can arguably be done perfectly safely in the right circumstances.
I wouldn't call luck being "perfectly safe".
Seriously, do you understand what you have to do to text while driving? You have to take your eyes off the road completely and focus most of your attention on entering your text message.
Most of your job while driving is not keeping the vehicle running down the street straight. A six year old can do that (there are a number of COPS episodes that prove that). Most of your job as a driver is making sure you are not going to run into someone else, or that someone else is not going to run into you. It doesn't take a PHD in statistics to recognize that any activity that requires your entire attention, and requires you to remove your eyes from the road, is going to prevent you from doing your job as a driver. It isn't rocket science.
I do believe it's fair to say that drunk driving is a causal factor in accidents - the difference being that alcohol is a cause of bad judgment while things like driving too fast for the conditions are an effect of bad judgment.
There are a number of studies that show your judgment while just talking on a cell phone is nearly as impaired as being drunk. Can you honestly say texting is going to be better than that?
Common sense man, you don't need a scientist to tell you everything. Correlation does not prove causation, sure, but this isn't bizzaro world where correlation proves there is no causation. Correlation is strong evidence suggesting a link, and a little common sense points out the obvious factors. Distractions cause accidents, in fact very few things cause accidents except distractions and chemical or physical impairments (i.e. drugs, alcohol, or sleep deprivation). To take something as distracting as texting and say you can't assume it causes accidents is down right idiotic.
I've never tried Google Chrome, but now I never will unless they take this "feature" out.
They've already given you the option to disable it, good night.
Don't you do your searches with Google? You can't tell me you use Bing... This is trivial compared to your search history.
You also trust your ISP with everything you do on the net, I don't see you disconnecting your internet for that "invasion" of your privacy.
Seriously, you people need to get a grip. There isn't one person in ten thousand who's address bar history is so important that they'd actually care to dig it up and link it to you directly. You just aren't that important. The only reason Google uses it at all is to target unobtrusive advertisements at you - which makes ads less annoying and more relevant to you anyway.
I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, thanks. There is too little trust in the world as it is, a little reciprocity to encourage other businesses to rely on their customers' trust is a great thing to do in my book.
As you said, they trade on trust, and it has made them one of the fastest growing, most profitable companies in history. Right now there is an extremely small number of companies that could potentially afford to buy Google, and it shrinks every day. I seriously doubt there is anybody who could actually afford to make Google turn their back on their principles and sell out their customers. Doing so would also make Google worth a fraction of what it is worth before such a thing took place. They'd get the data, sure, but the image would be destroyed.
By default Google's address bar behaves as an address bar unless a website is not found, in which case it will connect to Google and perform a search.
It is certainly possible this function is structured such that the address always gets sent to Google, but at the very least all of your misspelled or incomplete addresses will be sent to Google.
Frankly, I don't have a problem with it either way. I think too many people are paranoid about others stealing their trivial information. What the hell do any of these geeks on here have that anybody would want to dig through their Google searches or address history to find? I mean, seriously, it's the digital equivalent of rummaging through your trash, what could you possibly have that would motivate someone to do that? If it does happen, though, you probably already know the person that did it, you just don't know they did it yet.
Amen to that. I actually put IE and FF on about the same level - I did have a couple of addons I liked but most of FF's behavior I found more annoying than IE's. They sort of even each other out.
how many users you think are going to check those just to know their privacy isn't violated?
All of them that are that anal about their privacy will.
Most of us, frankly, don't care if Google knows what addresses we've been putting into the address bar. It's not that big a deal. I could see terrorists or industrial spies not wanting to use chrome, but really, for most people this is not the kind of "privacy issue" that has them concerned. I use Google exclusively for my searches, so what difference is the address bar going to make? Get a grip, I and most others already trust them with far greater than the address bar, it is a non-issue.
Now, if you want to argue that Google should not be trusted, I'm all ears. So far they've done right by me and everybody else though, so you'd better have something pretty damning to make me change my mind.
Chances are you're one of the 90% who think they are one of the 2%, but aren't.
If you read through the comments, there are a hell of a lot of people who are just absolutely positive they are good drivers while talking on the cell phone.
I'd be very surprised if any of them are, let alone you specifically.
The Mythbusters did a similar study that only involved three of the Mythbusters team. Every one of them did about as bad as being legally drunk, and much worse than sober and distraction-free.
Most people think they do a whole lot better than they actually do. It would be nice to have a facility to demonstrate this by having a person do something similar to the MB crew, minus the drinking of course. I'm sure you'd be surprised at just how poorly you drive while talking on a cell phone, or even engaging in a serious conversation in your car.
...like having to take your hands off the wheel to operate another device - or worse - your eyes off the road to read the text messages.
What part of "hands free" and "conversations" did you not understand? This is actually pretty damning for proponents of hands-free cell phone use in vehicles.
The OP mentions texting, but that's not what this study was about, and you could get that just from reading the summary. It was about talking while driving, and only 1 in 40 can handle it. That is, only a little over 2% of drivers are not impaired by talking while driving.
That 1 in 40 would also be more likely to manage texting, but talking and texting do not equate, and texting is significantly more distracting. Texting while driving is already illegal almost everywhere, so I wouldn't worry about it unless it isn't illegal where you are. Then you should raise a ruckus and make it so.
The next big study will show that 95% of people think they are one of the 1 in 40 "Supertaskers".
I actually found this more damning than some people did.
What the study is basically saying is that only one person in forty can drive safely while talking. Obviously one study isn't enough, but figures like that should be good enough to ban all cell phone usage while driving, given that those 39 people out of 40 who are unsafe are allowed to talk and drive presently.
... dude, how can you not notice something that noisy that is literally casting a shadow on your whole car!
Easy, it's called "sleeping".
Seriously though, for people who aren't constantly checking their surroundings, it's very easy to get lulled into a daze and not notice incredible things. I've had several people almost run me off the road because they just weren't paying attention - they were zoned out.
Brother Mainar*: "The castle of Aaaaaarrrrgh!" King Arthur: "What?" BM: "The castle of... Aaaaaaarrrgh" Bedevere: "What is that?" BM: "He must have died while carving!" Lancelot: "Oh, come on!" BM: "Well that's what it says" KA: "Look if he was dying he wouldn't bother to carve 'Argh' he'd just say it" BM: "Well that's what's carved in the rock!" Galahad: "Perhaps he was dictating?" KA: "Oh shut up!"
It probably isn't encrypted, at least not for regular gmail users, but it also probably isn't in plain UTF-8 or HTML either. No doubt it's held in a custom database that wouldn't be easy to access without some knowledge of the system.
I'm pretty sure what goes out over the interwebs is plaintext though.
This is kind customers with non-functional requirements...
I dunno if you know this, but federal regulations have created an assload of non-functional requirements. State and local regulations add to this significantly as well.
Depending on the number of users, $100k for an in-house exchange system is not that bad. A couple good servers will run you $15-20k by themselves, and licensing with Exchange is a bitch, but integration with AD and a number of other perks make it well worth it over time.
...so what do you say to the vast majority of climate scientists whose data and methods are valid?
Most of the ones that do their own research don't make it into the journals, because their conclusions do not jive with AGW.
How do you explain the 650+ climatologists who spoke out during the Copenhagen convention against the IPCC report, which was produced by 50 or so scientists (most of whom were not even climatologists) using mostly re-hashed studies?
Real climatologists are getting seriously pissed off about this stuff, and aren't holding their tongue any longer.
Actually I believe he assumed you were talking about America, since this is an American website and all.
In America, north of the food belt is grasslands - the heavy forests are further north still and in the coastal regions.
Europe, well, enterprising individuals have always been able to find farm land, and it is unlikely the foodbelt will dry up if there is water near by - it will simply widen and encompass a larger area. Also, if Europe has glaciers 200 miles north of the food belt in any non-mountainous regions then you guys are in a shitpile of trouble already.
Not to mention the fact that the air holds 1.4% more water at a 2 degree increase, so you'd see more clouds and more rainfall in the foodbelt. The foodbelt itself would widen, because land further north would be more hospitable to crops.
It might suck a little for California, but then you'd gain much more California-like land elsewhere. It's very much a net gain.
What Cap and Trade recognizes is that sometimes, by changing economic incentives, you can make people's self-motivated behavior actually produce the optimal (or close to optimal) solution globally.
The key there is the "sometimes" bit. Cap and Trade is not a "sometimes" bill, it's an "all times in all places" bill. So I'd agree with your statement that sometimes you can incentivise such behavior and get good results, however it is not likely to work that way across the board, and there is a very real chance that will cause more harm than good. Cap and Trade itself is not an "incentive" program, it's a punishment program. You rarely get more out of people via punishment, typically what happens is people (and companies) will do as little as is necessary to keep from being punished, and not one bit more.
An incentive program would be something like a potential yearly tax break for surpassing pollution/efficiency goals. A state assessor can come in and rate a facility (much like houses are rated) and set a pollution/efficiency goal. If you miss the mark, you get no tax credit. For every so much percentage you come in under the pollution target, you get a tax credit. If you beat your target for 5 years in a row, your processes are re-assessed and you are given a new target.
That kind of system would have businesses fighting to cut waste, improve efficiency and eliminate pollution if you set the credits high enough. It's very similar to the credits given to homeowners for improving their energy efficiency - people will spend $5k-10k on an efficiency project that they might not have felt was worth it previously.
That kind of system is also a lot more likely to produce highly efficient businesses, which boosts the economy instead of chips away at it. Cap and Trade is just detrimental to the economy, without giving back any real gains. It doesn't even reduce pollution, since business can just buy their way out of that by planting a forest in South America. It's bullshit.
Areas prone to desertification see an increase in size and dryness of the desert during a warming period, but areas that are largely uninhabitable because they are currently iced over become available, and this happens on a global scale to vast land masses.
Also, the desertification is not going to be as strong as you might think, because with the rise in temperature the atmosphere is able to hold more water vapor, leading to higher average rainfall around the globe.
Obviously, sea level rise is going to force coastal communities to re-locate, and some areas that are near deserts will become uninhabitable, but overall the geological record shows that warmer temperatures are a net positive for life on earth.
For those concerned about mankind continuing to pump CO2 until the warming does become a serious problem, that just isn't possible. The CO2 we are pumping into the atmosphere now is CO2 that was in the atmosphere once long ago. We will run out long before it becomes a serious issue for life on earth overall. We can, however, fuck things up for ourselves and all mammals if we go too far - we need oxygen, and if we displace too much with CO2 we'll kill ourselves eventually.
Really though, in the grand scheme of things, that would just be another blip in the course of Earth's evolution. Basically there is no way we can permanently damage the Earth by accident, however there is a slight chance we could kill ourselves - what fools we'd be to allow that to happen.
Slashdot Mirror
can arguably be done perfectly safely in the right circumstances.
I wouldn't call luck being "perfectly safe".
Seriously, do you understand what you have to do to text while driving? You have to take your eyes off the road completely and focus most of your attention on entering your text message.
Most of your job while driving is not keeping the vehicle running down the street straight. A six year old can do that (there are a number of COPS episodes that prove that). Most of your job as a driver is making sure you are not going to run into someone else, or that someone else is not going to run into you. It doesn't take a PHD in statistics to recognize that any activity that requires your entire attention, and requires you to remove your eyes from the road, is going to prevent you from doing your job as a driver. It isn't rocket science.
I do believe it's fair to say that drunk driving is a causal factor in accidents - the difference being that alcohol is a cause of bad judgment while things like driving too fast for the conditions are an effect of bad judgment.
There are a number of studies that show your judgment while just talking on a cell phone is nearly as impaired as being drunk. Can you honestly say texting is going to be better than that?
Common sense man, you don't need a scientist to tell you everything. Correlation does not prove causation, sure, but this isn't bizzaro world where correlation proves there is no causation. Correlation is strong evidence suggesting a link, and a little common sense points out the obvious factors. Distractions cause accidents, in fact very few things cause accidents except distractions and chemical or physical impairments (i.e. drugs, alcohol, or sleep deprivation). To take something as distracting as texting and say you can't assume it causes accidents is down right idiotic.
To sum it all up, you sir, are a dumbass.
Exactly why do people trust google
Easy, because they've never betrayed that trust.
If you fear people who have consistently treated you well, and never given you any reason to distrust them, you've got a serious problem.
I've never tried Google Chrome, but now I never will unless they take this "feature" out.
They've already given you the option to disable it, good night.
Don't you do your searches with Google? You can't tell me you use Bing... This is trivial compared to your search history.
You also trust your ISP with everything you do on the net, I don't see you disconnecting your internet for that "invasion" of your privacy.
Seriously, you people need to get a grip. There isn't one person in ten thousand who's address bar history is so important that they'd actually care to dig it up and link it to you directly. You just aren't that important. The only reason Google uses it at all is to target unobtrusive advertisements at you - which makes ads less annoying and more relevant to you anyway.
What happens when they burn your trust?
I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, thanks. There is too little trust in the world as it is, a little reciprocity to encourage other businesses to rely on their customers' trust is a great thing to do in my book.
As you said, they trade on trust, and it has made them one of the fastest growing, most profitable companies in history. Right now there is an extremely small number of companies that could potentially afford to buy Google, and it shrinks every day. I seriously doubt there is anybody who could actually afford to make Google turn their back on their principles and sell out their customers. Doing so would also make Google worth a fraction of what it is worth before such a thing took place. They'd get the data, sure, but the image would be destroyed.
By default Google's address bar behaves as an address bar unless a website is not found, in which case it will connect to Google and perform a search.
It is certainly possible this function is structured such that the address always gets sent to Google, but at the very least all of your misspelled or incomplete addresses will be sent to Google.
Frankly, I don't have a problem with it either way. I think too many people are paranoid about others stealing their trivial information. What the hell do any of these geeks on here have that anybody would want to dig through their Google searches or address history to find? I mean, seriously, it's the digital equivalent of rummaging through your trash, what could you possibly have that would motivate someone to do that? If it does happen, though, you probably already know the person that did it, you just don't know they did it yet.
Amen to that. I actually put IE and FF on about the same level - I did have a couple of addons I liked but most of FF's behavior I found more annoying than IE's. They sort of even each other out.
Chrome is gold though, love that thing.
how many users you think are going to check those just to know their privacy isn't violated?
All of them that are that anal about their privacy will.
Most of us, frankly, don't care if Google knows what addresses we've been putting into the address bar. It's not that big a deal. I could see terrorists or industrial spies not wanting to use chrome, but really, for most people this is not the kind of "privacy issue" that has them concerned. I use Google exclusively for my searches, so what difference is the address bar going to make? Get a grip, I and most others already trust them with far greater than the address bar, it is a non-issue.
Now, if you want to argue that Google should not be trusted, I'm all ears. So far they've done right by me and everybody else though, so you'd better have something pretty damning to make me change my mind.
Am I am of the 1 in 40?
Chances are you're one of the 90% who think they are one of the 2%, but aren't.
If you read through the comments, there are a hell of a lot of people who are just absolutely positive they are good drivers while talking on the cell phone.
I'd be very surprised if any of them are, let alone you specifically.
The study is about talking.
The Mythbusters did a similar study that only involved three of the Mythbusters team. Every one of them did about as bad as being legally drunk, and much worse than sober and distraction-free.
Most people think they do a whole lot better than they actually do. It would be nice to have a facility to demonstrate this by having a person do something similar to the MB crew, minus the drinking of course. I'm sure you'd be surprised at just how poorly you drive while talking on a cell phone, or even engaging in a serious conversation in your car.
...like having to take your hands off the wheel to operate another device - or worse - your eyes off the road to read the text messages.
What part of "hands free" and "conversations" did you not understand? This is actually pretty damning for proponents of hands-free cell phone use in vehicles.
The OP mentions texting, but that's not what this study was about, and you could get that just from reading the summary. It was about talking while driving, and only 1 in 40 can handle it. That is, only a little over 2% of drivers are not impaired by talking while driving.
That 1 in 40 would also be more likely to manage texting, but talking and texting do not equate, and texting is significantly more distracting. Texting while driving is already illegal almost everywhere, so I wouldn't worry about it unless it isn't illegal where you are. Then you should raise a ruckus and make it so.
The next big study will show that 95% of people think they are one of the 1 in 40 "Supertaskers".
I actually found this more damning than some people did.
What the study is basically saying is that only one person in forty can drive safely while talking. Obviously one study isn't enough, but figures like that should be good enough to ban all cell phone usage while driving, given that those 39 people out of 40 who are unsafe are allowed to talk and drive presently.
but try holding a phone, steering and changing gear at the same time!!
That's nothing, do all that while eating a burger and shaving and I'll be impressed.
... dude, how can you not notice something that noisy that is literally casting a shadow on your whole car!
Easy, it's called "sleeping".
Seriously though, for people who aren't constantly checking their surroundings, it's very easy to get lulled into a daze and not notice incredible things. I've had several people almost run me off the road because they just weren't paying attention - they were zoned out.
This is the first time I've cursed on slashdot.
Once you start, it's really fucking hard to stop.
I've just got to:
Brother Mainar*: "The castle of Aaaaaarrrrgh!"
King Arthur: "What?"
BM: "The castle of... Aaaaaaarrrgh"
Bedevere: "What is that?"
BM: "He must have died while carving!"
Lancelot: "Oh, come on!"
BM: "Well that's what it says"
KA: "Look if he was dying he wouldn't bother to carve 'Argh' he'd just say it"
BM: "Well that's what's carved in the rock!"
Galahad: "Perhaps he was dictating?"
KA: "Oh shut up!"
Obviously he doesn't.
Come to think of it, this gives me a great idea for a defragmentation program..
I believe they call what you're thinking of "disk wiping".
It probably isn't encrypted, at least not for regular gmail users, but it also probably isn't in plain UTF-8 or HTML either. No doubt it's held in a custom database that wouldn't be easy to access without some knowledge of the system.
I'm pretty sure what goes out over the interwebs is plaintext though.
This is kind customers with non-functional requirements...
I dunno if you know this, but federal regulations have created an assload of non-functional requirements. State and local regulations add to this significantly as well.
...internally managed system
Sorry man, you are no more qualified than Google.
Depending on the number of users, $100k for an in-house exchange system is not that bad. A couple good servers will run you $15-20k by themselves, and licensing with Exchange is a bitch, but integration with AD and a number of other perks make it well worth it over time.
...so what do you say to the vast majority of climate scientists whose data and methods are valid?
Most of the ones that do their own research don't make it into the journals, because their conclusions do not jive with AGW.
How do you explain the 650+ climatologists who spoke out during the Copenhagen convention against the IPCC report, which was produced by 50 or so scientists (most of whom were not even climatologists) using mostly re-hashed studies?
Real climatologists are getting seriously pissed off about this stuff, and aren't holding their tongue any longer.
Actually I believe he assumed you were talking about America, since this is an American website and all.
In America, north of the food belt is grasslands - the heavy forests are further north still and in the coastal regions.
Europe, well, enterprising individuals have always been able to find farm land, and it is unlikely the foodbelt will dry up if there is water near by - it will simply widen and encompass a larger area. Also, if Europe has glaciers 200 miles north of the food belt in any non-mountainous regions then you guys are in a shitpile of trouble already.
Not to mention the fact that the air holds 1.4% more water at a 2 degree increase, so you'd see more clouds and more rainfall in the foodbelt. The foodbelt itself would widen, because land further north would be more hospitable to crops.
It might suck a little for California, but then you'd gain much more California-like land elsewhere. It's very much a net gain.
What Cap and Trade recognizes is that sometimes, by changing economic incentives, you can make people's self-motivated behavior actually produce the optimal (or close to optimal) solution globally.
The key there is the "sometimes" bit. Cap and Trade is not a "sometimes" bill, it's an "all times in all places" bill. So I'd agree with your statement that sometimes you can incentivise such behavior and get good results, however it is not likely to work that way across the board, and there is a very real chance that will cause more harm than good. Cap and Trade itself is not an "incentive" program, it's a punishment program. You rarely get more out of people via punishment, typically what happens is people (and companies) will do as little as is necessary to keep from being punished, and not one bit more.
An incentive program would be something like a potential yearly tax break for surpassing pollution/efficiency goals. A state assessor can come in and rate a facility (much like houses are rated) and set a pollution/efficiency goal. If you miss the mark, you get no tax credit. For every so much percentage you come in under the pollution target, you get a tax credit. If you beat your target for 5 years in a row, your processes are re-assessed and you are given a new target.
That kind of system would have businesses fighting to cut waste, improve efficiency and eliminate pollution if you set the credits high enough. It's very similar to the credits given to homeowners for improving their energy efficiency - people will spend $5k-10k on an efficiency project that they might not have felt was worth it previously.
That kind of system is also a lot more likely to produce highly efficient businesses, which boosts the economy instead of chips away at it. Cap and Trade is just detrimental to the economy, without giving back any real gains. It doesn't even reduce pollution, since business can just buy their way out of that by planting a forest in South America. It's bullshit.
Areas prone to desertification see an increase in size and dryness of the desert during a warming period, but areas that are largely uninhabitable because they are currently iced over become available, and this happens on a global scale to vast land masses.
Also, the desertification is not going to be as strong as you might think, because with the rise in temperature the atmosphere is able to hold more water vapor, leading to higher average rainfall around the globe.
Obviously, sea level rise is going to force coastal communities to re-locate, and some areas that are near deserts will become uninhabitable, but overall the geological record shows that warmer temperatures are a net positive for life on earth.
For those concerned about mankind continuing to pump CO2 until the warming does become a serious problem, that just isn't possible. The CO2 we are pumping into the atmosphere now is CO2 that was in the atmosphere once long ago. We will run out long before it becomes a serious issue for life on earth overall. We can, however, fuck things up for ourselves and all mammals if we go too far - we need oxygen, and if we displace too much with CO2 we'll kill ourselves eventually.
Really though, in the grand scheme of things, that would just be another blip in the course of Earth's evolution. Basically there is no way we can permanently damage the Earth by accident, however there is a slight chance we could kill ourselves - what fools we'd be to allow that to happen.