Windows doesn't play anything by default. Who cares?

So in your world, telling someone about a company's products is the same as murder?

Such as?

Last time I checked, telling people about a company's product isn't illegal.

Now, they may *possibly* be asking people to break and NDA, but that would be a civil matter, not a criminal one, and therefore it wouldn't be illegal.

Well if they file for a patent, they obviously think its worth the cost. You can't always directly measure the return either, since you don't know if you holding the patent lowers competition.

Also remember that because the system is like this, companies that aren't patent trolls still need to file for the patents if they want to defend their technology. Blame the system, not those who have to play by its rules.

No, the GP is wrong. It has a 16kWh pack, but a 50% DoD (Depth of Discharge). I.e., only half that capacity is actually used (8kWh).

1) The replacement rate on hybrid battery packs is *extremely* low, and they're not that expensive any more. *New* Prius batteries cost $2,229 for the first-gen and $2,588 for the second-gen. Used packs can be bought for several hundred dollars.
2) Where are you getting "similar highway ratings"? The Jetta TDIs score just above 40mpg (depends on what year you got).
3) Diesel mpgs != gasoline mpgs. Diesel is a denser fuel, representing more oil per gallon and releasing more CO2 per gallon. The proper comparison is gravimetric, not volumetric.

My wife has pretty much the entire animated Disney collection from before 2004 on VHS. A lot of good they do us seeing as we no longer own a working VCR. If we want our kids to see these movies we'll have to re-buy them on the popular format of the day when our kids are old enough to watch them.

Not true.

Now, I don't suggest that you download this torrent, as taking steps to keep watching movies you've already bought would clearly be illegal. I'm simply saying that you don't have to rebuy them to keep watching them.

It's such a horrible temptation to not be good little citizen and keep paying a company over and over and over again for the same content, isn't it? I mean, they paid good money to get copyright extended ad infinitum and make form-shifting illegal, no? So you'd be eeeevil to not fork over cash to them again for things you've already bought, no?

(Avon activates the star drive incinerating Dr. Langstrom in the Process)

Dayna: What about Dr. Langstrom?
Avon: Who?

Orac: We need to lose 63 Kilos in order to achieve orbit.
Avon: Who do we have left to jettison that weighs 63 Kilos?
Orac: Vila weights 70 Kilos.....
Avon: Vila, where are you?

You make a good point, but I defy you to correlate the success of foreign auto makers in the US with the decline of US auto makers in the US without noting that unions are a huge part of the equation.

Let's see, GM, Ford, Chrysler: Unionized.

Toyota, Huyndai/Kia, Honda: Non unionized.

They all develop and produce cars inside the US, for the US. They all borrow and/or share designs with overseas companies/subsidiaries/etc. The only real difference is the union status and the parent companies' nationality. I will concede that there is certainly a component of 'Americanism' in play at all levels of management decision making.

Nevertheless, how can you say with a straight face that a) the US auto makers aren't hindered at all by wildly expensive and inhibiting union contracts, and b) the foreign auto makers would be more competitive if they had unions? That's the burden of proof unions are up against if they want a place in the US going forward.

This really just seems to be "9 interesting animal models" or maybe "I spent 10 minutes reading about animal models."

Along those lines, I study development in chickens because they're easy to study live as embryos. I've seen a lab that studied owl optical lobes, if I remember correctly because owls can't turn their eyes, and I guess the other eye's region expands to compensate. Songbirds have been used to prove that neurons are produced in adult animals, females treated with testosterone gain neurons their vocal centers. I've heard of grasshoppers being used to study neuron axon guidance. And I saw an interesting discussion of platypus sperm, they seem to have a slingshot mechanism.

We kill animals and plants to eat them. Is this evil? Should we stop? Then we die...

If we can test new medicine, making n animals suffer but allowing us to make m fewer humans suffer, for what values of m and n is that a good trade in your mind? 1 and any? m equals n? any and 0?

See, absolutist statements have a tendency to blow up when you have to trade off things as you often have to in the real world constrained by the finiteness of resources.

And when traffic between my home and the tpb ip range (all tpb ranges?) is blocked, how do I get to the tpb from home?

When there already are plenty of other machines I can bounce off of, why set up my own? Exactly what is gained?

I really hope the order of that is wrong.