You can always ask. If you're the CEO, CIO, or other executive it might actually happen.
When I started working at one company they gave me a laptop that had been on a job in South America for months and was so loaded with porn popups that it was unusable. That was the only reason they gave me another one. Fortunately for me, the laptop started acting up in an obvious way right from the start.
Finally! I'll get some respect with this new paper when I get a paper cut! I can say: "Hey buddy, don't you know this paper is stronger than cast iron! I could have lost my whole finger!"
The second link states that 70% of suicide victims tell someone about their plans or give warning signs. This number is probably low since people who actually commit suicide are probably surrounded by people who don't want to admit that they saw the signs and did nothing about it. I would think it would be obvious to anyone that a person SERIOUSLY contemplating suicide will act in a noticeably different way from someone who wants to live as long as possible. I left out some of the recognized signs of a potential suicide but I think its clear that there are always signs.
Did any of your friends tell you that they had suicidal thoughts or show any of the signs? How many of your depressed friends or aquaintances actually committed suicide? Getting occasional thoughts of suicide or getting depressed occasionally is just part of life. It doesn't necessarily mean that they were close to committing suicide. It could just mean that they work in the IT field.
The point is that without leaving a suicide note or having confessed earlier to thoughts of suicide then it is LESS LIKELY that he actually committed suicide.
This is obviously an emotional issue for you and I'm sorry if you have lost someone to suicide. It can't be pleasant to think about the "what ifs" after the fact.
I agree completely. Without a suicide note or earlier confessions of suicidal thoughts it seems unlikely that the person did commit suicide. If he actually did commit suicide then it probably was triggered by something like anti-depressants which would make it murder in my opinion.
I know this is cynical to even say but if the police don't have a lot of free time then they're going to make a decision that will create less hassle for themselves. Which is more likely? That the family will get a lawyer or that the insurance company will.
I completely agree with you. I thought everyone could see that taking out an ARM, aka "suicide loan", that went to a ludicrous rate when it unlocked was going to be a BAD thing. It appears that unbridled greed trumps everything in this country. It also seems to me that people that lie end up lying to themselves and being gullible to lies from other people.
I still have plenty of disgust and disdain left for Microsoft. I don't care how many people Microsoft pays to write articles to try and deflect criticism. I'm not done yet so don't be in such a hurry to move on!!
Microsoft ranks up there with companies like Enron and Global Crossing on the old Revile-O-Meter. People may not like other corporations but Microsoft will still rank near the top of the most hated companies in history IMHO. Their greed and arrogance is almost palpable when you hear Steve Ballmer speak.
Scientists also thought, at one time, that there were only 4 elements: earth, wind, fire, and water. I wouldn't get too "uppity" if I were you until the theory could be reproduced in a lab. Believing someone without testing it for yourself means you either have faith in someone or something, which is religion, or you're just gullible.
I've used Safari for quite a while because it looked nicer and was relatively fast. Unfortunately, and maybe this is because I'm still running 10.3.9 (Panther), it crashed way too often in the last year. It seems like most of the news sites (Google, BBC, CNN, etc.) are Safari killers.
The new Firefox (2.0.0.12) seems just as fast now and is much more stable. It seems to work with all the sites I go to and has some great add-ons like NoScript and "Nuke Anything Enhanced". If this is the best Apple can do to make Safari shine I don't think anyone has much to worry about.
I wish more "slashdot-ters" would quit drinking the Cool-Aid and realize the EVERY publicly traded company is about making money and not much else.
Am I supposed to believe a document from an organization that is interested in promoting moving manufacturing to China or the fact that I can't find very many products with "Made in the USA" on them. The manufacturing organizations that I have visited employ mostly Hispanics that don't speak English very well. This leads me to believe that many of them are illegal immigrants that are subsidized by our federal government.
I don't believe the "increased efficiency" for a minute. What I have witnessed is an actual DECREASE in efficiency that has been made up for by using low-wage immigrants. If companies pay half as much for labor (including benefits) they are ahead of the game as long as the employee doesn't take more than twice as long.
IMHO, no one would post this article for any other reason than to whip the slashdot crowd into a frenzy. No one can verify the 40M number so it's not even useful information. Give it a rest!!!!
The world was able to feed itself very well using organic farming before it was called "organic". Your rant makes no sense since there is nothing intrinsically unscalable about organic farming as long as you have many small farms instead of a few very large farms. It's the large swaths of a single crop that lead to potentially dramatic losses and require the heavy use of pesticides.
If you knew anything about farming you would know that nitrate run-off is currently a serious problem and exists because of the mega-farms we have now. You haven't tried to explain what is wrong with organic farming or even added a link to some authoritative site that explains why organic farming is somehow quaint and not applicable to the real world
So what is really bothering you? Is it the fact that I may be right about the world not needing too many engineers?
Has someone you know had a bad experience with farming? Or are you just forgetting to take your medication?
As a software engineer myself, I've come to realize that much of the stuff I worked on was either redundant or not all that useful. The world only needs so many routers or MP3 players and it's starting to get tired of always upgrading and learning a new product.
People will always need food. The U.S.'s first mistake was believing that mega-farms could take the place of many, small farmers creating a quality product. If you want a challenging job that is in great demand then start growing organic produce. The demand is outstripping supply right now.
Adam and Eve lived in a garden and it was considered paradise. The human body wasn't designed to sit in a cubicle 8+ hours a day and will pay a heavy price for not getting more exercise. I can tell you that from experience. People need to get over their aversion to physical labor and start thinking about what the world, not just the U.S, needs.
I guess this is similar to why breast and penis enlargement ads are still popular. Hope springs eternal at the thought of a larger sex organ or unlimited, cheap electricity. I just wish I had known in college that researching fusion energy was a secure, long-term career choice.
What really bothers me is the fact that $12.8 billion dollars could easily buy over a billion watts worth of solar panels, which would produce close to 2/10's of a percent of the total US electricty requirement for over 25 years! On top of that, fusion still produces radioactive waste.
Stupid people are a problem for every job. If stupid people are the MAJOR problem with your job then you need to think about whether you're making reasonable demands on people.
MS Windows is marketed as an operating system that is usable by the average person. This is a lie!!!! An operating system is an incredibly complex bit of technology that most people learn to use by rote without understanding what is going on under the hood. This means that when an IT person makes, what they consider a minor change, it creates panic and angst in the average person. They don't see the underlying connections; they just know that their rote knowledge doesn't work anymore.
IMHO, this is why web applications, and a return to the "mainframe" mentality, is the future. Giving the average user a "Control Panel" is insane. Most users just wants to see a consistent interface and only have to learn the application ONCE. If they want more than that then they can take a lot of computer classes and leave the "digital illiteratti" behind.
"The intention to never get fooled leaves us open to being fooled quite often" - de la Rochefoucauld
Only people that are diligent and take pride in their work get stressed, which applies to most of the IT people that I've met. People that don't care don't get stressed.
Since managing a group of computers running Windows is a hopelessly impossible task to do perfectly, because it's a moving target, it creates great stress for those diligent people.
I would suggest that because the vast majority of IT people are managing MS Windows that the real culprit is Windows itself, and not IT intrinsically. Until IT people refuse to manage MS Windows they get what they deserve; a good salary and a lot of stress!
"You can make some of the people happy all of the time and you can make all of the people happy some of the time but nobody cares if the IT people are ever happy."
I'm afraid that most people will ALWAYS be disappointed in AI for several reasons. As the pace of society increases, people in general seem to take less time to think before asking their questions and usually get bad answers because of it. If the question is specific enough then it's the slurring of the speech, or the use of jargon, or a colloquialism, or background noise that throws off the listener.
If humans are the "gold standard" for understanding another person then AI can't do any better. A computer could make things worse by having access to TOO MUCH information. It would need to know more of the situational context before it could answer a question because of all the possible duplicate meanings that only a massive database would offer.
I would be happy with AI that was geared towards specific areas like medicine or art. That would narrow the context greatly and avoid annoying the user by not having to ask a bunch of contextual questions first.
"I'll admit that you're always right.... if you'll admit that I'm never wrong."
One of the big reasons people need to steal social security numbers (SSN) is to work in this country. The government actually likes the fact that illegals use hijacked SSNs and pay into services they can never use. If we actually made the system secure then it would be easier to keep illegal aliens from working in this country and congress can't have that.
Taking advantage of people to make more money is what big business is all about, whether it's Chinese serfs or illegal immigrants. It has always been that way and was why Communism and Socialism came into being in the first place.
If you are making money from people who are virtually slaves you are a Capitalist.
If you are making money from people who are actually happy to be at work then you are a Socialist.
If you aren't making very much money and no one is happy to be at work then you are a Communist.
I like the idea but I wouldn't start packing your space suit just yet. The problem I see is that companies, nowadays, won't pay to relocate you 100 miles, let alone 240,000 miles. They'll probably just do it in some third-world country where life is cheap. If there's an explosion the insurance companies will pay off the families and they'll write-off the whole endeavor (example: bhopal, India).
If you want rational, effective government, elect engineers rather than lawyers to Congress!
Just make sure your pay doesn't increase or you'll price yourself out of the market. Also, make sure you don't get old and slow down in any way or you'll be toast. And, of course, make sure you choose the politically correct technology rather than the best technology for the job or you'll be sidelined also.
People will often do good so they can do harm with impunity - Duc de la Rochefoucauld
Only the paranoid, diligent programmer stands a chance of writing "crash proof" code. The reason code crashes is because
some error checking is missing. If the "worst case" scenario is always handled then the program my quit functioning as expected but it won't crash.
The other major reason programs quit working, and possibly cause a crash if there isn't sufficient error checking, is because of memory leaks, which are due to poor architecture. There is no substitute for using a "formal" architecture, like state machines, to avoid unexpected code paths to be executed. The formal architecture will help a programmer determine to best point to allocate and free
up memory that will avoid memory leaks. Garbage collection is a great idea to help harried programmers get something out the door but it can't take the place of good architecture.
Heck yeah! If it weren't for war and pornography, we'd still be riding around in horse-drawn carriages and sending letters to each other. We all know that pornography is what drove the growth of the Internet so let's hear a big HURRAH! for war and pornography for making our life so much better.
We could also send equipment and know-how to repressive governments that treat their people like slaves so we can have cheap products. Or we could invade a country that had oil to help pay for our military and military contractors. Oh wait....we already did that.
I know!!! I know!!! Have you thought about killing people on welfare and social security to try and balance the national budget? We haven't done that yet!.............Unless, of course, there is more to the flooding in New Orleans than I know about.
Never underestimate the power of cognitive dissonance!
The fact that fact that computers are ubiquitous means that most people feel like they should know something about them. The problem is that computers are complicated and change fairly rapidly. I use to put PCs together many years ago but haven't kept up on the changes. When I put together a PC recently I was scratching my head for a while before I finally figured out what some of the new BIOS features meant or what a SATA cable looked like.
Only people who work in the industry are going to learn enough about computers to stand any chance of doing the right thing if an error that's not spelled out in the owner's manual takes place. It's like the people who aren't mechanical/automotive engineers that start tinkering with their car and usually learn the hard way what not to do. A computer is too complicated for the layman to do more than identify the major components and run their application. I'm happy when the person I'm talking to knows the difference between the monitor and the PC chassis. The people that are the most dangerous are the ones who THINK they know something because they read a book on computers once.
I think it's a complete waste of time to write a book about computers for the laymen since there are already plenty of books that
give the right amount of detail now. (Usborne Books)
Trying to get Grandma to understand what a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) is just an exercise in patience. As computers become more reliable and more consistent in their interfaces, there will be less and less demand for any understanding of what's going on inside the computer by the layman. Like a car or a microwave oven, as long as they work and we know how to get what we want out of them then we're happy.
If you want to write a book I would suggest writing about a specific application or about the social impact of computers. Something related to computers that doesn't make the user think he/she is ready to write a rootkit or hack a Linux kernel driver.
Nothing is given more liberally than advice - La Rochefoucauld
Everyone gets excited about some new technology until they have to pay for it. My guess is nobody is going to give a rip about a 15% efficiency increase when they find out how much it adds to the cost of the car. IMHO, the reason hybrid cars are popular is because people percieve them as being on the path to eliminating our dependence to gasoline, especially foreign oil. Adding a steam engine to your car doesn't come across as a radical step in that direction.
If most people were really interested in paying more upfront to reduce their dependence on oil and gas then every house would be built with heat-pumps instead of furnaces. Also, every house in a sunny climate would have solar panels on it. The problem is that many people prefer to think short-term and until gasoline is more than $6/gallon and natural gas is more than $3/therm, it's going to be more attractive to maintain our current energy habits.
You're
here because you know something. What you know, you can't explain. But you feel it. You've felt it your entire life. That there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is but it's there, like a splinter in your mind driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about? - from the Matrix
Slashdot Mirror
You can always ask. If you're the CEO, CIO, or other executive it might actually happen.
When I started working at one company they gave me a laptop that had been on a job in South America for months and was so loaded with porn popups that it was unusable. That was the only reason they gave me another one. Fortunately for me, the laptop started acting up in an obvious way right from the start.
Finally! I'll get some respect with this new paper when I get a paper cut! I can say: "Hey buddy, don't you know this paper is stronger than cast iron! I could have lost my whole finger!"
Here are some online references:
WebMDStop a Suicide
The second link states that 70% of suicide victims tell someone about their plans or give warning signs. This number is probably low since people who actually commit suicide are probably surrounded by people who don't want to admit that they saw the signs and did nothing about it. I would think it would be obvious to anyone that a person SERIOUSLY contemplating suicide will act in a noticeably different way from someone who wants to live as long as possible. I left out some of the recognized signs of a potential suicide but I think its clear that there are always signs.
Did any of your friends tell you that they had suicidal thoughts or show any of the signs? How many of your depressed friends or aquaintances actually committed suicide? Getting occasional thoughts of suicide or getting depressed occasionally is just part of life. It doesn't necessarily mean that they were close to committing suicide. It could just mean that they work in the IT field.
The point is that without leaving a suicide note or having confessed earlier to thoughts of suicide then it is LESS LIKELY that he actually committed suicide.
This is obviously an emotional issue for you and I'm sorry if you have lost someone to suicide. It can't be pleasant to think about the "what ifs" after the fact.
I agree completely. Without a suicide note or earlier confessions of suicidal thoughts it seems unlikely that the person did commit suicide. If he actually did commit suicide then it probably was triggered by something like anti-depressants which would make it murder in my opinion.
I know this is cynical to even say but if the police don't have a lot of free time then they're going to make a decision that will create less hassle for themselves. Which is more likely? That the family will get a lawyer or that the insurance company will.
I completely agree with you. I thought everyone could see that taking out an ARM, aka "suicide loan", that went to a ludicrous rate when it unlocked was going to be a BAD thing. It appears that unbridled greed trumps everything in this country. It also seems to me that people that lie end up lying to themselves and being gullible to lies from other people.
I still have plenty of disgust and disdain left for Microsoft. I don't care how many people Microsoft pays to write articles to try and deflect criticism. I'm not done yet so don't be in such a hurry to move on!!
Microsoft ranks up there with companies like Enron and Global Crossing on the old Revile-O-Meter. People may not like other corporations but Microsoft will still rank near the top of the most hated companies in history IMHO. Their greed and arrogance is almost palpable when you hear Steve Ballmer speak.
Scientists also thought, at one time, that there were only 4 elements: earth, wind, fire, and water. I wouldn't get too "uppity" if I were you until the theory could be reproduced in a lab. Believing someone without testing it for yourself means you either have faith in someone or something, which is religion, or you're just gullible.
I've used Safari for quite a while because it looked nicer and was relatively fast. Unfortunately, and maybe this is because I'm still running 10.3.9 (Panther), it crashed way too often in the last year. It seems like most of the news sites (Google, BBC, CNN, etc.) are Safari killers.
The new Firefox (2.0.0.12) seems just as fast now and is much more stable. It seems to work with all the sites I go to and has some great add-ons like NoScript and "Nuke Anything Enhanced". If this is the best Apple can do to make Safari shine I don't think anyone has much to worry about.
I wish more "slashdot-ters" would quit drinking the Cool-Aid and realize the EVERY publicly traded company is about making money and not much else.
Am I supposed to believe a document from an organization that is interested in promoting moving manufacturing to China or the fact that I can't find very many products with "Made in the USA" on them. The manufacturing organizations that I have visited employ mostly Hispanics that don't speak English very well. This leads me to believe that many of them are illegal immigrants that are subsidized by our federal government.
I don't believe the "increased efficiency" for a minute. What I have witnessed is an actual DECREASE in efficiency that has been made up for by using low-wage immigrants. If companies pay half as much for labor (including benefits) they are ahead of the game as long as the employee doesn't take more than twice as long.
I thought we were only talking about the West Coast and the East Coast. You didn't think we were talking about the Fly Over states did you?:)
You're the one who told me to get rid of the middle man! Will I be going to jail now?
IMHO, no one would post this article for any other reason than to whip the slashdot crowd into a frenzy. No one can verify the 40M number so it's not even useful information. Give it a rest!!!!
The world was able to feed itself very well using organic farming before it was called "organic". Your rant makes no sense since there is nothing intrinsically unscalable about organic farming as long as you have many small farms instead of a few very large farms. It's the large swaths of a single crop that lead to potentially dramatic losses and require the heavy use of pesticides.
If you knew anything about farming you would know that nitrate run-off is currently a serious problem and exists because of the mega-farms we have now. You haven't tried to explain what is wrong with organic farming or even added a link to some authoritative site that explains why organic farming is somehow quaint and not applicable to the real world
So what is really bothering you? Is it the fact that I may be right about the world not needing too many engineers? Has someone you know had a bad experience with farming? Or are you just forgetting to take your medication?
As a software engineer myself, I've come to realize that much of the stuff I worked on was either redundant or not all that useful. The world only needs so many routers or MP3 players and it's starting to get tired of always upgrading and learning a new product.
People will always need food. The U.S.'s first mistake was believing that mega-farms could take the place of many, small farmers creating a quality product. If you want a challenging job that is in great demand then start growing organic produce. The demand is outstripping supply right now.
Adam and Eve lived in a garden and it was considered paradise. The human body wasn't designed to sit in a cubicle 8+ hours a day and will pay a heavy price for not getting more exercise. I can tell you that from experience. People need to get over their aversion to physical labor and start thinking about what the world, not just the U.S, needs.
I guess this is similar to why breast and penis enlargement ads are still popular. Hope springs eternal at the thought of a larger sex organ or unlimited, cheap electricity. I just wish I had known in college that researching fusion energy was a secure, long-term career choice.
What really bothers me is the fact that $12.8 billion dollars could easily buy over a billion watts worth of solar panels, which would produce close to 2/10's of a percent of the total US electricty requirement for over 25 years! On top of that, fusion still produces radioactive waste.
Stupid people are a problem for every job. If stupid people are the MAJOR problem with your job then you need to think about whether you're making reasonable demands on people.
MS Windows is marketed as an operating system that is usable by the average person. This is a lie!!!! An operating system is an incredibly complex bit of technology that most people learn to use by rote without understanding what is going on under the hood. This means that when an IT person makes, what they consider a minor change, it creates panic and angst in the average person. They don't see the underlying connections; they just know that their rote knowledge doesn't work anymore.
IMHO, this is why web applications, and a return to the "mainframe" mentality, is the future. Giving the average user a "Control Panel" is insane. Most users just wants to see a consistent interface and only have to learn the application ONCE. If they want more than that then they can take a lot of computer classes and leave the "digital illiteratti" behind.
"The intention to never get fooled leaves us open to being fooled quite often" - de la RochefoucauldOnly people that are diligent and take pride in their work get stressed, which applies to most of the IT people that I've met. People that don't care don't get stressed.
Since managing a group of computers running Windows is a hopelessly impossible task to do perfectly, because it's a moving target, it creates great stress for those diligent people.
I would suggest that because the vast majority of IT people are managing MS Windows that the real culprit is Windows itself, and not IT intrinsically. Until IT people refuse to manage MS Windows they get what they deserve; a good salary and a lot of stress!
I'm afraid that most people will ALWAYS be disappointed in AI for several reasons. As the pace of society increases, people in general seem to take less time to think before asking their questions and usually get bad answers because of it. If the question is specific enough then it's the slurring of the speech, or the use of jargon, or a colloquialism, or background noise that throws off the listener.
If humans are the "gold standard" for understanding another person then AI can't do any better. A computer could make things worse by having access to TOO MUCH information. It would need to know more of the situational context before it could answer a question because of all the possible duplicate meanings that only a massive database would offer.
I would be happy with AI that was geared towards specific areas like medicine or art. That would narrow the context greatly and avoid annoying the user by not having to ask a bunch of contextual questions first.
One of the big reasons people need to steal social security numbers (SSN) is to work in this country. The government actually likes the fact that illegals use hijacked SSNs and pay into services they can never use. If we actually made the system secure then it would be easier to keep illegal aliens from working in this country and congress can't have that.
Taking advantage of people to make more money is what big business is all about, whether it's Chinese serfs or illegal immigrants. It has always been that way and was why Communism and Socialism came into being in the first place.
If you are making money from people who are virtually slaves you are a Capitalist.
If you are making money from people who are actually happy to be at work then you are a Socialist.
If you aren't making very much money and no one is happy to be at work then you are a Communist.
I hope that cleared things up for everyone
I like the idea but I wouldn't start packing your space suit just yet. The problem I see is that companies, nowadays, won't pay to relocate you 100 miles, let alone 240,000 miles. They'll probably just do it in some third-world country where life is cheap. If there's an explosion the insurance companies will pay off the families and they'll write-off the whole endeavor (example: bhopal, India).
You're also absolutely correct.
Just make sure your pay doesn't increase or you'll price yourself out of the market. Also, make sure you don't get old and slow down in any way or you'll be toast. And, of course, make sure you choose the politically correct technology rather than the best technology for the job or you'll be sidelined also.
People will often do good so they can do harm with impunity - Duc de la Rochefoucauld
Only the paranoid, diligent programmer stands a chance of writing "crash proof" code. The reason code crashes is because some error checking is missing. If the "worst case" scenario is always handled then the program my quit functioning as expected but it won't crash.
The other major reason programs quit working, and possibly cause a crash if there isn't sufficient error checking, is because of memory leaks, which are due to poor architecture. There is no substitute for using a "formal" architecture, like state machines, to avoid unexpected code paths to be executed. The formal architecture will help a programmer determine to best point to allocate and free up memory that will avoid memory leaks. Garbage collection is a great idea to help harried programmers get something out the door but it can't take the place of good architecture.
Heck yeah! If it weren't for war and pornography, we'd still be riding around in horse-drawn carriages and sending letters to each other. We all know that pornography is what drove the growth of the Internet so let's hear a big HURRAH! for war and pornography for making our life so much better.
We could also send equipment and know-how to repressive governments that treat their people like slaves so we can have cheap products. Or we could invade a country that had oil to help pay for our military and military contractors. Oh wait....we already did that.
I know!!! I know!!! Have you thought about killing people on welfare and social security to try and balance the national budget? We haven't done that yet! .............Unless, of course, there is more to the flooding in New Orleans than I know about.
The fact that fact that computers are ubiquitous means that most people feel like they should know something about them. The problem is that computers are complicated and change fairly rapidly. I use to put PCs together many years ago but haven't kept up on the changes. When I put together a PC recently I was scratching my head for a while before I finally figured out what some of the new BIOS features meant or what a SATA cable looked like.
Only people who work in the industry are going to learn enough about computers to stand any chance of doing the right thing if an error that's not spelled out in the owner's manual takes place. It's like the people who aren't mechanical/automotive engineers that start tinkering with their car and usually learn the hard way what not to do. A computer is too complicated for the layman to do more than identify the major components and run their application. I'm happy when the person I'm talking to knows the difference between the monitor and the PC chassis. The people that are the most dangerous are the ones who THINK they know something because they read a book on computers once.
I think it's a complete waste of time to write a book about computers for the laymen since there are already plenty of books that give the right amount of detail now. (Usborne Books) Trying to get Grandma to understand what a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) is just an exercise in patience. As computers become more reliable and more consistent in their interfaces, there will be less and less demand for any understanding of what's going on inside the computer by the layman. Like a car or a microwave oven, as long as they work and we know how to get what we want out of them then we're happy.
If you want to write a book I would suggest writing about a specific application or about the social impact of computers. Something related to computers that doesn't make the user think he/she is ready to write a rootkit or hack a Linux kernel driver.
Everyone gets excited about some new technology until they have to pay for it. My guess is nobody is going to give a rip about a 15% efficiency increase when they find out how much it adds to the cost of the car. IMHO, the reason hybrid cars are popular is because people percieve them as being on the path to eliminating our dependence to gasoline, especially foreign oil. Adding a steam engine to your car doesn't come across as a radical step in that direction.
If most people were really interested in paying more upfront to reduce their dependence on oil and gas then every house would be built with heat-pumps instead of furnaces. Also, every house in a sunny climate would have solar panels on it. The problem is that many people prefer to think short-term and until gasoline is more than $6/gallon and natural gas is more than $3/therm, it's going to be more attractive to maintain our current energy habits.