics seemed to involve fantasy characters and worlds that had very little whatsoever to do with reality, especially with respect to the physical universe.

I realise this doesn't necessarily mean anything, but it did certainly make me wonder.

Such a thing exists:

http://www.lemote.com/en/products/Notebook/2010/0310/112.html

I have two close friends whose children each had symptoms similar to Asbergers/Autism whose lives have been transformed by changing their diet in ways that are generally aligned with the ideas in this study (unhealthy bacterial conditions in gut cause undigested proteins to leak through the gut into the bloodstream, where they cause problems when they bind to receptors in brain or other tissues).

There is a strict diet called the GAPS Diet that both of these families followed and they began to see substantive changes within months, and ongoing improvements over a couple of years that have really allowed these kids to blossom.

This is not hearsay. I knew these kids before and I know them after, and they have improved dramatically.