You may have been going for sarcasm, but it's reality for car insurance companies...

There are certain off-work things that an employer should know about - witness the guy who intentionally flew the airliner into the mountain and killed all on board - when it can affect their on-the-clock performance

Not really. I mean, maybe if the job in question is life-safety-critical (and probably not even then!), but the vast majority of jobs are not even slightly like that.

It's worth noting that the situation you cite has happened exactly once in all recorded history, so it's not exactly a common case worth optimizing for.

And selling yourself into slavery is a PRIVATE agreement between a PRIVATE master and a PRIVATE slave. That doesn't make it okay, though!

Now go fuck yourself.

Every nonprofit on the planet has the long-term goal of having an endowment large enough that they can focus on their core mission rather than bullshit fundraising drives. In order to do that sustainably, they need to have an endowment approximately 25x their annual operating budget, plain and simple.

Okay, so you're saying that Wikipedia will raise another $9.5 million* and then stop, right? If they do that, then I won't complain.

Of course, they're almost certainly not going to stop. Instead, they'll just increase Jimmy Wales' compensation (among other silly things) and keep badgering users, because that's what all non-profits actually do.

(* 25 * $2.5M = $62.5M, $62.5M - $53M (the amount they already have) = $9.5M still needed)

Ubuntu, RedHat, Debian, CentOS

You just listed the same two groups twice. Ubuntu uses systemd because Debian chose to use it, and CentOS uses systemd because RedHat invented it. Ubuntu and CentOS aren't deciding independently; they're using what their upstream distro chose.

True, like any piece of software, systemd surely must have issues (binary logs seem like one) that should be fixed or parts that may be improved, but all this constant bashing from some members against it, is just purely irrational.

The problem with systemd is not that it has "issues" -- $DIETY knows lots of Free Software has "issues!" -- the problem is that systemd's issues are designed that way on purpose, marked "wontfix," no compromise is tolerated, and the main developer (Lennart Poettering) is an ass about it.

Hey, I'm an American and I'd like to have one of these Russian PCs for more or less the same reason! Sometimes it's nice to have a weird foreign architecture around...

So what you're saying is, you're terrified of his ideas. You can't stand the thought of simply eliminating subsidies and letting the chips fall where they may.

What's the matter? If you're right, then fossil fuels remain more profitable than renewables and nothing changes.

If you still want to try to defend subsidies, all it means is that you're admitting that fossil fuels can no longer compete.

Just as well: with that subway system y'all have got up there, nobody should need to park at the airport anyway.

What's that? The subway doesn't go to La Guardia, you say? Damn, even here in Atlanta, with our shitty transit system, we manage to get a train to the airport! So much for that superior New York attitude...

It's 1500 quid for a new one

Bull. The first Google result for an aftermarket cat that fits an RX-8 shows it as $291 (including shipping within the US). Even in England (where I assume you are from your use of the word "quid") it is not possible for it to cost anywhere near $2000 more than that.

And a failed catalyst quickly causes failed seals.

How?

Well, my post presupposes that increasing density is a problem in the first place and addresses how to solve that problem. If one rejects that premise, then of course what I said doesn't apply.

For the record, I like both the single family houses and the higher-density stuff in those photos, but I agree they shouldn't be mixed together quite like that. What they ought to do is pick which nieghborhoods should go higher-density and which should be preserved (and it's valid for the answer to be "all of them," if that's what they decide), and adjust the zoning accordingly.

Of course, the real solution would be for Amazon to open satellite offices in other cities (say, Atlanta) and stop trying to turn Seattle into a company town.

The real question is: When do we cross the line when legislating aesthetics.

This isn't necessarily an issue of aesthetics, it's an issue of size and density (lot floor area ratios). It could be fixed by simply changing the zoning such that only single-family houses were allowed, with a floor area ratios less than X, and with a maximum roof height less than Y.

Alternatively, the older houses in those photos look old enough that they could just declare the neighborhood to be a historic district and then they couldn't be torn down to build gigantic new shit. In that case, the only aesthetic consideration would be "matching what's already there."

By the way, your diesel's filter does remove most of the soot. It fails to catch the ultra-fines however.

My diesel was made in 1998. It doesn't have a particulate filter at all, and emits a small puff of soot when I floor it. (When I occasionally use dino-diesel instead of bio-diesel, the puff gets larger and I think something's wrong until I remember I put dino in.)

My small car puts out particles so big that they're visible, you insensitive clod!

(And it's supposed to do that... it's a pre-2007 Diesel. Of course, it has a functioning EGR system and uses Biodiesel, so it doesn't put out as much of them.)

(In fact, the emerging concern over "ultra-fine particles" is starting to make me wonder if engineering the soot out of Diesels -- which doesn't make it go away, but just makes the particles the same size as those produced by gasoline engines -- might not have been such a great idea.)

Then fix your damn catalytic converter, for fuck's sake!

You know, even if you're an enthusiast there's no excuse not to have a functioning cat. It's not as if it makes more than a negligible difference in horsepower (especially if the car is close to stock). I have a 25-year-old Miata that I use for autocross, and you know what? Even though it's so old that it's no longer even required to meet emissions, all the equipment is still intact, it doesn't smoke, and it doesn't smell. If I had to get it emissions-tested tomorrow, I'd fully expect it to pass with flying colors.

Now, as for your rotor apex seals, those I can't blame you for failing to replace since they require disassembling the engine. But the cat isn't enough trouble to justify neglecting.

CO2 is in a different category than "air pollution" in the sense that "air pollution" causes health problems (directly), while CO2 only causes climate change.

It's also in a different category because the solution to reducing it is different. In theory, it would be possible to eliminate all "air pollution" other than CO2 from an internal-combustion engine exhaust, if you had the right kind of catalytic converter/filter/etc. on it. In contrast, the only way to eliminate CO2 from an internal-combustion engine is to turn it off.