Laser beam is continuous, sooner or later one of them will manage to hit that small area just by chance. This does not require good accuracy. just like if I have a machine gun (and a lot of ammo) and fire I will eventually hit the target (and probably everything else in the area) it even with my eyes closed, provided the target is close enough for the bullet to reach it and still have some energy.
I do not now how long the laser beam has to be pointed to the eye to cause permanent damage though.
On Borderlands 2 setting PhysX to high will result in tons of shrapnel being thrown all over the ground from explosions, but those objects are all non-clipping, so it doesn't matter beyond the fact that sometimes you have a hard time seeing through it to the weapon drops.
It looks nice though. I got a GT620 for PhysX (main card is AMD 6850) and I like how Borderlands 2 looks now, especially since I tend to use elemental guns (pools of acid, slag and blood after a big fight). The 6850 manages to render all this in 1920x1200 without slowing down most of the time.
Compared to television - yes. TV in my country is filled with copies of American reality TV shows (dancing with the stars, singing (duet - a professional singer and some random guy/girl) and so on just with local people, not the actual American episodes) and soap operas (earlier in the day) there really isn't anything to watch. At least there are some good videos on youtube.
If listening to music is allowed then I can do nothing for a long time, just listening to music and watching the reels spin (also imagining the internal mechanism - belts, idlers etc).
If I have to sit in silence (waiting in line for the doctor and I forgot my walkman) then my brain usually starts playing a 5 second loop of some earworm (and I spend all the waiting time trying to switch to some better song while at the same time thinking about what I will be doing when I get back home).
They are in a few years in the EU. But for now, yes, the halogen lamps (they are even made with the regular envelope over them they fit in a regular fixture) are the closes alternative to the inert gas incandescent bulbs (light bulbs have some inert gas in them to reduce the filament evaporation). To my taste the color is a bit too white, but I could just connect a resistor in series to reduce the voltage and the color temperature.
Those 100 bulbs are a stash for future use, nor many are in use at a time, some rooms even have CFLs, I am saving those bulbs for my rooms - I do not like daylight and use electric light all the time. Here the bulbs last a bit longer than the rated 1000 hours (mot likely because I try not to turn them on/off frequently and not I have the slow dimmer).
They even make CFLs with the sickening yellow color of incandescent if that's what you want.
Good to know. Still, the color temperature of the incandescent bulb changes as it is dimmed, with CFL it probably doesn't.
>They are not a point light source.
?????
Clear incandescent or halogen bulb (or a single LED) is a point light source - the shadows have clean edges. CFLs, LEDs (if more than one LED is used, which they are for lighting, since LEDs produce narrow beams) and matte incandescent bulbs (as well as the clear ones, if the fixture is closed) produce diffused light - shadows become fuzzy. To me the point source looks better.
I have about 100 light bulbs. Almost all 40W ones.
CFLs suck because: They do not turn on very fast. The color temperature is wrong. They cannot be fully dimmed. They are not a point light source.
So I am using incandescent bulbs. I will try the halogen ones though - they are still available and the only downside is that the color is too white, but a simple resistor in series will solve that problem (and it will be fun figuring out how big a resistor I need).
OTOH I think that the regular bulbs are still available, maybe in a different shape, but for the normal E27 socket, so I might as well just buy some more of them.
I also saw long life "traffic lights" for sale once - these last 3000h but are even less energy efficient (100W bulb emits about the same light as a 80W bulb, "F" grade). I bought a couple of those and if I see them again, I'll buy more - to save space in the box as less bulbs will be needed. Also I installed a dimmer that slowly turns on the light (takes about 5 seconds, so still faster than the CFLs) to extend the life of the bulb (as the filament wears out the fastest during initial warmup).
As for the energy - my computers use ~1kW (on 24/7), my monitor uses ~140W (24" CRT), yea, the 40W light bulb uses so much power compared to that.
And ideal free market is just as impossible as ideal Communism. Especially with power, internet and similar services where you need a lot of infrastructure. It will never be profitable to build new infrastructure in parallel with the one of an already existing provider - you won't be able to compete with it because the old provider most likely has already recouped the costs of laying cable etc.
Also, if it is not economical for the big provide to build infrastructure to support clients in area X, it will be even less economical for the new provider.
This is why the government of my country is laying lots of fiber to rural areas - any ISP will be able to rent tat fiber and use it to provide fast internet connections in those areas. The government is doing this because no ISP would - it is too expensive. However, the government works (in theory) for the good of the people, not to just accumulate lots of money (the goal of private companies) so it can undertake projects that are not economical, but improve the lives of the people.
The size of the fine is good IMO - a fine should hurt a lot, so the offender will not want to repeat the offense. After all, if the company can still profit from the illegal activity after paying the fine, it will do so (say that a fine is $1k, but the company got $2k from doing whatever resulted in the $1k fine - this means that the activity gets $1k profit and is worth doing, despite the fine). Fixed sums (say $1M) may destroy small companies but be pocket change for big ones, so making the fine be a part of the money the company makes in a year balances it - a small company makes less and will pay less, and a large company will pay more.
Actually, in Sweden, fines for violating traffic laws are based on the income of the offender, so one guy will pay 100EUR for parking where it is not allowed and the other might pay 1kEUR for leaving his car in exactly the same place. Too bad this is not so in my country.
Now, whether Google should be allowed to promote its own services over others in search, here is my opinion: the search is supposed to be neutral. Google can advertise the other services in the menu etc or as ads (similar to the other ads), but not as part of search. Or, if it wants to provide the service of integration (search for an address and have a map pop up), then allow other providers to also add their services and let the user choose which one they want.
Google is not lenient or anything. Google only wants one thing - more money. While currently the "try to do no evil" motto attracts users (which result in Google getting more money), that would change the instant Google has no competition (since doing evil results in even more money, assuming the users have nowhere else to go).
You seem to not understand the part where "monopoly" comes in.
Company growth has positive feedback - a big company can buy smaller ones and become an even bigger company, at some point it will buy all its competitors and become a complete monopoly (the only producer). This is obviously bad for the market and people in general, so laws have been passed to limit this kind of behavior. One of them applies to "market position abuse".
If a company has a dominant position (80% or more market share) in a market, it can use that position to influence other markets. An example would be Microsoft Windows bundling with IE. If you want a more clear example, I could give you this: Microsoft starts its own cell phone service and includes it as part of Windows - you buy windows and also get the contract for the cell service (free for a year then you can cancel it or start paying normal rates). Since people use Windows, they will get the service and most of them will later choose to stay with Microsoft (after all, the other providers are not much cheaper or better, so why the hassle), which would result in Microsoft gaining a large market share. However, it did not get that market share by being better than the competition, but by using the power that Windows being a monopoly gave it. This is what the EU does not like and neither should you.
And yes, Apple could probably do it without problems, since it does not have a monopoly. Having a monopoly gives you great power but also adds new rules to how you should behave.
Imagine there is apiece of software that does a DNS request then opens two connections to the server - http and ftp. In the past both services ran on the same server, but now due to lack of resources one service was moved to a different server and sits on a different IP. The software does not know that and still expects to be able to connect to the same server for both services, so it gets the DNS response and uses the same IP to try to connect. One way to do it would be to use a proxy server on that IP that then redirected the connections to the actual servers. The downsides of this method are useless log files on the real servers (since they would show only the proxy IP) and a need for a third server (especially if the reason the services were split up was because the single server could not handle the bandwidth).
To keep the same session when switching computers or log in from two computers at the same time.
Transparent proxies work just fine.
How? Transparent proxies require that the router redirects the relevant packets to them instead of the real server (DNAT target on iptables) and would not work without NAT, unless the DNS requests also got intercepted, but you can't know beforehand whether the user will try to connect using HTTP (which should get redirected to the proxy) or , say, HTTPS (which should go straight).
Load balancing/failover between different ISPs: IPv6 - ISP cooperation and 1300EUR/year, IPv4 - NAT router with software that supports this (for example pfsense) - can be completely free and does not need ISP cooperation or knowledge.
I actually did the load balancing between two connections from the same ISP. I had DSL and could access a WiFi AP (legally), but WiFi was not very reliable. Pfsense could load balance both connections and give me faster torrents (if WiFi worked) or was just the same as with only DSL (when WiFi did not work). No additional configuration required, uT worked perfectly.
IPv6 level NAT (there are software packages for this)
any of them work on x86 Linux or Windows?
Two real servers appearing as one - it may be that the client software expects one server (and for some reason I have to have them separately, be it physical or virtual machines) or to confuse hackers. Or to keep old links working after one of the services was moved to a different server.
Essentially, NAT allows me to "decouple" the internal network from the external one - I can make it appear as I want to from the outside instead of what it actually is. Nobody outside has a need to know how my network is set up - just like the power company does not need to know what devices I have plugged in - all it sees is the total current.
Too bad. Now every time I want to switch to a backup ISP (when the main connection goes down) I'll have to reconfigure all computers in the internal network (maybe some script will be able to do it automatically). After all, the other ISP will give different IPs and instead of the router just using whatever external IP it has and the PCs not caring, now the connection will be disrupted for some time until all PCs realize that the main connection is dead.
If I ever wanted to load balance between two ISPs and use standard software that would be impossible.
If I wanted to make a server believe that two clients are actually the same one - that would be impossible too. Well, I could use a proxy server, but that requires that the client software supports using proxies.
No more transparent proxies - remember the special URL to log in to the ISP (now you just get redirected there) and no more upside-down-ternet.
NAT has more uses other than the "share one external IP to multiple computers".
In a perfect free market environment (a lot of almost equal choices), no seller would be able to control the market and thus could do whatever they want, the result would just be felt by them (set prices too high - everyone buys from the competitor).
However, the market for desktop OSs is not really "free". Windows dominate it with a huge market share. As such, whatever Microsoft does will affect not just them. Even if Microsoft does a lot of people do not like, Windows will still hold the dominating position - remember when people were using Vista even tough it sucked, just because there were no drivers for their PC for XP? As such, Microsoft can be considered to be having a monopoly and the ability to abuse it. For example - what if Microsoft made Windows no longer work with, say, Dell computers (not some "natural" incompatibility like 64bit vs 32bit, but "if (PC_mfg == "Dell") Crash();")? Dell would suffer a lot, it may even go out of business. What if Microsoft did that in response to Dell selling some computer with Linux installed by default and told Dell to stop selling PCs with Linux or Windows will not longer work on all Dell's PCs? This is called "abusing your position" and there are laws against it.
On the other hand, a small guy can do whatever he wants, because he does not have the power to influence the market such a degree (what if Linux stopped working on all Dell PCs? Nothing much would happen to the bottom line of Dell, and "Stop selling PCs with Windows or Linux won't work on any of your PCs" threat would not result in Dell complying with it).
But as soon as the next-gen consoles hit, D3D9 (and thus, XP gaming) are toast.
So, I guess it's time to start saving for a new PC - one that will be good enough for 5 or more years without replacing the motherboard. Reinstalling Windows is so tedious (not because of Windows, but because of all the apps and settings), that I might replace the main PC at the same time, making the transition easier (since I will still have the old installation for the times when I need it).
But if the radio plays that song all the time then I have less desire to buy it, since I can hear it on the radio anyway. If I really want to, I can record it to tape without much trouble. I buy the records with music that is played on the radio less often than I would like (or is not played on the radio at all).
Depends on the station. My favorite station mostly plays ~80s pop (which I like) and there are no commercials at night, only music. It is almost as good as playing a 26cm reel of tape at 9.5cm/s - hours of uninterrupted music (though the tape plays the songs in the same order every time, so it is better, even though I have to flip it after 3 hours).
Different people have different amounts of money, so something can be "cheap" and "expensive" at the same time (to different people). Also, the developers usually offer extras (like adding your name to the list of credits) if you pay a lot on Kickstarter, those extras might also be worth it to those people that pay for them.
And yes, games need demos, the game may be buggy, it may suck, or I may just not like it and I would want to find that out before paying money for it.
As for piracy - well, I'm not going to buy the game either way (not not at least), so I might as well pirate it (and maybe I'll pay for it later, when the price drops, assuming I manged to finish the game and did not delete it 10 minutes after stating to play). Despite what the companies say my piracy does not make money disappear from their bank accounts.
Yes, it has value to me. However, games only have a value of up to ~10EUR to me, so if the game is sold of less than 10EUR I am likely to buy it (and I buy the indie games that I think are worth it, I also buy some games when there is Steam sale), but I will not pay 50EUR for a game. Instead of buying a game, I'd rather buy another tape deck, buy a bunch of records or build some circuit - I would derive more enjoyment from any of those alternatives than the game, so a game is not worth 50EUR to me.
And yes, I have bought games after pirating them - when the price dropped to the "worth it" level and I thought the game really deserved it.
I'm pretty sure that it is possible to reconstruct a 22.00kHz sine signal with 44.1kHz sampling rate. If the signal is not sine, then it has higher frequencies (harmonics), that are above the Nyquist limit. By the way, the theorem states that is is possible to reconstruct the signal if the sampling rate is higher> than 2x the bandwidth, when the bandwidth is equal to half of sampling rate, it is no longer possible to reconstruct the signal.
The nagain, this is theory, maybe in practice the ADCs and DACs suck and cannot reconstruct the signal properly.
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Well, I pay by the cubic meter.
Laser beam is continuous, sooner or later one of them will manage to hit that small area just by chance. This does not require good accuracy. just like if I have a machine gun (and a lot of ammo) and fire I will eventually hit the target (and probably everything else in the area) it even with my eyes closed, provided the target is close enough for the bullet to reach it and still have some energy.
I do not now how long the laser beam has to be pointed to the eye to cause permanent damage though.
On Borderlands 2 setting PhysX to high will result in tons of shrapnel being thrown all over the ground from explosions, but those objects are all non-clipping, so it doesn't matter beyond the fact that sometimes you have a hard time seeing through it to the weapon drops.
It looks nice though. I got a GT620 for PhysX (main card is AMD 6850) and I like how Borderlands 2 looks now, especially since I tend to use elemental guns (pools of acid, slag and blood after a big fight). The 6850 manages to render all this in 1920x1200 without slowing down most of the time.
Compared to television - yes.
TV in my country is filled with copies of American reality TV shows (dancing with the stars, singing (duet - a professional singer and some random guy/girl) and so on just with local people, not the actual American episodes) and soap operas (earlier in the day) there really isn't anything to watch. At least there are some good videos on youtube.
If listening to music is allowed then I can do nothing for a long time, just listening to music and watching the reels spin (also imagining the internal mechanism - belts, idlers etc).
If I have to sit in silence (waiting in line for the doctor and I forgot my walkman) then my brain usually starts playing a 5 second loop of some earworm (and I spend all the waiting time trying to switch to some better song while at the same time thinking about what I will be doing when I get back home).
If both are drunk (but still conscious) and have sex, then who raped who? Should they both go to jail?
They are in a few years in the EU. But for now, yes, the halogen lamps (they are even made with the regular envelope over them they fit in a regular fixture) are the closes alternative to the inert gas incandescent bulbs (light bulbs have some inert gas in them to reduce the filament evaporation). To my taste the color is a bit too white, but I could just connect a resistor in series to reduce the voltage and the color temperature.
Those 100 bulbs are a stash for future use, nor many are in use at a time, some rooms even have CFLs, I am saving those bulbs for my rooms - I do not like daylight and use electric light all the time. Here the bulbs last a bit longer than the rated 1000 hours (mot likely because I try not to turn them on/off frequently and not I have the slow dimmer).
They even make CFLs with the sickening yellow color of incandescent if that's what you want.
Good to know. Still, the color temperature of the incandescent bulb changes as it is dimmed, with CFL it probably doesn't.
>They are not a point light source.
?????
Clear incandescent or halogen bulb (or a single LED) is a point light source - the shadows have clean edges. CFLs, LEDs (if more than one LED is used, which they are for lighting, since LEDs produce narrow beams) and matte incandescent bulbs (as well as the clear ones, if the fixture is closed) produce diffused light - shadows become fuzzy.
To me the point source looks better.
I have about 100 light bulbs. Almost all 40W ones.
CFLs suck because:
They do not turn on very fast.
The color temperature is wrong.
They cannot be fully dimmed.
They are not a point light source.
So I am using incandescent bulbs. I will try the halogen ones though - they are still available and the only downside is that the color is too white, but a simple resistor in series will solve that problem (and it will be fun figuring out how big a resistor I need).
OTOH I think that the regular bulbs are still available, maybe in a different shape, but for the normal E27 socket, so I might as well just buy some more of them.
I also saw long life "traffic lights" for sale once - these last 3000h but are even less energy efficient (100W bulb emits about the same light as a 80W bulb, "F" grade). I bought a couple of those and if I see them again, I'll buy more - to save space in the box as less bulbs will be needed. Also I installed a dimmer that slowly turns on the light (takes about 5 seconds, so still faster than the CFLs) to extend the life of the bulb (as the filament wears out the fastest during initial warmup).
As for the energy - my computers use ~1kW (on 24/7), my monitor uses ~140W (24" CRT), yea, the 40W light bulb uses so much power compared to that.
And ideal free market is just as impossible as ideal Communism. Especially with power, internet and similar services where you need a lot of infrastructure. It will never be profitable to build new infrastructure in parallel with the one of an already existing provider - you won't be able to compete with it because the old provider most likely has already recouped the costs of laying cable etc.
Also, if it is not economical for the big provide to build infrastructure to support clients in area X, it will be even less economical for the new provider.
This is why the government of my country is laying lots of fiber to rural areas - any ISP will be able to rent tat fiber and use it to provide fast internet connections in those areas. The government is doing this because no ISP would - it is too expensive. However, the government works (in theory) for the good of the people, not to just accumulate lots of money (the goal of private companies) so it can undertake projects that are not economical, but improve the lives of the people.
The size of the fine is good IMO - a fine should hurt a lot, so the offender will not want to repeat the offense. After all, if the company can still profit from the illegal activity after paying the fine, it will do so (say that a fine is $1k, but the company got $2k from doing whatever resulted in the $1k fine - this means that the activity gets $1k profit and is worth doing, despite the fine). Fixed sums (say $1M) may destroy small companies but be pocket change for big ones, so making the fine be a part of the money the company makes in a year balances it - a small company makes less and will pay less, and a large company will pay more.
Actually, in Sweden, fines for violating traffic laws are based on the income of the offender, so one guy will pay 100EUR for parking where it is not allowed and the other might pay 1kEUR for leaving his car in exactly the same place. Too bad this is not so in my country.
Now, whether Google should be allowed to promote its own services over others in search, here is my opinion: the search is supposed to be neutral. Google can advertise the other services in the menu etc or as ads (similar to the other ads), but not as part of search. Or, if it wants to provide the service of integration (search for an address and have a map pop up), then allow other providers to also add their services and let the user choose which one they want.
Google is not lenient or anything. Google only wants one thing - more money. While currently the "try to do no evil" motto attracts users (which result in Google getting more money), that would change the instant Google has no competition (since doing evil results in even more money, assuming the users have nowhere else to go).
You seem to not understand the part where "monopoly" comes in.
Company growth has positive feedback - a big company can buy smaller ones and become an even bigger company, at some point it will buy all its competitors and become a complete monopoly (the only producer). This is obviously bad for the market and people in general, so laws have been passed to limit this kind of behavior. One of them applies to "market position abuse".
If a company has a dominant position (80% or more market share) in a market, it can use that position to influence other markets. An example would be Microsoft Windows bundling with IE. If you want a more clear example, I could give you this: Microsoft starts its own cell phone service and includes it as part of Windows - you buy windows and also get the contract for the cell service (free for a year then you can cancel it or start paying normal rates). Since people use Windows, they will get the service and most of them will later choose to stay with Microsoft (after all, the other providers are not much cheaper or better, so why the hassle), which would result in Microsoft gaining a large market share. However, it did not get that market share by being better than the competition, but by using the power that Windows being a monopoly gave it. This is what the EU does not like and neither should you.
And yes, Apple could probably do it without problems, since it does not have a monopoly. Having a monopoly gives you great power but also adds new rules to how you should behave.
Imagine there is apiece of software that does a DNS request then opens two connections to the server - http and ftp. In the past both services ran on the same server, but now due to lack of resources one service was moved to a different server and sits on a different IP. The software does not know that and still expects to be able to connect to the same server for both services, so it gets the DNS response and uses the same IP to try to connect.
One way to do it would be to use a proxy server on that IP that then redirected the connections to the actual servers. The downsides of this method are useless log files on the real servers (since they would show only the proxy IP) and a need for a third server (especially if the reason the services were split up was because the single server could not handle the bandwidth).
Uh.. why would you want to?
To keep the same session when switching computers or log in from two computers at the same time.
Transparent proxies work just fine.
How? Transparent proxies require that the router redirects the relevant packets to them instead of the real server (DNAT target on iptables) and would not work without NAT, unless the DNS requests also got intercepted, but you can't know beforehand whether the user will try to connect using HTTP (which should get redirected to the proxy) or , say, HTTPS (which should go straight).
Load balancing/failover between different ISPs:
IPv6 - ISP cooperation and 1300EUR/year,
IPv4 - NAT router with software that supports this (for example pfsense) - can be completely free and does not need ISP cooperation or knowledge.
I actually did the load balancing between two connections from the same ISP. I had DSL and could access a WiFi AP (legally), but WiFi was not very reliable. Pfsense could load balance both connections and give me faster torrents (if WiFi worked) or was just the same as with only DSL (when WiFi did not work). No additional configuration required, uT worked perfectly.
IPv6 level NAT (there are software packages for this)
any of them work on x86 Linux or Windows?
Two real servers appearing as one - it may be that the client software expects one server (and for some reason I have to have them separately, be it physical or virtual machines) or to confuse hackers. Or to keep old links working after one of the services was moved to a different server.
Essentially, NAT allows me to "decouple" the internal network from the external one - I can make it appear as I want to from the outside instead of what it actually is. Nobody outside has a need to know how my network is set up - just like the power company does not need to know what devices I have plugged in - all it sees is the total current.
Too bad. Now every time I want to switch to a backup ISP (when the main connection goes down) I'll have to reconfigure all computers in the internal network (maybe some script will be able to do it automatically). After all, the other ISP will give different IPs and instead of the router just using whatever external IP it has and the PCs not caring, now the connection will be disrupted for some time until all PCs realize that the main connection is dead.
If I ever wanted to load balance between two ISPs and use standard software that would be impossible.
If I ever wanted to make ftp://example.com and http://example/ com be different actual servers, that would be impossible too. Maybe I could use very similar names - http://i.example.com/ and ftp://l.example.com but that is not the same.
If I wanted to make a server believe that two clients are actually the same one - that would be impossible too. Well, I could use a proxy server, but that requires that the client software supports using proxies.
No more transparent proxies - remember the special URL to log in to the ISP (now you just get redirected there) and no more upside-down-ternet.
NAT has more uses other than the "share one external IP to multiple computers".
Market share.
In a perfect free market environment (a lot of almost equal choices), no seller would be able to control the market and thus could do whatever they want, the result would just be felt by them (set prices too high - everyone buys from the competitor).
However, the market for desktop OSs is not really "free". Windows dominate it with a huge market share. As such, whatever Microsoft does will affect not just them. Even if Microsoft does a lot of people do not like, Windows will still hold the dominating position - remember when people were using Vista even tough it sucked, just because there were no drivers for their PC for XP? As such, Microsoft can be considered to be having a monopoly and the ability to abuse it. For example - what if Microsoft made Windows no longer work with, say, Dell computers (not some "natural" incompatibility like 64bit vs 32bit, but "if (PC_mfg == "Dell") Crash();")? Dell would suffer a lot, it may even go out of business. What if Microsoft did that in response to Dell selling some computer with Linux installed by default and told Dell to stop selling PCs with Linux or Windows will not longer work on all Dell's PCs? This is called "abusing your position" and there are laws against it.
On the other hand, a small guy can do whatever he wants, because he does not have the power to influence the market such a degree (what if Linux stopped working on all Dell PCs? Nothing much would happen to the bottom line of Dell, and "Stop selling PCs with Windows or Linux won't work on any of your PCs" threat would not result in Dell complying with it).
It runs fine on XP SP3.
But as soon as the next-gen consoles hit, D3D9 (and thus, XP gaming) are toast.
So, I guess it's time to start saving for a new PC - one that will be good enough for 5 or more years without replacing the motherboard. Reinstalling Windows is so tedious (not because of Windows, but because of all the apps and settings), that I might replace the main PC at the same time, making the transition easier (since I will still have the old installation for the times when I need it).
But if the radio plays that song all the time then I have less desire to buy it, since I can hear it on the radio anyway. If I really want to, I can record it to tape without much trouble. I buy the records with music that is played on the radio less often than I would like (or is not played on the radio at all).
Depends on the station. My favorite station mostly plays ~80s pop (which I like) and there are no commercials at night, only music. It is almost as good as playing a 26cm reel of tape at 9.5cm/s - hours of uninterrupted music (though the tape plays the songs in the same order every time, so it is better, even though I have to flip it after 3 hours).
Different people have different amounts of money, so something can be "cheap" and "expensive" at the same time (to different people). Also, the developers usually offer extras (like adding your name to the list of credits) if you pay a lot on Kickstarter, those extras might also be worth it to those people that pay for them.
And yes, games need demos, the game may be buggy, it may suck, or I may just not like it and I would want to find that out before paying money for it.
As for piracy - well, I'm not going to buy the game either way (not not at least), so I might as well pirate it (and maybe I'll pay for it later, when the price drops, assuming I manged to finish the game and did not delete it 10 minutes after stating to play). Despite what the companies say my piracy does not make money disappear from their bank accounts.
Yes, it has value to me. However, games only have a value of up to ~10EUR to me, so if the game is sold of less than 10EUR I am likely to buy it (and I buy the indie games that I think are worth it, I also buy some games when there is Steam sale), but I will not pay 50EUR for a game. Instead of buying a game, I'd rather buy another tape deck, buy a bunch of records or build some circuit - I would derive more enjoyment from any of those alternatives than the game, so a game is not worth 50EUR to me.
And yes, I have bought games after pirating them - when the price dropped to the "worth it" level and I thought the game really deserved it.
I'm pretty sure that it is possible to reconstruct a 22.00kHz sine signal with 44.1kHz sampling rate. If the signal is not sine, then it has higher frequencies (harmonics), that are above the Nyquist limit. By the way, the theorem states that is is possible to reconstruct the signal if the sampling rate is higher> than 2x the bandwidth, when the bandwidth is equal to half of sampling rate, it is no longer possible to reconstruct the signal.
The nagain, this is theory, maybe in practice the ADCs and DACs suck and cannot reconstruct the signal properly.