In a ruling 20+ years ago, my city banned rooftop and "visible from the street" solar panels and all wind turbines in a "nuisance" ruling. That same ruling also bans trash cans visible from the street and having any sort of front yard structure to hide them (these structures are allowed on the side of the house). Living on a corner lot where my backyard is partially visible from the street (I could build a fence, but my backyard is small and would likely block the panel), I cannot legally have solar and they have cited me for trashcans on the side of the house because it is "front facing to the street," even though it is the side of my house.

This is why we can never have nice things under capitalism. I'm sure the contractor noticed this early in the construction process, and they took the gamble that maybe nobody would notice and saved some dollars. They got caught, and so it cost them... But if you think this is an isolated incident, you're sadly delusional. Pretty much every company out there pulls stunts like this, and most of them don't get caught. That's why they do it. Worship the all mighty ROI.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

You could also use a system to vary the passwords. I use the last character of the site name (as I stated in a different post), but I've been migrating to a new system in the past couple of years, which is why I didn't care about divulging it. Let's say the new system is the first and last characters of the site (it is not) - I could then have sPa$$w0rdT for the password to Slashdot, and while it is essentially the same, it varies for most of my accounts. One hint - my new system sometimes excludes RSTNLE, AKA the Wheel of Fortune characters, AKA the most popular characters in at least American English, but sometimes does not and knowing when to use them or not is part of the trick. My new system gives me 4 character/number differences and positional differences in every password, so I expect it will be far more secure than my current method and still easy to remember.

I have throw-away passwords I sometimes reuse as well, also for sites I need to register on and don't particularly care about (they also get a junk email account I never check). I will vary this password by using a trick - I use the last character in the site name as the first character in the password so it is rarely the same. Still not exactly secure, but easy to remember and varies the password by site. The rest of the password is usually some fantasy character name with flipped calculator/leetspeak letters thrown in with the capital moved to after the first number. For instance, Godwynne would become g0Dwynn3 and BadBrutus would be b7DBrutus. If I was on Slashdot, these would be tg0Dwynn3 or tb7DBrutus.

And yeah, that is for my throw-away passwords. Most of my non-throwaway passwords I doubt could be guessed or hacked through brute force. A keylogger probably won't help (it will be flagged as an unknown program by security scans and set off a security alert), so you'd need to rootkit the machine.

That works great if you aren't forced to have 6 characters different, as well. Our rules were 8+ characters, 20x without repeat, 6 char difference in each password, 30 day forced changes, at least one upper case character, and at least one punctuation. Through trial and error, I found the 6 characters different were based on position, so my solution was rotation - Pa$$w0rd becomes a$$w0rdP and then $$w0rdPa, etc. Works for a few months at least, and I only needed to memorize three strings. Never got cracked by the brute force software so far, so it worked for me (and no, my password is not Pa$$w0rd - that is an old joke and not a very good one).

Speaking of nuclear, Nixon actually killed off the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment and fired Oak Ridge Laboratory lead Alvin Weinberg because he was advocating ditching the liquid metal fast breeder reactor in favor of the much safer molten salt reactors. Nixon did this to promote building Light Water Reactors in California and protect jobs there rather than delaying them for a new technology to be developed. The ABSOLUTE KICKER is that Weinberg also wanted molten salt reactors because their high heat can be used for desalination (and their ability to scale to small sizes would make them ideal for developing countries that needed desalination as well as some electricity).

I can count Bush's environmental policies on two fingers - banning of incandescent light bulbs (which, honestly, was going to happen eventually) and banning CFC asthma inhalers to support the Montreal Treaty, even though those were one of the tiniest contributors to ozone depletion and seriously impacted asthmatics (for one, it was the only over the counter asthma remedy, for two, the replacement, HFA inhalers, were patented, prescription only, and were only tested on healthy adults in the FDA's "fast track" program, which is the same thing they do to test GMOs, and 3/4 of the manufacturers used an allergen, alcohol, as part of the propellant, so that went over poorly...).

If there's one president I wish had failed to get into office, it's Bush, though Obama has cut it close a few times (both of them have TERRIBLE financial policy, IMO - defund Obamacare? Only the assistance to the poor was unfunded - Bush's Medicare D wasn't funded AT ALL)...

Saying "Hey guys, these are the works that I've produced recently that are currently eligible for awards. Vote for me, please!" is not the same as saying, "Hey guys, here is a slate of works by various authors (most of whom are not me) that I think you should vote for."

Oops... I replied upthread before reading this. Apologies.

Yes, I read that too. I think that you are reading way too much into what is written there. It seems pretty clear to me that he is planning on casting his own ballot on the merits of the works nominated, but that he understands those that would vote against the sad puppy slate on the theory that intentionally disruptive behaviour should not be encouraged. Moreover, even if I granted your interpretation, that would be Scalzi pushing against a given slate, rather than pushing his own slate of nominees, which is what was claimed by ageoffri in the first post to which I replied.

I asked for a slate of candidates posted or endorsed by Scalzi. You replied with a the sad puppy slate, which was posted by Larry Correia. Thanks for the attempt, but that doesn't answer my question. The condescension is a nice touch, though.

Citation, please? I've noticed that Scalzi leaves a thread open on his website where people can push their own recommendations or slates, but I don't think that I have ever seen him endorse any particular slate of candidates. Again, my recollection may be flawed and my quick look at the Google may not have turned up whatever you have in mind, so I am more than willing to be shown that I am wrong---but for that to happen, I would need you to point out where Scalzi has posted such a slate (as I seem to be unable to find it myself).

Well we all saw how Title II killed wireless phone service back in 1993. I mean, who uses a cell phone these days?

I just bought a new laptop and the cheapest one that included 802.11ac was a $700 Dell - but that had absolutely shitty specs other than that (720p graphics, non-touch, a slow i5, Intel integrated 4000 graphics...). For $800 I got a much faster i7, nVidia 840 gpu (shitty, but better than Intel 4000 by far), and 1080p graphics in the same form factor, but only 802.11n wifi (which was in almost every other laptop I looked at as well). It is unfortunate, but 802.11ac is not widely adopted yet :(