I used a local term, we call freeway highways in NJ.
So 4 lanes each way, no cross-overs, speed limit is 65mph. A cyclist should be in a regular lane?
Considering CARS are ticketed for going too low of a speed and causing a danger... wouldn't a bike (which goes around 15-20 mph) be a major hazard on such a road?
It's a regional thing... my definition of "highway" is probably the same as other definitions of "freeway"
In our case in NJ, we call it a highway even though it's 4 lanes each way, median down the middle, no cross-traffic, and speed limit varying from 65-55 mph.
Don't know about where you live, but here, on roads where cyclists are allowed they are entitled to use the road and drivers are legally required to respect that.
By highway I mean the 65 mph multi-lane highway. Riding down the middle of that in a bike that's probably only doing 15-20 mph is "unwise" to say the least.
I don't know for sure whether that scenario is illegal. But considering it's a fine-able offense to go too low under the speed limit for safety concerns, I'd IMAGINE that a bike doing 15-20 mph on a 65 mph highway is subject to the same scrutiny.
I'm talking about idiots that don't stop or even slow down, and blast through the stop sign and cross that perpendicular 40mph road praying nobody hits them.
If at a light, then you should at least stop and hit the pedestrian cross button.
Admittedly, many car drivers are idiots... DANGEROUS idiots.
But on the other side of that spectrum, SOME cyclists are idiots as well. I'm NOT talking about the ones that know what they're doing, signal, ride in the bike lane, etc.
I'm talking about people that fly through red lights and stop signs because they think the lights/signs don't concern the cyclists. I'm talking about the idiots that ride on the highway without helmets and don't stay in the shoulder.
The annoying stuff such as riding side-by-side and blocking off a lane of a 40mph road instead of using the shoulder is just annoying.
By me we have a lot of the idiots, and it's annoying. And a synic can say "Well then they'll get hurt or die, Darwin in action." The problem with that is, then some driver who WAS paying attention and WAS following the rules has to live with the guilt at hurting or killing someone. And of course deal with the inevitable law-suits that follow.
If you mean "Prevent the natural disaster that occurred" then obviously they couldn't do anything. If you mean the cluster-f#@k that followed involving incompetence, lies, and not doing as much as you could to try to clean up afterwards... then yeh this plays into that.
Let's face it, if it hits the fan and there IS a natural disaster... you want to keep the amount of incompetence to a minimum. Having almost everyone who's responsible to monitor the reactors and coordinate with everyone in case of a cluster-f#@k isn't a great scenario.
The fact that Fukushima got hit by a disaster is a tragedy that nobody could stop. The fact that they were so ill-prepared afterwards COULD have been better. And the whole hand-waving thing afterwards has no excuse other than pride and greed.
I'm NOT saying that the US regs involving nukes are any better... I could see them being worse. But telling 90% of the people who's job it is to try to PREVENT the screw up isn't making things better.
X-Wing Alliance came after "X-Wing vs Tie Fighter" It had a decent single player campaign with a story... BUT it also had a solid online multiplayer experience.
While I didn't like it as much as regular "Tie Fighter" I do have to say Alliance was quite fun.
I was driving on a small highway once, 3 lanes each way / concrete divider / 55MpH speed limit BUT with traffic lights spread out like every 5 miles. So not a full-blown highway, but close to it. Lights are not for turning, they have like 5 signs at each light saying no turns.
Anyway... I'm driving my small car behind a delivery truck... not too close... going around a turn. There are some cars on my right so I couldn't change lanes really if I wanted to. I see the light is green so I'm thinking cool we're all going.
What I could NOT see was in front of the delivery truck was a guy stopped at the light wanting to make a left. The van pulled quickly to the right the arse... and here I am not too many car lengths away from that idiot stopped on the rode. I didn't hit him, but between being trapped in the left hand land and everything, it wasn't a guarantee I could avoid him.
Even though the signs said no turns. Even though he was trying to cross 3 lanes on the other end with cars zipping by.
I manage to avoid him... and it's not like it was THAT close of a call. Ultimately though, I can't say for sure who the law would side in that case. The arse-hat stopped in the left lane trying to make an illegal turn or me. I imagine both of us.
Firstly, you're talking hard drives while the article is talking Micro SD cards. Hard drives... plug them into a RAC and you're done. I know companies that do the same.
Secondly, we're talking about scope. A handful of Micro SD cards... even a bread-box worth... isn't too bad. But a station wagon FULL of Micro SD cards.
The article itself says that's "19 Million Micro SD Cards" Just picture that... manually trying to load 19 Million Micro SD cards into a system. Even if you hired dozens or hundreds of interns and gave them each a bunch of workstations with Micro SD readers... that's going to take a long long long time to load that data into your system.
Great, you've managed to transfer X terrabytes of data across state lines. I salute you.
Now... go find this list of files that I need. Also that collection of data that our servers need to process. What, that's going to take you HOW long?
Yes might be quicker to send the data from point A to point B by just shipping disks... but only for archiving purposes. If you actually need to access the data, then you still have that last mile (or 10') of having to load that data into a system or network.
Now, if you were shipping a truck load of servers, or maybe a car full of NAS devices that you could just plug into a network and be done with it... then it's not too bad. Then you can start electronically searching the data within minutes, index it, use it for your data-store, whatever.
But just a car load of disks for non-archival purposes... you're asking for a headache.
Any time I hear about underground CO2 sequestration, I think about the Lake Nyos Incident: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos Pumping mass amounts of CO2 underground would be a disaster waiting to happen.
Jeez
I'd heard of the lake and its acidic nature... but never heard about the 1,700 people that it asphyxiated. That sucks on toast.
They just have a price tag which reflects the real cost of the hardware.
No sane person with any math capabilities will take a "locked" phone as you end up paying far more for the hardware (and have no flexibility as to replacing it during the contract period). That $700 phone will turn into $1000-1200 phone when you add up all the monthly charges for the contract period even after you first take out the costs of the same carrier services when bought for unlocked phone.
Luckily for the carriers in the US, the country is full of people who are bad at math.
Which US carrier are you talking about?
I know T-Mobile has their own "BYOD price" for the monthly charges... but as far as I can tell AT&T doesn't.
And now they all offer the $20-per-month fee if you want to pay the cheap-price for the phone AND want to replace it with another cheap-price-phone the following year.
But outside of T-Mobile, I don't know of any that give you a monthly discount if you BYOD or pay full-price.
Because I remember that being the case in Europe, but here in the US, there is not a single provider that has coverage anywhere near me that will even talk with you about BYOD. You will sign a contract and take a subsidised phone off the list or they will not do business with you, period.
T-Mobile used to be very good about it... but I don't know how they are now. However I imagine you don't bother with them because you say "coverage anywhere near me" and T-Mobile's coverage is one of the worst in the US.
They used to have a separate price: if you brought your own (compatible) phone they wouldn't charge you for a new phone AND the monthly price would be reduced by like $10-$20 (I forget the exact amount).
I recall going to them with a Nexus One for a while and getting the deal above... but the signal in my area was horrid so I dropped them and went back AT&T. In my case, I hadn't cancelled AT&T yet just in case the signal was as bad as a friend told me. So no harm / no foul.
With Yellowstone though, we're kind of screwed either way. If a Super Volcano blows it's top... there's not much we can do as a species except wave good-bye or live in hellish conditions. Great, the government and super-rich might survive a couple of generations under ground while the rest of the world dies. It's hard to call that a win.
At least with a super flu we have a chance at fighting back or preventing the damage.
I know - a company I worked for got bought by Dell a couple years ago. We watched as benefits got wiped, and the switch to a new platform meant WORSE service for our clients. A bunch of us jumped ship.
Your statement is a little ambiguous
I imagine you're saying "Michael Dell bought our company" and Dell Inc. is now screwed.
But it also reads like "Dell Inc. bought our company" in which case you're saying that Michael Dell has his work cut out for him (aka, Michael Dell is going to be busy trying to right the ship)
Agreed, the opinion was not worth adding it to the summary let alone the opening sentence.
Personally I don't agree with the opinion: I didn't think it was spectacular, but I don't think it was horrible either. I just felt the original was better.
But in any case, it's out of place. It would be one thing if the article was about the movie itself and how it was received poorly by critics or whatever... but it's an article about the tech used in a couple of scenes.
It's like introducing your team to a client, and mentioning that your co-worker has crabs... how the hell does that factor into it?
I can see this being a problem for deaf people, but if you're not deaf, what's so horribly problematic with the model all manufacturers have been using the past 15 years, repeating the relevant alarm sound (SMS etc.) once every minute until the user picks the phone up?
Really? All manufacturers? For 15 years?
My 5 year old Samsung flip phone only beeped once... no options anywhere to beep again let alone forever.
I'm pretty sure the iPhone only ever beeped a second time like 5 minutes later and not every minute forever like you suggest. Granted that second beep was often very useful but it was only a second beep. One loud TV show or phone conversation with your neighbor and you might not notice until the next time you need to use the phone.
I like the LED. If I leave it on my dresser and leave it for a while... I can tell right away if I got a message while I was gone without waiting for this mythical forever beep.
Granted, the LED is useless if the phone is in your pocket but it's still a nice feature for people that will put their phones on their coffee tables or whatever.
Some people will never change their mind about it. A person with a larger car than my CTS got into it and complained it was a boat / huge / etc. And how old it looked. Meanwhile my CTS looked a lot sportier than hers, and was smaller, had a lot of kick, etc. I should also mention, said girl was driving an old Buick full-size sedan.
I was willing to let it slide though, because she was cute:-)
Those people are never going to change their mind. I guess the only alternative is for GM to just wait for those people to grow old and pass away.
Don't get me wrong... I think the venture is a big positive for humanity.
I'm just saying... the (great?) grandparent post said there are too many unknowns to see if they really have their act together: ship quality, planning, etc.
The grandparent post said "Well, so what. If you find out they don't have their act together then quit or leave... it's not like they won't let you"
My response to THAT was... yeh great. If you do quit or leave then you're kind of screwed because you would have given up your job and stuff for this.
And if it's eventually / later revealed that for all of their good intentions that it was a FAIL in terms of piss-poor planning and no real tech, then society may laugh at the people that "fell for it" and gave up their jobs. Not that it's the right reaction: but it's a probable reaction for society at large. The same way society laughs at non-extreme doomsday / emergency preppers as being paranoid... until there actually is an earthquake / tsunami / etc.
Wow, that's expensive. There are people paying $2.99 for one single episode? I would love to be that rich some day.
I think it's $2.99 for the HD version, $1.99 for the Standard Def version. I haven't bought one in a while so I can't say for sure.
The season-passes (think box-sets) are / were often priced at a slight discount compared to buying each episode individually... so the season-passes are somewhat price-competitive with the DVD box sets for SD and BluRay box sets for HD. Meanwhile you tend to get the episodes within 24hr of them airing.
I don't buy that many shows... sometimes season pass here-and-there if I only learned about (or got into) a show mid-way through a season and it's not on Netflix or my cable company's OnDemand service.
Meanwhile the video quality is solid and there are no commercials so it's not a horrible price to pay. And I make enough that I never consider pirating stuff anymore.
True, but it's a decision you'd want to make earlier-than-later.
Deciding to at least start the program is a life-changing thing. For example, I doubt you'd be able to keep your job so that means losing your job AND your home since you couldn't afford payments past X months.
So let's say they talk a great game and it looks like they have their "act" together. They have scientists, their mockups look sound, etc.
A hypothetical 2 years period goes by while you're training and what-not... and you realize WOW these people do NOT know what they're doing. Their ships aren't going to be able to get 10ft off the ground let alone make it to Mars. These conditions are not going to last more than X months let alone the planned Y decades. These people have no idea what they're doing.
So you quit... and now what. You're unemployed and homeless... and when asked about the 2 year gap on your resume you labeled a psycho for thinking that Mars One (now known as a cluster-f#@k) was actually going to happen.
Suppose Bob may have committed a crime, and Alice is known not to be an accomplice but appears to have been a witness. If the courts ask both Bob and Alice the same question -- "Did Bob do it?" -- and both of them refuse to answer, then Bob's right to remain silent is protected under the Fifth Amendment, but Alice can be sent to jail -- despite the fact that Bob may have been guilty, but Alice is innocent!
If the government thinks that Alice knows whether Bob did it or not, then she might very well also be a suspected accomplice. She would be well within her rights to plead the Fifth until and unless she was offered immunity.
That's my thinking with his example as well. Maybe she did it. Maybe she's concerned she'll be charged with something because of what she did or did-not do. Maybe what she says will open her up to Civil suits from the victim's family. etc.
But ultimately the first part... by opening your mouth you may incriminate yourself. But, I guess that's OK... because we *promise* we think you're only a witness. Huh?
I'm not saying people shouldn't speak up... but I can understand if a person wanted to keep shut. And technically they can't *know* whether or not you're just a "witness" unless you say something. So even if the law goes against it, I feel one SHOULD be protected even if they're not the target of an investigation.
Otherwise you have the end-run around the 5th: -You must tell us what you saw because you're a witness. - Umm, can I plead the fifth? - No - Umm, OK I saw blah-blah-blah - Thank you for your candor and your sworn testimony. Now that it's on record we are charging you with...
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Including on a freeway?
I used a local term, we call freeway highways in NJ.
So 4 lanes each way, no cross-overs, speed limit is 65mph. A cyclist should be in a regular lane?
Considering CARS are ticketed for going too low of a speed and causing a danger... wouldn't a bike (which goes around 15-20 mph) be a major hazard on such a road?
It's a regional thing... my definition of "highway" is probably the same as other definitions of "freeway"
In our case in NJ, we call it a highway even though it's 4 lanes each way, median down the middle, no cross-traffic, and speed limit varying from 65-55 mph.
Don't know about where you live, but here, on roads where cyclists are allowed they are entitled to use the road and drivers are legally required to respect that.
By highway I mean the 65 mph multi-lane highway. Riding down the middle of that in a bike that's probably only doing 15-20 mph is "unwise" to say the least.
I don't know for sure whether that scenario is illegal. But considering it's a fine-able offense to go too low under the speed limit for safety concerns, I'd IMAGINE that a bike doing 15-20 mph on a 65 mph highway is subject to the same scrutiny.
Then you at least stop at the light.
I'm talking about idiots that don't stop or even slow down, and blast through the stop sign and cross that perpendicular 40mph road praying nobody hits them.
If at a light, then you should at least stop and hit the pedestrian cross button.
Admittedly, many car drivers are idiots... DANGEROUS idiots.
But on the other side of that spectrum, SOME cyclists are idiots as well. I'm NOT talking about the ones that know what they're doing, signal, ride in the bike lane, etc.
I'm talking about people that fly through red lights and stop signs because they think the lights/signs don't concern the cyclists. I'm talking about the idiots that ride on the highway without helmets and don't stay in the shoulder.
The annoying stuff such as riding side-by-side and blocking off a lane of a 40mph road instead of using the shoulder is just annoying.
By me we have a lot of the idiots, and it's annoying. And a synic can say "Well then they'll get hurt or die, Darwin in action." The problem with that is, then some driver who WAS paying attention and WAS following the rules has to live with the guilt at hurting or killing someone. And of course deal with the inevitable law-suits that follow.
If you want to go there...
Then when she came out of the fire you also have to wonder why his sports bra and such were intact after stepping out of an inferno.
Like they were going to stop earthquakes???
It depends on how you define "incident"
If you mean "Prevent the natural disaster that occurred" then obviously they couldn't do anything. If you mean the cluster-f#@k that followed involving incompetence, lies, and not doing as much as you could to try to clean up afterwards... then yeh this plays into that.
Let's face it, if it hits the fan and there IS a natural disaster... you want to keep the amount of incompetence to a minimum. Having almost everyone who's responsible to monitor the reactors and coordinate with everyone in case of a cluster-f#@k isn't a great scenario.
The fact that Fukushima got hit by a disaster is a tragedy that nobody could stop. The fact that they were so ill-prepared afterwards COULD have been better. And the whole hand-waving thing afterwards has no excuse other than pride and greed.
I'm NOT saying that the US regs involving nukes are any better... I could see them being worse. But telling 90% of the people who's job it is to try to PREVENT the screw up isn't making things better.
X-Wing Alliance came after "X-Wing vs Tie Fighter" It had a decent single player campaign with a story... BUT it also had a solid online multiplayer experience.
While I didn't like it as much as regular "Tie Fighter" I do have to say Alliance was quite fun.
Man...what a waste!
The F-16; the most beautiful fighter jet ever built..EVER!
Wish I could have one....
Personally I prefer the A-10
But the F-16 is a close second on my list.
It's a tough call sometimes...
I was driving on a small highway once, 3 lanes each way / concrete divider / 55MpH speed limit BUT with traffic lights spread out like every 5 miles. So not a full-blown highway, but close to it. Lights are not for turning, they have like 5 signs at each light saying no turns.
Anyway... I'm driving my small car behind a delivery truck... not too close... going around a turn. There are some cars on my right so I couldn't change lanes really if I wanted to. I see the light is green so I'm thinking cool we're all going.
What I could NOT see was in front of the delivery truck was a guy stopped at the light wanting to make a left. The van pulled quickly to the right the arse... and here I am not too many car lengths away from that idiot stopped on the rode. I didn't hit him, but between being trapped in the left hand land and everything, it wasn't a guarantee I could avoid him.
Even though the signs said no turns. Even though he was trying to cross 3 lanes on the other end with cars zipping by.
I manage to avoid him... and it's not like it was THAT close of a call. Ultimately though, I can't say for sure who the law would side in that case. The arse-hat stopped in the left lane trying to make an illegal turn or me. I imagine both of us.
Firstly, you're talking hard drives while the article is talking Micro SD cards. Hard drives... plug them into a RAC and you're done. I know companies that do the same.
Secondly, we're talking about scope. A handful of Micro SD cards... even a bread-box worth... isn't too bad. But a station wagon FULL of Micro SD cards.
The article itself says that's "19 Million Micro SD Cards" Just picture that... manually trying to load 19 Million Micro SD cards into a system. Even if you hired dozens or hundreds of interns and gave them each a bunch of workstations with Micro SD readers... that's going to take a long long long time to load that data into your system.
Great, you've managed to transfer X terrabytes of data across state lines. I salute you.
Now... go find this list of files that I need. Also that collection of data that our servers need to process. What, that's going to take you HOW long?
Yes might be quicker to send the data from point A to point B by just shipping disks... but only for archiving purposes. If you actually need to access the data, then you still have that last mile (or 10') of having to load that data into a system or network.
Now, if you were shipping a truck load of servers, or maybe a car full of NAS devices that you could just plug into a network and be done with it... then it's not too bad. Then you can start electronically searching the data within minutes, index it, use it for your data-store, whatever.
But just a car load of disks for non-archival purposes... you're asking for a headache.
Any time I hear about underground CO2 sequestration, I think about the Lake Nyos Incident: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos
Pumping mass amounts of CO2 underground would be a disaster waiting to happen.
Jeez
I'd heard of the lake and its acidic nature... but never heard about the 1,700 people that it asphyxiated. That sucks on toast.
Carbon Dioxide isn't flammable.
Instead what you'll get is the gas pressure rupturing the well casing at the water table line and we'll all have fizzy water. And then asphyxiate.
I believe the grandparent meant flammable water from the Fracking use to empty out the shale so the CO have eventually be placed inside.
You can already get devices unlocked.
They just have a price tag which reflects the real cost of the hardware.
No sane person with any math capabilities will take a "locked" phone as you end up paying far more for the hardware (and have no flexibility as to replacing it during the contract period). That $700 phone will turn into $1000-1200 phone when you add up all the monthly charges for the contract period even after you first take out the costs of the same carrier services when bought for unlocked phone.
Luckily for the carriers in the US, the country is full of people who are bad at math.
Which US carrier are you talking about?
I know T-Mobile has their own "BYOD price" for the monthly charges... but as far as I can tell AT&T doesn't.
And now they all offer the $20-per-month fee if you want to pay the cheap-price for the phone AND want to replace it with another cheap-price-phone the following year.
But outside of T-Mobile, I don't know of any that give you a monthly discount if you BYOD or pay full-price.
Because I remember that being the case in Europe, but here in the US, there is not a single provider that has coverage anywhere near me that will even talk with you about BYOD. You will sign a contract and take a subsidised phone off the list or they will not do business with you, period.
T-Mobile used to be very good about it... but I don't know how they are now. However I imagine you don't bother with them because you say "coverage anywhere near me" and T-Mobile's coverage is one of the worst in the US.
They used to have a separate price: if you brought your own (compatible) phone they wouldn't charge you for a new phone AND the monthly price would be reduced by like $10-$20 (I forget the exact amount).
I recall going to them with a Nexus One for a while and getting the deal above ... but the signal in my area was horrid so I dropped them and went back AT&T. In my case, I hadn't cancelled AT&T yet just in case the signal was as bad as a friend told me. So no harm / no foul.
With Yellowstone though, we're kind of screwed either way. If a Super Volcano blows it's top... there's not much we can do as a species except wave good-bye or live in hellish conditions. Great, the government and super-rich might survive a couple of generations under ground while the rest of the world dies. It's hard to call that a win.
At least with a super flu we have a chance at fighting back or preventing the damage.
I know - a company I worked for got bought by Dell a couple years ago. We watched as benefits got wiped, and the switch to a new platform meant WORSE service for our clients. A bunch of us jumped ship.
Your statement is a little ambiguous
I imagine you're saying "Michael Dell bought our company" and Dell Inc. is now screwed.
But it also reads like "Dell Inc. bought our company" in which case you're saying that Michael Dell has his work cut out for him (aka, Michael Dell is going to be busy trying to right the ship)
Agreed, the opinion was not worth adding it to the summary let alone the opening sentence.
Personally I don't agree with the opinion: I didn't think it was spectacular, but I don't think it was horrible either. I just felt the original was better.
But in any case, it's out of place. It would be one thing if the article was about the movie itself and how it was received poorly by critics or whatever... but it's an article about the tech used in a couple of scenes.
It's like introducing your team to a client, and mentioning that your co-worker has crabs... how the hell does that factor into it?
I can see this being a problem for deaf people, but if you're not deaf, what's so horribly problematic with the model all manufacturers have been using the past 15 years, repeating the relevant alarm sound (SMS etc.) once every minute until the user picks the phone up?
Really? All manufacturers? For 15 years?
My 5 year old Samsung flip phone only beeped once... no options anywhere to beep again let alone forever.
I'm pretty sure the iPhone only ever beeped a second time like 5 minutes later and not every minute forever like you suggest. Granted that second beep was often very useful but it was only a second beep. One loud TV show or phone conversation with your neighbor and you might not notice until the next time you need to use the phone.
I like the LED. If I leave it on my dresser and leave it for a while... I can tell right away if I got a message while I was gone without waiting for this mythical forever beep.
Granted, the LED is useless if the phone is in your pocket but it's still a nice feature for people that will put their phones on their coffee tables or whatever.
"Succeeded" is a relative term
Some people will never change their mind about it. A person with a larger car than my CTS got into it and complained it was a boat / huge / etc. And how old it looked. Meanwhile my CTS looked a lot sportier than hers, and was smaller, had a lot of kick, etc. I should also mention, said girl was driving an old Buick full-size sedan.
I was willing to let it slide though, because she was cute :-)
Those people are never going to change their mind. I guess the only alternative is for GM to just wait for those people to grow old and pass away.
Don't get me wrong... I think the venture is a big positive for humanity.
And if it's eventually / later revealed that for all of their good intentions that it was a FAIL in terms of piss-poor planning and no real tech, then society may laugh at the people that "fell for it" and gave up their jobs. Not that it's the right reaction: but it's a probable reaction for society at large. The same way society laughs at non-extreme doomsday / emergency preppers as being paranoid... until there actually is an earthquake / tsunami / etc.
Wow, that's expensive. There are people paying $2.99 for one single episode? I would love to be that rich some day.
I think it's $2.99 for the HD version, $1.99 for the Standard Def version. I haven't bought one in a while so I can't say for sure.
The season-passes (think box-sets) are / were often priced at a slight discount compared to buying each episode individually... so the season-passes are somewhat price-competitive with the DVD box sets for SD and BluRay box sets for HD. Meanwhile you tend to get the episodes within 24hr of them airing.
I don't buy that many shows... sometimes season pass here-and-there if I only learned about (or got into) a show mid-way through a season and it's not on Netflix or my cable company's OnDemand service.
Meanwhile the video quality is solid and there are no commercials so it's not a horrible price to pay. And I make enough that I never consider pirating stuff anymore.
True, but it's a decision you'd want to make earlier-than-later.
Deciding to at least start the program is a life-changing thing. For example, I doubt you'd be able to keep your job so that means losing your job AND your home since you couldn't afford payments past X months.
So let's say they talk a great game and it looks like they have their "act" together. They have scientists, their mockups look sound, etc.
A hypothetical 2 years period goes by while you're training and what-not... and you realize WOW these people do NOT know what they're doing. Their ships aren't going to be able to get 10ft off the ground let alone make it to Mars. These conditions are not going to last more than X months let alone the planned Y decades. These people have no idea what they're doing.
So you quit... and now what. You're unemployed and homeless... and when asked about the 2 year gap on your resume you labeled a psycho for thinking that Mars One (now known as a cluster-f#@k) was actually going to happen.
Suppose Bob may have committed a crime, and Alice is known not to be an accomplice but appears to have been a witness. If the courts ask both Bob and Alice the same question -- "Did Bob do it?" -- and both of them refuse to answer, then Bob's right to remain silent is protected under the Fifth Amendment, but Alice can be sent to jail -- despite the fact that Bob may have been guilty, but Alice is innocent!
If the government thinks that Alice knows whether Bob did it or not, then she might very well also be a suspected accomplice. She would be well within her rights to plead the Fifth until and unless she was offered immunity.
That's my thinking with his example as well. Maybe she did it. Maybe she's concerned she'll be charged with something because of what she did or did-not do. Maybe what she says will open her up to Civil suits from the victim's family. etc.
But ultimately the first part... by opening your mouth you may incriminate yourself. But, I guess that's OK... because we *promise* we think you're only a witness. Huh?
I'm not saying people shouldn't speak up... but I can understand if a person wanted to keep shut. And technically they can't *know* whether or not you're just a "witness" unless you say something. So even if the law goes against it, I feel one SHOULD be protected even if they're not the target of an investigation.
Otherwise you have the end-run around the 5th:
-You must tell us what you saw because you're a witness.
- Umm, can I plead the fifth?
- No
- Umm, OK I saw blah-blah-blah
- Thank you for your candor and your sworn testimony. Now that it's on record we are charging you with...