For example, the Bacula documentation is still online, as a prime example of this: https://www.bacula.org/9.6.x-manuals/en/main/Getting_Started...

The light rail can run a frequency of 12-20 minutes in each direction. The freight's schedule: who really knows?

But the freight train is generally inhibited from sounding its horn or bells near residential neighborhoods. So, unless I am really paying attention while awake, I cannot detect it passing by, no matter the size.

The light rail is audible from where I sit, usually, but only just. It toots the horn mostly as it passes, but it's not disruptive or annoying to me, anyway. I sort of enjoy the white noise it all makes. There are cars that do a lot worse.

I think that the architecture here is helpful, too. The buildings are clustered around a central courtyard, and really insulated from the road noise. At any given time, there may be folks splashing in the pool, or running the jets on the hot tub, anyway.

The light rail stations are a major convenience to living here, and the train noise is absolutely the least of our worries!

However, the United States is also a nation built upon the motor vehicle, and our much-vaunted freeway system here was built deliberately as a national defense measure that could easily move materiel and troops between cities and states, in the event of a domestic invasion or future wars on our own soil. The freeways enjoyed deep investments also due to commercial utility, and again, many cities and habitations sprang up at the nexus of various freeways, as truck-based shipping could service them as well.

I think one of the main obstacles to rail lines in the United States is our car-centrism, and many motorists of any socio-economic class really, really hate trains and public transit of any kind, and any other type of transport that may impinge on their freedom to drive wherever they want on as many highways as possible.

Therefore it is extraordinarily difficult for railways to get good rights-of-way. Amtrak is a redheaded stepchild. Commuter rail may be better respected in places where it was established, like the Eastern Seaboard, but if I asked any voter or motorist here, they would be voting against any sort of rail project whatsoever.

Furthermore, the concept of "ejecting a passenger" from a flight would mostly not be something you do while in the air, unless you're nuts. Ejecting a passenger is either done before takeoff, or your crew decides to divert the flight, or continue to the destination and have law enforcement waiting on the tarmac.

Naturally, pilots get involved when it's a question of where to fly the plane and when to divert, but ultimately the cabin crew is also involved in those decisions about problem passengers.

Tsk, tsk.

My sister and I were both groomed to go to college. We attended the standard college prep high schools. The choices were laid before us. Mom told me definitely not to attend UC Berkeley (because of the hippies and anti-war protests.) So, I chose UCSD and my parents basically handled all the paperwork; I sat down to write an essay, and I was totally in.

However, mental illness ruled my life and I dropped out of classes. An excuse by my therapist got me restarted but not for very long before the second dropout. I tried community college for a semester and earned one more good grade (in C programming). I started work, foolishly believing that would go better than college! My life fell apart around me and college remained unfinished for decades.

Finally by 2017 I was stable enough to consider college again. Of course I should have understood that my career was not a thing, and at that point, college was the frivolous pipe-dream of an aging guy unable to really support himself. Nonetheless, I did the FAFSA, and Uncle Sam paid for the rest of my college bills.

I again dropped out, for reasons of being less-than-stable, but I had managed to earn 3 CompTIA certifications and I also landed a very nice job, which I held for over 4 years. None of those would've been possible without the drive to finish college.

Ultimately, the community college found a way to "graduate me" and award me a certificate of completion (instead of the Associate's in Applied Science which I was pursuing.) My "graduation ceremony" occurred in the US Postal Service station. Receiving that certificate was 100% a surprise, but a Pyrrhic victory.

At this point, I achieved my "bucket list" of graduating college, but I have 0 career prospects, and the certificate means 0 to my former or prospective employers (the certifications also meant nothing to them!)

So what did Uncle Sam really pay for? My personal satisfaction? Just to funnel more taxpayer money to the college system? I am fine with that, I suppose.

But it just goes to show that far more families push their children to attend college, and the expectations are set too high, when many kids growing up really need some vocational skills and real-life street smarts to survive in this world. Tuition prices have been jacked-up absurdly by the proliferation of scholarships and grants. "Diversity" means any view except conservatives or Christians. We are in need of a reckoning, especially for land-grant and "Ivy League" institutions.

Recently, I've been struggling with adding locations to some photos after-the-fact, such as edited photos as well as screenshots (because these screenshots are from location-based apps).

The Photos app always tells me that "location will only be visible inside Photos" -- that is, only to users of the app, and those who I share with inside the app. If the image is downloaded or extracted from the Photos app, apparently it will lose that location info and it won't be stored in the EXIF as normal.

This is because Android, like iOS, seeks to assert control over the JPEG/PNG image file types, and claim them as a special object type which can only be handled by Photos and other image-handling apps.

These image-format objects will no longer be treated as normal files that you can just throw anywhere, but as something that only Photos can handle on your phone, and tied inextricably to the Photos app. Therefore, any metadata that you add shall be stored and managed by Photos, and not in the file itself, because that would be interoperable, and that would be absolutely nuts!

Do not try and derail this thread with facts about vaccines!

My father has always insisted on purchasing the latest inkjet at Costco and he has probably burned through 5 printers in those 16 years when I had one. The OEM compatible toner cartridge was ubiquitous, and lasted around 18 months for my low-volume needs.

I would never dare purchase anything but a LaserJet. HP has been so very good to me in engineering, support, and reliability. I considered a Brother printer, but without any valid reason to leave HP behind, I stuck with them again for a new model. No regrets!

I told him that it seemed quite absurd and unattainable, at present or near-future levels of technology. I told him, we could probably send a crew, as long as we didn't expect to get them back!

Going to LEO with the ISS has been an amazing achievement, and we (mankind) have proven that it's a sustainable thing: to maintain a crewed station in orbit, and send regular resupply missions up there. It's been a landmark of cooperation, even while USA-Russian relations are frosty.

Now, getting to the Moon and landing on it is also an achievement. Putting a crewed station in permanent orbit around the Moon, or a permanent crewed Moonbase, would be an important milestone, but we must understand that those goals are orders-of-magnitude harder than what the ISS has done.

Humans going to Mars, on the other hand, is absurd, and would be so performative in the first place. You could, hypothetically, send all your cargo up to Mars first, in advance of the crew, and then the crew could utilize the cargo upon arrival. Perhaps.

But we simply couldn't count on the survival of a return-crew mission to Mars. It's a full 6 months in transit, one-way! Anyone who has ever seen an ISS Expedition get dragged out of their capsule, loaded onto gurneys, and wheeled into the hospital, you will know that a 6-month weightless journey will incapacitate each and every person who goes. I once heard an ISS astronaut describe the things they're "not allowed to do" by NASA after arriving home. They need to re-learn many gravity-bound skills. They aren't even allowed to go jogging! They would hit Mars and be utterly useless as human beings, much less scientists or explorers.

The reality of the mythical Mars mission is that it's a pipe-dream which is sold to us by the military-industrial complex in order to fund their current missions and current science, which achieves achievable things, mostly with robots. And I'm fine with sending robots to Mars and Europa and Uranus. Sending humans is counterproductive.

The people who are confused are claiming that "Free Software" is zero-cost, and you yourself contradict that belief. "Free Software" is not "free as in beer".

However, just because software is provided free of cost, doesn't mean it can't be supported, or the developers held liable. I don't see really what kind of difference that would make. I mean, other than creating an actual and direct contractual agreement between customer and distributor. If you grab a download for no money, that's obviously different than paying for a subscription, and signing a contract that includes an SLA.

But that doesn't preclude "Free as in Beer" software from having guarantees. Why should it?

It would seem that Google and Gmail have a distinct COI in regards to delivering messages about these lawsuits to their victims/plaintiffs.

It is like the USPS losing a lawsuit and "losing" your mail about it...

I did indeed fall in love with the sound of her voice, and if it had been a malicious ruse or "catfishing" I would've been crushed. But, having been an Internet user since 1989, I like to think I'm fairly savvy. I mean, some of the "hot girls" I had interacted with turned out to be fat, smelly dudes, but they never really surprised me!

Eventually, I bowed out when I realized that the game had become quite solitary for me, grinding out solo puzzles every day without really socializing anymore.

But at that time, 20 years ago, I was holed-up in my little apartment and not socializing much, due to the broken leg injury, the extreme heat, and poverty. So, in many ways, this MMOG helped to socialize me and kept me sane, at that critical juncture in life.

Since then, I've managed to adapt better, socially, to real life, and I can get out and interact with real people on most days of the week, so that's a big win.

And my ex-fiancée did find the man of her dreams, after all, and it seems that she got what she wanted out of the experience as well. No regrets!

I loved the game and the concept so much that I stuck around for years. Eventually, I met a woman who was from Catalonia. And we began a long-distance romance. And for months, our romance built on the foundation of our crew and our pirate flag, and our community-building within the game’s context. We won many victories and pillaged much booty, and eventually she offered to come and visit me where I lived in Arizona.

She visited for a few weeks, during which we visited my parents, and we found ourselves engaged to be married. Thereafter, we continued our game-based LDR, but she also insisted that I not only upgrade to ADSL, but also that I travel to visit her in Spain.

It turns out that real life was far more difficult for me to manage a romantic relationship. It fell apart, and so did the airline that was supposed to take me home. My parents intervened, rescuing me and bringing me home, but I was profoundly damaged by that experience, and honestly, if some kind of romance develops online, you’d better test it ASAP in real life, lest either of you be deceived by the masks worn in online communities, especially any type of game.

Ironically, the privacy matter involved with the Quinlan case is that the parents/guardians sought to terminate a medical treatment. The medical establishment regarded this termination as tantamount to murder. That is, without the treatment, Quinlan’s prognosis was death.

While based on the same reasoning in regards to personal privacy and medical treatment decisions, surely we can appreciate the diametrically opposite case of withdrawing an extraordinary, unwanted and ineffective treatment, vs. demanding to undergo one that affects not one life, but two, and again, parental rights over the very life and continued existence of a person who is dependent and reliant on others, and wholly incapable of answering or advocating for themselves.

Karen clearly did not wish to die at all; nor did her parents or physicians wish to deny her a right to life.

Her parents and physicians all agreed (after the fact) that the removal of the machine proved to relieve her immediate suffering and distress, just by judging those outward signs and her struggles against the relentlessly opinionated machine.

There is nothing “compassionate” about killing; it is an oxymoron and a political slogan for eugenicists. You seem to desire that some assassin had stepped up and murdered Karen against everyone’s wishes, and against the law. You and your ilk have a similar mindset to Dr. Mengele, and y’all seem very very proud of that mindset.

No, "we" never knew how "aware" these patients were. Speaking for myself personally, I never knew; I've never been in a PVS but I do affirm that any person who is in a PVS deserves dignity, the right to life, and the right to ordinary sustenance, such as food and hydration.

I lived through the very traumatic case of Terri Schiavo, whose husband hated her guts and really, really needed her to die ASAP. But I only recently learned of Karen Ann Quinlan, whose parents were quite devout and merciful, and had perceived that the "treatment" (a breathing tube) was causing much discomfort and distress to Karen, yet the medical establishment insisted that removing the tube would be "MURDER" and they engaged in a protracted legal battle against the "MURDEROUS PARENTS" who simply wanted them to withdraw this barbaric medical treatment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Ann_Quinlan

Karen's level of cognizance was fairly obvious to any observer: that she was feeling pain and distress, that she was capable of emotion and rational response to stimuli, and that changing those stimuli resulted in distinct changes in her responses. That much is true.

Karen Ann Quinlan's quality of life improved immensely after the tube was removed. She began breathing on her own. She lived a good life (in a PVS) for a significant period of time and was not, in fact, ever murdered by her loving parents or by her physicians.

Let's recall the classic analogy of rms: "Free as in Beer" and "Free as in Speech".

"Free Software" and its cousins, F/OSS, and Creative Commons, are "Free as in Speech" (in Spanish: libre).

This freedom often means it is provided free of charge. But it does not require it. Free software may cost money. In fact, we now often pay for free software, because it's incorporated in our routers, our smartphones, our smart home devices, our IoT things. SaaS is replete with free software under the hood, yet we pay for subscriptions and access and all kinds of costly things that incur fees. Free software is ubiquitous and often costs $$$ just to distribute it. Ask anyone who subscribes to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Please stop with your stupid analogies comparing a "free car" to Free Software. They aren't the same thing by any means. If I serve you "Free Beer" all night, and you don't get drunk, that has nothing to do with Free Software or Free Speech: capice?