Carriage laws in the US prevent a ticket price from being changed after it is purchased. This includes canceling the ticket because of the price it was issued at (because this is effectively the same as changing the price of the ticket since the consumer would have to repurchase it). You'll notice that Delta's carriage policy specifically outlines that they will never sell a ticket for $0 so they can excluded it. Since they can't state this for any other fare price, they can't exclude it and it falls under the general carriage policy. http://www.delta.com/content/dam/delta-www/pdfs/legal/contract_of_carriage_dom.pdf It would be different if, say, Kayak or Expedia screwed up and gave the wrong ticket price... but since this was on the carriers website and they are dealing directly with the customer, they are SoL.

Aluminum is a perfectly sound material as long as it's used correctly. It's been used in aircraft, rockets and other vehicles that take stresses far beyond what you will ever do to your truck. Flying may seem like it doesn't generate much stress but the loads on a 747 or A380 when they are landing are tremendous. The regular compression/decompression cycles that a plane goes through when going from ground level to altitude are also impressive when you look at the numbers. The fact that we consider it so commonplace is a testimony to how durable aluminum is. The average person is shocked when they see the thickness of the tubing used in bicycles, including downhill mountain bikes which take one hell of a beating.

But this is all contingent on how the aluminum is employed. If they have good, experienced engineers then this can only end well (I'd love to have a truck that didn't rust).

The simplest, and most effective way to get what you want is to prove that your staffing approach will save man hours/time/money. That is your only effective recourse. If you can't do this you are SOL.

I'm actually speaking from experience. I live in NYC and last year during Sandy we ran into many of the problems you describe. Business and Individuals in areas that still had power were setting out extension cords and power strips for people to recharge their phones. Mobile generators can be used for the same purpose (and growing up in Texas it was my experience that most people in isolated rural areas either already have a portable generator or know someone close by that does).

The situation you described in Rio and Sao Paulo is not unique to cell phones. POTs systems have a limit on how many calls they can support as well, the dreaded "all circuits are busy message" here in the states. The reason POTs lines are less susceptible to that now is that fewer people are using them so it doesn't happen as often. A common solution to this is to tell people just to text instead of making calls, that helps reduce the load on the cellular infrastructure.

1. If a hurricane/tornado/earthquake/what-have-you destroys your POTS infrastructure, it can take weeks or months to rebuild it. You can restore cell service in matter of hours with a mobile cell site.
2. The same applies to your house. What good is a fixed, "simple" phone if your house isn't there any more?
3. One of the biggest issues when a disaster strikes is locating people. POTS doesn't do anything to help with this.

POTS was great but it's had it's time and we need to stop supporting it and move on newer technologies.

Or any of the former satellites of the CCCP for that matter. The authoritative list is here.

They've been asked to help fix ObamaCare.

For being almost impossible to completely uninstall.

No one was ever debating the need or value of the actual devices. The OP was referring to a market for image/video capture devices that encrypt the data. My response was to that perceived market for encrypting devices, not the market for image/video capture devices as a whole. Actually, my post was arguing that people want to post images/videos of themselves so I don't see how you could even infer that I was arguing that there was no market for video cameras.

No. There's not a substantial market for it. The market is for things that make it _easier_ for people to post every last second of their lives online (Facebook, Twitter, Vine, Instragram, Youtube, etc). The vast majority of the public will see encryption or anything else that interferes with instant narcissism as broken.

If you read the original study, you're comparing apples to bricks. From Recidivisim of Sex Offenders Released from Prison in 1994 (Langan, Schmitt, Durose)

Compared to non-sex offenders released from State prisons, released sex offenders were 4 times more likely to be rearrested for a sex crime. Within the first 3 years following their release from prison in 1994, 5.3% (517 of the 9,691) of released sex offenders were rearrested for a sex crime. The rate for the 262,420 released non-sex offenders was lower, 1.3% (3,328 of 262,420) So the rate of recidivism for the same crime is higher among sex offenders. The likelihood of being arrested for a different crime is lower (43% compared to 68%).

It should also be pointed out that all these stats are for the first three years after release only.

With that said, your point that recidivism is not a forgone conclusion as the stereotype suggests is correct, Wikipedia just made a hash of the stats.

The data centers are located downtown because that's where the banks and exchanges are. The banks and the exchanges originally built their data center close to them (this started in the 70's). Customers wanted to be as close to the servers as possible (and still do - high frequency trading) and it just kind of organically grew into what it is now. It also didn't hurt that AT&T and Verizon both have massive switch stations downtown and when these things were being built out high speed connections were not as easy to get as they are now.

The idea that requiring ID to vote some how disenfranchises legitimate and legal voters is asinine. The contention is that low-income and minority citizens won't have ID's and will be afraid to get them or can't afford them. You need an ID to even try to get a job, claim State or Federal benefits, cash payroll checks, open a checking account, etc.

The only legitimate complaint I can see is that they may not be able to afford an ID (currently $16 in Texas and for someone without a job that is a few meals). That's easy enough to fix... just make ID's free.

The joke here is that many of the countries that represent OSCE require voter ID's in their elections.(The article also mentions issues with gerrymandering... which is a problem but that's a problem in most states... Chicago pretty much wrote the book on this.)

What's driving all of this is the rampant fraud and abuse of the system by illegal immigrants in Texas. I recently read an article that was carrying on about how Texas was a "red"/republican state and but was taking more money from the Federal government than it was giving back. The article was implying that Texas voters were hypocritical in there beliefs. They're not. They are well aware that there is a huge drain on resources and social from illegal immigration. However, the Federal government and the "blue" states are trying their best to keep them from doing anything about it. This is where the backlash and "attitude" is coming from.