selected a five-year disk array lifetime and assumed disk failures were independent events distributed according to a Poisson law with a mean time to failure (MTTF) of 100,000 hours.
100,000 hours = 273 years. Does anyone believe that?
I remember seeing that suicide on the news.
The stats are scary. 2/3 of all people with a mental illness never seek help. Of those who do, quite often they get it because they're in a crisis situation and a danger to themselves (yes, it's a euphemism for suicide because nobody wants to say "that" word).
The pressure to just "get over it" or "man up" or "its all in your head" or "don't be such a weakling" is internalized even by those who need help; combining that with the stigma and just not knowing where to turn to for help (because nobody talks about it), we end up trying to "handle it one day at a time." Until one day we find out the hard way that this is the day we can't handlie it any more.
The stigma has to go. We're making headway up here, because of the lead-up to events like Lets Talk. Maybe companies in the US are afraid of being "tainted" by taking part in such initiatives.
One thing that's nice abut this fund raiser is that all the funds raised yesterday came from the sponsors. All we had to do was join in the discussion by sharing links to the videos and stories. It raised more than $5 million, all from the sponsors donations.
You haven't lived in/around DC. Driving a few miles can be quite the chore. 8 miles can easily mean 1-2 hours.
Yes I have spent plenty of time in and around DC. No I don't give a shit if the traffic is bad sometimes. I particularly don't give a shit if it interferes with your ability to legally fly a drone regardless of purpose. If it is that important to you then figure out how to do it in unrestricted airspace.
There's no 'need' to consume alcohol, play team sport, have foods with added sugar, own a car, or have the internet either. It's idiotic to look at laws restricting things on the basis that there is no 'need' for the thing they restrict.
It's not at all idiotic to look at need versus wants when public safety concerns are involved. We do it all the time. Every single example you cite (particularly alcohol) has laws relating to balancing public needs versus private wants. Should we permit you to drive drunk just because you want to? You certainly have no need to do so. You might need to own a car but that doesn't mean your needs and wants are free of restrictions. You don't need to own a car without a muffler and so we restrict your ability to own/operate one on public roads. If you want to live in a civilized society you constantly have regulate genuine needs versus wants. You might need a car but you don't need one that is demonstrably unsafe to those around you.
We restricted the airspace in various places for very good and practical reasons. If you think a specific bit of airspace should be unrestricted then by all means petition your government to un-restrict it. However you apparently have no argument for why we should permit drone in restricted airspace beyond mere desire which is not sufficient.
I didn't know that. It actually bothers me that they would intentionally make their product un-flyable in areas to 'prevent' me from breaking the law. Is it a law that they have to do it?
Why should it bother you? What is it preventing you from doing that you would otherwise do? You have no actual need to fly a drone near the white house or in other restricted airspace. Given the safety concerns involved what you want (versus need) to do is pretty much irrelevant unless you can articulate a coherent reason for what you hope to accomplish. And for the record, no we should not by default trust you or anyone else to necessarily make good choices in this matter. I'd certainly be willing to listen to good arguments in favor of flying in controlled airspace but I doubt there are any.
I'm looking at car manufacturers: how would people feel if they governed their cars to the posted speed limits on the roads?
Probably annoyed but for a very different reason. We have nearly 100 years of history of the public being able to control the speeds of their cars but the consequences of that precedent are very different and well understood. Very few people have actually piloted an aircraft, manned or unmanned.
I'm not surprised that a Chinese company took this route: it's par for the course in China to be under the governmental thumb.
Not really so different here. People have this illusion that the government in China is this all pervasive authoritarian entity but in reality it has less control than most westerners realize. Conversely, the US government is more pervasive and intrusive than most people seem to be willing to acknowledge. That's not always a bad thing but it definitely causes problems sometimes.
*Automatic* ATM Machines.
All ATMs are automatic. The letters literally stand for Automated Teller Machine. So you just said Automatic Automated Teller Machine Machines which is pretty dumb if you give it a moment's thought.
It may seem odd that a private club has effectively been given authority to make law, but it has worked quite well for 60 years or whatever.
It's nothing unusual at all. To give another example Congress granted the SEC delegates authority over accounting standards to the Financial Accounting Standards Board which is not a governmental agency but rather is an association of professionals tasked with setting accounting standards for public companies. And they do a very good job of this task. (I'm a certified accountant so yes I would actually know) If they failed in it the SEC could take the responsibility away at any time and by using this group the public gets better results for less money.
This is analogous to the other AMA, where doctors make rules for themselves and any doctor violating these generally accepted standards is likely to lose any court case.
The AMA is a bad example because they are fundamentally a lobbying group for physicians. They do not have any formal rule making authority that I am aware of delegated to them by the government.
The next person to mention spaghetti stacks to me is going to have his head knocked off. -- Bill Conrad
