Bank of America, and probably others, use something they call SafePass as the equivalent of a CAPTCHA: they send a text message to your cell phone which you have to type back into a web page.
In the end, how strong a CAPTCHA system you use comes down to who feels the pain. A few spam emails sent by our system? Small price to pay to sign up new users for our [email|blog|whatever] service. An unauthorized transfer of $any_amount that we'll have to cover? Clamp down hard.
Lots of people don't seem to realize how much the cost of electricity varies from state to state in the U.S. Here in Massachusetts, I'm paying nearly 20 cents a kilowatthour. You can see the differences by state in this table. This doesn't even account for regional differences: the town of Wellesley has their own power plant and a supply deal, and their residents pay half what neighboring towns pay. So if you're reading this in Idaho and wondering what the fuss is about, imagine your electric bill three times higher!
And as others have pointed out, it's lighting and HVAC that make all the difference. Think of it this way: at my 20 cents, a 100-watt bulb on for ten hours a day costs about $6 a month. That's one bulb. In a big house, you might have 75 or more bulbs. And that's just for lighting. Switch to compact flourescent; I even like the light quality better now.
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Bank of America, and probably others, use something they call SafePass as the equivalent of a CAPTCHA: they send a text message to your cell phone which you have to type back into a web page.
In the end, how strong a CAPTCHA system you use comes down to who feels the pain. A few spam emails sent by our system? Small price to pay to sign up new users for our [email|blog|whatever] service. An unauthorized transfer of $any_amount that we'll have to cover? Clamp down hard.
And as others have pointed out, it's lighting and HVAC that make all the difference. Think of it this way: at my 20 cents, a 100-watt bulb on for ten hours a day costs about $6 a month. That's one bulb. In a big house, you might have 75 or more bulbs. And that's just for lighting. Switch to compact flourescent; I even like the light quality better now.