'Cloud' only really works if you can centralize everything in a few locations for load-balancing. Having to install enough servers to handle peak load plus overhead in every big city on the planet gets expensive, fast.
But this is Akamai's model, and it's very successful. They're constantly negotiating to put servers on the "edge" of as many ISPs services as possible.
... then you reject the core of the legal system in the UK, the USA, and most of the Western world.
A bunch of losers who couldn’t even make up an excuse to skip jury duty, with ZERO expertise on anything and most likely caveman education
I served on a jury last year. It never occurred to me to try and skip it. I considered it my duty to society. When you pick 12 people at random, you get a reasonable cross-section, and we ranged from highly educated to left-school-at-16. It is the prosecution and the defence's job to educate the jury on subjects that are relevant to the case (we came away from our case knowing a lot more about coup and contrecoup head injuries).
In the case of "reasonable man" judgements on offence, the only way you can gauge offence is to take a random sampling of the general population, and ask them how offensive they find the matter. That sounds like a jury to me.
But Frankie Boyle tweeted a joke which combined Jimmy Savile and Madeline McCann. Probably as offensive as this joke, although possibly tempered by the passing of time. He has not been arrested.
I've been in a theater that caught fire... We all got up calmly and walked outside.
[Sigh] It's a meme from the days when building regulations and safety procedures where less rigorous than today. Imagine an 18th century theatre; lots of wood and other flammable materials. Crammed full of people; the rich sitting in balconies. The poor standing, tightly packed, below the stage. No emergency exits. A fire could kill almost everyone in there. Raising a false alarm would be likely to cause a couple of tramplings at least.
If you actually want the answer to this question, then it's "the courts of law"
More specifically, in the UK, a magistrate or a jury; and if the defendant doesn't want to accept a magistrate's verdict, they can always appeal to a full court.
Then again, juries only decide guilt or otherwise. Judges decide on the sentence.
He wasn't constructing a strawman. He was attempting reduction ad absurdum.
"If we imprison people for offending someone with a sick joke, shouldn't we also imprison people for offending someone with their religions beliefs? Since the latter is absurd, so is the former."
And if he was claiming that the McCanns were involved in the death of their daughter on a Facebook 'find Madelein' page? I'm sure the McCanns would be equally offended and use this law to silence any critics.
They could use the libel laws against such a "claim". If it was speculation, rather than a claim, things might be a bit more grey.
Of course, if you ignored that it was a joke, the Facebook post would be a libel against Mark Bridger - he as not yet been found guilty of anything; and none of the charges he's accused of are for sexual offences.
What happens is you have idiot cyclists cycling side-by-side (cars can't do that, motorcycles don't do that) just because they want to chat, you have them under-taking people, which you are not supposed to do, and you have them cycling in the wrong lane "because it's easier than following the rules of the road". Like you say they also ignore red lights, they ignore traffic signs
Ignoring red lights is unforgiveable - but mostly stupid, because the cyclist is putting themselves in serious risk.
On my route to work, I undertake long queues of static cars. I can see no rational reason not to. Waiting at the back of the queue helps nobody. Overtaking puts me in the path of oncoming traffic.
I also use a left-turn lane to go straight on. It's tricky to explain without diagrams, but the alternative is to cross into the middle lane, where I'll obstruct cars.
I also make some of my journey on roads, and some on pavements. Always, it's the best balance between my own safety, courtesy to cars, and courtesy to pedestrians (I don't speed along pavements terrorising pedestrians).
I would happily welcome you to my neighborhood. Where I'm from (Pittsburgh, PA), many bicyclists don't use hand signals or stop at red lights - They buzz right through. I was almost nailed by one of these cycle delivery guys while walking across a street, with a walk signal. It sometimes seems like traffic laws are just for automobiles, while cyclists can run wild like wolves. (Although I've never been bitten by one.)
I don't defend cyclists who don't obey the rules of the road, but note that you wrote "many" not "all". What upsets me is that lots of the comments here attack *all* cyclists, because of some bad apples.
And, there's this idea that they can ride on any road, even if it's clearly only meant for automobiles, like an entry lane to an expressway. There are bicycle lanes in some neighborhoods, but I sometimes get the couple who want to ride side-by-side, even if that means that they are in the traffic lane. Smug superiority abounds.
We (Americans) collectively suck at driving, be it cars or cycles.
I don't know about the US, but here in the UK, bikes are traffic. Except for motorways, a bike can go anywhere a car can. The highway code explicitly says it's OK to ride bicycles two-abreast. If you're a car behind them, then you should stay behind them until there's room to overtake, just as if they were a slow car.
I guess it depends on where you live, but in the UK cars (and other vehicles) pay for the roads via a road tax
This is simply not true. "Road tax" is a common informal name given to Vehicle Excise Duty. Vehicle Excise Duty does not pay for roads. Some roads are paid for by general taxation (income tax, VAT, etc.) and some roads are paid for by council tax.
We all pay for roads, because we all benefit from them whether we drive or not.
I typed an ad-hominem, then deleted it. I may regret it.
In the UK, neither vehicle excise duty ("car tax") nor fuel tax is ringfenced to pay for road; and I'm pretty certain the equivalent is true in the US. Roads are paid for out of general taxation, and rightly so because they're of general benefit to everyone, not just drivers.
Even if you never leave your street, you benefit from roads, because a road is how your postman gets to you, how your local shop gets stocked, how the fire brigade can reach you, how the supply-chain that feeds you is joined up, etc. That's why it's right that everyone's taxes pay for roads.
But that also means that the cyclist you're so happy to cut up, probably did pay their share for the road. Not only that, but it's fairly likely that the cyclist owns a car too. I don't know whether you live somewhere where heavy traffic is a problem, but if you do, every car owner who chooses to cycle that day, is helping reduce traffic.
I don't defend cyclists who don't obey the rules of the road. But you should treat the cyclists who do with the respect they deserve.
Show me one person that has said, "I would love to start bicycling, but I refuse to because of the damn helmets."
I don't think it's so much about people starting to cycle; it's about them continuing to cycle, and the frequency they do it.
Every morning, I decide whether to go to work by car or by bike. There are lots and lots of variables. How do I feel? What's the weather like now? What's the weather forecast for later? How late have I left it? What are my plans for the end of the day? Do I need to carry anything too large/heavy for the bike? What are my plans for lunchtime?
Often, the decision is on a knife-edge. Tiny factors affect which way it goes. Like, the hassle of getting the bike out of the shed, through the locked gate and onto the road is a factor. A helmet is slightly uncomfortable, threatens to leave my hair looking ridiculous all day*, and involves fiddling with an unwieldy clasp. It's seemingly insignificant, but it's a factor.
Actually what usually happened, if I got the bike out, is that I'd think "Damn, left the helmet inside. Shall I go and fetch it? Nah, screw it. I'll remember tomorrow." -- if it was actually illegal to go out without my bike, it's likely I'd cycle a lot less.
No, it's not rational. But people aren't.
(* if I start with wet hair. Yes I am a bit ashamed of caring.)
A friend of mine was obese. She tried dieting, but she wasn't eating particularly unhealthily in the first place, and moving to tiny portions of very low-calorie food didn't suit her.
She started running, and very quickly brought herself to a healthy weight, having ditched the diet.
Actually, at first she was on Weight Watchers, and followed their plan of "if you do x amount of exercise, you may eat x more 'points' worth of food". After a while she ignored the points, ate normally, and ran regularly.
Helmets give you a sense of security. It might be false. Having a proper bike seat instead of a rusty spike gives you a sense of security. It's almost certainly not false.
Also, some research showed that drivers overtook helmeted cyclists with less room compared to unhelmeted cyclists, i.e. the drivers take a higher risk because they assume the helmet is protecting the cyclist.
I get the impression that a number of car drivers are more hostile towards "serious" cyclists than "casual" cyclists (my choice of words). That is, they resent lycra-clad, helmet-wearing cyclists going fast on racing bikes, and are more accepting towards people in ordinary clothes on modest bikes. That might partially explain the result you report.
Slashdot Mirror
He's British. Most British people think circumcision is weird.
How do you raise a kid as an atheist?
You don't routinely take them to church.
When they ask questions "why" questions, you give the best true explanation you can, rather than invoking a creator.
When they come back from school/wherever saying "God made x like y because z" you say "Well, yes, some people believe that, but other people don't."
The original Smart Car was way smaller than a typical European car. Like, half the length.
Nobody will type? What will we do instead?
Nobody will use Morse Code? How will we communicate with lighthouses?
'Cloud' only really works if you can centralize everything in a few locations for load-balancing. Having to install enough servers to handle peak load plus overhead in every big city on the planet gets expensive, fast.
But this is Akamai's model, and it's very successful. They're constantly negotiating to put servers on the "edge" of as many ISPs services as possible.
I note that Matthew Woods (who made the original facebook "joke") has now been jailed for 3 months.
Yes. He took the cowardly (but perhaps pragmatic) choice of pleading guilty.
No winners in this one, I reckon.
... then you reject the core of the legal system in the UK, the USA, and most of the Western world.
A bunch of losers who couldn’t even make up an excuse to skip jury duty, with ZERO expertise on anything and most likely caveman education
I served on a jury last year. It never occurred to me to try and skip it. I considered it my duty to society. When you pick 12 people at random, you get a reasonable cross-section, and we ranged from highly educated to left-school-at-16. It is the prosecution and the defence's job to educate the jury on subjects that are relevant to the case (we came away from our case knowing a lot more about coup and contrecoup head injuries).
In the case of "reasonable man" judgements on offence, the only way you can gauge offence is to take a random sampling of the general population, and ask them how offensive they find the matter. That sounds like a jury to me.
I suppose technically it could be slander, given that he's not been found guilty by a jury of his peers.
He hasn't even been accused of rape. Just abduction, murder, and attempting to pervert the course of justice.
No, I wouldn't.
But Frankie Boyle tweeted a joke which combined Jimmy Savile and Madeline McCann. Probably as offensive as this joke, although possibly tempered by the passing of time. He has not been arrested.
I've been in a theater that caught fire ... We all got up calmly and walked outside.
[Sigh] It's a meme from the days when building regulations and safety procedures where less rigorous than today. Imagine an 18th century theatre; lots of wood and other flammable materials. Crammed full of people; the rich sitting in balconies. The poor standing, tightly packed, below the stage. No emergency exits. A fire could kill almost everyone in there. Raising a false alarm would be likely to cause a couple of tramplings at least.
If you actually want the answer to this question, then it's "the courts of law"
More specifically, in the UK, a magistrate or a jury; and if the defendant doesn't want to accept a magistrate's verdict, they can always appeal to a full court.
Then again, juries only decide guilt or otherwise. Judges decide on the sentence.
I think you might need some more straw..
He wasn't constructing a strawman. He was attempting reduction ad absurdum.
"If we imprison people for offending someone with a sick joke, shouldn't we also imprison people for offending someone with their religions beliefs? Since the latter is absurd, so is the former."
Or that's how I read it.
And if he was claiming that the McCanns were involved in the death of their daughter on a Facebook 'find Madelein' page? I'm sure the McCanns would be equally offended and use this law to silence any critics.
They could use the libel laws against such a "claim". If it was speculation, rather than a claim, things might be a bit more grey.
Of course, if you ignored that it was a joke, the Facebook post would be a libel against Mark Bridger - he as not yet been found guilty of anything; and none of the charges he's accused of are for sexual offences.
Is it so hard to imagine that some people cycle for convenience rather than fitness?
10 minutes of hassle, which could be avoided by simply not wearing a helmet.
Many workplaces don't have basins large enough to wash hair in, let alone showers.
I deliberately cycle more slowly to work than I do on the way home, because if I get sweaty, I'm going to stink all day.
No, most of Europe drives on the right.
What has confused you is that in Europe right-turn-on-red is not allowed. Not for cars, not for bikes. Red means stop, with no exceptions.
What happens is you have idiot cyclists cycling side-by-side (cars can't do that, motorcycles don't do that) just because they want to chat, you have them under-taking people, which you are not supposed to do, and you have them cycling in the wrong lane "because it's easier than following the rules of the road". Like you say they also ignore red lights, they ignore traffic signs
Ignoring red lights is unforgiveable - but mostly stupid, because the cyclist is putting themselves in serious risk.
Cycling two-abreast is explicitly permitted by the highway code although it tells you to go in single file on busy or narrow roads.
On my route to work, I undertake long queues of static cars. I can see no rational reason not to. Waiting at the back of the queue helps nobody. Overtaking puts me in the path of oncoming traffic.
I also use a left-turn lane to go straight on. It's tricky to explain without diagrams, but the alternative is to cross into the middle lane, where I'll obstruct cars.
I also make some of my journey on roads, and some on pavements. Always, it's the best balance between my own safety, courtesy to cars, and courtesy to pedestrians (I don't speed along pavements terrorising pedestrians).
I would happily welcome you to my neighborhood. Where I'm from (Pittsburgh, PA), many bicyclists don't use hand signals or stop at red lights - They buzz right through. I was almost nailed by one of these cycle delivery guys while walking across a street, with a walk signal. It sometimes seems like traffic laws are just for automobiles, while cyclists can run wild like wolves. (Although I've never been bitten by one.)
I don't defend cyclists who don't obey the rules of the road, but note that you wrote "many" not "all". What upsets me is that lots of the comments here attack *all* cyclists, because of some bad apples.
And, there's this idea that they can ride on any road, even if it's clearly only meant for automobiles, like an entry lane to an expressway. There are bicycle lanes in some neighborhoods, but I sometimes get the couple who want to ride side-by-side, even if that means that they are in the traffic lane. Smug superiority abounds.
We (Americans) collectively suck at driving, be it cars or cycles.
I don't know about the US, but here in the UK, bikes are traffic. Except for motorways, a bike can go anywhere a car can. The highway code explicitly says it's OK to ride bicycles two-abreast. If you're a car behind them, then you should stay behind them until there's room to overtake, just as if they were a slow car.
I guess it depends on where you live, but in the UK cars (and other vehicles) pay for the roads via a road tax
This is simply not true. "Road tax" is a common informal name given to Vehicle Excise Duty. Vehicle Excise Duty does not pay for roads. Some roads are paid for by general taxation (income tax, VAT, etc.) and some roads are paid for by council tax.
We all pay for roads, because we all benefit from them whether we drive or not.
I typed an ad-hominem, then deleted it. I may regret it.
In the UK, neither vehicle excise duty ("car tax") nor fuel tax is ringfenced to pay for road; and I'm pretty certain the equivalent is true in the US. Roads are paid for out of general taxation, and rightly so because they're of general benefit to everyone, not just drivers.
Even if you never leave your street, you benefit from roads, because a road is how your postman gets to you, how your local shop gets stocked, how the fire brigade can reach you, how the supply-chain that feeds you is joined up, etc. That's why it's right that everyone's taxes pay for roads.
But that also means that the cyclist you're so happy to cut up, probably did pay their share for the road. Not only that, but it's fairly likely that the cyclist owns a car too. I don't know whether you live somewhere where heavy traffic is a problem, but if you do, every car owner who chooses to cycle that day, is helping reduce traffic.
I don't defend cyclists who don't obey the rules of the road. But you should treat the cyclists who do with the respect they deserve.
Show me one person that has said, "I would love to start bicycling, but I refuse to because of the damn helmets."
I don't think it's so much about people starting to cycle; it's about them continuing to cycle, and the frequency they do it.
Every morning, I decide whether to go to work by car or by bike. There are lots and lots of variables. How do I feel? What's the weather like now? What's the weather forecast for later? How late have I left it? What are my plans for the end of the day? Do I need to carry anything too large/heavy for the bike? What are my plans for lunchtime?
Often, the decision is on a knife-edge. Tiny factors affect which way it goes. Like, the hassle of getting the bike out of the shed, through the locked gate and onto the road is a factor. A helmet is slightly uncomfortable, threatens to leave my hair looking ridiculous all day*, and involves fiddling with an unwieldy clasp. It's seemingly insignificant, but it's a factor.
Actually what usually happened, if I got the bike out, is that I'd think "Damn, left the helmet inside. Shall I go and fetch it? Nah, screw it. I'll remember tomorrow." -- if it was actually illegal to go out without my bike, it's likely I'd cycle a lot less.
No, it's not rational. But people aren't.
(* if I start with wet hair. Yes I am a bit ashamed of caring.)
(Warning: anecdotal evidence)
A friend of mine was obese. She tried dieting, but she wasn't eating particularly unhealthily in the first place, and moving to tiny portions of very low-calorie food didn't suit her.
She started running, and very quickly brought herself to a healthy weight, having ditched the diet.
Actually, at first she was on Weight Watchers, and followed their plan of "if you do x amount of exercise, you may eat x more 'points' worth of food". After a while she ignored the points, ate normally, and ran regularly.
The key is the word "false".
Helmets give you a sense of security. It might be false.
Having a proper bike seat instead of a rusty spike gives you a sense of security. It's almost certainly not false.
Also, some research showed that drivers overtook helmeted cyclists with less room compared to unhelmeted cyclists, i.e. the drivers take a higher risk because they assume the helmet is protecting the cyclist.
I get the impression that a number of car drivers are more hostile towards "serious" cyclists than "casual" cyclists (my choice of words). That is, they resent lycra-clad, helmet-wearing cyclists going fast on racing bikes, and are more accepting towards people in ordinary clothes on modest bikes. That might partially explain the result you report.
Not every road has a sidewalk, including roads that pedestrians use.