While people don't directly have a choice, indirectly many do - anyone near the border of the respective service areas. Go two towns over and it's Comcast land. In my case, apartments in Comcast territory were automatically excluded from consideration. If Comcast ever got so terrible that people fled their areas for Time Warner, it could actually affect property values. As it is, apartment complexes in Fios territory advertise this fact and are able to charge just as much as the ones 5 miles closer to the city center. Quality of internet adds value.

Have you ever actually observed a truck on the highway? Just drive behind one for about 10 minutes. If you played a drinking game over how many times it fouls the other lane, you'd be DUI before the time is up.
1. Trucks are wider so they have less margin on each side of the lane.
2. When taking a curve, if they are on the outside lane, they are guaranteed to foul the inside lane, simply because a straight line is the shortest path between two points.
3. If the trailer is empty, the wind will cause it to sway erratically.

Also count how many truck tire blowouts you see. That has to cause at least a small loss of control, woe is he that is next to the truck when that happens.

Plus the kinetic energy. Just two days ago: somehow I think the bus would have fared better if it was a mini cooper that crossed the divider... bus-and-fedex-truck-collide-on-i5-bus-in-flames.

Basically, anyone driving adjacent to a truck for more than the 10 seconds it takes to pass one is applying for a darwin award.

If you are equally relaxed whether the vehicle next to you is a Mini Cooper or an 18 wheeler, your survival instinct must be terrible...

Except you sometimes end up in more dangerous situations that way. It's not fun when trucks and buses are passing *you*... not to mention the long line of cars behind that truck / bus now occupying your "shit there's a [immovable object] in the road" swerve space.

For me, getting a pre-emptive gg meant the game has now changed to "find the pylon." The pre-emptive gg-er desperately wants me to quit, so after finding the pylon, rather than killing it, they will usually do something silly like draw pictures with buildings in the middle of the map. Of course, I'd have alt+tabbed to watch a movie or TV show at that point. When I come back to find he eventually killed the pylon, I feel smug in knowing that the last 45 minutes of my life were slightly more enjoyable than his. And sometimes I would get a surprise and find that he d/c-ed :).

I miss starcraft bw *sniff*.

And compared to using the internet, every one of those alternatives is either more expensive, more time consuming, or both. As time goes on, the brick and mortar method will become 'depricated' as anyone still catering to that group will be less cost effective than their online-only counterparts. Obligatory car analogy: Once upon a time, people could get anywhere they needed to go via public transportation or by simply walking. Automobile travel enabled the 'big box retailers' model, and local businesses in small towns evaporated.

Same thing with cell phones: People once used a combination of pagers and pay phones. Now there's very few pay phones, so that model is no longer viable.

Why not? A clock's purpose is for humans. It's relation to the sun is of no importance. The simplest tweak to everyone's routine to improve things is is to pin them to DST, to correct a problem that is only present for four months a year (and caused directly by returning to standard time).

Retraining would be required for Windows 8, so no cost difference in that area.
The cost of google apps can be compared against buying new office licenses for 2300 new PCs.

Nothing fishy at all, this actually looks like a good idea.

I think you missed what I was getting at... that the time zones are more often than not, "off by one" while in standard time during the winter months. I am agreeing that we should stop messing with the clocks, and just pin them to DST. Since we spend 8 months out of the year in DST and 4 in ST, it is already almost there. The net result could very well be a national shift of time zones "to the left".

What you are suggesting is that during the winter months, people change office hours to start earlier, to counteract the meddling with the clocks. How is that better than my solution of not meddling?

Did you read my post? Work is starting at 8 and it's *still* too dark at the end of the day during the four months of EST... I've noticed this problem in other time zones as well (JST, AST). I am guessing that the pre-alarm clock "up with the sun" mindset is why the time zones are the way they are, but if you poll people with a simple question "do you prefer sunlight before work or after" the answer is a resounding after.

During EST, my upstate NY city has hardly any sunlight after 4:30 PM. As a result, it seems the local businesses are all on a 8-4:30 work schedule. A few weeks ago I overslept and was amazed at how freely traffic flowed when trying to get to work at 9.

And, we *still* want it to be EDT year round. I don't care if it's completely dark on the drive in to work, but driving home in the dark is depressing (it's dark because "the day is already over" versus "the day hasn't begun yet").

It does make the situation worse; by adding sources it drives down the price of the weapons, allowing the cartels to to be better armed for less money.

And to pre-empt any response that says "flying is not a right", you can't take a bus to Hawaii and the U.S. Territories...

In sortof agreement with what you said: this seems to be a simple case of jury nullficiation, but in the opposite direction /. seems to desire. People here like to advocate it as a way of getting someone who was arrested under an unjust law out of trouble. But the truth is, far more often it is used in a matter that results in convicting those who exhibit scummy behavior, regardless of the evidence.

More, a drunk passenger is safer than a sober driver. Pity the intercity buses in the US disallow consumption of alcohol...