Indeed, and in some places of work (notably government) they still give 10-20 "ATV-dagen" (workweek reduction days) on top of the contractual amount of holidays. But keep in mind that wages have been decreased accordingly as well.

Exactly. And I see the same happening over here with teaching "critical thinking". It's important, but it got turned into the idea that questioning everything makes one a critical thinker. A college professor in history once told me he gave a guest lecture at a high school. The kids kept challenging him on points during his lecture, and at the end of class, the regular teacher proudly noted how critical the children were and didn't take everything from an authority figure at face value. To which the professor replied: "Yes, but it's a shame they know bugger all about history".

Some of this attitude carries over when these kids graduate and get a job. They're highly vocal and opinionated, but they are equally noisy on topics they have no knowledge on as they are within their own area of expertise. Thankfully, most of them quickly learn better, but sadly some of them are perceived as "strong decision-makers" (whatever the hell that means) and promoted to management, where their unfounded opinions actually do damage.

We tried this in the Netherlands in the 80s, and it didn't work. Only a handful of jobs were created; instead productivity was increased by 20% (let people work less but keep their workload the same, and don't pay overtime...over time, employers and employees figured out how to do the same job in less time) The effects of a shorter work week probably vary a lot between industries. In services, you may see hardly any increase, also because a lot of the work is knowledge work and communications, and adding extra people to the team to make up for lost hours will certainly decrease productivity. In manufacturing however, it may be easy to slot in extra workers working shorter hours, while increasing productivity is not something easily done.

And GP is right: hiring 5 guys at 80% instead of 4 full time guys may well increase overall cost, because of the effects of tax and wage regulations.

A coupe of examples:
- Light recipes. Especially in the living room where there are many lights all around the room, including some Philips Hue bulbs that can change color. Instead of having to set all of them for dinner, sitting around or movie night or whatever, 1 button does it all. And it works with the media player, put that on pause and the lights dim up a bit
- Heating in certain rooms is turned off when not in use, and turned on automatically when someone is there. This saves a little on the heating bill.
- Irrigation in the greenhouse is fully automatic.
- If I go to bed, I get a warning if there are still doors unlocked.
- When leaving the house, 1 button switches of all lights, heating and airco.
- Notifications on my smart phone in case a smoke detector or flood sensor is tripped. The smoke detectors will also trip all lights.
Stuff like that. Nothing life-changing, but those little conveniences do add up and if the hub is offline for whatever reason, we start missing them...

Russian made cars might get 13,000 miles to a tank of gas, but us capitalist pigs have to stop every 400 miles for gas. Even if it was a train tunnel, no train on this planet can go 13,000 miles on one load of fuel. Then you have the pesky problem of ventilation.

"hat are we left with? keep the door open and we have murderous hijacking? "

Yes we have to accept that 0.001% risk of a MURDEROUS HIJACKING

You have a better chance of dying in your bathtub at home by a terrorist hiding behind your shampoo.

"Any method of getting in from the passenger compartment would be vulnerable to coercion."

not if you have an air marshall with an AA12 shotgun full of beanbag rounds right there. There are very simple answers, the airlines are whiny bitches that claim they cant afford it, and that is the center of the problem.

3 crew on flight deck for all aircraft, Let the pilots rest and get good sleep, and2 very well armed angry air marshalls on every flight. Solves 100% of all "terrorisim" problems.

Sadly the people in charge of security that have zero clue as to what to do, and the airlines whiny executives disallow the correct answer.

Ot that they haven't slept. I know several airline pilots, they are told to fly even when they are very tired or when sick.

It's a single switch. Dont make it sound like he pushed a dresser in front of the door.

How is it not anonymous? A wallet is just as anonymous as a numbered account, with the difference that no entity has a record of who owns which wallet (unlike bank accounts). Oh, I am sure clever law enforcement agencies are able to combine data and tie a wallet to a specific person, but for day to day cases, no one knows who owns wallet XYZ, and I do not need to present any proof of identity to get my own wallet. So: anonymous.

The transactions are public. But that has nothing to do with anonymity of the accounts.

Anonymity isn't what crypto currencies provide. In fact, far from the opposite: Their whole structure is based on publicly broadcasting every transaction, that then everyone in the network store in its local copy of the common ledger (= into the blockchain). At best your can call it "pseudonymous" (wallets are identified by a base32 hash. it's not obvious at first look which real person is behind a wallet, just like the username on a forum doesn't immediately looks tied to an identity).

The main argument for bitcoin is decentralisation: because everyone has a copy of the blockchain, every one can verify that a transaction is legit and did indeed happen. There is no need for a central authority. Things are kept in balance by the whole network, no single entity can take control. (Unless they control 51% of all mining hash power).

Another peculiarity which stems from the above is that you aren't bound to any specific company. As long as both ends of a transaction support the bitcoin protocole, they can do whatever transaction suits them.
(you could be using a web-based coin payment processor like coinbase, i could be using a wallet running locally on my machine like bitcoin.org's own, and we can still exchange BTCs)

Well, we are both in Europe, so thanks to SEPA we already have reasonably fast and cheap transfers, that can work between any participating banks (I don't need to be at the same bank as you, or even in the same country. Because your dutch and my swiss bank are both participating in SEPA, we can send each other funds).

But that's not the case everywhere else.

Also, even if they are relatively fast, they still take between 24 and 72 inside the same country, and a few days up to a week for international payment. That makes it still usable for ordering goods around, for example.

One of the small advantage of bitcoin protocol is that it works much faster: between a few minutes up to half an hour at worst. Between any end-point wherever on the world as long as both support the protocol. That makes it usable for buying services.
It gives the easy and quick possibilities of cash transaction (here's your 5EUR note).
- but without the limitation of needing physical present (I can't send a 5EUR note over e-mail)
- and without relying necessarily on a third party or the same 3rd party.

Yet still, these are form of payment where there is one single company in charge or supervising everything (most credit cards issued by banks will rely on the VISA or MasterCard companies). When paying an online merchant through a credit card, you need to have a credit card at the same company (e.g.: MasterCard) and that company is going to charge you both for the transaction.
Also, the company can decide to stop receiving payments (see Visa and MasterCard deciding to stop processing donations to WikiLeaks).

Same with PayPal: a single company, requires that both ends of the transaction use paypal.
Is known for making troubles and locking account on a very regular base.
And very often, you need to give your credit cards info to paypal anyway, in order to be able to add funds to your paypal account.

One of the reason bitcoin gained some traction, is to work around the blocking of funds by Paypal and credit card companies.

That's not the case, neither with SEPA as you mentioned in Europe, nor with bitcoins.
I could by exchanging my BTCs with CHFs face-to-face by meeting people (like localbitcoins) and sending them using a wallet running on my laptop. You could be storing them on your wallet of a big exchange platform (like BTC-e) and convert them back to euros there. Or one of us could be using a payment processor like coinbase, or whatever.

Well atleast, unlike paypal, you can choose your poison.

Good for them. I'm still struggling to see what the benefit for me would be? I have little need for making anonymous payments, and international transfers are reasonably fast, cheap and convenient these days. One benefit is not having to give online merchants my full credit card details, but for local purchases iDeal (the Dutch banks' online payment solution) is better, and for international orders I can almost always use PayPal for that. Beats mucking around with out of date block chains and/or crooked exchanges (though some people would put Paypal in that category).

Dont worry, next year will be ruined by the hotels. They already announced there will be a 20% increase in hotel prices next year.

2 years ago it was a lot better, this year is probably my last year as I just cant afford $600 a night for a 4 night minimum stay anymore Plus $80 a day parking at the hotel. Makes my VIG passes look cheap in comparison.

Plus the bonus of chicago is if you take the red line to far south, you get murdered for free in your costume!

Gencon consumes all of indy that weekend. you cant get a hotel within 30 miles. Every single hotel room is already booked for that weekend. Every restaurant in a 10 mile radius of the center is packed full of people.

I honestly hope they move because Indy is too dinky of a town for Gencon. I want them to move to Vegas. Cheaper and better hotels, cheaper and easier flights. And a shitload more to do outside of the convention.