The employee handbook sometimes is an implied contract. Here's one source.

Of course, most employee handbooks say that you can be fired for every offense, so.. no problem for the employer.

>unless I have some type of constant, ongoing backup mechanism to more reliable (and slower) media

You should have that anyways.

>in my experience only about 75-50% of my tickets can be solved remotely.

So what you're saying is that the department can outsource 75-80% of its staff, while keeping a few people on site.

Using it with 40 different blogs that all post the same shit is silly. Don't do that. RSS is supposed to be used with irregularly and infrequently updated content.

For example, I use RSS to keep up with web comics. Now I don't have to remember that Comic A updates on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and Comic B updates every 3rd Thursday, and Comic C was on hiatus for a summer but started up again. I just go to my "comics" folder on Google Reader and see what's new.

I also use RSS to keep up with a few low-volume blogs, that update whenever the author feels like it, but general 2-3 times a month.

There's no good replacement for RSS.

>How are you gonna config the thing? Are you gonna head over to 2000:FF01:B4F1:A020:0000:0000:0000:0001 ? Or are you gonna head over to 192.168.1.1?

http://router.local/ which the router will answer the DNS for

Or what I've seen some routers do, intercept any and all web traffic and redirect it to the router config page until the router is configured.

Rsync would also work, but BitTorrent will be faster.

> a half dozen locations that have as much outbound bandwidth as the primary

Assume all the sites have 10 MB/s inbound and outbound. To transfer 3.7 TB (3,879,731 MB) would take 107 hours per site, 646 hours total.

Using BitTorrent, all 6 sites will take somewhere between 107 and 646 hours - probably around 300 hours, because after one site receives a block, it can send it to the other sites, without using the primary's bandwidth.

The daily diffs will of course be smaller - but the same principle applies. BitTorrent will also verify the existing data and then just transfer the new bits, same as rsync.

> Ownership is simple: leave your hard drive to an heir.

Not so - your collection of games under Steam/Origin, your music/TV/movie collection under iTunes/Amazon/Google Play, and other 'licensed' digital items belong to the person who just died and can't be transferred. Legally, you're supposed to wipe those items from the drive.

>A flashy UI that is actually very nice, very useful in many ways (Aero peek, preview, etc.) and doesn't look like Microsoft subcontracted PlaySkool to design it.

In both XP and Win7 I've set the theme to "Windows 2000", and then turned off the theme service. Unsurprisingly, this makes both OSes look like Windows 2000. Aero and all other effects are turned off (in System -> Properties -> Advanced -> Performance, set to "Adjust for best performance"). While bland, this saves system resources (no theme manager running) and offers the fastest and most responsive GUI.

I've now done the same to Windows 8, although I kept the start screen launcher because it's actually not too bad (despite scrolling sideways). The magic corners are super annoying though.

>File operations that actually handle errors properly instead of just, "aw, fuck it, there's one error in a copy operation of a thousand files, I'll just drop them all..."

Teracopy

I do like Win7 (and Win8) better than XP, but there's also no denying that XP is much lighter-weight, or that Win7/8 in their default config is rather visually different from XP. People don't like change, and non-techie users will never care about file operations or GUI features they'll never use (like Aero peek) except by accident (and which will then result in them freaking out).

> 12 hours is my limit. I know people that routinely do 18 hours

I'd put anyone doing over 8 hours a day of driving in the "trucker" category. It's not what most people do, even on vacations.

Yes, the current electric cars won't work for these extreme drivers. For normal people, it's fine.

>I've always wondered what a device that FAILED to accept interference would do?

Catch fire, explode, etc.

>Let me get this straight: I can't drive 65 or turn up the heat without having to worry about getting stranded?

The Superchargers are 200 miles apart, but you can use regular chargers too. If you look at Tesla's blog post, there were chargers all over the place. You're not going to get stranded unless you're a dishonest reporter with a grudge against electric cars.

>It takes an hour to refill the thing, and I have to do it three times to drive 600 miles?

Drive 3 hours (200 miles at 65 mph), stop for charge and lunch. Drive another 3 hours, stop for an hour break. Drive another 3 hours, and you're at your destination, so let it charge up overnight.

If you're a trucker with a pee bottle that doesn't want to stop for anything, I'm sure this isn't great. For normal people, an hour break every 3 hours of driving is fine.

Your link doesn't refute my statement. Yes, "you would be able to deduct up to $185,800 from your US expat taxes for the 2011 tax year" - but only if both spouses made $92k+ each.

Even if you trusted your random expat tax site over the IRS itself, if you look at Form 2555 (PDF) it's quite clear that the exclusion is per-person. Look at lines 37 - 45. Start with $95k (the 2012 exclusion), adjust for number of days outside the country, then subtract from your income. There's no method to double that $95k except by having two forms, one for each spouse - but then each spouse's income is listed separately, and gets their own $95k deduction.

Thus, if you have one person making $180k and the spouse making $0, then that $180k is going to go on one Form 2555, deduct $95k, and be left with $85k of un-excluded taxable income.

>And besides, how would the router decide who gets the 80 or 22 port out of the potentially thousands of customers all sharing one fixed IP? Same goes for upnp port requests.

ISPs don't have to (and probably can't) cram their entire customer base on to one IP. It's quite possible they'll have 16 or 64 or 256 external "real" IP addresses for thousands of customers.

There will still be contention, but not as much.

>If you happen to be married the $90,000 exclusion is doubled; you would not even begin to owe taxes in the US until you are well beyond $250,000 or so.

The exclusion is per-person. If you earn $90k and your wife earns $90k, no tax. If you earn $180k and your wife earns $0, lots of tax.

"For tax year 2011, the maximum foreign earned income exclusion is up to $92,900 per qualifying person. If married and both individuals work abroad and both meet either the bona fide residence test or the physical presence test, each one can choose the foreign earned income exclusion. Together, they can exclude as much as $185,800 for the 2011 tax year."

>US citizens working abroad can enjoy the comfort of an embassy and US Marines protecting them in times of war and/or crisis. Hell, they'll even evacuate you back to the US if the shit really hits the fan. I'd pay my taxes for that, especially if I was working somewhere that's dangerous.

Every other country besides USA and Eritrea offers similar things without taxing non-resident citizens.