So many memories of those early /. days have come flooding back.

RIP Roblimo.

Happy Birthday /.

It is difficult to fathom that the site has been around for 20 years, because I've "only" been online for 25 or so and I can't possibly be that old. Right? Right??

The electric company subscription service provides the voltage and amperage I need (all the time) when I need it (right now.) Without it, life would be very difficsy8907^#!Z NO CARRIER

I view streaming content on a variety of devices off of a perfectly acceptable cable internet connection and I still see the compression, but the worst of it is seen on the "main" family TV. Netflix offers the best experience (followed by Amazon Video, followed by the truly horrific Google Play), but it's still there.

I fully admit that I am not a hardcore video guy and not obsessed with tweaking a bunch of TV settings so there is indeed room to make adjustments. That said, I'm very happy with up-scaled DVDs of the same movies on the same TV. Adjusting contrast/brightness would only force the shadows even deeper for disk-based video and that's not an acceptable trade-off.

I should clarify my previous statement above. When I wrote "Visible gradients ruin every single scene always" I didn't meant to imply I'm seeing gradients all the time. I'm only seeing them in scenes containing large percentages of darkness/black.

Call it anything you want: "Netflix uses bagels to compress video" I don't really care. I just wish they would take a closer look at the darkest parts of a scene and stop compressing the hell out of it. Visible gradients ruin every single scene always.

Tesla have a range calculator to show expected range based on speed, temperature, whether air con is on etc. Various factors will reduce your range from the optimum so you'll almost never get the full range quoted.

I too read this when I was young, as a part of a science fiction anthology book we had in school. It is the one story from that time that has always stuck with me. The over-shadowing sense of futility and loss in the story really triggered something in my brain.

As other posters have said, there are enough features in Oracle (some of which are added cost options) to keep it (or DB2, Sybase etc) mandatory in some cases because Postgres & MySQL simply aren't up to the job.

Once you have that in play, companies will tend to standardise on one DB platform for most deployments because (a) you don't want to have to keep multiple skillsets up to date and (b) you never know when that new application will suddenly evolve into requiring feature X which MySQL doesn't support properly, possibly simply by organic data growth.

Also, in some cases, it's probably more expensive proving you can run on MySQL than it is to simply open your wallet to start the deposit for Larry's next yacht...

2005 wasn't that long ago, was it?

http://it.slashdot.org/story/0...

I'm not involved as I'm in Scotland....

1) The state legislature is run by people. People are (a) greedy and (b) want to stay in power. When car company lobby groups see potential competition, it's cheaper for them to bribe, sorry, "provide campaign funds" to a pet politician than to actually compete. Those people take the money and decry the horrible, horrible Tesla company for daring to defile the hard working people who they've been speaking to (read - taking wodges of cash from).

2)There are some reasons, e.g. here and various Google searches would give you differing opinions. Perhaps it's simply that, because of their current low sales volumes, dealerships just can't provide the right environment to sell Teslas.

I'd have thought that OpenOffice or LibreOffice have probably over taken it on functionality on a modern OS, so there's likely little real value in it. As for running on DOSBOX or similar, why bother?

This will be the next global pandemic that will devastate the human population. Just like Swine flu. Just like Avian flu. Frankly, I've got less fear from these horror stories as time goes by.

And before someone points it out, yes, I'm aware the mortality rate from Ebola isn't comparable to the flu, but the overblown hype about it stands.

The negotiation point is moot. There is the option for you to negotiate the terms with the ticket seller, but there is no onus on the seller to alter the terms if they don't want to.

In specifics - the advertisement to sell the ticket is an "invitation to treat". Proferring money to the seller is the "offer" and it's implicit that the offer is on the terms of sale advertised in the invitation to treat (including terms regarding prohibition of cameras/filming) and the seller accepts the offer. The buyer could place an offer whereby they offer to buy the ticket buy allowing filming. The seller can then reject the offer and/or present a counter-offer (e.g. you can film if you pay some fee to allow filming).

IANAL, but I've studied contract law for Scotland. A contract is an offer and an acceptance, that's all it takes.