The only thing that chews my balls is the lack of an included utility to password-protect.zip files
I'd actually argue that that's for the better. The standard "encryption" mechanism for PKZIP-compatible zip files is atrociously weak -- breakable in a matter of seconds with off-the-shelf software. Better to not provide it at all, and thereby encourage people to go find something that will give them real security when they need it, than to ship snake oil.
If both parties agree that low income jurors are preferred, it seems things should be fair enough.
A trial regarding (say) someone harmed due to purported negligence in my role as a landlord is less likely to be fair with a minimum-income jury than with an even cross-section... but if I have to risk footing a large bill for lost income to have a non-minimal-income jury, I may not be able to afford that.
The justice system is already weighted enough towards those with means to hire experts, better lawyers, etc -- and encouraging folks to "agree" to something out of financial necessity which may impact their ability to get a fair result isn't necessarily going to help.
You also note that you can simply hook it up to pumped-storage hydro - but that means you are using a significant quantity of water and further increases the cost.
Huh? Water for pumped-storage hydro doesn't need to be potable, and it's not used up by the process -- doesn't even escape as steam.
But why not internalize the externalities of being a litigious bastard and fold it in with the court costs?
Making legitimate use of the court system prohibitively expensive is a substantial risk here. Moreover, you'd encourage the parties to select juries with lower income potentials rather than an even cross-section... meaning one could end up with less of a jury of peers.
I just wish COA would get the bus system up to par with everyone else. As of now, it is a living room/bedroom/bathroom for the local hobos (who get a free unlimited pass).
I agree that the bus system is awful -- but to correct a factual point, it isn't free-of-charge for the hobos, merely cheap (as they tend to buy day passes and use them to the max)... and not cheap for anyone on the express routes; I use those only if I have a month pass for the train, which has MetroExpress folded in. Moreover, being pricey keeps the express lines hobo-free.
For that matter -- my significant other has a Cap Metro disability pass, but bus access isn't free for her either, merely reduced-fare. (This wasn't always the case, and is a fairly recent change -- perhaps this is where the impression that hobos get free access came from?).
And if the employer is a small business that can't afford weeks of payroll without the associated profit?
You know, there is such a thing as key person insurance, and if losing the services of an employee would cause you to go under (medical leave happens!), a policy would probably be called for.
Sure, it may be more expensive if you want it to cover extended jury leave, but if that's a business-ending event...
Disagree. Austin is considerably easier to drive in than several other places:
Unlike much of the rest of Texas, freeways have one-way frontage roads.
Unlike the California bay area, onramps and offramps are generally highly forgiving.
Unlike New Jersey, California, and several other locations, there are cultural prohibitions against tailgating. (Yes, some implants don't follow them, but a fairly substantial number of drivers do).
I think you also underestimate the amount of new road work being done -- 183 has undergone pretty substantial changes just in the last decade. Also, by the time this trial takes place, the Mopac Improvement Project may well be underway (as a cyclist, I'll very much welcome this one -- having a north/south throughfare on the other side of a sound wall will be very much a welcome thing).
I don't know the statistics for motor vehicles, but for bicycles, the common accidents are motorist-at-fault but avoidable by following best practices on the part of the cyclist (typically right-hook and left-hook, avoidable by things like proper lane positioning -- taking the lane rather than trying to ride in the gutter to avoid encouraging motorists to pass unsafely, using positioning to encourage drivers making right turns at an intersection to go behind rather than in front of you, etc) or cyclist-at-fault and thus avoidable (riding at night without lights, riding on the wrong side of the street, running intersections), and only a very tiny percentage are motorist-at-fault and unavoidable (ie. the "struck from behind while riding safely and properly" accident that everyone worries so much about... has a high chance of being lethal should it happen, but frequency is almost negligible).
That said -- I'm curious as to whether the parent's asserted statistics more correctly refer to the party at fault in lethal accidents as opposed to the parties harmed in accidents. My suspicion would be very much the former.
If you remove waste, it will return in another form. If you create incentive to reduce waste, it will stay gone. Private industry already has that incentive.
If you think there's no waste in private industry, I suggest spending a few years at a Fortune 50. Or a startup, for that matter -- everywhere I've been has focused on optimizing for one thing and failed at optimizing others, with an end result of massive waste. Whether it's spending massive man-hours to reimplement the wheel in-house because we're unwilling to spend any actual cash (startups!), disregarding opportunity costs (and man-hours) in hopeless pursuit of big contracts that never pan out (different startups!), pursuing false economies by optimizing for an individual department's budget rather than the profitability of the company as a whole (enterprise!), preferring to buy a "platform" that needs just as much customization to convert to the desired product as that product would cost to build in the first place (different enterprise!), but... well.
I've never seen any kind of a business run in a truly efficient manner. Profitably, yes, but good enough to satisfy those who would call any waste justification for a shutdown? Never.
Maybe Britain is radically different from the US in this regard, but I'd be shocked if any such law weren't written in a way that made it impossible to actually DO that to any car that was secured by a bank loan, as opposed to a car that was paid off and driven by an uninsured owner. At the *very* least, the law would be written with "safe harbor" provisions that exempted any car used to secure a loan as long as the lender made a good-faith effort to enforce compliance (regardless of whether or not the lender's efforts were actually successful and effective).
Another approach is for the lender in those environments to buy the insurance directly (and charge through their costs with a penalty added) should a buyer not properly self-insure.
Heck -- if the lender always acts as an intermediary in the insurance-purchasing process in such cases, there's no need for a legal safe-harbor at all.
Yup. Had the Nexus 7 in my left pocket this morning, but was asking myself on the bike ride to the train station (I ride a tikit -- the crossbar is low enough to not conflict with the kilt) if it was there at all.
The only real down side to the huge pockets is how they sit to the front. It's a benefit to cycling -- have heavy enough pocket contents and the pockets prevent wind gusts from compromising modesty -- but a disappointment to the womenfolk (hard to cop a feel through a smartphone, a wallet, and a 7" tablet).
In my humble opinion, ergonomic keyboards are a really stupid response to most typing RSI issues, and it's probably a better idea to get a keyboard with proper keyswitches - all the ergonomic boards I've touched still have the same shitty membrane switches.
This isn't true of Maltrons -- I have a friend who's a huge fan, owning 3 generations of the product. According to Wikipedia, they use Cherry MX switches.
It was done by someone pretty damned incompetent if it left a visible icon on your screen.
That said -- you could have (should have) connected it by USB, rebooted into the recovery image, and uploaded your own firmware to overwrite what was there. This goes beyond the "factory reset", effectively being the same thing that the attacker (purportedly) did to you.
Bloody hell you have enormous pockets! That's like claiming a readers digest fits right in your pocket.
I'd argue that you have tiny ones -- I have a Nexus 7 (in a case), and it fits into the pockets of my slacks -- snugly, but nonetheless. (The utilikilts, by contrast, it fits into easily -- but for a garment whose manufacturer boasts 20-beer-bottle cargo capacity on their premium line, that should hardly be a surprise).
This definitely makes a big difference in terms of whether I'm going to have a device with me; I don't see a 10" tablet being of much use except as a laptop replacement, and I don't use/want/need a laptop right now, except for rare occasions that I know of ahead of time (working in colo, attending a Clojure meetup, etc)... but the 7" tablet is great; it's far better for gaming, e-mail, reading, showing people photos, etc. than my phone.
Okay, I want to buy a device for CyanogenMod. I don't want the hassle of jailbreaking and I want to know for sure that it will keep working even if I try an upgraded manufacturer's ROM.
Buy a Nexus-series device from Google. "Jailbreaking" those is a matter of running an official, vendor-supported tool (which tells you that you're voiding all vendor support on the software stack) -- however, they also can be reverted back to stock vendor ROMs, which Google has for download.
High utilization isn't (except for maintenance) a problem, but it does mean that there aren't really going to be many (if any) fewer vehicles on the road. Parking lots might be emptier, but the number of trips isn't likely to change significantly.
It's beneficial in a few ways:
The vehicles that do exist are better-maintained. Poorly-maintained vehicles contribute far, far more to air pollution than well-maintained ones.
Parking lots in urban areas are actually a huge problem. They add up to massive amounts of prime real estate that could otherwise be put to productive use, but which instead do nothing but house idle vehicles. Zoning laws with minimum parking requirements are hurtful to businesses which could otherwise fit into higher-density areas -- Austin recently had a major vegan restaurant nearly shut down due to lack of compliance with parking requirements, despite catering to a clientele that mostly arrived by bicycle.
Having costs be per-mile or per-minute with granular billing (car2go is the latter) rather than fixed monthly (or amortized into weekly or bi-weekly fuel stops, monthly auto and insurance payments, annual maintenance, etc) provides motivation to use transit, cycling, or other options when they make sense, rather than having the car be first-choice.
As for your existing vehicle-sharing collective, I wonder how much of that would scale if the entire population (instead of a small segment) were using them.
It's a question, indeed. I'm not sure I'd posit "entire population" -- we have people who can't get driver's licenses, after all. Similarly, I wouldn't want car-sharing membership to be a civil right -- if one abuses it, they should be able to lose the privilege, just as it is presently with privately-run car-share operations rejecting members based on background checks done by their insurance carrier.
And now think about how many extra miles each of those vehicles will be driving. And think about how disgusting those cars are going to be inside.
I'm not sure where the higher per-vehicle utilization becomes a bug rather than a feature. As for the interior -- I'm a member of car2go, an existing vehicle-sharing collective, and we don't have problem.
Every time someone gets in, they're asked to rate how the interior and the exterior look. Successive low ratings? The car gets cleaned. If there's a serious problem, there's a button to call customer service -- and if they need to, they'll ground the car until someone gets out to fix it, and bill the person who had it before you for the cost.
And since you were asked how the interior looked when you got into the car, you're always reminded that the person after you will be asked the same question.
If you intentionally blow yourself up to kill other people in the process you are a Soldier. You are waging war, you are a terrorist, you are a soldier.
Well -- if that's true for anyone with a bomb, why don't we make it true of anyone with a gun, too?
What a wonderfully fun way to strip anyone we don't like of their rights!
If the vast majority of users don't care in the slightest about booting an alternate OS, why should they reject something on the basis that they can't boot an alternate OS?
Simple: Artificially limiting the uses to which secondhand hardware can be put reduces resale value.
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I'd actually argue that that's for the better. The standard "encryption" mechanism for PKZIP-compatible zip files is atrociously weak -- breakable in a matter of seconds with off-the-shelf software. Better to not provide it at all, and thereby encourage people to go find something that will give them real security when they need it, than to ship snake oil.
Because having justice be only for those who can afford it is a great way to get people enacting private revenge rather than going through the courts.
A trial regarding (say) someone harmed due to purported negligence in my role as a landlord is less likely to be fair with a minimum-income jury than with an even cross-section... but if I have to risk footing a large bill for lost income to have a non-minimal-income jury, I may not be able to afford that.
The justice system is already weighted enough towards those with means to hire experts, better lawyers, etc -- and encouraging folks to "agree" to something out of financial necessity which may impact their ability to get a fair result isn't necessarily going to help.
Huh? Water for pumped-storage hydro doesn't need to be potable, and it's not used up by the process -- doesn't even escape as steam.
Making legitimate use of the court system prohibitively expensive is a substantial risk here. Moreover, you'd encourage the parties to select juries with lower income potentials rather than an even cross-section... meaning one could end up with less of a jury of peers.
I agree that the bus system is awful -- but to correct a factual point, it isn't free-of-charge for the hobos, merely cheap (as they tend to buy day passes and use them to the max)... and not cheap for anyone on the express routes; I use those only if I have a month pass for the train, which has MetroExpress folded in. Moreover, being pricey keeps the express lines hobo-free.
For that matter -- my significant other has a Cap Metro disability pass, but bus access isn't free for her either, merely reduced-fare. (This wasn't always the case, and is a fairly recent change -- perhaps this is where the impression that hobos get free access came from?).
You know, there is such a thing as key person insurance, and if losing the services of an employee would cause you to go under (medical leave happens!), a policy would probably be called for.
Sure, it may be more expensive if you want it to cover extended jury leave, but if that's a business-ending event...
Disagree. Austin is considerably easier to drive in than several other places:
I think you also underestimate the amount of new road work being done -- 183 has undergone pretty substantial changes just in the last decade. Also, by the time this trial takes place, the Mopac Improvement Project may well be underway (as a cyclist, I'll very much welcome this one -- having a north/south throughfare on the other side of a sound wall will be very much a welcome thing).
I don't know the statistics for motor vehicles, but for bicycles, the common accidents are motorist-at-fault but avoidable by following best practices on the part of the cyclist (typically right-hook and left-hook, avoidable by things like proper lane positioning -- taking the lane rather than trying to ride in the gutter to avoid encouraging motorists to pass unsafely, using positioning to encourage drivers making right turns at an intersection to go behind rather than in front of you, etc) or cyclist-at-fault and thus avoidable (riding at night without lights, riding on the wrong side of the street, running intersections), and only a very tiny percentage are motorist-at-fault and unavoidable (ie. the "struck from behind while riding safely and properly" accident that everyone worries so much about... has a high chance of being lethal should it happen, but frequency is almost negligible).
That said -- I'm curious as to whether the parent's asserted statistics more correctly refer to the party at fault in lethal accidents as opposed to the parties harmed in accidents. My suspicion would be very much the former.
If you think there's no waste in private industry, I suggest spending a few years at a Fortune 50. Or a startup, for that matter -- everywhere I've been has focused on optimizing for one thing and failed at optimizing others, with an end result of massive waste. Whether it's spending massive man-hours to reimplement the wheel in-house because we're unwilling to spend any actual cash (startups!), disregarding opportunity costs (and man-hours) in hopeless pursuit of big contracts that never pan out (different startups!), pursuing false economies by optimizing for an individual department's budget rather than the profitability of the company as a whole (enterprise!), preferring to buy a "platform" that needs just as much customization to convert to the desired product as that product would cost to build in the first place (different enterprise!), but... well.
I've never seen any kind of a business run in a truly efficient manner. Profitably, yes, but good enough to satisfy those who would call any waste justification for a shutdown? Never.
Another approach is for the lender in those environments to buy the insurance directly (and charge through their costs with a penalty added) should a buyer not properly self-insure.
Heck -- if the lender always acts as an intermediary in the insurance-purchasing process in such cases, there's no need for a legal safe-harbor at all.
In an alternate world where the societal effects were exactly opposite what they actually were, it might have been.
Yup. Had the Nexus 7 in my left pocket this morning, but was asking myself on the bike ride to the train station (I ride a tikit -- the crossbar is low enough to not conflict with the kilt) if it was there at all.
The only real down side to the huge pockets is how they sit to the front. It's a benefit to cycling -- have heavy enough pocket contents and the pockets prevent wind gusts from compromising modesty -- but a disappointment to the womenfolk (hard to cop a feel through a smartphone, a wallet, and a 7" tablet).
This isn't true of Maltrons -- I have a friend who's a huge fan, owning 3 generations of the product. According to Wikipedia, they use Cherry MX switches.
It was done by someone pretty damned incompetent if it left a visible icon on your screen.
That said -- you could have (should have) connected it by USB, rebooted into the recovery image, and uploaded your own firmware to overwrite what was there. This goes beyond the "factory reset", effectively being the same thing that the attacker (purportedly) did to you.
Can you store 20 bottles of beer in one? :)
Traditional kilts have other downsides -- living in Texas, I'll take cotton over wool, thankyouverymuch.
The word you want is "dock". And yes, not even that far away -- the Asus PadFone shows a substantial chunk of the capabilities in question.
Well, it's pretty unusual for me not to be wearing a kilt, so yes. :)
I'd argue that you have tiny ones -- I have a Nexus 7 (in a case), and it fits into the pockets of my slacks -- snugly, but nonetheless. (The utilikilts, by contrast, it fits into easily -- but for a garment whose manufacturer boasts 20-beer-bottle cargo capacity on their premium line, that should hardly be a surprise).
This definitely makes a big difference in terms of whether I'm going to have a device with me; I don't see a 10" tablet being of much use except as a laptop replacement, and I don't use/want/need a laptop right now, except for rare occasions that I know of ahead of time (working in colo, attending a Clojure meetup, etc)... but the 7" tablet is great; it's far better for gaming, e-mail, reading, showing people photos, etc. than my phone.
Buy a Nexus-series device from Google. "Jailbreaking" those is a matter of running an official, vendor-supported tool (which tells you that you're voiding all vendor support on the software stack) -- however, they also can be reverted back to stock vendor ROMs, which Google has for download.
It's beneficial in a few ways:
It's a question, indeed. I'm not sure I'd posit "entire population" -- we have people who can't get driver's licenses, after all. Similarly, I wouldn't want car-sharing membership to be a civil right -- if one abuses it, they should be able to lose the privilege, just as it is presently with privately-run car-share operations rejecting members based on background checks done by their insurance carrier.
I'm not sure where the higher per-vehicle utilization becomes a bug rather than a feature. As for the interior -- I'm a member of car2go, an existing vehicle-sharing collective, and we don't have problem.
Every time someone gets in, they're asked to rate how the interior and the exterior look. Successive low ratings? The car gets cleaned. If there's a serious problem, there's a button to call customer service -- and if they need to, they'll ground the car until someone gets out to fix it, and bill the person who had it before you for the cost.
And since you were asked how the interior looked when you got into the car, you're always reminded that the person after you will be asked the same question.
Well -- if that's true for anyone with a bomb, why don't we make it true of anyone with a gun, too?
What a wonderfully fun way to strip anyone we don't like of their rights!
This has yet to be seen.
The people in the business of buying old hardware (which has often had its OS wiped) and reselling it for use, to start with.
Simple: Artificially limiting the uses to which secondhand hardware can be put reduces resale value.