I believe that this is already the case. Leastwise, I've never seen one... have you?

Kids today... what ever happened to dip switches with your chips?

Actually, that's just not true - or at least not usefully true. A modern SSD should perform just fine far beyond the expected life of a laptop. Of course, anything may fail, but outside of a lab experiment even early adopters of laptop SSDs aren't finding themselves suddenly bereft of data. Exaggerating the risks just reduces credibility.

You have to admit that the final finale was brilliant, though. "You're going to bring us back for another season? Oh, I think not..."

Although it still has the possibility of Avon somehow ducking and letting the circular firing squad just shoot itself, but that's somewhat unlikely given the length of the barrage.

Yup. Totally agree. The thing is... so does Coal. And oil. And natural gas. Small scale solar actually has more deaths from installers falling off roofs than you'd think All power is somewhat dangerous - nuclear just happens to be the least dangerous we have.

FFS, coal mining and burning puts more radioactivity into the system than nuclear waste would if the plants just ground up their detritus and spewed it into the sky - while removing the natural landscape - but we're used to it so it doesn't count.

The branded tape was replaced with similarly positioned white tape - and while manual sorting might add a whole day to the process (since it takes some amount of time that could cause a package to miss the regular shipment on to the next station), it should never add more than that (and rarely make a noticeable difference). Besides, if that was the case than every package/postcard/you name it with branding on it would have this problem - and that doesn't appear to be the case.

Well, they did similar (although smaller) tests in other countries and saw no difference, so it was unlikely German customs. And US customs generally has far less opportunity for someone to tweak results like the USPS does, especially in their last-mile service.

If this were true, then presumably I wouldn't have been asked to turn off my e-ink Kindle while sitting next to the guy juggling a hardback book, a pizza (!), and a large cup of hot coffee in his lap. I totally get the argument against tray tables, since you can't just drop them to the floor in an emergency, but banning small electronics based on evacuation fears is groundless.

For that matter, you're even allowed to carry your laptop in your lap during takeoff and landing as long as its turned off. So... if the rule is about evacuation, its focussing on entirely the wrong areas.

Yup. In the same way that having a service that made it easy for people to get self-selected articles from authors they know and trust delivered directly to their phones to, uh, "Read" when they had a spare minute would be a great feature too...

The real issue with the google distrust is their current opaqueness.

That explains why their DCMA request clearly pointed to the URL of their online store:

Yup. Nothing to do with the review here...

Have you actually looked at a decent map of Europe? Its far from all being Mediterranean, you know, and happens to host many high mountain ranges and get buried under metres of snow just like Canada does.

So... almost impossible then? Copying a file, even a DRM-encumbered file, is far easier than photocopying a book (or repurchasing it, which is the normal "backup" procedure.

That was actually the original point of having the Senate and House be made up differently (as Lords and Commons are in the UK) - the Senate, being primarily appointed and serving far longer terms, could look out for the well-being of the country as a whole; they were supposed to come into conflict with the House and provide balance against short-term vote-seeking behavior. Of course, that's not what happened.

How easy is it for you to make a backup of your paper book, anyway?

By default, if you're in a "walled garden" at least, your book license survives your device and a new reader can easily be re-authorized; this is actually far easier than replacing the few books that were in your lost backpack (or, worse yet, your library that burned down with the rest of your house).

We actually ran those back in the day. 1GB SCSI disks with 1GB memory on top of them. Expensive as fuck, but boy would they scream.