quoting the report:

"a person s negligent if he does something that a reasonably careful person would not do in the same situation or fails to do somethign that a reasonably careful person would do in the asme situation". ...
"to establish the crime of vehicular manslaughter, the People would be required to prove that Wood's encroachment into the bicycle lane, nuder the circumstances, was negligent." ...
"the fact that Wood did not apply his brakes or swerve to avoid the collision indicates that he did not see or notice Olin until the moment of impact." ...
"Wood's entry of 'Yes I...' followed by '][\NOKKO' is also consisten with him utilizing his MDC at the time of collision" ...
"Based on all of these circumstances, the People cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Wood's momentary distraction in the perfomance of his duties constituted a failure to use reasonable care"

So... he was negligent, he was negligent, he was neglegent. But in summary, he wasn't negligent. Either that or texting while driving isn't negligent. Which I'm pretty sure has gone onto the books in most states by now. If he felt he had to respond immedidately to a message with obvious indications of serious urgency (such as keywords like "bro") he should have done like the same advice he would have given anyone else while ticketing them for texting while driving, "next time, pull over and do your texting from the shoulder".

I also found this particularly insulting in the latter part of the report:

"It is significant to note that the driver in the vehicle directly behind Wood's patrol vehicle, Andrwe McCown, also failed to see Olin in the bicycle lane prior to the collision"

Look back at the witness accouns and see "something equally significant that we aren't going to mention again":

Ashley McCown was the passenger in that vehicle. (the one following Woods patrol car) She stated that she noticed Olin in the bicycle lane prior to the collision"

Of course the driver of the following car didn't see Olin, he doesn't have xray vision to look through the patrol car, his passenger is in the correct place to see around into the right bicycle lane. It look s like the person writing that report was making a number of stretches trying to justify not pressing charges?

Someone with more time on their hands needs to type up and post that report online in searchable format. I can't help but wonder if they deliberately put it up in image format to meet their legal requirements without making it easily quoteable and searchable...

there's really very little difference between optimizing audio and video. back-culling polygons and all that magic to increase framerate by lowering processing overhead. Same thing with audio. It's just that it hasn't really been taken very seriously in the past.

When Marathon came out, it had "ambient sounds" that changed as you moved in relation to their source. They were also in stereo. (these were new, no other fps had it) Sound effects from map features, weapons, and ordinance were adapted based on distance from you and were also in stereo. Sadly, lery little has changed since then.

In other words, it's ok to place this directly agains the wall, because the shape ensures it cannot be placed agains the wall. Well done.

That's actually completely accurate. Towers do tend to get placed under desks, or more commonly, in a corner where the desk meets the wall. Ventillatoin back there is crap, and the system overheats. So rather than make another case that will just generate a lot more support calls and broken harware in warranty, they just made it physically impossible to keep installing it like retard.

y'know... for their retarded customers ;)

Knowing your customer is key to a successful business.

But all sarcasm aside, I do like the new design. I'm a mac fan but I can see some thought went into this both for functionality and for original and interesting design. Even if they fail at both, at least they're trying. It's not just another boring beige / black box.

I think the biggest concern for me though would be how much floor space this is going to take up, plus how little or zero space there is to set anything on it. I don't even think you could set the keyboard aside on it without risking it falling over. And imagine the users setting drinks on top of it! At least with a box, if you knock your drink over, it's on the floor. HERE.... it can drain your entire soda into the mobo ports (back) or fan intake. (front) I think that will be the biggest problem this case has, getting users out of the habbit of setting things on top of their case.

Look at the top of any manned rocket. see that "mini rocket" looking thing strapped to the top? that's an "escape tower". It IS a mini rocket. if there's a catastrophic faulure on a rocket massive enough to go to the moon, you REALLY don't want it hitting dirt before it explodes. The cabin module separates from the top with explosive bolts, and the escape tower pulls them a distance away from the main rocket and after awhile a parachute goes off.

Probaby still a heck of a close call though, being so close to the rocket when it blows up. But you still have a chance.

lol they must have really screwed up for all three of them to be fired at once

My money's on "they asked for more pay for the next signing and couldn't reach an agreement". That will always boil down to some point between "you shouldn't have demanded more than you were worth" and "we probabably shouldn't have broken the cash cow's leg".

Only time will tell.

Making it should be illegal. Viewing it arguably does no additional harm

The best arguement made against that is that if you are a "supporting audience/consumer" of the "product", you are a part of the demand, which encourages the supply. Making viewing something like CP illegal doesn't proactively prevent the harm that has already occurred in the course of its production, but does give the perps less incentive to do it again, or others to get into the business.

In other words, people tend to stop performing when they don't have an audience. (some are in it for the benjamines, but others are simply content to have an audience) Law enforcement applying the above reasoning however definitely demonstrates that other means are proving insufficient or powerless to stop the original offense. Makes you consider alternate motives for the law, as though it was enacted due to the general frustration of law enforcement. Being unable to adequately stop the crime head-on, they're taking to trying to suffocate it out from the other end. Maybe a defensive strategy taken up by the politicians and police chiefs to deflect the criticisms of the public that is frustrated that their police are unable to stem the crime. "LOOK, we're doing *everything* we can!" (including arresting YOU because you're encouraging them!)

CP and terrorism are pretty different animals, but in the end, more viewers does encourage them. They'll both keep doing it even with no audience, but it's easy to show that a growing audience does encourage them. Specifically, terrorism has little point when there's no audience to terrorize.

So you're saying you lied and didn't actually get a notice the first time?

Basically. (in those cases, there was a notice the first time, but he completely blew it off, so I told him it was now required before it actually WAS) I really don't like having to do that, but I had so much experience with him on these sorts of issues. We'd get plenty of warning, often six months or more, that we were going to need to be doing something a specific way or do an extra step. No amount of poking or prodding would motivate him to get practices changed, until the day the hammer fell. Things would go down hard for days, and be very spotty for the next 3-5 weeks, while staff dragged their cans refusing to do the additional work. (despite the problems, said manager refused to put much crack in the whip, even after it was manditory) He'd just whine and moan about unfair this all was and how unreasonable, and how they should have given us more warning etc etc. I'd spend 1-2 hrs a day on the phone trying to shimmy things through that weren't done right.

The only solution was to translate the "we'd like you to start doing.." into "you need to do this, starting today". Then he could spend the next three months actually working to get the staff to change their procedures, getting close to 100% when it actually became manditory. Then, the odd 3-5% of non-compliance that remained could be managed without creating significant business impact.

Don't think I just went ahead with this as a kneejerk reaction. This was the only remaining solution after everything else practical had been tried. He simply didn't want to change his ways.

Nonetheless, as an engineer, I've had to prove beyond any doubt that a certain problem existed to get business people to move on it. So I think there's another layer there: If the evidence goes against the businessperson's gut, it needs to be 100% iron-clad.

"translating for your listener" sometimes requires an even more aggessive approach. Me: "I just got a notice, we need to start doing XYZ immediately". Boss: "That's a pain in the ass." Me: "It's manditory." Boss: (piss/moan/grumble) "I didn't read anything about that, you sure?" Me: "Positive. Starts today. Make sure everyone's doing it, 100% of the time."

Two months pass, during which reliability of actually doing XYZ goes slowly from 2% to 95%. Boss: "I just got a note on XYZ, you were right, the memo says it's manditory. I must have missed the first notice". Me: "ayup."

I had to play that specific game with him on numerous occasions because he expressed so little authority over the staff when things needed to change. Saved our company enormous non-compliance headaches. I don't especially like it when I have to do that, but part of my job is making things happen, on schedule, so it's sometimes necessary to "plan ahead" a little bit to compensate for lag (due to bad management) on the back end.

for downloading firefox on a new windows install

Or clean it with fire. Put it in a red hot flame and it should clean right up.

Take a (dirty?) pad of real steel wool outside with a box of matches and "clean" it with fire. Report back.

I guarantee you we will be very interested to read your followup. (be sure you are in the open over some concrete)

Cleaning it will only be a problem if the product is soft. If it can support being hit with 90PSI air without bending at all it will be easy to clean. Depending on the type of copper used it should sustain 90PSI very easily.

The hardness of the structure can be many times lower than the hardness of the material when you're talking turning it into FOAM. Compare the hardness of steel wool and steel.

If this is anything like I'm envisioning, you could probably take a 3" block of the stuff and step on it and crush it down to about 1/4-1/8". And unlike traditional material foam, this stuff isn't going to spring back.

Even if it can survive the blast of air, it may just serve to drive the particles deeper into the block. A filter has to be thin or very porous to insure air pressure can drive most of the trapped materials out.

I'm betting the best way to deal with dust/dirt in this case is to simply filter the air very well. Very fine dust should be removable with air, but you don't want anything at or above large dust particle size getting into that foam or you'll never get it out.

The minimum wage around here nets you $1492 a month before tax and the average apartment costs nearly $1300

If you're making minimum wage and trying to live in your own apartment without roommates or gf/bf, you are an idiot. I can't even think of anyone I've known recently that's been naive enough to try to make that work. Two roommates and scratching for a job above minimum wage is the most common formula I see people use to build up momentum for independence. At that point even at minimum wage everyone can start accumulating some savings fairly quickly.

That usually evolves into just gf/bf small apartments for awhile, then on to a larger apartment, or renting/buying a starter house, as both find better jobs.

Also your 1300/mo apartment cost does vary from place to place, it's quite a bit cheaper here, $650 easily gets you 2 bedroom if you're not too picky, and minimum wage isn't lower here. If you're just getting started and on minimum wage, where the cost of living is high, roommates or moving to lower cost-of-living is essentail. None of this is difficult if you just use your head and don't get stupid or unreasonable.

They've been pursuing the dream of one windows to rule them all since the days when

No, not really. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

When you decide it's time to "unify" a single product, clearly you've made a serious, long-running mistake.

Having a dozen different versions of a single product is just a short-term way to milk a few more dimes out of your customers, and has a pretty severe long-term cost. It's most lucritive in software though, because it doesn't cost a penny more to manufacture the $300 version than the $100 version once you're finished with development. If it were a car for example, that leather interior is going to cost more to produce. But those "better bits" are free to produce. So it's creme, pure profit.

And eventually the customers get pissed. Which is OK if your'e not in it for the long haul. Which unfortunately is what Windows is. Bad match.

Raising the minimum wage doesn't cost jobs any more than inflation creates jobs.

It's a never-ending cat-and-mouse in a freemarket. Wherever they happen to be at this moment in the game, it reqiures the same people to play it.

Govt raises minimum wage. Consumer prices go up. Rinse, repeat, forever. Consumer prices are going to go up due to greed (as well as increases in minimum wage) so raising the minimum wage occasionally to offset it is necessary, even though it contributes to its own need.

Since the only way to offset inflation in a free market is to raise the minimum wage, it cannot be considered as a method to slow it. It's all just a shell game, aimed at trying to food the greedy into being less greedy, by doing things like lowering federal interest rates etc. They'll never stop it, all you can do is hope to keep its pace slow so you don't have runaway inflation. But it's a difficult act to balance, because retarding inflation tends to slow the economy.

Lower prices "leave a trail of blood in our balance sheet" according to Bernhard Guenther, CFO at RWE, Germany's biggest power producer

Sounds to me like "our production costs are so close to our competition's retail price, we're having trouble staying in business, pity us!"

No, this is not something for me to pity, and it most certainly isn't my problem to help you solve. You need to innovate and improve efficiency of your business, or close your doors. We don't do the "buggy whip" thing anymore. And your existence isn't critical enough to justufy subsdies/handouts. Innovate or die. (quietly if possible)