Because the Oil industry is the most heavily regulated industry in the US, and we hired the people who wrote the regulations, and who also hired the people who hired the people who were supposed to be enforcing those regulations (that's Congress/The Prez > MMS > MMS inspectors in case you didn't follow).
We are the ones who put the people in power who allowed the corruption in the regulators to grow - primarily the Bush administration, but Obama wasn't exactly on the ball fixing this particular issue, and in fact it appeared that his people made little to no effort to change the way the MMS was wrong.
In that respect, we the people are, to an extent, ultimately responsible. We do not care enough about corruption in government to make sure we get people who make it a primary goal to eliminate that corruption. We'd much rather have our pet projects instead.
What pisses me off most is how little the MMS is being investigated by all this. Those are the people we pay with our hard earned tax money to be sure this kind of shit doesn't happen, yet there was obvious corruption in the MMS that led directly to this catastrophe. Not to take any blame away from BP, but if the MMS had been doing its job the spill would not have happened.
They weren't abandoning it, no producer in their right mind would abandon a well that can pump out 60,000+ barrels a day, that's a fucking gusher!
The accident actually occurred while they were capping it with cement - which is done when the exploratory drilling is finished and they want to bring in a production rig.
Granted, it's the exact same procedure to permanently abandon a well (because they never really abandon them permanently), but a well like that they definitely would produce. The average well in the gulf produces something like 1,800 barrels of oil a day, for a comparison.
Executive orders have the full force of law unless an act of Congress specifically denies the power (Exec Orders are assumed to be based on acts of Congress), or the POTUS is not given such power in the Constitution.
Executive Agreements (there are three types, we're talking about sole-executive agreements here) have exactly the same force as standard treaties, and as far as international law is concerned is just a treaty.
The real difference between them is how easily they are enacted and repealed, and what has to be done after they are signed. Most treaties are executive agreements of one type or another. If the treaty falls in line with US law, nothing has to be done. Occasionally, new laws need to be enacted or current laws need to be changed to comply with a treaty. In this way Congress can essentially repeal a treaty they don't like, as well, because domestic laws take precedence over treaties.
A sole executive-agreement is extremely easy for a President to enact, and just as easy for a president to remove. They are the weakest form of treaty, but unless there is something that contradicts US law or they are unconstitutional, they automatically carry the force of law - just like executive orders.
Holy crap, Noone has a lot of power! The rest of your post doesn't make any sense though, why would Noone railroad it because the voters want it passed?
I'm confused.
P.S. I hope you can read the sarcasm. Noone is a guy's name, dipshit. No one is what you are looking for, they are two separate words.
Mathematics are a description of the physical universe, a sort of source code, if you will. The rules in math are not arbitrary, they are rules set by the physical world. For example, lets take two objects. Math tells us that if I have two objects, and I add one more, I'll have three objects. So I add another object and lo-and-behold, I have three objects now.
It's like the universe is a giant computer and math is its assembly language. The universe itself just does what it does, we don't get any say in that, but we can describe what it does with math, and make it do other stuff.
If we put the source together right, we can do all kinds of cool shit with physics.
Engineering is like universe-coding. The math itself isn't patentable, but the way you put everything together to solve a particular problem is (if it is truly innovative).
In the same way, you can't patent source code, but you can patent the resulting product if it is truly innovative.
I disagree with most of your post. I'll sum up how the preliminary software patent test should work (only to show what is definitely not patentable) here:
If you can take an idea for a piece of software to any software engineer and say "Here, program this for me" and they can program it for you, it isn't an innovative enough idea for a patent. If you take it to an engineer and they say "How the hell am I supposed to do that?" then you have something special. After you get the patent, that same engineer should be able to read your patent and say "Oh, that makes sense" and write the program.
Most software patents would fail this test, but the really groundbreaking stuff would not fail, and that's the stuff that patents exist for. That's why they are called innovations.
It may mean they need to hire some software engineers to sit and look at the idea and try to come up with a way to implement it on their own before they look at the solution. If they come up with the same solution, then obviously it should not receive a patent.
The test I give is applicable to physical inventions, too, with some slight modifications in wording. If you can give any engineer in the particular field a problem and they come up with the same solution you did, your solution is not original and is not patentable. If they are stumped, or their solution is significantly inferior to yours, you are probably on to something, and after a little more verification you can get a patent.
Not really, the SC simply upheld the specific rejection of Bilski, but struck down the broader machine-test portion, which was the key in eliminating business method patents.
In other words, Bilski originally said business methods were un-patentable, because all patents must this test. The SC said that the Bilski test isn't the only test.
Thus, business method patents are still potentially valid, even though the specific patent in Bilski is not.
If that's not paving the way for business method patents, I don't know what is.
It has been proposed as the main argument against intelligent design.
Wait, seriously? That is supposed to be the main argument against ID?
An easy ID response would be it's like re-using code - the systems are similar, why not put one inside the other?
There are really a lot better arguments against ID than that, and the fact that evolution chose it for every single animal on the planet speaks against it being a bad design. If it didn't work extremely well, we wouldn't see it at all, let alone in every single animal. In evolution, all processes go through a trial by fire as they are being developed - if anything doesn't work at any given stage of development the whole system is scrapped.
Really, if it's such a bad design it's a better argument against evolution than ID - after all, God can have a sense of humor, evolution can't.
Meanwhile in the US, the way has been paved for business method patents. Yay progress!
While I definitely think there are legitimate software patents, the decision to have none at all is probably better than the current insanity in the US.
Patents should be for truly innovative things, and no, adding "on a computer" to something that has already been invented is not innovative. Apparently our patent clerks cannot tell the difference when it comes to software.
Bingo, there is absolutely zero evidence to suggest an electronic failure in the sudden acceleration problem. The fact is, a well tested electronic system is not subjected to nearly the same wear a mechanical system is, and so is far less likely to physically break. If it doesn't break as often physically, and the software is sound, you're failure rate is going to go way, way down.
They are - turn the key (or hold the start button) and you'll turn off the car.
I'm suddenly reminded of a rant from the 90's about Windows. It was someone railing about how stupid Windows was, I mean, you don't have to hit start to turn off your car, why should I hit start to shut down windows?
Well, it turns out Windows was the wave of the future - now you have to hit 'start' to turn off your car.
Sorry, I just don't buy it. And I won't be buying a Toyota any time soon, either. And I think their handling of this problem is deplorable.
How is Toyota's handling deplorable? They never once said it was driver error, the have consistently said it was a design flaw. What they were adamant about is that it wasn't a problem with the electronic control, and to date there has been absolutely no evidence to suggest that there is anything at all wrong with the electronic control.
It's the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that is saying this is caused by driver error, and I believe it.
I find it far, far more likely that your dad accidentally hit the gas three times. You may believe your dad, but I don't, especially since we lose our perception of where our limbs are as we age. The age distribution of these reports is telling - it's rarely young but experienced drivers. It's always the young but inexperienced or the experienced but old who have a problem. The distribution aught to be even across age groups, but it isn't.
true, however the runaway throttle will override the brakes. The part where the brakes also impact the accelerator is electronic. If that failed, then you could press the accelerate and then the brakes and still accelerate.
Says someone who knows fuck all about electronics.
They're on separate circuits, separate I/O (it would actually be pretty difficult with no benefit to put them on the same I/O - I/O is plentiful), and operate in different functions within the software. In order for the brake to be overridden by the throttle there would have to be either a loop in the throttle function (which would show up a hell of a lot more than 7 times out of 100,000), or some obscure condition exists where the brake function actually sends its output to the wrong I/O, which is patently absurd. A brake function just isn't going to be complicated enough to allow for that kind of mistake - since the brake is controlled by the ABS, the ECU only has to send a very simple signal to the ABS to initiate the braking mechanism.
Add to that the brake function is almost certainly on an interrupt circuit, which causes the controller to pause whatever it is doing and run the brake function as soon as the brake pedal is pressed.
The only reason the signal from the brake to the interrupt would not go through is if the switch (actually almost certainly a potentiometer of some sort) at the brake was bad, and that hasn't been the case at all.
Just because it's electronic doesn't mean it is more likely to fail than a mechanical device. In fact, because there is less wear, they tend to be a lot less likely to fail than mechanical linkages - if you've got sound logic and a properly designed circuit, there isn't much to go wrong.
It's actually happened to all of the car manufacturers.
In fact, in 2009 VW/Audi (they have trouble with throttles it seems) had significantly more auto-acceleration complaints per 100,000 vehicles than Toyota did, and BMW was not far behind Toyota.
Further, we're talking 7 out of 100,000 cars. You get better odds on million dollar lotteries than that, and I don't know anybody who has one one (though obviously people do).
Really, I'd be surprised if there weren't 7 out of 100,000 people who accidentally hit the gas instead of the brake, let alone the other potential causes.
The stories were clearly bogus -- couldn't stop a _manual_transmission_ car for instance.
Automatics have a neutral also, so it goes for all cars. Worst case scenario you turn the car off and flip the key back (without turning the car back on) so you can use the steering wheel.
If the computer is somehow misreading inputs in a system such as this, then it certainly is possible that the driver has the brake on but no lights and no brakes.
And if the inputs are on separate I/O channels (and they certainly are, it's one hell of a convoluted and unnecessary system that puts the brake and the throttle on the same I/O, and I cannot think of a reason to do it - it's much harder and offers no advantage), how exactly is it going to misread the inputs? I'd believe bad logic before I'd believe misread inputs, and I can't come up with a way to screw up the logic.
Sorry, I just don't buy that it's driver error. I believe my father-in-law over Toyota or NHTSA. Afterall, he had no reason to make the story up (no crash happened) and certainly hadn't heard of it before then.
It's also entirely possible that he accidentally rested his foot on both the brake and the gas, which would do exactly as he described and is 100% driver error.
For these cases, Toyota implemented another piece of logic to shut down the engine if both gas and break are pressed.
Afterall, he had no reason to make the story up (no crash happened) and certainly hadn't heard of it before then.
It doesn't need to be malicious for him to be incorrect.
Except that the breaks worked fine as soon as the got Ms. Marseille out of the car (in fact, before then).
These aren't super complicated software packages on a general purpose CPU, these are specific purpose logic devices on a microcontroller. Working in an environment where tens of thousands of similar devices operate non-stop 24/7 for years, I can tell you that they are extremely reliable. Debugging the logic is pretty straightforward (for an engineer, anyway), and the logic is verifiable.
It's far, far more likely that 35 people out of 180,000 missed the brake pedal than it is that there is a phantom race condition floating around in Toyota's logic that nobody can find after months of searching.
This stuff is seriously along the lines of "If brake = true then engage brake". It would be on a different I/O from the throttle, and there are completely different circuits between the two, so there is zero chance that that command gets sent to the throttle instead of the brake.
I would really be shocked of the brake were much more complicated than that. You'd even put it on an interrupt channel, so the break signal takes priority over anything else. I honestly don't see how they could screw it up in the logic, and it obviously isn't the chips they are using or other vehicles with the same components would be having the same problem.
Yup, one of my favorite truths to live by from a popular fantasy book series is that people in general will believe either what the wish to be true, or what the are afraid is true. Most people are pretty close minded to what is really, actually true.
By definition, engine braking doesn't happen if the throttle is wide open.
Actually it would be like a near-neutral situation - the car wouldn't be able to accelerate past the first gear's top speed. However, to do this you need a manual, in which case you should just throw it in neutral. Then, if it's stuck real good, just turn the friggin thing off (though stalling it would work too).
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How is it everyone's fault?
Because the Oil industry is the most heavily regulated industry in the US, and we hired the people who wrote the regulations, and who also hired the people who hired the people who were supposed to be enforcing those regulations (that's Congress/The Prez > MMS > MMS inspectors in case you didn't follow).
We are the ones who put the people in power who allowed the corruption in the regulators to grow - primarily the Bush administration, but Obama wasn't exactly on the ball fixing this particular issue, and in fact it appeared that his people made little to no effort to change the way the MMS was wrong.
In that respect, we the people are, to an extent, ultimately responsible. We do not care enough about corruption in government to make sure we get people who make it a primary goal to eliminate that corruption. We'd much rather have our pet projects instead.
What pisses me off most is how little the MMS is being investigated by all this. Those are the people we pay with our hard earned tax money to be sure this kind of shit doesn't happen, yet there was obvious corruption in the MMS that led directly to this catastrophe. Not to take any blame away from BP, but if the MMS had been doing its job the spill would not have happened.
They weren't abandoning it, no producer in their right mind would abandon a well that can pump out 60,000+ barrels a day, that's a fucking gusher!
The accident actually occurred while they were capping it with cement - which is done when the exploratory drilling is finished and they want to bring in a production rig.
Granted, it's the exact same procedure to permanently abandon a well (because they never really abandon them permanently), but a well like that they definitely would produce. The average well in the gulf produces something like 1,800 barrels of oil a day, for a comparison.
Somebody obviously doesn't know what SCADA is used for in this day and age.
An Executive Agreement has the same force as an executive order, namely none.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_order_(United_States)
Executive orders have the full force of law unless an act of Congress specifically denies the power (Exec Orders are assumed to be based on acts of Congress), or the POTUS is not given such power in the Constitution.
Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_Clause
Executive Agreements (there are three types, we're talking about sole-executive agreements here) have exactly the same force as standard treaties, and as far as international law is concerned is just a treaty.
The real difference between them is how easily they are enacted and repealed, and what has to be done after they are signed. Most treaties are executive agreements of one type or another. If the treaty falls in line with US law, nothing has to be done. Occasionally, new laws need to be enacted or current laws need to be changed to comply with a treaty. In this way Congress can essentially repeal a treaty they don't like, as well, because domestic laws take precedence over treaties.
A sole executive-agreement is extremely easy for a President to enact, and just as easy for a president to remove. They are the weakest form of treaty, but unless there is something that contradicts US law or they are unconstitutional, they automatically carry the force of law - just like executive orders.
Noone will railroad this...
Holy crap, Noone has a lot of power! The rest of your post doesn't make any sense though, why would Noone railroad it because the voters want it passed?
I'm confused.
P.S. I hope you can read the sarcasm. Noone is a guy's name, dipshit. No one is what you are looking for, they are two separate words.
If the EU company has no presence in the US, they don't have to worry about US laws, even if they sell to someone who does sell in the US.
If the US company tries to sue the EU company, they'll have to come to the EU to do it, and the patents aren't valid in the EU.
Problem solved.
However, if you want to do business in the US, expect to comply with the laws of the US.
Mathematics are a description of the physical universe, a sort of source code, if you will. The rules in math are not arbitrary, they are rules set by the physical world. For example, lets take two objects. Math tells us that if I have two objects, and I add one more, I'll have three objects. So I add another object and lo-and-behold, I have three objects now.
It's like the universe is a giant computer and math is its assembly language. The universe itself just does what it does, we don't get any say in that, but we can describe what it does with math, and make it do other stuff.
If we put the source together right, we can do all kinds of cool shit with physics.
Engineering is like universe-coding. The math itself isn't patentable, but the way you put everything together to solve a particular problem is (if it is truly innovative).
In the same way, you can't patent source code, but you can patent the resulting product if it is truly innovative.
I disagree with most of your post. I'll sum up how the preliminary software patent test should work (only to show what is definitely not patentable) here:
If you can take an idea for a piece of software to any software engineer and say "Here, program this for me" and they can program it for you, it isn't an innovative enough idea for a patent. If you take it to an engineer and they say "How the hell am I supposed to do that?" then you have something special. After you get the patent, that same engineer should be able to read your patent and say "Oh, that makes sense" and write the program.
Most software patents would fail this test, but the really groundbreaking stuff would not fail, and that's the stuff that patents exist for. That's why they are called innovations.
It may mean they need to hire some software engineers to sit and look at the idea and try to come up with a way to implement it on their own before they look at the solution. If they come up with the same solution, then obviously it should not receive a patent.
The test I give is applicable to physical inventions, too, with some slight modifications in wording. If you can give any engineer in the particular field a problem and they come up with the same solution you did, your solution is not original and is not patentable. If they are stumped, or their solution is significantly inferior to yours, you are probably on to something, and after a little more verification you can get a patent.
Not really, the SC simply upheld the specific rejection of Bilski, but struck down the broader machine-test portion, which was the key in eliminating business method patents.
In other words, Bilski originally said business methods were un-patentable, because all patents must this test. The SC said that the Bilski test isn't the only test.
Thus, business method patents are still potentially valid, even though the specific patent in Bilski is not.
If that's not paving the way for business method patents, I don't know what is.
...but I'm fairly certain that most of the human mass, and cell count is still that of human.
Mass yes, cell count no. Bacteria are far smaller than human cells.
It's like water - there are twice as many hydrogen atoms as there are oxygen atoms in water, but water is 3/4 oxygen by mass.
The hydrogen is like the bacteria, and the oxygen is like the human cells., except the difference between human cells and bacteria is bigger.
It has been proposed as the main argument against intelligent design.
Wait, seriously? That is supposed to be the main argument against ID?
An easy ID response would be it's like re-using code - the systems are similar, why not put one inside the other?
There are really a lot better arguments against ID than that, and the fact that evolution chose it for every single animal on the planet speaks against it being a bad design. If it didn't work extremely well, we wouldn't see it at all, let alone in every single animal. In evolution, all processes go through a trial by fire as they are being developed - if anything doesn't work at any given stage of development the whole system is scrapped.
Really, if it's such a bad design it's a better argument against evolution than ID - after all, God can have a sense of humor, evolution can't.
I hate to break it to you, but scientists tend to know that better than anybody.
Who the hell else would wonder if everybody has different types of viruses in their crap?
Isn't that just alanis.
That's probably the most obscure musical reference I've ever seen and actually picked up on.
Bravo sir.
Meanwhile in the US, the way has been paved for business method patents. Yay progress!
While I definitely think there are legitimate software patents, the decision to have none at all is probably better than the current insanity in the US.
Patents should be for truly innovative things, and no, adding "on a computer" to something that has already been invented is not innovative. Apparently our patent clerks cannot tell the difference when it comes to software.
Bingo, there is absolutely zero evidence to suggest an electronic failure in the sudden acceleration problem. The fact is, a well tested electronic system is not subjected to nearly the same wear a mechanical system is, and so is far less likely to physically break. If it doesn't break as often physically, and the software is sound, you're failure rate is going to go way, way down.
I suppose you can just keep going instead.
Dumbass.
They are - turn the key (or hold the start button) and you'll turn off the car.
I'm suddenly reminded of a rant from the 90's about Windows. It was someone railing about how stupid Windows was, I mean, you don't have to hit start to turn off your car, why should I hit start to shut down windows?
Well, it turns out Windows was the wave of the future - now you have to hit 'start' to turn off your car.
Sorry, I just don't buy it. And I won't be buying a Toyota any time soon, either. And I think their handling of this problem is deplorable.
How is Toyota's handling deplorable? They never once said it was driver error, the have consistently said it was a design flaw. What they were adamant about is that it wasn't a problem with the electronic control, and to date there has been absolutely no evidence to suggest that there is anything at all wrong with the electronic control.
It's the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that is saying this is caused by driver error, and I believe it.
I find it far, far more likely that your dad accidentally hit the gas three times. You may believe your dad, but I don't, especially since we lose our perception of where our limbs are as we age. The age distribution of these reports is telling - it's rarely young but experienced drivers. It's always the young but inexperienced or the experienced but old who have a problem. The distribution aught to be even across age groups, but it isn't.
true, however the runaway throttle will override the brakes. The part where the brakes also impact the accelerator is electronic. If that failed, then you could press the accelerate and then the brakes and still accelerate.
Says someone who knows fuck all about electronics.
They're on separate circuits, separate I/O (it would actually be pretty difficult with no benefit to put them on the same I/O - I/O is plentiful), and operate in different functions within the software. In order for the brake to be overridden by the throttle there would have to be either a loop in the throttle function (which would show up a hell of a lot more than 7 times out of 100,000), or some obscure condition exists where the brake function actually sends its output to the wrong I/O, which is patently absurd. A brake function just isn't going to be complicated enough to allow for that kind of mistake - since the brake is controlled by the ABS, the ECU only has to send a very simple signal to the ABS to initiate the braking mechanism.
Add to that the brake function is almost certainly on an interrupt circuit, which causes the controller to pause whatever it is doing and run the brake function as soon as the brake pedal is pressed.
The only reason the signal from the brake to the interrupt would not go through is if the switch (actually almost certainly a potentiometer of some sort) at the brake was bad, and that hasn't been the case at all.
Just because it's electronic doesn't mean it is more likely to fail than a mechanical device. In fact, because there is less wear, they tend to be a lot less likely to fail than mechanical linkages - if you've got sound logic and a properly designed circuit, there isn't much to go wrong.
It's actually happened to all of the car manufacturers.
In fact, in 2009 VW/Audi (they have trouble with throttles it seems) had significantly more auto-acceleration complaints per 100,000 vehicles than Toyota did, and BMW was not far behind Toyota.
Further, we're talking 7 out of 100,000 cars. You get better odds on million dollar lotteries than that, and I don't know anybody who has one one (though obviously people do).
Really, I'd be surprised if there weren't 7 out of 100,000 people who accidentally hit the gas instead of the brake, let alone the other potential causes.
The stories were clearly bogus -- couldn't stop a _manual_transmission_ car for instance.
Automatics have a neutral also, so it goes for all cars. Worst case scenario you turn the car off and flip the key back (without turning the car back on) so you can use the steering wheel.
You mean like this?
Toyota doesn't even have the highest number of complaints per 100,000, VW/Audi does. Toyota is the second highest, but BMW is right behind them.
Do you buy it now? Since, you know, your criteria for not buying it is completely wrong?
If the computer is somehow misreading inputs in a system such as this, then it certainly is possible that the driver has the brake on but no lights and no brakes.
And if the inputs are on separate I/O channels (and they certainly are, it's one hell of a convoluted and unnecessary system that puts the brake and the throttle on the same I/O, and I cannot think of a reason to do it - it's much harder and offers no advantage), how exactly is it going to misread the inputs? I'd believe bad logic before I'd believe misread inputs, and I can't come up with a way to screw up the logic.
Sorry, I just don't buy that it's driver error. I believe my father-in-law over Toyota or NHTSA. Afterall, he had no reason to make the story up (no crash happened) and certainly hadn't heard of it before then.
It's also entirely possible that he accidentally rested his foot on both the brake and the gas, which would do exactly as he described and is 100% driver error.
For these cases, Toyota implemented another piece of logic to shut down the engine if both gas and break are pressed.
Afterall, he had no reason to make the story up (no crash happened) and certainly hadn't heard of it before then.
It doesn't need to be malicious for him to be incorrect.
Except that the breaks worked fine as soon as the got Ms. Marseille out of the car (in fact, before then).
These aren't super complicated software packages on a general purpose CPU, these are specific purpose logic devices on a microcontroller. Working in an environment where tens of thousands of similar devices operate non-stop 24/7 for years, I can tell you that they are extremely reliable. Debugging the logic is pretty straightforward (for an engineer, anyway), and the logic is verifiable.
It's far, far more likely that 35 people out of 180,000 missed the brake pedal than it is that there is a phantom race condition floating around in Toyota's logic that nobody can find after months of searching.
This stuff is seriously along the lines of "If brake = true then engage brake". It would be on a different I/O from the throttle, and there are completely different circuits between the two, so there is zero chance that that command gets sent to the throttle instead of the brake.
I would really be shocked of the brake were much more complicated than that. You'd even put it on an interrupt channel, so the break signal takes priority over anything else. I honestly don't see how they could screw it up in the logic, and it obviously isn't the chips they are using or other vehicles with the same components would be having the same problem.
Yup, one of my favorite truths to live by from a popular fantasy book series is that people in general will believe either what the wish to be true, or what the are afraid is true. Most people are pretty close minded to what is really, actually true.
By definition, engine braking doesn't happen if the throttle is wide open.
Actually it would be like a near-neutral situation - the car wouldn't be able to accelerate past the first gear's top speed. However, to do this you need a manual, in which case you should just throw it in neutral. Then, if it's stuck real good, just turn the friggin thing off (though stalling it would work too).