But one large dome probably contains 100 times the volume of the individual buildings it encapsulates.

The regulatory agencies prevent the per kwh prices from going up, but the billing fees, line item fees, paper statement fees, non-paper statement fees and whatnot are able to be adjusted at a whim. Also, the local electric utility is only regulated on their delivery charge. They are allowed to pass the cost of fuel directly to the consumer. The cost of the fuel is passed on at cost to the consumer, so there is no profit. But they don't need to make a profit, since they buy their fuel from their parent company, which is a fuel company and not a utility, so their prices are not regulated.

I remember this "war on dead batteries" starting as far back as 1996, after some sort of bomb threat or something. They forced you to fire up your laptop, but only if it wasn't rush hour, and then after about two or three weeks, they stopped doing it because it wasn't worth the effort.

That won't work. They will just subpeona that copy as well.

Not store specific, but there were pre-order bonuses of 15th anniversary cars. In order to play some of the seasonal events, you have to have one of these cars. Under no circumstances should one ever be forced to buy aftermarket (or premarket) content in order to play a game. If they want to sell content to make it easier, to add bonus missions, to put stupid costumes on your character or whatever, that is fine. But I bought the game and I should be able to play it to completion with spending an extra penny.

I think it is mostly due to the fact that energy costs have tripled, along with most everything else other than salary in the past 4 or 5 years.

I don't want them to be indestructible, but since they cost 10 times as much, it is reasonable to expect that they will last longer, not less long, and that they will be more resilient, not less resilient, and they will produce more light, not less light.

Out of the 2 Android phones that I have had, zero of them came with Facebook preinstalled. I blame the mobile phone provider.

This. And for the ultimate example, I give you Metro. Let's have the same interface across all platforms, and since mobile devices can't do the more efficient input methods, we will instead dumb down the desktop so that it uses the inefficient input methods.

Well, if bad power is an ongoing problem, then obviously it would be extremely irresponsible of the bulb makers to make them so dependent on clean power and it would be irresponsible of the government to outlaw bulbs that are more tolerant of lower quality power.

I also write the dates on mine because I have also noticed that they don't last nearly as long and I also haven't seen any noticeable reduction in my energy costs. In fact, my energy costs are about triple what they were before CFLs came out.

Even nerd top 10 lists are still a popularity contest. These are the best celebrity programmers, but chances are there are thousands of better programmers that just have their heads down in code at some obscure company somewhere. Probably many of them have solved complex algorithmic issues in clever ways that other programmers like the ones in the list are still struggling with.

I live in city limits in which fireworks are illegal. So when my stepson asked whether they should light the fireworks they just bought in the front yard or the backyard, I told him neither, because they are illegal. He complained that they shouldn't be able to sell him fireworks if they are illegal. I pointed out it is his duty to know the law. He ended up firing them off in the backyard, as did I am sure the 90-95% of my neighborhood who also were firing off fireworks that night.

Are you saying that most people on Slashdot can't read, since most people on slashdot are from the United States? Or are you saying that, although most people on slashdot are from the U.S. , they are mostly illegal immigrants? Or are you just remarking that most people that can read in general are not from the United States, independent of the number of people who read slashdot?
Or according to Alexa, we should only be posting surveys relevant to Indian holidays, since supposedly visitors from India outrank those from the U.S. Not sure I believe that. I wonder if perhaps a lot of servers are hosted there due to the U.S. offshoring of tech jobs.

I don't know why they choose to have an improper date format on the 4th of July, but not on other days of note. Obviously, they should be using a consistent format that is sortable, such as 20140704. Everybody should be able to understand that and it is least significant to most significant and sorts properly both as a date and as a number.