You are incorrect. The camera's were conceived as an FHWA program for specific intersections to reduce fatalities.

Now that we are finally bringing most of the nations roads to standards past 1970 the number of fatalities on our nations roads have been dropping at a considerable rate for quite a while. The result is that now intersection related fatalities now outpace roadway design related fatalities. After a lot of research the FWHA determined that many many of these fatalities are occurring in the same intersections and that a significant number of these accidents were being caused by drivers running red lights. Other research pointed out that this is being exacerbated by the fact that as congestion increases more drivers are deliberately running red lights out of frustration.

The FHWA red light campaign was created, it encouraged and provided money for local governments to install red light cameras at these high fatality intersections to try to decrease the number of deaths through enforcement. Unfortunately the program was grabbed by a bunch of private companies that offered to provide and maintain the cameras for a share of the revenue. Once the private company's salesmen were hooked in with the top city officials it went down hill from there. Some cities began tweaking signal timing to cause more ticket revenue which caused dramatic spikes in the number of rear ending accidents. Others put the cameras at intersections that didn't need it. The program spiraled out of control at the local level because of these private companies and their sales forces and it got even worse as the economy tanked and the revenue became even more important to the city.

The camera's actually did reduce fatalities at some of those high fatality intersections. The FHWA program was a success in that regard, but the FHWA naively didn't see the damage these private companies would do in encouraging the cities to treat the tickets as a revenue source. Had these cameras remained as ONLY a safety device they would have continued to work. We've still got the problem that red light fatalities are increasing nearly exponentially and we're going to have to deal with it. Fatalities per mile driven have been dropping precipitously for the last 30 years or so, red light fatalities may very well halt or even reverse that trend. This is a very hard problem to solve.

In addition to admitting fault and paying restitution, the US punished the guy in charge of the boat (it ended his career), changed policy on shoot first and installed civilian radios in all anti-aircraft systems.

That's why the Russians are trucking the BUK system back into Russia so they can destroy it. No launcher, no inspection of the launcher and they can claim they know nothing about it. That BUK launcher is going to be scrap metal by the end of today.

They are either Terrorists or Criminals. These insurgents robbed dozens of businesses at gunpoint including car jacking people in broad daylight. I don't like calling them terrorists either, but they are certainly criminal scum. This is what happens when the leader next door has made deals with the Russian Mafia. I'd be willing to bet that when you subtract the Russian Spetznaz officers from the insurgents you are left with a core of people that are Russian Mafia and probably less than 10% that are genuine civilians with Russian Nationalist inclinations that want to see their cities integrated into Russia (course they would be very surprised to find out that Russia doesn't want them).

The guy that replaced the Crimea parliament at gun point and then named himself governor so he could call for a referendum on joining Russia was nicknamed "the Goblin" and was the local Russian Mafia leader. Why do you think no one stood up to him? People that stood up to him ended up dead. Putin choose to use the same strategy in Eastern Ukraine but he wanted a smoother fight so he appointed an Intelligence operative to move in and take control.

With the Russian intelligence officer in coordinating actions and the Russian mob providing the muscle Putin got his little war to stir up a pile of shit so he could force the Ukrainian's to do what he wanted. This is why the referendum never said anything about joining Russia because he doesn't want them to join Russia. Putin want's a federal type government in Ukraine that he can use to control the entire government. He realizes he can't control the western side anymore so he's using the British divide and conquer strategy. He'll put the Mob in control in the east (they get financial benefit out of it) and because there are more people in the east he'll have control over the whole country.

I've always wondered why Ukraine didn't call Putin's bluff and tell the eastern provinces to join Russia while handing them the bulk of all the debt. Putin doesn't want to take on all that outdated industry and energy demand or the debt he caused so he could use it as leverage to control them. If they'd called his bluff he would have been put in the position of refusing to annex the eastern provinces which would have cost him dearly.

I get your intent but you really messed up the delivery. The Mormons do believe Jesus is their lord and savior, so arguing that someone doesn't care whatever wacky thing they believe if they support that statement would be exactly the opposite of your intended meaning because it's in fact true.

My point is that the anti-systemD propaganda out there runs from it's all a redhat conspiracy to personal attacks on the author. Some talk about systemD violating Unix philosophy, very few talk about implementation and I've seen almost no comment what it actually does. Most of the attackers have never actually used it, only read blog posts about philosophy and redhat conspiracies.

Which is all relatively silly because no one is forcing you to use it. (of course other than the conspiracy theorists who claim this is a redhat plot to force everyone to do everything the redhat way). Let me say that again, even if your favorite distribution uses it and it become popular in the Linux community such that it's support is incorporated into numerous packages you are never going to be forced to use it. There is ALWAYS going to be a distribution that doesn't use it. And even if there isn't and it takes over Linux completely there is always one of the BSD's.

That is what is so bloody stupid about this whole I hate pottering and systemD BS. Pottering and RedHat are not trying to destroy Linux, they aren't going to hold you down and force you to use SystemD. You don't like it? Don't use it. If it gets so popular other packages depend on it, stop using those too. This is argument is beyond stupid. It's free software for gods sake, if you hate it that much you can always pay someone else to make software that works around it.

There is an argument to be made that one the soviets and the Russians are not the same thing (even if they are the same people). And as you noted the airliner had crossed (accidentally) into hostile soviet airspace. That situation and what happened today are not the same thing.

This was a commercial airliner in a designated commercial air corridor with a broadcasting transponder. This is far more similar to the Iranian flight shot down by the US Navy. The commander of that ship was punished for his actions and the US apologized for a clear transgression of international norms on civilian flights.

The gone is gone only from the country specific google domains, ie. Google.fr. You can still access the US indexes and get uncensored results although my bet is that at some point they make Google start filtering access by IP address.

Your assuming of course that the armed insurgents are going to let anyone near that crash site. Given what it will reveal there are very high odds in my opinion that they won't let anyone near it claiming it's a major security threat to do so.

Which is precisely the reason commercial flight corridors and hundreds of miles wide.

With a layover in Moscow from what I read. Admittedly it's all pretty preliminary and the information has changed a couple times already.

I highly doubt a Russian military plane would shoot down a commercial airliner flying into Moscow. Not only did this probably kill mostly Russian citizens, no Russian pilot is going to fire on a plane in a commercial flight corridor that's the same size and speed of a commercial airplane without visually confirming it's not a commercial plane.

You might remember the soviets did that once apparently intentionally and it didn't end well for them, and that plane didn't even have Russian citizens on it. I won't believe a Russian fighter jet shot that plane down without hard evidence.

I don't think MANPADS can hit a plane at that altitude. Early reports said this plane was at nearly 30-50k altitude on it's way to Moscow and most MANPAD systems have fairly limited altitude ranges in the 2 mile range. This is the reason Ukraine accused Russia of shooting that other plane transport plane down, it was at an altitude that very very few MANPAD systems are capable of reaching.

Either Russia has given the insurgents some very high tech MANPADS or Russia shot the plane down using an air defense system like the S300. You need pretty advanced (and relatively large) missiles to reach the altitude that commercial airlines fly at.

And why should I give a rats ass what some random blogger thinks about software? Pappp's opinion about SystemD is as relevant as the homeless person down the street.

There will always be a Linux distribution that doesn't use systemD, if you are so adamant about not using it, don't use it instead of trying to convince everyone else it's evil because CLEARLY everyone else doesn't agree with you. You people that hate systemd are worse than "born-again's" and mormons and just like them you don't have the answer and I don't care what you think about it.

The typical phone and cable bill in the US includes on average a $4 levy by your local city/state. These are easy taxes for the localities to pass. Congress anticipated localities using "internet" taxes to try to balance budgets and banned them before many could pass them (even though a few got them passed before congress could act). This tax ban should have been made permanent years ago and waived those localities that jumped at the opportunity and put taxes in place. It specifically prevents cities from tacking on a $4 tax onto your internet bill and that's a good thing because those taxes are HIGHLY regressive and disproportionately harm the poor.

I'm one of those silly individuals that think nickle and dime'ing everyone with fee's and taxes on every little thing is bad tax policy. We need a straight up progressive income tax with no exceptions, deductions, credits or waivers. If they need more money let them raise the base tax. This BS where they tax every little thing and service is grossly unfair and tends to disproportionately shift the tax burden to the middle class/poor and excessively harms the poor. That $4 tax on your phone, cable and TV bill ends up being a 1% tax on the poor and 0.000001% tax on the rich. And when you add all the different $4 taxes on everything the poor can end up paying 10% of their income in taxes and fees on these utility taxes. The only "items" that should have taxes are those things that require a massive public owned infrastructure to build and maintain and those that use the system should be paying for it with a tax on the item that measures the use of that infrastructure such as a per mile tax on roadway use. Everything else should be a straight up income tax.

Apple colluded with publishers to raise prices. Because of their action the average ebook increased in price $5. Everyone buying ebooks at the time noticed this overnight increase that priced many ebooks more expensive then the printed version.

Price collusion is illegal under US law. In many many way's it's worse than a monopoly.