I can think of a great many times driving larger vehicles: Vans, F-150, Box trucks, or even the Ranger heavily loaded where I would have loved to have had a backup camera and not just depend on the extended mirrors and circular mirrors I had installed. You have enough going on driving a larger vehicle, and people to asinine things like stand and work in front of the loading dock as you are backing in or end up so distracted from their cell phones that they stand in the path of large vehicles trying to back up. Its not just kids, but kids are probably going to be the main beneficiaries of this policy.

Except they never make doomsday apostrophe films!

If you can't keep people from using their mobile phones in church with the lingering threat of eternal hellfire, you wont keep them from using them on a plane either. The bathroom cue will just grow longer.

http://mobile.slashdot.org/sto...

Being from St Louis, Missouri - I have to agree. I have Z-chains if I need them because I have a RWD pickup with a big engine and it sucks in the snow even with M+S tires, but this past snow of 12" with -15F temperatures was the first time I have had to put them on in a couple years. I remember being in Florida one year when it snowed maybe 1", and there were tons of wrecks from that. People don't have M+S tires down there, and aside from the snowbirds they don't know how to drive in it. That definitely contributes, but I suspect the real problem was something more typical of the south.

I suspect the real problem for Atlanta, and for much of the south isn't snow as much as it is freezing rain leaving a layer of ice on everything. It wasn't the snow that shut things down, it was the transition where it laid a layer of ice on everything first, and they had not treated their roads in any meaningful way in preparation for it. If you have a sheet of ice to drive on, that is much much worse than snow.

Probably far more lives are ruined due to their illegality than if we simply had stopped at the pure food and drug act, and left it at that.

At least 95% of ATM's are not running OS/2 (which used to be the case not very long ago). Most of the ATM's using XP at least have an upgrade path to Windows 7. That said, it would not surprise me that 6 months months down the line
if 30-50% of ATM's are still running Windows XP. Many of them will buy extended support from someone if it is offered, but I am s, but I am also certain many will just roll the dice until an exploit comes along that actually effects their systems/netorks.

I think the bigger problem is all of the point of sale systems that run XP. Many of those will not get upgraded until they are no longer functional!

Meh.. I clicked the wrong setting moderating. Only way to undo it was to post! I thought AC's post was funny!

The reason muggings are down is because most states got serious about prosecuting muggers with rather nasty penalties. 10 year MANDATORY sentence in most states, tack on another 3 for armed criminal action, and the top end is life without the possibility of parole with an average of 23 years handed out. Plus prosecutors still have the option of going federal with any gun crime to tack on 5 years of federal time.

Muggers and armed robbers typically have a very short career.

I'm more concerned with doctors being able to find medical records from other doctors. You see one quack and get a misdiagnosis, and it can haunt you for years to come. With electronic records, almost all of the hospitals are linked here, and a simple search turns up everything. Its impossible to correct things in your medical files as well. All you can do is add a statement to them.

I have witnessed a good officer let go for what I would consider an unjust cause. The officer in question didn't get with the new commanders special forces background, and wasn't hip to the SWAT style tactics that he brought with him. He was the kind of officer that used conversation to defuse dangerous situations rather than force. He was decorated twice for doing just that, defusing two hostage standoffs at great personal risk. The new boss took a minor complaint and went hog wild with it even though he knew there was never any racial animus in the officer. The police officer had no trouble finding another job with another department, but they let him go just before he became eligible for a better pension at retirement.

I have neurosarcoidosis; it is a degenerative autoimmune condition. Like many others with NS, many people with multiple sclerosis, everyone with macular degeneration, many with Lupus, and even some with conditions most do not associate with light sensitivity such as rheumatoid arthritis -- I am highly sensitive to certain spectrums of light. With Lupus, and NS there are often issues with natural sunlight as well. I have special glasses that filter out parts of the blue spectrum, IR, UV, and most the red spectrum. They are similar to shooters glasses, but about 5x as expensive due to the IR coating requirement still being limited to NOIR. Some of you who work with higher powered lasers are probably familiar with NOIR. Lowbluelights is another company that makes specialty filters for things like smart phone screens, and has a few (but expensive) LED fixtures for those of us with special frequency needs.

Right now I can buy amber incandescent lights for $120 for a case of 40. I can buy a single 7w low-blue LED for $35... In terms of dollars its going to be an expensive proposition when I can't buy incandescent bulbs anymore, even if I have to shell out more for amber bulbs as it is.

  There is one maker of laptops that will work with people with custom needs, and that is Toshiba. They were willing to put in custom LEDs in my laptop to make it tolerable when they learned it was a disabilities issue. I wish Toshiba was as accommodating for TV's and computer monitors with the same issue (in fairness I haven't tried to get a custom back lighting TV from them yet, but I did try to purchase custom back lighting monitors from them without success.) I had to void the warranty on both of my ASUS monitors to get the back lighting correct as ASUS was not any more accommodating. The custom frequency LEDs exist (although they still tend to emit IR), but the demand isn't enough for the big makers to notice the need yet.

The challenges can be overcome switching to LEDs, but its not going to be cheap for those of us with needs for non-blue, no UV, and no-IR lighting. The market is at least two million people who have conditions like myself that benefit from them. People don't realize that the issue also includes: smart phones, tvs, monitors, laptops, flashlights, and light fixtures. I wish some of the larger appliance makers would wake up to the issue and I could just go buy a TV without having to make a parts swap. There is a growing body of evidence that it might be in everyone's interest to demand LEDs in those nicer frequency ranges: http://www.livescience.com/31949-led-lights-eye-damage.html

I'm law abiding for the most part, but I wouldn't be volunteering for this. 1) I have to take opiate pain medicines to be function 2) I don't want my DNA in a database somewhere. It was bad enough to have to be fingerprinted by the police for my occupation - and who knows what agencies have access to that data now. Why I voluntarily hand over DNA, and face a potential DUI for medicines that are about as impairing to me as you missing your first cup of coffee, but would likely make you unconscious in short order?

The cutoffs they have in place would likely mark me a drugged and impaired driver -- even though I could pass any type of "impairment" test that I am physically able.

Those two weeks are cool though watching the water bead up, and then quickly slide up the windshield.

That reminds me of my favorite family of lottery winners. They won just shy of Th 40 million dollars. Did they buy a house? No! A new boat? No! They bought a Bentley! Of course, the entire family are raging alcoholics and no one had a license to drive anymore. So they just have the courier drive to the liquor store for them. They still drink the same cheap swill beer they did before they wont the lottery.

They have a really nice Bentley, and someday when one of them actually completes SATOP successfully they will get to drive it again.