So.... how are you fixed for firewood and natural gas?

Pretty well, thanks! I have four cords cut split and seasoned (In a typical winter I'll go through 2-3), and another two I could tap in a pinch if we have a really bad winter.

I couldn't keep the fridge going (good thing winter provides its own cold), but I have enough solar/battery capacity to keep the house lit up with efficient LEDs indefinitely, and to run an energy-efficient tablet on the off chance we have some tattered remains of a communication infrastructure to connect to (or just to while away the hours reading the entirety of Project Gutenberg). And perfect time of year, crop-wise, I'll spend the next few months canning anyway.

You?

I don't see the name become generic at any point soon

You should re-read TFS, then. This entire topic centers on exactly that - "iPad" has become a generic term for any tablet, just as iPod has become a generic for any portable music player.

And I have just one thought on that: "Ha, ha!"


/ As long as they don't have ultra-high-tech proprietary rounded corners. That would just go too far.

The big reveal images have already been negotiated with some major media outlet.

I have no problem with that, as long as not a single penny of public funding went into this project, nor did they find this thing on public lands.

Oh, look: "it has been funded with 180.000 euros by the Prefecture of Central Macedonia, the Ministry of Macedonia and Thace and the Ministry of Culture". Yeah, NatGeo and NBC can fuck right off, 'kay? I might give the BBC or PBS a pass on access for doing a legitimately scholarly documentary, but not exclusive rights to the imagery.

We all own our history. The fact that the government paid you to dig some of it up makes you a glorified landscaper, not some sort of artist with "rights" to pictures of the rocks you found.

Given that we've discovered planets everywhere we never expected planets to be, being "not surprised" at not finding planets is pretty weird. The damned things are everywhere!

In the case of the "Exciting Choice", Astronauts will be riding in the same basic design as what Commercial Passengers will use, which means more flights and (theoretically) higher reliability due to a continuously refined manufacturing process, plus the loss of commercial passenger dollars. Going with the "Safe Choice" means you're riding in one of perhaps only four or five of a series that will ever be produced. The loss of commercial dollars is a big deal to SpaceX as it represents a much larger market than Government spaceflight will in the next five decades.

And yet if sales follow their current upward accelerating trend, by this time next year 1% of the world's population will own a copy of the game. What would you suggest hitching your wagon to instead? Second Life? Because that's worked out so well.

Fuck me, that's impressive! It even manages to track 17 million ghosts!

https://www.google.com/search?...

EA tried to buy them for $100 million a couple years ago, they let the CEO in to the office and shortly after showed him out. At that point they'd already made enough to all comfortably retire and it's not surprising that they would turn down a billion dollars (that's what, $100 mil each per employee?) before caving at the $2 billion mark? It's hard to turn down that kind of money.

The battery on the Model S is replaceable by robots, surely you could put a rooftop battery on there, and then just swap them out at large bus stations near neighborhood substations for charging? Who on earth builds an industrial grade public bus without swappable batteries in this day and age?
 
Propane and natural gas powered buses have had their fuel tanks on the roof for decades now. With hooks and simple optics it wouldn't be hard to lift an old battery pack off and swap it for a fresh one in under 5 minutes.

Imagine you can leverage off of their existing user base, your minecraft character becomes your xbox equivilent of a "Mii", and now you have a 3D avatar in a 3D world you can legitimately interact with. Did you not read Snowcrash? This is Snowcrash. Someone bootstrapped the 3D virtual world we've been promised since the 1980's (and failed at with Second Life) and now Microsoft will own it. And will integrate it in to your living room and cell phone.
 
P.S. Go read Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson

This is the most perfect example of begging the question I have ever seen on /.

The whole point of the GP's argument is that hurricanes are weather, and you have countered by simply declaring hurricanes are climate, or "climatological events", whatever that means.

Here is the problem in the simplest words I can think of:

1) Climate is a set of distributions, and is defined by the parameters of those distributions at any time.

2) Weather is a set of events drawn from those distributions.

Warmist talking heads who attribute every heat wave and extreme weather event to climate change are engaged in exactly the same fallacy as Denialist talking heads who claim every cold snap is proof of no climate change: both groups deny that the distributions in the case of a) climate change and b) no climate change overlap so substantially that only a liar or an idiot would draw any conclusion about the shape of the distribution from a single event.

You ignored what I said.

Oh, wow did I misread that! Sorry, my bad.

Clearly we disagree, rather than agreeing. Ah well, I probably would have responded with the same thing, just intro'd slightly differently. ;)

In the processing of waiting for a new card. Even if I'm not liable, I don't want my bank footing the bill for criminal purchases made by someone.

This. Everyone seems all panicked about this (along with Shaws, a regional supermarket chain) - But why care? I shop regularly at both stores, use only plastic, and... I will lose exactly zero dollars even in the worst-case scenario.

I know people who currently refuse to shop at TJ Maxx because of that breach a decade ago. Yet, such people never seem to have a good answer for how much it cost them personally (correct answer: nothing). And I fully expect the same people to start using Lowes exclusively (because at least they only screw their own employees with poor security, amiright?).

Guess what, folks - It just doesn't matter. If you report any fraudulent charges within a reasonable time after getting your statement, you have no liability, with the bank, the merchant, and the insurance company getting to argue over which of them foots the bill. Debit cards have somewhat worse terms (you front any money stolen, and start sharing the liability if it takes you too long to notice any problems), but even with them, you still have one full statement cycle to notice any fraudulent charges.

Much ado about nothing.

I wonder how many packs of mj cigarettes do the most "addicted" smokers smoke.

'cause everyone knows everclear has much higher alcohol content than beer but if you drink one shot of everclear, you won't be more drunk than after seven beers.

Seriously, I don't like coffee. I need coffee but I dislike it.
Why can't I have a glass of good caffeine-rich carrot juice?