My mistake, IANAL. While the court itself is usually capable of dealing with more serious offenses, the traffic violations themselves are usually treated as if they were civil, and not criminal. That is, preponderance of evidence is used instead of reasonable doubt. Of course this differs depending on locality and the severity of the incident.
Just because the evidence can be forged does not mean that it has. If the police have reason to believe that someone falsified the evidence from their GPS device then the burden is on them to provide some evidence that this took place. Even if this kid had the resources or the technical skill to pull this off, the GPS is still much stronger evidence than a handheld radar device unless properly refuted.
This demand for some kind of absolute mathematical certainty in the law is ridiculous and totally unreasonable. Every time a court story pops up on/. we hear this over and over (I'm looking at you, RIAA stories). The fact that thing X could have been faked/incorrect/a coincidence/whatever means very little unless there is a specific reason to believe that it was, or at least that such mistakes happen reasonably often. Especially in civil cases, like lawsuits or traffic court.
I'm from the area (very close to said power plant) so I figured I could clarify on why Long Island is the NIMBY capital of the world:
There are very few rivers and streams on Long Island, and most of them are in located in parks or protected woodlands. This means that almost all the drinking water for LI residents comes from ground water - most of it is contained in large underground aquifers.
Nuclear catastrophes usually involve radioactive material finding its way into the ground - and eventually the groundwater. This is a very unlikely scenario, but if it happened the outcome would be devastating. Houses here tend to be very expensive (compared to other parts of the country) and land values are always on the rise, which makes them a great investment for many residents who plan to sell their houses years down the road, move somewhere cheaper, and live off the difference. Any contamination of the groundwater would make housing values plummet and stay that way for a very, very long time. This is just not a risk that homeowners here are willing to take for a tiny decrease in electricity costs. Whether or not they are well-informed is a different issue.
Add in the fact that shipping in drinking water from anywhere would be very difficult/expensive and a major evacuation of the island could take weeks. Both of these go double for the eastern parts of the island where there are few/no highways/ports. A major hurricane here would put New Orleans to shame.
If you unload the cargo, the tiedowns have to hold 40 tonnes of pull.
Only if you unload all the cargo at once without compensating by reducing the amount of gas in the airship. Unless you are unloading tanks or some other really heavy object this shouldn't be much of an issue, since the airship has to have this capability anyway, in order to control its altitude or fly with different payloads.
Looks like you were dealing with idiot or newbie employees. For future reference, OS installation IS included under the service plan if any hardware fault at all is found. Backups are not covered. My advice is you go back and ask for a more experienced agent. Maybe you'll get someone who isn't a complete idiot.
Since that is the highest paid (non-managerial), highest stress, and most important (from a customer service perspective) position in the store, there's usually several people, both in and outside the store, gunning for it. Combined with the fact that it is very irritating working with bad agents, and it's very hard to disguise lack of technical or people skills from other agents, I can tell you that employees like that either shape up or get fired. At least in the store I work at.
A bit of how Best Buy works: I doubt the employees were out to rip you off since they don't make any commission. Also, the Geek Squad department operates with more autonomy than any other in the store, and is less affected by the revenue-seeking bullshit that the managers try to force down the throats of salespeople. Most of the budget for this department comes from the *SALE* of service plans in other departments, vastly reducing the amount of pressure for the Geek Squad to rake in money since it doesn't really affect their hours. In my opinion, if any employee in that store is out to get your money, it's the home theater/TV salespeople, since their hours are greatly affected by how much they sell. Them and the blood-sucking managers.
In fact, the famous Geek Squad usually fixes all Windows problems by re-imaging your box (which may solve the problem, but also wipes all your data, which is not cool at all, and not REALLY a true fix.) It would be like hiring someone to fix a leak in your roof and you come home and find that the roof was replaced, but now all your personal possessions in your house are gone. This is simply false. Yes, there are certain classes of problems that are best solved by re-imaging, but this is FAR from "all Windows problems." The vast majority of problems I see are minor and easily fixed. However there are common problems which almost always warrant a reinstall of the OS. If, for example, a machine is severely infected with malware (conventional or rootkit), it is unethical not to reformat it. Do you think you can get every last piece of spyware out? Do you think that brand X antispyware/virus can? If you do, I've got a bridge to sell you... The truth is, attempting a manual fix in this case is doing a half-ass job.
Note that it is against operating procedure at Geek Squad to reformat a machine without first getting approval from the customer - and informing them of the consequences of it. Your comment implies that this is done without knowledge of the owner, which is pretty much just FUD.
Once a Linux box is properly setup and running (which I admit may be a bit of a challenge if you have certain bits of "Windows Only" hardware) it is LESS likely to have problems than a Windows box in the first place. About half of the machines that come into my store have problems caused by bad hardware. Another quarter have issues I can see easily happening if Linux was the mainstream OS. Sorry to bust your bubble, but things like driver issues, networking problems, and spyware infections (almost always the user's fault) will still happen on Linux. Don't get me wrong - Linux is great. But it won't solve problems cause by people not having the time or interest to learn about computers.
Disclaimer: I am a Geek Squad Agent. I can't speak for every store, but I consider myself and most of the employees in my store to be overqualified. I sense a lot of hate here and I think it's best directed at Best Buy Management (we call them 'blue shirts') not a room full of young techies trying to pick up some of the 50 zillion years of experience you need for a respectable IT job.
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My mistake, IANAL. While the court itself is usually capable of dealing with more serious offenses, the traffic violations themselves are usually treated as if they were civil, and not criminal. That is, preponderance of evidence is used instead of reasonable doubt. Of course this differs depending on locality and the severity of the incident.
Just because the evidence can be forged does not mean that it has. If the police have reason to believe that someone falsified the evidence from their GPS device then the burden is on them to provide some evidence that this took place. Even if this kid had the resources or the technical skill to pull this off, the GPS is still much stronger evidence than a handheld radar device unless properly refuted.
This demand for some kind of absolute mathematical certainty in the law is ridiculous and totally unreasonable. Every time a court story pops up on /. we hear this over and over (I'm looking at you, RIAA stories). The fact that thing X could have been faked/incorrect/a coincidence/whatever means very little unless there is a specific reason to believe that it was, or at least that such mistakes happen reasonably often. Especially in civil cases, like lawsuits or traffic court.
I'm from the area (very close to said power plant) so I figured I could clarify on why Long Island is the NIMBY capital of the world:
There are very few rivers and streams on Long Island, and most of them are in located in parks or protected woodlands. This means that almost all the drinking water for LI residents comes from ground water - most of it is contained in large underground aquifers.
Nuclear catastrophes usually involve radioactive material finding its way into the ground - and eventually the groundwater. This is a very unlikely scenario, but if it happened the outcome would be devastating. Houses here tend to be very expensive (compared to other parts of the country) and land values are always on the rise, which makes them a great investment for many residents who plan to sell their houses years down the road, move somewhere cheaper, and live off the difference. Any contamination of the groundwater would make housing values plummet and stay that way for a very, very long time. This is just not a risk that homeowners here are willing to take for a tiny decrease in electricity costs. Whether or not they are well-informed is a different issue.
Add in the fact that shipping in drinking water from anywhere would be very difficult/expensive and a major evacuation of the island could take weeks. Both of these go double for the eastern parts of the island where there are few/no highways/ports. A major hurricane here would put New Orleans to shame.
If you unload the cargo, the tiedowns have to hold 40 tonnes of pull.
Only if you unload all the cargo at once without compensating by reducing the amount of gas in the airship. Unless you are unloading tanks or some other really heavy object this shouldn't be much of an issue, since the airship has to have this capability anyway, in order to control its altitude or fly with different payloads.
Disclaimer: I work for Geek Squad.
Looks like you were dealing with idiot or newbie employees. For future reference, OS installation IS included under the service plan if any hardware fault at all is found. Backups are not covered. My advice is you go back and ask for a more experienced agent. Maybe you'll get someone who isn't a complete idiot.
Since that is the highest paid (non-managerial), highest stress, and most important (from a customer service perspective) position in the store, there's usually several people, both in and outside the store, gunning for it. Combined with the fact that it is very irritating working with bad agents, and it's very hard to disguise lack of technical or people skills from other agents, I can tell you that employees like that either shape up or get fired. At least in the store I work at.
A bit of how Best Buy works: I doubt the employees were out to rip you off since they don't make any commission. Also, the Geek Squad department operates with more autonomy than any other in the store, and is less affected by the revenue-seeking bullshit that the managers try to force down the throats of salespeople. Most of the budget for this department comes from the *SALE* of service plans in other departments, vastly reducing the amount of pressure for the Geek Squad to rake in money since it doesn't really affect their hours. In my opinion, if any employee in that store is out to get your money, it's the home theater/TV salespeople, since their hours are greatly affected by how much they sell. Them and the blood-sucking managers.
Note that it is against operating procedure at Geek Squad to reformat a machine without first getting approval from the customer - and informing them of the consequences of it. Your comment implies that this is done without knowledge of the owner, which is pretty much just FUD. Once a Linux box is properly setup and running (which I admit may be a bit of a challenge if you have certain bits of "Windows Only" hardware) it is LESS likely to have problems than a Windows box in the first place. About half of the machines that come into my store have problems caused by bad hardware. Another quarter have issues I can see easily happening if Linux was the mainstream OS. Sorry to bust your bubble, but things like driver issues, networking problems, and spyware infections (almost always the user's fault) will still happen on Linux. Don't get me wrong - Linux is great. But it won't solve problems cause by people not having the time or interest to learn about computers.
Disclaimer: I am a Geek Squad Agent. I can't speak for every store, but I consider myself and most of the employees in my store to be overqualified. I sense a lot of hate here and I think it's best directed at Best Buy Management (we call them 'blue shirts') not a room full of young techies trying to pick up some of the 50 zillion years of experience you need for a respectable IT job.