What can I say? I'm in a snarky mood this morning and my caffeine hasn't kicked-in yet.

Unterminated quotations are by-definition terminated at the end of the paragraph. At least they are regularly and consistently in all of the novels that I read.

Oh, for a moment there I thought you'd use the wrong homophone for prophet...

Wait. You read slashdot and have been here long enough to have a six-digit user-id, but you're not nerdy enough to recognize a device versus an operating system?

And the carriers are desperate to increase fuel economy too, as it's eating them alive. They're equipping their trucks with small generators to power the sleeper compartment without running the main engine, and many truckstops are now equipped with umbilicles that don't require the trucks to idle or generate their own power at all; some just supply HVAC and have a couple of power outlets; others interface directly with the cabs' systems.

Unfortunately, the things that are best for efficiency are also more dangerous. Multiple trailers, more weight, more volume, more cargo in a single trip. The Aussies have it down fairly well with their road trains, but there's so little traffic on the roads they run those on that it's not nearly as dangerous there as it would be here.

We would do well to improve our rail system, and to use tractor trailers for regional and local delivery, last-mile as it were. Rail is a lot more efficient than tractor trailers are.

No, it's a lot easier to control those people and corporations that are within your jurisdiction than it is those that are in the jurisdictions of other countries. Very few ships are registered in the United States, or even in many first-world countries. Unless international treaties are changed to modify maritime law, or unless the US wants to ban gross-polluting ships from its waters and ports, then there's probably not much that's going to happen.

It'd be easier to continue to develop technology to the point that it's not economically practical to operate gross-polluters because of fuel and maintenance costs, rather than to try to force a change.

The soviets have had reactors go critical and melt through the hull. The original nuclear-powered Icebreaker Lenin had this happen at one point. Grigori Medvedev wrote about it in The Truth About Chernobyl. He was very high in the Soviet nuclear programme before he defected to the UK.

If all nuclear vessels were operated to the standards of the US Navy then that'd be one thing, but merchant shipping is lucky to not have a hull covered in rust and bilge pumps running constantly to keep the ship from foundering.

Oh I'm aware. My chair at work is asset-tagged, and items don't get asset-tagged unless they cost more than $500. Same with my desk, though I think it came in at about $530.

I have a lot more surface area with that $530 desk than I'd get with a $2000 height-adjustable desk though. It'd probably cost a hell of a lot more than $2000 for a desk as big as mine to be height adjustable.

Donno. Was that the little hole next to the camera?

There's no room for a camera, that large sliding glass patio door takes up all of the space!

Having had a coworker come down with Deep Vein Thrombosis, it is, but until someone successfully sues an employer as a workmans' comp issue I don't think we'll see employers take it seriously.

Have you priced those kinds of desks?

There were two of them at a furniture store near me. One was well over $1000, the other was well over $2000.

I don't think that most employers are going to spend that kind of money for just a desk. Remember, the inventor of the cubicle originally intended for the furniture to be dynamically changable like that, but cost constraints got it turned into the barely-modular, difficult-to-change setup that we have today.

what do I do to cure the problems caused by walking for 15 minutes?

Stop gossiping.

Won't work. I put tape over the camera.

I don't think that you need it. Your English is quite good, if your written example is any indication.