It isn't amazon's job to setup a DR plan for their entire datacenter. That is the customer's job. You can pay for Amazon support and they will gladly help you setup a DR plan for your setup, but there is no way what-so-ever that it is their responsibility.

They provide you with an easy way to rent their hardware from 1 or more locations, and you can build in redundancy into your own system.

- Americans also have family to take care of (say the H-1B sends money back home... that money goes way further than it would for an American doing the same)
- Americans also have student loans, which is constantly rising due to the nature of how College tuition / loan stuff works

This right here would probably solve the issue in one iteration.

Of course it could also backfire and bring our wages down to the point where they still recruit H-1Bs

There is only one reason STEAM is doing this, and it's pretty simple.

When they decide to release their own console (oh and they will), they want to make sure their platform will work on it, and that game developers have already started thinking about porting them over to *nix. Why pay a licensing fee for some OS to put on a console (or a licensing fee to XBOX or Sony to get STEAM on their platform), when they can instead make sure their platform works flawlessly on *nix, and then create a console using *nix.

the desktop *nix community will be like a beta test for their console, without all the demands of "I want a fix yesterday" that you would get from the Windows community.

Long term, they will end up taking a significant chunk of the current consoles market share.

This right here.

This is how Valve will play this out.

1) Release Linux version of STEAM + Source games working from day 1
2) Release new Console version based on Linux (no MS licensing overlord). Console comes with all source games
3) Release STEAM client for mobile ...
Profit?

If they now have a linux client, doesn't that mean that if I make a game using their source engine, it will work on Windows, Mac & Linux right off the bat? If so they would basically be able to say "Use STEAM & Source engine to make your game and it will work on our console (#2 above), and PC from day one."

Bonus points if they release a brand new Source v2 engine or something along with a console.

Cutting out a single night out at a restaurant will almost always end up covering the cost of that month's cell phone bill.

How do you secure a reactor like this though?

If I have a gun can I shoot at it and it goes BOOM?
What if I have a grenade?
Rocket?
Large home-made bomb?
Stolen Bunker buster missile?

If you were able to get it to go BOOM or melt down, what are we talking about for containment? If it powers a suburban area 20sq miles, will the melt down only cause health issues for that 20sq miles or larger? If it impacts areas around it, do they get a say on how you deploy it and regulations you need to follow to secure it?

What happens if both drivers were Speeding?

What happens if (more extremely) both drivers were recorded going 46 when the accident happened on a road with a speed limit of 45?
Should BOTH insurance companies be legally OK to wipe their hands clean of paying out for the accident?

Simply put, is there anything in the books that would stop both insurance companies from using "speeding" as the end all, over-rules everything reason to not pay out?

I am a real person :(

What about a way to block specific users, which in turn ALSO blocks all their moderation?

Say some group of shills mods post Y down to oblivion, by having them on your block list, those down mods are invisible and not counted. You now see the post for how it is, and if anyone else modded it +1 whatever, you would see that as well, as long as they aren't on your block list as well.

Of course, this could be the way it is currently, but as a /. noob, I don't have a good enough idea of what users to block.

IF enough people have them, banning them won't be an option.

Frankly, the concept of these things has some +'s for the current crop of internet only stores (like Amazon), where the majority of their customers will go into a physical store to look at a product, then go online and but it. Instead of having to go into the store, you download the Amazon Showcase app, and it creates a showcase for your right in the room you are in.

Oh wait, so a device that ONLY worked on a mac, and then JUST releases a version that works on Windows is already "well-known" in "non-geek" circles?

ugh

sounds almost like a MS feature...

So what you seem to be saying is that the Generalists shouldn't be working for the company, they should be creating new companies :)

Blog / forum / area you'll be frequenting regarding this? Very VERY interested in helping test this out.