I agree. I've been victimized by the "upgrades" to a once-fast browser. Just one day I will open it and it will be upgrading itself. Wait, wait, must restart, etc. Now some ad-ons don't work anymore, gotta go look manually for up them, and so on. Hang on, did I say I wanted a Firefox upgrade? No, it just happens.

No, the phrase that includes any country in North or South America is "en america" (saying it in Spanish, that is).

A little talked-about advantage of having solar panels + battery backup at your home is that you get reliability and close to 100% uptime for your electricity needs. (The entire block could be in a blackout but you have your own power source.)

I'd definitely recommend looking into solar power.

There, fixed that for you.

Since most /.ers are college students or live in their parents' basement (and in either case don't pay income taxes), probably not. :P

Here you go ... http://www.google.com/analytics/

Well, no one's bombed the shit out of Ethiopia for example, yet this article from Time Magazine explains the problem: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1829841,00.html

Quote from article: "...for countries receiving their charity, long-term food aid can become addictive. Why bother with development when shortfalls are met by aid? Ethiopian farmers can't compete with free food, so they stop trying. Over time, there's a loss of key skills, and a country that doesn't have to feed itself soon becomes a country that can't. All too often, its rulers use resources elsewhere — Ethiopia has one of Africa's largest armies."

There was an interesting story in Time Magazine about that last year. It was about Ethiopian farmers, and it turns out that they are suffering big time, simply because it's impossible for them to sell their crops locally when their potential customers are receiving western food aid for free. So the whole ironic thing about aid from the west is that it keeps people locked into poverty and dependence.

By your definition, credit cards aren't unsecured loans.

You can do an income contingent repayment plan: http://www.direct.ed.gov/RepayCalc/dlindex2.html

Most of the temperature data is seriously flawed in that there is a great influence of the urban heat island effect on the overall data.

If you look only at the rural sites in the US over 111 years, you see a cyclic pattern but no overall warming. The cities are getting warmer but overall, the real temperatures are not going up. Its like measuring the temperature in the forest near a campfire. That does not reflect the real temperature.

Check out Youtube, Global Warming Urban Heat Effect.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcsvaCPYgcI

enjoy. By the way, I am a scientist and do a lot of data analysis. This was done with my son. I have spent hundreds of hours checking the data at the GISS site. It is sadly to say, very flawed. I did not believe it until I checked it myself.
Thank you

What's important is what happens in court, not with patent clerks.

Yes, integrity is definitely extremely important. For example, if you tell me "I quit my previous job", you could have gotten fired for:

a) Failing a drug test
b) Sexual harrassment
c) Incompetence
d) Stealing
e) Surfing porn on the job
f) Inability to report to work ontime and stay awake, or
g) A multitude of smaller sins.

I will never know the truth, since in today's environment your previous employer will only reveal, "Yes, John worked here from January 2004 until May 2009", period. No more.

The hiring risk is on me. For that reason, I behave like I am looking at used cars. Some may be fine, but I have to assume many have been wrecked, flooded or abused in some way. I cannot trust the "salesman" (you) to tell me the truth. My job is to manage the risk for my company in the hiring decision.

Your integrity is your own, it's attached to you as an individual, and any competent employer will DEFINITELY look at it first and foremost.

I am a manager at a large Fortune 500 company, and I have hired a fair number of people for accounting positions in the company. I certainly won't rule out a person who is out of work, but I certainly have a bias towards people still in their job. Here is what goes through my head when I see a person applying for my position who is unemployed:

a) Where they fired for cause?
b) Were they laid off, and thus at the bottom of the performance rankings at their previous company?
c) If they quit (to find another job), isn't their judgement sound enough to stay with their current job until they find another?

If your spouse has taken a job in another city, and you are the "trailing spouse", the question of unemployment (in the new city) is easy to answer....and I don't mind hiring such an individual.

If your previous company has outsourced the entire department to another country or location, that is also a very easy answer.

But your answer needs to address the three questions I posed. If you cannot satisfactorily answer them, I will probably lean towards hiring the guy who currently has a job (assuming you have similar qualifications). That is because you pose a risk to me (I am afraid you might be a problem employee), while I can be more confident that the guy who is currently employed can keep a job and perform.

Best wishes.

I agree, the Android may catch up to the iPhone in a few years, but Apple is way, way ahead.

I own both and the iPhone hands down is better, more intuitive, more fun, more interesting, etc etc, and every day there are a gazillion new apps to play with

I use the GPS on my iPhone constantly, and I love having instant access to the internet to look things up -- info, phone numbers, addresses, whatever. I don't really use it for games or movies, but it is nice having my music collection with me.