For an EMP I'd be more worried about cars than trains. A complete loss of all electrical systems should cause an emergency brake application (railway brakes are completely mechanical in all but the most modern trains; fortunately the US doesn't have many of those). On the other hand, the sudden loss of power steering and assisted braking on every road vehicle would mean chaos.

So, English Majors are good for documentation and middle management?

Those are not his battles. In any case, mass surveillence causes consequences for anyone who organizes regarding any other issue. How is ensuring people are safe to talk about the pressing issues not a pressing issue?

I'm not sure how my post is offtopic considering I quoted one of the linked articles...

I want to be in support of unions, but then you read about shit like this. Basically, "Hey, let's render inoperative some vital equipment necessary to make the determination on whether 10 blocks of Manhattan need to be evacuated because they weren't wired by union electricians"...

One time, the readings went off the chart, then stopped. This provoked more bafflement than fear, since it seemed unlikely that a hurricane raging on Lexington and Fifty-third Street would go otherwise unnoticed at Forty-sixth and Park. The cause proved to be straightforward enough: When the instrumentation experts from California installed their strain guages, they had neglected to hire union electricians. "Someone heard about it," LeMessurier says, "went up there in the middle of the night, and snipped all the wires."

How is it his job to come up with the better solution? It was a legal/paperwork issue, not a technical one. If the Vice Chancellor and lawyer did not want to sign all that paperwork, they were the ones who needed to offer up the alternatives.

Sorry, you are correct; it is usually a good financial decision. If nothing else, it's an excellent hedge against inflation. I was just pointing out that it isn't a sure-thing risk-free investment... I just got out of almost purchasing a home, for many of the reasons above (though the main show stoppers were 9k/yr taxes and a complete lack of public transportation).

I wished I still had it the day after I gave up my HTC... whatever it was. Your thumbnail was good enough for big buttons like dialing the phone, and the stylus allowed for precision and worked even when the user is wearing gloves.

As a renter, if your apartment burns down, you don't still have to mail in a monthly check for a smoldering hole in the ground. Yes, this is what homeowner's insurance is for, but the disaster that destroyed your house may not have been covered. Other reasons not to own:
-They may build a sewage treatment plant down the block and you want out. Of course your property value has plummeted for the same reason you want to leave.
-Your town jacks up the property taxes.
-You may meet the love of your life in another city.
-As the sibling AC said, you may need to chase a job somewhere.
-You're not mechanically inclined and don't want to have to do your own maintenance.
-You'd rather not worry about security.

On a personal level, if I had a full time telecommuting job, I would want to travel the world by living in a different city every month. Being able to divert 100% of my stationary living expenses into travel expenses would make that financially feasable.

If the permission issue is small, you can at least *find* the permission problem in Redhat with rpm -Va and look for anything flagged as having [M]ode, [U]ser, or [G]roup discrepancies. For Windows (at least back in the XP days), the standard solution seemed to be to recursively give Administrator ownership and full permission everywhere.

I don't know if there is similar on Debian, I've simply never had that problem. I only know the RedHat command as it's useful for security auditing.

While people don't directly have a choice, indirectly many do - anyone near the border of the respective service areas. Go two towns over and it's Comcast land. In my case, apartments in Comcast territory were automatically excluded from consideration. If Comcast ever got so terrible that people fled their areas for Time Warner, it could actually affect property values. As it is, apartment complexes in Fios territory advertise this fact and are able to charge just as much as the ones 5 miles closer to the city center. Quality of internet adds value.

Have you ever actually observed a truck on the highway? Just drive behind one for about 10 minutes. If you played a drinking game over how many times it fouls the other lane, you'd be DUI before the time is up.
1. Trucks are wider so they have less margin on each side of the lane.
2. When taking a curve, if they are on the outside lane, they are guaranteed to foul the inside lane, simply because a straight line is the shortest path between two points.
3. If the trailer is empty, the wind will cause it to sway erratically.

Also count how many truck tire blowouts you see. That has to cause at least a small loss of control, woe is he that is next to the truck when that happens.

Plus the kinetic energy. Just two days ago: somehow I think the bus would have fared better if it was a mini cooper that crossed the divider... bus-and-fedex-truck-collide-on-i5-bus-in-flames.

Basically, anyone driving adjacent to a truck for more than the 10 seconds it takes to pass one is applying for a darwin award.

If you are equally relaxed whether the vehicle next to you is a Mini Cooper or an 18 wheeler, your survival instinct must be terrible...

Except you sometimes end up in more dangerous situations that way. It's not fun when trucks and buses are passing *you*... not to mention the long line of cars behind that truck / bus now occupying your "shit there's a [immovable object] in the road" swerve space.

For me, getting a pre-emptive gg meant the game has now changed to "find the pylon." The pre-emptive gg-er desperately wants me to quit, so after finding the pylon, rather than killing it, they will usually do something silly like draw pictures with buildings in the middle of the map. Of course, I'd have alt+tabbed to watch a movie or TV show at that point. When I come back to find he eventually killed the pylon, I feel smug in knowing that the last 45 minutes of my life were slightly more enjoyable than his. And sometimes I would get a surprise and find that he d/c-ed :).

I miss starcraft bw *sniff*.