On that note, I think it would be good to say goodbyes to Windows Vista too. Windows 7 and 8 are truly better and the only OS we currently need, on top of Mac OS X. That trio is something beautiful and hard for anyone to break.
Yes, let's all celebrate a duopoly of walled gardens. That'll be grand.
I don't have/use the Windows 8 or the latest Mac OS, do Microsoft and Apple have an application approval requirement now, a la iOS? That would certainly keep businesses that rely on home-grown software away.
First off, I couldn't agree with you more on just about every point you make.
I got a notification from both eBay a while back, and PayPal twelve days ago by email, so you might check what email your account(s) use and their associated spam buckets. And as you say, email seems to be an acceptable channel for this sort of communication, but apparently only one way. Ironic in the traditional sense, yes. I could rant all day about this, but I think everything that can be said has been by now.
Perhaps, you didn't get the notice because for reasons you've stated the change may not be enforceable in your country (NB, this is a wild-ass guess on my part). A US Supreme Court ruling last year cleared the way for this sort of crap here. If you're curious, here's the text of the PayPal email I received:
Notice of Policy Updates
Dear So-and-So
PayPal recently posted a new Policy Update which includes changes to the PayPal User Agreement. The update to the User Agreement is effective November 1, 2012 and contains several changes, including changes that affect how claims you and PayPal have against each other are resolved. You will, with limited exception, be required to submit claims you have against PayPal to binding and final arbitration, unless you opt out of the Agreement to Arbitrate (Section 14.3) by December 1, 2012. Unless you opt out: (1) you will only be permitted to pursue claims against PayPal on an individual basis, not as a plaintiff or class member in any class or representative action or proceeding and (2) you will only be permitted to seek relief (including monetary, injunctive, and declaratory relief) on an individual basis.
You can view this Policy Update by logging in to your PayPal account. To log in to your account, go to https://www.paypal.com/ and enter your member log in information. Once you are logged in, look at the Notifications section on the top right side of the page for the latest Policy Updates. We encourage you to review the Policy Update to familiarize yourself with all of the changes that have been made.
If you need help logging in, go to our Help Center by clicking the Help link located in the upper right-hand corner of any PayPal page.
The Consumerist has links to template letters for eBay (by November 9) and PayPal (by Dec. 1). You need to fill out, print and mail them by the deadline to opt out. That's physical, actual paper, snail mail. No online forms, no emails, no calls.
When you force my son to take subjects which which he doesn’t connect, you are not allowing them that same time to take a public speaking course, which he could be really good at, or music, or political science, or creative writing, or HTML coding for websites.
Turns out the whole argument is rather weakened by the editor's note stating that chemistry isn't specifically required, just a certain amount of science of which chem is one option.
I still find it hard to believe that there are so few elective hours available that the kid couldn't fulfill the science requirement and take music, political science, creative writing or programming. Maybe I'm really old and things are much different now, but I didn't miss out on the electives I wanted to take just because I took chemistry and physics. There was still time for band, foreign language, a political science course (required) and even programming.
But my son is not being exposed to chemistry, he’s spending a year of his life studying chemistry every day, which translates into a year of misery for him and our entire family, and paying for tutors who just get him through the course.
I think this is the real complaint: "The kid doesn't like chemistry and might not get an A. Therefore, he shouldn't have to take it."
Yeah, but there's a difference between short range wireless (several cm) and long range (10's of metres) that makes a huge difference to the possible attach vectors.
But since the attacker isn't worried about getting his hacked programming device approved, he's free to boost the amplifier and/or antenna gain on his end, or any other tweak he can come up with to increase the effective range.
Well someone needs to get these lackwits into the current millennium and tell them about these amazing fucking "computers" these days that can do all that automatically.
A doctor, lawyer and and engineer were condemned to death by guillotine.
The executioner put the doctor in the head mount and asked, "Do you have any last words?" The doctor answered, "Viva la France!" The executioner pulled the lever and the blade dropped. But it stopped one inch over his head. The executioner said, "Under the law I must set you free if the guillotine fails to function." So he set him free.
Then he put in the lawyer and asked, "Do you have any last words?" The lawyer answered, "Viva la France!" The executioner pulled the lever and the blade dropped. But it stopped again, one inch over the lawyer's head. The executioner said, "This is unprecidented, but under the law I must set you free if the guillotine fails to function." So he set him free as well.
Then finally he put in the engineer and cautiously asked, "Do you have any last words?" The engineer looked and said, "Stop! Wait! I think I see what is wrong!"
Jimmy, come in, we haven't seen you on our records lately, why yes Mr Tegan did say you were in his 5th form class, but we don't see you. We'll have to refer you to the police regarding truancy. Now I don't like this, but if you just wore this new ID badge, we don't need to get the police involved..."
Jimmy (Who comes from a non-PBS watching household): "My fifth what?"
Seriously, a cable box for my Mom? That's gonna work. Until she tries to change channels for the first time. Because talking her through getting her "screen" back on the computer wasn't fun enough, I get a family tech-support call for TV now every time the box and/or TV get screwed up? And I doubt I'm the only guy here with an elderly relative that couldn't work a cable box remote to save their life.
they should do their own censoring and leave the rest of the world's internets alone . ..
Exactly. Since that which threatens "public order" varies so widely by culture and country, attempting to find a global solution is pointless. As messy and difficult as it can be, censoring that which is perceived to be dangerous to a particular government is that particular government's problem, not everyone else's.
So instead of doing the capitalistic thing and gouging with insanely high prices, the shops instead started rationing drives for a sane price so everyone could get a little bit of the very limited supply.
That was actually a really good thing to do. Instead of profiteering, they tried to make the best of a bad situation for everyone.
Then a bunch of dicks like this figure that they're more important than everyone else and that they should be able to get more than enyone else.
Selfish bastards. Nothing but scum.
After reading this I will not be giving them my money.
The hard drive sellers weren't doing this altruistically. They made their call, figuring that rationing drives was the best for their businesses and best fulfilled their duty to their shareholders.
The cloud storage company also did what they thought best benefited their business and fulfilled their duty to shareholders/backers/etc.
It does not benefit us as individuals to assign a moral motive to the actions of a company. Whatever they do, it's for a business purpose. If it seems like one company is the good guy, it's just that that's what they think will help them return value to the owners. We must realize that they are all "selfish bastards" by the very nature of the capitalist system and not be fooled into personifying them.
What I've written in no way implies that you can't spend your money wherever you want -- or withhold it -- based on anything you want to base it on. If you find a business' actions to be detrimental to society or just contrary to your ideals, you can certainly boycott them. In fact, I think you should boycott if you feel as strongly as you appear to. In this way -- if you're not alone -- those actions on the part of the company may turn out not to benefit the shareholders and therefore force them to change.
You could also pursue a legislative approach, maybe convince your representatives that legal rationing is in the public interest. The US rationed commodities during wartime before, perhaps you can appeal that adequate storage space for all is sufficiently important for legal intervention.
The guy who's being brought to trial seems to have imported enough textbooks to earn $1.2 million. That means this isn't really a case about reselling your car, but about whether private citizens can buy a bunch of stuff abroad and re-sell it here for profit because it's cheaper abroad.
It sounds like the guy's real crime was not being a big corporation.
The case is regarding items manufacturered in foreign countries and intended for sale in those countries. NOT items manufactured in foreign countries intended for sale in the United States. At issue is having someone buy things cheaper overseas and resell them cheaper here in the US than the manufacturers intended US price.
That's still horrible - but not nearly as bad as the article summary would have you believe.
The set of employees that has come in to work extra hours is almost surely more "willing to work extra hours when necessary" than the set of employees who have never worked extra hours (including, potentially, because they've never needed to.) On the other hand, the "extra hours" probably also contains a higher percentage of "people who can't budget their time well enough to finish things within the time planned." As a manager I'd certainly count overall productivity as one of my main concerns, but I might value an employee with lower "average" productivity but who is better able to accommodate spikes than the employee whose average productivity is higher but who is unwilling to make any personal sacrifice during extenuating circumstances. And that seems perfectly reasonable.
Have you noticed that the "extenuating circumstances" seem happen more frequently the more "people who can't budget their time well enough to finish things within the time period" are on the case? Is it possible that the "no personal sacrifice" folks feel that way because they don't want to pick up the slack left by the highly-valued-but-can't-budget people?
That doesn't even make any sense. I mean, none. Unless you mean the manager isn't part of the team, in which case I'm not surprised you're throwing darts at a calendar for delivery estimates.
Darts would be just as good a tool as the standard practice of "Estimate it'll be done by the time the sales guys promised it" . ..
Actual meeting many years ago . ..
Boss: How long will it take you guys to do this new feature? (This was the first time I heard of this new request.)
Me: I just don't know. It's so different from what we've done before, my estimate is a wild guess now.
Boss: Well, just give me that.
Me: OK, I say two months at least. We don't even know what sort of unknowns we're facing yet.
Boss: Really? You think it will take that long?
Me: Like I said, I'm not sure. We'll have a better idea after we get into it a little and we see the kind of issues that come up.
Boss: But really that long? I thought maybe it would take 2 weeks?
Me: Well, I think it'll be longer than that.
Boss: Are you sure?
This question and answer are repeated and rephrased several times.
Me: (giving up) OK. Two weeks.
Boss: Are you just saying that to make me happy?
Me: Yes.
Boss: How long do you think it will take?
. . . and so on and so on.
I guess I could have told the boss we really needed to invest in a few days investigation and planning so he could have a better number to pass on up the chain. But I knew that the 2 weeks was the number that had been passed down to him anyway, so it didn't matter. And we had the culture: "If you're so smart, how come I'm boss and you're not?"
Even as we transition to electric go carts, unless we build new and bigger highways, the gridlock to get home will be intolerable as the population thickens. Inevitably, there will be neighborhoods where you don't want to get stuck in traffic because some greenie didn't put a highway between work and your home. so now you drive 4 hours a day to work 8+ hours a day and average 3+ useful hours of useful time to have a life. So then we pack into the cities to be closer to work. Now Kansas City can start to look like Tokyo and New York can look like a cyberpunk sprawl.
What a good green idea, let's have no new highways for a growing population.
This may sound a little snarky, but that's not really my intent. Please forgive me for not wanting to fund your desire to live in a brand new suburb with a nice big lawn planted on what what was, until last year, farmland. Look, I'm not telling you where you should live, but I am telling you that when you make a choice to avoid being "packed in", your commute is not my problem. If by not building more superhighways to suburbia, we can discourage people from commuting 20 or 30 miles from a McMansion to work, I'm all for it.
You used Kansas City as an example of a place that could be packed in like Tokyo, but in reality, there is plenty of vacant land right in town. The land covered by the metro area is nearly as big as NYC, but only a fraction as many people live there. This situation is repeated in many US cities: usable land in town goes underutilized as new houses are built in outlying areas. You could easily accommodate twice as many people in the same space without transforming it into something you'd see in a dystopian anime. As a bonus, we'd get to "un-blight" our urban cores.
It also wouldn't hurt to make tax breaks for rebuilding and renovating existing housing the same as the mortgage tax deduction for new construction.
My helmet has little vent holes in it that my cable lock can fit through. But I don't lock up the helmet, I just leave it on the seat. People here who want a helmet have one, and those who don't wouldn't be caught dead with it, even if they could steal it.
I got my helmet because the hospital ER had a "free helmet with every bike accident" policy.
Buyers buy what they think makes them comfortable. As they should, if they are comfortable paying higher energy costs but the decor is more to their liking, how does that make them stupid?
Well, if they made the conscious decision to favor decor over energy costs, that would be one thing. I just don't know how they'd be able to do that without at least looking at utility costs, and I've never had a buyer ask. For that matter, I've never even had one that expressed concern over the age of the furnace, which was old enough to buy its own beer. And believe me, stuff they don't like gets passed on to the showing agent. What's a cheap furnace or A/C compressor cost vs. a gallon or five of the finest paint?
The old kitchen, on the other hand, got much more favorable reviews after I painted right over the wallpaper. "Never paint over wallpaper, buyers can see that," I read. Utter bullshit. As long as it's a popular shade of beige, they're happy.
Pop quiz: If one house has monthly energy costs $30 cheaper than a competitor, how much more can you pay for the efficient one and break even on monthly bills if interest rates are 4% per anum? 3%?
Unfortunately, I've discovered (to my annoyance) that practical home improvements like insulation, thermal windows, high efficiency HVAC and appliances, etc., etc. just don't impress the average buyer nearly as much as painting all the walls beige and replacing the hardware with something in brushed nickel or, my personal bete noire: "oil-rubbed bronze."
Short of moving, the only way you're gonna get the sound level down is more insulation, even though you've already done some. Can't hurt to deaden the surfaces inside to damp the noise that does get in: carpet, soft wall coverings or hangings. Heavy (or heavier) drapes on the windows.
Of course, all of this will change the aesthetics of your place in other ways, too. And not necessarily to your liking.
We have a constitution, and the right to privacy is there. And we have a labour legislation that guarantees employers don't have fuck to do with their employees private lives. We don't need to write a specific law for something that's blatantly abusive!
Slashdot Mirror
On that note, I think it would be good to say goodbyes to Windows Vista too. Windows 7 and 8 are truly better and the only OS we currently need, on top of Mac OS X. That trio is something beautiful and hard for anyone to break.
Yes, let's all celebrate a duopoly of walled gardens. That'll be grand.
I don't have/use the Windows 8 or the latest Mac OS, do Microsoft and Apple have an application approval requirement now, a la iOS? That would certainly keep businesses that rely on home-grown software away.
First off, I couldn't agree with you more on just about every point you make.
I got a notification from both eBay a while back, and PayPal twelve days ago by email, so you might check what email your account(s) use and their associated spam buckets. And as you say, email seems to be an acceptable channel for this sort of communication, but apparently only one way. Ironic in the traditional sense, yes. I could rant all day about this, but I think everything that can be said has been by now.
Perhaps, you didn't get the notice because for reasons you've stated the change may not be enforceable in your country (NB, this is a wild-ass guess on my part). A US Supreme Court ruling last year cleared the way for this sort of crap here. If you're curious, here's the text of the PayPal email I received:
Notice of Policy Updates
Dear So-and-So
PayPal recently posted a new Policy Update which includes changes to the PayPal User Agreement. The update to the User Agreement is effective November 1, 2012 and contains several changes, including changes that affect how claims you and PayPal have against each other are resolved. You will, with limited exception, be required to submit claims you have against PayPal to binding and final arbitration, unless you opt out of the Agreement to Arbitrate (Section 14.3) by December 1, 2012. Unless you opt out: (1) you will only be permitted to pursue claims against PayPal on an individual basis, not as a plaintiff or class member in any class or representative action or proceeding and (2) you will only be permitted to seek relief (including monetary, injunctive, and declaratory relief) on an individual basis.
You can view this Policy Update by logging in to your PayPal account. To log in to your account, go to https://www.paypal.com/ and enter your member log in information. Once you are logged in, look at the Notifications section on the top right side of the page for the latest Policy Updates. We encourage you to review the Policy Update to familiarize yourself with all of the changes that have been made.
If you need help logging in, go to our Help Center by clicking the Help link located in the upper right-hand corner of any PayPal page.
Sincerely,
PayPal
The Consumerist has links to template letters for eBay (by November 9) and PayPal (by Dec. 1). You need to fill out, print and mail them by the deadline to opt out. That's physical, actual paper, snail mail. No online forms, no emails, no calls.
More info and speculation on whether you'll be deemed a troublemaker, persona non grata, communist, vegetarian, etc., etc. if you opt-out.
When you force my son to take subjects which which he doesn’t connect, you are not allowing them that same time to take a public speaking course, which he could be really good at, or music, or political science, or creative writing, or HTML coding for websites.
Turns out the whole argument is rather weakened by the editor's note stating that chemistry isn't specifically required, just a certain amount of science of which chem is one option.
I still find it hard to believe that there are so few elective hours available that the kid couldn't fulfill the science requirement and take music, political science, creative writing or programming. Maybe I'm really old and things are much different now, but I didn't miss out on the electives I wanted to take just because I took chemistry and physics. There was still time for band, foreign language, a political science course (required) and even programming.
But my son is not being exposed to chemistry, he’s spending a year of his life studying chemistry every day, which translates into a year of misery for him and our entire family, and paying for tutors who just get him through the course.
I think this is the real complaint: "The kid doesn't like chemistry and might not get an A. Therefore, he shouldn't have to take it."
Also it teaches you basic fucking chemistry which comes in handy if you work for a living.
Love is chemistry. What you're referring to is physics.
But either way, the kid'll get plenty of opportunity to learn in college what he misses in high school.
Yeah, but there's a difference between short range wireless (several cm) and long range (10's of metres) that makes a huge difference to the possible attach vectors.
But since the attacker isn't worried about getting his hacked programming device approved, he's free to boost the amplifier and/or antenna gain on his end, or any other tweak he can come up with to increase the effective range.
Well someone needs to get these lackwits into the current millennium and tell them about these amazing fucking "computers" these days that can do all that automatically.
A doctor, lawyer and and engineer were condemned to death by guillotine.
The executioner put the doctor in the head mount and asked, "Do you have any last words?" The doctor answered, "Viva la France!" The executioner pulled the lever and the blade dropped. But it stopped one inch over his head. The executioner said, "Under the law I must set you free if the guillotine fails to function." So he set him free.
Then he put in the lawyer and asked, "Do you have any last words?" The lawyer answered, "Viva la France!" The executioner pulled the lever and the blade dropped. But it stopped again, one inch over the lawyer's head. The executioner said, "This is unprecidented, but under the law I must set you free if the guillotine fails to function." So he set him free as well.
Then finally he put in the engineer and cautiously asked, "Do you have any last words?" The engineer looked and said, "Stop! Wait! I think I see what is wrong!"
Jimmy, come in, we haven't seen you on our records lately, why yes Mr Tegan did say you were in his 5th form class, but we don't see you. We'll have to refer you to the police regarding truancy. Now I don't like this, but if you just wore this new ID badge, we don't need to get the police involved..."
Jimmy (Who comes from a non-PBS watching household): "My fifth what?"
Seriously, a cable box for my Mom? That's gonna work. Until she tries to change channels for the first time. Because talking her through getting her "screen" back on the computer wasn't fun enough, I get a family tech-support call for TV now every time the box and/or TV get screwed up? And I doubt I'm the only guy here with an elderly relative that couldn't work a cable box remote to save their life.
they should do their own censoring and leave the rest of the world's internets alone . . .
Exactly. Since that which threatens "public order" varies so widely by culture and country, attempting to find a global solution is pointless. As messy and difficult as it can be, censoring that which is perceived to be dangerous to a particular government is that particular government's problem, not everyone else's.
Seriously, what a bunch of assholes.
So instead of doing the capitalistic thing and gouging with insanely high prices, the shops instead started rationing drives for a sane price so everyone could get a little bit of the very limited supply.
That was actually a really good thing to do. Instead of profiteering, they tried to make the best of a bad situation for everyone.
Then a bunch of dicks like this figure that they're more important than everyone else and that they should be able to get more than enyone else.
Selfish bastards. Nothing but scum.
After reading this I will not be giving them my money.
The hard drive sellers weren't doing this altruistically. They made their call, figuring that rationing drives was the best for their businesses and best fulfilled their duty to their shareholders.
The cloud storage company also did what they thought best benefited their business and fulfilled their duty to shareholders/backers/etc.
It does not benefit us as individuals to assign a moral motive to the actions of a company. Whatever they do, it's for a business purpose. If it seems like one company is the good guy, it's just that that's what they think will help them return value to the owners. We must realize that they are all "selfish bastards" by the very nature of the capitalist system and not be fooled into personifying them.
What I've written in no way implies that you can't spend your money wherever you want -- or withhold it -- based on anything you want to base it on. If you find a business' actions to be detrimental to society or just contrary to your ideals, you can certainly boycott them. In fact, I think you should boycott if you feel as strongly as you appear to. In this way -- if you're not alone -- those actions on the part of the company may turn out not to benefit the shareholders and therefore force them to change.
You could also pursue a legislative approach, maybe convince your representatives that legal rationing is in the public interest. The US rationed commodities during wartime before, perhaps you can appeal that adequate storage space for all is sufficiently important for legal intervention.
The guy who's being brought to trial seems to have imported enough textbooks to earn $1.2 million. That means this isn't really a case about reselling your car, but about whether private citizens can buy a bunch of stuff abroad and re-sell it here for profit because it's cheaper abroad.
It sounds like the guy's real crime was not being a big corporation.
The case is regarding items manufacturered in foreign countries and intended for sale in those countries. NOT items manufactured in foreign countries intended for sale in the United States. At issue is having someone buy things cheaper overseas and resell them cheaper here in the US than the manufacturers intended US price.
That's still horrible - but not nearly as bad as the article summary would have you believe.
It's not like the SCOTUS (or, allegedly its unsupervised peons) hasn't gone above and beyond the scope of the case before.
The set of employees that has come in to work extra hours is almost surely more "willing to work extra hours when necessary" than the set of employees who have never worked extra hours (including, potentially, because they've never needed to.) On the other hand, the "extra hours" probably also contains a higher percentage of "people who can't budget their time well enough to finish things within the time planned." As a manager I'd certainly count overall productivity as one of my main concerns, but I might value an employee with lower "average" productivity but who is better able to accommodate spikes than the employee whose average productivity is higher but who is unwilling to make any personal sacrifice during extenuating circumstances. And that seems perfectly reasonable.
Have you noticed that the "extenuating circumstances" seem happen more frequently the more "people who can't budget their time well enough to finish things within the time period" are on the case? Is it possible that the "no personal sacrifice" folks feel that way because they don't want to pick up the slack left by the highly-valued-but-can't-budget people?
That doesn't even make any sense. I mean, none. Unless you mean the manager isn't part of the team, in which case I'm not surprised you're throwing darts at a calendar for delivery estimates.
Darts would be just as good a tool as the standard practice of "Estimate it'll be done by the time the sales guys promised it" . . .
Actual meeting many years ago . . .
Boss: How long will it take you guys to do this new feature? (This was the first time I heard of this new request.)
Me: I just don't know. It's so different from what we've done before, my estimate is a wild guess now.
Boss: Well, just give me that.
Me: OK, I say two months at least. We don't even know what sort of unknowns we're facing yet.
Boss: Really? You think it will take that long?
Me: Like I said, I'm not sure. We'll have a better idea after we get into it a little and we see the kind of issues that come up.
Boss: But really that long? I thought maybe it would take 2 weeks?
Me: Well, I think it'll be longer than that.
Boss: Are you sure?
This question and answer are repeated and rephrased several times.
Me: (giving up) OK. Two weeks.
Boss: Are you just saying that to make me happy?
Me: Yes.
Boss: How long do you think it will take?
. . . and so on and so on.
I guess I could have told the boss we really needed to invest in a few days investigation and planning so he could have a better number to pass on up the chain. But I knew that the 2 weeks was the number that had been passed down to him anyway, so it didn't matter. And we had the culture: "If you're so smart, how come I'm boss and you're not?"
Even as we transition to electric go carts, unless we build new and bigger highways, the gridlock to get home will be intolerable as the population thickens. Inevitably, there will be neighborhoods where you don't want to get stuck in traffic because some greenie didn't put a highway between work and your home. so now you drive 4 hours a day to work 8+ hours a day and average 3+ useful hours of useful time to have a life. So then we pack into the cities to be closer to work. Now Kansas City can start to look like Tokyo and New York can look like a cyberpunk sprawl.
What a good green idea, let's have no new highways for a growing population.
This may sound a little snarky, but that's not really my intent. Please forgive me for not wanting to fund your desire to live in a brand new suburb with a nice big lawn planted on what what was, until last year, farmland. Look, I'm not telling you where you should live, but I am telling you that when you make a choice to avoid being "packed in", your commute is not my problem. If by not building more superhighways to suburbia, we can discourage people from commuting 20 or 30 miles from a McMansion to work, I'm all for it.
You used Kansas City as an example of a place that could be packed in like Tokyo, but in reality, there is plenty of vacant land right in town. The land covered by the metro area is nearly as big as NYC, but only a fraction as many people live there. This situation is repeated in many US cities: usable land in town goes underutilized as new houses are built in outlying areas. You could easily accommodate twice as many people in the same space without transforming it into something you'd see in a dystopian anime. As a bonus, we'd get to "un-blight" our urban cores.
It also wouldn't hurt to make tax breaks for rebuilding and renovating existing housing the same as the mortgage tax deduction for new construction.
I lock up my helmet with my bike.
How exactly?
My helmet has little vent holes in it that my cable lock can fit through. But I don't lock up the helmet, I just leave it on the seat. People here who want a helmet have one, and those who don't wouldn't be caught dead with it, even if they could steal it.
I got my helmet because the hospital ER had a "free helmet with every bike accident" policy.
I think you forgot your Prozac.
There's only so much it can do.
I generally stand tall, and fix my vision into the crowd of passengers entering screening.
I'm too busy trying to keep an eye on all my unguarded stuff left up for grabs -- I guess that goes for people stuck in the naked booth, too.
Buyers buy what they think makes them comfortable. As they should, if they are comfortable paying higher energy costs but the decor is more to their liking, how does that make them stupid?
Well, if they made the conscious decision to favor decor over energy costs, that would be one thing. I just don't know how they'd be able to do that without at least looking at utility costs, and I've never had a buyer ask. For that matter, I've never even had one that expressed concern over the age of the furnace, which was old enough to buy its own beer. And believe me, stuff they don't like gets passed on to the showing agent. What's a cheap furnace or A/C compressor cost vs. a gallon or five of the finest paint?
The old kitchen, on the other hand, got much more favorable reviews after I painted right over the wallpaper. "Never paint over wallpaper, buyers can see that," I read. Utter bullshit. As long as it's a popular shade of beige, they're happy.
Pop quiz: If one house has monthly energy costs $30 cheaper than a competitor, how much more can you pay for the efficient one and break even on monthly bills if interest rates are 4% per anum? 3%?
(plus soundproofing increases the resale value)
Unfortunately, I've discovered (to my annoyance) that practical home improvements like insulation, thermal windows, high efficiency HVAC and appliances, etc., etc. just don't impress the average buyer nearly as much as painting all the walls beige and replacing the hardware with something in brushed nickel or, my personal bete noire: "oil-rubbed bronze."
Short of moving, the only way you're gonna get the sound level down is more insulation, even though you've already done some. Can't hurt to deaden the surfaces inside to damp the noise that does get in: carpet, soft wall coverings or hangings. Heavy (or heavier) drapes on the windows.
Of course, all of this will change the aesthetics of your place in other ways, too. And not necessarily to your liking.
Just because someone likes what you don't like doesn't make them pathetic. Your behavior, on the other hand...
. . . whooshed you.
If the SSID is broadcasting, "Smith" and the name on the mailbox is "Smith", you can probably take a guess about it.
I think if you're a residential broadband customer, and your access point is wide open, the SSID is gonna be "Linksys" or other default name.
We have a constitution, and the right to privacy is there. And we have a labour legislation that guarantees employers don't have fuck to do with their employees private lives. We don't need to write a specific law for something that's blatantly abusive!
Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.