monstrinho_do_biscoito @1:

To clarify, this is not the same elephant as the one in London: it was built by the same people (I believe) but it's larger and carries paying passengers around a disused industrial site, on an island in the middle of the River Loire, right in the heart of Nantes.

As for whether it's steampunk or not, the connection between elephants (and the site's other bizarre offerings) on the one hand, and Nantes on the other, is Jules Verne.

The brand name is particularly apt: a French speaker would pronounce it ee-breed, the same as the word for "hybrid".

As another thing to throw into the mix, given the timeline, some of the energy usage was probably directly linked to the renovation work itself. For one thing, contractors tend to draw a certain amount of electricity running power tools. For another, renovation often means leaving doors and windows open for extended periods. Hard to see how you can avoid that sort of thing and still get the long-term energy gains.

TUS @ 6:

And I will also continue to point out that Al Gore is a failed politician...

Failed? Ran for VP twice, got elected twice, discharged his duties faithfully, defended the constitution etc. If that's failure as a politician, what would success look like? George W. Bush?

The way I read it, Ignacio Cavero's only talking about the price in Europe: 17€ might equal $25 for foreign exchange purposes, but it probably equates to a US sale price of $19.95.

As for attempted manipulation, I think it's more likely an honest best-guess figure, and it sounds about right to me. For PalmOS and Windows Mobile games, $19.95 is a typical price point for quality games, and I'm guessing the iPhone market will be pretty similar.

@57:
The issue isn't that they made the video, but that they misrepresented it and themselves, and then acted like jerks when they got called on their misrepresentations. I could recast your question as:

"We all gotta work for a living, so what's wrong with people whose job is to lie and cover things up on behalf of their clients actually doing what they're paid to do?"

but then that's kind of self-answering, isn't it.

"Honestly, I think that iPhone development sounds like a raw deal. You can't distribute your software on your own terms, and Apple has the final right of refusal on everything."

That depends on what you're comparing it to. From a console developer's point of view, Apple are actually offering a pretty good deal here: you'd have even less freedom developing for DS or PSP, and with the physical media to pay for, you wouldn't get anything like 70% of the purchase price.

The real question is, will enough iPhone users buy enough games to justify the cost of special controller support?

Remmelt @ 3:
I don't think competition vs monopoly makes sense as a rationale: European city councils do all kinds of things in non-monopoly areas (subsidise music schools and sports facilities, collect refuse, lend books, feed schoolchildren) and I've never heard anyone suggest that these actions are illegal.

Justin Mason @ 7:
That was my guess, based on how the EU gets used as a scapegoat in the UK. I kind of hoped Ireland might be more enlightened than that, being in the Euro and all, but I guess politicians are much the same everywhere.

Sad if true, but is it actually correct that EU law prevents this kind of thing? City councils can maintain roads, tramways and all kinds of other infrastructure, so I can't see how free wi-fi would be different in principle.

EU law would doubtless have a lot to say about how such a scheme was implemented, and could certainly make a specific plan illegal (because of lack of transparency in the tendering process, say), but it's a big jump from there to say that any such plan would be illegal.

Does anyone out there have any specifics on why Dublin City Council thought the plan would have been contrary to EU law?

#1, sorry if I'm being obtuse here, but what's the connection between this post/the IHT article and France wanting to "screw things up for the whole world", once again or otherwise?

Ghanburighan is clearly right, and furthermore provides an explanation for why you, brilliant logician but mediocre marksman, would have entered into such a duel in the first place. You've just tricked the two meanest hombres in town (one of whom never misses, remember) into a position where they can't shoot at you. (They are men of honor, right? I mean, they wouldn't decide to just drill you anyways, seein' as yer yeller?)

Eh, the tubes of the net done swallowed the vowels in my previous post.

Anything's possible, but I don't think that was the tubes, I think that was disemvoweling.