Well, another thing to consider is that around here, if you turn in a older, working fridge, the power company will give you $50 and haul it away for you. They define "working" as good enough to make ice, by the way. Might be enough to consider trying to rig it up to run again even if you decide to replace it.
My fridge would qualify (it's 20 years old) for the rebate, so I put a Kill-a-watt on my fridge to see how much power it draws compared to a new fridge, to see if it might be worth it. I found comparing its actual power usage to the claimed power usage on a new fridge, I would save about $40 a year. Now, $40 a year is still $40, but even with the $50 rebate I would be talking about something like a 10 year payback should I replace it with something equivalent. Considering that the prevailing opinion is that appliances all went to crap sometime in the late 90's/early 2000's, and the fridge I have is a GE model that's considered pretty robust, I figure I'm better off just keeping the fridge I have.
No, older cars are definitely easier to work on. They were dead simple, easy to understand, generally don't require special tools, and generally were built to be serviced with plenty of room to work and anything that might need to be replaced was easily accessible. Anyone with some mechanical know-how and basic electronics can keep one going. The downside of course is that these cars generally needed constant tinkering to keep them running at top shape.
Newer cars don't require the constant tinkering. Turn the key and go. My bicycle requires more fiddling than my car, despite the car being incredibly more complex than a bike (and the car is 16 years old!). But when something breaks, newer cars are much harder to fix. I'm already finding it's getting a bit hard to find some parts for my car (it was not a terribly popular model when it came out). At some point something will go wrong and I may not be able to get the parts to fix it, or be able to get the parts in a reasonable time. It's hard to say exactly when that will happen. It could be 10 years or more away. But at some point it will be the case.
The last computer I remember seeing without a built-in NIC is a very early (Socket 423) Pentium 4 system from HP c. 2001 or so. The last one without a sound card was actually pretty recent. A whitebox dual CPU workstation built with what is essentially a server board which had no sound (well, most likely the chipset had built in sound but there were no ports on the board and it was disabled in firmware).
I have seen many examples where the guy who says "I have a job offer, match it or I am leaving" every two years advances by leaps compared to his peers that didn't.
I can't really see that working well. Sure, they may match it, but after that they'll do their best to make sure that they can get rid of you on their terms, and when that happens you won't have the other offer in your back pocket. In that situation you're best off just taking the other offer and splitting ways. Or not telling them about the offer and just making your demands, and if they aren't met then giving your notice.
On the other hand, what does seem to work well is leaving for 1-2 years then coming back to the same place, often for a significant pay bump.
Winamp is a big one. While there are a few clones for Linux, I've yet to see one that can also do video like Winamp does. Winamp is my favorite video player because you get the exact same playlist editor for video files as you do for audio files, and that video window is separate from the rest of the program which is great for dual monitors. The only other program that's close is Zoom player, and that's also Windows-only too.
I know that both Qmmp and Xmms have a plugin architecture. One of these days I need to see if it's possible to make a plug in which would hand off video files to mplayer to play them back in a second windom.
The first episodes with the Ferengi in TNG were so completely ridiculous and over the top that the show never really took them seriously after that. Supposedly the Ferengi were supposed to be the reoccurring villains in TNG but ended up being more like comic relief. They were taken much more seriously in DS9.
People don't complain because they think the rates are helping them because their mortgage is financed at some absurdly low rate. But in reality all that money chasing after the supply of homes has driven the cost of them up. Ditto for education, which is even more ridiculous.
The only thing more predictable than someone saying "I don't watch TV" is that someone will then reply by dragging out that Onion article. Again. It's old, it's tired, and no, I don't need to read it again.
That's the problem. They'd rather have one person working 60 hours a week than two people working 30 hours each as the latter causes more overhead. That, and they only pay the first person for 40 anyway.
Plus, he was a shit manager. He'd yell, backstab, kiss up, hoard knowledge, not answer questions, not return email, and generally do anything he could to protect himself (usually at the expense of his reports). I heard through the grapevine that they'd been trying to fire him for more than a year but couldn't make anything stick, or get enough information out of him to sanely replace him.
Sounds like they just need to grow a pair and fire him. I've seen this kind of situation, and while getting rid of someone who has managed to hoard a lot of institution knowledge will hurt, the only thing worse is letting them stay on so they can continue to dig themselves in deeper and continue with driving away the employees they need to keep. Unfortunately it seems management often just won't do what needs to be done.
I like to think of it in terms of how much they would have to pay someone to fill my position should I leave. If it's more, then I'm underpaid. Even if it's the same, I may still be underpaid as otherwise my years and experience with the company are being valued at $0.
Another way to look at it is if I resign and they try to counter, then I am definitely being underpaid.
Well, the obvious solution is to stick to the paths intended for the golf carts in the golf course. Assuming the people who laid it out the course aren't idiots, the slopes on the paths are not going to be steep enough to roll a golf cart.
I'm sure the problem is that they were out there hooning the carts, and yes, if you're being stupid it's pretty easy to tip one.
Around here, you're not supposed to enter an intersection unless you can also clear it. That means that if traffic is stopped on the other side of the intersection, you stop and wait on your side until there's enough room for you to clear it. That also means for the left turn yield on green situation, you wait until it's clear before you make your turn, though myself and almost everyone will creep into the intersection and wait if it looks like there's going to be a break in the oncoming traffic. Though the people who enter the intersection, then make their turn when the oncoming traffic stops for the red light can be ticketed. As long as you follow the first rule in the sense that you only enter the intersection if you can clear it, you're okay if the light turns red while you're in the intersections so long as it wasn't red when you entered it.
The problem I have is that many human drivers seem to think of bicyclists as pedestrians, and assume that they pretty much always have right away like pedestrians do. It becomes tricky with the biking trails around here, as bicyclists are supposed to stop and wait at road crossings (the trail has a stop sign and a sign warning that cross traffic does not stop). But about 90% of cars will treat the crossing as a crosswalk and yield to the bikes. Which creates potentially dangerous situations for the 10% of cars that do what is actually the right thing and not stop.
However, I've also found that when I'm on the road, following the rules and acting like a car, people generally treat me like a car. I've had very little trouble at 4 way stops as long as I'm in a lane, stop and wait my turn, and signal if I'm going left or right.
Around here, they just need to stop. If he can come to a complete stop without putting his foot down then he's okay. The little dance he did though likely would not count as a full stop.
It's common in purely residential neighborhoods around here in the suburbs that normally receive very light traffic (usually because the neighborhoods purposely only connect to one road so there's no through traffic). Typically the rule seems to be that people on the main road have right of way over the people entering from the side roads, most of which are dead ends or finger streets.
The problem is even if production of manually driven cars stopped tomorrow, through normal attrition even in 20 years you'd probably still have 10% of the cars being manually driven, which would be enough that the computer driven cars will encounter them constantly. And you'd probably never truly get rid of them, just as you still have horses and buggies on the road too (which is something else autonomous cars will have to deal with, even if they are somewhat rare to encounter).
Both cards have the same environmental cost to produce but can have very different sale prices. However, that means the environmental cost is best represented by the cost of the _cheapest_ version. So maybe the aforementioned $500 upgrade really costs $50 to produce and thus has a positive environmental impact.
I wouldn't count on that. The $50 card may have cost $100 to produce. It was going to be a $250 card, but when it failed to meet the high-level specs they crippled it and sold it at lower-level specs $50, as to only take a $50 loss on it rather than a $100 loss if they had just scrapped it.
The good craftsmen will likely do things so that the bad cuts won't be visible on the finished project as much as possible, should he/she be forced to use a $100 tile saw.
But really, the good craftsmen is not going to blame his tools because they are his tools and he carefully picked them out. One of things that makes him a good craftsmen is that he knows what tools to use for the job and what to avoid. The apprentice may not have that experience, and won't get the same results.
It's kind of too bad that doesn't exist anymore. If you want to have it so the user double clicks on a file in Windows Explorer and have the file open in an already existing instance of your application, this can be somewhat tricky. Windows file associations work by launching your program with the file name as a command line argument, so it will just keep launching instances of your application. So to get around this, when your application starts, it must somehow figure if there is already an existing instance, and if one exists, pass the command line arguments to the first instance to open the file, then the duplicate instance can exit. This is actually non-trivial, and one of the common solutions is to use DDE, which is basically unchanged since Windows 3.1.
Yes, it's true. It took Apple all the way to OSX to have what Microsoft had in 1995 with Windows 95, and in 1993 with NT. Apple spent the entire 1990's with an OS that wasn't any more advanced than Windows 3.1 in many ways.
The Windows 10 start menu is terrible. It's basically the Windows 8 start screen shrunk down so it doesn't take up the full screen. However, you still got the big tiles and a long list of programs you can't organize that you have to scroll through. It's a bit easier to use once you maximize it, which puts you right back where we were with Windows 8...
I actually like Vista's UI as I never have really cared for most the stuff they added in Windows 7, and missed some of the stuff they removed.
I got the impression that XP was intended to be the merge point and 98SE was supposed to be the end of the line. But it ended up being late, so they backported a bunch of the features that were going to be into XP like system restore into the old DOS line and called it ME. That's one of the reasons why ME was kinda problematic.
The other reason was probably hardware. The DOS-based OS's were a lot lighter on the requirements, and the inexpensive computers sold in the late 90's just weren't going to be up to running NT well. Even a lot of the computers sold with XP when it came out really weren't powerful enough to give a good experience.
Around here we have a similar thing that turns off A/C compressors. It's pretty popular because the discount for your bill is significant if you opt to let the power company remotely shut off your air conditioning. I haven't heard of that for water heaters, but around here almost everyone has a gas water heater.
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Well, another thing to consider is that around here, if you turn in a older, working fridge, the power company will give you $50 and haul it away for you. They define "working" as good enough to make ice, by the way. Might be enough to consider trying to rig it up to run again even if you decide to replace it.
My fridge would qualify (it's 20 years old) for the rebate, so I put a Kill-a-watt on my fridge to see how much power it draws compared to a new fridge, to see if it might be worth it. I found comparing its actual power usage to the claimed power usage on a new fridge, I would save about $40 a year. Now, $40 a year is still $40, but even with the $50 rebate I would be talking about something like a 10 year payback should I replace it with something equivalent. Considering that the prevailing opinion is that appliances all went to crap sometime in the late 90's/early 2000's, and the fridge I have is a GE model that's considered pretty robust, I figure I'm better off just keeping the fridge I have.
No, older cars are definitely easier to work on. They were dead simple, easy to understand, generally don't require special tools, and generally were built to be serviced with plenty of room to work and anything that might need to be replaced was easily accessible. Anyone with some mechanical know-how and basic electronics can keep one going. The downside of course is that these cars generally needed constant tinkering to keep them running at top shape.
Newer cars don't require the constant tinkering. Turn the key and go. My bicycle requires more fiddling than my car, despite the car being incredibly more complex than a bike (and the car is 16 years old!). But when something breaks, newer cars are much harder to fix. I'm already finding it's getting a bit hard to find some parts for my car (it was not a terribly popular model when it came out). At some point something will go wrong and I may not be able to get the parts to fix it, or be able to get the parts in a reasonable time. It's hard to say exactly when that will happen. It could be 10 years or more away. But at some point it will be the case.
The last computer I remember seeing without a built-in NIC is a very early (Socket 423) Pentium 4 system from HP c. 2001 or so. The last one without a sound card was actually pretty recent. A whitebox dual CPU workstation built with what is essentially a server board which had no sound (well, most likely the chipset had built in sound but there were no ports on the board and it was disabled in firmware).
I can't really see that working well. Sure, they may match it, but after that they'll do their best to make sure that they can get rid of you on their terms, and when that happens you won't have the other offer in your back pocket. In that situation you're best off just taking the other offer and splitting ways. Or not telling them about the offer and just making your demands, and if they aren't met then giving your notice.
On the other hand, what does seem to work well is leaving for 1-2 years then coming back to the same place, often for a significant pay bump.
Winamp is a big one. While there are a few clones for Linux, I've yet to see one that can also do video like Winamp does. Winamp is my favorite video player because you get the exact same playlist editor for video files as you do for audio files, and that video window is separate from the rest of the program which is great for dual monitors. The only other program that's close is Zoom player, and that's also Windows-only too.
I know that both Qmmp and Xmms have a plugin architecture. One of these days I need to see if it's possible to make a plug in which would hand off video files to mplayer to play them back in a second windom.
The first episodes with the Ferengi in TNG were so completely ridiculous and over the top that the show never really took them seriously after that. Supposedly the Ferengi were supposed to be the reoccurring villains in TNG but ended up being more like comic relief. They were taken much more seriously in DS9.
People don't complain because they think the rates are helping them because their mortgage is financed at some absurdly low rate. But in reality all that money chasing after the supply of homes has driven the cost of them up. Ditto for education, which is even more ridiculous.
The only thing more predictable than someone saying "I don't watch TV" is that someone will then reply by dragging out that Onion article. Again. It's old, it's tired, and no, I don't need to read it again.
That's the problem. They'd rather have one person working 60 hours a week than two people working 30 hours each as the latter causes more overhead. That, and they only pay the first person for 40 anyway.
Sounds like they just need to grow a pair and fire him. I've seen this kind of situation, and while getting rid of someone who has managed to hoard a lot of institution knowledge will hurt, the only thing worse is letting them stay on so they can continue to dig themselves in deeper and continue with driving away the employees they need to keep. Unfortunately it seems management often just won't do what needs to be done.
I like to think of it in terms of how much they would have to pay someone to fill my position should I leave. If it's more, then I'm underpaid. Even if it's the same, I may still be underpaid as otherwise my years and experience with the company are being valued at $0.
Another way to look at it is if I resign and they try to counter, then I am definitely being underpaid.
Well, the obvious solution is to stick to the paths intended for the golf carts in the golf course. Assuming the people who laid it out the course aren't idiots, the slopes on the paths are not going to be steep enough to roll a golf cart.
I'm sure the problem is that they were out there hooning the carts, and yes, if you're being stupid it's pretty easy to tip one.
Most likely they'd put a switch on the dash to turn on "speed mode" or something, then deny all responsibility should you flip it.
Around here, you're not supposed to enter an intersection unless you can also clear it. That means that if traffic is stopped on the other side of the intersection, you stop and wait on your side until there's enough room for you to clear it. That also means for the left turn yield on green situation, you wait until it's clear before you make your turn, though myself and almost everyone will creep into the intersection and wait if it looks like there's going to be a break in the oncoming traffic. Though the people who enter the intersection, then make their turn when the oncoming traffic stops for the red light can be ticketed. As long as you follow the first rule in the sense that you only enter the intersection if you can clear it, you're okay if the light turns red while you're in the intersections so long as it wasn't red when you entered it.
The problem I have is that many human drivers seem to think of bicyclists as pedestrians, and assume that they pretty much always have right away like pedestrians do. It becomes tricky with the biking trails around here, as bicyclists are supposed to stop and wait at road crossings (the trail has a stop sign and a sign warning that cross traffic does not stop). But about 90% of cars will treat the crossing as a crosswalk and yield to the bikes. Which creates potentially dangerous situations for the 10% of cars that do what is actually the right thing and not stop.
However, I've also found that when I'm on the road, following the rules and acting like a car, people generally treat me like a car. I've had very little trouble at 4 way stops as long as I'm in a lane, stop and wait my turn, and signal if I'm going left or right.
Around here, they just need to stop. If he can come to a complete stop without putting his foot down then he's okay. The little dance he did though likely would not count as a full stop.
It's common in purely residential neighborhoods around here in the suburbs that normally receive very light traffic (usually because the neighborhoods purposely only connect to one road so there's no through traffic). Typically the rule seems to be that people on the main road have right of way over the people entering from the side roads, most of which are dead ends or finger streets.
The problem is even if production of manually driven cars stopped tomorrow, through normal attrition even in 20 years you'd probably still have 10% of the cars being manually driven, which would be enough that the computer driven cars will encounter them constantly. And you'd probably never truly get rid of them, just as you still have horses and buggies on the road too (which is something else autonomous cars will have to deal with, even if they are somewhat rare to encounter).
I wouldn't count on that. The $50 card may have cost $100 to produce. It was going to be a $250 card, but when it failed to meet the high-level specs they crippled it and sold it at lower-level specs $50, as to only take a $50 loss on it rather than a $100 loss if they had just scrapped it.
The good craftsmen will likely do things so that the bad cuts won't be visible on the finished project as much as possible, should he/she be forced to use a $100 tile saw.
But really, the good craftsmen is not going to blame his tools because they are his tools and he carefully picked them out. One of things that makes him a good craftsmen is that he knows what tools to use for the job and what to avoid. The apprentice may not have that experience, and won't get the same results.
It's kind of too bad that doesn't exist anymore. If you want to have it so the user double clicks on a file in Windows Explorer and have the file open in an already existing instance of your application, this can be somewhat tricky. Windows file associations work by launching your program with the file name as a command line argument, so it will just keep launching instances of your application. So to get around this, when your application starts, it must somehow figure if there is already an existing instance, and if one exists, pass the command line arguments to the first instance to open the file, then the duplicate instance can exit. This is actually non-trivial, and one of the common solutions is to use DDE, which is basically unchanged since Windows 3.1.
Yes, it's true. It took Apple all the way to OSX to have what Microsoft had in 1995 with Windows 95, and in 1993 with NT. Apple spent the entire 1990's with an OS that wasn't any more advanced than Windows 3.1 in many ways.
The Windows 10 start menu is terrible. It's basically the Windows 8 start screen shrunk down so it doesn't take up the full screen. However, you still got the big tiles and a long list of programs you can't organize that you have to scroll through. It's a bit easier to use once you maximize it, which puts you right back where we were with Windows 8...
I actually like Vista's UI as I never have really cared for most the stuff they added in Windows 7, and missed some of the stuff they removed.
I got the impression that XP was intended to be the merge point and 98SE was supposed to be the end of the line. But it ended up being late, so they backported a bunch of the features that were going to be into XP like system restore into the old DOS line and called it ME. That's one of the reasons why ME was kinda problematic.
The other reason was probably hardware. The DOS-based OS's were a lot lighter on the requirements, and the inexpensive computers sold in the late 90's just weren't going to be up to running NT well. Even a lot of the computers sold with XP when it came out really weren't powerful enough to give a good experience.
Around here we have a similar thing that turns off A/C compressors. It's pretty popular because the discount for your bill is significant if you opt to let the power company remotely shut off your air conditioning. I haven't heard of that for water heaters, but around here almost everyone has a gas water heater.