HN user
JR does this with many of their trains. There are green cars that you can get a special pass for at the station platform. I would only buy it for long trips by train, for general commuting I think it's a little unnecessary. That said JR is cheaper than the BART and MUNI but doesn't seem to have many undesirable carriage companions.
That product is actually an April Fool's prank, as shown by the little winky face box at the very bottom of the page. I was fooled for quite a while as well.
In Cory Doctorow's book Little Brother, the protagonist defeats gait sensors with some pebbles in his shoe. It's really not such a bad idea, as every step is going to be different as your foot tries not to hit the pebble too hard.
Most law libraries do not let you check out their copies of the legal code. Also most law libraries tend to be in court buildings, and not at public library branches. My public library has lots of hours outside the normal 0900 to 1700, my city's law library is open from 0800 to 1700.
Your point about purchasing a paper copy of the legal code is spot on. In my state, I asked my local government workers (clerks, law librarians, etc) where to buy a copy of my state's code. There seems to be only one source and it costs more than 700 USD.
For someone who lives on the opposite side of town from the courthouse, or spends more on rent than a potential law book, reading law on paper can be impossible.
There are online versions, but somehow I think that most people wouldn't be willing to suffer through the mountains of legal text on their phones. The interfaces I've seen sometimes even break tab navigation by using javascript references to each item, making them a pain to use on a big screen.
It's rapid prototyping. It might just happen that the prototype is good enough to sell, but once you have a basis, comparisons can begin. If the prototype doesn't have to act as the real product, just a skeleton, it's not so hard to change the "bones" if something isn't working properly.
If the prototype is quickly made, it could even count as part of that upfront design process.
I don't keep "slow tv" up, but I tend to have Netflix running on my left monitor, my requirements on my right monitor and my IDE or text editor in the center. If I get too busy, then Netflix goes away. The motion to the side helps keep me from getting bored.
"Both men received two counts of first-degree burglary and three counts of aggravated robbery, for each of the three employees they made cooperate at the two stores... Then came the kidnapping charges: three counts of second-degree kidnapping, because they’d forced three employees in those two robberies to move from one part of a store to another."
Edit: and edit ninja'd...
Even within the state of Virginia, look at the difference between Fairfax County and Portsmouth. It's comforting to think that your peers are "beating" the national average, and I think that something we miss when we read these graphs. A reminder about both ends of an average is something we need more in life.
I wonder if they plan on recovering the satellite and the geckos. Cameras are ok, but it would be much more useful to have a live sample of space-born geckos to research. Looking at the pictures of this thing, it looks like it might have non-destructive down-mass capabilities, but then I question whether the eggs will survive landing.
"On an LCD display behind Baber, I could see an image of my leg, transmitted by a camera under the robot’s gun barrel. The gun then pointed at my stomach. He assured me that it was not loaded."
Pointing a firearm an anyone, even unloaded, even (especially?) robot controlled, is a terrible idea. This bothers me to no end, and it's so strange that someone who works with very powerful weapons can act like this. Perhaps he feels that he's smart enough that no mistakes will happen? Perhaps he has confidence in the robot not to fire any rounds? He's a brilliant man, very good at what he does; certainly he's spent lots of time with these things, and understands them more than I ever will.
That said: mistakes happen, don't point guns at people you don't want holes in.
What are you quoting here?