dead red laws

I see Virginia is listed. I wish there had been such a thing back in the 80s. I sat for what seemed like 5 minutes on rt. 50, waiting for a left turn arrow. It was mid-day so there was very little traffic (it's a parking lot during rush). I had at least 1/4 mile line of sight, maybe more. I honestly thought the signal was broken, and that's what I told the cop who was either behind me or camped under a tree where I didn't see him. There was no arguing on the spot, and it's the only time I ever went to traffic court, where the excuse didn't fly either. But hey, at least the 70 year old half-blind lady who caused an accident got to keep their license. I learned a lot of lessons that day.

To this day, I also wonder if that cop was dicking with the signals to make his quota.

You're attributing far too much value and putting far too much importance on money.

Police offices can be hospitalized for even minor injuries, largely because of liability concerns. Just because they're in a hospital doesn't mean they had limbs amputated or third degree burns or severe trauma or some such. It could very well have been whiplash or cuts and bruises or smoke inhalation or even concussion-like symptoms.

Michael Bay will get the movie rights.

Always go in with a well considered plan, and be there when it happens.

Even if your planning is awesome, you'll look unprofessional not being in a position to fix a problem when it is most likely to occur.

If something does happen, and your not there.. There will be crankiness.

Alternatively (or in addition), we could increase the penalties for those caught cheating.

FYI, cheating like this is already a guaranteed career-ender. People who do things like this aren't rationally weighing the cost of getting caught against the career advancement that comes from publishing; they simply don't expect to get caught.

Depending on how specific their criteria, and how high they set the detection thresholds, the following people could be in for serious grief:

1) Gardeners and farmers - (nitrate compounds from fertilizer, + fuel oil from any of a dozen sources)
2) Painters, mechanics, people with Zippo lighters, people who use hand sanitizer, people who gas up their own vehicles - (flammable solvents)
3) Anyone who handles paper money (cocaine)

They'd be better off doing genetic research to figure out how to give us all the olfactory capabilities of blood hounds. Then none of us would have any secrets from each other. Of course, the ass-sniffing thing would get old pretty fast.

Maybe at some point we'll regard this thing as being on a continuum from mis-folded proteins to intelligent life such as whales. In the meantime, people will argue about whether or not it's really a virus.

I had no trouble reading the sarcasm. I have a silver-braided VGA cable with platinum contacts.

My thoughts exactly. A discussion of the merits of add-on vs built-in sound hardware is worthwhile on its own terms; but basing the discussion on a specific add-on card, with the flimsy excuse of one company's 25th anniversary, strikes me as blatant shilling.

Business search is sadly broken in many ways. Whenever I google for a service that I actually need, there are dozens upon dozens of sites at the top of the results. No doubt they're all SEO'd there. When you follow the links, what do you get? A boiler-plate script along the lines of $foo is an experienced contractor in $bar who serves the $locality area. In fact, he does nothing of the sort if he even exists.

The surveillatizing industry does a fantastic job of tracking us and shoving shit-ads at us for stuff we don't want.

And yet, when I'm searching for a service that I ACTUALLY WANT TO PAY FOR, I have to deal with all this dreck.

I figure it must be click-bait, since I've clicked on it because it's misleading. I have a couple ad-blocking methods running concurrently, so I almost never see 3rd party ads there; but I can't imagine what other motive there would be to provide absolutely useless boilerplate like that.

BTW, I guess you could extend this out even further to say that many things other than searching for a business are broken by click-baiters.

Take any question, really. "Who won the 1950 World Series". And although I haven't tested this yet, I'm willing to wager somebody has a site out there that will tell you something like, "The 1950 World Series is available on eBay. Click here to learn more about 1950 World Series products, etc..."

The AI that does this shit is usually pretty smart, but sometimes you get gems like, "The best cleaning products for your World Series".

FTA:

"I'll be explaining today why emergency legislation is needed to maintain powers to help keep us safe from those who would harm UK citizens."

— David Cameron

No need to explain, David. We all know this is just another excuse for more power-hoarding privacy invasion, and that "those who would harm UK citizens" are in fact you and your masters. Kindly stop pretending and man up. The only "emergency" here is the fear fantasy you're manufacturing and trying to get UK citizens to swallow.

Uh... I put that there. And, hey - thanks for all the money!

This business of the developers not knowing how it works. It reminds me of the question "How can God create a being that sins. Doesn't that make Him responsible?". One way to answer that is that God withdraws his authority within the a locus that we call the "soul". What happens there isn't his action. This implies that while knowingly taking actions that lead to wrong is immoral, withdrawing your power from a particular locus and opening things up to potential wrongs is not immoral.

It has nothing to do with intelligence though. The "soul" could be as dumb as a post.

The AC system expels hot air through a small thermal exhaust port, about 2m wide. In order to access it, we'll have to drive really fast down Main St.