I'm not talking about computer equipment, I'm talking about TVs, receivers, home theater equipment, headphones and the like. That's where they're losing most of the business to showrooming. And it's not just Amazon, there's a ton of other online sites to buy from after you go to Future Shop and see what you like.

What part is doubtful? That people showroom? I've done it and so has everyone else I know.

Yes, "stealing business". It's called showrooming, and there's even apps for that. You go down to the local Future Shop or Best Buy and kick the tires of whatever thing you were thinking of buying online but can't see before delivery and then when you find one you like you check its price on Amazon or wherever else and if it's cheaper online after shipping you make your purchase. Frequently you buy online and the retailer has now lost a sale to an online company despite being the one that showed you the product in person and allowed you to make your final decision on its merits. Online retailers don't need to pay for retail space which is why they're almost always able to undercut the retail shops.

I do wonder what the future will look like when many retailers have gone under and everyone orders things online.

But apparently if you're a rising star BBC newsreader and you BITE a producer, you end up as the BBC Director General. Oh, and when that producer complains, you have him sent to Rwanda.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/the-day-i-was-bitten-by-bbc-boss-7086208.html

"The bizarre, apparently unprovoked, attack was on senior television journalist Anthony Massey. Thompson's 44-year-old victim suffered clear bite marks through his shirt, and immediately reported the incident.

Their bosses were so determined to hush up the affair, however, that Massey was promptly sent to Rwanda on a perilous assignment. And Thompson, then a rising star, was allowed to continue his soaring career unhindered."

Seems a bit of a double standard to me.

You wouldn't care because you'd be dead. That doesn't mean you would LIKE the idea before it happened. If I walked up to you tomorrow and said I can upload your consciousness and "you" will live forever but after the upload I regrettably have to shoot your meatbag in the forehead, would you agree to it?

It's not a migration, it's a copy. You will cease to exist and your digi-clone goes on. How could that be appealing to anyone is beyond me. It's no different than having a machine that makes a perfect copy of you on another planet and then as you step out of the machine here on Earth, the operator shoots you in the head with a sawed off shotgun. Other you is happy on planet Gletzlplork 12, but YOU you are dead.

He's pointing out that's how it will go in the US when the medium income jobs disappear. You're not going to get a Scandanavian style society with guaranteed basic living standard for all, you're going to get what's happening in Brazil. Either you're rich or you're dirt poor.

Banks fail, even in places like Iceland, the UK and the US. Now, many countries have bodies set up to guarantee a certain amount of a given account's deposits, like the FDIC in the US will guarantee the first $250K in an account if the bank fails. But then again the US also has almost 400 million people and the largest economy in the world. It'd be a little insane to expect that Iceland with a population of less than 350,000 people could offer the same guarantees, especially on foreign deposits in privately operated banks. That would be privatizing profit, but socializing the risk, hardly fair.

There are always risks, you took one, it went badly. Such is life.

I think you vastly underestimate the market. Touchscreen games are like pretzels before dinner. You can only eat so many before you want something more substantial. And with the iOS/Android gaming market heavily F2P-P2W monetized, it feels less like gaming and more like paying rent on something. As those kids gets older they do generally get a handheld, and the numbers break means it's most likely going to be a Nintendo handheld. Most of the kids who won't bother to get a handheld now are the ones who 5-10 years ago wouldn't have bothered then either. Plus, don't underestimate the allure of the handheld crack known as Pokemon, and there's only one way to scratch that itch. Pokemon X and Y sold 12 million copies in the 5 months after launch in 2013, that's not exactly peanuts.

I've been hearing that consoles are dead for at least a decade. "Industry watchers" are about as reliable as a broken clock. They throw out a hundred predictions and when they get one correct by chance they crow from the rooftops about it like they're bloody Kreskin.

That sounds more than a little harsh, and written like you haven't actually used a Nintendo system in some time. The only two consoles that see regular use in my household are the WiiU and 3DS. XBone and PS4 are just the same old same old with a graphics card upgrade. I have a PC for that stuff and I can upgrade my GPU any time I want.

Nintendo's games on the other hand are inventive and not just rehashing things like FIFA version 22 with even better grass or Call of Battlefield Hard Lines Front 12 or whatever.

I live in Canada, and the problem with parole being on the table for all crimes no matter what is you occasionally get a sick sideshow when someone like Clifford Robert Olsen would go up for parole (thankfully he died in prison). For those unfamiliar with that waste of flesh, he raped and killed 11 kids. Anyway, when his hearings would come up, some of the family members of his victims would inevitably show up for various reasons, and Olsen would use his time taunt them.

I think there are some lines that if crossed, you don't get parole. Like raping and killing more than 0 kids.

There's been talk about seeding the upper atmosphere of Venus with plant life and algae that, if properly developed, could thrive in the upper atmosphere and convert CO2 to O2, lowering the density and the greenhouse effect. And 2 HUGE advantages Venus has for terraforming are that nice thick atmosphere, and a molten core which generates a magnetosphere to protect from solar wind like ours on Earth. Mars has neither so you'd need to get the gas from somewhere (comets probably) and then you'd get to watch it slowly get blown back out into space by solar wind.

> and will have the longest development time before it can return resources to the people that invest in it.

Oh I wouldn't say that. Aside from the Moon, it's the only other option with both decent gravity and a nice solid landmass to build on. Building things in microgravity is very hard compared to on the surface of a planetary body, which is one of the chief draws of Mars. I agree that the moon should be a bigger priority for a large number of reasons, but Mars does have an appeal in the human consciousness that the moon just can't match.

I found Red Mars a loooooong slog. But after I finished it, Green and Blue were a lot better. Red took so much effort to go through because it's the foundation for the other two.