Making electricity smarter

The idea of a "Smart Grid," which applies information technologies and decentralization to electric power generation and distribution, was strongly endorsed by both candidates in the presidential campaign, and has been reiterated by Obama since the election. But I realized that I didn't really know what the idea of the Smart Grid entailed. It turns out to be an interesting combination of changes not just at the utility level, but down to the municipal and consumer levels. I found this Smart Grid white paper (PDF) done by the US Department of Energy that gives a good overview of the project.

The promise of the Smart Grid is that it can make electricity generation and distribution more efficient and reliable, and can even help the consumer use electricity more intelligently. And like the Internet, decentralization means that the electric grid would become more robust to natural disaster and external attack. The grid could also better integrate more generation capacity from many different, smaller sources, including wind and photovoltaic. Sounds like a project worth doing.

Where to Get the Worst Deal on a Professional-level Mac

Once again, I'm in the market for a new laptop. It's been almost two years since I got my current 2.16GHz MacBook Pro, and the state of the art has advanced enough that a new machine may be worth it to me. The machine I'm pricing now:

15" MacBook Pro

• 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• 6MB shared L2 cache
• 4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x2GB
• 320GB Serial ATA hard drive; 5400 rpm
• NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT graphics processor w/512MB GDDR3 memory
• SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)

A little bit of shopping around, and I discover that most of the sources to get it have nearly-identical prices, with one exception:

Wondering now where that last price came from? That's how much it costs, combined, when you buy the MacBook Pro and an Apple Developer Select membership. And any operating systems Apple ships in the next twelve months are automatically included.

So, my question is:

Why does anyone—developer or not—ever buy a professional-level Mac (i.e., Mac Pro and MacBook Pro machines selling for $2500 and up) from Apple retail?

[Of course, if you want to spend a whole lot less and get an almost-as-good Mac, the place to buy is Apple's Refurb and Closeout store.]

Good to know