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Comment Re:Flip Argument (Score 4, Insightful) 1128

I submit to you that you do not know what happened. Don't feel bad- very few people outside of the 12 members of the Grand Jury have heard all of known facts of the case. I certainly don't know what happened.

But please keep this in mind. Things that you accept as fact are not really facts. Case in point: your assumption that Brown had surrendered. Some of the sworn testimony that was released tonight following the prosecutor's press conference indicates that Brown had not surrendered, and in fact was charging the police officer "like a football player" with his head down and fists clenched. And at the same time, as the prosecutor detailed in his press conference, much of the early eye witness accounts that indicated that Brown had surrendered did not hold up under further scrutiny.

As I said, I don't know what happened, but I think this is enough to move the narrative that Brown had surrendered out of the "fact" category.

Comment Re: Ask the credit card for a refund (Score 2) 307

While in the US there is a generally accepted right to self defense, the legal theory in the UK is that fighting crime is the police's job.

This brings up a question. It's well established in the US that the police have no responsibility to protect your life; if you call 911 when the Bad Guys show up and get killed before the police arrive, your next of kin don't get to sue the cops. (Look up Warren v. District of Columbia for an example.) It's not that much of a problem here as you have the right to defend yourself, with deadly force if necessary. In a legal environment where that right to self-defense isn't guaranteed, as it isn't in the UK, does that then imply a potential liability if their police don't do what has been decided is their job? (I suspect it doesn't, but I could be wrong.)

Comment Wikipedia the vector (Score 1) 61

Like others I found the headline confusing. I read it as "Researchers are predicting the use of Wikipedia as a vector for the spread of disease". This may mean that:

  • Disinformation and ignorance are diseases.
  • Memes and computer viruses are diseases.
  • Wilipedia contains information that leads to depression.
  • Instructions on Wikipedia lead to substance abuse.
  • This is getting entertaining, fill in your own reason here.

Comment Re:My useless(?) WD anecdotes (Score 1) 142

12 Power Cycle Count is relevant on the EZRXs (greens); that keeps increasing unless you do certain things to prevent it, and I think (this is murky) I saw a weak correlation between this going into way up, and the drives failing sooner.

I've not done anything special with the two that I have in a media server at home. This stat is at 5 on the older drive and 4 on the newer drive. By comparison, a Seagate Barracuda LP in the same box is at 128 (it's quite a bit older than the WD drives), and the boot drive, a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 I grabbed out of the unused-drive box when whatever drive it replaced failed, has 365 spinups logged.

(Looking at the stats for all of my drives, the outlook for that 7200.11 isn't so good. :-P )

Comment We use the wrong model for IT hiring and retention (Score 4, Interesting) 574

Eight years ago, Ruby Raley and I published (in Cutter IT Journal) an article entitled "The Longest Yard: Reorganizing IT for Success" (you can read it here). Our basic premise is that the current "industrial" model of IT hiring/management -- treating IT engineers like cogs or components -- is fundamentally flawed, and that a model based on professional sports teams would likely work much better. Having spent 20 years analyzing troubled or failed software projects, I believe we need a significantly different approach on hiring and retaining the right IT engineers. ..bruce..

Comment Re:For the rest of us (Score 1) 299

The "programmers" can scream all they want but VB with Access did one job and did it VERY well which was allowing anybody to build single function programs quickly and easily. VB code was very human readable

I'm stuck maintaining some Access projects. "Readable" isn't an attribute I'd apply to most of the VBA "code" I've run across.

Comment Re:Not a good week... (Score 1) 445

One of the definitions I found was:

One who makes great sacrifices or suffers much in order to further a belief, cause, or principle.

I am sure that fits. While SpaceShip II is mainly intended for a non-exploration purpose, the program has resulted in some significant advances in rocketry and White Knight II has significant non-tourism use. These pilots have been involved in other space efforts, I remember the one who was injured from the Rotary Rocket test flights. There are lots of safer ways for these folks to make as much money as a test pilot is paid. They do what they do to advance our progress in aeronautics and space.

Comment Re:They tried to raise prices 20% unnanounced (Score 1) 392

That's probably a ClearQAM signal that he is receiving. Most HDTVs in North America have dual-standard 8VSB/QAM64 tuners so they can receive both broadcast and cable channels. No CableCard required.

It's more likely that it's a mix of that and analog. In Las Vegas at least, Cox makes all channels below 100 available as unencrypted analog video, receivable by pretty much every TV built since the '40s or so. Local channels (including the subchannels many of them have offered since the digital transition) are also available in unencrypted digital form. It works out to probably somewhere around 70-80 channels, with maybe a half-dozen in HD, a dozen or so in digital SD, and the balance in analog SD.

I cut off TV service about a year ago, switching to data-only service. They've not bothered blocking these channels, so they're still available. My TVs are set up to tune them in, but I can't remember the last time I watched something that wasn't streamed from across the Internet or played back from the file server on my LAN.

Comment Re:Fine, if (Score 1) 286

The military and corporate planes have had rear facing passenger seats for ages. It certainly doesn't affect babies being carried in rear facing car seats. There's all kinds of safety reasons why this is a good idea, but I can't find anything substantial to back up your claim.

I've flown on 737s with rear-facing seats. Southwest used to have them...last time I recall seeing them was in the mid-'90s:

http://www.blogsouthwest.com/flashback-fridays-southwest-airlines%E2%80%99-interiors-over-years/

They blame changed safety regs, strangely enough:

When Southwest introduced the 737-700 in January 1998, new federal safety regulations doomed the lounge areas. No rear-facing seats could meet this new safety requirement, and the -700s were delivered with all forward facing seating. Lounges in the -300s and -500s were phased out, and only the -200 retained lounges until they were retired at the start of 2005.

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