Yep - it's called spec work:
http://www.nospec.com/

Freudian slip as they were thinking about using these moored to their off-shore datacenter islands.

They say the same thing about web servers, too. One big one is better than lots of cheaper, smaller ones. And yet that's not how Google runs its data centers...

I think that would be included in the overall size.

So why didn't they add a charging circuit for the battery, still meet the specs, and have it actually be useful? I have one on my computer.

If you're working with a printed circuit (think a computer on a magazine page or a greeting card), it's useful if the silver dots can be read by the printed circuit without an additional machine or any (relatively) large equipment at all.

And if dpi directly translated to individual sprayed dots, that would be useful. Inkjet printers spray microdroplets that aren't strictly locked to the pixel grid. And CMYK are not all perfectly aligned with one another.

Still, that inkjet printed page can't read itself. A circuit printed on the page could.

Those are distribution lines. And only the drop to the customer carries 240V. That's converted down from about 2-4KV at the pole transformer off the distribution line.

Transmission lines are what connect distribution areas to generating plants and carry tens of thousands of volts.

I think their use of the term islanded may refer to more than just the technical specifications. I bet Google wants this tech for off-shore floating data centers.

And all this is happening while the USPS is still trying to end Saturday delivery. If that ever happened, Netflix wouldn't receive any more discs to process.

Do you think that you are being throttled because of your usage or that your particular distribution center is overloaded? I know where I'm at, I mail it one day, they receive it the next, and the next movie goes out for the following day.

It might actually be a problem on the mail delivery side, but it could be your particular distribution center. I just wanted to say it's not the universal experience. But I rarely go through more than 1 disc a week because of my viewing habits.

Most people no longer have a local video store. My alternative is buying every movie I want to watch once.

How about keeping it on the queue, but listed at the bottom under "Saved Titles" - just like the movies that haven't come out on DVD yet.

An oddly strict definition of conservation....not using it at all would fit under the definition of conservation. Or saving it all for a global emergency to survive a volcanic winter when solar and hydro give out. That's what I was getting at. There's no reason we shouldn't know where it is and be ready to mine it just in case.

I said nothing against going to nuclear as a primary fuel source. It's perfectly feasible except for one small problem - no one will do it or approve it. With that standing as a major roadblock to this day, we still need to conserve what we're using.

I think it's great as long as they can keep the SNR in-margin. The problem is that at certain times of the year, my cable service is just plain unreliable - especially for VoIP - even when uncongested.

I don't subscribe to TV, because they really overcram. I wish they were just using better QAM, but they're also overcompressing the channels on top of that.