What do you mean "exit dense urban spaces"? This sounds like a service designed for the wide open, upper class suburbs where the purchaser wouldn't blink at paying a premium charge for drone delivery - chances of it being practical in an urban setting are virtually nil.

Pretty cheap since the first thing they'll do after delivering the plants is apply for farm subsidies . . .

Going with pinball for similar reasons . . . and hopefully the choice of machines would be from, what for me, is the Golden Age of pinball: late 70's to mid-80's when the machines were still all mechanical but the scoring was electronic. A few favorites from my rusty ol' memory: Alien (damn it seemed wide!), Six Million Dollar Man, and Playboy. Seems all the "current" -- gotta put that in quotes because I'm honestly not aware of when the last new machines were produced -- are all too gimmicky and convoluted. (If the rules don't fit on that little paper card near one of the flipper buttons, it's too complicated! LOL)

It's been my assumption that by far the largest purchasers of such info is US companies . . . with the Cuban trade embargo still going on it may not be that easy for them to find a purchaser . . . or my assumption may be incorrect.

Because quite frankly, what the hell could they do with any info they gathered about me? Exploit it for propaganda purposes? /shrug

" . . . as God is my witness, i thought textbooks could fly . . . "

Is like a broken Coke machine . . . maybe if they keep putting one more quarter in it, they'll finally get a cool refreshing drink . . .

That's pretty much going to be my litmus test before considering one. Currently using a myth backend with XBMC for frontends . . . if I could use a SteamOS machine as a frontend for watching recordings, and it has other HTPC capabilities similar to XBMC (I hate the myth frontend for anything except watching TV) then it could be a serious contender to replace my XBMC boxes.

. . . but I've had to setup dialup modems on a number of AT&T supplied routers for installation & maintenance. Or more precisely, dig up a POTS line for their tech to plug their dialup modem into.

The day we can automatic politics . . .

I'm old enough to remember and have used those ASR-33's as well. But my preferred terminal at the time was a DECwriter. Most of them at the uni I was at were only capable of 110 baud (Gandalf modems fault, not the DECwriter). So if I managed to sit down at one setup for 300 baud I was gonna do me some serious computin'!!!!!! There were a few 1200 baud units around, but the handshaking was so fubar'ed on those they were useless . . . Ah, the good ol' days!

OHHHH!!! We're doing analogies! Then we need the obligatory Slashdot buffet and car analogies:

XKCD is like an all-you-can-eat buffet . . . where you can pick and choose what pleases you, and you can share with your friends . . . er, wait a minute, sharing is frowned upon at most buffet establishments . . . scratch that analogy . . .

XKCD is like your car . . . er, well, not really . . . no comic strip has ever left me stranded on the side of a highway in West Texas for 4 hours . . .

Come to think of it, I'm liking the tattoo analogy more and more!

We can forget about such similar legislation ever passing in the US . . . ain't no way in hell we're gonna (knowingly) follow France in anything!

Except the machine did not malfunction. It did as it was programmed to do. The fact that it didn't do what the casino expected it to do does not make it a malfunction. The casino should be addressing this with the vendor if they want their money back.

Or you may get free room and board in Guantanamo for an undefined period of time . . .