The richness needed to drive one also makes it so that people who own Vipers are less likely to be ticketed for a multitude of reasons (including but not limited to the overlap between race and wealth, and the areas where rich people live), so their speeding wouldn't show up in infraction statistics at the same rate as others.

The change to the current system was relatively minor - it was still highly usable, even though it was different. The beta site in its original state, though, was very much less usable than the current incarnation of /. . Looking it over now, it seems like they listened to what people were saying, and changed comments for the better. At least in my view, the atrocious comment layout was the main problem with beta, with some of the other information density weirdness coming in just behind it.

I think you missed the point. The OP said his job paid $5,000 and he's used 4 other printers, 3 of which cost under $1,000. A $40,000 printer is absolutely irrelevant to the thread,

Billing addresses are a thing, you know. They use it as verification.

You reason is entirely valid IMO - you bought the game, and it didn't work under WINE. This guy is saying straight up he doesn't want to buy it because the sellers asking for basic information, and specifically, that they're doing a job that protects both the credit card company (they're liable for fraud, at least here) and himself (since if they're liable for fraud, they need to raise rates to compensate). Those are two entirely different leagues, and comparing them as if they're equal is disingenuous.

I can think of one. Townships and cities may not be able to place any solar panels at all besides on top of government buildings and roads. There's not some massive usable field in New York City that you can just toss a bunch of solar panels on, and that situation pretty much extends the entire way to my township nearly 40 miles away contiguously. Even in my town, it's not really possible.

I'm pretty sure "viable" doesn't necessarily mean "viable in every locale on planet Earth" - New Mexico might be able to do it while Minnesota may not be able to - that doesn't mean the technology is a wholesale failure.

I'm also pretty sure that indiegogo isn't an ideal way to fund it, but otherwise, it likely wouldn't get funding due to entrenched interests, so I'm all for it.

"Your is totally terrible, look at this one" - links to a $40,000 printer.

You need to give them your name and address anyway for a credit card transaction, and you were being subject to fraud prevention. That's an excuse to pirate, not a reason.

I see that as the main use for automatic driving in the near future anyway. Going around the corner to the grocery store? No big deal, just drive it. Taking a road trip from NYC to Florida, or a commute from the suburbs into your local major city? Set it to autopilot and go, take control once you're in the ballpark of your destination. You're still going to need a license to use one of these for a long while, so that kind of limitation isn't crippling.

Um, aren't literally all of their search ads above the search results? Why should they exclude their services from advertising in the same exact spot as everyone else who would be buying ads?

That's just not true. There are sub-launched ICBMs. The definition doesn't require that they're launched from land, just that they have a very long range (5k+ miles or so) and are primarily designed to deliver nuclear warheads.

That's just not true. AT&T's monopoly already existed when the government agreed to let them be a monopoly. The government was investigating them for antitrust violations, and then agreed to stop their investigation in exchange for them doing a few specific things, like requiring them to allow independent networks to connect to theirs in relatively limited circumstances.

Also, it was 1913, not the 30's, when this happened. Over the subsequent decades, the federal government basically gave AT&T everything they wanted - they approved 271 out of 274 buyouts of independent companies between 1921 and 1934, the government did not require them to interconnect their local services to independent local services, they did not require AT&T to interconnect with other long distance providers, and more.

That's the exact opposite of "heavy handed regulation" - that's the government rolling over to everything a corporation wanted.

Not at all. It's absolutely not OK. But even if we do everything we can to lower those numbers, unless it's at effectively zero, there will always be more incidents in NYC than (insert random town whose population is an order of magnitude or more lower than a rounding error compared to NYC's).

Of course it happens more frequently in NYC than elsewhere. It's a city with 8.4 million people, and 35,000 cops. The number of cops alone is larger than most towns. As an example, Ferguson, MO is only 21,000 people - there's 14,000 more cops alone in NYC, plus another 8.4 million people. Ferguson's entire population is literally a fucking rounding error relative to NYC's population.