Try figuring out basic grammar, and then we can have a discussion.

Because the parent is a troll. And wrong. Reliable is a term you are both misusing. Solar and wind generation is perfectly reliable, given the predictions that can be made about the source (since the reliability in question is of the cells/turbines themselves, which are extremely durable). Do they generate enough to satisfy year-round demand? Of course not. Neither do coal plants, and neither do nuclear plants, and neither do natural gas plants (by themselves). Are you saying those technologies are "unreliable" too?

This is a pretty sad, and wrong, assertion. Electricity usage from industrial and commercial load peaks during the day, and those two combined far eclipse residential usage. Even if you could just generate solar power during the day to offset demand from those two, and keep a dirty coal burning plant around for all the TVs and light bulbs that are on in homes in the evening, we would be a lot farther ahead.

In the UK (like most first world nations) electricity peaks at around 2pm when commercial demand and residential demand are both high. By nightfall, commercial demand is ending (which accounts for a lot more total usage than residential) and residential power tapers off starting at 6pm.

When rebate clearinghouses (the ones who actually fulfill the rebates, maybe) advertise their services as having "the lowest redemption rates" meaning basically that they are the best at scamming customers out of rebate money, something truly fucked up is going on. I agree that regulation should be used very sparingly but the whole premise of a rebate (as it is executed currently) is to entice someone into buying something with the speculation that many of them wont actually fulfill the rebate offer and get the discount they were promised.

The law I would pass is to require any rebate offer to be submitable in store (or wholly on-line for an online purchase) and present the customer with all necessary information and questions to fulfill the rebate at the point/time of sale. The companies can still collect their marketing data and time-shift the discount (the only possibly legitimate reasons to offer a rebate) and the consumers can walk away from the purchase not having to jump through any additional hoops (and open up opportunities for the submission to be lost) to get the money they were promised.

Asymmetry of information really plays a hard role in this. TWC no doubt entered into an agreement with the muni that controls the utility right of way, such that there was a quid pro quo (they install coax and boxes and pay a franchise fee and they get a 10 year exclusivity agreement, or similar) and of course the local lawmakers ate it up because people moving into an area aren't going to look into local laws about media service agreements, they are just going to know the place is cable-ready. When cable TV started to grow exponentially, it was a given that only one company in any given area would have the incentive to hang/bury the lines because two in the market would make it unprofitable for both. We are at the point now where rising demand and lower costs of technology can support two or more providers in most urban and suburban areas, but why change the agreement precedent now? Its not like normal people have a clue how any of this works. The only hope is that second-tier providers (like Wide Open West) will push their way into your market looking for profit, and force coaxial competition.

The *only* reason to offer some sort of price promotion later instead of just giving you the discount up front and making you sign a contract (even for three months of service) is so that they can roll the dice on customers signing up after being enticed by the promotion, and then not claiming the promotion. Rebates work the same way. Why is it that we can pass a thousand consumer protection laws about credit card interest rates and privacy disclosures, but can't just ban the blatant rip-off of rebate promotions?

There was no gift at all. RTFA puts it this way: "While this arrangement did not cause an economic loss to NASA or DLA-Energy, it did result in considerable savings for H211 and engendered a sense of unfairness and a perception of favoritism toward H211 and its owners."

So, they are pissed that a perfectly legal "arrangement" between Google and NASA where the latter sold the former some jet fuel for *what they paid for it*, is now an official one that apparently will save NASA about $6 million a year. I wonder if anyone else actually tried to ask NASA to sell them fuel and got turned down? Or, is this "consumer protection" group just pissed that Google had the balls and they didn't? We may never know.

The point is right there in the second paragraph of the article: "The company will let developers build .NET cloud applications on multiple platforms; it is promising future support of the .NET Core server runtime and framework for Mac and Linux"

The cloud market is dominated by Linux and linux-like systems, no one is doing Windows in the cloud except Microsoft Azure and that hasn't been going very well for them (hard to make money selling yourself OS licenses). So, get the stack into the cloud and maybe just maybe companies doing hybrid cloud deployments or are otherwise cloud-averse due to the lack of Windows presence can now get their feet wet. If they stick with .net, they will no doubt be still buying Windows licenses and MSDN subscriptions for a while. Without this bridge, companies just make the jump completely away from Microsoft.

XLTE isn't really a thing, it's Verizon marketing-speak for extra bands of regular LTE spectrum with which they make data move really really fast. The difference is really noticeable, but only because most of their LTE markets are saturated and the extra bands are needed to maintain true LTE speeds.

This. Now, with "XLTE" I can blow past my monthly data cap in 13 minutes of full speed downloading! The future has arrived.

It used to be worth it, until they made the seats so damn close together that laptop use is excruciating unless you're in first class. Heaven forbid the sod in front of you reclines his seat, in which case there literally isn't room for the laptop to fully open unless you suck your chest in. Nah, I would rather get my work done in the relative comfort of the terminal, and use the in flight time for catching up on podcasts or reading.

Except those that answer "1 year" and to a lesser extent "~10 years". To them, you have both my sincere condolences and my urgent plea to get off of Slashdot and enjoy your life without us trolls fucking up your day.

It's well known that they use Deer Park bottled water (almost a million dollars a year worth). Have you ever tried that crap? How can it not be infected.

Considering they weren't even trying, and managed to find a sample where 44% of the participants had the virus... Its hard to imagine that the effects could be short term unless the research was done literally on a boat on the lake.