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Comment Re:Could we hear some Germans tell this story? (Score 1) 473

So I just had a look at my most recent electric bill which provides my usage numbers for the past 13 months. According to those numbers, I used between 779 KWh and 1,291 KWh, averaging 1,001 KWh/month. I'm on the budget plan, meaning my payment is the same each month regardless of usage (with an annual settle-up to account for any over/undercharges). By my calculations, I pay about $0.11/KWh, vs. your $0.31/KWh. Does your electric company do something "special" for you in addition to simply providing electricity? For nearly triple the price/KWh I sure hope they do!

Comment Don't avoid legacy code (Score 3, Insightful) 360

Certainly don't become trapped with a dying language, but do not arbitrarily rule out working with legacy code. Think of it as a challenge instead:

1) You always learn something even if it's negative (don't do that!!!)
2) You gain insight into another's thought process. Sometimes that's scary, but again, you learn something - a new perspective, perhaps.
3) Really bad code can let you pull off the impossible - improving performance, reducing resource utilization, etc. You can become the "go to" person, with the job security and good performance evals that come with it.

Give it a shot before turning up your nose.

Comment Out of context (Score 1) 659

None of the questions have any surrounding context that would add or subtract from any feelings of empathy I may or may not have. Whether I (or anyone else, for that matter) feels empathy towards a subject depends greatly on the circumstances. Do I feel empathy towards the folks being impacted by the gulf oil spill? Sure. Why? Because their way of life is being altered in ways we can't even begin to measure through no fault of their own. Do I feel empathy for a guy who burned himself to a crisp because he was too realize he shouldn't smoke while fueling his Prius? Very little, actually. Don't do stupid shit ya dumbass!

Comment Re:Put the damn thing in neutral! (Score 1) 1146

The other thing to consider is that no car ever made has enough engine power to overcome the brakes. Even if you don't put the transmission in Neutral, you should be able to stop the car barring massively failed brakes.

Don't believe me? Go start your car. Step on the brakes and hold them, and then put the transmission in gear. No matter how much you rev the engine, the car won't move other than torquing over a bit. The brakes are designed specifically to overcome the engine.

Comment Joystick control (Score 1) 609

This is an exceptionally bad idea. Even with extensive training, in an emergency, you do not think about how to react, and decades of "muscle memory" kicks in. There will be many, many instances of someone in a crisis situation trying in vain to stop their vehicle by attempting to stomp on a non-existant brake pedal.

If you change the QWERTY keyboard, for example, all you have are some frustrated touch-typists. Change this interface and you're going to have scores of dead bodies followed by inevitable lawsuits. A steering wheel and pedals may not be the best interface, but it's too late to change unless you have both systems in place for decades until a new generation of drivers are trained to use only the joystick mechanism.

Comment This is old news folks ... (Score 1) 847

This is publicly available information to start with, and, according to someone in the know, the town is very small, and the officers are quite brazen about being "undercover cops" to the point where her disclosure came as no surprise to anyone in town. For a longer discussion, try this:

http://opencarry.mywowbb.com/forum54/29292.html

Comment Re:Can someone explain this guy's logic to me (Score 1) 367

I may still be connected to the grid, but solar power usage already provides net benefits to the company:
  • The reduction in demand allows the company to reduce its capital needs since they have less need to string new cable, less need for new generating capacity, land acquisition and attendant zoning/legal fees, etc.
  • The reduction in demand allows the company to reduce its consumption of fossil fuel - lessening both its direct fuel costs and its need to potentially purchase costly carbon offsets.

And yet they still want to chage customers more money?

Comment Simple, market-based solution (Score 5, Interesting) 263

The RIAA, MPAA, etc. all claim insanely high valuations for copyrighted content; witness the latest verdic against now-convicted "pirate" Jamie Thomas-Rasset who is now on the hook for 1.92 million. Fine. Let them copyright to their heart's content.

But let's also update the tax code to capture the full monetary value of these copyrighted works. Oh, and since "intellectual property" does not deteriorate over time as would a piece of real property, the tax code should explicitly disallow depreciation.

I suggest we start collecting back taxes on all of those old "Steamboat Willie" cartoons that Disney started putting out in the early part of the 20th century, along with old music catalogs and so forth. Let's see how truly valuable these IP assets are, and how many are suddenly not worth keeping copyrighted.

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