I usually buy direct in store. Shipping time zero. Prices have adjusted, at least around here, so that in-store prices aren't much different from the online ones.

Typically I'm browsing at a book store on the way home from work, and discover a book I might like. I could order it and get it a few days later, or walk out the store, book in hand. I'm an adult, with disposable income, so a hundred yen or two price difference doesn't matter to me. Being able to get the book right then does. Amazon is great for finding out what other people think about the book before I buy it.

Another example was my used oscilloscope. Buying second-hand things online is a gamble, and returning it is a major pain (get a cardboard box, arrange for the return and get and fill in a return label, be home to do the delivery). I went to a local shop instead. They hooked it up right in the shop to make sure it worked and to show me the basics of using it. And had there been a problem they would have come by in a car to pick it up directly. Much better. But Amazon did tell me which of the available models were better for me.

I'm happy to see improvements in the review system. I rarely buy anything from Amazon (shipping takes time, returns are a hassle), but I often use their pages to check reviews and compare items before I buy them.

Hey, I hang out with a lot of creative people. Not Elon Musk, but Steve Jobs for more than a decade, and lots of people at least as smart that you don't know. They can be really brilliant, and successful, and they can still make really stupid mistakes and sell them to the rest of us pretty well because they believe in themselves completely and they have a track record. I've done that too.

That's the hyperloop. Something Elon never meant to stand behind (and still really isn't), just put out there to torpedo a worthy project that he didn't believe in.

Anyone who looks at the hyperloop design can see it's not a no-brainer. It has safety issues up the wazoo :-) It's going to take a long time to get right.

Meanwhile, little Switzerland can have incredible trains everywhere and the United States can't get it together, and unlike with rockets and cars Elon's not helping this time. And I am not sure that the "lease" part of his solar business is a great thing for the world either.

Although the hyperloop is possible and might even be practical someday, let's please be honest about the reason it was created. Elon Musk just wanted to kill the California high-speed rail.

That might have been OK if there was a hope that we could actually replace it practically with a hyperloop. But given the history of bleeding-edge rail - ride any maglevs lately? We haven't even had much success with monorails outside of theme parks and Las Vegas - we don't really have any working system to replace high-speed rail. Hyperloop should really be called "Pipes that carry People" and we need decades of work on it before considering intercity lines.

No, it's the same mechanism; just think of the third-party developers as "your" employees (share-cropping is quite an apt comparison). If they write their cool apps in a language only your platform uses, they are much less likely to port it to other platforms. You get more "exclusive" content, and your share-croppers/valuable partners are less able to leave for better terms elsewhere.

Heh... Almost any NSAID is performance enhancing. I've never heard of dosing with Ibuprofen, but they use Phenylbutazone ("bute") all the time with horses so long as they're not in the ring and about a month BEFORE they hit a race or ring. Bute used to be available for human use- but it's really very nasty and was banned for all but ankylosing spondylitis when the other treatments won't do- because it's effective for it...just dangerous. Knowing that it's effective (as is Naproxen) for this sort of thing, I'm unsurprised. Naproxen's not made for equine use, but vets will prescribe it all the same for compounded and other use for things that won't respond to bute. Any of the NSAIDs will be "performance enhancing" for a racehorse because they'll suppress the lactic acid inflammation response in their muscles so they can run longer and harder.

He was against a strong field. One of them had opted to skip Preakness just so they'd be ahead of everyone else.

One minor difference...horses can refuse to do something. See it all the time. If you have no concept about it, be silent. Seriously.

That's because it's difficult to get a horse to stay put long enough to have the bones heal. Hint for you- I happen to have a horse that was one of the last live covers he made before making a spiral break of his leg. The stallion, SJ Mikhail +++ (Hint: This is the highest level of champion of record status within the Arabian Horse Association), developed a spiral break of his leg similar to what had happened to Barbaro and lived. Freak accident in the case of Mikhail- there wasn't any speed or even that much hard riding (You don't expect a Western Pleasure horse to be galloping down the rail like in Working Cowhorse...) The reason that they trend to put down horses after a leg break, unlike humans, is because they're not sound even to be "merely a horse" once the leg breaks- and the odds aren't good because the horse won't do the right things for it to heal up, normally. The main reasons we don't put people down is we're like the friggin' Terminator over the rest of the Animal Kingdom. You heal differently/better than most of the rest. You're smart enough to largely not do stupid things so you CAN heal that way. As it is clear you don't know any of this, I strongly suggest silence and education until you DO get it. The feels won't get you very far, to be truthful.

Unless they abide by the Constitution, they shouldn't be signing them because they lack authority to do so (Some have taken to believing that Treaty is a convenient way to "Amend" the Constitution as a "loophole" which would be wrong. Doesn't mean they won't keep trying...)

No, and we can see the reason you posted that anon...the title fits you very much.

They mean anybody putting it on their damn wall, you ass.  But hey, it IS /.

So long as I'm using the blob and the device using it can still function in perpetuity, meaning that it's effectively firmware for the hardware and I can copy it ad-infinitum and expect each generation of the driver and code associated with the device to work with THAT particular blob, I'm am "fine" with it.

It's still a problem, but it's so minor compared to closed drivers, etc., that I too question it being that much.  Needs to be noted.  Needs to have people aware of it.  Then we move on.  I'd love to have fully open HARDWARE as well as software, but that's not always the case, now is it?

Many people don't use mods and never play on servers. Of course, you don't meet them online, so it's not strange you'd get the impression they aren't out there.

To me the fun is designing and building stuff. Having other people around is mostly a distraction. If there's anything I'd like it's a more consistent challenge; better zombie and villager AI, for instance, to make larger structures meaningful.

Biggest problem THERE would be that they'd have to open up the X86 kimono a bit more than they'd really want to do that with NIOS.  I won't be surprised in one way (your meaning of the situation) if they do it and surprised all the same- because they're giving stuff out that can be more readily reverse engineered through the tools, etc. that people would get as a result of that decision.

Not a conflict of interest.  Just that a competitor just bought your supplier.  Big difference.  It's a problem that you need to find a new supplier.  The drawbacks with FPGAs is that there's nothing other than your sole supplier is just that.  You can't readily or easily swap out the FPGAs like you can SoC's in the ARM or MIPS space- or like RAM or eMMC's.  There's a bit of "standard" and "open" involved with things there.  I consider it necessary evil to be using them because they're not as open or "standardized" as the other stuff- but the moment someone wises up, even though it'll be a race to the bottom like the other plays, they will be the "king" there.