My personal peeve is people that hit Reply when Reply All is required.
I had a customer who always did this to his sales rep (me being the engineer responsible for the customer). The sales rep got to the point where he was specifically requesting "please reply all because..." in every email. It didn't help at all and the customer continued as usual. Over drinks one night, I found out that the customer didn't like the sales rep very much and was doing it just to spite him.
How many of the trappings of modern society do we really need, and how many just make us more comfortable? How many things did we have a hundred years ago that we could re-implement with the benefit of hindsight and have a much better life than we have today?
That's a very difficult question, but I would argue that many of them we DO need.
I have been doing a little genealogical research, and what I have found is that up until about 90 years ago, my ancestors were mostly farmers. Since they were farmers, they needed big families. There are many patriarchs in my family who had 15, 20, or even more children. Eventually the wife would die in childbirth and the father would find a new, younger wife. That isn't sustainable over the long term, and it doesn't take many 20-children generations before overpopulation becomes a big problem. It also isn't so great for gender equality. We needed NEEDED technologies that get us out of that.
So then you start thinking about technologies to get out of that situation. Mechanized farming, so less children are needed. Cities, since everyone being a farmer will eventually lead to severe land shortages. Better roads so that people can eat food grown on farms while living in the city. Mechanized transport so that we can get that food to market before it goes bad. Fertilizer to increase yield. Birth control to allow people to have the family size they want. Families are much smaller, so the loss of a child is more significant- you need better medicine to keep them alive. Electricity to power many of these machines. Eventually, computers are needed in order to design every-complicated machines to further these advances. And on it goes
If you don't have these things, what are you? You are Amish (quaint, but unsustainable on a large scale) or you are a 3rd world country.
There's a scam going on where people sell these big capacitor banks as "Power Savers" to reduce your electricity bill. They work on solid principles. Such things are used in steel mills where big driver loads run by heavy motors have a low power factor. Correcting the power factor greatly improves actual operating efficiency. Some of these mills shut down operations when the power saver fails because it's more expensive to operate without power factor correction than it is to idle the plant.
This is only half true. Industrial and large commercial customers are often billed based partly on their power factor. This is because poor power factors are less efficient for the utility. Residential customers are not billed by the power factor. Lousy power factors in residential areas are still less efficient for the utility, which is why they sometimes install capacitors on the poles. You have probably seen them and never noticed- google photos
Putting Power factor correction in the home isn't going to help your bill at all, since residential customers aren't billed by the power factor.
The one thing I would do if I had the house down to studs would be CAT6 drops everywhere and speaker wire everywhere with binding post connections. CAT6 is incredibly versatile and the speaker wire is useful too. I have been adding drops as needed in my current house, but fishing wire through the walls is a huge pain. A lot of walls are basically inaccessible since they have insulation in them and fishing wire through THAT is almost impossible.
You do know why these "must keep a distance" laws are in place right? Once upon a time, kooky people in white pointed hats would stand around polling stations. They wouldn't actually do anything and thus weren't breaking any laws, they'd just stand there and take notes whenever a black person came to vote. If said black person later turned up dead shortly after a bunch of other kooky people in white pointed hats had gathered and burned a cross during the night, well there was no connection was there?
What a ridiculous argument. Election observers are not members of a cult/hate group. They do not dress in a threatening manner and are not threatening intimidation or retaliation, real or implied. We are talking about people dressed professionally, probably with clipboards and librarian glasses, watching to make sure the election workers are doing their jobs.
Yes, but the price is almost the only information consumers can base there decision on. That, and the packaging design.
How else are consumers supposed to decide if a bag of chicken is tastier than a different bag of chicken? Being pricier might be some indication that it is better in some way, but it certainly doesn't guarantee it. Brand name chicken is typically overpriced or as cheap as possible. The "organic" stuff might be good since it could be coming from people with higher standards, but people are slapping "organic" on everything these days since the term is poorly defined.
There is no way to tell if a product is tasty without trying it. And even then, companies change their recipes to a cheaper, inferior recipe all the time.
We had IBM model PS/2 model 25's and 30's. They are basically the same machine, but the model 30 was a beige box while the model 25 had an integral monitor. Both had the fantastic model M keyboard.
Above all else, I learned that you need to hire the ferry to cross the river. Fording the river is a fool's game.
But since I haven't look at the non X86 chips in awhile my question is...what advantage do they give over the AMD and Intel X86 cores? i mean I could understand using MIPS, SPARC, POWER back in the day because X86 was slower at certain tasks but now the amount of IPC on the Intel side is just nuts and AMD is going with an insane numbers of cores for cheap...so what's the selling point?
I mean I can understand those that already have significant resources tied up in SPARC as it'd be cheaper to stay with what they have than to switch, but what do they use as selling points to get new customers?
For certain workloads it really shines. A couple of years ago, web servers was given as a prime example. Tons and tons of threads, none of them that powerful, but good for workloads where you have lots and lots of small-tasks running in parallel.
If you don't have that kind of workload, obviously it isn't attractive. But if you have the right kind of workload, you should be interested.
Gold Chloride is not naturally occurring and expensive to make. If you managed to get hold of some gold chloride and decided for some reason you wanted the gold metal out of it, you could mix it with hydrogen peroxide or pretty much any reducing agent and get gold without having to wait a week. Or you could just heat it up on an ordinary stove (but don't breathe in).
This is performance art, nothing more.
No. It is research, and a terrible headline.
Gold isn't the end goal here. Bacteria that survive in heavy metal solutions are pretty rare. Bacteria that do something useful with those heavy metal solutions are even rarer. The end goal is probably to find and/or create bacteria that can treat large quantities of contaminated water. Water contaminated with other heavy metals like lead, arsenic, etc. Unleashing a heavy-metal leeching bacteria has got to be cheaper than treating a huge quantity of contaminated water. It might take a lot longer, and not be as efficient, but you better believe there is a use and a market for bacteria that can do that. This is just a step along the way.
I was thinking that maybe 22% of foursquare users use the service only to show off the exotic far flung destinations they've been.
That would be me. I'm not a bar-hopping single guy anymore. The places I go most days just aren't exciting. I'm not going to check in to Target or Advance Auto Parts- I don't have the time for it, it seems like I am giving a "tip of the hat" to a megacompany that I don't care about, and who cares about my mundane errands anyway?
When I travel though, I find that I get bored easily waiting in various lines, and the company blackberry becomes a boredom-killer device.
I'm convinced these full body scanners are less about security and more about ensuring wealth doesn't leave the country. When the shit hits the fan, people wanting to leave and take their fortunes converted into say diamonds, will not be able to take them with them.
For years you could only take up to $10,000 in cash/valuables to a foreign country. Diamonds were the only way to take more. If these scanners proliferate that will be the end of that.
Food for thought in our future police state.
I'm not sure what your point here is. Yes, diamonds are a way to get around the currency restrictions of $10,000, but then they are considered goods if you plan on leaving them somewhere. Unless they are personal property (not used as a currency as you suggest), they need to be declared and any relevant duty paid. Are you saying that you advocated breaking the law and are upset that a new technology might make breaking the law harder?
Have you looked at the Chinese tablets? There are many which have pretty much everything you want. I just got a Novo 7 Fire, which has a MicroSD slot, a 1280x800 IPS 5-point multitouch screen, bluetooth, etc. I am satisfied with the build quality. It is hard to compare build quality since it is somewhat subjective, but I would put it at slightly less than Apple products, but not much less. I flashed the firmware with a different rom which someone put together, and it is behaving exactly like a Nexus 7 now.
There are a multitude of different chinese tablets made by Ainol, Onda, Ramos, PiPo, etc. I found Merimobiles a good site to browse and shop for these chinese tablets, but I didn't buy from them so I can't say anything about their service and I don't recommend for or against them.
Power companies love pumped storage because it is one of the few types of power stations which is basically instant-on. They can charge it out on the market at ridiculous prices.
The bad part is, every site that is suitable for pumped storage either already has it, or can't get it because of the environmental permitting. All the best "natural" sites have it already. Sure, you can take the top off a mountain and build a man-made lake where the top of the mountain used to be, but people really frown on that. The quantities of water needed to make any sort of difference is staggering. It has to be a big reservoir.
I believe some of the fees and/or taxes on cars in Japan go UP as a car ages.
For the inspections, it isn't just a simple safety inspection. From the stories I have heard from my wife (who lived in Japan for 25 years), if the mechanic recommends something, you need to fix it. Even if it is something trivial. This tends to be in the thousands of dollars and gets higher as the vehicle ages. These are not quick safety inspections where they test the brakes, the steering, and the lights. They go over everything and their idea of "worn out" would make you laugh.
It also may depend on the local laws. Some cities are stricter than others.
full-body MRI for a few hundred bucks in much of the US
Where is this? I've never seen a full-body MRI for under $1000 anywhere in the US, and often considerably higher than that. Or are you referring to just your copay amount, with the rest covered by health insurance?
You need to stay out of the hospitals and go with an independant imaging company. I needed an MRI a few weeks ago, and an independant imaging company would have done it for about $300 cash if I was uninsured (I have not gotten the bill yet after-insurance). I know the local hospitals charge over $1200 (before insurance).
The hospitals need to cover all the care they have to provide for the uninsured. Seeking out only providers who do not provide care for the uninsured and have no ties to hospitals is how I have been approaching healthcare lately.
This kind of behavior worked a lot more in the 40 years ago (when the manufacturing cycle took a lot longer) than it does today. I'm not saying it is excusable, but the market for people who need to buy Apple accessories is so large that many companies buy the Apple Thing on day 1, reverse engineer it on day 2, and are receiving Accessories for the Apple Thing within a couple weeks from China. I work with a company that owns a Faro Laser Scanarm (3d scanner) and they frequently have multiple customers send them phones overnight on day 1. Each one of them is trying to get into the market for docks, cases, screen protectors, etc.
I'm not saying that Apple's tactics are OK, but they are generally futile in this case. You can't stop a flood of Chinese accessories from dozens of manufacturers.
For comparison, one of the "loudest" subwoofers made (though damned if I can find a link to it ATM) uses a fan with blades that pivot in phase with the sound... Effectively "breathing" in and out based on whether it has a positive or negative pitch to the blades at any given point in time.
I'd love to see the link on that. I have some experience with variable pitch propellers (althought I am not claiming to be an expert). It seems like you wouldn't be able to vary the blade rotation fast enough unless the blades were quite lightweight or small. And if they were small, there wouldn't be a point- you could just use a normal subwoofer.
The pile of mountain dew cans they would leave behind is probably gonna be worth a couple hundred bucks. Nevermind it is on your living room floor.
Since they will, at least, buy their own food, its like getting free money back!
That would be funny if every state had a bottle deposit program. Most don't. Kansas does not. Even if we were talking about Kansas CIty, Missouri, they don't have a program either. Best you can hope for is scrap value (maybe $1) or recycling them for free.
If you ever forget your keys, or lock them inside your car you will find out. The locksmith used a rod to flip the "unlock" button on my Subaru, and when he opened the door, the alarm went off. I didn't even know it had an alarm until then.
I'd agree that's what they are thinking. But I think they are wrong. A good example is Neverwinter nights. I bought that game 5 years after release so I could play some of the mods people had made for it. That's money they wouldn't have had. Look at Team Fortress 2... that wouldn't even really be a game without all the player made maps. It would have faded into obscurity a few months after release. The mod community let Valve spend less time making maps and focus more on game play.
I'm not sure I totally agree with that. The maps made by valve are excellent, and you can tell that they spent a lot of time thinking about player routes and wall placement. I have over 800 hours in TF2 and I only play Badwater, Gold rush, and Turbine.
Not to say that there aren't great player-made maps too. Turbine is an excellent map, and I believe it is player-made entirely or in part. I think this map is so good because it emulates a lot of the features that Valve uses in their maps- 3 routes to every flag, enough space and obstructions that 1 sentry doesn't dominate, a way to destroy every sentry given enough skill and thought, etc. One of the reasons I think TF2 is special is because the textures are so simple and cartoonish. You don't need to spend hours and hours painting textures or figuring out stylizing. Everything fits together well aesthetically already. You can concentrate on the things that matter like player pathing and other geographic placement.
But your point that without player-made maps the game would have failed, I can't buy it.
I used to consume copious amounts of cereal. I trimmed back to rasin bran but even that isn't really healthy. I finally went to a oatmeal breakfast as my routine. I have several tupperware containers, and once a week I fill them with a measured amount of plain oatmeal, raisins, and a little bit of sugar. In the morning I add 1 cup of water and microwave for 2 minutes. Matching the convenience of cereal is hard, but my oatmeal packs take most of the inconvenience out of the morning. Even with the sugar, it is more healthy than the cereal I was eating.
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My personal peeve is people that hit Reply when Reply All is required.
I had a customer who always did this to his sales rep (me being the engineer responsible for the customer). The sales rep got to the point where he was specifically requesting "please reply all because..." in every email. It didn't help at all and the customer continued as usual. Over drinks one night, I found out that the customer didn't like the sales rep very much and was doing it just to spite him.
How many of the trappings of modern society do we really need, and how many just make us more comfortable? How many things did we have a hundred years ago that we could re-implement with the benefit of hindsight and have a much better life than we have today?
That's a very difficult question, but I would argue that many of them we DO need.
I have been doing a little genealogical research, and what I have found is that up until about 90 years ago, my ancestors were mostly farmers. Since they were farmers, they needed big families. There are many patriarchs in my family who had 15, 20, or even more children. Eventually the wife would die in childbirth and the father would find a new, younger wife. That isn't sustainable over the long term, and it doesn't take many 20-children generations before overpopulation becomes a big problem. It also isn't so great for gender equality. We needed NEEDED technologies that get us out of that.
So then you start thinking about technologies to get out of that situation. Mechanized farming, so less children are needed. Cities, since everyone being a farmer will eventually lead to severe land shortages. Better roads so that people can eat food grown on farms while living in the city. Mechanized transport so that we can get that food to market before it goes bad. Fertilizer to increase yield. Birth control to allow people to have the family size they want. Families are much smaller, so the loss of a child is more significant- you need better medicine to keep them alive. Electricity to power many of these machines. Eventually, computers are needed in order to design every-complicated machines to further these advances. And on it goes
If you don't have these things, what are you? You are Amish (quaint, but unsustainable on a large scale) or you are a 3rd world country.
There's a scam going on where people sell these big capacitor banks as "Power Savers" to reduce your electricity bill. They work on solid principles. Such things are used in steel mills where big driver loads run by heavy motors have a low power factor. Correcting the power factor greatly improves actual operating efficiency. Some of these mills shut down operations when the power saver fails because it's more expensive to operate without power factor correction than it is to idle the plant.
This is only half true. Industrial and large commercial customers are often billed based partly on their power factor. This is because poor power factors are less efficient for the utility. Residential customers are not billed by the power factor. Lousy power factors in residential areas are still less efficient for the utility, which is why they sometimes install capacitors on the poles. You have probably seen them and never noticed- google photos
Putting Power factor correction in the home isn't going to help your bill at all, since residential customers aren't billed by the power factor.
The one thing I would do if I had the house down to studs would be CAT6 drops everywhere and speaker wire everywhere with binding post connections. CAT6 is incredibly versatile and the speaker wire is useful too. I have been adding drops as needed in my current house, but fishing wire through the walls is a huge pain. A lot of walls are basically inaccessible since they have insulation in them and fishing wire through THAT is almost impossible.
You do know why these "must keep a distance" laws are in place right? Once upon a time, kooky people in white pointed hats would stand around polling stations. They wouldn't actually do anything and thus weren't breaking any laws, they'd just stand there and take notes whenever a black person came to vote. If said black person later turned up dead shortly after a bunch of other kooky people in white pointed hats had gathered and burned a cross during the night, well there was no connection was there?
What a ridiculous argument. Election observers are not members of a cult/hate group. They do not dress in a threatening manner and are not threatening intimidation or retaliation, real or implied. We are talking about people dressed professionally, probably with clipboards and librarian glasses, watching to make sure the election workers are doing their jobs.
Yes, but the price is almost the only information consumers can base there decision on. That, and the packaging design.
How else are consumers supposed to decide if a bag of chicken is tastier than a different bag of chicken? Being pricier might be some indication that it is better in some way, but it certainly doesn't guarantee it. Brand name chicken is typically overpriced or as cheap as possible. The "organic" stuff might be good since it could be coming from people with higher standards, but people are slapping "organic" on everything these days since the term is poorly defined.
There is no way to tell if a product is tasty without trying it. And even then, companies change their recipes to a cheaper, inferior recipe all the time.
We had IBM model PS/2 model 25's and 30's. They are basically the same machine, but the model 30 was a beige box while the model 25 had an integral monitor. Both had the fantastic model M keyboard.
Above all else, I learned that you need to hire the ferry to cross the river. Fording the river is a fool's game.
But since I haven't look at the non X86 chips in awhile my question is...what advantage do they give over the AMD and Intel X86 cores? i mean I could understand using MIPS, SPARC, POWER back in the day because X86 was slower at certain tasks but now the amount of IPC on the Intel side is just nuts and AMD is going with an insane numbers of cores for cheap...so what's the selling point?
I mean I can understand those that already have significant resources tied up in SPARC as it'd be cheaper to stay with what they have than to switch, but what do they use as selling points to get new customers?
For certain workloads it really shines. A couple of years ago, web servers was given as a prime example. Tons and tons of threads, none of them that powerful, but good for workloads where you have lots and lots of small-tasks running in parallel.
If you don't have that kind of workload, obviously it isn't attractive. But if you have the right kind of workload, you should be interested.
Gold Chloride is not naturally occurring and expensive to make. If you managed to get hold of some gold chloride and decided for some reason you wanted the gold metal out of it, you could mix it with hydrogen peroxide or pretty much any reducing agent and get gold without having to wait a week. Or you could just heat it up on an ordinary stove (but don't breathe in).
This is performance art, nothing more.
No. It is research, and a terrible headline.
Gold isn't the end goal here. Bacteria that survive in heavy metal solutions are pretty rare. Bacteria that do something useful with those heavy metal solutions are even rarer. The end goal is probably to find and/or create bacteria that can treat large quantities of contaminated water. Water contaminated with other heavy metals like lead, arsenic, etc. Unleashing a heavy-metal leeching bacteria has got to be cheaper than treating a huge quantity of contaminated water. It might take a lot longer, and not be as efficient, but you better believe there is a use and a market for bacteria that can do that. This is just a step along the way.
I was thinking that maybe 22% of foursquare users use the service only to show off the exotic far flung destinations they've been.
That would be me. I'm not a bar-hopping single guy anymore. The places I go most days just aren't exciting. I'm not going to check in to Target or Advance Auto Parts- I don't have the time for it, it seems like I am giving a "tip of the hat" to a megacompany that I don't care about, and who cares about my mundane errands anyway?
When I travel though, I find that I get bored easily waiting in various lines, and the company blackberry becomes a boredom-killer device.
I'm convinced these full body scanners are less about security and more about ensuring wealth doesn't leave the country. When the shit hits the fan, people wanting to leave and take their fortunes converted into say diamonds, will not be able to take them with them.
For years you could only take up to $10,000 in cash/valuables to a foreign country. Diamonds were the only way to take more. If these scanners proliferate that will be the end of that.
Food for thought in our future police state.
I'm not sure what your point here is. Yes, diamonds are a way to get around the currency restrictions of $10,000, but then they are considered goods if you plan on leaving them somewhere. Unless they are personal property (not used as a currency as you suggest), they need to be declared and any relevant duty paid. Are you saying that you advocated breaking the law and are upset that a new technology might make breaking the law harder?
Have you looked at the Chinese tablets? There are many which have pretty much everything you want. I just got a Novo 7 Fire, which has a MicroSD slot, a 1280x800 IPS 5-point multitouch screen, bluetooth, etc. I am satisfied with the build quality. It is hard to compare build quality since it is somewhat subjective, but I would put it at slightly less than Apple products, but not much less. I flashed the firmware with a different rom which someone put together, and it is behaving exactly like a Nexus 7 now.
There are a multitude of different chinese tablets made by Ainol, Onda, Ramos, PiPo, etc. I found Merimobiles a good site to browse and shop for these chinese tablets, but I didn't buy from them so I can't say anything about their service and I don't recommend for or against them.
Power companies love pumped storage because it is one of the few types of power stations which is basically instant-on. They can charge it out on the market at ridiculous prices.
The bad part is, every site that is suitable for pumped storage either already has it, or can't get it because of the environmental permitting. All the best "natural" sites have it already. Sure, you can take the top off a mountain and build a man-made lake where the top of the mountain used to be, but people really frown on that. The quantities of water needed to make any sort of difference is staggering. It has to be a big reservoir.
I believe some of the fees and/or taxes on cars in Japan go UP as a car ages.
For the inspections, it isn't just a simple safety inspection. From the stories I have heard from my wife (who lived in Japan for 25 years), if the mechanic recommends something, you need to fix it. Even if it is something trivial. This tends to be in the thousands of dollars and gets higher as the vehicle ages. These are not quick safety inspections where they test the brakes, the steering, and the lights. They go over everything and their idea of "worn out" would make you laugh.
It also may depend on the local laws. Some cities are stricter than others.
If everybody reading this goes in and makes a dislike of that video and others of that so called religion then at least we made a statement.
Why stop there? Youtube has a "flagging" system to flag for different kinds of abuse.
full-body MRI for a few hundred bucks in much of the US
Where is this? I've never seen a full-body MRI for under $1000 anywhere in the US, and often considerably higher than that. Or are you referring to just your copay amount, with the rest covered by health insurance?
You need to stay out of the hospitals and go with an independant imaging company. I needed an MRI a few weeks ago, and an independant imaging company would have done it for about $300 cash if I was uninsured (I have not gotten the bill yet after-insurance). I know the local hospitals charge over $1200 (before insurance).
The hospitals need to cover all the care they have to provide for the uninsured. Seeking out only providers who do not provide care for the uninsured and have no ties to hospitals is how I have been approaching healthcare lately.
fatfingered the mouse when I modded this down accidentally, undoing it :(
This kind of behavior worked a lot more in the 40 years ago (when the manufacturing cycle took a lot longer) than it does today. I'm not saying it is excusable, but the market for people who need to buy Apple accessories is so large that many companies buy the Apple Thing on day 1, reverse engineer it on day 2, and are receiving Accessories for the Apple Thing within a couple weeks from China. I work with a company that owns a Faro Laser Scanarm (3d scanner) and they frequently have multiple customers send them phones overnight on day 1. Each one of them is trying to get into the market for docks, cases, screen protectors, etc.
I'm not saying that Apple's tactics are OK, but they are generally futile in this case. You can't stop a flood of Chinese accessories from dozens of manufacturers.
For comparison, one of the "loudest" subwoofers made (though damned if I can find a link to it ATM) uses a fan with blades that pivot in phase with the sound... Effectively "breathing" in and out based on whether it has a positive or negative pitch to the blades at any given point in time.
I'd love to see the link on that. I have some experience with variable pitch propellers (althought I am not claiming to be an expert). It seems like you wouldn't be able to vary the blade rotation fast enough unless the blades were quite lightweight or small. And if they were small, there wouldn't be a point- you could just use a normal subwoofer.
The pile of mountain dew cans they would leave behind is probably gonna be worth a couple hundred bucks. Nevermind it is on your living room floor.
Since they will, at least, buy their own food, its like getting free money back!
That would be funny if every state had a bottle deposit program. Most don't. Kansas does not. Even if we were talking about Kansas CIty, Missouri, they don't have a program either. Best you can hope for is scrap value (maybe $1) or recycling them for free.
If you ever forget your keys, or lock them inside your car you will find out. The locksmith used a rod to flip the "unlock" button on my Subaru, and when he opened the door, the alarm went off. I didn't even know it had an alarm until then.
That is exactly what I do.
I'd agree that's what they are thinking. But I think they are wrong. A good example is Neverwinter nights. I bought that game 5 years after release so I could play some of the mods people had made for it. That's money they wouldn't have had. Look at Team Fortress 2... that wouldn't even really be a game without all the player made maps. It would have faded into obscurity a few months after release. The mod community let Valve spend less time making maps and focus more on game play.
I'm not sure I totally agree with that. The maps made by valve are excellent, and you can tell that they spent a lot of time thinking about player routes and wall placement. I have over 800 hours in TF2 and I only play Badwater, Gold rush, and Turbine.
Not to say that there aren't great player-made maps too. Turbine is an excellent map, and I believe it is player-made entirely or in part. I think this map is so good because it emulates a lot of the features that Valve uses in their maps- 3 routes to every flag, enough space and obstructions that 1 sentry doesn't dominate, a way to destroy every sentry given enough skill and thought, etc. One of the reasons I think TF2 is special is because the textures are so simple and cartoonish. You don't need to spend hours and hours painting textures or figuring out stylizing. Everything fits together well aesthetically already. You can concentrate on the things that matter like player pathing and other geographic placement.
But your point that without player-made maps the game would have failed, I can't buy it.
Because Valve already long ago recouped their money.
Valve makes more money on hats than they made selling the game.
I used to consume copious amounts of cereal. I trimmed back to rasin bran but even that isn't really healthy. I finally went to a oatmeal breakfast as my routine. I have several tupperware containers, and once a week I fill them with a measured amount of plain oatmeal, raisins, and a little bit of sugar. In the morning I add 1 cup of water and microwave for 2 minutes. Matching the convenience of cereal is hard, but my oatmeal packs take most of the inconvenience out of the morning. Even with the sugar, it is more healthy than the cereal I was eating.