But electric motors have nothing to do with charging the batteries... While electric motors are very efficient compared to the ICE, a more realistic number would be 85-90%. I've seen peak efficiency as high as 98% in some hub motor data sheets, but that's only at particular speeds.

As far as charging efficiency goes, I imagine there are losses from the voltage converter and the internal resistance of the battery cells. How much effect they have, I can't say...

If you're assuming 100% efficiency and constant power (probably quite wrong on both counts), just have a look at the capacity of battery packs and divide by the charging time. We can look at 3 battery packs: the Prius (1.3 kWh), the Chevy Volt (16 kWh), and the Tesla Roadster (53 kWh). For an 8 hour charge time, that's approximately 160 W (Prius), 2.0 kW (Volt), and 6.6 kW (Roadster).

Some PC games support split-screen gaming. I don't know of many, but TOCA Race Driver 3 does, for example.

I don't think that would work for people that play music in the background (via websites, that is).

It would help if going to class weren't a waste of time. Too many professors simply read their slides and ask only very basic questions. The net effect is students that are either distracting themselves or struggling to stay awake and pay attention. The textbook is a much better format for this type of material.

Then again, I have a feeling this lecture style is made to accommodate the lazy student. Reading the text--before an exam or homework forces it--seems rare...

Perhaps the point of the adage is that you can't derive true happiness from material possessions. I think many would find money can yield a certain satisfaction, though. ;)

I do this all the time. The trailer often picks some of the most interesting sequences of the movie. If it isn't good enough, the movie is binned to rental or exclusion.

They aren't entirely pointless. They force new developers to give credit to those that came before. I figure this is what a university is most interested in (i.e. their reputation).

Putting aside your whining about being unable to monetize your changes to someone else's code, I think you can expect a relatively permissive license. In TFA, EditShare mentions they intend to let developers sell plug-ins and such. While some device drivers demonstrate you can make binary blobs interact with GPL code, I imagine it would make things much simpler if they stuck with a BSD or MIT license.

I don't know about how brazen the RIAA is, but as far as I can tell, the Court ruled them statutory damages--There was a table with each song on a row and a column titled "Statutory Damages Award," and written in each box was 22,500.00 (source). If they thought they were handing down a punishment, well, they picked the wrong box. While I agree with you that tens of thousands in compensation for each song is ridiculous, that's how the fools ruled.

Disclaimer: IANAL.

It's not being twisted around, honestly. Perhaps the intent was to prevent the injustices we're talking about now, but that isn't how it was written. The RIAA seeks what it sees as damages, at least ostensibly; this is compensation, not punishment. Even if this were a criminal trial, it would be foolhardy to use the eighth amendment to attack awards for statutory damages. Totally different story if we're talking about a fine.

And that's why they're talking about due process instead. I'm not sure how that works (certainly didn't read the brief), but it sounds logical to me.

Ah, but you're making a mistake. It may be cruel and unusual, but it is not punishment. Therefore, the eighth amendment does not apply. ;)

Scalia made a similar argument against the unconstitutionality of torture. It was brilliant! And someone should probably reword the eighth amendment...

One question... why? I bet your prejudices are based on very outdated information.

I've used yum, zypper, apt, and pacman based systems before, and I don't see any significant differences in the packaging format's power. Repositories are often set up a bit differently, but that's a policy issue. What is this major feature DEB has that RPM doesn't? Or even that apt has that yum doesn't?

I figured netbooks were positioned between handhelds and notebooks... but if you're going to include the DSi, perhaps the Pandora would be a better answer for that. They may actually start shipping sometime this year... ;)

They're working with their contractor to perfect the case moulds right now, and the rest of the components are supposedly together, ready for assembly. I'm not qualified to judge, but it sounds like they aren't far off. Too bad ordering is a snafu.