1) I don't think that what the GGP was looking for, he said he had to "open e-mail" to see if he has e-mail. That's not the case. You can setup push notifications and the device will tel you when it receives new mail (both by vibrating the mail comes in, and via an alert bubble over the mail app on the home screen). he also said he has that problem with blackberry too, which makes no sense at all. I agree the LEDs to let you know a message has come in are nice, not a deal breaker for me, but nice.
2) There's a number of very nice cases for the iPhone that have batteries built into them. I used one from Brookstone for a while when I was traveling a lot. I can't find that one in quick Internet search, but there are lots of others. Basically you charge the case while you're charging the phone and then when the phone battery gets low, you turn on the case. It acts as a supplemental battery, charging the phone. They're very nice. The better ones can give you give you double normal battery life. They're slightly more expensive that a second battery for a phone with a replaceable (Mostly they seem to run between $40 and $70), but also more convenient in a lot of ways. You don't have to recycle your phone power to use them. Might be a worthwhile investment for her.
I wouldn't be very surprised to find out this wasn't voluntary. Being asked politely to resign so you don't have to be fired is pretty common in these types of jobs. Let's you save face and minimizes bad press for the company. The number and timing of these "resignations" makes me think they're polite firings by the board. CEOs still answer to someone, even they can be asked to leave.
iPhone has had push e-mail notification since the first major software update. Unless you bought one within a few months of release and never updated it, you should have had that. I don't actually have a Blackberry, but my wife's tells her when she has e-mail. As to the virtual keyboard issue, I can see that. I've never had a problem (I swear my wife can type faster on the virtual keyboard on her iPhone than a real keyboard (yes, my wife has both, work provides the Blackberry)), but I recall seeing a article a few years ago about sumo wrestlers in Japan needing custom cell phones because even the hardware keyboards are too small for their fingers.
Also: Woot, nested parentheses in a post. Can I get an achievement for that?
Fascinating question: How much does snow and ice have to do with the fortunes of a mobile phone developer?
Well I don't know about mobile per se, but Boston is one of the larger innovation hubs outside California in the US (These days more biotech than straight IT stuff, but there's some of that too), and the climate isn't that different from Ontario. Vancouver also is in the same climate zone as Redmond more or less. I can't help but think that the rather beautiful SF Bay area climate doesn't hurt them though.
Small difference between requiring service for citizenship and saying 'Hey, this is one way you could become a citizen. Since you're helping us out we'll even fast track the process". That said, nearly all the rules are a little more stringent for contractors than actual members of the military. Especially with junior enlistees (those most likely to be non-citizens) the service has a lot of control over the day to day lives of servicemen. They have much less control over contractors so they tend to hold them to higher standard. It's ironic, but makes a certain amount sense from their point of view.
I don't think I said that. I think I mention that I've personally lived in the South most of my life. Certainly there are racist Southerners (and Northerners), but it's rarer these days than it was. What many poor southerners are is insular, and legitimately fearful. When you live in town where the best jobs are working for the local plant at $12 an hour, and it barely employs 25% of the town, the idea that a Mexican might come and steal your job seems a lot more scary than it does for a guy in a cushy IT job. When you've know the same couple of hundred people all of your life, you tend to have bond with them that outsiders neither comprehend nor have a part in. The cities are, of course, another matter. New Orleans has more in common with Boston than it does with Sun or Thibodaux. Other than the weather of course. That's not where the majority of Republican votes come from though.
I admit, I've spent most of my life in the cities. I've lived in Tampa, New Orleans, Lafayette, and Huntsville; but as a National Guard officer I've dealt with people from all walks of life and all socioeconomic backgrounds. I've seen poor southern boys, both inner city black kids and white bread coonassses, at their best... and if not at their worst, surely close to it.
Actually Democratic votes in the south tend to be in urban areas, but are rather evenly split between blacks and whites. Also, more educated people in the south *tend* to be more likely to vote Democrat, but then they also tend toward urban areas, so that makes sense. Again speaking in broad statistical terms, not about any specific person.
There have never been "Welfare Queens". It's a myth created by Regan. There were a very few women who managed to game the welfare system (in the 70s and early 80s, before computers made it harder) sufficiently that it's believed they may have been getting as much as 30-40K a year (a decent living at the time, it's true, but hardly wealthy even then). What those women did was illegal then, a well as now, and all that were found were arrested for it. A typical Welfare recipient barely receives enough to live on, and that at a level that most even working class people would consider squalor.
As for Cabrini Green... well, I don't know how you can blame the government for that. The term "slum" far predates the term "housing project", and refers to more or less the same thing. A place where a lot of desperately poor people all live together because the housing is cheaper, and many of those desperate people turn to crime. Whether the cheap housing comes from government mandates or landlord who simply ignore all forms of maintenance is fairly immaterial. You ever been to a low end trailer park in the South? The ones where even most of the trailers are rented? I have. I've also been to the Projects in New Orleans, and the ones in Boston. Other than skin color there's not a lot of difference. Desperately poor people trying desperately to survive.
Some did, some didn't. Dixie Democrats were definitely one the driving forces in maintenance of the status quo on slavery, no doubt. It is more than a little disingenuous to think that party politics from the early to late 18th century haven't changed at all. One of the big reasons Southern Democrats didn't want slavery to end was that their constituencies were almost entirely white southern men who felt that keeping blacks down was key to their ongoing power and success.
Remarkably that is the exact same demographic so widely courted by Republicans today. I think you'd be amazed at the parallels between a Dixie Democrat platform of the 1850s and modern Republican platform in any Southern state. Replace "Black Slave" with "Illegal immigrant" as the focus of hatred and ire and they're basically the same.
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of good people in the south. There are plenty of good people who are southern conservatives. I lived in the South most of my life. As a statistical class though Republican voters in the south are poor white men who lack an education and are easily led by fear. To fair, they're easily led by fear because they exist at the edges of society that was designed to keep them there. Those are the exact same people with the exact same statistical properties that elected pro-slavery Dixie Democrats 150 years ago.
It's like this. North Korea would be *thrilled*, just thrilled to host Wikileaks. As long as Assange can make reasonable (read "absolutely iron clad" ) guarantees that North Korea itself will never, ever, ever be portrayed as anything other than a country of perfection and bliss. The problem for Wikileaks is two fold:
1) They are equal opportunity whistle-blowers. They aren't going to compromise their principles by immunizing their host country from scrutiny. 2) Most countries that really want to embarrass the US have far worse secrets than the US does, and even less of a sense of humor about them being revealed.
The US may want to prosecute Assange and put him in jail for revealing classified documents (Which I happen to think they can't legally do, he neither stole those documents, nor had legal access to them via having signed a security agreement. He just published what someone else gave him), but North Korea would happily put him in a labor camp and work him to death for publishing anything that reflects vaguely poorly on them.
I said "skilled and lucky". I don't think there's any doubt that some luck was involved. The altitude was high enough to give him time to react, there was a body of water convenient, he had enough power for the avionics to work, he had a good copilot... There was certainly a high degree of skill, courage, and quick thinking involved, but conditions were right for him to apply them.
Wait wha? I mean, I can see blocking it on outgoing ports in the firewall so that you can't tunnel to the outside world, but blocking it internally? Besides, it's trivial to set SSH to listen on port 23 and viola. New tunneling setup.
Oh, and they come with chemical heater now. Activate the heater with a quarter cup or so of water and no more cold/frozen food. The second and third generation had the heaters as an optional extra item the unit could get along with the MRE; but now they're packed inside the bag. There's less chance of a screw-up or sadistic supply sergeant that way.
Between ROTC and 10 years in the Guard I've experienced the last four generations of MRE. The late 80's / early 90's version was worthy of all the disdain ever heaped upon them. They've gotten progressively better though. Other than a residual slight metallic tang to the meat, current generation MRE's are by and large no worse than most fast food (which is not to say that they're good, just not nearly as awful). The vegetarian one's are actually better IMO, the lack of meat completely removes the metallic taste and they always have fruit and granola bars as extras. The fruit is no worse than any canned fruit and the granola bars don't suffer from the heat as much as a lot of snacks.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that you want a regular diet of the things; but living on them for a couple of days isn't unpleasant anymore. No worse than a travel day where you're forced to eat more fast food than you'd like.
Not only is it possible it was rather famously done in the last few years by a pilot with essentially no engine power. There were pictures and video on all the major networks and most new websites; this one included IIRC (or at least links to pictures and video). Not only is GP replying to nonexistent quotes in his parent, he's quite wrong. Captain Sully proved that a skilled and lucky pilot can ditch even the largest planes in water and have them and their passengers survive the incident.
It's also well worth pointing out that statistics aren't real world applicable in practical situations. If we pick one random man and one random woman for a physical task, chances are that the man will be better at it. That said if the man happens to be me, and woman happen to be Venus Williams, she's probably gonna beat me in most physical tasks. The point of sexual equality is not that men and women are precisely equal in all ways statistically, but rather that they should have equal opportunity. The best male basketball players in the world are certainly better than the best female players, but a WNBA team is still going to beat any intramural male team; and the best WNBA teams probably could do well against the worst NBA teams. This is my argument with the military's rule against women in combat roles. Sure, statistically fewer women than men will be able to finish SEAL training, but that said there are plenty of women who can finish it. Why not give them a chance?
To get back on topic, just because statistically women manage more democratically it doesn't mean that your female manager will do so. Just because statistically men manage more autocratically, doesn't mean some men don't do quite well with a democratic style. It would be sexist to assume a woman or man will manage a certain way simply based on sex, an even more so to refuse them a job because of that assumption; but making broad language statements about likelihoods is not sexism.
The really fancy ones had a tape player and projector all in one and could self-advance. I suspect they had very simple computers in them that could react to the beep, I dunno.
They didn't develop an OS though. It's a Linux Distro. I'll grant you it's not free to put together a Linux distro either, but it's a Hell of a lot cheaper than writing an OS from scratch. Even buying the components at retail cost, they're essentially charging around $1500 for a roll-your-own Linux and some ugly case graphics.
I was very favorably impressed with the review. I actually tried to use Gnome3 for a while and gave it up as a bad job, after reading this I've got a good idea of how I could fix a lot of the annoyances I found. I'm not sure I'd want to (as the reviewer says, he had to go through a pretty insane amount of effort to make the desktop usable), but still this guy went to some serious effort and found several tips and tricks I didn't know about. Combined with a really good explanation of the pluses and minuses for a pure FOSS distro on the first several pages and a clear effort to really use and abuse the system being reviewed, this may be one of the most useful and informative reviews I've seen in a while. Whether for a new Linux user or a Linux veteran that hasn't really played with Gnome3.
It should be pointed out that the Germans are also strongly Socialist. Much more so that in the US. The differences between Greece and Germany are many: Greece has a much smaller population, many fewer natural resources, quite a bit more corruption in government, and their finances were poorly managed for decades; but the government safety net is the same in both countries. Honestly it's probably better in Germany now, with all the cuts the Greeks have had to make. It's certainly true that the Greeks are looking for bailouts mostly from Germany, and that the way they were running their government was unsustainable; but if you're pointing at the Germans as a model of how it "should" be done I want my socialized medicine, awesome state sponsored public transportation, employee-centric employment laws, 5 weeks of vacation... well you get the idea. I'd be pretty happy if the US swung far enough to the left to look anything like Germany.
Before you start accusing me of wanting other people to do my work for me, I should point out that I'm a skilled, well paid, degreed worker. I'd probably lose money paying taxes like the Germans do, it's true. I can live with that. Taxes are the price we pay to live in civilization. (That said, I'd be pissed if my government managed the tax money I put in as poorly as the Greek government did)
There is a significant difference between being at work 60-80 hours a week and working 60-80 hours a week. I have many people who do the former, very few who can maintain the later, at least not long term or without suffering serious consequences. I'm not saying it's impossible or it doesn't happen, but most people who work 60-80 hour weeks for any length of time are doing it for show after a point.
I wouldn't use this particular service (the streaming requirement is simply a deal breaker), but for the time invested I'd totally use something similar that gave me viewable files. It's took me days to rip the 50 or movies I have done to a hard drive. I'd much rather have been doing something else and paying someone to handle it. I could have been hiking, or jogging, or watching a movie, or.. well.. lots of stuff. It takes just long enough to rip a movie that you can't really just leave it and go. Not if you want to achieve any level of efficiency.
It's illegal to search for things outside of the terms of search warrant. If you walk in and discover palates of drugs on the living room floor you can still use that as evidence. Once you're inside anything in obvious view or come across in what was clearly intended as a search for the original item is OK. If your warrant is for something large and you check under the seat cushions, what you find is probably not admissible. If you're looking for an iPad and you check under the seat cushions, but find a diamond ring it's probably admissible (it's reasonable to think someone might have hidden an iPad under seat cushions).
Basically the cops can't search for anything not in the warrant, but if they find something not on the warrant without looking for it, they're probably OK. There's gray areas here, obviously. Very small items might be hidden almost anywhere so it's hard to argue that almost anything found wasn't in the scope of the search, but that's mostly how it works.
In any but a few US cities taking a train or a bus anywhere is impractical at best, impossible at worst, and even compared to a pricey self-driving car taking a taxi everywhere would be extremely expensive. As an example:
I live 20 minutes of Boston. Boston itself has, by American standards, enviable public transportation. Within the city or in its immediate suburbs you can get nearly anywhere via public transport. Even 20 miles north of the city though the nearest commuter train station to my house is nearly 5 miles away. There is no bus or rail line between me and that station. My wife and I, when we want to got into Boston, actually drive the ten miles into Cambridge to get directly on the subway rather than driving 5 miles to the commuter station, then taking the commuter train in. An extra five miles in the car is considerably more convenient (since we have to drive anyway) than the commuter rail. Worse, I work even further north of the city. There's no public transport at all less than 10 miles from my work. And this is an area that takes public transportation relatively seriously.
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1) I don't think that what the GGP was looking for, he said he had to "open e-mail" to see if he has e-mail. That's not the case. You can setup push notifications and the device will tel you when it receives new mail (both by vibrating the mail comes in, and via an alert bubble over the mail app on the home screen). he also said he has that problem with blackberry too, which makes no sense at all. I agree the LEDs to let you know a message has come in are nice, not a deal breaker for me, but nice.
2) There's a number of very nice cases for the iPhone that have batteries built into them. I used one from Brookstone for a while when I was traveling a lot. I can't find that one in quick Internet search, but there are lots of others. Basically you charge the case while you're charging the phone and then when the phone battery gets low, you turn on the case. It acts as a supplemental battery, charging the phone. They're very nice. The better ones can give you give you double normal battery life. They're slightly more expensive that a second battery for a phone with a replaceable (Mostly they seem to run between $40 and $70), but also more convenient in a lot of ways. You don't have to recycle your phone power to use them. Might be a worthwhile investment for her.
I wouldn't be very surprised to find out this wasn't voluntary. Being asked politely to resign so you don't have to be fired is pretty common in these types of jobs. Let's you save face and minimizes bad press for the company. The number and timing of these "resignations" makes me think they're polite firings by the board. CEOs still answer to someone, even they can be asked to leave.
iPhone has had push e-mail notification since the first major software update. Unless you bought one within a few months of release and never updated it, you should have had that. I don't actually have a Blackberry, but my wife's tells her when she has e-mail. As to the virtual keyboard issue, I can see that. I've never had a problem (I swear my wife can type faster on the virtual keyboard on her iPhone than a real keyboard (yes, my wife has both, work provides the Blackberry)), but I recall seeing a article a few years ago about sumo wrestlers in Japan needing custom cell phones because even the hardware keyboards are too small for their fingers.
Also: Woot, nested parentheses in a post. Can I get an achievement for that?
Fascinating question: How much does snow and ice have to do with the fortunes of a mobile phone developer?
Well I don't know about mobile per se, but Boston is one of the larger innovation hubs outside California in the US (These days more biotech than straight IT stuff, but there's some of that too), and the climate isn't that different from Ontario. Vancouver also is in the same climate zone as Redmond more or less. I can't help but think that the rather beautiful SF Bay area climate doesn't hurt them though.
Small difference between requiring service for citizenship and saying 'Hey, this is one way you could become a citizen. Since you're helping us out we'll even fast track the process". That said, nearly all the rules are a little more stringent for contractors than actual members of the military. Especially with junior enlistees (those most likely to be non-citizens) the service has a lot of control over the day to day lives of servicemen. They have much less control over contractors so they tend to hold them to higher standard. It's ironic, but makes a certain amount sense from their point of view.
I don't think I said that. I think I mention that I've personally lived in the South most of my life. Certainly there are racist Southerners (and Northerners), but it's rarer these days than it was. What many poor southerners are is insular, and legitimately fearful. When you live in town where the best jobs are working for the local plant at $12 an hour, and it barely employs 25% of the town, the idea that a Mexican might come and steal your job seems a lot more scary than it does for a guy in a cushy IT job. When you've know the same couple of hundred people all of your life, you tend to have bond with them that outsiders neither comprehend nor have a part in. The cities are, of course, another matter. New Orleans has more in common with Boston than it does with Sun or Thibodaux. Other than the weather of course. That's not where the majority of Republican votes come from though.
I admit, I've spent most of my life in the cities. I've lived in Tampa, New Orleans, Lafayette, and Huntsville; but as a National Guard officer I've dealt with people from all walks of life and all socioeconomic backgrounds. I've seen poor southern boys, both inner city black kids and white bread coonassses, at their best... and if not at their worst, surely close to it.
Actually Democratic votes in the south tend to be in urban areas, but are rather evenly split between blacks and whites. Also, more educated people in the south *tend* to be more likely to vote Democrat, but then they also tend toward urban areas, so that makes sense. Again speaking in broad statistical terms, not about any specific person.
There have never been "Welfare Queens". It's a myth created by Regan. There were a very few women who managed to game the welfare system (in the 70s and early 80s, before computers made it harder) sufficiently that it's believed they may have been getting as much as 30-40K a year (a decent living at the time, it's true, but hardly wealthy even then). What those women did was illegal then, a well as now, and all that were found were arrested for it. A typical Welfare recipient barely receives enough to live on, and that at a level that most even working class people would consider squalor.
As for Cabrini Green... well, I don't know how you can blame the government for that. The term "slum" far predates the term "housing project", and refers to more or less the same thing. A place where a lot of desperately poor people all live together because the housing is cheaper, and many of those desperate people turn to crime. Whether the cheap housing comes from government mandates or landlord who simply ignore all forms of maintenance is fairly immaterial. You ever been to a low end trailer park in the South? The ones where even most of the trailers are rented? I have. I've also been to the Projects in New Orleans, and the ones in Boston. Other than skin color there's not a lot of difference. Desperately poor people trying desperately to survive.
Some did, some didn't. Dixie Democrats were definitely one the driving forces in maintenance of the status quo on slavery, no doubt. It is more than a little disingenuous to think that party politics from the early to late 18th century haven't changed at all. One of the big reasons Southern Democrats didn't want slavery to end was that their constituencies were almost entirely white southern men who felt that keeping blacks down was key to their ongoing power and success.
Remarkably that is the exact same demographic so widely courted by Republicans today. I think you'd be amazed at the parallels between a Dixie Democrat platform of the 1850s and modern Republican platform in any Southern state. Replace "Black Slave" with "Illegal immigrant" as the focus of hatred and ire and they're basically the same.
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of good people in the south. There are plenty of good people who are southern conservatives. I lived in the South most of my life. As a statistical class though Republican voters in the south are poor white men who lack an education and are easily led by fear. To fair, they're easily led by fear because they exist at the edges of society that was designed to keep them there. Those are the exact same people with the exact same statistical properties that elected pro-slavery Dixie Democrats 150 years ago.
It's like this. North Korea would be *thrilled*, just thrilled to host Wikileaks. As long as Assange can make reasonable (read "absolutely iron clad" ) guarantees that North Korea itself will never, ever, ever be portrayed as anything other than a country of perfection and bliss. The problem for Wikileaks is two fold:
1) They are equal opportunity whistle-blowers. They aren't going to compromise their principles by immunizing their host country from scrutiny.
2) Most countries that really want to embarrass the US have far worse secrets than the US does, and even less of a sense of humor about them being revealed.
The US may want to prosecute Assange and put him in jail for revealing classified documents (Which I happen to think they can't legally do, he neither stole those documents, nor had legal access to them via having signed a security agreement. He just published what someone else gave him), but North Korea would happily put him in a labor camp and work him to death for publishing anything that reflects vaguely poorly on them.
I said "skilled and lucky". I don't think there's any doubt that some luck was involved. The altitude was high enough to give him time to react, there was a body of water convenient, he had enough power for the avionics to work, he had a good copilot... There was certainly a high degree of skill, courage, and quick thinking involved, but conditions were right for him to apply them.
Wait wha? I mean, I can see blocking it on outgoing ports in the firewall so that you can't tunnel to the outside world, but blocking it internally? Besides, it's trivial to set SSH to listen on port 23 and viola. New tunneling setup.
Oh, and they come with chemical heater now. Activate the heater with a quarter cup or so of water and no more cold/frozen food. The second and third generation had the heaters as an optional extra item the unit could get along with the MRE; but now they're packed inside the bag. There's less chance of a screw-up or sadistic supply sergeant that way.
Between ROTC and 10 years in the Guard I've experienced the last four generations of MRE. The late 80's / early 90's version was worthy of all the disdain ever heaped upon them. They've gotten progressively better though. Other than a residual slight metallic tang to the meat, current generation MRE's are by and large no worse than most fast food (which is not to say that they're good, just not nearly as awful). The vegetarian one's are actually better IMO, the lack of meat completely removes the metallic taste and they always have fruit and granola bars as extras. The fruit is no worse than any canned fruit and the granola bars don't suffer from the heat as much as a lot of snacks.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that you want a regular diet of the things; but living on them for a couple of days isn't unpleasant anymore. No worse than a travel day where you're forced to eat more fast food than you'd like.
Honestly the new MREs aren't that bad. I've had worse airline meals.
Not only is it possible it was rather famously done in the last few years by a pilot with essentially no engine power. There were pictures and video on all the major networks and most new websites; this one included IIRC (or at least links to pictures and video). Not only is GP replying to nonexistent quotes in his parent, he's quite wrong. Captain Sully proved that a skilled and lucky pilot can ditch even the largest planes in water and have them and their passengers survive the incident.
It's also well worth pointing out that statistics aren't real world applicable in practical situations. If we pick one random man and one random woman for a physical task, chances are that the man will be better at it. That said if the man happens to be me, and woman happen to be Venus Williams, she's probably gonna beat me in most physical tasks. The point of sexual equality is not that men and women are precisely equal in all ways statistically, but rather that they should have equal opportunity. The best male basketball players in the world are certainly better than the best female players, but a WNBA team is still going to beat any intramural male team; and the best WNBA teams probably could do well against the worst NBA teams. This is my argument with the military's rule against women in combat roles. Sure, statistically fewer women than men will be able to finish SEAL training, but that said there are plenty of women who can finish it. Why not give them a chance?
To get back on topic, just because statistically women manage more democratically it doesn't mean that your female manager will do so. Just because statistically men manage more autocratically, doesn't mean some men don't do quite well with a democratic style. It would be sexist to assume a woman or man will manage a certain way simply based on sex, an even more so to refuse them a job because of that assumption; but making broad language statements about likelihoods is not sexism.
The really fancy ones had a tape player and projector all in one and could self-advance. I suspect they had very simple computers in them that could react to the beep, I dunno.
They didn't develop an OS though. It's a Linux Distro. I'll grant you it's not free to put together a Linux distro either, but it's a Hell of a lot cheaper than writing an OS from scratch. Even buying the components at retail cost, they're essentially charging around $1500 for a roll-your-own Linux and some ugly case graphics.
I was very favorably impressed with the review. I actually tried to use Gnome3 for a while and gave it up as a bad job, after reading this I've got a good idea of how I could fix a lot of the annoyances I found. I'm not sure I'd want to (as the reviewer says, he had to go through a pretty insane amount of effort to make the desktop usable), but still this guy went to some serious effort and found several tips and tricks I didn't know about. Combined with a really good explanation of the pluses and minuses for a pure FOSS distro on the first several pages and a clear effort to really use and abuse the system being reviewed, this may be one of the most useful and informative reviews I've seen in a while. Whether for a new Linux user or a Linux veteran that hasn't really played with Gnome3.
It should be pointed out that the Germans are also strongly Socialist. Much more so that in the US. The differences between Greece and Germany are many: Greece has a much smaller population, many fewer natural resources, quite a bit more corruption in government, and their finances were poorly managed for decades; but the government safety net is the same in both countries. Honestly it's probably better in Germany now, with all the cuts the Greeks have had to make. It's certainly true that the Greeks are looking for bailouts mostly from Germany, and that the way they were running their government was unsustainable; but if you're pointing at the Germans as a model of how it "should" be done I want my socialized medicine, awesome state sponsored public transportation, employee-centric employment laws, 5 weeks of vacation... well you get the idea. I'd be pretty happy if the US swung far enough to the left to look anything like Germany.
Before you start accusing me of wanting other people to do my work for me, I should point out that I'm a skilled, well paid, degreed worker. I'd probably lose money paying taxes like the Germans do, it's true. I can live with that. Taxes are the price we pay to live in civilization. (That said, I'd be pissed if my government managed the tax money I put in as poorly as the Greek government did)
There is a significant difference between being at work 60-80 hours a week and working 60-80 hours a week. I have many people who do the former, very few who can maintain the later, at least not long term or without suffering serious consequences. I'm not saying it's impossible or it doesn't happen, but most people who work 60-80 hour weeks for any length of time are doing it for show after a point.
I wouldn't use this particular service (the streaming requirement is simply a deal breaker), but for the time invested I'd totally use something similar that gave me viewable files. It's took me days to rip the 50 or movies I have done to a hard drive. I'd much rather have been doing something else and paying someone to handle it. I could have been hiking, or jogging, or watching a movie, or.. well.. lots of stuff. It takes just long enough to rip a movie that you can't really just leave it and go. Not if you want to achieve any level of efficiency.
Obligatory XKCD: http://xkcd.com/951/
It's illegal to search for things outside of the terms of search warrant. If you walk in and discover palates of drugs on the living room floor you can still use that as evidence. Once you're inside anything in obvious view or come across in what was clearly intended as a search for the original item is OK. If your warrant is for something large and you check under the seat cushions, what you find is probably not admissible. If you're looking for an iPad and you check under the seat cushions, but find a diamond ring it's probably admissible (it's reasonable to think someone might have hidden an iPad under seat cushions).
Basically the cops can't search for anything not in the warrant, but if they find something not on the warrant without looking for it, they're probably OK. There's gray areas here, obviously. Very small items might be hidden almost anywhere so it's hard to argue that almost anything found wasn't in the scope of the search, but that's mostly how it works.
In any but a few US cities taking a train or a bus anywhere is impractical at best, impossible at worst, and even compared to a pricey self-driving car taking a taxi everywhere would be extremely expensive. As an example:
I live 20 minutes of Boston. Boston itself has, by American standards, enviable public transportation. Within the city or in its immediate suburbs you can get nearly anywhere via public transport. Even 20 miles north of the city though the nearest commuter train station to my house is nearly 5 miles away. There is no bus or rail line between me and that station. My wife and I, when we want to got into Boston, actually drive the ten miles into Cambridge to get directly on the subway rather than driving 5 miles to the commuter station, then taking the commuter train in. An extra five miles in the car is considerably more convenient (since we have to drive anyway) than the commuter rail. Worse, I work even further north of the city. There's no public transport at all less than 10 miles from my work. And this is an area that takes public transportation relatively seriously.