Anytime I've rented or borrowed something, from an actual place, they have placed a defined return date on it.

"We'll revoke access when we feel like it" doesn't sound like a proper rental. How do I know I'll even be able to finish watching the movie once before it is revoked?

The courts generally require contracts to have "mutual interest" or whatever the term is. Basically, both parties have to get something out of the deal. I pay the money, I get access to the movie.

If the rental period is indefinite, then the only reason to stop offering it should be technical or logistical - IE something actually broke in the company's systems. We were stupid, consolidated on this one cloud system that turned out to be based in one room in some guy's basement, there are no backups, and there was a fire.

Not a company decision to not renew a licensing agreement.

I agree.

Probably not as good for Sony, like I said, the money they saved on the contracts was probably minimal to nothing, now they're eating a whole lot of bad press over it. For those who have lost the titles and care, how likely are they to buy from Sony again?

This might not work out the way you think. Generally speaking, with torrenting, you are not prosecuted for downloading the media. The prosecution is for UPLOADING the media, at least fragments of it, to others.

You'd need to set yourself up as an absolute leech - 0% upload. Might take a while to get the media file in that case. In which case one is unlikely to get the threatening letter in the first place.

Yes, the court system is nitpicky enough for that to matter.

At least to be like Steam - it is understood that people who buy things get said license in perpetuity.
IE they might buy a 10 year license for SELLING said titles, but they still get to provide said titles to those that purchased them after the license expired.
It sounds like Sony, for what was probably a trivial savings, wrote bad contracts. Or their system can't handle not having something for sale yet still downloadable by those who have previously purchased it.

Yes, but once one is ripping, the important part is the digital copy without DRM under your control, not the DVD itself.

Even the physical copy in hand doesn't guarantee continued possession. Besides just needing to protect the disc from things like fire, physical abuse, and more, an awful lot of DVDs only last a decade or two.

I'm sure they have some definition for it somewhere in the legislation, probably an appendix or glossary.
"Designed to be worn on the body during operation or use, such as watches, hearing aids/headphones, body monitors, glasses, etc..."

Two decades old would probably mean you're considering NiMH rechargeable vs Alkaline primary - 1.2V vs 1.5. On the other hand, NiMH cells have much lower internal resistance, which makes it such that NiMH cells can actually provide more power, as the 1.5V of Alkaline gets pulled down to 1.2V or less much faster, as load increases.
Today, it'd be LiIon more often, though lithium primary cells exist as well, and both tend to be ~3V and low internal resistance. Yes, the primary cell, along with chemistries like zinc-air, are very long lived, but as it is easy to make the battery last all day and then just recharge at night, not actually that big of a deal.

1. Sony should be forced to refund the original purchases, no matter how old they are. If the consumer was only "borrowing" the media, then Sony was only "borrowing" the money.
2. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of Rum. IE Piracy.

Merit should always consider strictly value.

Yes, I intentionally don't go to work because I'm too busy going to the Illegal Immigrant Volunteer Slaughterhouse. This means I don't have the money to feed my family or fuck hot chicks. It's a sacrifice we all have to make for the future of our children, though!

Man, they really need to pass a law or something to make it affordable to have healthcare in this country, man. Someone should run on that premise. It's something long past having not been tried.

How do you think those immigrants get those skills in other countries? Are they randomly birthed with them, perhaps assigned them? Bequeathed, like a royal bloodline?

Are you retarded?

No. There are 3 ways they get them, the same as in the US:
1) earn them
2) buy them
3) fake them

At the very least, they had to have the forethought to acquire them in piece or in farce before applying for the job, unless you're suggesting a very large percentage of India appears to have precognition as well as having a disproportionately high rate of supposed idiot savants/high functioning autists (and that 'functioning' is doing a lot of work).

I'm so sick of this shit. It doesn't matter what your political persuasion is, you've got to admit that this is completely self contradictory:

"shortages in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of nurses, physicians, teachers, engineers, pharmacists, mental health counselors, construction worker and airplane mechanics"

If there is less of something (labor) the value of that thing will increase due to increased demand. It does not matter if they were allocated by government fiat (a communistic thing, funny enough, given the prevalence of H1B as a so-called "capitalist" measure).

More H1Bs and 'helping' companies is more of a planned or managed economy. It's more communist. But the fact is that no amount of societal uplifting that will make an 80IQ citizen a 120IQ citizen so that there's enough doctors or engineers. The only real option is to pay more for it, as a larger incentive to allow those who are smarter to be more likely to pursue it. (After all: as much fun as it is to operate heavy machinery all day, construction still wasn't the career that the smart kids who liked to play into the dirt went into...)

It's more than just a set RPM. It is also a set power level. An ICE engine is typically the most efficient at a set RPM and 70-80% of maximum power for that RPM.

Then size the engine for roughly highway speed on level terrain. Maybe give it the ability to go higher in RPM - less efficient, but able to handle going up a big hill/mountain if necessary. But ideally the battery would handle that, then charge up on the way down.