J. C. R. Licklider is about the most important person in the development of the Internet. He worked in the Pentagon and had three different dedicated terminals to three different systems in his office and each had its different connection procedure. He asked the question of "Why can't these things be connected together?" (probably to save office space...)
He took his question across the hall and in 5 minutes had the funding to start what became the ARPAnet. He was as close as the computer world gets to an expeditionary explorer.
In other words: He funded the startup of the Internet.
For a really great read get a copy of "Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet". Besides learning about the incredible minds that built the foundations, you can read a number of entertaining anecdotes. (Like AT&Ts refusal to believe that it was possible long after it was working!!!)
This happens right before they read their "undying love's" email from that other REALLY hot person and change their whole lifestyle to a goth theme to match the blackness in their heart. (It also allows them to express their individuality... just like all of their other friends...)
Traffic courts are the end point of a revenue supply stream. Judges do not make, "Gee, was there a valid reason?" types of decisions. They make "Is it humanly possible to apply this law here and are all the 'T's crossed?" types of decisions.
The enforcement and fee structure of our traffic laws are based on extremely low chances of getting caught. If every possible infraction was enforced in every possible instance the average driver's license would be ticketed to the point of suspension within an hour. The policeman is the point were discretion should be applied to decide, "Should I enforce this", and the idea that infractions should be blanket enforced by an automated, 1984ish, mechano-fascist system is insane.
Also there is a general "knowledge" that speed is the ultimate "safety sin" that is so far from correct. The government's own NHTSA report that was released after 10 years of the "55 mile-an-hour limit" had background data that when analyzed (by someone other then the government) showed that the safest speed to be traveling was 5 to 10 mph faster then the general flow of traffic. That same study "proved" that 55 saved lives: after ignoring any other possible source for a reduction in deaths per mile such as much safer cars, massive improvements in tire safety, seat belt laws, etc... So after going with the spin that nothing else could have effected the number of fatalities, the best number they could come up with worked out to it costing an additional 150 man/years (from the reduced speeds) on the roads for every life saved. (One independent analysis pointed out that you could get the same expected reduction in fatalities by increasing the actual tire pressure in all cars by about 2 psi.)
When a more sensible look is made at the data, it is pretty clear that once you factor out increases in passenger car safety, tire safety, and seat belt use, it shows that drivers had become worse, most likely because they had lost driving ability and when at a slower pace it encourages people to do "other things" besides drive.
Lets be serious. Traffic enforcement is about revenue. Speed is easy to prove, it is fun/interesting for cops to enforce and the public has been led to believe that SPEED is the big scary thing,... and lets be honest, there is something in the back of the average person's head that doesn't want someone to pass them. If speed was the CAUSE of an accident then there would be a speed where when you reached it the accident would ensue.
If traffic enforcement was about "safety" there would be a mandate to enforce the laws as they relate to the generation of accidents: Failure to yield right-of-way, inattentive driving, and just plain incompetence.
----
Oh, and the correct civilian use of drones is to create an open source project of mesh networked drones to monitor our government...
And that includes detecting speed traps from above!
... because you have to ride in a car to get to the airport, you probably walked up or down stairs (and/or escalators), and you probably took a shower or a bath before you left. Those all are quite a bit more risky then flying.
Other then that, the real risk is the 100% risk that the government will stomp all over your personal property rights, privacy rights, and any possible right to dignity,
More to the point: Have you seen the lineup that is the best they can come up with for the next election? Geeze... You would think the companies that pay for our elected officials would have provided a better selection.
Yeah, because we all know that children will only break their toys in front of their parents. Plus even if it was broken out of the parent's view we all know that children always show their parents the things they have broken immediately afterwords...
I used to have two standard replys to the, "It's broken" type of complaint.
- "How can you tell? Is there an axe sticking out of it?"
and
- "How can you tell? Is it on fire?"
One day I had this young kid came up to me saying, "My computer is broken." so of course I respond, "How can you tell? Is it on fire?"
He looked a bit embarrassed and said, "Well it was smoking and made a buzzing sound but it has stopped now."
His one day old computer's power supply had burned up in a spectacular fashion.
Seeing that here in the US we live in the safest time in human history your apparent need to up the ante of the surveillance state seems to indicate you should move to a nice fascist regime. As a person who realizes that, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants" I also realize that the "blood of patriots" did not refer to young men shipped to foreign countries but possibly referred to liberty minded citizens right here at home who are willing to take the amazingly slight risk of allowing liberty to remain paramount. I also realize that "tyrants" could even refer to our own government and that the government should be trusted as far as I can spit up wind in a hurricane.
Government by popularity with a decision making process funded by corporations is an insanely dangerous thing.
No. I will not willingly give a blind government hierarchy a cost effective way to micromanage our lives and to automate the fleecing of the people. WE ARE NOT THEIR SOURCE OF INCOME. They are supposed to be our servants.
Think about this: It is impossible for a government, a corporation, or a committee to be moral. Morality requires a conscience and only an individual can have a conscience.
Put the passwords in a sealed envelope known to a few specific family members. Probably near the will. You can tell if it has been accessed... To further the scheme you can let them verbally know that the password is scrambled in some manner such as "Last 4 chars are in reverse order" or similar. The fact it is offline protects it from anything except for direct physical access by someone who already knows it exists and it keeps it under your physical control until you aren't there.
Not Motorcross... Autocross.
Over 90% of the participants are using the car in their driveway. There will be no "buried loop (antenna)" because you don't modify a parking lot you borrowed for a day. People are not going to use a $200 HotLap timer when they are just there to drive fast.
Auto-X is a very, very entry level motor sport. Most people don't even have their own helmet so they borrow a loaner that most clubs have available. The system HAS to be external to the car. There isn't any question about this.
Say you want to see who can go around a little course faster in your wife's Volvo wagon. That is Auto-X. How much modification are you going to do to your wife's wagon before you and your friends take turns driving through cones? None.
If you don't understand this then be clear about this: You don't understand.
RFID stickers and barcodes are a really interesting idea. You would still want to do the timing with a photo sensor but having the secondary system to tag the photo sensor events to the correct car would solve lots of things like people walking through the lights and messing up all the times for people who are on course. Barcode is the easiest and cheapest to generate but I see the issue there being that the barcode would need to be at a consistent height for the sensor to read it. Cars aren't consistent so you wouldn't be able to do that without a sophisticated machine vision system.
This type of upgrade to a timing system would make running an event a lot more fun. The timing system is the source of lots of cussing from workers and participants. A timing system generally costs a bit more then a grand so I doubt you would be able to develop something for less then that. I see this as something that might be added to a current system either by the manufacturer or as a personal upgrade. If you were able to come up with an open source type of solution or upgrade you would be a hero to car clubs across the country.
"Let's blame legacy machines" is an incredibly silly idea and it is so easy to prove how dumb it is.
Legacy Systems = "Old stuff"...
Now tell me how fast is the quantity of "Old stuff" increasing? Who is making the new "Old stuff"? (gaaak!)
(Where can I find the next generation of really old stuff?...)
In Grand Tourismo 5 there is a feature where the game gives you a "birthday gift car" that was produced in the year of your birth. Lots of people were making multiple fake accounts to try and get really rare and expensive cars. Once they got the car they would give it as a gift to their main account.
(PSN patched the game so people couldn't trade expensive cars any more so that glitch is gone.)
I could easily believe there are lots of fake accounts out there for similar reasons.
Jay's real interest is in cars with displacements rated in gallons. This might catch his eye but if there was a locomotive converted to street use he wouldn't even notice this one.
I would like to suggest a subtle change to the posting system: Make it so the first post on any article cannot be done as "Anonymous Coward".
I know Slashdot has a tradition of being a "free-for-all, run through a blender" but I don't think there has ever been an AC first post that has ever been anything but either:
- So lame that you wonder how a person manages to survive such a terminal case of lack of personality or creativity... or
- There is no real reason it couldn't have been posted under a login.
Stupidity really should be viciously stamped out but if we can use automated steps to reduce the "background stupid" we can then focus more energy on more invasive cases of dumb.
The farther north you go the lower altitude treeline is. You go far enough north and treeline is below sea level.
So the "far north: that the posted question eludes to is either treeless or has a few little black spruce that might be about as tall as you are. Using a black spruce from anywhere near the arctic circle as a "renewable resource" is laughable. A spruce tree 1" in diameter that is that far north is probably 100+ years old.
You don't say what portion of the state you are in. What about geothermal?
Other options include wind, tidal, and wave energy sources. These may be interesting simply because of the technical challenges posed by the local conditions.
Three specific resources I would look into:
- The Anchorage School District used to have a Science Resource Center with modular prepackaged lessons. Assuming the center still exists I would suspect they may have some great ideas and probably would have some lesson plans they could email you.
- Contact the offices of any or all of the oil companies in Anchorage (or a local office if there is one). They actively search for this sort of thing because it is good publicity and they have lots or resources to draw from.
- Contact the offices of the native corporation that covers your portion of the state. I'm certain they are actively looking at renewable projects as they are always interested in investing local and long term.
Slashdot Mirror
J. C. R. Licklider is about the most important person in the development of the Internet. He worked in the Pentagon and had three different dedicated terminals to three different systems in his office and each had its different connection procedure. He asked the question of "Why can't these things be connected together?" (probably to save office space...)
He took his question across the hall and in 5 minutes had the funding to start what became the ARPAnet. He was as close as the computer world gets to an expeditionary explorer.
In other words: He funded the startup of the Internet.
For a really great read get a copy of "Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet". Besides learning about the incredible minds that built the foundations, you can read a number of entertaining anecdotes. (Like AT&Ts refusal to believe that it was possible long after it was working!!!)
Look, in the political climate that would even consider Newt Gingrich for president, anything other than overt genocide is going to get a pass.
Ding, ding, ding, ding...
We have a winner!!!
More to the point:
Everyone has an interest in having a well funded retirement plan...
This happens right before they read their "undying love's" email from that other REALLY hot person and change their whole lifestyle to a goth theme to match the blackness in their heart.
(It also allows them to express their individuality... just like all of their other friends...)
Traffic courts are the end point of a revenue supply stream. Judges do not make, "Gee, was there a valid reason?" types of decisions. They make "Is it humanly possible to apply this law here and are all the 'T's crossed?" types of decisions.
... and lets be honest, there is something in the back of the average person's head that doesn't want someone to pass them. If speed was the CAUSE of an accident then there would be a speed where when you reached it the accident would ensue.
The enforcement and fee structure of our traffic laws are based on extremely low chances of getting caught. If every possible infraction was enforced in every possible instance the average driver's license would be ticketed to the point of suspension within an hour. The policeman is the point were discretion should be applied to decide, "Should I enforce this", and the idea that infractions should be blanket enforced by an automated, 1984ish, mechano-fascist system is insane.
Also there is a general "knowledge" that speed is the ultimate "safety sin" that is so far from correct. The government's own NHTSA report that was released after 10 years of the "55 mile-an-hour limit" had background data that when analyzed (by someone other then the government) showed that the safest speed to be traveling was 5 to 10 mph faster then the general flow of traffic. That same study "proved" that 55 saved lives: after ignoring any other possible source for a reduction in deaths per mile such as much safer cars, massive improvements in tire safety, seat belt laws, etc... So after going with the spin that nothing else could have effected the number of fatalities, the best number they could come up with worked out to it costing an additional 150 man/years (from the reduced speeds) on the roads for every life saved. (One independent analysis pointed out that you could get the same expected reduction in fatalities by increasing the actual tire pressure in all cars by about 2 psi.)
When a more sensible look is made at the data, it is pretty clear that once you factor out increases in passenger car safety, tire safety, and seat belt use, it shows that drivers had become worse, most likely because they had lost driving ability and when at a slower pace it encourages people to do "other things" besides drive.
Lets be serious. Traffic enforcement is about revenue. Speed is easy to prove, it is fun/interesting for cops to enforce and the public has been led to believe that SPEED is the big scary thing,
If traffic enforcement was about "safety" there would be a mandate to enforce the laws as they relate to the generation of accidents: Failure to yield right-of-way, inattentive driving, and just plain incompetence.
----
Oh, and the correct civilian use of drones is to create an open source project of mesh networked drones to monitor our government...
And that includes detecting speed traps from above!
Flying is dangerous!!!
... because you have to ride in a car to get to the airport, you probably walked up or down stairs (and/or escalators), and you probably took a shower or a bath before you left. Those all are quite a bit more risky then flying.
Other then that, the real risk is the 100% risk that the government will stomp all over your personal property rights, privacy rights, and any possible right to dignity,
More to the point:
Have you seen the lineup that is the best they can come up with for the next election? Geeze... You would think the companies that pay for our elected officials would have provided a better selection.
You have now been marked for elimination.
(resistance is futile!)
Can you say, "Off shoring" anyone?
Yeah, because we all know that children will only break their toys in front of their parents. Plus even if it was broken out of the parent's view we all know that children always show their parents the things they have broken immediately afterwords...
I used to have two standard replys to the, "It's broken" type of complaint.
- "How can you tell? Is there an axe sticking out of it?"
and
- "How can you tell? Is it on fire?"
One day I had this young kid came up to me saying, "My computer is broken." so of course I respond, "How can you tell? Is it on fire?"
He looked a bit embarrassed and said, "Well it was smoking and made a buzzing sound but it has stopped now."
His one day old computer's power supply had burned up in a spectacular fashion.
(Still waiting to see an axe...)
Letting citizens exercise the rights could "interfere with enforcement proceedings" so hand over all your rights immediately!
TVs with that style of remote were easy to mess with. You just had to shake a ring full of keys. Fun with technology...
Seeing that here in the US we live in the safest time in human history your apparent need to up the ante of the surveillance state seems to indicate you should move to a nice fascist regime. As a person who realizes that, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants" I also realize that the "blood of patriots" did not refer to young men shipped to foreign countries but possibly referred to liberty minded citizens right here at home who are willing to take the amazingly slight risk of allowing liberty to remain paramount. I also realize that "tyrants" could even refer to our own government and that the government should be trusted as far as I can spit up wind in a hurricane.
Government by popularity with a decision making process funded by corporations is an insanely dangerous thing.
No. I will not willingly give a blind government hierarchy a cost effective way to micromanage our lives and to automate the fleecing of the people. WE ARE NOT THEIR SOURCE OF INCOME. They are supposed to be our servants.
Think about this: It is impossible for a government, a corporation, or a committee to be moral. Morality requires a conscience and only an individual can have a conscience.
English.
Yeah! Charging someone more for a faster internet connection is so anti net neutrality!!!
... wait ... uh ... urrrr...
Put the passwords in a sealed envelope known to a few specific family members. Probably near the will. You can tell if it has been accessed... To further the scheme you can let them verbally know that the password is scrambled in some manner such as "Last 4 chars are in reverse order" or similar. The fact it is offline protects it from anything except for direct physical access by someone who already knows it exists and it keeps it under your physical control until you aren't there.
Not Motorcross... Autocross.
Over 90% of the participants are using the car in their driveway. There will be no "buried loop (antenna)" because you don't modify a parking lot you borrowed for a day. People are not going to use a $200 HotLap timer when they are just there to drive fast.
Auto-X is a very, very entry level motor sport. Most people don't even have their own helmet so they borrow a loaner that most clubs have available. The system HAS to be external to the car. There isn't any question about this.
Say you want to see who can go around a little course faster in your wife's Volvo wagon. That is Auto-X. How much modification are you going to do to your wife's wagon before you and your friends take turns driving through cones? None.
If you don't understand this then be clear about this: You don't understand.
RFID stickers and barcodes are a really interesting idea. You would still want to do the timing with a photo sensor but having the secondary system to tag the photo sensor events to the correct car would solve lots of things like people walking through the lights and messing up all the times for people who are on course. Barcode is the easiest and cheapest to generate but I see the issue there being that the barcode would need to be at a consistent height for the sensor to read it. Cars aren't consistent so you wouldn't be able to do that without a sophisticated machine vision system.
This type of upgrade to a timing system would make running an event a lot more fun. The timing system is the source of lots of cussing from workers and participants. A timing system generally costs a bit more then a grand so I doubt you would be able to develop something for less then that. I see this as something that might be added to a current system either by the manufacturer or as a personal upgrade. If you were able to come up with an open source type of solution or upgrade you would be a hero to car clubs across the country.
"Let's blame legacy machines" is an incredibly silly idea and it is so easy to prove how dumb it is.
...)
Legacy Systems = "Old stuff"...
Now tell me how fast is the quantity of "Old stuff" increasing? Who is making the new "Old stuff"? (gaaak!)
(Where can I find the next generation of really old stuff?
In Grand Tourismo 5 there is a feature where the game gives you a "birthday gift car" that was produced in the year of your birth. Lots of people were making multiple fake accounts to try and get really rare and expensive cars. Once they got the car they would give it as a gift to their main account.
(PSN patched the game so people couldn't trade expensive cars any more so that glitch is gone.)
I could easily believe there are lots of fake accounts out there for similar reasons.
Jay's real interest is in cars with displacements rated in gallons. This might catch his eye but if there was a locomotive converted to street use he wouldn't even notice this one.
I would like to suggest a subtle change to the posting system: Make it so the first post on any article cannot be done as "Anonymous Coward".
I know Slashdot has a tradition of being a "free-for-all, run through a blender" but I don't think there has ever been an AC first post that has ever been anything but either:
- So lame that you wonder how a person manages to survive such a terminal case of lack of personality or creativity... or
- There is no real reason it couldn't have been posted under a login.
Stupidity really should be viciously stamped out but if we can use automated steps to reduce the "background stupid" we can then focus more energy on more invasive cases of dumb.
Your thinking of it backwards. It isn't so much that they, "figured this out". It is more of a case of, "We are stacking the cards this much higher".
The farther north you go the lower altitude treeline is. You go far enough north and treeline is below sea level.
So the "far north: that the posted question eludes to is either treeless or has a few little black spruce that might be about as tall as you are. Using a black spruce from anywhere near the arctic circle as a "renewable resource" is laughable. A spruce tree 1" in diameter that is that far north is probably 100+ years old.
You don't say what portion of the state you are in. What about geothermal?
Other options include wind, tidal, and wave energy sources. These may be interesting simply because of the technical challenges posed by the local conditions.
Three specific resources I would look into:
- The Anchorage School District used to have a Science Resource Center with modular prepackaged lessons. Assuming the center still exists I would suspect they may have some great ideas and probably would have some lesson plans they could email you.
- Contact the offices of any or all of the oil companies in Anchorage (or a local office if there is one). They actively search for this sort of thing because it is good publicity and they have lots or resources to draw from.
- Contact the offices of the native corporation that covers your portion of the state. I'm certain they are actively looking at renewable projects as they are always interested in investing local and long term.