I'm not sure what bank you deal with, but at my bank funds are available the next business day after I deposit, and the first $100 is available immediately. Maybe that's "float", but not enough that I'm going to squawk.

One important thing for people to realize is that even if the bank clear the check immediately, as in the instant you present it, it can still bounce. All the electronic clearing does is validate that the account number is real and that the account has sufficient funds to cover the check. The account holder can still claim that the check is a forgery and you are then liable for the amount of the check unless some other resolution is arrived at, e.g. it can be shown that the presenter of the check is lying that it is a forgery.

Just remember, curious is not synonymous with approve or accept.

If I met somebody with a Google Glass I too would be curious. That doesn't mean I would approve or welcome the person taking a video of me. As irrational as it is, to a lot of people there is a big difference between somebody standing there blatantly videoing you Vs the ever present surveillance cameras, at least from an emotional perspective.

Like the USA? We have greater economic inequality since the robber baron era. And we seem hell bent on becoming the newest third world country.

Let see, an ocean capable and proven boat, a full load of fuel, generator, watermaker, long range HF radio equipment... We could easily last for an extended period with only food being the limiting factor. Unless a tsunami takes out the harbor, we can easily just untie the boat and leave for an area not affected by whatever the problem is.

Well stated. If only we could somehow move there as a nation we'd be a lot better off. Unfortunately we're stuck with the Bushism "If you're not with us, you're against us."

Hopefully the AC comment was posted as a sarcastic comment. It's hard to tell sometimes. But yes, the social media hords did get two INNOCENT people on the cover. Mostly it seems as though the crowd sourcing folks did a great imitation of Chicken Little.

While some of the logos are great artist creations, they were mostly, or totally I can't remember exactly, animated. Web page logos shouldn't be animated. Anything animated calls or attention to it and distracts us from the rest of the page. If the purpose of a web page is to show off animated icons, then by all means, proceed. But if the purpose of a website is to provide content to the user the best thing you can do is banish all animation.

I don't know the legal issues at hand, nor do I know the laws of China, but if what you are planing to do is a violation of those laws you should be prepared for an extended stay as a guest of the Chinese government.

While you might not believe that what they do is correct, moral, or defensible, it is non the less their country. Just as you would expect foreign visitors to your own country to respect the local laws, you should respect the laws of a country that you visit. If you find the laws so personally distasteful that can not abide by them, don't go.

While I'm concerned about being tracked, the major reason I adblock is to avoid having annoying animated ads appear. My eyes are inexorably drawn to anything animated within my near field of view. If a site has any animation on it I have an extremely hard time concentrating on the content. So adblock is most helpful in helping avoid all maner of methods that advertisers use to try and capture your eyeball.

If there were some means of blocking any animated content while still allowing ads I would think seriously of using that. I want the sites that I rely on to earn money. I don't have a problem with advertisers using sites as a venue to get the word out about their product. But I do want to be able to read the sites I visit.

I'm a self employed mobile marine electrician. So I guess I get to work by walking. That is, from my boat where we live to my work truck in the parking lot. But after that it is a HBV, Hurking Big Van. Not very fuel efficient, but probably uses less fuel than driving a small vehicle and running back and forth to the shop for every little thing.

I just visited a link on the dailyrecord.co.uk and received some kind of cookie notice. The notice appeared as a pop up in the bottom right corner (the last place an english speaker will scan to) with text in pale grey. The notice was clearly designed to be difficult to notice. Even though I saw it pop up right away, I didn't have a chance to read the text or see which link to use to opt out before the notice disappeared. It was clear from the first sentence that if I did nothing I was consenting to be tracked.

I guess the law, which clearly had good intentions, has been eviscerated so that now the websites can just briefly display a hard to notice blob of text, remove it before you have a chance to read it, and continue tracking you with impunity.

But what about instances where private for-profit companies provide poor quality unreliable service? Should a municipality, if petitioned by the citizens, respond "We're sorry, but a private company is already providing that service."?

We live in a rural community. People consider themselves lucky to get DSL. There is no cable option. Some people get long range WiFi. We consider ourselves to be extremely lucky because we can get 3mb DSL service. The service is, for the most part, fairly reliable, but we have periods of very poor throughput and lots of dropped packets. The local telco has shown very little interest in building out to provide faster more reliable service.

Our local co-op owned power company is looking seriously at building out a strong, fast, reliable broadband system. They already have a good chunk of fiber in place throughout the area for use by the county and a few businesses. They want to build out using wireless solutions for the last mile. Except for a few "Wi-Fi is damaging my brains" type people, the local folks are strongly in favor of it.

Rural infrastructure problems are exactly the areas where the standard municipality Vs business issues break down. Businesses don't see enough profit to warrant expanding or even maintaining the services. If municipalities don't step in, then people have to do with substandard service or no service at all.

I've always stopped whatever I'm doing during take off and landing. It doesn't matter if I'm in a really good spot in a book, or engrossed in a great conversation; at these times I stop. Even if I were allowed to used a portable electronic device, I'd still stop for landings and take offs.

Why? This will sound strange. Take offs and landings are the riskiest phase of a flight. I don't want to die and miss out on the experience. For whatever reason, I want to be in the here and now in the event of a catastrophic failure. I think it would be a shame to leave the present plain of existence (no pun intended) without being aware of the events that led up to the departure.

Everybody is different, and all family situations are different. In my case I have a wife who works full time, no kids, and no dogs. So these were the rules that worked for me. They might not work for you.

1) Have an office. A room set aside from the rest of the house that other family members don't need to access.
2) Treat your home office like a work office. You have times that you start and times that you end... more or less.
3) Get dressed for work. I don't mean tie and jacket, unless that's what floats your boat. I would wear jeans, t-shirt, and sneakers. The idea being that you want to mentally differentiate "lounging" from "working". This also helps protect your lounging times.
4) When your are at work, you are at work. We quickly settled on the rule that my wife would come into the office to let me know she was home, then head off. When I was done at work I would leave the office and walk into what ever room she was in announcing "Honey, I'm home."
5) I took breaks. For the first time in years I actually ate lunch someplace other than working at my desk. I'd go downstairs and make coffee when I wanted it. When you're hitting your head against a brick wall (I did software development) take a walk around the neighborhood. You don't need to explain yourself to anybody but yourself.
6) And this is important; when you are not at work, don't work. My office was also my household office so it was where I did bills, email, etc. But I was always careful to not just take a quick peak at whatever I'd been working on earlier. In my case, this was the hardest part. I'd get an idea on something to try that might solve a problem. The temptation is to sneak away for a just a few minutes... next thing you know it's 11:00pm and your wife is asking if you're ever coming to bed.

Good luck. I enjoyed working from my home office. But it all came to an end when I hired my first employee and my wife said "No employees working in the house." So then I was back to a downtown office again.