And they achieved this without DRM as a part of the standards.

Just like it did for music?

I'm interested in what happens when we assume the best of the cloud for a moment. You have a bunch of resources... and the majority of them are on the other side of a home network connection. What's your strategy here? Set up the game to run like a multiplayer client of the resources that are in the cloud? What constraints does that introduce on the user experience?

There's a wealth of information on the net regarding DIY wind turbines.

Check this out:
http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-1000-watt-wind-turbine/

A few years ago it was quite common for people to use the motor out of Fisher and Paykel washing machines:
http://www.yourgreendream.com/diy_fp_findthem.php

Have fun buddy!

Yeah? Tell that to Milla Jovovich.

If Microsoft want to make a home media device for use in people's main living rooms, that's fine. It's actually quite a good idea. But such a device cannot be principally viewed as a games console.

I don't know about the rest of you, but aside from the occasional multiplayer split screen session, I play console games on a dedicated screen, either in a bedroom or computer room. I cannot play a game in a main living room, on a screen which in in demand by others for watching TV, films, or even browsing the internet. It's nice that this device can do so much, but flipping "channels" to whatever everyone else wants to watch is not conducive to the 4-6 hour gaming sessions I would like to have.

Maybe they're going for the complete casual gaming market here, people who will flick over to Angry Birds or whatever. But even the most passé of run-of-the-mill gamers is going to spend an hour or so playing shooters online, and are not going to be inclined to flip over to daytime TV, or browse the web in the middle of their frag session. I just cannot see this working en masse.

Some may call it anti-social, but to me playing video games is closer to reading a book than watching TV; it's principally an individual experience, and the living room is not the place to have it unless you are specifically playing co-op. I don't think Microsoft are serious about the Xbox One as a gaming console. It appears to be principally oriented around completely orthogonal capabilities.

If reporters come to understand that the administration came after them on a fishing expedition, which is what this was, they will not be happy.

Reporters are, on the whole, pretty unintelligent and shallow people who write the stories they are told, in the way they are told, by their editors, and who without such direct instruction quickly lapse back into gossip, lattes, and twitter feeds. I doubt most journalists have even heard of this story.

If Holder knew about Breuer's decision not to prosecute any bankers -- he did -- then he should fired for that alone. Unfortunately, Holder is in his position precisely because he did know this, and because he will uphold the law in as dysfunctional a manner as the administration desires.

Sometimes I think the only reason they are getting away with this is because Obama is the President and liberals and progressives are unwilling to challenge him, and conservatives are secretly cheering the whole thing on. But secretly, deep down, I understand that this is all just fallout from September 11th 2001, and that the United States of America will never be able to go back to the way it was.

Which is a big problem for the rest of us.

It really is blackmail. This is a threat with menances in order to get someone to comply with the sender, and it is not a reasonable way of enforcing the request. If they simply send out the letters, while questionable in other ways it is not blackmail. These threats however are genuine straight up blackmail. I'm not sure whether this is criminal or civil offence in the US, but in the UK you'd be in a lot of trouble for this.

So in both absolute terms and per-capita terms, the richest 10% pay the most tax.

Since you seem to have all the figures, what's their effective tax rate then?

The top earners are also the most mobile and "international" members of society, so the unfortunate conclusion is that countries have to retain those top earners, and one way they do that is to give them a fabvourable tax position. While they pay lip-service to stopping evasion, most countries would prefer to have the richest paying some tax rather than losing them and getting no tax at all.

Why bother. These people are giant hoovers-up of wealth. Their mentality, greed, and influence on politics destroys societies. Most societies would reap the benefits of these people leaving in droves.

No wrong. Listen: We know that banks like money to begin with. They don't generally say "Oh, we're making enough money" and rest on their laurels avoiding some profitable change in policy until they're shocked by an external event. If it were possible for them to profitably raise fees or credit-card interests, they'd have done it already.

This is a direct hit to the bank's shareholders, or to their insurance.

This is where I point out the amusing factoid that hydroelectric power accidents have killed 2/3 about as many people as nuclear power.... iff you include the atomic bomb in the latter number.

(One botched dam in China...)

Seriously, though, radiation's totally overrated.

Slashdot: Where no energy source can be allowed to pass unmolested.

They say that the whole premise of democracy is that the people know what they want, and moreover they deserve to get it good and hard.

Yes, there's a movie with NIMH in the title, and it came out in the 1980s, and it's sometimes regarded as the pinnacle of American hand-drawn animation. And the film diverges substantially from the book it was based on in order to express an allegory on the promise and the perils of atomic energy, and it provides a useful contrast to the attitudes expressed in other 1980s films dealing with similar issues (like Blade Runner - especially the director's cut, Aliens, and Rock-a-doodle).