I will bet if you use this new search technology called "Google" you can search for solar installers in your area and there are probably a dozen or more.  I got quotes from 5 different installers.  Picked which one I thought was the best one, paid them and then they installed it.

Here I even did the first search for you:  https://www.google.com/search?q=solar+installers+houston

China will not stop the flow of semiconductors OUT of China, they export goods - that is what they do.  If they ever did stop the flow of any of these technologies the price would go up and fabs in other countries would start making them.  China could only temporarily stop these things from being make.

All good.  China really gets into this and starts mining, buying and hoarding, price goes up, more miners come on board, more security for the chain.  Price goes up more.  More publicity, etc.

May have run into some sort of problem with selling BTC on their merchant account?  Don't know.

I will try to buy some more from them on the 13th.

Exactly what risk are you talking about for these clients?

I think the game we have been playing is called "consume".  Consumer society.  Hey don't "they" call us "consumers".  That is just what we are to "them".  In the current economic system our job is to consume.  Just look at what happens when we stop.  The entire thust of the media is then directed at getting us to get back to our job and consume again.

I think this is where Bitcoin is the most dangerous.  The current system relies on an unlimitted supply of fiat currency to drive the consumption process.

In among the usual personal crap there is a LOT of good information and ideas in this thread.  It describes using standard cards and other solutions using more advanced cards, etc.  I think if you go throught the whole thing and ignore the personal stuff there are some good ideas in there:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=46366.0

How about water?  Not political.  Not religious.  Nothing is more fundamental to life.  Not too big, not too small.  Celebrity spokesperson.  If Mr. Damon likes the idea then they would probably do it.  http://water.org

+1, just the illusion of choice, the super bowl or world cup to keep the masses busy (entertained) arguing about nothing.

"who gets the money?"  has already been answered.

Please stop using the "word" wattage.  It is like fingernails on a blackboard to us electrical engineers.

Power not "Wattage" is measured in kilowatts
Energy is measured in kilowatt-hours
Current not "Amperage" is measured in Amps
Resistance not "Ohmage" is measured in Ohms

Now we do make one exception, electric or electrostatic potential, electric potential difference or electromotive force is measured in Volts, but that is to hard to say so we do call it Voltage.

For any given load the power factor gives the ratio of resistive to reactive load.  For residential customers the utility only charges for the resistive portion of the load, large commercial consumers are charged for both their resistive and reactive loads.

As stated above the power factor of the average computer is very close to a totally resistive load.  The power factor of a totally resistive load like an electric heater is, well, totally resistive.

So if your computer consumes 1000 Watts of power and your hairdryer consumes 1000 Watts of power and you run them both for one hour you would be charged for 1 kilowatt-hour of energy for each.

I have used them once to try it out and it worked for me.

I also really like physical bitcoins and own quite a few.

Here is an old thread that may be of interest:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=46366.0

Wouldn't that be 0.27182818 (e/10) instead of 0.12718281 then?

What does the card do?  How does it work?  Can you give us a simple use case?  Is it a "Pay Me" card that just has my public information on it so others can pay me or are you trying to figure out a way to use it to pay others and buy things with it (like the current fiat money denominated credit and debit cards)?

What is your vision here?

At least where I live it is not as bad as you make it out to be.

With all the tax credits and residential energy credit payments from our local utility my system was more like 11K out of pocket.  It started paying for itself the first day and has been paying for itself ever since.  I no longer pay anything to the local utility and the system will be paid off in about 7 years and from then on for about the next 13 - 18 years I will be making a "profit".

I got my "standard" checks but have not gotten my Ron Paul's yet.  Any idea when they will ship?

You make is sound like you basically guessed at the answer and then used Google to check your guess.

This has been a valuable learning experience for me and makes me really feel for any teacher nowdays that is trying to get their students to think and discover things for themselves.  When the answers to every question are so easily available people don't get to have that feeling of discovery that comes from actually thinking through a puzzle and finding the answer themselves.

You did get the correct answer and although it is not at all what I was looking for the link to the answer does satisfy the other two parts of the question, namely what was the original test question and how can you know the test question by just looking at the answers.

BTC grudginly sent.

Darin,

One final note on this subject.  By some luck of the cosmos you drew Phinnaeus instead of Matthew to your thread.  If you want to see just how lucky you are you can check out this thread where Matthew tries to help out Mr. Coins:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=52625.msg628476#msg628476

I did think of this and thought of it this way:  If both parites send their public keys to each other at the start of the protocol and they "cross in the mail" then the system is secure because there is now agreement on which two keys are to be added together to create the final public key.

I guess there may be a way to ensure this "crossing in the mail" but what if Ekim is very clever and so on...

EDIT:  I guess this is an answer to a question that disappeared while I was answering it!  O well I will leave it here for anyone who has the same question.

The argument is subtle.  First we are not talkikng about Mike, we are talking about Ekim - and he is out to rip off the customer (being Mike's evil twin brother).

On purpose he is funding the key E (which he totally controls with the private key e).  He is planning to take the BTC back at a later time.

The plan is to lie and tell the customer that his key E is the final combined key.

To do this he calculates P = E - C and lies and tells the customer that P is his public part of the two part key chain being used to secure the BTC.  Liar - he does not even know the private key for P (and can't)!

So everything is set up.  Ekim ships the item to the customer claiming that P is his public key and claims to have put the corresponding private key p under the hologram.  He has not since he does not even know p.  He also lies and says that E is the final combined key.

The customer gets the item and the two public keys P and E.  The customer is sophisticated and careful so they check everything out.

First they check to make sure the BTC they ordered are on the combined key.  He looks in the block chain for key E and yes the BTC are there.

Next he wants to make sure that the public keys add up so he calculated C + P and yes it does equal E!

So the customer is happy and thinks everything is ok - but it is not.  Ekim controls the BTC and the customer has no way to get the BTC.