That doesn't mean you have to use it. That's why they make transfer switches. And if you ever want to sell your house, you can be damned sure you'll get a better ROI if it's hooked to the grid.

Here's a juicy tidbit for those not familiar with the Codes: Builders and Fire Marshalls are not the only ones writing the codes. The mortgage underwriters and the insurance companies also have their hands in the pie (in addition to all the manufacturing special interests, like sprinkler manufacturers and hurricane strap companies). The insurance people want to minimize losses in major events, and the mortgage underwriters want to make sure they can resell your house when you default on the loan. Look at the codes with an eye to *who* wants to preserve their business helps to see how some otherwise odd provisions get put in.

More like "Oops, you caught us this time. We're truly sorry (that you caught us) and will try to slide the terms in later, when we think you're not looking anymore. Hey - like us again for 10% off your next purchase of $10 or less!!!!"

Most of those who do vote, don't think. If you were to take the R and the D off of the names and eliminate television advertising (which provides generally no insight into policy issues), you would find that most voters would pick whomever was on the top of the ballot or - in a more cynical case - whomever they saw the most yard signs for, because they have no idea who stands for what. Otherwise intelligent people simply follow the masses, taking little or no time to actually read the candidate's positions and records.

This isn't limited to a single party, and both have the bulk of their constituents who would not vote for the candidate with the opposite party designation even if their beliefs lined up perfectly.

Given the choice, hung - any day of the week.

Oh, you meant hanged. Nevermind.

We're supposed to be surprised that everyone is supposed to fly coach?

And, if you're custom rolling your backend at the scale of AWS, I wouldn't expect anything *but* sourcing yourself. Outsourcing is for organizations that don't have the expertise in house and want a finger to point if things go wrong. Vertical integration is more cost efficient if you have the scale to make it work.

It sounds like a bad driver or hardware enumeration. But, yes, if windows takes more than a few seconds to get to a login on a SSD based machine (so, what 30-40 seconds on a spinner?) then it's a hardware problem. W8, once I restored the start menu, is no less stable or responsive than my W7 machine. Most of my complaints are over install of OEM versions of the OS that aren't auto-authorized by the bios (most of my machines are Dell, and the Dell OEM OS just installs; no games, no keys, no mess).

FWIW, my favorite version was NT 3.51, and I go back to Win 1.02 days (on windows, at least); I still even have the install disks - though no 8086 or 720k floppy drive to read them.

You don't get security updates for 6.1.5, you have to upgrade to 6.1.6, and Apple only provides this because their own hardware won't run 7.x.

MS saying that they won't provide patches for 8.1.0 now that 8.1.1 is out is trivial. The only PR fuck up is giving a date instead of "after reinstatement of 8.1 Update (8.1.1) availability).

And don't get me started on Apple. You know the first thing that happens when you call Apple with a problem? They have you wipe the device clean and reinstall the OS from scratch. Which, I suspect, would work fine on nearly any windows machine except for the annoyance of the reinstall. (I don't bother calling Apple anymore for iOS help - I don't have a couple of hours to reinstall the whole goddamned phone and set everything in it back up)

Mark...is that you?

If you think it costs a lot to develop and build a flying car, wait until you find out how much it costs to change the FAA regulations.

Where are my mod points when I need them. Thank you - I couldn't have said it better myself.

Stop trying to use logic to discredit an article that gets these /. geeks in such a froth. These are people who use logic for a living, but ignore it when it suits their cause.

Indeed - you should be in the business where you have hundreds of millions of installed users. That's the way to make the dime easily.

Why would you want to pull over the let your passenger send a text?

Dead wrong. Driver mode should be a UI mode which is tuned for hands and (mostly) eyes free usage. Allowing communication, navigation, and entertainment (audio) to seamlessly be integrated with the automotive head unit. The use of simpler prompts keyed through the steering wheel (like volume on head units or set/coast/resume cruise control) and large format feedback/UI viewable with peripheral vision.

Phones *could* make the driving experience safer by bypassing the distraction of the modern touchscreen headunit which is mounted way outside of peripheral vision. But because there is no dedicated mode, it's simply not suited for the task. Yet.

Mobile phones *could* make much of driving safer than it is today instead of making it more dangerous. For the first time, we have devices which be an effective co-pilot (mapping, traffic, entertainment, communication) and yet most of them are unusable in a voice-only mode. Part of that is standardization - every app requires a different set of commands, or an incomplete set of commands. Part of it is parochialism - OS developers allowing only their own offspring apps (most of which are, at best, middling compared to 3rd party) integration with the OS. This speaks nothing of the hideous integration with head units in cars, both OEM and aftermarket, which have the same problems - and don't even get me started on the microphones in cars.

Nobody seems to have really put a team together that has been tasked with making the experience safe for use in a car. They've bolted on weird, disfigured additions that make demos possible but which are not really useful in regular usage. It needs to be a core functional operating mode.

FWIW, I don't consider a ban on personal computers useful in cars. The distractions of text messages and the idiot watching movies is no different than the woman putting on lipstick or the guy reading a paperback while driving, and the presence of music and navigation and communication is no different than the music and navigation that gets built into head units today and the husband jabbering away or the kids yelling at each other in the back seat. Until we are no longer driving it's better to manage distractions than think we can eliminate them.