If there is a veritable 'horde' of deviants, if there are so many of them, could it be that perhaps they should be heard?

You know, being a straight male (arguably young), I somehow do not feel emasculated by these 'perverse individuals'. If you do, perhaps that's *your* problem to deal with.

"Everybody knows" is not as useful as actually having it public and provable.

The guys who hide their ships and then shoot enemies in the back of the nacelles? I've always found that odd.

If I ever go cycling in the US, it'll probably be with friends, but point taken.

In the decade before I was born (the 70's), the Dutch made a concerted effort to increase cycling infrastructure. At the start of that decade, the situation was much like the US still is, today. By the time I got to riding a bike out in traffic, age 4-5, cars were used to bicycles, and there were plenty of bicycle lanes and paths, so direct mingling didn't happen very often.

One thing that helps is that you have to take driving lessons from an accredited school here, no parents teaching children how to drive. You learn practically how to deal with cyclists.

Also, if you're a driver and you hit a cyclist for whatever reason, you are responsible for at least 50% of the damages to the other person, whether material or not. If the other person is below 14 years of age it's 100%. This is regardless of the cause of the accident.

If you're ever going to ride your bike in Europe, and especially the Netherlands, I suggest you strap on a grin and try to follow other peoples' leads. :)

You don't have a codified right-of-way? WTF?

For right-of-way, in the Netherlands, we do not distinguish between the various "vehicle operators". This includes bicycles, mopeds, tractors, 18-wheelers, horses (at least with rider; I'm assuming horses themselves have not read this bit of traffic law), and all must keep to the simple elements.

Traffic from the right has right of way. If two participants are on the same road and one wants to make a left or right turn crossing the other's path, the turning driver has to yield (this actually also applies to pedestrians). If two drivers meet at an intersection and want to turn into the same lane, the guy making a right turn has right of way. Etc.

Obviously, with eye contact and other means of communication (positioning, lights, etc) you could yield where you don't have to, for more convenience. And yes, more cyclists should use hand signals. I tend to use them when I have to cross other traffic or slow down for a turn.

In the US, where there is virtually no cycling infrastructure and bikes have to share the road with cars. Cyclists have to use the highways(!!) to get to places, which is utterly ridiculous. The weaving is pretty much necessary for safe travel. Both cyclists and drivers need to get used to doing it safely though.

It's pretty simple: As a cyclist on a general road, make yourself as little nuisance as possible, so hug the right side of the road. If you need to overtake someone, see a pothole or need to take a left turn, look back, and if it's fairly clear, claim your place closer to the middle of the lane. Vacate this place as soon as convenient. As a driver sharing the road with cyclists, if you see a cyclist looking back and edging out into your lane, stop throttling up, assume he has a reason (and has seen you), and hang back until you can safely pass.

Voila, you're welcome.

Also, as for obeying rules: just like pedestrians tend to ignore red lights if the way is clear and traffic is light, because they have great overview and can accelerate quickly, cyclists have similar overview and acceleration capability. Also, like peds, cyclists are unlikely to injure someone if they break the rules, other than themselves. Right-of-way is the only absolute ruleset I can think of that you shouldn't break (except via communication with the other participant, obviously).

Disclaimer: I'm from Holland.

What is your problem? He's right.

Malala is a posterchild for peace. Not calling for increased war against the Taliban, but instead resistance to their ideas and ideals. She greatly impressed me, and awarding her the price would be a way to peacefully add a loud voice against the Taliban. The million dollars into her fund would probably also not go amiss.

And Snowden exposed Obama and the US government as running a network to spy on their citizens that the KGB and Stasi could have only dreamt of. They basically took the First Amendment away. What Snowden did was necessary and good.

Do YOU realize what this means? Apparently there are biologists at 4 km altitude!

<quote>
<p>You are assuming that the government had nothing to do with this failure. Software development by committee never ends well.</p>
</quote>

Oh, I'm assuming that the contractor will throw his hands up and say that exact thing. But you know that going in. And I believe it to be exploited by the huge companies that get to make bids on contracts like this.

Let's face it, once you've got the contract, you're not going to get booted out quickly. As long as you have some sort of manager saying "But I want a pony!", you write that down, add it in the requirements with manager's name, and start work on a pony. If you're building a system that has nothing to do with ponies, it might take quite a while to shoehorn it in, and it will cost a lot. But you have some manager's approval, so you do it, because it means income.

What you or I or any smaller company that's focused on delivering quality systems would do is first limit the scope, get a product owner on the government side, and make that one person fully and totally responsible for scope. And if he tries to shoehorn in a pony, you'd say "Well, that means this core functionality you wanted has to go, or we'll go over budget".

Big companies don't care about budgets, as government will pay up. Interestingly, the increased income that's caused by being willfully incompetent allows them to compete in the next bid too.

You can pay all of those out of the OTHER 8 billion dollars he wasn't taking into account to calculate the number of developers you could hire.

Note that you can't put 6+k people on a project and have it go anywhere. A project like this would have at most a few hundred people working on the various components. Wages, including support personnel like managers, are therefore an absolutely insignificant part of this. Hardware, dito. Utilities, dito. If you're spending more than five-ten million per year on this, you're doing something ridiculous and/or illegal.

Not actually producing something after 12 years, that's just the icing on the cake.

IMO: Taking that much money from government should be considered a very literal hanging offense.

Because you apparently have trouble with reading comprehension: He was remarking on the fact that the story makes two contradictory points. Both of these would indicate that Apple has made a huge mistake, but at least one of these can't actually be true.

It's on Google's Youtube, he mentions Iran, he mentions the NSA. If it didn't trip flags, their system isn't working.

Actually what you need (I am assuming you're American. Excuse me if you're from the Netherlands or Denmark) is decent cycling infrastructure. For absolutely most of the traffic I've encountered since I started riding a bike in traffic (age 3-4, and I'm now 34), I'm not among cars, which keeps me a lot safer than a helmet ever would have. We have dedicated cycle paths (in a vast, country-wide network, mostly apart from roads) and in most city areas cycle lanes. Very safe.

Also, you need more cyclists. Because you can get everywhere in relative safety while cycling, more people cycle. More people cycling means cars have much greater awareness of cyclists. Because we (Dutch) have more liability for drivers in car/bike accidents, cars are more considerate (if a driver hits a cyclist < 14 years old, he's 100% liable for the cyclists damages, regardless of the cause of the accident. If the cyclist is > 14 years old he's at least 50% liable).

Racing-cyclists are typically assholes who ignore traffic lights and overtake people on bike paths with a 20mph speed difference, even here. The problem is, those are mostly the only ones you get there, because grandma or little Timmy won't get on a bike in traffic, because it's too dangerous. Here, *everyone* bikes. Sure, traffic rules are more like guidelines for cyclists; we have better overview than in a car, and taking a right turn through a red light isn't hazardous as long as you don't have to jump in front of a car to do so.

Helmets? Bah. Maybe strongly recommended for kids, but for most everyday traffic they're ridiculously unnecessary.

Given that you're more likely to meet a mate while traveling than you are while telecommuting, I doubt any genetic predisposition for non-live interaction will be selected for.

Grains are easy sources of carbohydrates (good if you're not a sedentary society, and food is scarce). Antioxidants are overhyped, and fats aren't just fuel and are necessary, it's true.

But vegetables being unhealthy? I assume you're with the paleo crowd, who eat too much meat. If you look at extant hunter/gatherer societies, the closer you get to the tropics (or at least, regions with lots of greenery), the more those people eat vegetables. The people who live the longest in the world live on pasta/rice, vegetables, fish and only some meat. Vegetables are big sources of micronutrients, and meat is a great supplement.

Please point me in the direction of representative research that says otherwise.