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Comment Re:Who uses fans to circulate liquid anything? (Score 1) 56

I bet there's some misunderstanding on the reporter/marketer's side, whether deliberate or not, to make this seem cooler (heh) than it is. Conventional refrigeration systems already exist that use carbon dioxide, though they seem to be more focused on walk-in coolers and such rather than air conditioners. The only technical challenge to using carbon dioxide as a refrigerant is that the whole system runs at a much higher pressure than those using more conventional fluorocarbon refrigerants. That means they need to be much more ruggedly engineered and built, which adds cost. Long runs of piping through a large building makes that even more of an engineering challenge. I suspect that's where more of this "rocket technology" is used.

Comment Some Good Some Bad (Score 1) 171

More stops means people don't have to walk as far to get to a stop, obviously. But on lightly-used bus routes, or routes with very high frequency, the bus isn't going to be stopping at every stop anyway, so there's not much benefit to eliminating stops that aren't used very often. If the bus just drives past it then it's no different than if it's not there at all.

That said, regardless of service speed, a benefit to removing stops is that you can make the ones that remain better. Instead of every stop just being a sign on a pole, you can have more stops with benches, shelters, sidewalk extensions, route maps, and connecting route information.

Comment Re:Don't Buy Apple Gift Cards (Score 1) 62

It's not an issue of backups. If you're locked out of your developer account you no longer get paid for your apps, nor can you update your apps or re-release them under a new Apple ID because that's a TOS violation. If you're not a developer, being locked out of your Apple ID means you have to redo all your sign-ins that use it as a bridge, your photos and emails stop syncing, iMessages that go to your Apple ID rather than your phone number stop working, notes/reminders may not work at all anymore, etc. All those things are generally recoverable with backups, but that's not a process you can do if you're out on the road or aren't at your primary computer. It's an hours or days long ordeal during which you're cut off from many services and means of communication. Google and Microsoft are no better in this regard, and it's the result of years/decades of lax antitrust enforcement and "pro-business" lobbying and legislation that let these few companies become so powerful and hooked into our lives without also requiring them to have some responsibility to their customers for support and appeals.

Comment Re:Lets be honest here (Score 2) 109

Back then they didn't understand, or didn't see a need, for merging lanes. Freeways were going to solve all traffic problems. They thought the high speeds and free-flow would mean there would always be huge gaps between vehicles with more than enough room to merge in easily.

There may also be a holdover component to the original "yield to the right" rule. That was the overriding rule for much of early motoring, hence the term "right of way." So highway traffic may well have been expected to yield or move over for entering onramp traffic, hence no need for merge lanes. We quickly discovered why that doesn't work, and "yield to the right" has been relegated to 4-way stop signs and pretty much nothing else.

Comment Re:Wrong. (Score 1) 142

A brand or trademark is a bit of a different animal (heh) but let's set that aside for now and talk just about the drawing/character/cartoon/work of art, etc. The social contract is that if you want copyright protections from the government, then when that protection term is over you release it into the public domain. Same for patents, if you want patent protection, then you must document your invention sufficiently such that after the patent expires anyone can reasonably replicate it. This how copyright and patent law "promote the progress of science and useful arts." It's not JUST protecting the creator's work so they can profit from it, it's ALSO limited in time (though that's been effed up with copyright due to lobbying) and requires releasing that work to the public later on. Give the creator/inventor their exclusive control so they're incentivized, limit the time so they have to create/invent more rather than resting on their laurels, and release it to the public so they can iterate and derive their own works from it and the cycle repeats.

Comment Re:It had USB? I recall they did not. (Score 1) 60

There were a couple iterations of this PowerBook form factor, and the last one (Pismo), which I still have and still works, has two USB ports and two Firewire 400 ports in lieu of the old ADB and SCSI ports. The model prior to Pismo (Lombard) also had USB, but it was SCSI instead of Firewire. Both of those models had semi-transparent bronze keycaps. The prior Wall Street models with ADB and SCSI, and no USB or Firewire, had opaque black keycaps.

Comment Re:Houston (Score 1) 191

Houston has all the trappings of zoning except the use-based restrictions. It still has all the building setbacks, lot coverage maximums, parking minimums, and height restrictions of every other city. They will also enforce private zoning-like deed restrictions as if they were city ordinances. So Houston really has something like 80% as much zoning as anywhere else.

Comment Re: This is what happens (Score 1) 221

But the manufacturer could just apply strict licensing and anti-tampering terms into their purchase contract, whether for the device itself or for any replacement parts. Then the hackers would be subjected to contract law violations rather than copyright law violations. Potayto potahto.

Comment Re: afterwards (Score 1) 160

"Parental responsibility" doesn't include putting yourself at risk of disability or death, which is absolutely a risk in pregnancy. So maybe the government and busybody religions shouldn't be the one making decisions about that instead of the mother and her doctor. A baby that's born is one the mother consented to carrying to term. They can also keep it alive by giving it up for adoption. There's no violation of the mother's bodily autonomy in those cases.

Also, consent to sex is not consent to getting pregnant, and consent to getting pregnant is not consent to remaining pregnant. Just like you know there's a risk you could get into a car crash when you get behind the wheel, it doesn't mean you consent to crashing. Forcing someone to remain pregnant against their will turns pregnancy into a punishment. How righteous.

Consent can be withdrawn at any time, otherwise you could be forced to donate a kidney against your will, to give blood against your will, to have sex against your will, to have a limb amputated against your will, or to be injected with a drug against your will, because that could save another person's life. If a mother no longer consents to having a fetus inside her, then she can and should have the right to remove it. The fact the fetus may not survive is unfortunate, but the same goes for the person who didn't get the kidney, blood, or whatever.

Comment Re: afterwards (Score 1) 160

Consent to sex is not consent to getting pregnant, and consent to getting pregnant is not consent to remaining pregnant. Just like you know there's a risk you could get into a car crash when you get behind the wheel, it doesn't mean you consent to crashing. Forcing someone to remain pregnant against their will turns pregnancy into a punishment. How righteous.

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