At least for the crosswalk buttons and elevator close door buttons.

For crosswalks, it doesn't take long to notice the lack of effect when the only time the light changes is when a car eventually comes up on the low-traffic cross street. I have had to cross against a red light so often, I don't even bother pushing the button anymore. Of course, I just figured they were consistently broken just about everywhere and that nobody ever bothered repairing them. I had not considered that they were intentionally disabled.

For elevators, I can't remember a time when the close door button ever did anything. I always figured it was there for the firemen when they used their keys to take control of the elevator.

As for office thermostats, I've never messed with them, so I've never had the opportunity to notice that they don't work either; now I'll have to check that out at my office. With my luck, it probably will work, and we'll all fry.

"I don't remember exactly what I wrote as I was drunk."

This consequence may be a bit overboard, but maybe this will help you learn that your actions have consequences. Being drunk is no excuse; you still performed the action. Even if you never would have done such a thing while sober, unless someone held you down and shoved a hose down your throat, you willingly chose to get drunk. Now you get to live with the result.

If only we could be so strict about people driving while drunk or on other drugs, instead of letting them off with a slap on the wrist and a small fine every time until they kill someone. But this kid who sent a threatening email gets banned from the US for life. The consequence doesn't seem proportional to the crime.

My first thought was couldn't this be more of a tidal effect than due to shrinking? After all, look at what the orbiting mass of the moon does to our oceans. Wouldn't the mass of the earth have a similar effect on the moon? Even if it is tide-locked so the same face always faces the earth, surely there's some slight wobble to that that would cause stress.

While I would love to have an AM/FM radio built into my phone, I don't agree that the government should be mandating that. It does really bug me that my phone (an HTC Hero with Sprint) offers multiple "radio" channels through the phone, at least until the mobile network connection shuts down, while still indicating it is connected, after about 30 minutes, but I can't get any local stations.

While they're mandating FM radio, they might as well get AM in there, too. And while they're at it, how about forcing manufacturers to throw in a digital TV tuner as well, so I can watch broadcast digital TV? Of course, just because they force the manufacturers to add all this in, that doesn't mean the phone companies won't disable it. Every phone I have ever had has had manufacturer-advertised features disabled by Sprint while sometimes Sprint offers that feature for an extra price (mostly, a serial or USB connection to backup the data on my phone). Now that I have a "smart" phone, what I really need most is a longer-lasting battery.

Anyway, it should be competition and customer demand that drives them to add features like this, not government mandates driven by the music industry.

I've always wondered about the absence of E in the grading scale. It always felt awkward skipping from D to F. I guess now future students will have to wonder about the absence of both D and E.

I've always wondered what the point of D was, anyway. It seemed to mean you didn't fail, but you didn't pass, either. What is the effective difference between D and F?

I have yet to get a GPS. But even with a map that I study before getting in the car, I often have trouble with places I've never been before. Hasn't anyone in city street planning ever figured out that a street sign on only one corner of an intersection of two 5-lane roads is very difficult to find, much less read, before entering the intersection? I've learned to just keep right on going and turn around when safe, but I've seen a lot of people make sudden stops and sudden lane changes when they finally catch sight of the sign and realize that it was the street they were looking for, often blocking straight-through traffic while waiting for a gap to open up in the left-turn lane. I figure I'm dangerous enough driving slow trying to find the sign; why increase the danger by trying to turn too late once I find it?

Like you said, those kinds of situations are not taught in driver's education. They should be!

I don't like the idea of having my full real name out there, but I can think of ways to maintain accountability and reduce trolls without it. Instead of using just the character and server name, also include the poster's account name. Of course, now that Blizzard has made your email address into your account name (another stupid idea IMHO), that isn't such a good idea. So, let people create a unique userid for their account and NOT allow them to change it afterward (or maybe allow one change a year?) and include that userid in the posting.

Then allow people to ignore (to not see posts from) the userid and have that ignore the account even if the userid changes in the future. Maybe even if a certain small number of people put the userid on ignore then prohibit that account from posting for a day, with a larger number ban them for a couple days, and so on with increasing ban periods as the ignore list grows larger. That should put a good sting into the worst trolls. Maybe even have a game ban if they persist enough.

The whole problem is lack of consequences for their actions. Anonymity makes it easier to avoid consequences, but a good forum design would go a long way toward providing consequences without having to reveal real names. While having your real name displayed adds some accountability, it does not provide any immediate consequences, only vague potential future problems. Having immediate consequences for their actions will go further to discourage the worst trolls than anything else will.

I use my real name here on Slashdot because I stand behind what I say; I feel no need to hide from it. This is who I am. I always post on the same character on the WoW forums, again because I stand behind what I say within the virtual world of the game. However, my game-related activities have no bearing on my non-game life, so I do not put my real name on those posts.

I do occasionally read and post while at work. I need breaks, too, even though I don't go out and smoke during my breaks. But there is no need to connect my posting times with my work schedule and have to explain that I did that during a break instead of smoking.

How does this account for rogue or malicious clocks present on the network? It sounds like it would be pretty easy to introduce significant error into the system.

I think I'll keep using one system connecting to the atomic clock and all the rest connecting to that one to keep their time accurate.

Actually, no you can't. The server location has no correlation with where the player lives. I've been playing practically since the original release, and I only recently discovered there is a list of wowwiki of servers by location along with which timezone each server is set to. The average player has no clue what time zone a server is set to until they create their first character there and no idea ever where a server is physically located. I have yet to have a character on a server that is set to my own time zone. I really don't even care what time zone the server is set to as long as people refer to "server time" when making plans. I know the delta between server time and my time and can adjust accordingly.

All you can determine is what region the physical server is in, not the player.

Looking at posting times would be a better indicator. However, if I'm posting between 8am and 10pm PST, am I an early riser on the east coast or a 'normal' riser on the west coast?

Cable originally started with "no ads" as the big selling point. After only a few years, the "no ads" was only on the "premium channels" for which you paid even more, while regular cable got more and more ads as the number of different channels kept increasing.

At least Hulu is just starting off admitting they need the ads along with the subscription fee. This is probably to cover costs of getting permission to provide the shows and also is probably just enough to cover network bandwidth of the high-volume movie watchers.

Just think what would have happened if it had been "plans for a nuke or plans for a sub or for a stealth fighter". The guy probably would have disappeared and we probably never would have heard about it even.

Personally, I'd rather have the legal problems. But then, I hopefully wouldn't be stupid enough to get to that point.

For the ticket prices you found, you probably had to schedule the return trip at the same time. Usually, the bereavement fare allows an open-ended return, meaning you have already paid for it but do not have to schedule it yet, so you have time to get affairs in order when you don't know in advance how long that will take. On the other hand, if you know you don't have to help get affairs in order and know when you will be returning, the bereavement fare is usually not the best deal.

I think it was a short story in Analog or Asimov science fiction magazines. Someone got tired of the weather forecast being right only about half of the time and created a nation-wide betting pool for people to bet on the weather for the next few days for their area. The theory was that most people would bet on what they thought would actually occur instead of trying for long odds. In the story the forecasters eventually started subscribing to the pool because its predictions were accurate more often than theirs.

I always wanted to try this to see if it really would work. I guess someone has finally done so, just not yet with weather.

Tell that to the person it glitched on...

and you have to wonder how many other lesser glitches occur that never get heard about because the casinos decide to pay off anyway to prevent bad publicity.

They didn't do so well either....

Colorado Woman Celebrates $42 Million Slot Machine Win Until Casino Says Machine Malfunctioned
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/colorado-42-mil-jackpot-winner-jack/story?id=10235836