Sure, AC-3 alone is patent-free, but each newer version of DD or DTS adds new patents and new licenses.

One of the big factors here is the licensing costs for DD and DTS. The terms for licensing those codecs are pretty harsh and can apply to a per device cost to all devices a manufacturer sells.

To date, all GM Electric cars have only supported 3.3kW Level 2 charging. Do you think 3.3kW charging plus CCS quick charging is sufficient for longer-range vehicles that might be used for road trips, like the forthcoming Bolt?

GM has been in-sourcing the production of many of the key components of their electric vehicles in recent years. What have the benefits and successes been of using that approach?

If you have the opportunity to acquire a Spark EV, do it. I love mine. Fast, fun, 4-door. It's a great car.

The -22F is not a problem, as long as the car is plugged in when left for prolonged periods. At well above that temperature, the battery management system will kick in and heat the battery to keep it within safe temperatures. Now, technically, they could probably disclaim coverage for that, but it seems unlikely if the battery management system does what it's supposed to do.

The $15k charge is a theoretical charge back-calculated from insurance settlements. It does not include any core rebate for returning the old drive train. Since no owner has owned the car for even the current 4 year warranty, we have no information on what Tesla would charge for a drive train replacement, swap or any other non-accident generated repair.

Tape is valuable when you want true off-line backup, that's not connected to a system or powered on at all. Yes, you can do cold backups on hard drives, but they're more likely to fail when restarted after 6 months or longer.

Even in the External Links section? How annoying. Were these general MUD Wikis, or ones specific to a single MUD?

The thing is, if you want, you can setup MUDWiki that has all of this data for all of the great MUDs going back into time. Once you have that site, you can add it as a prominent link on the Wikipedia MUD page. Wikipedia doesn't have to contain every piece of information itself.

The one thing I will note about rackmount servers is that they are all very noisy. For home installation, a desktop chassis will nearly always fit your needs and will be much quieter and more power-efficient than a rackmount. I recently replaced my home server with about $850 in parts from newegg. If you're interested in making a quiet desktop, take a look at SilentPCReview.

If you're set on a rackmount server, I've been very happy with Silicon Mechanics, but their cheapest machine is still ~$1000.