Yeah, but why would you? It's a slightly less efficient implementation of h264 with no hardware support.

There is the added blow of commoditization of TVs and electronics in general. Even back in the SD days of CRT sets making TVs was difficult and high manufacturing. Back when Sony was considered the top electronics brand int he world, that's one of the major areas where they made their name. So even before the HD boom televisions enjoyed an excellent margin. They used to be sold more like cars, with a certain degree of haggling expected for the higher end models. The last few years have seen all that disappear.

I doubt there is enough market here to be bothered with. For example, Apple has sold about 15 million appleTVs so far. That number is so small that they publicly label it a 'hobby' and actively discourage any real attention on their earnings reports. How big is the after-market car audio market? Has any single unit ever sold 15 million total? A quick Google puts the total value of the car audio industry around 2 billion. Apple's revenue last year was 156 billion. They could capture the entire market and only get a 2% bump. They probably spend more on advertising than the entire car audio industry would net them.

Which is why they are puttering around with the occasional arrangement directly with auto manufacturers. But even that is likely more of a hobby than a serious investment.

You had damn well better cover your bases before launching, especially in international waters. If the first time the governments of the world take notice of you is when they detect your unannounced launch of an ICBM (And anything that can get into space is definitely showing up as an ICBM) in international waters it is going to end in tears.

I'm pretty sure it says precisely that. Or at least 'You agree to only interact with our software in approved ways". Which, for a multiplayer game, seems like a pretty reasonable restriction.

The current cost of electricity in the USA is anywhere from $.08 to $.17 per KWh depending on location. If fusion can do it for $.20, or even $.25 it would probably be considered a win when you factor in the environmental benefits and reduced dependence on coal and other resources. If you figure in increased use of electric power in areas that currently use gas/oil like cars, then even $.25 looks great due to the reduced reliance on foreign sources.

Sure, but what distro/versions/other hardware are you running? At a guess, I think nVidia had little trouble ironing out all the bugs for a single targeted setup like this. One hardware spec and known OS/packages? Easy. It's supporting every frankenbox and smashed together OS that causes them ulcers.

Uh, how about your neighbor to the north, Canada? We're even larger geographically and are so ethnically diverse that our second largest province has a completely different official language than the rest of the country. And yeah, there's some friction but we make it all work pretty good.

As a truism, that's bullshit. And it's not even entertaining bullshit.

Let's pretend it was taken to it's logical extreme, aka a society with zero taxes. Also known as a society with no roads, no enforced laws, no food inspection, no building codes, etc. You really thing that's a better functioning society with increased employment? Now, obviously a society at the other extreme (100% taxes) is equally dysfunctional. Arguments can be made for lower taxes (and certainly better spent taxes), and arguments can be made for raising taxes in some circumstances (certainly worked in California lately), but to say lower taxes are always better is so stupid it's not even wrong.

If you think 5-10 Gb is large, you need to recalibrate your expectations. 8Gb is probably the smallest USB stick I've in a store in the last year. Single movie files are regularly that big. 1 Tb and up is a pretty standard hard drive size. back when you had a 100 Gb HD and felt pretty good about it 8 gigs was enormous. Now it's not.

I wouldn't be too sure about the 50 years thing. The manufacturers tend to state an average lifespan of around 25-35 years for burned CDs and DVDs. Based on independent testing, those turn out to be fairly accurate numbers. But they are an average. For every one that lasts 25 years, there is one that goes 45 years no problem and one that is kaput after 5.

There are two major things that go wrong. First, any minor flaws in the how the disc has been sealed and the reflective backing will oxidize over time, rendering it useless. The second thing is that the 'burning' is accomplished with photosensitive organic dyes. They can have chemical changes over time, but more importantly remain photosensitive. A single day left out in sunlight can be the end of a disc.

If you want a neat trick, leave a disc out face up in the sun and cover part of it with a piece of paper or something else. It's like one of those old time photography demos.

Archival organizations usually recommend the useful lifespan of a burned disc as 8-10 years. As in if you burn a hundred discs and store them properly you should be able to count of reading them all for the first eight years. After that statistics start taking its toll.

Most Americans should be basically unprepared for regular or severe power outages. If the basic utilities are failing enough that it's accepted as a regular thing, shouldn't you be up in arms?

Older than what? Apple has industry leading backwards compatibility on their mobile devices. Hell, plenty of android devices are effectively end-of-life six months after they come out. The latest iOS build is backwards compatible back to the 3GS, which launched just over 4 years ago. Try to find ANY 4 year old android that supports Jelly Bean.

I've seen these percentages reported a lot of places, but I have yet to be able to find anything that lists actual sales numbers. Without knowing how big the market for sub-$300 PC market is, it's a meaningless measurement. For example, if 50 million sub-$300 PCs were sold, 25% is a really respectable number. If two million sub-$300 PCs were sold then the 500,000 total sales are quite disappointing.

You incentive to invest is exactly the same. you invest in order to make more money. Option one is that you leave you money sitting in a bank account where it does nothing. Option two is to invest the money and then pay some percentage of taxes on the profits.

And no one in the history of ever has gotten the profits on their investments, looked at the taxes and wished that they had made $0 instead by not investing.