I might consider a phone line, esp since we are in hurricane country. However it costs friggin $60 a month!!!!!!

Home Automation has grown leaps and bounds, but you'll have to pay to play. The current state of the art is "Crestron", but is definitely Audio/Video oriented, but will control things and automate yourhome as well. Price tag is near a quarter million for most high-end installs.

http://www.savantav.com/ is much cleaner, easier to use, updateable, and is chomping at Crestrons heels. Also very expensive in the hundreds of thousands, but they did just release a simple controller for only a few thousand. FYI: Savant is based on MacOSX.

IBM and dozens of call centers supporting the company used OS/2 - on 16mbit token ring networks - daily, productively, and much to the chagrin of myself and everyone in that section of the office - until around 2001ish - thats when they moved us to windows 2000 pro.

Obviously you've never driven on one of the roads they are talking about. Pickup trucks don't notice potholes, and you drive FASTER on dirt roads to minimize suspension travel. Not only did Mythbusters prove it, I LIVED it.

Drunken rednecks - and MI has more than one - don't slow down.

Born in 1979, spent my pre and teen years in Redford or Redford Township, MI. They STILL don't have paved roads from what I hear. This city of 50k or so which butts up against the western edge of Detroit proper - has roughly 30% of its residential roads still dirt. Today - in 2009. Potholes, water trucks spraying god knows what, mud, all kinds of fun to be had. Best part was shagging cars in the winter because there was really no danger, you could lose grip and no way you can scrape your face on dirt, at least not nearly as bad as you could end up in the hospital doing that on pavement.

According to wikipedia - this city is 89% white. Mostly trash (according to me, who lived there for a long time). Cross Telegraph Rd - and it's 89% black. White flight at its worst. Except these folks didn't get far enough.

I'm not shocked at this - it costs SO much money and no matter how much they throw at the roads they still have dozens of freeze thaw cycles to destroy them in a couple years.

Down here in south florida we have roads that have lasted 20 years and look damn good.

They aren't going to get away with modifying code to stifle competition. The copyright claim stands on its own but by bricking machines they seem to run afoul of antitrust law.

This.

Here are the maths:

1 BTU = energy needed to raise 1 pound of water 1 degree.

1600 cuft pool: 6 feet deep/15 feet wide/17ish feet long, aka your average backyard pool.

A pint's a pound the whole world round... 1 cu ft water is 7.48 gallons, or about 62.31 pounds.

You are looking at: 62.31lbs x 1600 cuft = 99,696 lbs give or take.

You need 100,000 btu's to raise that 1 degree (and I believe its 1 degree in an hour)

Swimming pool heat pumps (reverse air conditioners really) as well as electric heaters and natural gas all have a power factor involved, since nothing is 100% efficient.

100,000 BTU's is generated from about 29000 watt hours.

So you need at least 29kw/h to make the heat to increase the temp in your pool 1 degree.

at $0.10 (USD) per kw/h, thats $3 per hour. Yes heating your pool is ridiculously expensive. So is cooling your house, or heating your house for that matter. Gas/oil/heat pumps are much more efficient and cost-effective than electricity at this.

Avg cpu uses 150-300watts TOTAL, and dissipates maybe 20-60W from the CPU at less than perfect efficiency.

You need to cool 2000 CPU's or maybe 1000 CPU's and 1000 video cards in order to raise the temp of your pool 1 degree.