jbpritts's comments

Agreed. Many natural cleaning solution lists them together, though. Are we missing something. I would think that each would be more effective alone.

You're not as resourceful as you claim then. I mean you're already giving up.

Major banks in the Czech Republic will not issue checking accounts to US citizens because of the costs of FACTA. This leaves expats with large, bureaucratic, formerly state-owned banks, like Ceska Sporitelna, which charge exorbitant fees and have dubious customer service. FACTA is a big problem. It is comical that major banks in Europe have a "No Americans" policy because of this stupid legislation; it needs to end.

Utopic intercity train travel in Europe is a myth. In Germany it is good, but expensive and most under 30 are trying to find an affordable alternative, e.g., BlahBlah car or a bus. France is just prohibitively expensive: I had a group trip cancelled because people balked once they saw what the TGV costs were. In Czech republic inter city is cheap, but there is no AC in the cabins and dodgy heat, infrequent high speed corridors, no WiFi, and often it is standing room only (keep in mind this might be for a 2-3 hour trip). Intracity transport is much better than the us almost all over Europe, but don't by the hype otherwise.

C++ code, when sophisticated template meta programming techniques are used, can be as fast as tuned C code, and can beat any language in terms of speed with the exception of hand-tuned assembly. However, techniques like expression templates, automatic loop unrolling, template specialization, and static polymorphism require a VERY high degree of sophistication from the programmer. In some sense, the programmer is forced to be a compiler. There are some individuals that, despite this demand, can be highly productive. The others wallow in complicated syntax, horrible type errors, and difficult to trace run-time errors. Unless speed is absolutely essential, C++ should be avoided at all costs.