Wordy but Necessary...

In an attempt to help advance the adoption curve of EV's, I foolishly/naively installed 2 DCFC stations at the Ute Pass on US 24. I worked with a State program that reimbursed $70k of the $200k investment. I expected it to be a loss leader for a year or two. I did not expect that:

- ChargePoint depends on a hodgepodge of contractor/partners to conduct its installations - with no standardization, oversight, nor checks and balances. You and your friends can become installers next week, do halfway work, get paid, and suffer no consequences. It happened to me. Once.

- Not every power company has EV friendly rates. My three phase power, required for DCFC stations, comes with a peak demand fee based on my busiest 15 minutes (no matter the time of day) multiplied by $14.35. So if I give a Tesla or a Rivian 125 kW for 15 minutes straight, that discrete charge costs 125kw*$14.35=$1793.75. Imagine having to amortize the cost of one charge across an unknown monthly number of charges. Consequently, I now limit charges to 62.5 kw, which cuts "Fast Charging" in half. It is more than enough for the first generation of BEV's.

- Many EV's depend on Google Maps' data for their in-car navigation. It took 6 months to get my stations listed on Google - and not as my business (they still won't list it) but as a site I added to Google Maps as a random Maps user. For 6 months every EV driver looking at their dash for stations just drove by. ChargePoint is worthless at helping their drivers and their station owners. I have 6 wasted months of support tickets to prove it.

- Independent charging operators do not control the software, so we cannot throttle our stations' power use to avoid demand charges. Tesla can. A station owner can submit feature requests to manage peak power demands via software, but their software developers (if even in-house) do not seem to ride the clue train. These request fall on the deaf ears of an understaffed support team with a ticket response time of about 8 days.

- Not all stations can afford to provide power at a cost lower than gasoline. My power company, an EMC, is in the charging business. I am the only DCFC operator in their service area. (Did I mention that I was a fool?) They charge $.40/kWh, and less for their members. I charge $.48/kWh - which is on par with the cost of gasoline per gallon, but far more than you would pay at home. I do charge less than Ethanol free gas which is probably a better comparison than regular gas.

- Every month I pay to subsidize the EV's which charge at my stations. I repeat that I expected this to be a loss leader, and that I am a fool. I did not anticipate an approximate $80k loss of over 5 years - if I am lucky. For my spreadsheets to turn green, I need more cars charging than I see coming up the mountain. Demand is pretty inelastic.

- I can get salespersons galore to talk to me about buying and installing new stations. I get crickets for support of my existing stations.

Guess who is *NOT* buying any more stations to help advance the adoption curve? This is the job of the car manufacturers. Dante said it best, "Abandon all hope ye who enter here."

Profitability has nothing to do with a decision to let the people who run the company actually own the company. Usually owners don't care as much about their employees and the company culture, so they sell out without taking care of the people who made them successful. The realist in me sees this as far more sustainable, equitable, and economically beneficial.

Fortunately, every employee-owned company I am familiar with is thriving. I seek them out because they are more accountable. There will be more over time and I anticipate logarithmic growth.

Not a problem for "people trying to use an OS." Key word is USE. Proprietary is a problem for those trying to develop, maintain, and sustain.

Once upon a time, before The Google and The Book of Face, there was Pointcast. Now residing in the annals of Wikipedia, it was as it should be.

I know Richard. He has stayed in my home. We have commuted together. I have conducted conferences that featured him.

We have been to "clubs" together. We have broken bread together. He has used my computers. I have cleaned up after him.

Some people know how to write. Richard is one of them. He says what he means and he means what he says. He Acts.

Some people do not read very well. They see what they want and hear what is already in their head. They Re-Act.

The night we were in a club in Waikiki, I could not compete with the attention Richard attracted. Why or how could I? The man wore a Thinkpad around his neck with some kind of a makeshift neck sling. He was adored by all because he was purely human. Big boys and girls with good Karma know how to react to a real human.

No one has given me better entrepreneurial advice than Richard. Ever. He fully understood that being in public service meant that you still had to pay your bills. Freedom comes at a cost.

I can read who among you do not know Richard. I can read who among you cannot read. So can the rest of us.

Your behavior is forgivable, but the world would be rounder if you applied your outrage where it belonged. Please.

We can measure the success of RMS by the magnitude of misguided outrage. Well done, Richard. Well done.

Do you know Richard? Has he spent two weeks with you in your house in Hawaii? Have you commuted in a car with him? Have you gone to a "club" with him? Tell me, please, how people perceived these referenced cards when coming from a man with a Thinkpad strung around his neck? Because that's how RMS rolls when he's clubbing. Paint that scene with your generous imagination. Perhaps people saw him as he is - an unabashedly honest and transparent human.

I can tell in this awful abuse of a human who actually has a soul, who knows Richard, and who is working out their own issues at the expense of RMS and a man who is no longer living. Reprehensible context to achieve moral superiority. Reprehensible.

I have never met a more strategic entrepreneur. I have never been around someone that could charm an audience of strangers who knew or cared nothing about software freedom - until meeting RMS. I've never seen so many people simply like a human as I saw people like Richard in Hawaii.

I could have been jealous, but instead I admire him, still. RTFM, and RTFemails. Words matter more than how your misguided feelings interpret them.

If you don't know your history of how Netgate hijacked the pfSense project for profit, or how sinister the shills running Netgate are, then wake up and do some homework. If you believe in the values of a community driven distribution, with integrity, then start avoiding the insidious trolling of the Netgate team and move onward and upward. Leave it to Jim Thompson to become so desperately insecure that he attacks the integrity of the FreeBSD project rather than consulting his changelogs in a mirror. Live free or risk being pfscked.

I want the neighbor to cross the fence, smack the tablet with a shovel, and say "I don't know what a computer is, either."

This article, and too many of the the comments, are completely clueless. I chose to get a T-Mobile hotspot because of Binge On. My responsibility as a consumer requires some due diligence. I learned that I could stream content from providers for free if they participated in a programs that would reduce the quality of my video to that which could be carried at 1.5 Mbps. Great for a mobile device, tablet, and even a laptop. Not so great for a 4K TV.

But I knew this because it was a hotspot from a mobile provider with a clearly stated policy about what to expect for free. If I wanted to use all of the 6GB I paid for at full resolution watching any video service I wanted, then all I had to do was to turn off Binge On. Wow. Such a violation of my rights as a net user.

Let's repeat. T-Mobile offers a free video feed at 1.5mbps. Free net access at 1.5mbps. How Net Neutral can one be?

Twitter's single biggest mistake, in my humble opinion, was overlooking ride sharing. I don't want to use a paid ride sharing service where I don't know the people, the driver, or what kind of music I will hear during the ride. I would prefer to twit my ride and go with someone I know something about.

They can monetize this quite easily by charging the regulated Taxi industry a small percentage when a twitter user summons their service and pays through their Twitter account. You don't always have a twitter friend nearby when you need a ride. It would be a shame to see a company with so much momentum and promise fail due to hubris.

This guy is a complete Idiot Incarnate. Period. Given his brilliant insights, perhaps he can architect the "simple data pipe" that he suggests T-Mobile implement. How, or why, is this a Slashdot story?