They're trying this in Detroit with city police officers. The deal is basically, you give me $1000 and I'll give you a 3000 sq/ft mansion and $150,000 worth of renovations... if you'll move into it and live there. Most of the officers aren't taking the deal because it would mean that they lived in Detroit... their kids would be going to Detroit schools, their insurance rates would skyrocket and so on.
I'm one of those folks who use GPS when they know where they're going. I usually don't program in a destination and just use it like a heads up display. Time, speed, direction, cross streets etc. All that training in Grand Theft Auto being but to good use!
And I would reply with "I cannot see around the truck and past the shrub, so I will not block the crosswalk out of consideration for the bicyclist you cannot see, that's why I am not turning right on red" and "I am going just under the speed limit, you do know that speed is illegal, do you not, please see under 'less than or equal to' -- Thanks"
"Then get the hell in the right-hand lane you self-righteous prick" would be my reply. Seriously, all the "speeding is illegal too!!" people aren't much different than Dana Carvey's Church Lady. Not to mention that small differentials in speed are A GOOD THING FOR SAFETY if the faster cars pass on the left and the slower cars keep to the right. It allows traffic to spread out so cars are spaced out... extremely important on the highway! That's why we've got all those "keep right except to pass" signs that you seem to willfully ignore.
Self-Righteousness is also thought to correlate highly with hipocricy, and this is a perfect example. Enforcing your beliefs in a strict interpretation of the speed limit on others while willfully ignoring the "Keep Right" laws in most states.
Your rolling roadblock is far more dangerous than my 5mph over the speed limit keeping up with traffic. To say otherwise is simply untrue.
The shrub bit I agree with and feel is a good example though.
It is very easy to not see or hear a cop behind you. Last year I was pulled over on my bike for a crazy low speeding violation (+4mph... serisouly? I'd never felt "profiled" before then). I'm a big proponent of ATGATT (all the gear all the time) and thus even wear ear protection 90% of the time. The small mirrors on a sportbike make it very hard to notice the flashing lights unless they are right behind you. The hearing protection along with the wind noise (that the ear plugs are protecting me from) make it nearly impossible to hear the sirens unless they are fairly close behind.
The officer that stopped me ended up grabbing my shoulder in my garage as I was walking in my house. Had no idea I was being followed and the officer said they were about 10 car lengths behind. Luckily the officer that grabbed me (probably a bad idea) was saying "license and registration" as he did so... kept me from thinking I was being robbed in my garage (which happens more than you would think).
That guy probably wasn't running from the cops. Just because the cop had a hard time catching him, doesn't mean he was trying to evade the officer. Being hard to catch just means you're riding way too fast and being an ass... it doesn't mean you're running. Besides, any modern 600cc class sportbike will do 0-60 in 3 seconds flat in first gear (and there are 5 more gears to go). The officer's Malibu isn't even remotely in the same performance ballpark. I'd expect the Chevy to have trouble catching a sportbike just as I'd expect most people on slashdot would have trouble catching http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usain_Bolt
It's probably like the current iPhone "flash" app that my mother-in-law downloaded that one about 6 months ago. I asked how do you download a flash!?! Then I thought about it for a second. All it does is increase the ISO... A LOT. The result is a horrible grainy terrible photo, but it's brighter and you can see in the dark.
This is probably just processing the photo to brighten the areas you selected with your directional "flash". Actually it could up the ISO a bunch and then darken the areas you don't select. That sounds like a perfect recipe for garbage photos.
Nothing to see here... I'm sure the target demographic will happily pay $10 to download this "flash" and take even crappier pictures.
As I said in the last line of my reply, no one would starve without the culling & continual population control. It would be a shame however to waste the perfectly good venison (though I beleive they threw out most that first year as the deer were rather sick). If you strictly define _need_ as in _not_starve_ then no. I'm defining _need_ with _killing_to_protect_infrastructure_... and if you _need_ to kill an animal such as a deer, in my opinion you _need_ to process & eat the meat, otherwise it's _extermination_ and a waste. Killing a non-livestock animal that you will eat is called _hunting_. Need to kill + need to eat (so it's not a waste) == need to hunt for food.
We're just looking at it a bit differently I guess. Hopefully the Germans are processing and eating the deer they are culling, would be a terrible waste of an animal if not.
(And trapping is horribly cruel IMO... animals can be stuck in the trap for days at a time until they die of dehydration or whatever. I think even a bothched kill shot that needed to be followed up would be preferable!)
The rural midwest of the US of A needs to hunt for food. We had a deer over-population in my home town about 15 years back. Farmers had shot nearly all the coyotes that normally kept the deer in check as they were killing their livestock. It's nearly impossible to keep them out, coyotes are pretty smart and WILL find a way to get to your goats/chicken/whatever so I understand the farmers protecting their livelyhood. Adding to that hunting was also less popular than in previous decades and less deer were being taken in that manner. The overpopulation of deer was causing starvation, driving them to eat anything within 6ft of the ground including tree bark. It was also causing a large increase in deer/car collisions, resulting in multiple injuries and a couple deaths if memory serves.
The solution was to have an organized hunt/cull in which many people who wanted to try their hands at hunting but couldn't because they are disabled. Then they loosened the restrictions on regular hunting during the year and allowed people to take more deer. Now the you see in parks are much more healthy and less deer are hit on the roadways.
Plus, venison if cooked correctly is delicious! (Ok so nobody would starve if there was no hunting for food, but people were getting hurt/killed due to over population of deer. Tasty venison is a nice byproduct of solving that problem.)
There's one large and glaring difference between the US and the nations you mentioned above, and it's a cultural/societal one... demographics. In the US we have a very large gap between the have's and have not's... and the have not's. This partly due to our history of slavery in the south, partly due to illegal immigration along the souther border and the rest just comes from poverty. The above might be seen as race baiting but that's not my intent, poverty breeds crime regardless of race.
Having grown up in the rural midwest in a fairly rough town with a lot of poor folk that moved A LOT of drugs, and then moving to suburban Detroit, I'm speaking from expereince in this post. Criminals do what they feel they "have" to do. This leads to a cycle of house/car break ins and theft... to be pawned or sold on Craigslist for drug money.
Even living in an affluent suburb a mere 2 blocks from the police department as my family and I do, there have been multiple break ins in the neighborhood in the past few years.
There was a shooting in the neighborhood last year. A police chase that started in one of the rougher parts of metro detroit somehow ended up on the next street over. The wife and I were awakend to the sound of the suspect exchanging fire with the lone officer in the chase. It took over 3 minutes from the first shot until the time we heard the next squad car show up. 3 minutes is a long time...
I see my family's safety as my most important responsibilty in life. Given that I can't change society into a place where everyone is a "have" and there is no need for crime, and that it takes the police 3 minutes to show up to a "shots fired" call in a very good neighborhood 2 blocks from the station... I have a gun and know how to use it. (I enjoy range time and thus practice. Try it sometime, it's fun and relaxing!)
I have no illusions of being Rambo or anything of the sort. The the second to last thing I want is to need to use my firearm in a defense situation. That LAST thing I would ever want is to need a firearm and not have one. Our posessions can be replaced, and if there is a break in they can have whatever they want downstairs. All the bedrooms are on the second floor and any entry into the stairwell would be a very dangerous and likely fatal error (12g 00-Buck is rather nasty). The threat of violence against my family is too high if an intruder is allowed to the top of the stairs. (Of course the intruder would be alerted that I have called the police and am armed to comply with local laws. Also the police would be alerted that the homeowner is at the top of the stairs in his underwear with a Mossberg.)
Maybe it's a cultural thing, but I can't understand how any husband/father could see the situation any differently or at the very least understand my point of view. Instead I'll likely be seen as another "gun crazy American" by the majority of our EU friends. I'd like to take them down the bad side of Grand River Ave at night and explain to them that these fine folks can be at my house in 15 minutes.
A friend of mine back home (rural Indiana) had an interesting take on the "we don't call 911" home security strategy.
A few years ago 3-4 of his neighbors houses had been broken into and robbed in a short period of time. My friend, a gun enthusiast who loves shooting at the range and does so at least once a week, decided there was no better deterrent than hanging one of his used silhouette targets up on the back door.
The ragged holes in the head and chest said all that needed to be said... and his house was never broken into.:)
It's amazing that someone else had the exact same experience I had. Except my intro to actual programming was a TI-85. Computer classes were more like typing classes.
I did take Pascal as an elective in HS though. The class ended up being really lame though, learned more programming the TI-85 to cheat at chemistry.
There's quite a big issue with your idea unless you want to go all Logan's Run on people (at say 55 instead of 30). When you are old, if you and all those in your generation had 1 child there would be 2x as many old retired people living off the backs of the young. If your children only have one child and you and your spouse haven't died yet... there will be 4x as many old people living off the backs of their children and grand-children.
It's a hard and ugly problem, but in a discussion that revolves around the "law of unforeseen consequences" to suggest such actions without considering the long term effects is... well... nearly a slashdot meme all it's own:)
Mod parent up! This isn't just a problem in acedemia, but in teachign in general. In the US we seem to have this idea that if a student fails, it's the teacher's fault... from kindergarten through college. These poor teachers are put in a situation where their students HAVE TO PASS, come hell or high water. Nothing else matters, if your students fail then you fail, it doesn't matter if the students never did any work, never tried, doodled the whole time or whatever.
My wife is a kindergarten teacher and even at that level she has to deal with this situation more often than she'd like to. She's great and her kids love her and learn a lot... she has even gotten kudos from 1st grade teachers at other schools for how well prepared her former students are compared to those from other kindergartens. Recently she had to recommend to some parents that their child redo kindergarten because he wasn't getting the concepts that he needs to know in 1st grade. This student would be dropped off consistenly an hour or more late (private school, they can't kick him out or they'd lose revenue in a down economy). He would fall asleep nearly everyday as his parents let him, a 5 yr old, stay up until 11pm-12am if he wanted to. I don't care if you're Plato, Michelle Phiefer or that guy from Lean on Me... you can't teach a kid effectively if he's sleeping (not that the poor guy could help it). What's the parents response to my wife's recommendation? Attempt to get her fired because she's obviously failing her students. If she were a better teacher he'd know these things. If she did this or that he would have done better... makes me sick.
A little personal responsibility goes a long way. Students and when young enough, their parents MUST be held accountable for their own success or failure.
(I know there are some bad teachers out there and we need to be able to identify & remove them, but there needs to be a better way than "Mr./Mrs. so-and-so made me work for my grade, I didn't and I failed. That's not fair! Other lazy students failed as well so he/she must be a bad teacher!" )
You do realise that Wind energy is solar energy? So it doesn't matter how you pull the energy out of the system, you are still pulling it out.
You do realize that petroleum IS solar energy? It just happens to be conveniently stored in a thick liquid form that's easy to burn and turn into mechanical energy.
It all goes back to solar. My Jeep has been technically solar powered for years now:)
Slashdot Mirror
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Makes sense given Florida's location ...
They're trying this in Detroit with city police officers. The deal is basically, you give me $1000 and I'll give you a 3000 sq/ft mansion and $150,000 worth of renovations ... if you'll move into it and live there. Most of the officers aren't taking the deal because it would mean that they lived in Detroit ... their kids would be going to Detroit schools, their insurance rates would skyrocket and so on.
See below for details
http://www.freep.com/article/20110215/BUSINESS04/102150427/Homes-Detroit-s-police-can-buy-low-down-payment
I'm one of those folks who use GPS when they know where they're going. I usually don't program in a destination and just use it like a heads up display. Time, speed, direction, cross streets etc. All that training in Grand Theft Auto being but to good use!
And I would reply with "I cannot see around the truck and past the shrub, so I will not block the crosswalk out of consideration for the bicyclist you cannot see, that's why I am not turning right on red" and "I am going just under the speed limit, you do know that speed is illegal, do you not, please see under 'less than or equal to' -- Thanks"
"Then get the hell in the right-hand lane you self-righteous prick" would be my reply. Seriously, all the "speeding is illegal too!!" people aren't much different than Dana Carvey's Church Lady. Not to mention that small differentials in speed are A GOOD THING FOR SAFETY if the faster cars pass on the left and the slower cars keep to the right. It allows traffic to spread out so cars are spaced out ... extremely important on the highway! That's why we've got all those "keep right except to pass" signs that you seem to willfully ignore.
Self-Righteousness is also thought to correlate highly with hipocricy, and this is a perfect example. Enforcing your beliefs in a strict interpretation of the speed limit on others while willfully ignoring the "Keep Right" laws in most states.
Your rolling roadblock is far more dangerous than my 5mph over the speed limit keeping up with traffic. To say otherwise is simply untrue.
The shrub bit I agree with and feel is a good example though.
... that he shot Bill Murray.
Funny how it's on the last page ... Is there an ARTWFA standing for "Almost RT Whole FA" :P
It is very easy to not see or hear a cop behind you. Last year I was pulled over on my bike for a crazy low speeding violation (+4mph ... serisouly? I'd never felt "profiled" before then). I'm a big proponent of ATGATT (all the gear all the time) and thus even wear ear protection 90% of the time. The small mirrors on a sportbike make it very hard to notice the flashing lights unless they are right behind you. The hearing protection along with the wind noise (that the ear plugs are protecting me from) make it nearly impossible to hear the sirens unless they are fairly close behind.
... kept me from thinking I was being robbed in my garage (which happens more than you would think).
... it doesn't mean you're running. Besides, any modern 600cc class sportbike will do 0-60 in 3 seconds flat in first gear (and there are 5 more gears to go). The officer's Malibu isn't even remotely in the same performance ballpark. I'd expect the Chevy to have trouble catching a sportbike just as I'd expect most people on slashdot would have trouble catching http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usain_Bolt
The officer that stopped me ended up grabbing my shoulder in my garage as I was walking in my house. Had no idea I was being followed and the officer said they were about 10 car lengths behind. Luckily the officer that grabbed me (probably a bad idea) was saying "license and registration" as he did so
That guy probably wasn't running from the cops. Just because the cop had a hard time catching him, doesn't mean he was trying to evade the officer. Being hard to catch just means you're riding way too fast and being an ass
Reminds me of a speech my football coach used to give about dedication ...
...
(wavy flashback fadeout)
"There's levels of dedication boys. While a chicken and a pig are both involved in making breakfast. The pig is dedicated! Be the pig!"
(wavy flashback fadeout)
Kinda creepy now that think about it
It's probably like the current iPhone "flash" app that my mother-in-law downloaded that one about 6 months ago. I asked how do you download a flash!?! Then I thought about it for a second. All it does is increase the ISO ... A LOT. The result is a horrible grainy terrible photo, but it's brighter and you can see in the dark.
... I'm sure the target demographic will happily pay $10 to download this "flash" and take even crappier pictures.
This is probably just processing the photo to brighten the areas you selected with your directional "flash". Actually it could up the ISO a bunch and then darken the areas you don't select. That sounds like a perfect recipe for garbage photos.
Nothing to see here
As I said in the last line of my reply, no one would starve without the culling & continual population control. It would be a shame however to waste the perfectly good venison (though I beleive they threw out most that first year as the deer were rather sick). If you strictly define _need_ as in _not_starve_ then no. I'm defining _need_ with _killing_to_protect_infrastructure_ ... and if you _need_ to kill an animal such as a deer, in my opinion you _need_ to process & eat the meat, otherwise it's _extermination_ and a waste. Killing a non-livestock animal that you will eat is called _hunting_. Need to kill + need to eat (so it's not a waste) == need to hunt for food.
... animals can be stuck in the trap for days at a time until they die of dehydration or whatever. I think even a bothched kill shot that needed to be followed up would be preferable!)
We're just looking at it a bit differently I guess. Hopefully the Germans are processing and eating the deer they are culling, would be a terrible waste of an animal if not.
(And trapping is horribly cruel IMO
The rural midwest of the US of A needs to hunt for food. We had a deer over-population in my home town about 15 years back. Farmers had shot nearly all the coyotes that normally kept the deer in check as they were killing their livestock. It's nearly impossible to keep them out, coyotes are pretty smart and WILL find a way to get to your goats/chicken/whatever so I understand the farmers protecting their livelyhood. Adding to that hunting was also less popular than in previous decades and less deer were being taken in that manner. The overpopulation of deer was causing starvation, driving them to eat anything within 6ft of the ground including tree bark. It was also causing a large increase in deer/car collisions, resulting in multiple injuries and a couple deaths if memory serves.
The solution was to have an organized hunt/cull in which many people who wanted to try their hands at hunting but couldn't because they are disabled. Then they loosened the restrictions on regular hunting during the year and allowed people to take more deer. Now the you see in parks are much more healthy and less deer are hit on the roadways.
Plus, venison if cooked correctly is delicious! (Ok so nobody would starve if there was no hunting for food, but people were getting hurt/killed due to over population of deer. Tasty venison is a nice byproduct of solving that problem.)
There's one large and glaring difference between the US and the nations you mentioned above, and it's a cultural/societal one ... demographics. In the US we have a very large gap between the have's and have not's ... and the have not's. This partly due to our history of slavery in the south, partly due to illegal immigration along the souther border and the rest just comes from poverty. The above might be seen as race baiting but that's not my intent, poverty breeds crime regardless of race.
... to be pawned or sold on Craigslist for drug money.
Even living in an affluent suburb a mere 2 blocks from the police department as my family and I do, there have been multiple break ins in the neighborhood in the past few years.
...
... I have a gun and know how to use it. (I enjoy range time and thus practice. Try it sometime, it's fun and relaxing!)
Having grown up in the rural midwest in a fairly rough town with a lot of poor folk that moved A LOT of drugs, and then moving to suburban Detroit, I'm speaking from expereince in this post. Criminals do what they feel they "have" to do. This leads to a cycle of house/car break ins and theft
There was a shooting in the neighborhood last year. A police chase that started in one of the rougher parts of metro detroit somehow ended up on the next street over. The wife and I were awakend to the sound of the suspect exchanging fire with the lone officer in the chase. It took over 3 minutes from the first shot until the time we heard the next squad car show up. 3 minutes is a long time
I see my family's safety as my most important responsibilty in life. Given that I can't change society into a place where everyone is a "have" and there is no need for crime, and that it takes the police 3 minutes to show up to a "shots fired" call in a very good neighborhood 2 blocks from the station
I have no illusions of being Rambo or anything of the sort. The the second to last thing I want is to need to use my firearm in a defense situation. That LAST thing I would ever want is to need a firearm and not have one. Our posessions can be replaced, and if there is a break in they can have whatever they want downstairs. All the bedrooms are on the second floor and any entry into the stairwell would be a very dangerous and likely fatal error (12g 00-Buck is rather nasty). The threat of violence against my family is too high if an intruder is allowed to the top of the stairs. (Of course the intruder would be alerted that I have called the police and am armed to comply with local laws. Also the police would be alerted that the homeowner is at the top of the stairs in his underwear with a Mossberg.)
Maybe it's a cultural thing, but I can't understand how any husband/father could see the situation any differently or at the very least understand my point of view. Instead I'll likely be seen as another "gun crazy American" by the majority of our EU friends. I'd like to take them down the bad side of Grand River Ave at night and explain to them that these fine folks can be at my house in 15 minutes.
A friend of mine back home (rural Indiana) had an interesting take on the "we don't call 911" home security strategy.
... and his house was never broken into. :)
A few years ago 3-4 of his neighbors houses had been broken into and robbed in a short period of time. My friend, a gun enthusiast who loves shooting at the range and does so at least once a week, decided there was no better deterrent than hanging one of his used silhouette targets up on the back door.
The ragged holes in the head and chest said all that needed to be said
It's amazing that someone else had the exact same experience I had. Except my intro to actual programming was a TI-85. Computer classes were more like typing classes.
I did take Pascal as an elective in HS though. The class ended up being really lame though, learned more programming the TI-85 to cheat at chemistry.
Meeeemmmmoriiiieeeesssss
I think technically it's not augmented reality, but rather seeing more of reality.
Bath & Body Works mixed with equal parts sweat and shame.
There's quite a big issue with your idea unless you want to go all Logan's Run on people (at say 55 instead of 30). When you are old, if you and all those in your generation had 1 child there would be 2x as many old retired people living off the backs of the young. If your children only have one child and you and your spouse haven't died yet ... there will be 4x as many old people living off the backs of their children and grand-children.
... well ... nearly a slashdot meme all it's own :)
It's a hard and ugly problem, but in a discussion that revolves around the "law of unforeseen consequences" to suggest such actions without considering the long term effects is
As I've said to a few people in the past (cribbed from a country song).
"The First Amendment protect you from the govt, not from me."
That's because zero thought ... er ... I mean, zero tolerance rules and their enforcement like this is PRECISELY bullying.
Makes me sick.
I don't think BP stands for American Petroleum ... why America bash over this?
Mod parent up! This isn't just a problem in acedemia, but in teachign in general. In the US we seem to have this idea that if a student fails, it's the teacher's fault ... from kindergarten through college. These poor teachers are put in a situation where their students HAVE TO PASS, come hell or high water. Nothing else matters, if your students fail then you fail, it doesn't matter if the students never did any work, never tried, doodled the whole time or whatever.
... she has even gotten kudos from 1st grade teachers at other schools for how well prepared her former students are compared to those from other kindergartens. Recently she had to recommend to some parents that their child redo kindergarten because he wasn't getting the concepts that he needs to know in 1st grade. This student would be dropped off consistenly an hour or more late (private school, they can't kick him out or they'd lose revenue in a down economy). He would fall asleep nearly everyday as his parents let him, a 5 yr old, stay up until 11pm-12am if he wanted to. I don't care if you're Plato, Michelle Phiefer or that guy from Lean on Me ... you can't teach a kid effectively if he's sleeping (not that the poor guy could help it). What's the parents response to my wife's recommendation? Attempt to get her fired because she's obviously failing her students. If she were a better teacher he'd know these things. If she did this or that he would have done better ... makes me sick.
My wife is a kindergarten teacher and even at that level she has to deal with this situation more often than she'd like to. She's great and her kids love her and learn a lot
A little personal responsibility goes a long way. Students and when young enough, their parents MUST be held accountable for their own success or failure.
(I know there are some bad teachers out there and we need to be able to identify & remove them, but there needs to be a better way than "Mr./Mrs. so-and-so made me work for my grade, I didn't and I failed. That's not fair! Other lazy students failed as well so he/she must be a bad teacher!" )
You do realise that Wind energy is solar energy? So it doesn't matter how you pull the energy out of the system, you are still pulling it out.
You do realize that petroleum IS solar energy? It just happens to be conveniently stored in a thick liquid form that's easy to burn and turn into mechanical energy.
:)
It all goes back to solar. My Jeep has been technically solar powered for years now
You know, there was a big ship around the turn of the century that everyone thought was incapable of sinking into the ocean...
The sea always wins in the long run. Not much you, I or anybody else for that matter can do about it.