I'm confused. The entire purpose of an archive database is to KEEP things, forever, so you can go back to them when you need to. If you have files that you expect to delete, maybe they shouldn't be going into the database.

You may have missed the word, "volunteer". Maybe they can't add staff. If there's only one staffer at a time, then one-at-a-time is the only way.

Many supermarkets in New York City do this, partly because they have limited physical space for people to wait in front of each register. In turn, it allows registers to be packed closer together, potentially meaning more registers at peak time.

My apologies if it seems I'm duplicating the post "Name" saying "Drone or RPV?". These things are not autonomous drones; they are actively controlled by people. There is no ATC of the things in the air; it's all about the various people wherever they happen to be on the ground.

There's a park near us where people fly RC planes. Fun to watch, and people keep them over the park, and there's no question they're controlled. The first time someone put up a multi-rotor, though, someone asked, "Is that a drone? Can it go by itself?" No. It's an RC plane just like everything else. And if you keep it over the open land in the park, and stay away from people's windows, you'll be fine.

Second the motion. My wife and I were in the wedding party of a dual wedding - two brothers marrying two sisters - held at a college chapel with the reception being a backyard open house (the mothers were both great cooks), with well over 200 friends, relatives, classmates, and random neighbors. Both couples still married 35+ years later. It's about the sort of people who have a large social circle.

Are you thinking of Larry Niven's "Safe at any speed"? in which the car gets eaten by a roc? "Your car is perfectly safe, provided it was built later than 3100 A.D." http://bookre.org/reader?file=...

Yes. And maybe some people think it was *great* that their parents hit them with a belt, and it's *right* that plebes and pledges should be abused. OTOH maybe some people reach for other old behavior models like "chivalry", and feel that the world would be nicer if more did. One can disagree vehemently without threatening personal injury; one can be blunt and truthful about pointing out error without being an a**hole. Poor behavior is not harmless. The fact that we can't do much about it should not lead us to accept or encourage it.

Of course, they're the main ingredient in Soylent Green!

Different shapes in our iconography and languages turn out to be influenced by the True Shapes, as our world is but a shadow of the True Realm.

But where are the curves? Where are the non-right-angles (mustn't forget the pyramids)? Perhaps it's all a question of which True Shapes visited our world, like Babylon 5's explanation of all our religions as a proxy war between the law-and-order Vorlons and the what-do-you-want Shadows. (As opposed to Stargate's "chariots of the gods" theme of a proxy war between . . . other aliens.) Or maybe it's about how shadows falling on Earth's curved surface become non-Euclidean (what Tetris shape gives a shadow like a yin-yang symbol? Hmm . .)

With ticket numbers being assigned by the register / receipt printer, they could be successive Fibonacci numbers or whatever else people want.

Well, there you go, I can hear the baristas calling "Free Man" every few orders . . . .

Wasn't there a magazine article years ago suggesting that one should never make restaurant reservations under one's real name? Instead, use a name appropriate to the cuisine of the restaurant - or, if traveling, the local language. It's more likely to be recognized, and may get you more karma points in advance.

One of the earliest episodes involving Captain Sheridan involves Starfuries rotating around their axes while translating (moving) in a different direction, so Sheridan can look "backward" https://www.youtube.com/watch?.... White Stars similarly rotate into position to strafe a "cut" along the length of their target (again while translating in a direction at 90 degrees to the direction they are facing and aiming). Except they also swooped around in curves that only work with aerodynamics, and often did both swooping and realistic-physics moves in the same battle. ;-) Gotta allow for the expectations of the audience. :-) :-)

After the first few deliberate shockers, I came to the conclusion that GRRM is saving time on role-playing the story, and just rolling dice every so often. The reason it's taking so long for the next book is that he's been accepting deliveries from Chessex by the container-load, and he can't roll them all any more.

OTOH Come to the United States, where people in more populous states and cities find that their "one person one vote" is worth a lot less in the Presidential election thanks to (1) rounding error in dividing population into congressional districts, and (2) equal representation in the Senate meaning that states with low population get huge percentage bonuses in the electoral count. The 11 most populous states get one electoral vote per 600K+ people; since the lower limit on electoral votes per state is 3, the three LEAST populous states get one electoral vote per 200K people - in other words, their individual votes count THREE TIMES AS MUCH as mine in the final electoral tally.