We Will Control You!
 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/us/11control.html

SAN FRANCISCO — The conceit in the 1960s show “The Outer Limits” was that outside forces had taken control of your television set.

Next year in California, state regulators are likely to have the emergency power to control individual thermostats, sending temperatures up or down through a radio-controlled device that will be required in new or substantially modified houses and buildings to manage electricity shortages.

The proposed rules are contained in a document circulated by the California Energy Commission, which for more than three decades has set state energy efficiency standards for home appliances, like water heaters, air conditioners and refrigerators. The changes would allow utilities to adjust customers’ preset temperatures when the price of electricity is soaring. Customers could override the utilities’ suggested temperatures. But in emergencies, the utilities could override customers’ wishes.

Final approval is expected next month.

Funny how from the bastion of liberal thought in the US we get ideas for the government to be allowed into your thermostat. :D

:confused: Why was Outer Limits conceited?

What bastion? San Francisco? California? The California Energy Commission?

Perhaps conceit was supposed to be concept.

Dam spell checking pogroms.

SF or The Left Coast, take yer pick...:)

OH! :blush:
lol at pogroms!

Sorry for the incontinence.

Almost blew coca-cola out my nose!

Today received an appeal from a student, he was righting to express his inability to understand the class martial. If only we would have more patients.

Yep, spell-check...the bane of humankind.

Umm...conceit used in that context doesn't mean the same as conceited. It means an extended metaphor. Think of a literary conceit. essentially it refers to the set up in fiction.

friggin' english, always ruining our fun.;)

How conceited!

Well I'll be damned...I didn't know that context. Thanks for clarifying.

Austin Energy offers those sorts of thermostats. It's a program you voluntarily sign up for, and you get a free programmable thermostat--about a $150 value if you're replacing the crappy old kind, plus the added monthly electrical savings of programming your A/C not to run as much during the day when no one's home, which can be very significant in Texas. Under our program, they are not allowed to turn it off for more than 10 minutes at a time, and there's a limit on how many times they can turn you off as well. They provide stats each year on how many times they had to do it the previous year. It happened a total of three times for us over two years, and we never noticed any of them.

We control the heat...we control the cold....we control your mind....huh?