You do have a sliding scale, in the form of the hosting cost pass through. Your average restaurateur is entirely unqualified to estimate the AWS hosting costs of your software in relation to his/her restaurant, so these costs are completely opaque. (As patio11 puts it, "Metered pricing is none of predictable, transparent, or fair.") You, on the other hand, probably have a very good idea of the costs relative to e.g. size or popularity of establishment. In the interests of transparent pricing, you ought to consider factoring these costs into your price and charge your customer a fixed predictable amount, tiered according to the relevant parameter.
This suggestion comes up whenever the topic of self-driving cars arises, but I wonder if access to a fleet of self-driving cars would be more akin to a cheaper taxi service than a replacement for car ownership. I suspect that many people would still prefer to own their own (self-driving) car rather than rent one from a fleet only when required. However the privately owned self-driving car could still drive itself to the nearest charging station when not in use so I agree with your premise that self-driving and electric car technology has some synergies. Being a high-tech automaker, Tesla would be an obvious licensee for Google's self-driving technology once it matures.
Fair observation, but I think this sort of centralization will come after maybe 2 or 3 generations (40 - 60 years). With a long enough timetable I believe the sentiment behind private car ownership will dwindle until it becomes a hobby akin to collecting telegraph machines.
Default risk. The price for a bitcoin that is currently held by Mt.Gox factors in the market's expectation that said bitcoin will be able to be redeemed from Mt.Gox. Analogous to why your bank charges you a higher interest rate on a loan if you have a poor credit score, to compensate them for the perceived risk that you fail to repay the loan.
"However, although important for the local economy in Congo, the contribution of coltan mining in Congo to the world supply of tantalum is usually small. The United States Geological Survey reports in its yearbook that this region produced a little less than 1% of the world's tantalum output in 2002–2006, peaking at 10% in 2000 and 2008."
It's to keep all the railway clocks in sync. You could have one that's running up to 1.5s slow and it will still be able to keep up with all the rest, and they're all resynchronised with each other every minute. This is important when it could be the difference between catching a train or not.
History and culture, it's a symbolic touchstone for the Swiss railway. It could of course be ripped out and replaced with a digital one, but would it be as well loved? Possibly, possibly not.
The camera is on the end of the arm at the bottom left in [1]. By comparing that to this picture you can see where part of the arm is in the self-portrait, above and to the left of the front-most wheel. The third-person perspective in the self-portrait comes about because the robot arm will always move out of the way of any photo that the camera is taking.
Very OT, but why in God's name do some people/countries feel it appropriate to use imperial units rather than metric units? The reasons are the same - historical usage and inertia against change.
