Buy "disposable" stuff. Technology breaks, gets obsolete, gets lost, gets stolen, ect.

Example: A few years ago, I bought a $2500 42" TV. It broke after 3 years, so I replaced it with a $1000 55". I didn't miss much, because both TVs are just basic HDMI without a lot of features.

Likewise, with your computers, make sure that they are capable of using some kind of magic cloud backup so that you can quickly get your stuff back. Dropbox runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac.

In all honesty, once I was having an email exchange with a mechanic that charged me too much money for not enough work. Gmail stuck an ad up for a much better mechanic.

The apartment that I just moved into is wired for cable, with hookups for Comcast and AT&T. Just wire your condos for cable and phone according to the recommendations of your local cable and phone companies; and then have your tenants get cable modems or DSL. The best way to get good service is to ensure that your residents can easily choose among 2-3 competing ISPs, and let the ISPs deal with the headaches.

It really depends on what you're motivating people to do, and who your employees are. If you have employees where you need to trust their judgement on what is a good use of their time; things like leaderboards can backfire when the best employees decide that the metric is for things like TPS reports.

I bought the stick. When I found out that the 2012 model has a CVT, I had that, "if only I could have waited" feeling. The new Subarus are quiet and silky smooth like my old Hybrid. If it's any consolation, my girlfriend just got a new CRV, and its Bluetooth support is very flaky. Subaru's Bluetooth is very reliable.

Oh, the Impreza is awesome on country roads and in snow. What I liked about my Honda Civic hybrid, and why I considered the Insight, is that they're very quiet and smooth with gentle acceleration. For gentle acceleration, my Impreza goes "Vrrroooom-shift-Vrrrrooooom-shift-Vrrrroooooooooommm." The Honda hybrids are much more graceful, although you pay for it!

I grew up in MA and purchased my 2003 Civic Hybrid in Framingham. At the time, I assumed that it'd have enough rust after 7-8 years that it'd have very little value. If I was living in CA in 2003, I wouldn't have taken the risk.

I switched back from hybrid to conventional. In 2003 I bought a Civic Hybrid, last year I considered an Insight but bought a Subaru Impreza Sport. Here's why:

• I could only take the car to the dealer for anything more complicated then an oil change. Regular mechanics refused to look at the car. My check-engine light was on, and the dealer told me that I needed a new catalytic converter for $2-3000 dollars. (The guy who bought the car from me told me it was an inexpensive sensor that needed to be replaced.)
• I wanted four-wheel-drive so I could go through CA chain checks when I go skiing.
• My 7-year-old hybrid Civic was only worth about $2,000. Normally Civics hold their value.

My 2011 Impreza cost me $20,000, and is a compact car. The only 4wd hybrids are large SUVs, which cost $30,000. Even at $4.00 a gallon, $10,000 buys a lot of gas. At 21 miles a gallon, $10,000 buys over 57,000 miles worth of gas!

Furthermore, Subaru service charges a lot less money then Honda service, and their accessories cost less. Honda charged me $400 for rubber floor mats, and Subaru charged me $100 for rubber floor mats.

Now, had I not wanted 4wd, I probably would have bought the Insight. I really prefer its quietness and smoothness over the Impreza. On the other hand, given that Honda service is expensive, regular mechanics won't work on Honda hybrids, and that the Insight would probably be worthless after 7 years, I'm probably going to spend less money owning the Impreza.

I get the impression that go is suited to high-performance network software where C would be too low-level. The memory isolation model minimizes the overhead of garbage collection, because it can be optimized to not "stop the world."

The article explains how he won: He negotiated got the odds very close to 50/50, and once he was on a winning streak, continued. He would only walk once he was down $500,000, but only owe $400,000. In contrast, the casinos wouldn't shut him off until he was up in the millions. Basically, instead of counting cards, he got lucky at outsmarting the casinos at their own business.

I like going to the theater: It's an excuse to go people watching and get out of the house. I'm also able to focus on the movie because it's rude to pull out my phone or laptop.

Granted, I like the fact that I can drink or smoke anything I want from the comfort of my own couch. I'm sure I'll go to the theater less often when I have kids.

Then the question is: how loud is the artifact? Is the artifact louder or quieter then the quantization noise?

nonononono

In this case, "mastered for iTunes" has to do with the fact that the artist / producer / studio encodes the AAC directly from the 24-bit master, using Apple's recommended algorithms for reducing sampling rate to 44.1 khz.

When you get a CD and go to FLAC, you've already lost quite a bit going from 24-bit to 16-bit. That loss isn't there in "mastered for iTunes."

I've been playing with this stuff for a few years when I take a 24 bit, 96khz wave file from a DVD-Audio disk, stick it into iTunes, and compress it to AAC. It still beats the pants off of stuff that I ripped from 16-bit CDs.

Mastered for iTunes is better then CD quality assuming that the producer encodes directly from the 24-bit master. AAC is totally floating-point; its compression process arguably creates a more accurate sound then decimating 24-bit to 16-bit.

If you're going to ask for FLAC, at least make sure it's 24-bit. Otherwise, you're just wasting space to carry around the distortion created when decimating to 16-bit sound.

"Mastered for iTunes" is just a set of guidelines that ensure that the resulting AAC file is the highest quality possible when encoded directly from a 24-bit master. It's higher quality then most FLACs because they are usually 16-bit, whereas AAC is essentially 24-bit when the source material is 24-bit. In essence, compressing 24-bit audio to 256kbps AAC sounds better then going to 16-bit uncompressed audio.

If you're going to go FLAC, at least make sure that you're getting 24-bit.