That's a good explanation.

The other problem with rotary engines is that they're rare and therefore a lot of mechanics don't know how to work on them. In some areas, you're pretty much limited to going to the dealership for service, which is usually a lot more expensive than an independent. So in a nutshell, they might make more power in a smaller space, but they cost more both in mileage and maintenance.

Their big advantage (at least, the big advantage I perceived back in the 80's when I was drooling at the RX-7) is that because the engine can be smaller, the whole car can be lower, because you don't have to have the hood as high as you would to cover an equivalent-power piston engine. That advantage has been negated by all the pedestrian safety laws which require the front end of a car to be high enough that if you hit someone, they won't cartwheel into the windshield. Since the hood has to be that high anyway, you don't get any stylistic advantage from a more compact engine.

Maybe. I know I was getting them about once every couple of weeks until I checked the "I don't want to moderate" box (because I find moderating a forum that encourages anarchical moderation to be a waste of time)

I'm not so concerned about the comments themselves - every form of communication has the inane formula-comments designed to make someone look worthy of whatever happens to be esteemed by that group.

I'm more annoyed that people who do that then get mod points and mod thoughtful, good posts to -1 because they disagree with the post. That's not the purpose of down-modding. There needs to at least be some way to filter out the idiots who make a habit of attacking posts that do not deserve to be attacked.

Yes, but we still have the problem that anyone and everyone can moderate as long as they manage to get enough karma. As has already been discussed, it's pretty formulaic if you want to get modded up. Find the right discussion, and plug in the right "thoughts" and you'll be +5 in no time. So with enough formulaic regurgitation posts under your belt, you start getting mod points, and then it's really a matter of luck whether or not you're worthy of them.

It is possible to have a conventional moderation system in which moderators are picked by the admins for their contributions to the community, and then given guidelines that they are expected to follow, lest they lose their moderator powers. The key is in writing good guidelines and then sticking to them.

Slashdot's system is too anarchical to be reliable. I've been modded down -flamebait for such infractions as saying the Italian justice system has problems. Well, it does have problems. And who am I flamebaiting? Italy? As I said in the survey (and my sigline) "Flamebait" and "Troll" are Slashdotisms for "I don't agree with you," and that was not their intended use.

I don't think so. As you said, the phone should not have been searched. DWI/driving on suspended are not crimes for which you are likely to gather evidence from a cell phone. All the evidence you need is gathered from the DMV and the breath test. So as you said, his phone should not have been searched.

Now that we've established that the courts are fine with searching phones that should not be searched, and that indeed phones are apparently not subject to the requirement that officers obtain a warrant prior to searching a phone, it's really not a stretch at all to conclude that any time a cop pulls you over, he might decide to riffle through your phone. After all, he doesn't need a warrant. The distinction between a custodial arrest and a detention arrest is very small - in fact the only distinction is that in the former you are locked into confinement (cop car / jail cell) and in the latter you are not. Any encounter with a cop where you are not free to leave - such as a traffic stop - is an arrest, and so any search on a traffic stop is also incidental to an arrest.

That's great, but as I said above, this particular court decision shows that the court either is not terribly concerned about precedent, the law, and the Constitution, or that the court does not comprehend the notion that your cell phone and by extension the data on it is your private property. In other words, legal opinions, including correct ones, don't mean squat as far as this court is concerned.

Remember that we are not talking about a reasonable search-on-legitimate-suspicion-of-a-crime here. We're talking about getting stopped for minor traffic infractions and as a result being compelled to turn everything on your phone over to the police for scrutiny. It's rather like being forced to submit to a search of your house because you were caught jaywalking.

Additionally, you would have a hard time convincing the court that you did not know the password to a device that you use multiple times a day, and therefore it could be argued (and again, especially with this particular "Constitution? What Constitution?" court, likely successfully argued) that as it is already common knowledge that you know the password to the device you use multiple times a day, turning over the password is not an admission of that anything, any more than showing up for an interrogation is an admission of your hair color.

And so has warrantless searching of personal property. My point is that the Cali. court doesn't seem to give much of a damn about what is and is not sacrosanct.

Of course with the Legislature passing the mobile phone privacy law, this discussion is all academic, but I don't think so. The Fifth lets you refuse to *testify* against yourself. It does not say anything about letting you refuse to give the government the key to a locked box that they want to legally search (which would be the 18th century analogue to a password-protected phone). Especially in light of the court finding (wrongly, IMO) that phones don't count as far as illegal search and seizure goes, it's highly unlikely that they would find that the 5th means anything at all, much less that it means you can withhold the key.

That's a good point, though where I live hardly anyone pays cash anymore. You get a discount if you buy the pass ahead of time.

And you should expect privacy on a public bus that's driving down a public street in public because... ?

where I live, they record on the bus, and are reviewed if a fight breaks out or some other crime happens. I'm actually OK with cameras on buses - here in my city, for a long time buses had a bad reputation as a good place to go if you wanted to get mugged. Since the cameras went in, more people feel safe taking the bus, and moving people toward mass transit is good for everyone.

They can already track your movement on the bus (they know who bought what bus pass, and they know what bus it was used on and when, which means they can figure out where you started and where you got off). Buses have no reasonable expectation of privacy, and the cameras don't auto-generate tickets for anything. OK by me.

The masses do not check their oil level, but that's not a good reason to get rid of the dipstick. (Are you listening BMW? -shakes tiny fist- )

Are you by any chance from the US Southwest?

I grew up in NM and spell it that way too, but the other places I've lived don't.

That may be true right now, but I doubt they'll abandon the enthusiast if the volume guys start reselling iPads instead of building boxes. One of the nice things about being an online retailer is that you don't have to stock the low-volume-sales stuff. Just have it drop shipped from the manufacturer.

They're already spreading their sales base even further - selling crap like musical instruments and thermostats. I don't see them abandoning the enthusiasts just because we aren't jumping on the tablet bandwagon.

No offense, but someone who has no interest in upgrading a desktop (whether he needs to or not) who calls himself a PC enthusiast is like someone who drives a 1992 Dodge Caravan calling himself a hot rod enthusiast.

You might appreciate PC's, but you aren't the type of "enthusiast" that Newegg has ever relied upon for income. That type of enthusiast - the dorks like me who want an SSD not because it is necessary, but because it's a freakin' SSD!, is not going to stop building PC's just because you can play Angry Birds on a tablet now.

Plus, it's not like Egg only sells PC components. They sell damn near everything, from coffee pots to washing machines. I got my last TV through them. I doubt the iPad is going to replace big-screen HDTVs any time soon.

I'd say they're going to do just fine. They've managed to win a very loyal customer base over the years, and they're selling stuff that people buy whether they're into PCs or not.