I'm an actual Starlink user at my farm. It's head-and-shoulders better than any competing service.

I previously has used a cellular uplink... and even with a yagi mounted 30' up on a mast, I barely had 1-2Mb/s of bandwidth. It was truly miserable.

Starlink is a game-changer... give 'em the freakin' money. They've done something truly miraculous for rural internet users, who had previously only terrible/expensive options. As a taxpayer, I'm actually glad to see the money I contribute going to something useful.

Agreed. The last 20 years have not been kind to this place.

Hollywood has long been a wretched hive of scum of villainy. Toads like Weinstein should have been burned down long ago.

But throwing Kavanaugh in with Weinstein? C'mon.

Hallelujah, brother... preach it.

I too remember the Old Days (TM). Slashdotting was an actual thing. We fearlessly rode the waves of the ether, and many a site trembled at the sound of our clicks.

I rarely post any more... but the passing of Rob is sobering reminder than none of us are getting any younger... RIP Roblimo :(

I work with mentally ill patients, and I was an active SWAT officer when Columbine happened. It changed how we did everything.

After Columbine, we got our floor-plans on ALL of our local schools, and spent hours and hours during the nights assaulting those locations, and gaming-out active shooter scenarios. We had other officers play the OPFOR, and hunted them through the hallways. What we discovered was that as fast as we were, we weren't fast enough. By the time a police response arrives at a school, the gunman can have already killed several dozen (as happened at Virginia Tech).

The answer to a "man with a gun" is another man with a gun, and the School Resource Officer is critical against a homicidal maniac. The faster you can get that man on-scene and putting rounds on-target, the better.

And our mental health system is badly broken. Look into the eyes of Lanza, Holmes, Loughner... it doesn't take a board-certified psychiatrist to tell you they've lost touch with reality. Unfortunately, there are very few resources out there to address people like that. Until that changes, people like that (though they throw up red flags to every person who knows them) are going to continue to fall through the cracks.

They killed the goose that layed the golden eggs.

The uber-green and anti-nuke activists likely don't live there, and probably consider these folks collateral damage in their larger fight. Ideally, such activists would be up-front about the economic costs of some of their stands. Even beyond this now-impoverished small town, growing economies need affordable energy; that's just an economic fact. High energy costs reverberate through the entire supply chain, and raise the costs of virtually every good-and-service that normal people use.

Everybody wants clean air and water, but some green initiatives come with a serious price-tag.

Thank God for the UN's beneficence and adherence-to-principle.

Good thing none of those votes were bought through corruption... or through funds skimmed from the Oil-for-Food program.

I own two Das's... they rock.

I recommend the blank-keyed "stealth" model. It not only keeps those without any computer skills away from your terminal (some people look at a blank keyboard, and literally don't know what to do), but they're also ideal for home. Mine keeps my non-touch-typist kids away from my computer.

Here in MD, Driving Without Insurance is 1 year in jail and I believe $1k. The non-jailable version - Failure to Maintain Security - is $280 on the ticket.

In many states, it's a jailable offense to knowingly drive without insurance. If you're driving, and your insurance isn't valid, it would typically be enough to arrest you in such states (which could include the impounding of your car).

You might want to familiarize yourself with American law. In the US, the judge IS the court. They're synonymous. "The Court" is the finder of law, which is ALWAYS the judge (or, in appellate courts, the panel of judges). The jury is only ever a finder of fact.

That's never been the whole rule. You're presumed innocent as a matter of finding a verdict, but your'e not, nor have you ever been, presumed innocent as a matter of evidence gathering and investigation. This law, whether or not it is a good one, makes the correct move in requiring that the officers have some probable cause to begin investigating you (i.e. asking for papers). One question going forward is: is your skin color sufficient probable cause? If the officers think so, then that's going to be unconstitutional. However, how about if you're sitting in front of Home Depot in dirty clothes, not going in or out to buy anything. Is that probable cause to think you might be an illegal day-laborer? It's not sufficient to arrest you, but it's sufficient (most likely) for the officers to ask for your papers, i.e. to begin an investigation.

Compare it to less onerous laws. Right now, any officer in any state can ask you a question while you're walking on the street. You're entitled to ignore it and keep walking, and they can't just arrest you for that. However, let's say it is 2am and you're in a residential area. Now, the officer might have some concerns as to why you're walking around. In the interest of safety, he wants to know your name. When you're uncooperative, he might have enough probable cause to think you're there for criminal reasons. What if he sees what looks like a burglar's tool? (most states criminalize burglar tools).

If this law is enforced reasonably, it won't be trouble for anyone but criminals. If it's enforced unreasonably, it'll be wildly unconstitutional. The question is going to be the police, ultimately.

This is one of those situations that seems to draw out the difference between people who understand how policies work (as opposed to laws) and those who do not. A policy is an internal rule generated by an organization. Violating it exposes you to internal punishments and (in some situations) contractual civil liability. In other words, violating your policy might lead to some sort of penalty but not jail time. However, a law is above and beyond the scope of your organization, even when that organization is the government itself. The law that this idiot violated superseded the policy considerations. He was correct in his policy interpretation, I believe, but he was grossly incorrect in his legal interpretation. While the policy bound him against divulging the passwords, the law bound him against NOT divulging the passwords. He was in an ugly situation - one initiated by his boss - but this idiot is the one who broke the law to protect a policy.

Admitting you did what you're accused of is admitting "guilt". This is a factual decision, and so witnesses are able to testify on that matter. "Liability", on the other hand, is legal obligation to someone else due to your guilt. It is a legal decision, and so witnesses are (generally) not supposed to testify on that matter, especially when that legal decision is the central issue of the case. The question was improper as it apparently called for something beyond the scope of the witness' testimony. I'm not sure it actually was (the issue of "I am liability" versus "I am liable" is subtle...) but that's the idea.