... so I could play Oblivion. I think I'm still on the same system specs and I've been happy since.

If the company is a start-up, then they need to get some process fast or they are one disk crash away from oblivion. If they've been around long enough to know better then you might want to move on now. Either way you can try to encourage them to adopt some process first, then if it just isn't going to happen look for a new job. They absolutely must have a source control system and offsite backups. It doesn't matter what's normal, not having source control is like not having toilet paper in the bathroom. Even a one-person development team should use it. Offsite backups are literally your fire insurance. The other things you mentioned are all good to have, and their presence or absence may give you some idea of the relative maturity of the business, but version control and backups are absolutely non-negotiable. Java versions are a little different. There, you may be forced to develop in an older version to support a customer that's slow to change their client configurations. This can be true especially when your clients are businesses rather than individuals. At one job I was developing in Java 1.1 for a long time because our biggest customer was running Netscape 4 on OS/2 at 6000 locations and that was the latest version they could handle. The software still worked fine for folks with newer browsers and JREs, I just didn't get to use Swing and a host of other niceties.

You had me until "the day in the year when the nights are shortest". That's the summer solstice. The autumnal equinox is the day at the end of summer when the day and the night are the same length.

I have personally plugged a vacuum cleaner and a carpet shampooer into the same outlet, though I had the restraint not to turn them on at the same time, specifically to undo the effects of a rampaging incontinent cat.

Except that it's a green laser. If they can find a pair of sunglasses that filters out the right frequency of green light without filtering out the rest of the light they'll still need to see and operate, then that could be a countermeasure. At the least it would force them to change their mode of operations somewhat.

For what it's worth, the review appears to be a verbatim copy of the first review on amazon.com, by one "Gary Sorkin, Pacific Book Review".

Pacific Book Review, in its profile on amazon.com, describes itself as follows: "We review books for well known authors and emerging authors, and enabling many first time authors to reach the publishers with a recognizable review. We help you get the exposure you need to market your book effectively. We review both published and unpublished books. The only wish we have is for your success as an author."

It appears that they are a buzz generator.

Very nice. I believe the majority would need *at least* twice as many as the minority, not *more than* twice the minority, but since 206 is not divisible by 3 this doesn't come into play in this case.

you'll find that some though not all Chinese words are meaning-sound combinations: for instance, many words that are pronounced "zhong" have one radical that is also pronounced "zhong" by itself though perhaps in a different tone.

My wife and I have had success with making our own flashcards, each with a different character or compound word.

Perhaps the point of the poll was to examine data *only* about people who are living very close to their birthplace and to examine trends within that population. I for one was surprised that 1-3000 was such a popular answer, at less then 3.5 miles for most people. Perhaps it tells us something about movement patterns in small towns.

Or, maybe the poll designers were just bad at math.