The key word here is 'shouldn't.' The problem is that it is, and from the sound of it they're not even bringing back the option XP had that let me set it to actually run the updates at, say, 5AM Sunday every week.

If I'm having to worry about their QA, it shouldn't be my problem, and the last set of bad patches I got hit with they gave me the fix of 'uninstall manually (somehow)' as the primary fix--exactly how I was supposed to manage this when it'd managed to hose the boot was apparently Not Their Problem. (I reinstalled the OS and had to manually block Windows Update from installing the very same updates because apparently pulling them was also Not Their Problem, it seemed.)

My experience is that the complaint is not that they don't have mandatory, automatic updates--they've had that since XP and the default (and nag) is for it to be on right down to no-warning auto-rebooting. The complaint is that they do not test those updates before shoving them out, resulting in a feeling rather like it's being inserted rectally, and do not reserve it for vital, tested, and essential patchs.

That's why the options are essentially all-or-nothing for non-techie users, and if they were really paying attention to the users, we'd not have had Win8 & could opt for a 'stable' patch pipe with scheduling back. (Remember how XP let you schedule when it'd run the autoupdates? I do!)

If it's anything like that option for Win8/Win8.1, in Real Life the system will refuse to work properly until you reboot--which was a major reason why I have paid extra to have Win7 instead.

Depends on how you set it up--I configured mine with an eye towards having things not auto-update unless I explicitly authorized it, which means that sometimes it won't do that even for the programs I want it to do that with and that until recently it was actually pretty bad about letting me know there was any updates of the type that require reboots available. (Since it picks the early AM to let me know, so far, it's usually resulted in a sleepy approval since it also gives me a relatively accurate ETA and anybody who'd call me during that time will be cussed out unless it's hospital-now level of emergency.)

I'd agree, if M$ made it possible to have the technical knowledge needed to identify a bad update without installing it, if they made it possible for me to outright refuse one they'd refused to pull for months (I hear they did eventually), and if those same family members didn't expect me to fix the hosed system for them for free.

If they only had the mandatory ones be for a 'stable' version--no patches which haven't already been pretty decently tested and out for a while--with a 'beta' track for people who are okay with a higher risk of a bad patch breaking their computer, this wouldn't be a problem, but M$ has not done that since automatic updates became possible & likely will set the system to nag you if you dare want to only have well-tested patches. Not really listening to the market is why they thought Win8 was a good idea in the first place, remember?

I don't know, you might have trouble finding the sane company to work for but the tradeoff seems likely to be that it will also be a more reliable job because the execs don't manage to destroy the company by a combination of being stupid and evil--or because of their stupidity and evilness get rid of said job, possibly replacing you with an H1-B worker.

The problem is that pretty much all states* require your 'raving lunatic' be a clear and immediate threat, and by 'clear and immediate' we're taking along the lines of 'waving a gun and shouting about shooting people right now' on clearness & immediacy--if you're just saying that you're thinking about doing it tomorrow, it's not quite immediate enough, never mind that you may be saying so in hopes that you will not be doing it because you're stuck in the mental health ward on the 24 hour hold. (They've got to get a judge to agree to hold you for anything more, in the most generous jurisdictions, and odds are that unless you're trying to kill the staff or yourself during that 24 hour hold, you will be tossed out on your ass once it expires regardless of what you want.)

If a 4 hour hold is enough to figure out if you're actually mentally ill or suffering from a medical emergency that just looks a hella lot like it--yes, there are times where it's hard to tell, neurological issues are a bitch--then it's probably best to have the police able to haul your ass to the ER without having to charge you with anything since that will haunt you.

So, think of it this way: Do you want to be arrested for breach of peace and left in a drunk tank 'til a judge can see you with a nice mark on your criminal record, or quickly taken to an ER where somebody whose ass is at least liable if not trained gets to make the call? Do you want to criminalize having mental health issues--at least effectively--or have 4 hours being watched by somebody who is if not trained at least liable if they screw up?

* By 'pretty much all' I mean 'probably all but not checking.' I'd have expected any exceptions to have gotten mentioned when covering the overall shitty set of options shrinks get when having to get somebody to where they can give proper, informed consent to (or refuse) treatment... Think of it as being like getting somebody too drunk to recognize their own name to give you their address so you can get them home: it ain't gonna be easy or fast.

If you want to stick your hands in live wires with your feet on an OSHA-approved metal ladder, go right ahead. Just remember to make sure your funeral arrangements already made.

If you don't get it, this is a bit worse than getting details wrong, this is pretty much an adult failing Electricity for Preschoolers, and is an example of typical OSHA shenanigans. The rule of thumb I've learned from experience and from others in risky work is that, on the whole, OSHA is never there when you actually need them and often there when you don't--and don't expect them to be much help if your employer is violating OSHA regulations.

Not necessarily--as mr_mischief notes, it's not a shenanigan for Uber, Lyft, or AirBNB to call them contractors--though it probably is a shenanigan for taxi drivers who work assigned schedules at company-fixed rates 'contractors.'

In fact, it might be best to push those businesses into functionally being brokering services that can be used by independent self-employed individuals to find customers & handle transactions for fee (flat or percentage)--if they're employees, the employer can expect them to work a given set of hours, and as I noted, part of the reasons gigs appeal to some is because the arrangement is flexible, right down to being able to call off work if necessary without penalty beyond those hours' potential earnings.

That said, I'm not really okay with how Uber, Lyft and traditional taxi services treat their drivers, but I'm not seeing any of this actually improving the situation for the drivers. As far as I can tell, the end result is going to benefit the established businesses, bureaucratic power-grabbing dreams, and any politicians they bring along.

Actually, if the government gets out of this, I'll start being OK with having the union because this seems like precisely what ought to be the union's and not the government's job--particularly since sometimes it's necessary to get the union to go yell at the OSHA guy because what the OSHA guy thinks is scrimping on safety equipment is using the right equipment. When you've got the OSHA guy complaining because you're not using metal ladders when what you're doing is working on a live electrical system...maybe you're better off having the people doing the work having a large say in what the safety regulations are.

Some of us don't want the government making the rules because, really, we'd prefer to be empowered to do so in a more worker-centered way--and getting rid of 'gigs' entirely isn't going to work well, because for some workers this is a desirable, if not necessary, style of employment. If I need to be able to have a strong say in my hours, for reasons like school or being a primary caregiver, my choices right now are 'take gigs' or 'no job at all.' Gigs also have some appeal if your primary employer does not like giving you full hours, meaning you need something to fill in the gaps, as well as for those who feel that their free time is valuable enough that they see no reason to put in more hours working than absolutely necessary--something that would get you fired from a traditional job.

Sure, just make sure you carry along around $2.8 million in valuables with you--according to a bit of poking around, that's the current value market of a full load of oil in a small crude oil tanker. (This was determined via checking Wikipedia for the number of barrels a small tanker holds and the lower of the two per-barrel values given at this time by oil-price.net.)

They also tend to pay taxes and there's a surprising number of people who for entirely non-economic reasons would rather not see the results of an oil tanker sinking or being blown up.

They're examples of the kinds of charges that normally are tacked on at the end of the list, meaning that you've got to be a special sort to get yourself arrested for just that.

I am not a lawyer, but I listen to 'em: This is why you at least try to fake being a calm, reasonable human being who is willing to be cooperative so this gets sorted out faster, as it's a lot easier to make a bad arrest vanish from your records if they don't have you for perfectly valid Being A Twat charges.

Mine doesn't, mostly because I think they came to the conclusion that making sure there is a pen at the desks for filling out paperwork before going up to the tellers was important--and people couldn't be relied upon to be polite enough to mention to the staff that they took the last pen. Given that people have gone to the trouble of stealing those tethered pens, I don't blame them...

Honestly, if the plugs are dangerous to electronics to use while the car's in motion, a sign warning people of that or better yet locking safety covers are the correct measures. Otherwise, just have it as a courtesy phone-charging station, and if somebody hogs it the other passengers will probably handle the problem quite well.

You managed to accurately describe actual medicines and homeopathy due to the critical issue of dosage: the difference between the two is that homeopaths would dilute the poison into the yoctomolar range and consider it all the more powerful for it, while people who had to pass chemistry would be wondering how that could possibly work.

I don't know how to break this to you, but let me introduce you to the concept of a median lethal dose. Notice that sugar is on the list (29.7g/kg)--that means that, if you for some reason want to try suicide by sugar, you can now calculate about how much you'll need to succeed.

Okay, now, let's move onto the theapeutic index, which is basically the difference between the amount of a medicine that's enough to cause the desired effects and the amount which will kill you (assuming lethality isn't what's wanted).

So, aside from the fact that everything is lethal in sufficient amounts, yeah, a chalk pill is preferable to a poison, no matter how diluted, if the chalk pill will do the job. Homeopathy's problem is that it's got a really bad assumption at its heart, and in fact the inverse is used a lot in modern medicine--there's a few poisons used regularly because, well, their effect is what you actually want in some situations. One of them, atropine, is even considered one of the most important medicines to have around because it's so useful.

How it was realized that with some poisons, non-lethal dosages were important as medicines was figured out in the first place I leave up to your imagination. Mine's mostly supplying a black comedy of somebody trying to poison a pesky annoyance and accidentally curing them...

Actually, it wouldn't--this has a lot to do with history, and the bottom line is that the modern evidence-based school and the now-gone eclectic schools are the ones that where "But does it work?" actually get the most attention.

That said, most of alternative doesn't work, or works but not for the reasons they give, and a 'good' version of this course probably would be covering how to sort through and develop rigorous scientific tests. And possibly also raising the important question of "If the placebo effect works for this condition and has fewer noxious side effects than the non-placebo treatments, why not use it as a first-line treatment?"