There is a big difference between republican voters, and republicans in office.

Republican voters generally claim to want smaller government, reduced spending and deficits, etc. Republican governments on the other hand never do these things.

Corporations are people too, you insensitive clod!

I haven't seen the desk-type imprint machine in ages. Must be 20 years, maybe 10 - 15 years in backwater areas.

Though the last time I got my car towed, the driver had some sort of miniature impression rig. Which still makes sense, if you're out of range of network and whatnot...

Also in Cuba, they had one down there. Which sorta makes sense too.

The $1 iphone charger I took apart was such a poor design and construction. Very little isolation, so unsafe. two transistor resonant style switching setup, cheapest there is. Too small output capacitors making the output very noisy. Though it claimed 1A, it was dropping out by 300mA. Not even close. No input filtering at all. no fuse. I'm surprised the things work at all, really.

That's not to say that it isn't possible to make a good charger for less than a .. whatever ripoff pricing apple charges, $30? There should be room to profit on a $5-10 charger, and meet all standards... But the $1 ones are absolute garbage, and no one should use them, ever.

I think 'Prone to' is fine here. Apparently the iPhone chargers are more prone to starting on fire than a standard charger would be expected to. It's a relative thing.

Ford Pintos were prone to starting on fire. Not even a small minority of them actually did, though.

Seems like standard procedure for the "accountable and transparent" Harper Government.

My HP 1631 (circa 1985) most certainly doesn't run Windows 2000, you insensitive clod.

Some company bought a division of a company that makes an IC that apple uses. Wow.

Renesas is the merger of partial-spinoffs of semiconductor divisions from NEC, Hitachi, and Mistubishi, for people that don't recognize the brand.

Then they should revoke them every few years and have a lottery for who gets a new one.

of course companies will be massively butthurt by that, though.

Well, had they abandoned them in the theater they'd have cost $700k to taxpayers.

With the refurb, the sunk cost is then $1005k. So effective cost for the police having them is $305k, not $5k.

Pfft, there is only one operating system. ;-)

I am a big fan of dm-crypt.

These things are sort of self limiting though.

If enough people are out of work without some sort of guaranteed income... they'll just eat the robot owners.

Canadian jets don't use weapons though, so more advanced ones don't provide any improvement.

Grey iron blocks are still pretty popular, at least on smaller engines where it makes less of a difference... popular with a lot of diesels too.

Aluminium smelting uses a ridiculous amount of energy. So much that electricity costs can represent as much as half of the final value of a piece of aluminium metal.

It's also why smelters tend to be parked next to giant hydroelectric dams.

Note the process uses gigantic carbon electrodes and burns them up, releasing CO2; and cryolite as a flux, which makes fluoride waste products. So it's not entirely a closed deal. The aluminium part is, though. 100% reusable.