How is this not 'voting twice'?

1. 1) Individual votes their personal choice. Turnout is poor due to systemic disenfranchisement.
2. 2) Individual votes again, but this time their boss chooses. Turnout is effectively mandatory and close to 100%.

That's just madness.

I ended up voting 'Open Access For Everyone', but that's a bit misleading as 'Everyone' is exclusively 'Me'. Or sometimes my wife if she is home sick or on an odd schedule.

After reading all of these HVAC related horror stories, I'm glad for it too! I'll take arguing with a sick wife once in a while over any of that.

Unfortunately there are a not-insignificant number of idiots here in the Seattle area (and, I'm sure, in other places) that *do* run studded tires for no good reason at all, so that is still a very real concern.

Same here, a bit further south in Oregon. For what amounts to maybe 1/2" of snow a year, if it even snows at all, we have people running studded tires the entire legally allowed season 'just in case'.

These same people complain about the terrible shape the roads are in, and also complain about any taxes they may have to pay to fix the roads. All because it might snow, and it might stick around for more than an hour. Maybe. Or they might drive over the mountains to Central Oregon once. Or maybe go skiiing a couple of times.

I wish more people were sane about their winter driving tire choices.

And we weren't close to the CO and had no trouble getting 5 Mbps

I don't think I'd consider 5Mbps much of an improvement over 1.5Mbps Neither of those speeds would I consider an 'adequate replacement' for my current 50Mbps cable connection.

I've experienced this first hand. I gave my estimate for a new feature. Over the course of the remaining meeting, I literally watched my estimate get cut in half by the client and management as they shuffled dates around.

I then chimed back in with my original estimate of how long it would actually take in the real world, and somehow everyone was upset that I had moved the deadline. Unreal.

Most software requests seem to be more like "I want to drive across the Aleutian islands, make it happen".

Shortly followed by "We now need to support walking as well, but they need to get there as quickly as the people who drive. This should still fit in the 'get to Russia' spec, so we won't be adjusting your budget."

What might make golf more accessible is building smaller 9-hole courses heavy on par-threes with more forgiving hazards and flatter greens. Less of a time commitment, cheaper due to faster turnover... Change the name somewhat (Golf-lite? Softgolf?) so as to defuse objections from people who want to maintain âoepure golfâ(TM)sâ identity as is.

They have those already, generally called executive courses. The one in my neighborhood has 18 holes for $15 (or 9 for $9), will rent you clubs for $3 and a cart for $3.50. It's dead flat and has minimal hazards - just enough so you know what a hazard is.

If you are going to play with other people you know, you can share clubs while trying things out.

Most courses - even municipal public courses - won't allow you to do that as it slows your group down considerably. If you've got a rookie in your group, you're already going to be a bottleneck. Don't make it worse by having to chase back and forth sharing clubs.

Most places are more than happy to rent you clubs for the round at pretty reasonable rates. The nearby executive course is $3 for clubs and $9 for 9 holes.

I take all interested newbies there for an introduction to the sport. It's dead flat, nothing but par 3, no reservations, and chock full of duffers so nobody feels bad. For $20, you get a round in the sun plus a couple of beers.

I'm sure there's someplace similar to this in every city. Not everything is Bushwood Country Club.

My reaction when Google buys something is, "Ewww, now Google will know how I [whatever]." Example: I had been strongly considering a Nest thermostat, but there is NO WAY I want Google to have heuristic information about the goings-on in my house.

Yes, there is definitely a divide between the most ideal definition of Libertarian and the more common implementation. You're clearly a thinker, and I'd trust proposals made by you to be worthy of debate.

Most of the folks I've met who claim to be Libertarian are either more of the greedy sort, or are at least ideological purists, even to their own detriment. To go back to the garbage example, there are self-proclaimed Libertarians I've spoken with who would rather buy their own can and haul their own trash at a cost of X (plus their time) than be "forced" to be complicit with a government program for hauling trash, even though it only costs .5*X.

Even if the goals are lofty, idealogical purism is typically more destructive than not. See RMS for a fine example.

Oh, and their back-up plan, had they not won that debate, was to push for full privatization of the garbage system, i.e. 5 or 6 private companies running trucks every week, crisscrossing each others' routes. Wonderful.

You make a good point, but I'm not sure we're quite to a place where remote-piloted garbage trucks will be considered safe, except maybe in the dead of night when there's few other vehicles on the road.

Even then, though, in my locality, they don't force everyone to use a uniform (i.e. easily lifted by a robotic arm) garbage can. There's a strong libertarian bent in Oregon, so forcing everyone to pay $2/month or buy outright the type of can that'll interface with the truck isn't going to happen. As a result, probably 2/3 of my neighborhood uses their own, cheap cylinder cans, requiring that the garbage guy gets out and lifts.

It's my understanding that the garbage utility wanted to simply give everyone the cans and bury the cost because of the savings through efficiency. However, that was greeted with scorn; people who, on principle, didn't want to pay for other people's cans nor be forced to pay for their own, rallied to ensure that they would continue to be allowed to use whatever can they wanted, damn the cost to everyone else.

LOL, I hope we've never had an argument before, because I think this is awesome. Absolutely the best /. post I've read all day.

Let's stop glorifying the AC.