What?

Wikipedia is not a reliable source

[citation needed]

I'd take this job in a second. The position has a track record of failure and thus, expectations are low. This is exactly the kind of job I'm looking for. If you succeed, you're a miracle worker, if you fail, nobody blames you, either way it's not bad. It looks even better when you add in the fact that the pay is good and you have an awesome title. I mean c'mon, you'd be a freaking czar, how many people can legitimately put "Czar" on their resume?

John Wayne's not dead - he's frozen! And when we find a cure for cancer, we're gonna thaw out the Duke and he's gonna be pretty pissed off. You know why? You ever taken a cold shower? Well, multiply that by 15 million times. That's how pissed off the Duke's gonna be.

Operating systems aren't immortal beings, and by rights, there can't be (there shouldn't be) only one.

What? This directly contradicts the widely-known fact that Linux is The Highlander of operating systems.

Nobody wants to hear you cry about your broken flash drive, alright? This is not the place for that, hence, "Off-topic".

The teachers of every English class I ever took say so. They're wrong of course and a couple even openly admitted it, but even those who admitted that told us never to do it. For English teachers it's like the GOTO statement is to programming teachers -- justifiably legitimate in some cases, but they're convinced you'll just shoot yourself in the foot with it so they tell you never to use it.

That's one of the most excellent summations of Tesla Motors I've ever read. Whenever they come up there's somebody who says "That's great, but why don't they make it affordable for me?" and the answer is, as you said, that right now they can't.

The problem in making an affordable, mass-marketable electric vehicles right now is the cost of batteries. At present you have three main choices: Lead/acid, Nickel-Metal Hydride and Li-Ion/LiPoly.

Lead/acid cells are cheap (relatively) and are the prime choices for hobbiest EVs, but they would be hard to sell in a consumer EV because (1) they're large and heavy compared to the power they provide, making it difficult to make a car with much more ~100 mile range, (2) they take a long time to recharge (many hours) and (3) they wear out in a couple years. You can make a pretty affordable EV with these (indeed, there are plenty DIYers who have), most auto-buyers would not be willing to make those sacrifices: Why pay for an EV when you could get a regular car for the same amount of money (or less!) that can drive 3+ times as far without stopping, can be refueled nearly instantly rather than having to be left to charge overnight and doesn't require you to replace a $1000 worth of batteries every few years? So basically lead/acid is a non-starter. Some people might be willing to deal with their difficulties, but most will not. BTW though, if they do still sound interesting to you, look into building/buying a DIY EV conversion, it can be very fun and there are tons of nerds that will help you out.

NiMH and Li-Ion/LiPoly diminish a lot of these troubles by having better energy/weight ratios (more range) recharging faster (NiMH in a few hours, Li-Ion/LiPoly even less) and lasting longer (NiMH is better in this regard, Li-Ion/LiPoly will have to be replaced much sooner). An EV built with either of these, like Tesla's cars, can't match every feature of a regular car, but they are much more acceptable to consumers because there is less of a sacrifice and you still get the advantages of an EV (cheaper energy costs, less pollution (depending on what your source for electricity is), better energy efficiency, better source of hippy smugness, etc.). The problem is that while many consumers might drive a car like this, most of them won't buy/i> one because NiMH and Li-Ion/LiPoly batteries are expensive enough that any car based on them would (at present) cost more than most people would be able or willing to spend.

One step closer: Shakespeare wrote "A Midsummer Night's Dream", a 1999 film version of which featured Calista Flockhart who was in "Telling Lies in America" with Kevin Bacon.

All credit due to the internet, btw.

What in heaven's name are you talking about? The headphones have no DRM built into them

Oh really? The EFF disagrees: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/03/apple-adds-still-more-drm-ipod-shuffle

Movies have star power. The general public doesn't care who made the game.

Most people don't care which studios make a movie either. Games have stars just the same as movies. Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog, Lara Croft, etc., they're all stars as well as characters that fall in from other media -- Star Wars comes to mind. Similarly they have behind-the-scenes "stars" as well, instead of well-known directors there are well-known game designers who add a cachet to their productions (Will Wright, Sid Meier, etc.).

I don't think those two articles are really pointing out opposite trends at all. The CNet article claims the market at large is consolidating into fewer major studios, and the Gamasutra article claims new opportunities for independent studios. These conditions can exist concurrently and in fact do now exist in the movie industry. The majority of the film market is produced by major studios but film-making is still becoming increasingly attractive for independents.

The diffence is that in the movie industry, independents have thrived because of the decreased barrier-of-entry (film-making is now potentially cheaper than ever before) whereas a growth in independent game studios will, I think, come mostly from growth in the gaming market.

Soon the only jobs left on the planet will be: 1) prostitute 2) mercenary 3) bankers who own 1 and 2.

Well, judging from present lack of demand for my sexual services, I don't think I have to worry about being a prostitute. Being a mercenary or prostitute/mercenary-owning banker both sound pretty badass though, sign me up!

I agree, but that means the real question is, can I get ad-free radio just for letting somebody grope me? If so, sign me up, it sounds like a win-win.

Other 'free' services have been doing it for ages, most notably Hulu.com

I know this is the internet we're talking about, but Hulu went live ~1.5 years ago and has only been accessible to the general public for less than a year (March 12, 2008). They haven't been doing anything "for ages".