However, beyond the same normal OTC stuff that any of us can get doctors are not permitted to, for instance, write prescriptions for themselves. This is mostly because, just like the rest of us, doctors are subject to hypochondria, drug addiction, etc. Doctors cannot, generally, treat themselves for anything more serious than the rest of us can. Similarly, lawyers are discouraged from representing themselves even when it is possible for them to do so.
Above was an attempt to distill a "common sense, easily understandable law". "Do not kill, unless under armed assault". This was then immediately corrected by someone else to "Do not kill, unless your life is in danger", because of course there are plenty of situations where someone is unarmed but still a threat to your life (the example given was a small woman being attacked by and unarmed, but very large, man). Now of course, there's more interpretation, what is a "threat to your life"? Is a unarmed and very small woman a threat to my life if she attacks me (I'm a around 6' and 230 pounds)? What if she's a black belt in some esoteric martial art and knows exactly where to hit me (a precise hit to the temple can kill you with surprisingly little force behind it)? What if she's armed with a small knife that isn't LIKELY to kill me unless it hits an artery? What's the size and skill differential that makes someone a "threat to my life" if he or she is unarmed?
Let's ignore the precise definition or "threat". Can I act with deadly force to save the life of another? What about property? How much property, or of what type? What other exceptions do we need? Is killing someone in the heat of the moment the same crime as a premeditated murder? What if I kill you by accident? What if I attacked you on purpose, but didn't mean to kill you; is that the same as an accident or a murder?
Laws are often complex for no good reason, it's true; but they are also complex because they need to be. There's lots of nuance to these things and lots of interrupting of facts involved. It seems simple enough to come up with a 10 Commandments'esque list of things you shouldn't do, but there are always exceptions, reasons that make more sense than others, details of implementation to consider. The "One sentence law" that was proposed above is simply inadequate to deal with the reality of capital murder. Similar laws are likely to be inadequate to deal with other crimes.
Mostly the same reasons doctors don't treat themselves. Main ones that comes to mind are:
1) You tend to be more emotionally involved in a case that will affect you personally. Like anything else, you're more likely to make a mistake when your emotions are involved. Having an attorney besides yourself gives you someone with less of a stake in the matter to check your actions.
2) Most lawyers are specialists. If you've spent your life prosecuting murders, your knowledge of, say, civil court cases involving automobile accidents is probably not as good as someone who specialized in civil automotive cases. Since a lot of law involves researching and understanding precedent from earlier, similar, cases; it's almost certainly better to have a specialist represent you.
3) It never hurts to have another set of eyes.
4) You probably have your own stuff to do. If' you've actually been arrested, it's really hard to get access to law books, telephones, certified mail, etc from jail. If it's just a civil case, a minor criminal case, or you just haven't actually been arrested yet, you probably have your own client's cases to worry about (can't just leave them hanging or you win your case and have no business left), kid's birthday's to attend, etc. Better to have a guy who you know is going to be able to spend as much billable time as he needs to work on your stuff.
I'm sure there's lots of other reasons. I think the first one is the most common and most important cited, but all four are valid, as are many more I haven't thought of.
Actually virtually no Mac users run as "admin", they run on admin enabled accounts, but those accounts require you to enter your password (either in the GUI, or in sudo depending on the function) to perform any admin tasks. It's actually a bit of a chore to actually login as "root" on a Mac, it's a disabled account by default. Trivial for an experienced Unix user or admin to get in and activate it, but in theory that's not our worry here. My last couple of Macs I reactivated root, but on my most recent one I decided it was silly and use sudo when I need root access.
Having said that, you can still do plenty of damage as a "regular" user. I'd hate to lose my home directory, it contains more or less everything I use day to day. It's backed up, but I doubt everybody's is (Though Time Machine makes it pretty easy, so maybe more people have backups than I think)
But his point is that you can't EXPECT that with users that you sold a computer to. He's a person who makes money by selling computers. He'd like to sell Linux computers. He's tried to do so, but he runs into the simple problem that his customers don't WANT Linux computers (or for that matter Windows computers), they want computers that will work "all the time - every time" (or at least the vast majority of the time) with whatever was cheap this week at Walmart or Best Buy. What ever game they picked up, whatever printer they saw on sale, whatever the cheapest USB TV tuner they happened to see. They don't care about software freedom. They don't care about stability under load. They aren't interested in doing research before purchasing whatever dodad in the computer aisle strikes their fancy.
And if you are the person that sold them the computer, when they can't use $dodad, it's YOUR fault. No, not really; but hey, you sold them a 1 year warranty. It is obvious and clear in their minds that worked with the latest USB controlled back scratcher is part of "working" and they would like you to "fix" their computer as you "agreed" to do. Are they right? No, probably not, but if enough of them think they are it can hurt your business, not to mention being really irritating when you have to field the calls. There's even the chance of a lawsuit from someone with too much time, too much money, or a kid who's a lawyer. For you, it a matter of choice to support your family and friends, for a systems integrator it's their job.
And train an entire Tier 1 and 2 tech support department on what a "Linux" is and how to support it. Not to mention writing a bunch of new scripts. Some or most of these guys might know something about the OS, but you can't count on it, and you can't assume a relatively equal level of knowledge.
Yeah, I'm personally not seeing the sinister here. No one has said anything about removing the unlimited plan for those who want it, but I'd seriously consider a cheaper plan with a cap. I probably use WiFi hotspots for 75-80% of my Internet traffic and I doubt I use more that a few hundred MB a month on the cell network. I'd hate for them to remove the unlimited option, but there's no evidence so far that they plan to.
The argument that he (and everyone who makes these arguments while thinking about the real world with real people in it) is making is that "The Year of the Linux Desktop" will come when the average computer user can go to the store and buy a computer with Linux on it that works just as well as the one with Windows on it. When that user can go into the aisle next door and buy any piece of software and know that it will work on their new Linux computer, and when they can go to the aisle on the other side and buy a new printer or USB TV tuner or whatever and know that THAT will will work just as well on their computer as it will on a Windows computer. I've said this like a million times. I like Linux, I use Linux, I have no problems at all with Linux and I hate Microsoft's monopoly as much as anyone. It's not the fault of Linux developers or Linux advocates that their software doesn't come pre-installed, or that "regular" software companies don't develop for the OS, or that manufacturers refuse to develop Linux drivers or release specs. It's not their fault, but they are never going to get wide-scale desktop penetration until all those things happen.
Free isn't enough. Better in some difficult to measure or display ways isn't enough. Most normal users don't care about things like that. They want to go to the store and buy a computer. They want to know that most of the software they need will work on the computer. They want to know that they can take the computer to someone and get it fixed when it is broken. They want to know that when they buy a new piece of hardware (almost always an external piece of hardware, opening the computer up is scary), that the software that comes with it will make it work. MacOS has managed to make some inroads into the Windows desktop share, only because they can offer most of this. The software and hardware are a bit chancy, but mostly everything works with a Mac, and it's a big enough market share that hardware manufacturers make a point of showing they are Mac compatible if they are.
People are not going to install a new OS (Windows or Linux, it doesn't matter) unless forced. If they HAVE to do so (and can't afford to get the Geek Squad to do it for them), they'll do their best to use the quick restore the vendor provided. I recently friended an old military science professor of mine on Facebook. Nice, guy, I always liked him. He just bought a new computer. Why? Well you see his hard drive died. He couldn't/wouldn't install a new one and reload his OS, and Best Buy told him that it would cost $489 for them to do it (and they wouldn't guarantee it would work, since they couldn't be absolutely sure that it wasn't a bus problem or something until they got into the repair). So he bought a new computer. A WHOLE NEW COMPUTER, because his hard drive went bad. I wanted to strangle him through the Internet lines for even thinking about it, but to him it made perfect sense. This is the kind of person that will make the "Year of the Linux Desktop". Someday after you explain to him what a "Linux" is.
The one where IE or Firefox can have as many tabs as they want as they're still a single application?
or for that matter as many windows as they want, as long as they're still the same application? Of all the things to flog about Microsoft, how did this become such a popular meme?
You're talking standards compliance and engine changes, he's talking UI and usability changes. It is in fact that case that from a usability standpoint, there hasn't been a whole lot of change to browsers since their inception. He exaggerates the problem (among other things, tabs and the "awesome bar" or its equivalent are big changes), but you're arguing a completely different point. Yes, engines have changed, languages and standards have evolved, and support has improved, but none of that invalidates his point that the UI of Firefox 3 or IE 8 looks more less just like the UI of Mosaic. The buttons are rounder, everything is higher res, but the essential elements are still the same.
I don't shut down Firefox for weeks at a time but I do, you know, close tabs. I think.. man, I haven't looked at that tab in a couple of days, I'll just bookmark the page and close the tab so I can actually see what I have open.
Yeah, at least here they're going for a "Flavored Latte" approach to fancy coffee. The machine they have is a normal espresso machines, and I don't see any reason that they couldn't just make a regular cappuccino or straight espresso, but I didn't notice either of those on the menu (I probably should have asked, I might have been happier with the result). What I got tasted like a Starbucks' flavored latte that got an extra squirt or two of flavor syrup. Like I said: it wasn't awful, but it was not what I would have chosen to drink in a "real" cafe. If I ever happen to go into a McDonald's for breakfast again (Likely to happen on road trips), I'll probably order it in preference to a Coke, but I'd drive past a McDonald's to get to a local place or even a Starbucks anytime.
If you read, even the summary, much less the article you'll see that the quotes have nothing to do with the fact Gates is involved The "altruistic vaccine" works in a fundamentally different way than a "normal vaccine" and the quote are being used to highlight the difference. It's a perfectly acceptable grammatical structure.
The fact that he's made some goofy comments hardly makes him wrong. I happen to agree, McDonald's would be opening itself up to far to much liability by NOT looking for illegal traffic on its network. As it happens though, it probably doesn't matter. By the time they detected illegal traffic, and filtered it down to local authorities, it's pretty damned unlikely anything could be done about it.
Truly? Why an iPhone app? If they really thought this would work, a Kiosk would work better. If you limit your self to an iPhone app (or even an app for most of the major smartphone platforms) you're limiting the possibilities for this "expedited" (that's what they'd call it) service to, at most, 25-30% of the population. Using Kiosks they limit themselves only to the mostly literate. They could go down to one or two cashiers (for the people who aren't literate, and to help the rest). I think they don't do this because they know that people won't like it. Real people give the illusion of service. Honestly, on most occasions, it's more than an illusion. I've only had a few really bad experiences with service in McD's (granted I don't go often). Mostly the people there seem happy to help you, and since they make dirt it doesn't hurt the company much to provide what most people see as at least decent service.
The vast, vast majority of people go into Starbucks to get coffee and/or a pastry, and consider wifi and nice plus. Most won't object to this, and will ready for a new coffee by the 30 minute mark anyway. Sounds like a good plan to me.
So do the Americans ones, but it's not all that good. They overdo the flavor syrups, and don't appear to have any way to really customize your order. Swung into one on a car trip recently and gave the "coffee bar" a try. It was fast, and wasn't awful by any stretch, but under normal circumstances I'd much rather a local coffee shop or a Starbucks. I'd order it again under similar circumstances (I happened to be there anyway kind of circumstances), but I wouldn't go there for the coffee for sure.
Qualification: I am childless and likely to remain so, not because of a lack of suitable partner.
I've seen this "ban kids from public places" rant before. It ignores a few points. From a practical point of view, it ignores that fact that parents of small children still need to occasionally go places, and sometimes need to take the child. To use your airliner example: since many places are unreachable or terribly inconvenient to reach without air travel from specific other places, it is more or less impossible to ban children on planes. "I am sorry ma'am, you cannot go to your father's funeral across the country, because we don't allow children on airplanes." Yeah, that's going to go over well. You think the air travel industry is in trouble now, wait till they stop allowing kids.
From a legal point of view, both children and their parent remain citizens and residents of their respective homes. I'm quite certain that there would be discrimination lawsuits in the offing at any legal attempt to bar them from various premise. While certainly it is within a proprietors right to ban children, I think people would have trouble with a government attempting to do so. As it IS within a business's rights to ban children, and very few chose to, it seems that the business case for it probably isn't that good. I'm sure that a decent sized town can support a few, and a larger city many more, restaurants that don't allow children to make for a more elegant dining experience. You can chose to frequent those. I seriously doubt that many low or mid range restaurants could afford the lost revenue though (and probably not even ALL high end restaurants).
In short: Children make noise. At least until they reach kindergarten age (or so) they are often incapable of NOT making noise. They simply haven't learned how to be quiet yet. Businesses that chose not to cater to children do exist, but to make up for excluding a large market, they usually charge more. Often for this reason they are "fancy" places. Most businesses probably cannot or would not want to afford to do this. Trying to ban children legally is almost certainly not possible.
He's right on all counts though. It's one of my favorite "cheap" places to eat. Unfortunately the only one in Huntsville is across town so I don't get there much.
And has food and drink. Granted I'm a snob and prefer the food and drink at a good coffee shop, but the same theory applies. If I've got an hour to kill and have my laptop (or wifi phone for that matter) why not go get a milkshake or lunch or whatever and use the service provided. Generally speaking I do this when I'm traveling, or don't have enough time to really get home and do anything, but I've gone out to chill in the coffeehouse and drink a latte with my laptop a few times. They have nice chairs.
Seriously. We have literally hundreds of drives in our lab (Three 100 TB SAN racks and dozens of systems with local drives), we lose on average 2-3 drives a month. Out of at least 300, probably more like 500.
To be fair, professional aren't backing up old NCIS episodes. There is a point at which robustness is silly. I might even argue that he hit that point when he started backing up TV shows at all, but certainly rotating them in and out of a bank vault is beyond the pale.
Most people are talking about using a RAID on the backup, he would backup to a device which uses RAID. Personally I think this solution is overly complicated to the task asked about (backing up movies from a home system), but no one is suggesting that using a RAID alone will solve his problem.
Slashdot Mirror
However, beyond the same normal OTC stuff that any of us can get doctors are not permitted to, for instance, write prescriptions for themselves. This is mostly because, just like the rest of us, doctors are subject to hypochondria, drug addiction, etc. Doctors cannot, generally, treat themselves for anything more serious than the rest of us can. Similarly, lawyers are discouraged from representing themselves even when it is possible for them to do so.
This.
Above was an attempt to distill a "common sense, easily understandable law". "Do not kill, unless under armed assault". This was then immediately corrected by someone else to "Do not kill, unless your life is in danger", because of course there are plenty of situations where someone is unarmed but still a threat to your life (the example given was a small woman being attacked by and unarmed, but very large, man). Now of course, there's more interpretation, what is a "threat to your life"? Is a unarmed and very small woman a threat to my life if she attacks me (I'm a around 6' and 230 pounds)? What if she's a black belt in some esoteric martial art and knows exactly where to hit me (a precise hit to the temple can kill you with surprisingly little force behind it)? What if she's armed with a small knife that isn't LIKELY to kill me unless it hits an artery? What's the size and skill differential that makes someone a "threat to my life" if he or she is unarmed?
Let's ignore the precise definition or "threat". Can I act with deadly force to save the life of another? What about property? How much property, or of what type? What other exceptions do we need? Is killing someone in the heat of the moment the same crime as a premeditated murder? What if I kill you by accident? What if I attacked you on purpose, but didn't mean to kill you; is that the same as an accident or a murder?
Laws are often complex for no good reason, it's true; but they are also complex because they need to be. There's lots of nuance to these things and lots of interrupting of facts involved. It seems simple enough to come up with a 10 Commandments'esque list of things you shouldn't do, but there are always exceptions, reasons that make more sense than others, details of implementation to consider. The "One sentence law" that was proposed above is simply inadequate to deal with the reality of capital murder. Similar laws are likely to be inadequate to deal with other crimes.
Mostly the same reasons doctors don't treat themselves. Main ones that comes to mind are:
1) You tend to be more emotionally involved in a case that will affect you personally. Like anything else, you're more likely to make a mistake when your emotions are involved. Having an attorney besides yourself gives you someone with less of a stake in the matter to check your actions.
2) Most lawyers are specialists. If you've spent your life prosecuting murders, your knowledge of, say, civil court cases involving automobile accidents is probably not as good as someone who specialized in civil automotive cases. Since a lot of law involves researching and understanding precedent from earlier, similar, cases; it's almost certainly better to have a specialist represent you.
3) It never hurts to have another set of eyes.
4) You probably have your own stuff to do. If' you've actually been arrested, it's really hard to get access to law books, telephones, certified mail, etc from jail. If it's just a civil case, a minor criminal case, or you just haven't actually been arrested yet, you probably have your own client's cases to worry about (can't just leave them hanging or you win your case and have no business left), kid's birthday's to attend, etc. Better to have a guy who you know is going to be able to spend as much billable time as he needs to work on your stuff.
I'm sure there's lots of other reasons. I think the first one is the most common and most important cited, but all four are valid, as are many more I haven't thought of.
Actually virtually no Mac users run as "admin", they run on admin enabled accounts, but those accounts require you to enter your password (either in the GUI, or in sudo depending on the function) to perform any admin tasks. It's actually a bit of a chore to actually login as "root" on a Mac, it's a disabled account by default. Trivial for an experienced Unix user or admin to get in and activate it, but in theory that's not our worry here. My last couple of Macs I reactivated root, but on my most recent one I decided it was silly and use sudo when I need root access.
Having said that, you can still do plenty of damage as a "regular" user. I'd hate to lose my home directory, it contains more or less everything I use day to day. It's backed up, but I doubt everybody's is (Though Time Machine makes it pretty easy, so maybe more people have backups than I think)
But his point is that you can't EXPECT that with users that you sold a computer to. He's a person who makes money by selling computers. He'd like to sell Linux computers. He's tried to do so, but he runs into the simple problem that his customers don't WANT Linux computers (or for that matter Windows computers), they want computers that will work "all the time - every time" (or at least the vast majority of the time) with whatever was cheap this week at Walmart or Best Buy. What ever game they picked up, whatever printer they saw on sale, whatever the cheapest USB TV tuner they happened to see. They don't care about software freedom. They don't care about stability under load. They aren't interested in doing research before purchasing whatever dodad in the computer aisle strikes their fancy.
And if you are the person that sold them the computer, when they can't use $dodad, it's YOUR fault. No, not really; but hey, you sold them a 1 year warranty. It is obvious and clear in their minds that worked with the latest USB controlled back scratcher is part of "working" and they would like you to "fix" their computer as you "agreed" to do. Are they right? No, probably not, but if enough of them think they are it can hurt your business, not to mention being really irritating when you have to field the calls. There's even the chance of a lawsuit from someone with too much time, too much money, or a kid who's a lawyer. For you, it a matter of choice to support your family and friends, for a systems integrator it's their job.
It's more like 20-30 bucks, not 25-75 cents, but you are essentially right. It's a lot less than retail at any rate.
And train an entire Tier 1 and 2 tech support department on what a "Linux" is and how to support it. Not to mention writing a bunch of new scripts. Some or most of these guys might know something about the OS, but you can't count on it, and you can't assume a relatively equal level of knowledge.
Yeah, I'm personally not seeing the sinister here. No one has said anything about removing the unlimited plan for those who want it, but I'd seriously consider a cheaper plan with a cap. I probably use WiFi hotspots for 75-80% of my Internet traffic and I doubt I use more that a few hundred MB a month on the cell network. I'd hate for them to remove the unlimited option, but there's no evidence so far that they plan to.
The argument that he (and everyone who makes these arguments while thinking about the real world with real people in it) is making is that "The Year of the Linux Desktop" will come when the average computer user can go to the store and buy a computer with Linux on it that works just as well as the one with Windows on it. When that user can go into the aisle next door and buy any piece of software and know that it will work on their new Linux computer, and when they can go to the aisle on the other side and buy a new printer or USB TV tuner or whatever and know that THAT will will work just as well on their computer as it will on a Windows computer. I've said this like a million times. I like Linux, I use Linux, I have no problems at all with Linux and I hate Microsoft's monopoly as much as anyone. It's not the fault of Linux developers or Linux advocates that their software doesn't come pre-installed, or that "regular" software companies don't develop for the OS, or that manufacturers refuse to develop Linux drivers or release specs. It's not their fault, but they are never going to get wide-scale desktop penetration until all those things happen.
Free isn't enough. Better in some difficult to measure or display ways isn't enough. Most normal users don't care about things like that. They want to go to the store and buy a computer. They want to know that most of the software they need will work on the computer. They want to know that they can take the computer to someone and get it fixed when it is broken. They want to know that when they buy a new piece of hardware (almost always an external piece of hardware, opening the computer up is scary), that the software that comes with it will make it work. MacOS has managed to make some inroads into the Windows desktop share, only because they can offer most of this. The software and hardware are a bit chancy, but mostly everything works with a Mac, and it's a big enough market share that hardware manufacturers make a point of showing they are Mac compatible if they are.
People are not going to install a new OS (Windows or Linux, it doesn't matter) unless forced. If they HAVE to do so (and can't afford to get the Geek Squad to do it for them), they'll do their best to use the quick restore the vendor provided. I recently friended an old military science professor of mine on Facebook. Nice, guy, I always liked him. He just bought a new computer. Why? Well you see his hard drive died. He couldn't/wouldn't install a new one and reload his OS, and Best Buy told him that it would cost $489 for them to do it (and they wouldn't guarantee it would work, since they couldn't be absolutely sure that it wasn't a bus problem or something until they got into the repair). So he bought a new computer. A WHOLE NEW COMPUTER, because his hard drive went bad. I wanted to strangle him through the Internet lines for even thinking about it, but to him it made perfect sense. This is the kind of person that will make the "Year of the Linux Desktop". Someday after you explain to him what a "Linux" is.
The one where IE or Firefox can have as many tabs as they want as they're still a single application?
or for that matter as many windows as they want, as long as they're still the same application? Of all the things to flog about Microsoft, how did this become such a popular meme?
You're talking standards compliance and engine changes, he's talking UI and usability changes. It is in fact that case that from a usability standpoint, there hasn't been a whole lot of change to browsers since their inception. He exaggerates the problem (among other things, tabs and the "awesome bar" or its equivalent are big changes), but you're arguing a completely different point. Yes, engines have changed, languages and standards have evolved, and support has improved, but none of that invalidates his point that the UI of Firefox 3 or IE 8 looks more less just like the UI of Mosaic. The buttons are rounder, everything is higher res, but the essential elements are still the same.
I don't shut down Firefox for weeks at a time but I do, you know, close tabs. I think.. man, I haven't looked at that tab in a couple of days, I'll just bookmark the page and close the tab so I can actually see what I have open.
Yeah, at least here they're going for a "Flavored Latte" approach to fancy coffee. The machine they have is a normal espresso machines, and I don't see any reason that they couldn't just make a regular cappuccino or straight espresso, but I didn't notice either of those on the menu (I probably should have asked, I might have been happier with the result). What I got tasted like a Starbucks' flavored latte that got an extra squirt or two of flavor syrup. Like I said: it wasn't awful, but it was not what I would have chosen to drink in a "real" cafe. If I ever happen to go into a McDonald's for breakfast again (Likely to happen on road trips), I'll probably order it in preference to a Coke, but I'd drive past a McDonald's to get to a local place or even a Starbucks anytime.
If you read, even the summary, much less the article you'll see that the quotes have nothing to do with the fact Gates is involved The "altruistic vaccine" works in a fundamentally different way than a "normal vaccine" and the quote are being used to highlight the difference. It's a perfectly acceptable grammatical structure.
I LIKE that. Won't be as effective against Netbooks, but my wife (with her behemoth 17' desktop replacement) would be lucky to get 15 minutes.
The fact that he's made some goofy comments hardly makes him wrong. I happen to agree, McDonald's would be opening itself up to far to much liability by NOT looking for illegal traffic on its network. As it happens though, it probably doesn't matter. By the time they detected illegal traffic, and filtered it down to local authorities, it's pretty damned unlikely anything could be done about it.
Truly? Why an iPhone app? If they really thought this would work, a Kiosk would work better. If you limit your self to an iPhone app (or even an app for most of the major smartphone platforms) you're limiting the possibilities for this "expedited" (that's what they'd call it) service to, at most, 25-30% of the population. Using Kiosks they limit themselves only to the mostly literate. They could go down to one or two cashiers (for the people who aren't literate, and to help the rest). I think they don't do this because they know that people won't like it. Real people give the illusion of service. Honestly, on most occasions, it's more than an illusion. I've only had a few really bad experiences with service in McD's (granted I don't go often). Mostly the people there seem happy to help you, and since they make dirt it doesn't hurt the company much to provide what most people see as at least decent service.
The vast, vast majority of people go into Starbucks to get coffee and/or a pastry, and consider wifi and nice plus. Most won't object to this, and will ready for a new coffee by the 30 minute mark anyway. Sounds like a good plan to me.
So do the Americans ones, but it's not all that good. They overdo the flavor syrups, and don't appear to have any way to really customize your order. Swung into one on a car trip recently and gave the "coffee bar" a try. It was fast, and wasn't awful by any stretch, but under normal circumstances I'd much rather a local coffee shop or a Starbucks. I'd order it again under similar circumstances (I happened to be there anyway kind of circumstances), but I wouldn't go there for the coffee for sure.
Qualification: I am childless and likely to remain so, not because of a lack of suitable partner.
I've seen this "ban kids from public places" rant before. It ignores a few points. From a practical point of view, it ignores that fact that parents of small children still need to occasionally go places, and sometimes need to take the child. To use your airliner example: since many places are unreachable or terribly inconvenient to reach without air travel from specific other places, it is more or less impossible to ban children on planes. "I am sorry ma'am, you cannot go to your father's funeral across the country, because we don't allow children on airplanes." Yeah, that's going to go over well. You think the air travel industry is in trouble now, wait till they stop allowing kids.
From a legal point of view, both children and their parent remain citizens and residents of their respective homes. I'm quite certain that there would be discrimination lawsuits in the offing at any legal attempt to bar them from various premise. While certainly it is within a proprietors right to ban children, I think people would have trouble with a government attempting to do so. As it IS within a business's rights to ban children, and very few chose to, it seems that the business case for it probably isn't that good. I'm sure that a decent sized town can support a few, and a larger city many more, restaurants that don't allow children to make for a more elegant dining experience. You can chose to frequent those. I seriously doubt that many low or mid range restaurants could afford the lost revenue though (and probably not even ALL high end restaurants).
In short: Children make noise. At least until they reach kindergarten age (or so) they are often incapable of NOT making noise. They simply haven't learned how to be quiet yet. Businesses that chose not to cater to children do exist, but to make up for excluding a large market, they usually charge more. Often for this reason they are "fancy" places. Most businesses probably cannot or would not want to afford to do this. Trying to ban children legally is almost certainly not possible.
He's right on all counts though. It's one of my favorite "cheap" places to eat. Unfortunately the only one in Huntsville is across town so I don't get there much.
And has food and drink. Granted I'm a snob and prefer the food and drink at a good coffee shop, but the same theory applies. If I've got an hour to kill and have my laptop (or wifi phone for that matter) why not go get a milkshake or lunch or whatever and use the service provided. Generally speaking I do this when I'm traveling, or don't have enough time to really get home and do anything, but I've gone out to chill in the coffeehouse and drink a latte with my laptop a few times. They have nice chairs.
Seriously. We have literally hundreds of drives in our lab (Three 100 TB SAN racks and dozens of systems with local drives), we lose on average 2-3 drives a month. Out of at least 300, probably more like 500.
To be fair, professional aren't backing up old NCIS episodes. There is a point at which robustness is silly. I might even argue that he hit that point when he started backing up TV shows at all, but certainly rotating them in and out of a bank vault is beyond the pale.
Most people are talking about using a RAID on the backup, he would backup to a device which uses RAID. Personally I think this solution is overly complicated to the task asked about (backing up movies from a home system), but no one is suggesting that using a RAID alone will solve his problem.