Much the same has happened with yield signs. We tried to get a yield sign put in at an intersection in our neighborhood and our city traffic engineers (San Diego) said they won't put in yields anymore. The reasoning is apparently because people just blow through yields and now too many basically treat stop signs like a yield.

Technically incorrect. If you enter an intersection, even on green, and cannot clearly/reasonably exit the intersection before the red light (usually meaning traffic is piled up in front of you) then you can be cited. Presumably it's for blocking traffic vs running the red, but it might be up to the officer and/or judge.

Not the same situation, but it would apply on a yellow if you cross the line before red, but there were cars in front of you keeping you from exiting the intersection before it did turn red.

I picked up a refurb'd Aspire One off woot a couple weeks ago to play with. The default XP install definitely feels slower then the Ubuntu NR install I'm playing with. But overall it does feel way underpowered for any "real" use, i.e. aside from casual browsing. Though the keyboard is awkwardly small enough to make it not good for heavy typing anyway.

It barely can play some video files I encoded ages ago... might be good for watching some of those vids on a plane vs on my iphone though.

You think they won't find a way to charge a tax on an outside purchase? Right...

Seriously, already in CA, if you register a vehicle that was bought in another state within some time limit, you'll have to pay CA tax on it, or at least the difference.

You must get some whopping deductions for your kids, or have a hell of a huge mortgage. I don't have kids, but have the mortgage interest deduction and still am paying about 15-17% of just pure fed income tax. I'm not as high up in the earning % either.. though top 20% I think.

I've gotten nailed by the AMT twice now too. Both times in years I cashed in some stock options. That's partly because I'm in CA where state taxes (hence the deductions for them) are high enough that AMT kicked in (yay). At least that's how I understand why AMT hit me before.

It's probably surprising, even seeing the wikipedia page linked in a reply, because there are multiple levels. There's also the stuff not considered a "tax" (but let's face it, if it's something you're required to pay by the gov't, it's a tax) like Social Security. Sure, the official federal income tax is listed around 28% in the wikipedia page, but when you add in the social security, Medicare, state/local/property/gas/sales/etc taxes, it all adds up to a lot more. It can also vary a lot based on where you live.. for instance: some states have no income tax at the state level, others have no state sales tax.

The hiding of taxes as "fees" or under the umbrella of something else (like soc security) happens in other places too. There are limits on what state universities can charge for tuition in some states. I live in California and have had dealings with the UC and CSU systems. You should see how much stuff they wedge into "fees" vs tuition anymore. Then they can claim that tuition wasn't increased, when what you have to pay to attend still goes up. Granted I was last in school 10+ years ago.. but from what I've heard from co-workers, it's still going strong.

IME through 2 powerbooks and now on my 2nd 17" MBP.. the screen brightness is the main factor on battery lifetime, period. You can see very small differences with settings on CPU usage, sleeping HDD, etc.. but dim down the brightness on the display to 1 dot (which is still enough for all but the brightest situations or at least well worth the added battery time IMO) and you'll see the estimated time left climb.

Have you even used OSX? There are signs that it's still running:
1. The application is still in the title bar (assuming you don't click the background or something else immediately).
2. The Dock shows the application runnning

That said.. my dad, who's not stupid, doesn't get it either. I point it out to him all the time. He's worked with technology his whole life, starting with telecom (especially cypto stuff) in the Air Force, then worked with phone systems since then.. 40+ years now. Yet he's helpless with computers (and VCRs, receivers, etc). I think I _finally_ broke him of the habit of downloading a dmg, and dragging the application directly into the dock from there, so that everytime he started it via the icon on the dock, it'd have to remount the dmg again and run it from inside there.

There was one cool save I did for him. He managed to (I figured out later) move /Applications under his desktop. Most apps broke, but ichat was up. He IM'd me, I took over his desktop, opened a terminal.. figured out what he did, moved it back and the system was fine again.

While I agree, since having engineer in my title (and my corresponding BS level diploma) somehow garners me a modest discount in my home and auto insurance... I'll stick with it. :P

Seriously. Apparently "engineers" tend to be safer people and I do get a discount.

My first computer related job (early 90's) was at a small company (maybe 40 people in the office) and I really liked it. This was long before I was anything close to a real sysadmin, but I was basically the only "computer guy" (not really even IT, hell "IT" wasn't a term yet IIRC). I'd lean to the culture being the more imprtant factor then size.

The pluses a smaller place can have if it has the right culture and atmosphere is that you're more like a family and much better communication around the place.

Unfortunately, the place I worked at had really hard times after I was there for about 6 months and a chunk of us were let go.

Now I work in a huge company, but we still have a good culture (in general). I've been here for more then a decade and while there have been times where I was frustrated about stuff, I've been happy overall. Compensation and benefits have been great, and I've worked hard to get my base salary and such up there.

I did go through a long period (first 7-8 years) busting my ass, working WAY more time then I really needed to, but finally realized that it was too much to take anymore and have learned to put things down and get back to them later. I give myself more personal time, work from home more to break up stressful times, etc. I've earned the respect and trust of my peers and bosses in order to be able to do this.

Back to the main article's point.. I looked at TFA and even the PDF (holy crap did it look like crap in acroread on this linux box) and see no details at all. Without them, I can only assume this is mostly just people whining about stress (vs doing something about it) and about how IT can be in general. If they don't like it, they should get out now. As for real physical abuse.. that's illegal anyway, report it.