Could it have something to do with the National Transportation Safety Board's inquiry into the October crash? I heard that the NTSB is going public with some of the hearings soon.

If you live in the shit, it is sometimes hard to see it.

His name is Kunte Kinte.

I hold out hope that the two of them are getting air time not because they could win, but because they are more interesting than Clinton v. Bush. Plenty of time for that boring crap later.

Vendors cannot be held responsible for stupid (or non-existent) engineering and policy.

Without knowing the GS/contractor divide at OPM, it's hard to say who is ultimately to blame. If OPM gave carte blanche to the contractor, the latter is generally the one at fault. If the government micro managed the contract and ignored suggestions, the blame is back with them.

Jim Webb doesn't strike me as particularly interested in the office.

That Goldwater girl was never liberal enough to want it.

"You start kicking out the undesirables and its like filtering the porn links out of google. "

Or maybe it's like preventing Reddit from becoming the next 4chan.

"You want to contain as many communities as possible under the same roof."

That's what *you* want. Reddit wants to make money. Obviously they need numbers, but they're also probably going after a particular demographic. They need high-profile AMAs, they need not to be embarrassed elsewhere in the media, etc. Relying only upon shaming and other organic defense mechanism is not going to cut it.

Your post is yet another sad example of a classic Slashdot genre: "Scientists unsure if Sun exists".

It's pretty well accepted that solar output affects climate.

I'm not sure he can pull his music off the radio. He may not have the right to that.

Music that is classic and also rocks.

Neil,

Streaming's way better than FM, just saying.

When I clicked on the link to see the definition of "abstracting electricity", in the section on case law the offense cited was meter tampering. As in substantionally "more than a few electrons." The cost of prosecution would far exceed the cost of the electricity used. (I would also see where this particular law would apply to unauthorized taps or splices, where the power draw would be signifiant.)

One issue the article did bring up: the power at that train-car outlet isn't at all clean. If it uses external power pickup (third rail or overhead catenary) I could see where the surges, sags and dropouts would be severe enough to damage a phone or laptop, especially as the drive motors of the train, a highly inductive load, would cause very large spikes as the power pickup loses and re-makes contact. Contrast that with a long-haul train which supplies power from a locomotive generator, which shouldn't flicker at all.

So it could well be that there is a cause for action of a different sort: "We are not liable for any damage caused by plugging anything into the outlets on this train."

IAAL. I do mostly commercial litigation. Most lawyers do either mostly or entirely transactional work - negotiating agreements, drafting documents, that sort of thing. Usually when a client comes to me it is because one of the transactional lawyers stuffed up, or because the client thought they did not need a lawyer for transactional work. If you think all of this can be automated, I am sure I will be seeing you soon. Basically, you can fork out some money on a good transactional lawyer up front, or you can come to me and fork out a truckload of money later. Additionally, in nearly all of the litigation I do, there is at least one issue where the past cases do not quite cover the point. Then the lawyers have to figure out what the rule is for the particular facts. It is very rarely just a simple case of applying known rules to simple facts. That is without even getting to questions of proof and whether the witnesses will be believed, which is hard for a machine to assess.