It's all Greek to me...

...laura

Always ready to jump on a bandwagon, many new buildings in Vancouver are doing the same thing.

Most of our electricity here in B.C. comes from hydroelectric systems, so fossil fuels/emission elsewhere is a non-issue.

...laura

A middle-of-the-road EV like a Nissan Leaf would cover 98% of my driving. I can afford one easily. I could afford a Model S if I put my mind to it. I've even looked in to buying an old banger and converting it myself.

The problem is I have nowhere to plug one in. I live in an apartment building and there is no wiring in the parkade. Nor is there any requirement (or incentive) to retrofit the building. I've talked to the building management, but we've never come up with any answers.

New buildings must have EV support. Old ones don't.

...laura

...you insensitive clod!

That is only for tax purposes, more or less.

It is about rather more, and rather more important rights than that.

Marriage is about people being together, not about the government allowing it or not.

And that is only related to religion if you decide you want it to be.

Probably because Sony's entertainment division didn't want the playstation to be able to easily copy/read files easily over the network because any copying/reading makes "omg piracy!" pop up in their tunnel vision eyes. The ps3 and 4 support DLNA for streaming though which is something at least. DLNA was started by Sony I believe and is a open standard while CIFS is microsoft and a closed standard. SMB was only possible by reverse engineering SMB but microsoft often changes the standard giving *nix distributions a lot of headaches. Sony can make sure the playstation always supports DLNA but it's a lot harder for them to fix SMB when windows changes the standard.

Those are some good points made by mlts.

Even if console prices have come down like you say, they haven't come down as much as they should with zero copyright infringement. You can see this by comparing games that get released on consoles and the pc at the same time. The vast majority of the time, (maybe even all the time?), the pc release is cheaper than it is on a console. But at the same time the pc is the most open and 'pirated' platform. hmmm...

I think mlts has made some good points. It was always a sham blaming copyright infringement for the high price of software. Look at the price of a genuine windows licence worldwide. It is cheapest in the countries with high piracy rates. Hell, countries with high piracy rates get rewarded with lower prices while countries like Australia which has some of the lowest piracy rates pays some of the highest prices for software especially games on steam.

If you go back before there was any digital distribution for console games, the higher price for console games could be sort of justified by the buyer getting some of their money back by selling/trading in the game. But now that's gone too, once you buy it its worth basically nothing because you can't sell it to anyone. So not only have console companies kept prices higher with zero copyright infringement they've kept prices high after cutting out the second hard market.

2.5" inch drives require less power, generate less heat and are obviously smaller so the overall size of the console doesn't have to be as large.

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.

I sell my excess solar back to the grid at a rate which is a really bad deal for me - only 6c per kWh, which is al any of the utilities will pay for it
I expect selling my 'spare' computing cycles will be a similarly crap deal.
One day I hope there will be an energy storage solution which will allowe me to better usilise this excess solar capacity.
Meanwhile, I switch offwhatever cpu's I don't actually need running, so there aren't really any spare cycles to be had, and if there were, I wouldn't want to burn the electricity needed to spin them.

I see this with many of the older light airplanes. Types like the Cessna 150 and Piper Cub were designed when people weighed less, and it's difficult to get two 2015-size people plus a usable fuel load in either. There have been commercial plane crashes due to portly passengers (e.g. Air Midwest 5481).

I can fly a Cessna 152 solo with full fuel tanks, but if I have anybody in the plane with me I have to calculate how much fuel I can carry without being overweight. I can't do anything meaningful with a 150, and I'm not that heavy.

...laura

You would have be ignorant to believe Valve won't keep milking their franchises like any business does.

Source 2 is what Valve have been waiting to finish before they bring out Half Life 3, Portal 3, L4D3 and TF3.

Yes Half Life 3, I said it. Half Life THREE.

What follows Source 2 is the '3' games. Afterall, you wouldn't continue your award winning franchise that everyone has been waiting for, on a aging engine, would you? And less face it, Source 1 is so behind modern engines, Valve really needs Source 2 finished to show HL3 in the best way possible.

They need their own games to use as tech demos to get other developers onto using Source 3 too. And with their console coming out at the end of the year they need first party games to help it sell. Not saying that those sequels will come out that quickly with the console but you need Source 2 out before the '3' games come out and with the Steam console out soon, it makes sense for Valve to bring out the '3' games sooner than later. So it's getting closer guys.

I've seen two quasi-startups go down the tubes from the inside.

One company had some very clever ideas, but were chronically incapable of making reliable hardware, or of making software that worked. They had no internal procedures to track what they were making, what it was supposed to do, or how they knew it worked. Too many releases were "we have to ship something to keep from losing what little credibility we still have".

Another company tried to reinvent itself after its prime business peaked and then started to implode. The idea we tried to develop wasn't commercially uninteresting, but we had major focus issues. What, exactly, do we want to do? Who is going to buy it? For how much? Having owned our old industry we weren't very good at competing with others in our new industry.

Both companies had issues with ineffectual leadership, flavour-of-the-month development, and business decisions made to help friends rather than make money. Both were broadsided by external developments that eventually rendered their products commercially irrelevant.

...laura