Posts by Throatwobbler Mangrove

yeah but no but yeah

"Maybe if he was in jail indefinitely a family in Idaho family would be alive"

Possibly - but leaving the moral/legal/justice aspects aside (!), whenever you lock people up you're incurring costs that mean you can't spend money elsewhere. I have no idea what the cost is in Idaho, but in Florida it's $20k a year and it's $28k a year in Washington State (it's on google, so it must be true).

So is it better to lock hundreds of people up on the offchance that they might do something, or to spend that money on investigating the crimes that have already happened? I suppose it depends how likely they are to commit a crime again. It's a dismal question from the dismal science...

erm

"The rest of the world plays cricket & America plays baseball."

This is Ross McToss, I'm afraid - it's only a few British ex-colonies that play cricket, and quite a few countries (although hardly the rest of the world) that plays baseball: Japan, Cuba, Korea, Dominican Republic...

Tedious EZ Pass discussion

"I am sceptical of this, the variant used throughout New England (EZPass) uses number plate verification to cross check the transponder."

I don't think that's a safe assumption - at least in NYS, you are allowed to use your EZ-Pass with any other vehicle of the same type (i.e. use a car tag in another car but not a truck):

"Your Tags can be used in any other vehicle classified as an individually owned or leased vehicle with two axles, a maximum gross weight of 7,000 pounds (vehicle and load) and single rear tires (includes RV’s and pickup trucks with dual rear tires)."

http://www.ezpassny.com/static/downloads/i_guide.pdf

I have used my car's tag with borrowed/rented etc cars and the billing has gone through fine. Perhaps a license plate photo can be accessed in case of dispute or billing failure, but it doesn't appear to require cross-verification in most circumstances.