I think that it's hard to pay with card in the US in some places like Taxi and small shops - something that's so common in Sweden that it gets annoying when you can't.

The few shops that don't take cards these days have to put up huge signs to avoid annoyed customers that assumes cards are good there.

So next generation of Oculus Rift can get better image quality.

Other applications may be more light-weight devices for disabled people as well.

A higher density also means better images at short distance between eye and screen (you may want to add some optics to relieve eye stress though).

Most households here have 400V 3-phase for the heavy stuff like stove/oven, washer and dryer, Older households may only have 230V 1-phase, but that's usually only small apartments.

Also realize that a lower voltage with a certain current is more sensitive to voltage loss due to current if the current is the same, so your 110V 1760W plate may if you have a loss of 1V/A only put out 1500W. A 230V 1760W plate may at the same loss figures still provide 1700W (only 7.65A current for the same power)

And a 400V plate may see even lower loss since it will only draw 4.4A. (Assuming that the voltage loss per amp is the same, i.e. same wiring/fusing etc.)

It is actually easy to underestimate the actual loss of power in the wiring, fuses and switches to a heating plate causing it to provide less than the rated power.

I don't want BTUs in my food, I use metric, so it has to be Joules.

Since I have an electric stove - together with probably more than 95% of all households where I live (in Sweden).

The latest fad is induction heating, and I don't see that such a pot would be any advance there either.

Poppy seeds, if nothing else grows then they can at least have some fun.

That explains a lot why I seem to have headache with Creative drivers on an older card I have when I tried to make it work under Windows 7.

I would say that the people intentionally buying the Soundblaster cards are people that want to have something more than what the ordinary on-board cards can provide. But the reason may vary - it may be because they need additional inputs, better sound quality or have a specific application that works best with the Soundblaster cards.

That said I think that today it might be worth to consider USB connected sound cards as well as alternatives.

However the standalone sound card manufacturers have to work hard to keep up. For high-end audio the best connection is a digital connection from computer to a good amplifier supporting all the latest formats and good speakers. Personally I routed the CPU board digital output to a Denon 5.1 amplifier connected to a pair of Dali Concept 1 loudspeakers and a subwoofer. Definitely a lot better than the ordinary sound that you can get from even the more expensive loudspeaker sets dedicated for computer use.

Both architectures have their merits. I wouldn't say that one is better than the other.

At least Minix has come a long way since the late 80's where any crash after an uptime of more than 2 hours could be attributed to the OS instead of the application.

This yet again highlights that the three-party trust system is broken.

There are ways around it, but there is no great solution - only workarounds.

Which ball is the best for the players?

Personally I prefer the Telstar.

I think this is the biggest risk when it comes to a possible new outbreak. Some uneducated people clean out a lab of storage facility and just throws everything in a dumpster without knowing what they are working with.

It has happened before with other stuff (medical records, computers etc.) and it will happen again. The question is if there is something somewhere that is a major danger. Even worse is if there are some vials with biological warfare material that makes Ebola seem like a common cold. Since much of that research is done secretly it's not easy to know - and in some cases everyone that knows may have passed away and the remains of those projects are just stored in a warehouse with a reference to some documents that have been shredded a decade or more ago.

I plainly don't know the answer to it yet.

Same goes for commercial offerings - you never know when they get killed.

I have yet to see anyone really using the map services Microsoft offers as primary source.

And hope that it's the right voltage!