The majority of electricity is produced by doing something that wrecks the planet somehow, according to somebody.

The point is that electricity is an interesting way to power a car because we can think of more ways of making electricity - both now and in the future - than we can of making gasoline.

The same is true of hydrogen. For instance, you can make hydrogen via electrolysis. If you are somewhere with abundant, cheap, clean electricity - like Iceland - then dumping off-peak electricity into electrolosys so you can store H-gas might be an interesting process.

In fact, I saw Shell stations in Iceland that were providing hydrogen refueling in the mid 2000s. I have no idea where they were getting the Hydrogen from, but experimenting with alternative energy/power production systems is a good idea.

At some point, my iPod Classic is going to bite the dust and I'd love something that is a similar size that can store my large music (and video) collection and have a decent battery life.

This could have been it, but with an old version of Android and a stupid price point, I think I'll pass. Hopefully they'll come up with something that is less audiophile and more useful for the masses.

But they are right about the software, never has it been more insecure and more geared towards grabbing up your data and marketing/profiting from it.

The only thing I can think of that involves "grabbing up your data and marketing/profiting from it" would be iAd and that's hardly a large part of Apple.

What's your proof that Apple are making a massive play to slurp up your personal data and use it in the way Google would?

Part of the solution would be for Apple to decouple application updates from operating system updates.

I see no reason why a bug fix to Safari (of which there are plenty required) has to be delivered in the same way as an iOS update when they already have a perfectly good app updating mechanism (the App Store). Plus customers are used to apps updating frequently and automatically, adding Apple to the mix isn't going to be something strange for them.

I'm going on my 15th year at Microsoft. The first three were spent in Redmond. The rest have been at the office in Fargo, ND. For family reasons, I asked to be xferred to Fargo.

These days, not only do I not want to work in Redmond, I would prefer to not regularly go to a company office at all. Last year, I moved to a farmstead that is a bit outside of town. I've been working from home irregularly -- a few days here and there. Now that I have a new boss who is in Redmond, he doesn't care if I'm a remote employee in a Fargo office or a remote employee in my basement. So, I expect to be doing quite a bit more WFH.

It turns out that I am way more individually productive at completing tasks from home than I am when I am in the office.

However, there are definite advantages to getting some face to face time with the people you regularly work with. But not every day.

Every few months, Google, Netflix, Salesforce,etc will grab my linked in profile and ask if I'm interested. I tell them all the same thing - there is no condition under which I would move to the Bay Area. None at all. Furthermore, these companies are all based off of opensource software that was developed via distributed engineering - so what's their excuse to want to co-locate people into offices? Surely it isn't an engineering reason? Surely what they're building isn't more complicated than the linux kernel?

When something happens to my MS job out here, I plan on taking a 50% pay cut when I find whatever is next. That's not ideal, but I'm not willing to move to a big urban area again. There are people who are competent software engineers that don't want to live in large cities, or who don't want to commute to an office even if they do live in a large city. We're affordable to hire, we incur no facilities costs, and we're appreciative and loyal. Stop overlooking us.

Corporate culture is behind social and technical culture. Most of us interact daily with acquantances that live multiple timezones away. The reasons for forcing co-workers into the same building every day continue to shrink. It will be great when cube farms are levelled and other more interesting things are built in their place.

When you keep releasing a slew of poorly written movies, yet continue to demand unreasonable fees, this is the result. People aren't willing to shell out the bucks to see a B grade movie. It's just not worth it anymore.

This gets mentioned a lot on Slashdot but, in reality, the number of "good" movies has remained reasonably unchanged each year.

Here are the movies in the IMDB Top 250 grouped and counted by year:

Year Total
2014 6
2013 4
2012 5
2011 5
2010 6
2009 6
2008 4
2007 5
2006 5
2005 3
2004 7
2003 7
2002 4
2001 8
2000 6

In fact, 2014 (Interstellar, Boyhood, Gone Girl, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Grand Budapest Hotel and X-Men: Days of Future Past) was actually a better year than 2013 (The Wolf of Wall Street, Rush, 12 Years a Slave and Prisoners).

The "prime" year was 1995 but that only resulted in 10 films (Se7en, The Usual Suspects, Braveheart, Toy Story, Heat, Casino, Twelve Monkeys, Before Sunrise, La Haine and Underground).

(Nitpickers will point out that I really should run this over the entire DB and not the Top 250 and all take into account all film ratings - they'd be right, but that's a lot more work which I don't have the time to do).

If you view this as an imperialist move by China as opposed to a western style company taking a risky bet, does that change things at all?

Recall that many Chinese "companies" are appendages of the Chinese government -- and sometimes, even the Chinese Military (acting with quasi-autonomy from the government itself).

So, if some fragile corrupt African government attempts to nationalize Chinese investments, there's a good chance that China will simply dispense with the problematic elements of said government in whatever way doesn't risk significant repercussions from other world powers. Given what China is willing to provoke between Taiwan and Japan -- two US allies with protection agreements -- I don't think China is going to lose any sleep if it needs to steamroll a few African governments. The US won't do anything about it, and neither will anyone else.

Finally, why are you still in SA? It sounds like a wretched mess. Turn off the lights on your way out....

If you look up "appeal to authority" logical fallacy, there is an exception for Donald Knuth:

"footnote: It is never fallacious to properly cite Donald Knuth in lieu of providing your own argument."

The lawsuit accuses Apple of violating U.S. and California antitrust law by restricting music purchased on iTunes from being played on devices other than iPods and by not allowing iPods to play music purchased on other digital music services.

Unless I'm mistaken, wasn't this also the cause of the eventual death of DRM?

The music industry didn't like Apple's desire to sell every track at the same price (instead preferring to charge higher for more in demand music) - yet found themselves in the uncomfortable position of not actually being able to do that on competing stores thanks to the very DRM (they insisted on all content having) not being compatible with iTunes.

I can't help wondering what would have happened if the same situation had also been played out with video and eBooks...

What I'd like to know is whether or not this means we don't have a install a codec park (like Shark007) just so we can get support for all the common video formats in Windows Media Center.

Talking of Windows Media Center, does Windows 10 actually improve on this awesome (but sadly neglected) piece of software - or are they going to squander the opportunity again like they did with Windows 8?

What the fuck are these things? Am I supposed to know software/brand/product/service names off the top of my head?

Ever thought about using your favourite search engine to look them up?

There are plenty of non-USA based readers here who have to do that whenever a USA-centric article appears (which is often).

"this will be only used if the guests do not show up"...well, I created a virtual VISA with 5 EUROS. First thing my parents heard from the idiots "Your VISA card is not working".

Hotels typically do a pre-authorisation on your card which essentially checks to see if the card is active and that you have enough balance to cover the amount they are pre-authing. It does this by placing a hold on that amount until the transaction is settled or the authorisation falls off (usually a couple of days, but could be longer)

Since you only loaded on 5 euros, it'll naturally fail if they attempt a pre-auth above that. People who hand over a card to a hotel with not enough money on it are commonly trying to rip the hotel off.

TLDR; version: The hotel weren't "idiots", you just didn't understand how card payments work. Next time, create a virtual card with enough funds to actually cover the bill.

My ILEC is CenturyLink, a national company. The neighboring ILEC is actually a locally owned company that is much smaller and is providing much better service.

The point is, even if I wanted wired IP service from a competing ISP, that's not possible because the ILEC owns the copper to my property and the ILEC cannot provide L2 connectivity over its existing infrastructure, and has no plans to upgrade that infrastructure.

Meanwhile, a neighboring, locally owned ILEC is running FTTH to its rural customers...

I haven't spoken enough with the competing ILEC to know if they'd be able to finance their fiber buildout without capturing the revenue from voice and data service on top of their plant.

I don't understand your reference to my state. I agree that we shouldn't make laws for everyone based on the conditions in a particular place.

That's actually a great reason to limit FCC oversight, since it is a federal entity and makes rules that are national in scope...

Why does Verizon have the right to saturate my property with 700mhz energy?

I didn't sell that to them.

If they want to shoot 700mhz energy across (and through!) my house, why don't they have to buy rights to that? If they are preventing me from being able to do anything in my own home with 700mhz because of their harmful emissions, why don't I have any recourse against them?

Nobody would let me park across the street from your house and shine lasers or even flashlights into your windows.

Why is Verizon given this same privilege, albeit in a section of non-visible spectrum?

The current RF energy governance framework we have in the US may not be appropriate. The spectrum licensees certainly benefit from legal protection from competition, and from legal usurpation of my property rights on a massive scale...

I am near the edge of my ILEC's territory. If I wanted a different ILEC from a neighboring territory to be able to provide service at my address, I would need to petition for the two ILECs in question to agree to "hand me off" from the current ILEC to a different one.

This comes directly from the state public service commission in my state (North Dakota).