The Copenhagen bike-share system is free with a deposit of a coin that's worth about $5, which unlocks the bike, and you get your coin back when you relock it to a bikeshare rack. As the tourist guidebooks say, if you don't want to go to the trouble of returning your bike to the rack, a local bum will happily do it for you. (Ifound this to be correct, even when "not returning the bike" meant "hiding it in the shadows behind the store I was popping in to" - there wasn't a bikeshare rack nearby.)

You have the Part 15 and ISM services for that. You really can buy a microwave link that's metropolitan-distance and legal to use.

We lost much of our 440 capability to PAVE PAWS in California. Remember, Amateur Radio is not the primary service on many bands. The military is on 440.

I'm thinking of a few specific aspects of how the ACA passage happened.

The first is Pelosi actually convincing members of Congress to vote on the bill before reading it. I.e., her infamous "you'll have to pass the bill to find out what's in it" gambit. (It takes a lot of self control to not go into a tirade every time I think of that.)

The second is this: NPR did a great story talking about a variety of healthcare systems around the world, in terms of cost, outcomes, and implementation details. (Germany's looked especially good.) But nothing in the ACA seemed to indicate any of those vetted designs was seriously considered. It's like the authors of the ACA suffered from Not Invented Here syndrome. Or perhaps just as likely, the lobbyists didn't find it to their liking.

If you want that nearly infinite microwave spectrum, you have the Part 15 and ISM services. Absolutely nothing is stopping you. Power is not the issue with those frequencies, it's line of sight and Fresnel zones.

No, I absolutely do not have to prefix my words with anything. You do that by posting as an anonymous coward. I use my real name to indicate that I stand behind my words.

Yes. The usual mechanism here would be WiFi security, with HTTPS or SSL inside of it.

Thank goodness for forks.

I really wish people who down-mod with "Troll" had a way to explain themselves. Sometimes for the life of me, I don't understand what they saw as troll-ish about a comment.

Happily, if systemd really is a train-wreck in the making, there are still some other distros keeping the altneraties alive. So if Canonical and/or Debian ends up regretting the choice, there should be the living knowledge for a while to revert.

I'm using Mint 17, and I also had trouble getting it to mount my Galaxy Note 4. FYI, I was able to solve it with about 15-20 minutes of Googling + a reboot.

"But but ...

When you pretend to be a foolish version of someone else, in order to mock them, you only make yourself look foolish.

If you really have a valid point to make, argue against your opponents' best points. Don't make an ad hominem attack against a caricature of the opponent.

This feels eerily reminiscent of the U.S.'s push for the Affordable Care Act.

It's like the proponents don't want a careful vetting of their idea, so they're pushing forward as hard as possible before resistance can mobilize.

I wonder if that's what's happening here.

Sorry, I don't know how to give one in Welsh.

Maybe they are where they are partially because they force people out or actually fire them for the employees' political beliefs.

The CEO that stepped down because of a vocal bunch who didn't like his politics is the first to come to mind. He was one of the founders of Mozilla! Likely a big voice in it's innovation.

I also have a personal friend who helped a client in the British government - and he was let go because his boss got angry - the British government has been known to spy on some of it's inhabitants apparently, and helping the client doomed my friend.

Not for me. There are some purely instrumental pieces that captivate me every time. Especially Rimsky-Korsakov's Russian Easter Festival Orchestra.

(Note: Even if you're not a huge fan of classical music, I suggest giving that piece a full listen through just once. It may blow your mind.)

OK, no real technical data and some absurd claims here.

First all-digital transceiver? No. There have been others. Especially if you allow them to have a DAC and an ADC and no other components in the analog domain, but even without that, there are lots of IoT-class radios with direct-to-digital detectors and digital outputs directly to the antenna. You might have one in your car remote (mine is two-way).

And they have to use patented algorithms? Everybody else can get along with well-known technology old enough that any applicable patents are long expired.

It would be nicer if there was some information about what they are actually doing. If they really have patented it, there's no reason to hold back.