No, of course not. However, in America, HR runs the company, so there's no way around this idiocy.

It's worked fine for me for 16 years (mine was the very first model, not the later touchscreen models), except for the big mold issue (which after a couple years they did a factory recall and sent a technician to my place to install a bunch of new, redesigned parts in the door and front area), and the water pump failed a couple years ago which I replaced myself. There haven't been any electronic issues. I have read of some people having problems with the wax motor (the thing that controls the door locking) control circuit.

It can be very hard to get a new programming job if you haven't been doing it for a while. It doesn't matter how competent you are or if the language hasn't changed in 20 years. Many companies outright refuse to interview someone if they've been unemployed for more than 6 months.

You want a surgeon working on you who isn't passionate about medicine, and just wants to put in his 8 hours and go home?

So how do the Europeans do it? Just look at how cheap and high-quality cellphone and ISP service are in western European countries. Government regulation seems to work pretty decently over there.

I ask IBEW members in Alaska to do that, and they say yes, with a smile. Just because everyone's an asshole to you (wonder why), doesn't mean they are to everyone.

Where are you where everyone's in a union? Given the movie example, I'd lean towards CA, but I've worked with grad students and didn't run across any unions there.

You don't think microwaves can boil water?

Nonsense. systemd doesn't make anything easier or threaten anyone's livelihood, it's just change for the sake of change (at the UI level), as are the changes to network configuration. Whatever benefits there may be to whatever changes under the covers doesn't require replacing the init.d structure, the service command or the network config file formats. System administrators have enough to do without dealing with gratuitous changes that don't buy anyone anything.

Interesting. I wonder if any of this has changed in recent years, though, since a lot of (at least the high-end) laundry machines here in the US are now Asian-made, from Samsung and LG (rather than the old American standy-bys Maytag, Whirlpool, etc.); surely there's some effort there to make machines that are largely the same so they don't have to make different entirely machines for different markets.

>BTW, front loaders though more efficient do not nearly last as long and do not nearly have the capacity of a top loader and they seem to develop that stinky mold issue.

My Maytag Neptune is 16 years old and works fine. It also has the same capacity as most top-loaders (though not as large as today's larger front-loaders). The mold is a bit of a problem though.

Yes, but if a circuit has a higher current capacity, then it needs fatter wiring. If you reduce the current rating, you can reduce the wiring size, saving money since copper is expensive. So if European homes were more like American homes with special circuits for the high-power devices, and a lower current rating (5 or 10A) for the regular wall outlets, they could save money on construction by using smaller wiring. 16A circuits will still need the same size wiring as the 15A/120V circuits in American homes.

Do they actually do a good job? Usually, when you try to make a machine that does two very different jobs, it does a crappy job at either one compared to two machines that are optimized for each one.

I thought someone else in this thread mentioned those machines and said they do a terrible job cleaning clothes.