A friend of mine that had insurance cut off his thumb a few years ago; all told the bill to him ended up being around $80,000. It is unfortunate, but you can't really just save and hope that a tragic thing like that won't happen - it is possible.
I am no huge fan of the BPD, and I don't deny that their tactics here were silly. But there is real history behind this issue, and it's a legitimate safety concern. It was only a few years ago that the Station fire happened less than fifty miles away from Boston; a hundred people died that night, and people haven't forgotten it, nor should they. This is an area that has a ton of old buildings that aren't coded for large numbers of people. It's a very real risk to pack people in.
And - fires happen fast. Between the moment a fire starts and the moment when people start dying, there generally isn't time for a neighbor to call the police and complain.
This isn't a noise issue; it's a fire hazard issue.
Thanks for the history. It certainly seems to explain the political and community motivation beyond the assumed "let's get those punks."
However, while there may be some similarities I don't see it as the same situation as the Station any more than enforcing the fire code for any other gathering. if I remember correctly it was a valid nightclub and the permits they did not have involved the pyrotechnics not the show or venue. Doors were locked when they shouldn't have been, place was beyond capacity, etc ... a horrific tragedy.
if this is really a purely motivated by enforcing occupancy laws (and therefore fire codes) they should be cracking down on family reunions and Superbowl parties posted on social networks too.
We're talking about micro-transactions - less than five dollars. If failing to charge for and ship small items at very small prices were legally actionable or subject to regulation, I imagine a whole slew of companies would be out of business.
And - if we were talking about $500 speaker sets or something, we would be talking about bad PR. But if a false positive fails to receive a $2 item, well, I imagine that would have to be a lot of false positives to lead to a net effect of bad PR.
Unless these studies were controlled for gender - and it appears that they were not - height is just one more factor which both men and women have to contend with. And if that's the case, then attractiveness is still a lopsided standard which women deal with more.
Kayak, Hipmunk, Google Flights, Orbitz, and almost every other aggregator licenses ITA Software's system, actually. And most major airlines use it internally. It's good enough that it's pretty much the de facto standard and framework.
If you don't mind saying - in what way do you find it a breath of fresh air? I ask because I am very much a Linux guy, not a Microsoft and definitely not an Apple guy - but my iPad has completely revolutionized the way I use computers. I guess the main draw is filesystem access, right?
I'm more interested in knowing how the iPad revolutionized the way you use computers. I find it more hassle to keep mine charged then find a use for it besides reading news sites on the toiler.
I had this experience of "revolution" before the iPad came out, when I bought my second-hand tc1100 stylus tablet PC. Pretty much, the use cases for the iPad are the same as the old tc1100. The only differences are much better battery life on the iPad and no need for a stylus and to pay attention to which GUI item has focus.
Tablets do change how you use computing, simply because they are more mobile than the PC. Instead of a stationary tool, you now have a portable version.
I had a similar experience switching to a macbook air. It really does make a difference when you can walk around holding your laptop easily in one hand. It's a 13incher so I don't hold it for prolonged periods but I do find I move it around a lot more during skype conversations and I use it for things like radio when I'm cooking in the kitchen.
I'm surprised you use the battery up fast. I find charging mine annoying too - mainly because I so rarely have to do it that I don't have a set pace to do it (damn, I have to unplug the phone, wonder there I put the other charger). I seems to last an age on one charge. Its used pretty much 100% for reading and browsing.
The battery life is very good. It is just the lack of use and I forget about it. There is nothing technically wrong with it but I seem to struggle in finding a use for it to be honest. I just prefer being at a desk on my PC with a big screen.
A few years ago, I was given an iPad 1 by the company I work for as a x-mas bonus. It took me a little while, but over time I've found it taking up so very many functions in my life, and doing so with more ease than I thought possible.
To start with, I use a stylus (a Pogo Sketch Pro) constantly with my iPad. I journal daily - I now have about 300 pages of hand-written journaling done, two years worth, that I did in the Penultimate app. I also do a lot of reading on my iPad; I generally read PDFs inside Goodreader, which allows me to underline and take notes with my stylus; last month I read almost all of Kurt Vonnegut's novels, and now I'm working on Moby-Dick (an old favorite of mine.) Being able to take notes, save those notes, print out or email a single page - these things are very useful.
In fact, I use my iPad to fill in every form I find myself having to fill in. These days, lots of places (the DMV, insurance companies, etc) will send you a link to a PDF and ask you to fill it in - which, of course, seems utterly ridiculous in this era. But that's no problem for me; in fact, I prefer it, because I can fill it in pretty easily on my iPad (by hand with my stylus, or typing the data in if I want it to look pretty) and then print it out. That way, I can keep a copy of every form that I am forced to fill in. I do this with leases, with insurance cards, with applications for things, etc. It's a great way to keep track of those things when I find I need them later, too (since that seems to happen often.)
Just in general, it's allowed me to simplify my life immensely. Huge stacks of paper and file folders filled with old receipts and crumpled-up forms have been replaced by a tiny device with a few Goodreader folders. And of course, I'm the type of (ADD) person who is benefited immensely just by having a calendar app handy all the time.
Another thing - I am a jazz pianist. My iPad has become pretty much indispensable for my music. Most jazz musicians lug around three phone books' worth of music books called "Real books;" I have all three of the standard volumes in PDFs on my iPad, and several other more obscure ones too. I have hundreds of pages of other sheet music that's instantly accessible, no filing necessary. I can take notes on anything I like - my iPad saves all of it.
Also - lots of musicians like me find it really useful to practice along to a prerecorded background at home; once upon a time people used pre-recorded tapes, and in the past few years there's been a desktop program called "Band In A Box." Last I checked, a Band In A Box license costs $300; that's how it often is with these niche pieces of software. But there's a fantastic little $8 iPad app called "iReal B" that does everything Band In A Box does, and more - it gives you simple chord sheets for 1200 songs, and easily plays backgrounds for you if you need it. And in addition, I have apps that help me format sheet music for people and transpose it for other instruments when I want other musicians to be able to play along with me.
My iPad is also a really good tool for actually creating music itself. There's a pretty fantastic sequencing / synthesizer app called Nano Studio that I use to create some electronic music (like this: http://soundcloud.com/koeselitz/the-end-of-the-beginning) just for fun. There are apps like Filtatron with filters and effects I can run sounds through if I want. And the iPad is good enough to work nicely for my own recordings of me playing my piano; the Soundcloud app lets me record directly and upload immediately if I want, or there's an app called Fourtrack that just acts as a simple four-track recorder if I want several parts in the recording.
The essential thing for me is that the iPad is miniscule when compared to all the things it's replaced. And at this point, I can pretty much do anything I need to on my iPad. I can download files and then open them in any app I want to; and I have players that work with any format under the sun no matter how obscure. There were days when having an iPad seemed to be limiting in that it was somewhat difficult to move files around and manipulate them, but as far as I can tell those days are mostly gone. It would be nice to have direct filesystem acccess - but I almost never miss it now.
Sorry this is so long, but you asked I guess. Really, there are things I never would have even thought to do if I hadn't had this device.
Thanks for the response. It has clearly made an impact on your life. I play guitar and have recently started learning to play a keyboard. I do find it very useful in that scenario.
The retina display made me a bit disappointed, until I realised how easy it is to read, compared to most any screen (my Linux portable has 15" 1920x1080, but even that is blown away).
I can read literature on a screen now! I have documentation in A4/letter size readable! That combination can't be matched, since larger eInk screens seems to become retired?
Arguably, this changed not only how I use computers but my life for better...
Kathy was absolutely not trying to rank people by how much privilege they enjoy. And you're misunderstanding the "hard mode" metaphor; factors are not necessarily sole determinants. It has been demonstrated, for example, that in science being female is a hindrance and being male is an asset. [1] That doesn't mean that there are not some males who have it worse than some females; it means that, for a male and a female coming from exactly the same background with exactly the same experience, the male will be better off. Being male is a privilege, and being female is a drawback.
I can understand, however, that a lot of us white males (I am one too) find this threatening because it seems like it's intended to "wrack us with guilt," as you put it. I guess maybe there are times when that's the goal, but Kathy here clearly doesn't intend to shove that down our throats. She's trying to genuinely point out something that even people who've been in the industry for years (like she has) might not see. And that's jarring, and it's kind of shocking, but it is not supposed to be a guilt trip. It's just supposed to bring us to awareness of simple facts that many people these days aren't willing to acknowledge.
The study I linked to is absolutely not a "narrow experiment" - it's the largest and most thoroughgoing study of its kind ever done. The study you're linking to, by contrast, is a narrow experiment, is more than three years old, and has been superseded by new data. It'd probably be worth actually reading the link I gave.
Huh? Your study is a single experiment, which sends a single modified resume out to people and asks their opinion on pay/qualifications.
In contrast, the one I linked to examines real market outcomes at multiple career events. Unless you believe the situation has changed significantly in the past three years, your criticism of the age of my study is irrelevant.
>> 2. It's more about the doxxing, which seems to be the one legal thing that isn't allowed on reddit. Either they have the policy that doxxing is horrible or they don't.
I guess the question is whether that is a sensible policy. It may make sense to protect anonymity - I can see that - but does it make sense to protect nothing else? Is anonymity really the only true community value?
There's an interesting question here, actually. Do people really have the right to screw themselves out of a fair trial? I guess so - if only because it would be very difficult to deprive people of this right. I would point out, however, that most constitutions I know of go to great lengths to try to deprive people of the right to screw themselves out of a fair trial. That's why people are given public defenders if they cannot afford a lawyer, for instance.
More to the point - this case isn't just about Samsung. Everybody is affected by the changing limitations and definitions involved in patent law. So while it's hard to say that Samsung doesn't have a right to screw up their own defense, it's also hard to say that justice isn't infringed when jury selection is botched here.
At the very least, if someone were a champion of Apple's cause here (and I am not saying I am one) then that person would justifiably be very upset to see that what could have been a clear and direct case setting precedent of the future can become a hazy decision which will be ardently appealed and at the very least questioned for years.
You're confusing criminal and civil cases. People are given public defenders when they're part of criminal case, but not when they're part of a civil suit. All of this protection is so people are not railroaded by the government in court. People can be railroaded by other people/corporations and the government doesn't really care (for the most part).
As to your broader point, then the parties in the follow-up cases can argue that it doesn't make any sense since Samsung screwed themselves. It would then be up to a judge look at the established case law and say, "No this is incorrect." It would then be up to an appeals panel to decide which is the correct interpretation. These things takes years and even decades to work their way through the system.
