Speed cameras are bad because the speed people drive is determined not by the law, but by the speed other people drive.

It is collective reasoning that decides how fast people drive.

That's why when you're driving down I-280 the speed limit is 65 but everyone drives 80.

If you put speed traps all up and down I-280 it's not going to slow people down, it's just going to punish poor people who are driving the same speed as wealthy people.

"...a nonprofit scientific and educational organization funded by the insurance industry."

Sounds legit.

Mostly managers complain about open floor plans because they have to actually prove that they have an entire day's worth of work to do and justify their salary.

Hi, former Comcast support representative here.

Those cards do nothing, they're just placebos.

You dial the support number and punch in the code, and the switch drops you right into the same queue with everyone else.

At the call center we called them "idiot cards" because you'd have to be one to think they were any benefit to you.

We usually handed them out ironically to the least deserving customers.

Another problem is that response goes way down when you get close to the bezel. I have a touchscreen monitor that uses this technology that I can't use with Windows because I can't drag in from the screen edges.

As Doc Martin once said "it's the thin end of the wedge."

Now that terrorists have successfully prevented a movie release with threats of "911-like attacks," everything they want done will be done using that threat as the basis.

This is a simple case of knowledge as power.

Telling people they shouldn't use software to avoid freeway traffic is like telling black slaves they can't read because they might learn what it's like to have a life outside the plantation.

Knowledge exists whether or not you want it to and you can't force ignorance.

If someone discovers a way to improve their life in a way that is perfectly legal and legitimate, such as driving down a street in front of your house, you have no right to complain.

Microsoft has intentionally made their mobile devices expire after a few years.

They have done it with every iteration of their mobile platform from Windows CE all the way to Windows Phone.

It works like this:

1. Buy our new mobile device! It's amazing! It does everything and we'll support it forever and ever, we promise! It's okay, go ahead and put all of your contacts and data on our devices. What could possibly go wrong?

2. New generation of our mobile platform is out! Buy our mobile devices! It's amazing! Oh and also we're dropping support for existing devices tomorrow and closing the app store. You will never receive another software update and your old device is now a brick. But new platform!

They did this with Windows CE, Windows Mobile 1 through 6 and they'll do it with Windows Phone.

They even had a phone that was entirely cloud based in Europe and when they shuttered the cloud service the device literally refused to boot.

Beer is rotten barley water.

Beer was invented to create a use for grain that had sat too long and gone off.

It's been a successful marketing ploy for hundreds of years.

Former comcast employee and Business Class customer here. They tell you that you have to use their modem so they can market VOIP phone service to you once it's installed. You can use any modem you want as long as it supports DOCSIS3. Go buy any DOCSIS3 modem and plug it in, then call them and tell them you want a modem swap.

What an astounding surprise that voting machines malfunction so frequently.

That's totally not what I would expect from the US government.

Notice that widescreen monitors became popular right about the time televisions and monitors started being advertised by their diagonal dimension.

By that measure if you have a monitor that is 1 inch tall and 50 inches wide you would have a 50-inch monitor.

I don't know why it's 2014 and error messages still don't just tell you what the actual problem is.

Why not have the error say:

"The application that displays the navigation bar stopped because of an error it couldn't recover from. I will now restart it. [OK]"

Because restarting it is the only action that could possibly be taken.

It doesn't make sense to tell the user that "system UI has stopped." The user doesn't care that "system UI has stopped." The user wants to know what the problem it is and have the only logical action taken for them.

Saying that "system UI has stopped" and waiting for the user to perform some action breaks one of the fundamental principles of software design: Never make the user do something the software can do for them.

You don't see many IT professionals hanging out in front of the Home Depot.

I'm just saying.

A single closed-source executable from a German organization claiming to have the support of Amnesty International.

Seems legit.