I used to take the train occasionally, and I loved it. But I won't be doing that any more. The last time I took a train I arrived at Rocky Mount, NC station at 11am for a noon train to DC. Total trip time should be 5 hours by train, then one hour by Metro to my home in MD; roughly equivalent to driving. We arrived in DC at 3am, 2 hours after the Metro system shut down. To make things worse they sent my bags BACK to Rocky Mount. So I had to crash on a friend's floor and then go to work in the previous day's clothes. Then I had to go back to the station to retrieve my bags.

84 hours cross country might as well be 84 days. Amtrak's estimates mean absolutely nothing, and if something goes wrong you are just screwed.

That's correct. If you swipe a candy bar from the convenience store you can get a year in jail, but sabotaging thousands of televisions is a civil matter. If you're going to steal from people at scale it's always better to incorporate first.

I never thought of it as the planet of the ants, but I was fascinated by them. I particularly remember one strange behavior. As a child I lived in Southeast Asia. I used to climb over a wall in front of our house and it was always covered with ants. Those critters were big and could inflict a nasty bite, so I didn't want to cross paths with them. When I first started climbing that wall I'd put my hand on it slowly and the ants would move out of the way. After a while I'd come running up to that wall and the ants would clear out before I got there. I could never figure out how they seemed to know I was coming.

Interesting that they've left your post up. I got ghosted when I posted something critical. And it's not like I took a real hard swing either. I want Slashdot to succeed but it feels like the site is slowly dying.

Yeah, I can see that getting a few clicks. They probably keep playing it too, hoping to find a hidden trophy.

Yeah, that wasn't meant to be a comprehensive list of all the people you can't shoot.

It might seem obvious that you can't shoot (or threaten to shoot) at children, but that's on the list for a reason. I know of three different cases where people shot or threatened to shoot children for trespassing. One shot a wayward football. One threatened to shoot a kid for walking across his front yard. One posted on Facebook that she'd shoot any kids who pulled a doorbell prank on her. There are way too many unstable people with access to weapons.

I agree on the second part but I've done research on the trespassing rules, and it's very complicated. Here are a few of the things I learned.

1. A no soliciting sign on your door has no legal power. There has to be a clear line a person has to cross before they get to the door.
2. You can't shoot at children who cross into your property, even if they're trespassing.
3. Courts tend to treat back and side yards differently from front yards.
4. In a life threatening emergency your property rights are generally nil.
5. There are a lot of people who can come onto your property even if no trespassing signs are clearly posted.
+-- A. The postman can walk past no soliciting signs to come to your door.
+-- B. Free speech has been interpreted to mean that evangelists and politicians can ignore no soliciting signs.
+-- C. A police officer can knock on your back window in the middle of the night.
+-- D. The electric company can go pretty much anywhere they want.

That anyone can see it is true but that doesn't mean that anyone can copy it, alter it, and republish it as a new work. Even the fair use rules generally require credit to the original author.

Actually no, I'm not going to search Google. If your claims have merit you can provide sources.

I know this is going against the current, but reporting has value and I'm willing to pay for it. I currently subscribe to the Washington Post and if money were plentiful I'd pay to read the New York Times as well. But every once in a while I want to read an article on the Chicago Tribune, or even some tiny newspaper in rural America. There's just no way that I'm going to sign up for dozens of accounts, and I'm definitely not handing over my credit card information. But what if the Washington Post threw in $2 in micropayments each month? When I read an article on the Chicago Tribune, they'd get $0.10, and when a Tribune subscriber reads an article on the Post, they would get $0.10. That would ensure that I never see a paywall, but everyone still gets paid. After all, I don't make a decision about reading each article on the Post. I pay a monthly subscription and expect that, in aggregate, I will get my money's worth.

Nobody would see these trolls if they weren't top-posted, and they aren't even creative these days. Slashdot should have a rule that AC's can't post until there's been a minimum number of comments on an article.

That helicopter was just a theory proposed by some guy in Virginia. The news story I saw said that the guy lines were cut, the tower was pushed over, and somehow it was dismantled and removed. My guess is that they cut it up into pieces and rolled it out on a semi. They may not have even thought about what happens now.

It's not just Alabama. It's basically the same mess that happened in urban areas in the 80's and 90's, but now it's happening in small towns and rural communities. Opioids snared a lot of people who'd lived clean lives for decades, and heroin users will do anything for a fix.

Yup. I took a look at the place on Google street view. The antenna was tucked in down a gravel road through the woods behind a chicken processing plant. Chain link fence all around the factory. Cinder block and steel buildings with dozens of long haul trucks parked in the lots. Has a guard house too, but nobody sitting in the booth. You just know that Bubba and his kin folk have all the equipment you'd need to take down that tower piece by piece. They probably just borrowed what they needed from the factory. Likely did it in broad daylight and nobody paid any attention. Any noise from the equipment would have been drowned out by the factory.

RP9F+6H Jasper, Alabama