Ozexpatriate

How does one turn that off? Do you sneak up on it from behind and throw a switch or is there a distant 'power van' (along with presumably a mobile scope van) where the switch would be located. I wouldn't want to go anywhere near the front side of that truck while the device was 'on'.

One imagines there might be a (small) market for musical insertable 'toys' to suit particular tastes. Oh, you mean the tune was annoying you? 😉 Do you not enjoy Greensleeves? It is very traditional.

The problem is that software is inexpensive to write and incredibly expensive to maintain. Relevant share-ware that finds it's way into 'mission critical' applications inevitably comes under some sort of fee-based system to keep it functional, one way or another. I certainly saw this with Red Hat and SuSE. "Enterprise" operators were happy to pay for support - since that meant accountability.

It does help it to transit the pond intact. At one point I had to dry out the contents of a set of red boxes from a larger manufacturer with which someone had played post office football. The ends were all wet and disintegrating.

Agreed. And as you point out thus it was ever so. I do not believe any perceived positives for option (c) overcome the very real negatives. The point of the leaflet I linked to yesterday is that severity of punishment is not a deterrence, and the belief that increasing severity will result in less crime is wishful thinking. What is more effective is more policing - which increases the perception that perpetrators are likely to be caught. I suspect that spending more money on highly visible policing would result in reduced crime and less expense in criminal justice.

Oregon has a death with dignity law. It requires the patient to be terminally ill and in full possession of their faculties (and I think this is still true) a resident of the State. I believe the fatal prescription is taken orally by the patient. It must be completely self-administered and voluntary - with no 'assistance'. It is not administered as an injection or infusion like execution drugs. There were convicted felons on 'death row' in Oregon, but with a moratorium on all executions, their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment without parole.

Very natural and understandable. The stakes are higher and the assessment of "beyond reasonable doubt" will often (though not always) be examined more carefully in a capital case. Much might also depend on demographics - of the jury and the accused.

The legal cost of defending death row cases is vastly more than life imprisonment. All of the cost of defending such cases is borne by the state - most of the inmates not being able to afford representation, cases take longer and there are more appeals. It may be counter-intuitive but it is far cheaper for taxpayers not to pursue a death penalty. Locally: From here.

Exactly what the US DOJ 'leaflet' I linked to earlier said:

Forget all the resources - the big problem is the prosecution harassing the accused (outside of the courtroom) to cop to a plea-bargain to make the harassment go away - (de facto) aided and abetted (by circumstance rather than intent) by overworked public defenders.

More fun than the 'protectionism versus free trade' debate during Federation. Hartog / Tasman / Janszoon / Cook / LaPerouse / Flinders / Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson / Sturt / Leichhardt / Burke and Wills ... That's without trying to look them up. There are, of course, a lot more. And that's before getting to the Bushrangers.

An all-expenses covered, one-way trip to Sydney was a much better option.

Sit up on the side of the bed grasping an infusion pump pole in both hands with a 40's home counties accent and give them the running ... "Gerry at three o'clock squadron leader, I've got the blighter in my sights. Tally ho chaps! Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow!" You'll get plenty of attention.

The latest 'experiment' in state-sponsored execution murder is nitrogen hypoxia - essentially death by suffocation. You can find the 'sanitized' narrative here. There are plenty of news reports that explore more thoroughly how truly horrible this was to observe. I'll leave it to those who wish to learn more to search them out. It's worth remembering that M. Guillotine's invention was intended as being more "humane" than a professional executioner. It didn't really work out that way. Nor did the electric chair, or any other invention intended to sanitize state-sponsored termination of life.

It doesn't work that way in the US where many states (and the Federal Government) have a death penalty. It is not an effective deterrent. Anyone who thinks so is kidding themselves. Studies are non-determinative. From the US Department of Justice (who has a death penalty for certain Federal crimes), National Institute of Justice: As Andy notes: Indeed so, sir.

Yes. It *shouldn't* necessarily be a reason to stay away. People are free, or should be, (within some bounds of decorum) to say what they like. If someone sees a post they don't like (whether it is written or illustrated content) there is no reason for the reader to dwell on that post - just move on. But there are people who just don't want to have it presented to them at all. That's their prerogative too.

Far too much of a good (?) thing.

I presume you are talking about larger documents rather than a boarding pass and itinerary. A paper boarding pass or ticket can be lost, but depending on what apps you are willing to load, can be much more convenient. I recently had electronic tickets to an indoor sporting event. Every time I needed to present my ticket (which was much more often than I supposed*) the telephone had turned off, disconnecting the internet connection required to access the tickets via a web portal. Plus the ticket scanner was very fussy reading an electronic image. A paper ticket would have been sooo much more convenient. * Perhaps four times to get to my seat. Without my big monitor, I prefer to read documents on paper - though I would rarely need to do this enroute and never print long documents (of more than a few pages). I still prefer to read printed books and travel with them. Undoubtedly some sort of tablet has many advantages compared with carrying around a doorstop book, but I'm no longer any sort of road warrior.

We didn't watch the cops-and-robbers crime procedurals. Never watched Bellbird * either. * I remember Bellbird being mourned as the longest running drama on Australian television when it ended after ten years. Neighbours has been going for 39 years now. If the cricket wasn't on we'd likely be watching Britcoms** on ABC - or the US line-ups like Charlie's Angels/Love Boat/Fantasy Island etc. ** That vintage was probably On the Buses / Dad's Army / The Good Life / Are You Being Served etc.

I vaguely remember that. I don't think we watched it. For the most part, Dad decided what we would watch - meaning what he wanted to watch. There was a lot of World Series Cricket on our television in the late 1970s.

I think there were some in the US. Networks like CNN showed totality as it moved - Indianapolis / Cleveland / Niagara Falls etc. I happened to see a bit of their coverage (no sound) while I grabbed lunch. It's a bit like watching a fireworks show on television - not the same as being there. Any professional camera operator will have filters for the partial eclipse, so you don't have a sense of the spectrum shift to red and the sudden transition at totality - the cooling, the breeze, the colour shift, the darkening, the cessation of birdsong all happening at once is multisensory - not something you can experience though television.

Many of my university lecturers (early 1980s) used multiple coloured pens and some used overlays. I've seen professionally prepared materials that did the equivalent of PowerPoint 'animations'. The transparency/slide/viewfoil was mounted in a rigid card border (like a 35mm photographic slide) and 'hinged' overlays folded in from multiple slides of the card border. The use of overhead projectors was still 'standard' professionally until the late 1990s. Then we were printing transparencies (authored in PowerPoint) on colour printers. They used a waxy crayon like material to print on the transparency. If you left your slide deck somewhere warm*, the print medium would melt and all the slides would stick together irretrievably. You could separate them, but the image would have deteriorated. An 'onion skin' paper film could be placed between slides to stop them sticking to each other. * Like a hot car. Recording of presentations is the 'new normal'.

Two different failure mechanisms there. Things recover more quickly with the "Community is temporarily unavailable" message, though a "Oops Euston - We have a problem" message can happen when you try to link to a hidden/moderated post. (Not sure if that uses the same error code though.) With a specific error code there will be a likely reason - as opposed to a more vague server denial of service.

The internet suggests that "Bluey" is used in Australia as a nickname for a redhead (aka ginger), which I "get" but wasn't something I heard growing up. The use I was familiar with was a quarrel - usually a domestic dispute between partners. Derivative of a "blue" or "blue row*". Rhymes with now, (two pronunciations, like bow) 😉 How is bough pronounced again? I note this uncredentialled online resource:

Not here. The sun was to be 22% obscured. It has been cloudy and/or overcast all day. I did go outside (with proper eye protection) but though there was a glary bright spot in the cloud nothing was visible when I looked - in fact using the eclipse glasses was completely black with no suggestion of where the brighter spot was. I don't know of any RMweb correspondent in the path of totality, though of course some could have travelled there. Parts of Oregon saw a total solar eclipse in 2017 - which I had the pleasure of experiencing.