Comment Re:Um.... (Score 2) 120
Considering how many doctors used to inoculate for smallpox, a lot. There's probably envelopes containing spores in old collections. Hope they're dead.
Considering how many doctors used to inoculate for smallpox, a lot. There's probably envelopes containing spores in old collections. Hope they're dead.
Android 4.x devices like the Nexus 7 don't have a dedicated menu button. And in this copy of Google Maps, there's no "tricolon" button where the overflow menu is supposed to be.
https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/6054498?p=maps_android_tips_tricks&hl=en&rd=2
The first thing that came up on my phone for this? "Popular tip: View maps offline." I got to it from within Maps by opening the menu off to the left side and hitting "Tips and Tricks" down at the bottom.
(This was on a Moto X running Android 4.4. YMMV.)
Usually when there is surge pricing, I just use Uber to hail a normal taxi (in cities where this is possible). With a normal taxi, you pay a small fee to Uber, but otherwise the rate is straight-meter. Of course, that still won't help if literally every taxi is full, but it gets you better odds than simply standing on a single street corner and waving your hand.
Every other city I have used it in, UberX was at a fair discount to a regular taxi...after all, why would you hop a ride in some random person's car (whom you will have to provide with directions because they don't know the city) if it costs more than an actual taxi service? The only thing more expensive was the black car (limo) service.
Except for the ones that go off about teh gheys as they point to Leviticus.
Yeah. That flag pretty much no longer flies over the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Last time I went into a court house, I was required to remove my belt. Somehow, the US made it through a foreign invasion, a Civil War, WWI, WWII, the Cold War, and absolutely massive social upheaval without requiring people to remove clothing to enter into courts of law. But a few jackasses drive airplanes into some buildings and it's goodbye liberty, hello 'safety'. This 100% safe nonsense is destroying the Republic. We are less safe than ever and we have done it to ourselves. Government is the problem with our security, not to the solution to it
Of course, if people driving straight blow through the yellow and start of the red, then the turners have no time, and even those that were already in the intersection end up not being able to complete their turns until the other lights have already turned green.
Dedicated turn signals would alleviate the problem...but in pedestrian areas, they just produce new problems. Almost every time I go to lunch, I pass an intersection where there is a dedicated left turn and a lot of tourists--there is a Don't Walk sign, but often pedestrians start walking as soon as the traffic lights change (anticipating the Walk sign, not realizing there will be a turn signal)...leading to the turning cars not being able to clear the intersection and slamming on their horns. Then some of the pedestrians decide to stop in the intersection and give the cars the finger (some of them realize that they were wrong and hurry out of the way). Then the traffic lights change for the straight traffic, and oncoming cars start honking at the turning cars who are now blocking traffic...and the Walk sign turns on, so more pedestrians start walking and blocking the turning cars from being able to go...BAM! Gridlock.
It is literally saying, if you don't agree to this contract, you don't get the things that this contract says you get. It is like the guy at subway saying "If you don't give me $5, you can't have that sandwich". It's not duress until you say you don't really want the sandwich and the guy says "And if you don't want to buy the sandwich, I am going to beat your face in"
Duress is something that is not part of the contract that is being used to force you to sign the contract. The judge isn't going to uphold a contract that says "we won't kill you if you have signed this"...but they might uphold a contract that omits the death threat if you can't provide any proof of the threat. Some none-violent duress might be if your wife also worked for the company and they said "If you don't sign this, not only will you not get the job, but we are going to fire your wife"
He takes the first appointment that they can get...and fails for some tiny mistake. There is a wait-time after failing the test, so he actually has to start the trip late because of some tiny, tiny infraction (my recollection is that he didn't turn is head quite far enough to check if a corner was clear).
That would never happen in the US. I knew plenty of people in high school who hit the cones while parallel parking and still passed (probably explains all of the asshats I see in the city whose parallel parking technique involves damaging other people's expensive property). You should not be able to pass a driving test in which you made physical contact with something that is representative of another car.
A lot of kids would schedule their test at the nearby facility...and make an appointment for a week later at a testing facility that was further away but known for being easier (didn't have any one-way streets on the test...). If you fail, you just go take an easier test a week later and hope you pass.
Not sure what happened after the second time....but I don't think there were ever additional education requirements.
But there are large masses of people who can't drive safely (or often, such as with texters, can...but won't). Who is going to tell those people they can't drive? What alternatives are you going to offer them? That's a one-way ticket to a lost reelection campaign. You are going to tell all of the old people that they need to renew their licenses so they won't vote for you. You are going to make it hard for all the young people who manage to "Get Out The Vote" so they won't vote for you. And you will fail all of the idiots...so while they didn't vote at all in the last election, they are going to show up just to vote against you.
It sucks...but how do we fix it? There are large swaths of people who can't even be convinced that staring at and typing on a phone instead of focusing on the road is a bad idea. If something as obvious as actually looking at the road is too much to ask for from some people, then driverless cars really are the only answer that is going to work in this country.
Songza forces you into the "radio" model where you can't actually pick songs...but it has a wider playlist variety. For instance, you can choose "Music for Working in an Office". From there you have a five choices like "Indie Music That's Not Too Weird" or "Easy, Breezy Summer Songs". Each of those has a few more choices underneath it--Under the Indie category, you get "Songs From Apple Commercials", "Mainstream Indie", and "Sunshine Indie Pop". This is a lot more than you get from Spotify. So you lose the direct song-level access, but you can really find playlists that fit what you want.
Its a good idea though. I've certainly tried to curate pandora/spotify radio playlists in a similar way, such as trying to create something that resembles a "Happy Summer" station rather than a "Sounds like XYZ Band" station. My guess is that Google will try to integrate it into their own Spotify competitor (Play Music). Works for them in two ways: enhances features for the paid service and attracts free songza users to the paid service (Want direct track control? Want to hear this whole album? Try Google Play Music free for 30 days)
The basic idea behind non-countdown lights works pretty well if people actually follow it. Figure out how long it takes someone to walk across the street. Lets say it takes 30 seconds. Then, when the light goes green, you display the walk sign until 30 seconds before the light changes at which point you switch to a blinking don't walk. Blinking "Don't Walk" already means "You may finish crossing, but do not enter the intersection if you have not started".
The problem is that people don't listen. The traffic engineer has told them "You probably don't have enough time now" but they still enter the intersection. So now we give them a countdown hoping they will agree with the traffic engineer and decide they don't have enough time...Sure, if the countdown says "1" then they won't cross, but if it says "10", they are going to run into the intersection thinking they have enough time. Combine those people running into the intersection late with the drivers who see they only have 10 seconds left to make a turn through the light...and you are going to get accidents.
One way to make your old car run better is to look up the price of a new model.