Its there, so we[1] do, but we don't need it. We have many back roads where you can legally drive 55 for long stretches with no stop lights or other traffic (other than a few tractors at 10 Mph) to get in the way. In most of those areas if you speed is under 70mph the local sheriff (sheriffs are elected) will pass you, while if you go faster they will ignore it unless you are a danger. (I wouldn't try it though - some are strict about speed, and a few target outsiders)
The city needs the interstate in rural areas to get cargo between cities. Trains do a lot of this (and should do more), but trucks have there place in city to city runs. The interstate was built for military and industrial needs.
Actually we use the interstate when it goes where it needs to go. Most states have one north-south interstate, and one east-west one. The interstates go big city to big city. (even out here, though our big cities count as a small town by standards of the coasts) That leaves a lot of people who rarely take the freeway because it doesn't go anywhere close to where they travel normally.
[1]Actually I live in the city, so by we I mean those who live in rural areas. I identify with them, and long to be there, but the jobs I like to do are in the city so I'm forced into the city.
If you had Read The Fine Article.
You would have known that the WINE people invited the SAMBA people to their conference (and the two groups worked to plan their conferences one week apart in nearby locations) because there are things both projects need to do, so they may as well do them in compatible ways.
Both products need to emulate case insensitive names on a case sensitive filesystem. Both projects need to support Windows style file locks, which do not have a good Unix equivalent. They may as well do these the same, otherwise it will confuse everyone. (In the latter case it can result in corrupt files if they don't work together!)
More than one person has been killed after submitting to attackers. In one well known case those attackers crashed the airplanes into some buildings and killed more several thousand others who had no opportunity to resist.
Having a gun or not has no bearing on your needing to use deadly force to save someone's life (perhaps your own). However if you don't have the gun, nor proper training in martial arts, it is the innocent that dies.
If someone has a couple ten million to toss around I will happily design[1] them a custom 486DX/33 with a pci express slot so they can install this graphics card.
Finding an app that can use the power of the card, with that CPU is left as an exercise to the buyer.
[1]That is I will start a new company to design custom motherboards to your specs. I will even manufacture them in any quanity you like, so you can sell them to other fools who want the same silly system.
There are 12 new moons to name. For $10000 I will register the name of your moon in a book with the US copyright office ($500 for each extra foreign country). You will also get a chart of the night sky, and instructions on how to find saturn, and your moon[1]. But wait, there is more, I will also send you a customized version of kstars with your moon name and orbit clearly marked, so you can keep track of your moon at anytime.
Better hurry, there are only 12 moons to name, once they are gone they are gone.
Don't be fooled my cheap name a star offers. There are millions of stars to name, but Saturn only has unnamed 12 moons - once they are named I will never make an offer to name them again.
[1]Telescope powerful enough to view your moon is available for an extra charge.
No, but then as a programmer I don't need you to pay $50 to make money on my version of MineSweeper. It is a small game that I can write in a week or less. (Assuming I already knew the APIs, I don't normally work with GUIs so it would take me a little longer) I can sell it for $5, which people are more likely to pay. Or I can sell it with a bunch of other games of similar length for $40.
Note that I'm using MineSweeper as a generic. There is too much competition, in the MineSweeper world. (Most free and high quality) However there are other games of that type that I can write. Ideally I'd be creative enough to make something original.
Add it up across everything. That rail between SF and LA doesn't get to you Denver any faster. While the airport expansion serves not only the SF-LA planes, but also SF to Denver, at no extra cost. Consider the cost of putting high speed rail city to city when you have several cities. Even if you could build LA-Denver and SF-Denver rail for $20 billion (with the mountains in the way? I don't think so), expanding all 3 airports comes in cheaper.
IF you only run 1 train an hour, those rails spend most of their time empty. A runway with one plane per hour doing the LA-SF run spends the rest of the hour dealing with things like SF-NY, SF-MSP, SF-London... (add in any other city around the work you want to get to). Don't forget that you need the runway anyway, because a train from SF to New Zealand is not a possibility, so it would be correct to say you can install a high speed rail for $18 billion, or do nothing. (because you need the airport anyway, so those costs are sunk)
Just like an airport people need to go to the train station. The train can make a few stops along the way, but that slows the route down, which can make the airport (including arrive 1 hour early) faster even if you have to go by the train station.
Now LA and SF are fairly close to gether, and one presumes that many people do want to get between the two cities. It might make perfect sense to install this particular route with high speed rail. I have not done the studies, so I don't know. They are close enough that enough people might ride it to make it worth the cost. (remember to factor in load taken from the airport and roads)
Transportation is complex. Most forms of transit makes sense for something. Trains are not the solution to all problems. They have many downsides, and they are not cheap.
Most news papers have word restrictions for letters to the editor. The shorter the letter (while still making a point) the better your chance of getting in. If you write a long letter it has to be excellent, while two sentences just needs to be good.
So while I agree I wanted to see more, I suspect that more would not have been published. He is a professor, so I would have expected that he would be given some extra room because of this position. (That might have been what got this published at all in fact) Still he needs be limit his message as much as he can while still making a point, and that leaves no room for long arguments.
Simple really. I know many drivers who are more than 10 years since their last accident. Many truckers have 3 million miles since their last accident. That includes things they could do nothing about. I don't have statistics, but I'm comfortable enough with that sample to conclude that 4 accidents, he is outside the standard deviation of good drivers. (despite the claim that he is a good driver)
Compare the cost of constructing an airport to the cost of train tracks that go directly to each to the cities that airport serves. Each plane that leaves that billion dollar airport can go to a different destination, and (with some restrictions) take a very direct route. An airplane from Fargo ND to Maddison WI will not go through Minneapolis, while a train is sucked into the big city in between (with good reason, but if your goal isn't the big city in between it is a waste).
Airports are cheap compared to compition, and once you build them it costs little extra to add more flights (until capacity)
There are accidents where you can do nothing to prevent them. However with 4 that is not the case. Start following the parent's advice. Big following distances. (In fact with your record/luck you should be double the recommended distance, live with cars cutting in front of you it isn't as bad as everyone makes it out to be) Signal your turns.
Oh, and while going the speed limit causes problems, it is clear the law wants you do cause them, so play their game: drive exactly the speed limit. Let the other cars honk. Stay in the right lane and watch them drive by. Relax.
There are accidents that you cannot prevent. There are drivers who have gone 3 million miles since their last accident.
P.S. cut the arrogance. Humans are not designed to drive. You are not a good driver because your brain, just like everyone Else's was not designed for driving. You can get by, and if you make allowances for your inabilities can even be safe, but you will never be good.
Yes 3.5gpf toilets suck. Not as much as the 1.6, but they still suck. However you need to have used a 7gpf (not 5) toilet for a major dump to realize just how much that extra water helps.
Mind there is a good reason for 1.6gpf toilets in cities and dry areas where water is a problem. However I have my own septic system at home, and which to function properly requires about 4gpf of water. So I have to wash my hands for an extra long time to keep everything in balance. [1] I also live in an area where water is not scarce, so I don't need to worry about conservation like many areas do.
[1]The water from my laundry and showers balances things out long term. However I often shower at the gym, and I can go weeks before I have to do laundry (when I suddenly do several loads in a week)
Even in the summer my basement bedroom needs heat. The upstairs needs cooling, while the basement needs heat. Unfortunately I have not found a useful way to get the heat to move down. I can use the AC to cool air and pump it back upstairs, but it turns out to be harder than you would think to pump heat downstairs. (This is in part because of the way my ductwork is, all the returns upstairs, and the basement vents are in the ceiling)
Don't forget that until reciently few people cared about ppc compared to x86 optimization. Now that Apple is using gcc all over, and making money, they care enough to make ppc optimization good. I suspect there was a lot of "low hanging fruit" that apple could use right away.
There is a configure check in KDE, if your compiler is gcc 4.0 it will fail in the./configure step. This bug is acknowledged by the gcc developers, who are working on it. (They have some test fixes, but are not confident in them yet)
I'm sure kde will love 4.0.1 if the bugs are fixed, and the compile speed is still as fast, but 4.0 is a no-go.
These games are not about converting you to my religion, they are about giving me a passtime that doesn't violate all the principals of my religion.
My religion tells everyone not to watch (or own) a TV. There is nothing evil about a electron gun in a vacuum tube exciting a few phosphors (substitute your technology of choice). What is evil is what it is used for. Nothing is wrong with using a TV so you can take college classes from someone on a different continent. There is something wrong when you use TV to show sex, violence, and so on. (I picked two extremes, you have to decide where the dividing line is between them - if you even agree sex and violence is evil).
Video games are not evil of themselves. They can teach puzzle solving skills. A game of pac-man once a week has no value, but it isn't evil. (addiction to pac-man is evil, but that isn't the fault of the game itself) However most of the popular games go far beyond the line.
I'm not sure I agree that christian games are the solution to the problem. However the problem being solved isn't a reach out to non-Christians, it is a lack of things Christians can do.
True, but when you look at the actual numbers, underground lines come out worse than overhead for number of outages.
There is an effort by cities to get power lines moved underground anyway because they are "ugly". The power companies know that overhead wires don't break that often, and they are much easier and faster to fix.
If you want to travel to out of the way places like Minot North Dakota you are correct, the train is better - if it happens to go through that town. (last I check amtrack still stops in Minot) For some commuters I agree, though Northwest used to guarantee you would be on a plane flying for Chicago within an hour of arriving at the airport [1]), which is a counter example to that.
However most people travel from city to city, and they don't do it often. Airplanes go from city to city. So what that you have to plan ahead - my boss won't let me take this week off anymore so I have to plan ahead[2].
This is the US we are talking about. There are not that many cities that a high speed train could reach that an airplane isn't significantly faster. 150 mph for train is high speed, that is barely above stall speed for a big plane. On a 450 mile trip the airplace is there in 1 hour, the train in 3. Considering all the hassle that is even. A 3 hour plane trip is short, a train would take far too long. Cities are far enough apart in the US that flying is better.
Airplanes also do not require expensive track. For small towns it is cheap to build a small airport. (Most small airports cannot handle even a small jet, but it would be cheap to do the upgrade compared to track) People who want a quick way into/out of town can fly. Building any track is excessively expensive, unless you have enough traffic that needs to get through that area to justify it you can't build it to a small town. Now once the track is built it is easy to justify anything that brings it closer to capacity, and then the train is cheap.
[1]This was before 9/11, I don't think they can do that anymore. Though then they had flights leaving every 15 minutes, just step up to the counter and buy a ticket. The price was no better if you booked in advance.
[2]I'm writing this Sunday night, referring to Monday through Friday of the same week. I could take Tuesday off with one day notice, but for a week he wants more notice. I can't blame him.
Minneapolis and St. Paul are next to each other. Just a few miles between their downtowns. (I think they share a border, though I'm not sure) High speed rail doesn't make sense because there isn't space to accelerate, and people want to get on and off all over the line. Low speed is just as good.
We are considering a low speed light rail line between the two.
Trains work great for medium distances, which describes all of Japan, and any single country in Europe. They do poorly for long distances because a standard airplane goes twice as fast (at worst case), and has no problem with terrin that is hard to get a train through.
When you go between two cities in a single country trains are nice. (often trivially slower than a plane after you factor in all the hastles of flying) This describes Europe, cities are close enough that flying isn't enough faster.
In the US cities are more spread out, except on the coasts. There is a high speed train between NY and Boston. Law prevents it from reaching high speed, but it is high speed otherwise. Well if the law wasn't in the way anyway, IIRC they need a few more upgrades to reach high speeds, but who would pay for that if you won't be able to reach those speed anyway.
I don't know what California doesn't have a high speed train. It would make sense, they have the population to support it. (though perhaps not enough people are going in one direction? I don't know)
For me there is no point in a high speed train. I live in Minneapolis, there is no place for it to go. In the metro area stops would be too frequent, and any other city is far enough away that you fly. Though that may not be true, there is a special case that might make sense. The airport is considering a train to some tiny airport outstate that can handle more planes than they can.
When you tell someone you want to put your sensitive stuff in their shredder sell it as a perk for them. Anyone who goes after there sensitive information is unlikely to care about your. Time and effort will be wasted reconstructing your documents that are not wanted.
That's why I shred all my junk mail, not just that which is sensitive.
Don't worry about detecting the camera, just destroy its ability to work.
Start with newspapers (or better yet create some papers that look real, but really have fake data you WANT them to read) and a few logs. Start your fire normally. Once the logs are burning use a fan/bellows to crank up the heat. Do this for some time, long enough to melt any cameras directly in the chimney. Suddenly close the doors and damper. The heat of the former fire will keep smoke for a long time, this will build up soot in the chimney.
After some time re-build the fire, but just a small one.
Stir the shredded versions of your documents.
Slowly put the confetti in the fire.
Let the fire go out and everything cool. Keep watching.
Stir the ashes.
The small fire is important. A large fire will create enough of a draft to drive some of the paper up the chimney and out.
Well you start small. There are rules though. Once you own some amount of a company (IIRC 5%) you have to file paperwork saying what your intents are. This paperwork is public, all investors in the company will know when you reach 5%. (at 20% of the stock you are considered an insider and you need to file paperwork for every sell or buy. So some such rules that those who have a hope of getting this much stock know, but the rest of us don't care about)
Slashdot Mirror
Its there, so we[1] do, but we don't need it. We have many back roads where you can legally drive 55 for long stretches with no stop lights or other traffic (other than a few tractors at 10 Mph) to get in the way. In most of those areas if you speed is under 70mph the local sheriff (sheriffs are elected) will pass you, while if you go faster they will ignore it unless you are a danger. (I wouldn't try it though - some are strict about speed, and a few target outsiders)
The city needs the interstate in rural areas to get cargo between cities. Trains do a lot of this (and should do more), but trucks have there place in city to city runs. The interstate was built for military and industrial needs.
Actually we use the interstate when it goes where it needs to go. Most states have one north-south interstate, and one east-west one. The interstates go big city to big city. (even out here, though our big cities count as a small town by standards of the coasts) That leaves a lot of people who rarely take the freeway because it doesn't go anywhere close to where they travel normally.
[1]Actually I live in the city, so by we I mean those who live in rural areas. I identify with them, and long to be there, but the jobs I like to do are in the city so I'm forced into the city.
If you had Read The Fine Article. You would have known that the WINE people invited the SAMBA people to their conference (and the two groups worked to plan their conferences one week apart in nearby locations) because there are things both projects need to do, so they may as well do them in compatible ways.
Both products need to emulate case insensitive names on a case sensitive filesystem. Both projects need to support Windows style file locks, which do not have a good Unix equivalent. They may as well do these the same, otherwise it will confuse everyone. (In the latter case it can result in corrupt files if they don't work together!)
More than one person has been killed after submitting to attackers. In one well known case those attackers crashed the airplanes into some buildings and killed more several thousand others who had no opportunity to resist.
Having a gun or not has no bearing on your needing to use deadly force to save someone's life (perhaps your own). However if you don't have the gun, nor proper training in martial arts, it is the innocent that dies.
If someone has a couple ten million to toss around I will happily design[1] them a custom 486DX/33 with a pci express slot so they can install this graphics card.
Finding an app that can use the power of the card, with that CPU is left as an exercise to the buyer.
[1]That is I will start a new company to design custom motherboards to your specs. I will even manufacture them in any quanity you like, so you can sell them to other fools who want the same silly system.
There are 12 new moons to name. For $10000 I will register the name of your moon in a book with the US copyright office ($500 for each extra foreign country). You will also get a chart of the night sky, and instructions on how to find saturn, and your moon[1]. But wait, there is more, I will also send you a customized version of kstars with your moon name and orbit clearly marked, so you can keep track of your moon at anytime.
Better hurry, there are only 12 moons to name, once they are gone they are gone.
Don't be fooled my cheap name a star offers. There are millions of stars to name, but Saturn only has unnamed 12 moons - once they are named I will never make an offer to name them again.
[1]Telescope powerful enough to view your moon is available for an extra charge.
No, but then as a programmer I don't need you to pay $50 to make money on my version of MineSweeper. It is a small game that I can write in a week or less. (Assuming I already knew the APIs, I don't normally work with GUIs so it would take me a little longer) I can sell it for $5, which people are more likely to pay. Or I can sell it with a bunch of other games of similar length for $40.
Note that I'm using MineSweeper as a generic. There is too much competition, in the MineSweeper world. (Most free and high quality) However there are other games of that type that I can write. Ideally I'd be creative enough to make something original.
Add it up across everything. That rail between SF and LA doesn't get to you Denver any faster. While the airport expansion serves not only the SF-LA planes, but also SF to Denver, at no extra cost. Consider the cost of putting high speed rail city to city when you have several cities. Even if you could build LA-Denver and SF-Denver rail for $20 billion (with the mountains in the way? I don't think so), expanding all 3 airports comes in cheaper.
IF you only run 1 train an hour, those rails spend most of their time empty. A runway with one plane per hour doing the LA-SF run spends the rest of the hour dealing with things like SF-NY, SF-MSP, SF-London... (add in any other city around the work you want to get to). Don't forget that you need the runway anyway, because a train from SF to New Zealand is not a possibility, so it would be correct to say you can install a high speed rail for $18 billion, or do nothing. (because you need the airport anyway, so those costs are sunk)
Just like an airport people need to go to the train station. The train can make a few stops along the way, but that slows the route down, which can make the airport (including arrive 1 hour early) faster even if you have to go by the train station.
Now LA and SF are fairly close to gether, and one presumes that many people do want to get between the two cities. It might make perfect sense to install this particular route with high speed rail. I have not done the studies, so I don't know. They are close enough that enough people might ride it to make it worth the cost. (remember to factor in load taken from the airport and roads)
Transportation is complex. Most forms of transit makes sense for something. Trains are not the solution to all problems. They have many downsides, and they are not cheap.
Most news papers have word restrictions for letters to the editor. The shorter the letter (while still making a point) the better your chance of getting in. If you write a long letter it has to be excellent, while two sentences just needs to be good.
So while I agree I wanted to see more, I suspect that more would not have been published. He is a professor, so I would have expected that he would be given some extra room because of this position. (That might have been what got this published at all in fact) Still he needs be limit his message as much as he can while still making a point, and that leaves no room for long arguments.
Simple really. I know many drivers who are more than 10 years since their last accident. Many truckers have 3 million miles since their last accident. That includes things they could do nothing about. I don't have statistics, but I'm comfortable enough with that sample to conclude that 4 accidents, he is outside the standard deviation of good drivers. (despite the claim that he is a good driver)
Compare the cost of constructing an airport to the cost of train tracks that go directly to each to the cities that airport serves. Each plane that leaves that billion dollar airport can go to a different destination, and (with some restrictions) take a very direct route. An airplane from Fargo ND to Maddison WI will not go through Minneapolis, while a train is sucked into the big city in between (with good reason, but if your goal isn't the big city in between it is a waste).
Airports are cheap compared to compition, and once you build them it costs little extra to add more flights (until capacity)
There are accidents where you can do nothing to prevent them. However with 4 that is not the case. Start following the parent's advice. Big following distances. (In fact with your record/luck you should be double the recommended distance, live with cars cutting in front of you it isn't as bad as everyone makes it out to be) Signal your turns.
Oh, and while going the speed limit causes problems, it is clear the law wants you do cause them, so play their game: drive exactly the speed limit. Let the other cars honk. Stay in the right lane and watch them drive by. Relax.
There are accidents that you cannot prevent. There are drivers who have gone 3 million miles since their last accident.
P.S. cut the arrogance. Humans are not designed to drive. You are not a good driver because your brain, just like everyone Else's was not designed for driving. You can get by, and if you make allowances for your inabilities can even be safe, but you will never be good.
This is a statement of my morals. It generally is true of society in the US (though there are large exceptions).
Obviously you have to make your own judgments. Since TV in general has made a choice that conflicts with my choice, I choose in turn to not own one.
Yes 3.5gpf toilets suck. Not as much as the 1.6, but they still suck. However you need to have used a 7gpf (not 5) toilet for a major dump to realize just how much that extra water helps.
Mind there is a good reason for 1.6gpf toilets in cities and dry areas where water is a problem. However I have my own septic system at home, and which to function properly requires about 4gpf of water. So I have to wash my hands for an extra long time to keep everything in balance. [1] I also live in an area where water is not scarce, so I don't need to worry about conservation like many areas do.
[1]The water from my laundry and showers balances things out long term. However I often shower at the gym, and I can go weeks before I have to do laundry (when I suddenly do several loads in a week)
Even in the summer my basement bedroom needs heat. The upstairs needs cooling, while the basement needs heat. Unfortunately I have not found a useful way to get the heat to move down. I can use the AC to cool air and pump it back upstairs, but it turns out to be harder than you would think to pump heat downstairs. (This is in part because of the way my ductwork is, all the returns upstairs, and the basement vents are in the ceiling)
Don't forget that until reciently few people cared about ppc compared to x86 optimization. Now that Apple is using gcc all over, and making money, they care enough to make ppc optimization good. I suspect there was a lot of "low hanging fruit" that apple could use right away.
There is a configure check in KDE, if your compiler is gcc 4.0 it will fail in the ./configure step. This bug is acknowledged by the gcc developers, who are working on it. (They have some test fixes, but are not confident in them yet)
I'm sure kde will love 4.0.1 if the bugs are fixed, and the compile speed is still as fast, but 4.0 is a no-go.
Many tasks involve computation on data gathered. I cannot start my program 10 minutes earlier because the data has not arrived yet.
These games are not about converting you to my religion, they are about giving me a passtime that doesn't violate all the principals of my religion.
My religion tells everyone not to watch (or own) a TV. There is nothing evil about a electron gun in a vacuum tube exciting a few phosphors (substitute your technology of choice). What is evil is what it is used for. Nothing is wrong with using a TV so you can take college classes from someone on a different continent. There is something wrong when you use TV to show sex, violence, and so on. (I picked two extremes, you have to decide where the dividing line is between them - if you even agree sex and violence is evil).
Video games are not evil of themselves. They can teach puzzle solving skills. A game of pac-man once a week has no value, but it isn't evil. (addiction to pac-man is evil, but that isn't the fault of the game itself) However most of the popular games go far beyond the line.
I'm not sure I agree that christian games are the solution to the problem. However the problem being solved isn't a reach out to non-Christians, it is a lack of things Christians can do.
True, but when you look at the actual numbers, underground lines come out worse than overhead for number of outages.
There is an effort by cities to get power lines moved underground anyway because they are "ugly". The power companies know that overhead wires don't break that often, and they are much easier and faster to fix.
If you want to travel to out of the way places like Minot North Dakota you are correct, the train is better - if it happens to go through that town. (last I check amtrack still stops in Minot) For some commuters I agree, though Northwest used to guarantee you would be on a plane flying for Chicago within an hour of arriving at the airport [1]), which is a counter example to that.
However most people travel from city to city, and they don't do it often. Airplanes go from city to city. So what that you have to plan ahead - my boss won't let me take this week off anymore so I have to plan ahead[2].
This is the US we are talking about. There are not that many cities that a high speed train could reach that an airplane isn't significantly faster. 150 mph for train is high speed, that is barely above stall speed for a big plane. On a 450 mile trip the airplace is there in 1 hour, the train in 3. Considering all the hassle that is even. A 3 hour plane trip is short, a train would take far too long. Cities are far enough apart in the US that flying is better.
Airplanes also do not require expensive track. For small towns it is cheap to build a small airport. (Most small airports cannot handle even a small jet, but it would be cheap to do the upgrade compared to track) People who want a quick way into/out of town can fly. Building any track is excessively expensive, unless you have enough traffic that needs to get through that area to justify it you can't build it to a small town. Now once the track is built it is easy to justify anything that brings it closer to capacity, and then the train is cheap.
[1]This was before 9/11, I don't think they can do that anymore. Though then they had flights leaving every 15 minutes, just step up to the counter and buy a ticket. The price was no better if you booked in advance.
[2]I'm writing this Sunday night, referring to Monday through Friday of the same week. I could take Tuesday off with one day notice, but for a week he wants more notice. I can't blame him.
Minneapolis and St. Paul are next to each other. Just a few miles between their downtowns. (I think they share a border, though I'm not sure) High speed rail doesn't make sense because there isn't space to accelerate, and people want to get on and off all over the line. Low speed is just as good.
We are considering a low speed light rail line between the two.
Its the old population density issue.
Trains work great for medium distances, which describes all of Japan, and any single country in Europe. They do poorly for long distances because a standard airplane goes twice as fast (at worst case), and has no problem with terrin that is hard to get a train through.
When you go between two cities in a single country trains are nice. (often trivially slower than a plane after you factor in all the hastles of flying) This describes Europe, cities are close enough that flying isn't enough faster.
In the US cities are more spread out, except on the coasts. There is a high speed train between NY and Boston. Law prevents it from reaching high speed, but it is high speed otherwise. Well if the law wasn't in the way anyway, IIRC they need a few more upgrades to reach high speeds, but who would pay for that if you won't be able to reach those speed anyway.
I don't know what California doesn't have a high speed train. It would make sense, they have the population to support it. (though perhaps not enough people are going in one direction? I don't know)
For me there is no point in a high speed train. I live in Minneapolis, there is no place for it to go. In the metro area stops would be too frequent, and any other city is far enough away that you fly. Though that may not be true, there is a special case that might make sense. The airport is considering a train to some tiny airport outstate that can handle more planes than they can.
When you tell someone you want to put your sensitive stuff in their shredder sell it as a perk for them. Anyone who goes after there sensitive information is unlikely to care about your. Time and effort will be wasted reconstructing your documents that are not wanted.
That's why I shred all my junk mail, not just that which is sensitive.
Don't worry about detecting the camera, just destroy its ability to work.
Start with newspapers (or better yet create some papers that look real, but really have fake data you WANT them to read) and a few logs.
Start your fire normally.
Once the logs are burning use a fan/bellows to crank up the heat.
Do this for some time, long enough to melt any cameras directly in the chimney.
Suddenly close the doors and damper. The heat of the former fire will keep smoke for a long time, this will build up soot in the chimney.
After some time re-build the fire, but just a small one.
Stir the shredded versions of your documents.
Slowly put the confetti in the fire.
Let the fire go out and everything cool. Keep watching.
Stir the ashes.
The small fire is important. A large fire will create enough of a draft to drive some of the paper up the chimney and out.
Well you start small. There are rules though. Once you own some amount of a company (IIRC 5%) you have to file paperwork saying what your intents are. This paperwork is public, all investors in the company will know when you reach 5%. (at 20% of the stock you are considered an insider and you need to file paperwork for every sell or buy. So some such rules that those who have a hope of getting this much stock know, but the rest of us don't care about)