First of all, update your resume. No matter what you do, how good you are, sometimes you will end up out of work anyway. Take any reasonable offer, even if you would have stayed on, someone else can be transfered to your position who would otherwise be out of work.
I know one person who handed her 2 weeks into her boss. He closed the door, and told her to tear it up. One week latter she was laid off, with 2 months severance. Thats your best case. (Note that she was in management, most of you don't have a boss high enough in the chain to help you like this)
Make sure your boss knows you are willing to do other things. Another person I know survived a couple rounds because the department was eliminated, but another department was hiring, and a few people got transfered. If the boss doesn't know you are willing to do work for that department he might not suggest you for a position. (these positions were not posted)
Keep contact with those who are let go. Hard to do for some I know, but it is a good plan. When they get a job, odds are it is with a company that is looking for more people. When you are hit, send them your resume. One place I worked hired a lot of people by the manager going to one person and asking who would be good for a position. That guy gave them a name, and position was 90% filled before the person named even knew it existed.
Don't worry about it. Worry affects your job performance. If worry motivates you, worry about getting your current job done, at least your are seen as worrying about the right things.
Save your money! Pay off dept, and don't take on more. If the worst case strikes and you end up flipping burgers to make ends meet, your savings might have to fill in. Take the burger job after unemployment ends, and well before you run out of money, better to have some income than none. You can make good money (not great, but enough to live comfortably) if you move up in the burger world, but it takes time, so start before you are out of savings.
If you are laid off, consider volunteer work. You can often meet the spouses of important people this way, making it a good path to a job. If nothing else you generally meet people in other areas, and they can show you more about life. If you have kids, chaperon their field trips, a good way to see museams and things that you didn't apprecate as a kid.
Re-evaluate your life. Are you married with kids? Perhaps you should be a stay-at-home dad/mom. If nothing else remember that when you are not working you don't have to pay for day-care.
If you are single, can you pack up and leave? Europe is beautiful and worth seeing, sell just about everything, store the few things you can't live without at the parents, pack a bag and disappear for a while. You might or might not come back. If you live in Europe, substitute North America. Actually anyone can substitute any other area they have never been. Asia, Africa, New Zealand (you can spend a long time in that tiny country and not see it all), South America... If you can't pack up and leave, there are nice areas close to home that you should explore.
Check the local library. Get those books on starting your own business, even if you don't want to run one. Get books on tatting (making lace) and start a new hobby. And get books in your own field and update your skills. Not the word "and" above, do all of the above. If your local library is small they often can borrow from other libraries if you ask them to. You can buy the books you like of course.
Get religion. (or re-get if you have it) It may or may not help with any other part of life, but it can answer some other need you have. Obviously this is personal, but you should be giving it a thought anyway just in case. Don't make this a primary goal, but once you have one, you have a bunch of contacts who can help with a job search.
Do not fear losing your job. It will happen. It may or may not be your fault. How you deal with is up to you though. MIT says their graduates switch careers 7 times in their life. I've already had 3 and I'm not yet 30. (though I love the one enough that I'm trying to stay in it) Don't be afraid to switch.
Sure I live alone in a 4 bedroom house, but I can only be in one place at a time. I can only type on one keyboard at a time. I could in theory use 4 mice at a time (one in each hand, and a trackball for each foot), but my brain can't deal with all that at once. I have room for at most 3 montiors (As if I could afford that many) on my desk, but looking at more than one at a time is a challenge. Better if I use periferal vision, but that is completely different interaction and not as useful. I can get some feedback from audio, but not much.
Thus I spend most of my time in one room, and I don't even use even half the space in it. My body is just too limited to deal with anything more. The problem I need solved isn't physical space, it is useful space. In Japan they have limited physical space, so they must use it well. My physically space is for practical purposes unlimited. Me and my counterpart in Japan have essentially the same useful space limitations. Let me know when the come up with an advance to deal with those limits, and I'll be interested.
Plumbing is not easy, according to all the plumbers I know. They find it easy, and I find it easy, but it can't be, or they wouldn't have problem finding help that can learn to connect pipes. Prove you can solder two pipes together and plumbers will hire you. Most fail the test, after the plumber shows them how.
Hyperthreading is interesting. According to the article it is worth about a 5% boost overall. Note the overall. If you are running one single threaded application it won't help. If you run lots of things at once it will give a 5% boost.
I don't think you will notice it. However if you do decide on the P4 you would be stupid to not enable it, it costs nothing and just works. There are lots of factors in choosing your system, you can ignore hyperthreading because the other factors are so much stronger.
IIRC the Quadras maxed out at about 640 meg (not K) of RAM. A SIMM only had so much memory, so buy the biggest you could and fill the slots up ment that much ram.
Stations have looked at it. Turns out the people who use the pay at the pump are the people who would only buy gas anyway (often with the same credit/debit card that skims ~3% off the sale price), while those who buy the stuff inside go inside and buy it anyway.
With pay at the pump the don't need a clerk ($) to ring up sales for those who are only buying gas. Clerks costs money, if you can get by on one less clerk because of pay at the pump you are saving 5 bucks and hour. That adds up fast.
Thing is AutoZone makes their money from things like spark plugs. (barring sales where they go below value to get you in the door). Sure each one is a buck each, but they sell a lot of spark plugs.
I'm sure sales of water pumps, starters, and the like account for more money, but they don't sell as many of them either.
If you have a car you will need parts. You alone don't matter much, but every penny counts to that bottom line.
IIRC mac OS7 was released about 1992. First Mac was 1984. KDE was started about 1997. So that gives about 8 years (after release, not start of development) to get mac OS7. KDE is at year 7, and by your own words really close to OS7. About 10 years after that to get OSX. Sounds like KDE is right on track, maybe even a little ahead.
However that assumes you are correct. However, you obviously do not remember OS7 very well, because it wasn't that good everywhere. For instance the multitasking worked, but poorly you really didn't want to run two applications at once with it (part of this is the CPUs of the time, but not all). And it was slow, at least in the early versions I used, most of my machines dual booted to OS6 when they could because OS6 worked better. (Which was a trick in itself as apple didn't design those systems to dual boot) Not to mention it obviously looked like it was designed for a black and white screen, even when I had a color screen[1]. I remember many times reading a book in front of 3 macs, all with their hour glass on the screen, and the interface locked from other input while some work was being done. (desktop publishing work, a CPU bound problem in those days)
Yes KDE has some work to do, but OSX has a lot to do too. I believe KDE is better. My opinion though.
[1]Mental note: example KDE on a black and white monitor and make sure there is a scheme that looks good.
I did read his rant. It was focused on things not in KDE. KDE cannot fix Fedora, other than recommend you not use it. (A drastic step that isn't warrented)
I'll grant there are problems with KDE, and we need to fix them. I hope someone on this project helps us do so. However no matter how good KDE gets, if a distribution uses something outside of KDE there is nothing KDE can do to make it work.
To each his own. I personally consider the art work the hardest and most boring job that KDE has. Fortunatly someone (several in fact) is willing to do that work.
For that matter someone in the last couple days has just steped up to make some nice sounds. Don't know if he will finish the job, but what he has created so far is nice.
KDE tries to keep track of who submitted each fix. I'm sure some things slip through the cracks, but overall if you find a problem with KDE you can point that out latter as something you have done, and we can all go back into the archives and verify it really was you. There are far too many people helping with KDE for all but those who do the most work to get credit. That doesn't mean the credit is lost though.
You haven't checked out the price of a divorce yet have you?
You can buy a night with various girls. (which may or may not count as prostitution, and may or may not be legal). And sometime latter they will leave. Perhaps with your kid, which you can only visit every other weekend, at your expense. (And she might move to a different city) In many cases she will leave with a large part of your money, and may also get support payments for years afterwords.
You can have that if you want. I want nothing to do with it. I'm looking for a different life, where I come home to a girl who loves me (love, not wants my money), and some kids. If I can't have that I'll stay single.
The large majority of the Republicans I've talked to were not happy with Bush's steel tarifs. (the exceptions worked in the steel industry...)
You mistake what the leaders say and do for what the followers believe. It isn't easy getting someone elected, and sometimes you have to take what you can get.
I've contributed two simple lines of source to an Open Source project. Just two. In return I get FreeBSD (or pick any linux distribution), KDE (GNOME if you prefer), a lot of good enough apps. Most important to me, if I don't like something I'm encouraged to fix it. Since I've contributed I can also place on my resume a little line that I've developed for this project, which is in my favor as I'm look for a paying jobs. Anyone can look those two lines up and evaluate my quality, while the lines I've written for others are locked away and you can't look at them.
Seems like a good deal to me. I give 3 days of effort, contribute 2 lines, and get this in return.
Actually the code itself took just a few minutes (5 for the first line, and 1 for the second), most of the rest of the time was finding and understanding the code. Half a day to test, and a couple more minutes to create/submit a patch.
Maybe I should have said "the lesser of" 85f, or 2 degrees below the outside tempature. I thought that was obvious.
That said, yes the body can handle tempatures of 120F just fine, I know people who have done it. They drink a lot of water, and are amused by people like you who think it can't be done. They also adopt with things like afternoon naps so they can work in the cooler part of the day.
My web page is useless to you, because you don't know me, and don't care about me. However for those who care about me, my web page is very important, even though I don't update it often. I have pictures of family members. If you have ever looked through photo albums you can understand exactly what worth it is. (If you know the people you enjoy it, if you don't know it you are bored and hate it)
My web page is not intended for you, don't waste your time. (Unless you need my email address...) My web page is not worthless though, it is just targeted at someone else. (namely me and my close friends)
Re:Open Source Energy Initiatives
on
DIY HVAC
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Maybe you don't have a choice, but I do.
My water comes from my own well in the front yard. I'm in control of it. If I want to know whats in it, I have to test it. If I want to kill bacteria I have to buy the clorine, and follow directions. If the pump breaks I have to fix it (more likely pay to fix it, the pump is 200 feet underground).
My sewage goes to my own septic tank. I have to pay to get this pumped every few years, but there are several different companies that will do this. When the lines freeze I have to figgure out how to thaw them. (Stupid installer can't install lines that don't freeze... I'll try again to correct that next summer, but it isn't as easy as it sounds)
If you have a choice, get city sewer, it is much cheaper, and a lot less hasstles. I prefer well water, but some will disagree with me, it is a matter of taste. Most of the people who disagree with me have had problems with their well though, something to take note of.
Even if you have city hookups, you have choices. You can vote for someone who won't maintain the plant for instance. Closer to home, most city water systems could use further treatment. They give you safe water, it may or may not taste good. It may or may not stain your clothing. It may or may not need extra soap to clean clothing. It may or may not have sand mixed in. And those are just things locals watch for, your area may have other things to worry about.
Most people don't think of any of the above though. Just turn on the tap and there is water. (at least where/. is common, most of the world's population doesn't have that advantage) I don't normally think about it either, but once in a while I have to.
bad programing
on
DIY HVAC
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· Score: 2, Informative
That is a cheap solution that will for for some. However your temperature settings are wrong.
When you are at home in summer, set the thermostat to 85, or 2 degrees below the outdoor temperature. You do not need it any colder, you body can handle high temperatures just fine. (There are exceptions, but those folks are under doctors care often anyway) When humidity gets to you, lower the thermostat just enough to get some of it out of the air.
In winter your pipes need heat more than you do. Invest in a few sweaters. When you have guests raise the temperature to 68. When you are sick set the thermostat above 68 if it makes you more comfortable. Set it to 62 when you are sleeping, invest in some blankets if this seems cold. I keep my thermostat at 60 in winter, no matter what, and I'd go colder but the thermostat is upstairs, and I don't want to chance my pipes freezing.
Check with your utility before doing anything though. Mine offers a discounted energy rate (off-peak) if I let them control the AC. I need to leave the AC on my at home temperature all day, because when I get home they normally hit peak loads, and so are most likely to turn my unit off. (This sounds bad, but in practice you never notice it, other than lower utility bills despite having a cool house all the time). They have a similar program for heat, but I have gas heat so I don't pay attention
Manufactures will write their drivers for what is most popular. If Windows had 1% of the market you can bet that they wouldn't write drivers for MS. If there are 20 different products each with 4% of the market, manufactures would be forced to write for all 20. Do that math, those 20 different systems make up 80%, even if something else has the other 20% that 80% isn't ignorable.
As linux grows eventually drivers must be written if you want sales. Thats why you can get drivers for NVIDIA cards in linux already, the market is big enough that they can't ignore it. (But not big enough that they care about perfect drivers on the date the hardware is released, Windows gets more attention yet)
Yes there will be some pains as drivers are written for a Server nobody uses, but companies follow the money. When people who would buy their products complain that they don't have drivers in sufficient numbers it is eventually worth it to write those drivers. Then management looks at the budget and notices that they are written two different X drivers, and after a market survey drop the Xfree86 drivers that nobody is using anyway. (at least in a perfect world where management does their job)
Treaty Banning Antipersonnel Mines Sure, it would be nice to get rid of them, but in the real world their are evil people who will come after you, and landmines are the easiest way to prevent them. I wish it were otherwise, but until you can get rid of evil people you can't get rid of defense against them. (Hint first you have to come up with a good definition of Evil people that is more than I know it when I see it)
Rome Statue of the Internaitonal Criminal Court (ICC) Why would anyone sign that? As far as I can tell it is a way for the rest of the world to enforce their laws on us. I've never seen a good argument that this court is any better than the system we have. It is however above the other systems, and above any laws, and if there is ever abuse apparently above reform.
Kyoto Protocol Lets hurt the US protocol. Why would we agree to it? It gives the US nothing as far as we can see, and costs a lot. Try reading it from our point of view for a change.
I don't know much about the others I'll admit. However I look at the world from a different side than you. Look at the ones above from my shoes and they suddenly becomes obviously things we don't want. Your point of view isn't the only one you know. We can debate which is valid forever, but it is unlikely we will get anywhere.
Solution: ride in the middle of the lane like you are legally allowed to, and the sensors will see you. And you get the added advantage that cars are no longer able to pass you with just inches to spare between you and their mirror, so they are forced to wait for an opening and pass in the other lane like legally they are supposed to.
Note that it is always best to ride on less busy side roads when ever possible.
I've seen cases where the above behavior existed, except the button was not a trigger for the regular lights. Thus if you wanted to cross you not only had to push the button which would give you the walk sign (and give you enough time to cross safely), but you also had to wait for a car in the same direction to trigger the light to change.
I've seen traffic lights where pushing the walk button caused the walk light to come on when the light turned green (in the direction you want to cross), and caused the light to stay green a little longer. but the button did nothing to cause the light to change to green, that was controlled by a sensor in the road detecting a car.
Put it another way, pressing the button has no effect on when the walk sign will light, it only assures that eventually it will light.
Interesting question. I love questions like this that we can debate, secure in the knowledge that we will never find out the real answer. Eventually we will find out what it is like to have this working, but we geeks will never find out what it is like to have a "hottie" walk though the office.
Congratulations, you have posed the perfect open ended question.
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First of all, update your resume. No matter what you do, how good you are, sometimes you will end up out of work anyway. Take any reasonable offer, even if you would have stayed on, someone else can be transfered to your position who would otherwise be out of work.
I know one person who handed her 2 weeks into her boss. He closed the door, and told her to tear it up. One week latter she was laid off, with 2 months severance. Thats your best case. (Note that she was in management, most of you don't have a boss high enough in the chain to help you like this)
Make sure your boss knows you are willing to do other things. Another person I know survived a couple rounds because the department was eliminated, but another department was hiring, and a few people got transfered. If the boss doesn't know you are willing to do work for that department he might not suggest you for a position. (these positions were not posted)
Keep contact with those who are let go. Hard to do for some I know, but it is a good plan. When they get a job, odds are it is with a company that is looking for more people. When you are hit, send them your resume. One place I worked hired a lot of people by the manager going to one person and asking who would be good for a position. That guy gave them a name, and position was 90% filled before the person named even knew it existed.
Don't worry about it. Worry affects your job performance. If worry motivates you, worry about getting your current job done, at least your are seen as worrying about the right things.
Save your money! Pay off dept, and don't take on more. If the worst case strikes and you end up flipping burgers to make ends meet, your savings might have to fill in. Take the burger job after unemployment ends, and well before you run out of money, better to have some income than none. You can make good money (not great, but enough to live comfortably) if you move up in the burger world, but it takes time, so start before you are out of savings.
If you are laid off, consider volunteer work. You can often meet the spouses of important people this way, making it a good path to a job. If nothing else you generally meet people in other areas, and they can show you more about life. If you have kids, chaperon their field trips, a good way to see museams and things that you didn't apprecate as a kid.
Re-evaluate your life. Are you married with kids? Perhaps you should be a stay-at-home dad/mom. If nothing else remember that when you are not working you don't have to pay for day-care.
If you are single, can you pack up and leave? Europe is beautiful and worth seeing, sell just about everything, store the few things you can't live without at the parents, pack a bag and disappear for a while. You might or might not come back. If you live in Europe, substitute North America. Actually anyone can substitute any other area they have never been. Asia, Africa, New Zealand (you can spend a long time in that tiny country and not see it all), South America... If you can't pack up and leave, there are nice areas close to home that you should explore.
Check the local library. Get those books on starting your own business, even if you don't want to run one. Get books on tatting (making lace) and start a new hobby. And get books in your own field and update your skills. Not the word "and" above, do all of the above. If your local library is small they often can borrow from other libraries if you ask them to. You can buy the books you like of course.
Get religion. (or re-get if you have it) It may or may not help with any other part of life, but it can answer some other need you have. Obviously this is personal, but you should be giving it a thought anyway just in case. Don't make this a primary goal, but once you have one, you have a bunch of contacts who can help with a job search.
Do not fear losing your job. It will happen. It may or may not be your fault. How you deal with is up to you though. MIT says their graduates switch careers 7 times in their life. I've already had 3 and I'm not yet 30. (though I love the one enough that I'm trying to stay in it) Don't be afraid to switch.
Sure I live alone in a 4 bedroom house, but I can only be in one place at a time. I can only type on one keyboard at a time. I could in theory use 4 mice at a time (one in each hand, and a trackball for each foot), but my brain can't deal with all that at once. I have room for at most 3 montiors (As if I could afford that many) on my desk, but looking at more than one at a time is a challenge. Better if I use periferal vision, but that is completely different interaction and not as useful. I can get some feedback from audio, but not much.
Thus I spend most of my time in one room, and I don't even use even half the space in it. My body is just too limited to deal with anything more. The problem I need solved isn't physical space, it is useful space. In Japan they have limited physical space, so they must use it well. My physically space is for practical purposes unlimited. Me and my counterpart in Japan have essentially the same useful space limitations. Let me know when the come up with an advance to deal with those limits, and I'll be interested.
Plumbing is not easy, according to all the plumbers I know. They find it easy, and I find it easy, but it can't be, or they wouldn't have problem finding help that can learn to connect pipes. Prove you can solder two pipes together and plumbers will hire you. Most fail the test, after the plumber shows them how.
Hyperthreading is interesting. According to the article it is worth about a 5% boost overall. Note the overall. If you are running one single threaded application it won't help. If you run lots of things at once it will give a 5% boost.
I don't think you will notice it. However if you do decide on the P4 you would be stupid to not enable it, it costs nothing and just works. There are lots of factors in choosing your system, you can ignore hyperthreading because the other factors are so much stronger.
IIRC the Quadras maxed out at about 640 meg (not K) of RAM. A SIMM only had so much memory, so buy the biggest you could and fill the slots up ment that much ram.
Stations have looked at it. Turns out the people who use the pay at the pump are the people who would only buy gas anyway (often with the same credit /debit card that skims ~3% off the sale price), while those who buy the stuff inside go inside and buy it anyway.
With pay at the pump the don't need a clerk ($) to ring up sales for those who are only buying gas. Clerks costs money, if you can get by on one less clerk because of pay at the pump you are saving 5 bucks and hour. That adds up fast.
Thing is AutoZone makes their money from things like spark plugs. (barring sales where they go below value to get you in the door). Sure each one is a buck each, but they sell a lot of spark plugs.
I'm sure sales of water pumps, starters, and the like account for more money, but they don't sell as many of them either.
If you have a car you will need parts. You alone don't matter much, but every penny counts to that bottom line.
It is for presentations. It needs a laser pointer. Wouldn't cost much, and would solve a miner need in many presentations.
Course if it could make presentations good and interesting that would be better, but I don't know how they could do that.
IIRC mac OS7 was released about 1992. First Mac was 1984. KDE was started about 1997. So that gives about 8 years (after release, not start of development) to get mac OS7. KDE is at year 7, and by your own words really close to OS7. About 10 years after that to get OSX. Sounds like KDE is right on track, maybe even a little ahead.
However that assumes you are correct. However, you obviously do not remember OS7 very well, because it wasn't that good everywhere. For instance the multitasking worked, but poorly you really didn't want to run two applications at once with it (part of this is the CPUs of the time, but not all). And it was slow, at least in the early versions I used, most of my machines dual booted to OS6 when they could because OS6 worked better. (Which was a trick in itself as apple didn't design those systems to dual boot) Not to mention it obviously looked like it was designed for a black and white screen, even when I had a color screen[1]. I remember many times reading a book in front of 3 macs, all with their hour glass on the screen, and the interface locked from other input while some work was being done. (desktop publishing work, a CPU bound problem in those days)
Yes KDE has some work to do, but OSX has a lot to do too. I believe KDE is better. My opinion though.
[1]Mental note: example KDE on a black and white monitor and make sure there is a scheme that looks good.
I did read his rant. It was focused on things not in KDE. KDE cannot fix Fedora, other than recommend you not use it. (A drastic step that isn't warrented)
I'll grant there are problems with KDE, and we need to fix them. I hope someone on this project helps us do so. However no matter how good KDE gets, if a distribution uses something outside of KDE there is nothing KDE can do to make it work.
To each his own. I personally consider the art work the hardest and most boring job that KDE has. Fortunatly someone (several in fact) is willing to do that work.
For that matter someone in the last couple days has just steped up to make some nice sounds. Don't know if he will finish the job, but what he has created so far is nice.
KDE tries to keep track of who submitted each fix. I'm sure some things slip through the cracks, but overall if you find a problem with KDE you can point that out latter as something you have done, and we can all go back into the archives and verify it really was you. There are far too many people helping with KDE for all but those who do the most work to get credit. That doesn't mean the credit is lost though.
You haven't checked out the price of a divorce yet have you?
You can buy a night with various girls. (which may or may not count as prostitution, and may or may not be legal). And sometime latter they will leave. Perhaps with your kid, which you can only visit every other weekend, at your expense. (And she might move to a different city) In many cases she will leave with a large part of your money, and may also get support payments for years afterwords.
You can have that if you want. I want nothing to do with it. I'm looking for a different life, where I come home to a girl who loves me (love, not wants my money), and some kids. If I can't have that I'll stay single.
The large majority of the Republicans I've talked to were not happy with Bush's steel tarifs. (the exceptions worked in the steel industry...)
You mistake what the leaders say and do for what the followers believe. It isn't easy getting someone elected, and sometimes you have to take what you can get.
I've contributed two simple lines of source to an Open Source project. Just two. In return I get FreeBSD (or pick any linux distribution), KDE (GNOME if you prefer), a lot of good enough apps. Most important to me, if I don't like something I'm encouraged to fix it. Since I've contributed I can also place on my resume a little line that I've developed for this project, which is in my favor as I'm look for a paying jobs. Anyone can look those two lines up and evaluate my quality, while the lines I've written for others are locked away and you can't look at them.
Seems like a good deal to me. I give 3 days of effort, contribute 2 lines, and get this in return.
Actually the code itself took just a few minutes (5 for the first line, and 1 for the second), most of the rest of the time was finding and understanding the code. Half a day to test, and a couple more minutes to create/submit a patch.
Maybe I should have said "the lesser of" 85f, or 2 degrees below the outside tempature. I thought that was obvious.
That said, yes the body can handle tempatures of 120F just fine, I know people who have done it. They drink a lot of water, and are amused by people like you who think it can't be done. They also adopt with things like afternoon naps so they can work in the cooler part of the day.
My web page is useless to you, because you don't know me, and don't care about me. However for those who care about me, my web page is very important, even though I don't update it often. I have pictures of family members. If you have ever looked through photo albums you can understand exactly what worth it is. (If you know the people you enjoy it, if you don't know it you are bored and hate it)
My web page is not intended for you, don't waste your time. (Unless you need my email address...) My web page is not worthless though, it is just targeted at someone else. (namely me and my close friends)
Maybe you don't have a choice, but I do.
My water comes from my own well in the front yard. I'm in control of it. If I want to know whats in it, I have to test it. If I want to kill bacteria I have to buy the clorine, and follow directions. If the pump breaks I have to fix it (more likely pay to fix it, the pump is 200 feet underground).
My sewage goes to my own septic tank. I have to pay to get this pumped every few years, but there are several different companies that will do this. When the lines freeze I have to figgure out how to thaw them. (Stupid installer can't install lines that don't freeze... I'll try again to correct that next summer, but it isn't as easy as it sounds)
If you have a choice, get city sewer, it is much cheaper, and a lot less hasstles. I prefer well water, but some will disagree with me, it is a matter of taste. Most of the people who disagree with me have had problems with their well though, something to take note of.
Even if you have city hookups, you have choices. You can vote for someone who won't maintain the plant for instance. Closer to home, most city water systems could use further treatment. They give you safe water, it may or may not taste good. It may or may not stain your clothing. It may or may not need extra soap to clean clothing. It may or may not have sand mixed in. And those are just things locals watch for, your area may have other things to worry about.
Most people don't think of any of the above though. Just turn on the tap and there is water. (at least where /. is common, most of the world's population doesn't have that advantage) I don't normally think about it either, but once in a while I have to.
That is a cheap solution that will for for some. However your temperature settings are wrong.
When you are at home in summer, set the thermostat to 85, or 2 degrees below the outdoor temperature. You do not need it any colder, you body can handle high temperatures just fine. (There are exceptions, but those folks are under doctors care often anyway) When humidity gets to you, lower the thermostat just enough to get some of it out of the air.
In winter your pipes need heat more than you do. Invest in a few sweaters. When you have guests raise the temperature to 68. When you are sick set the thermostat above 68 if it makes you more comfortable. Set it to 62 when you are sleeping, invest in some blankets if this seems cold. I keep my thermostat at 60 in winter, no matter what, and I'd go colder but the thermostat is upstairs, and I don't want to chance my pipes freezing.
Check with your utility before doing anything though. Mine offers a discounted energy rate (off-peak) if I let them control the AC. I need to leave the AC on my at home temperature all day, because when I get home they normally hit peak loads, and so are most likely to turn my unit off. (This sounds bad, but in practice you never notice it, other than lower utility bills despite having a cool house all the time). They have a similar program for heat, but I have gas heat so I don't pay attention
Manufactures will write their drivers for what is most popular. If Windows had 1% of the market you can bet that they wouldn't write drivers for MS. If there are 20 different products each with 4% of the market, manufactures would be forced to write for all 20. Do that math, those 20 different systems make up 80%, even if something else has the other 20% that 80% isn't ignorable.
As linux grows eventually drivers must be written if you want sales. Thats why you can get drivers for NVIDIA cards in linux already, the market is big enough that they can't ignore it. (But not big enough that they care about perfect drivers on the date the hardware is released, Windows gets more attention yet)
Yes there will be some pains as drivers are written for a Server nobody uses, but companies follow the money. When people who would buy their products complain that they don't have drivers in sufficient numbers it is eventually worth it to write those drivers. Then management looks at the budget and notices that they are written two different X drivers, and after a market survey drop the Xfree86 drivers that nobody is using anyway. (at least in a perfect world where management does their job)
Treaty Banning Antipersonnel Mines
Sure, it would be nice to get rid of them, but in the real world their are evil people who will come after you, and landmines are the easiest way to prevent them. I wish it were otherwise, but until you can get rid of evil people you can't get rid of defense against them. (Hint first you have to come up with a good definition of Evil people that is more than I know it when I see it)
Rome Statue of the Internaitonal Criminal Court (ICC)
Why would anyone sign that? As far as I can tell it is a way for the rest of the world to enforce their laws on us. I've never seen a good argument that this court is any better than the system we have. It is however above the other systems, and above any laws, and if there is ever abuse apparently above reform.
Kyoto Protocol
Lets hurt the US protocol. Why would we agree to it? It gives the US nothing as far as we can see, and costs a lot. Try reading it from our point of view for a change.
I don't know much about the others I'll admit. However I look at the world from a different side than you. Look at the ones above from my shoes and they suddenly becomes obviously things we don't want. Your point of view isn't the only one you know. We can debate which is valid forever, but it is unlikely we will get anywhere.
Solution: ride in the middle of the lane like you are legally allowed to, and the sensors will see you. And you get the added advantage that cars are no longer able to pass you with just inches to spare between you and their mirror, so they are forced to wait for an opening and pass in the other lane like legally they are supposed to.
Note that it is always best to ride on less busy side roads when ever possible.
I've seen cases where the above behavior existed, except the button was not a trigger for the regular lights. Thus if you wanted to cross you not only had to push the button which would give you the walk sign (and give you enough time to cross safely), but you also had to wait for a car in the same direction to trigger the light to change.
I've seen traffic lights where pushing the walk button caused the walk light to come on when the light turned green (in the direction you want to cross), and caused the light to stay green a little longer. but the button did nothing to cause the light to change to green, that was controlled by a sensor in the road detecting a car.
Put it another way, pressing the button has no effect on when the walk sign will light, it only assures that eventually it will light.
Interesting question. I love questions like this that we can debate, secure in the knowledge that we will never find out the real answer. Eventually we will find out what it is like to have this working, but we geeks will never find out what it is like to have a "hottie" walk though the office.
Congratulations, you have posed the perfect open ended question.
Not with IPv6 where roaming is built into the protocol. At least in theory anyway, I don't know how well it works.