Well, I don't commute anymore, but my post was in reply to someone who was replying to someone talking about freeways.

FWIW, I consider busy city streets too dangerous to ride a bicycle on, but I notice that many people disagree with me. I've never used a moped, so I don't know about it's drawbacks, but back when I used to bicycle I once ended up in the street in traffic because the gears stripped. Not a pleasant sensation, even if that time I was only hurt by the pavement. Right about then I decided that bicycles are too dangerous in city traffic...and it's gotten a lot worse since then. (This decade my knees wouldn't let me ride a bike anyway, but...)

Mopeds aren't allowed on the freeways. I believe you need to have 110 (some measure) cylinder size before you're allowed on the freeway. You need a motorcycle (though not a large one). And at 2 mph it should be pretty safe, even in bad weather.

Ashby is no freeway. A proper comparison would be 880, but that goes through business districts. Which might be the correct answer, though even businesses don't seem to like to be next to freeway ramps. Still, the Berkeley 4th street businesses seem to be doing well.

No. Public transportation needs a high population density to be cheap. It can be quite effective even at reasonably low population densities, but it becomes considerably more expensive, especially if you want it to be frequent enough to be convenient. In the US being dependent on public transit is often inconvenient because it's never there when you want it, especially at night or in foul weather.

OTOH, a dedicated bus lane on the freeway (or bus and car with 3 or more people) can considerably speed traffic IF there are enough buses. And that means the buses need to collect and distribute the passengers. Which means wide coverage handled fairly efficiently. This is never done because of severe cost cutting, which causes the transit to be so inconvenient that nobody chooses to use it if they can choose something else. Which raises the cost. Whoops!

Another problem is that efficiency designers have designed buses that are hideously uncomfortable. This is done in the name of cost reduction, getting more people onto each bus, and ease in cleaning. The result is that anyone who has any choice rides something else. Curiously, as people have gotten taller, the leg space/seat has been reduced. Any guesses as to why people dislike public transit? A few years ago when my legs were stronger I would often prefer to stand rather than to sit.

Actually, the BIG problem with Silicon Valley is that prime farm land has been occupied by housing and factories. They could just as well have been built on lousy land, as they don't use it anyway.

"Silicon Valley" used to the the primary producer of cherries, apricots, etc. in all of California. Now there if there's an orchard left, I don't know about it. That was NOT the highest use of the land, just the one that returned most taxes.

Toll lanes are not a good solution. Traiins have limited value as person traffic relief. Unless you have a really good transit system, which I've never seen. (I don't have wide experience, so I admit the possibility.)

The real problem is the commute distance. That needs to be drastically reduced, which is quite difficult when both jobs and families are mobile.

For businesses that are small my favorite answer it to redo the zoning code, and give a good tax break to owners who live in the same building as their place of business. Also give a distance related tax break to people who live near their job. Unfortunately, most zoning systems actively work against this answer. And most taxation isn't locally controlled (but property taxes could be adjusted).

Is *that* why Google Maps has gotten worse. The other day I actually went back to MapQuest, and it was better.

Sorry, but I used to work at a transportation planning agency. Building more freeways DOES result in more traffic five years later. (Baring some major problem, economic crisis, etc.) It also results in longer commutes, as when the freeway is new people locate further from jobs, and then don't move again when the freeway clogs up.

OTOH, gas prices have risen significantly since we studied this, so it may no longer be true. But that's not the way to bet. People are still moving to the central valley and commuting to jobs on the coast. A better solution would probably be to improve the rail lines so that freight would make it easy to relocate jobs to where people want to live...but that's not something the Department of Highways can dedice.

Not totally true. If *you* encrypt the data before you store it in the cloud, it's a decent backup mechanism...provided you have a totally separate backup mechanism for your keys. A couple of unlabelled usb keys in two separate places, one of which you remember, and one of which you document in a sealed letter held by your attorney (or some other place that it can be retrieved from in case you forget). You might also have a couple of dummies. ("Well, that used to be the key. I must have forgotten to update it.")

It's not a one-way street.

It was my understanding that while some vendors were still selling it, MS had ceased selling it. I had presumed that the vendors were clearing back stock, but this *was* a presumption. If the computer manufacturers are still making new systems then this would substantiate your point, but I don't know how to check that, and be sure they aren't just clearing inventory.

If he is indeed advocating the position you suggest, then the statement doesn't apply to him. (And I misunderstood him.)

When an antivirus tool is disabled, then the presumptioon of sloppy carelessness is a bit strained. An assertion of "probable malice" isn't unreasonable. (One might, however, wonder on whose part. Was the update site hacked?)

OTOH, is sloppy carelessness is the suspected reason, then one might well doubt the policy of installing patches that are less tested than those of Debian testing. Perhaps it's better to wait a few days and monitor the response.

OTTH, updating a couple of days later after monitoring the results imposes a large burden on the end-user...and the updates would be likely to be skipped.

Perhaps it's best to just accept that MS is sloppy and careless, and occasionally updates your (what they consider obsolete) system with something indistinguishable from malware.

Considering that this is for a version of MSWind that MS is no longer selling, one may reasonably conjecture that MS is not exerting strong efforts on quality control. This is evidence supporting that conjecture.

You can call it short sighted if you want, but to me it seems good grounds for disabling auto-update. At this point one should wait a few days to hear reports about the quality of each update.

OTOH, I'm presuming that you'll be able to update it on Friday. If this is wrong, perhaps you should just avoid MSWind.

But people who follow your line of reasoning will be almost entirely those who would have acted that way anyway. So there's no loss.

Greedy xenophobes are greedy xenophobes whether you stigmatize them or not. Do I unreasonably stereotype you? Then perhaps you should consider whether you do that same thing to others.