I expect it is more from the Small business white box community. Yes they still exist. So they save money by getting Windows 7 Licenses and upgrading to Windows 10 by the time they sell their PC's.
I expect technically this would be against some agreement with Microsoft. But these guys are such small fries. The the cost of investing and fighting for it is more then then small pocket change these companies have for profit. If it were a Dell, HP or Lenovo doing this, that would be a different story all together.

Bull. Fucking. Shit.

Iran was getting its shit together and we took a gigantic shit on it on purpose, to prevent that from happening.

I bought mine on eBay from someone who is part of the Registered Refurbisher program. Since my PC was cobbled together from parts of other older PCs, it seems to apply. I'm about to upgrade the motherboard under it, I'll probably have to get on the phone to Microsoft for that one. I already have to call them for my lady's machine, I upgraded it to 64-bit and it validated, but later it popped a validation failure.

I can only speak for myself, but I bought a Windows 7 license at least partly because I would be able to upgrade it to a Windows 10 license... and partly because I feared that Microsoft would raise the prices or make them unavailable when Windows 10 came out. So a little from column A, a little from column B. Why are you surprised?

You only think this because you don't know how the system works. Ignorance is a bitch, prepare to be educated: The FBI serves your ISP with a letter telling them they have to collect your DNS requests. It doesn't matter where your requests go, because your ISP logs all of your DNS traffic, maybe the contents of any unencrypted HTTP requests you make (the URL, that is) and anything else the FBI wants. Then, on a regular schedule, they provide that information to the FBI.

Probably every ISP of any note in America is collecting logging data on at least one of their customers. I would be shocked, amazed, and almost appalled if I weren't one of them :)

Well, I live in serious critter country, Lake county is one of the primary hunting zones for California. And, knock on wood, I don't have problems seeing deer. Usually I spot them well before they try to cross in front of me. Maybe you just need to slow down, and not outdrive your eyes. When my vision is impaired, including by darkness, I slow down.

The HUD doesn't dominate the windshield, you know. And it's not as bright as you seem to imagine.

Mercedes has used the occasional turbo, but only on very rare cars... diesels aside. So yeah, it's a diesel. 1982 300SD. Runs like a top, but it does have a bit of a leak yet. It had many more, but I fixed those.

I just like being snarky. I get the idea. I far prefer a big center-mounted analog tach with a digital speedo off to the left, as I've said elsewhere in this thread. Everything else can be sprinkled about as necessary. I did actually use the oil pressure gauge in the Mercedes today, though... I really need a new wastegate diaphragm.

It doesn't matter what they agree with, I know two women who have been raped by licensed taxi drivers, taxi licenses don't prevent crime, stop repeating that idiocy.

No, no it isn't. Put a date and a number of miles on the sticker.

The amazingly shitty experiences I've had in amazingly shitty taxis disagree

No, my car will only do 178. And for that, I need different wheels+tires, and the missing plastic belly pan.

Of course they will. Headlights are meant to spread light to the sides. Any decent ones will do that. Even the Hella H4 sealed beam replacements have lenses that do that. Just make sure you get the right ones for which side you drive on...

This is a forum site; have you gone looking for 'proof'?

I'm going to have to rephrase my statements a bit. Tense problems, mostly. We couldn't, and currently can't, produce enough green energy to replace coal&oil economically, IE without making major sacrifices in quality of life elsewhere.

Somehow I dropped the battery part of my post as an additional option. Where the cheaper and more efficient the storage technology is, the more likely you are to store power rather than just build out your renewable energy infrastructure and just 'throw away' power during 'good' power production days.

Still, we appear to be on the cusp of radical changes. 30 years ago solar technology produced less power even at 100 times the cost. Lithium-Ion technology was a gleam in somebody's eye, much less possibly poised to take the market as the cheapest battery technology.
Lead Acid: $.194/wh.
LiIon: $.236/wh.

If ONE of the recent battery technologies that I've read about succeeds, or Musk's factory to cut the cost of his batteries in half, that means that LiIon will actually be cheaper than Lead-Acid. This would be huge.

Meanwhile they keep working to cut the cost of solar panels even as they increase their efficiency.

I'm still irked by the pricing. Now, I don't expect to be able to buy an ebook for the price of a used book, but by golly, I refuse to pay more for the book than I do for a dead-tree version, and given that I'm a halfway 'smart' shopper, 30% under 'list' is the average for me, I can often reach 50% or more, for a book that's not quite a new release. As such, I'm pretty much stuck buying from Baen for now.

They need to hold more sales like Steam. But no, the publishers don't want that. Apple & Amazon don't want that.

If the battery is cheap enough, you could have one of those tesla home batteries which would trickle charge through the day, then 'dump' the accumulated charge into your EV battery.

So when you get home, given enough time to shower, change clothes, apply makeup and have a snack, you have a vehicle back up to 80% charge.

So many 'fun' things would be possible if we could have a battery that stores 1kWh for $1. ;)