One of the reasons for this overcorrection is that brakelights are boolean.
To tell how hard someone is braking you have to observe them for enough time to judge their change in speed for yourself. In heavy traffic it is often unlikely you'll have enough distance in front of you to brake lightly, judge that actually they are braking hard, then react and do so yourself. It is much safer to assume they are braking hard when the lights come on and do so yourself, leading to overcorrection when they're just slowing down slightly to adjust the distance in front of them. Auto transmissions also don't help because they give you less control over using engine braking for minor speed adjustments so your brake lights will come on more often.
As has already been pointed out, watching the traffic as far ahead as possible helps to mitigate this but there has also been some design work on LED brakelights that vary in brightness or number of LEDs lit depending on how hard you press the pedal, giving the driver behind you a clearer idea of your intentions and reducing the need to overcorrect.
Mercedes have been working on more advanced systems. They have already developed automated systems for adjusting the cruise control speed to maintain a safe distance from the car in front, and for warning the driver and applying the brakes if that distance is suddenly decreased (aimed at emergency situations where the driver has failed to notice traffic suddenly slow/stop ahead).
A neat combination of the two was that when braking the car would encode information about the rate of braking into flashes of the brakelights (high enough frequency that the light is still perceived as being a solid glow). If the car behind was suitably equipped it would detect the braking information and use it to adjust the cruise control or trigger the emergency warning/brakes faster than having to wait to measure the speed change.
Personally I think some level of automation using system like this, plus additional technology with enough intelligence to understand merging traffic and slow down just enough to open a gap and allow smooth merging, is the answer to avoiding the shockwave traffic problems. It's certainly more likely to work than hoping people will improve their driving habits on their own.
Absolutely not true (for the US at least). When your green card application is accepted there is a scary bit of of paper tucked in amongst the leaflets pointing out that the US government reserves the right to include you in any military draft if you fall into the right age range.
If I understood it correctly you have the option to return to your home country instead but I wouldn't count on being let back into the country ever again once the war is over.
I watched them waste millions of dollars, produce nothing tangible or productive, then get promoted. Yep, that sounds like the upper management behaviour on most government projects I've heard about. It's incredibly depressing listening to friends who work for government agencies talking about how much money and manpower gets wasted in the course of running them.
Part of me fervently hopes that your notebooks survive to be discovered by archaeologists centuries from now. That'll really confuse their theories about the 21st century...
Which works really well until your bank needs to contact you to warn you of a suspicious transaction, your hospital needs to call you about a mixup in your test results, your garage needs to call you to tell you your car is fixed, your airline needs to contact you to tell you of a flight cancellation,...
While many companies that ask for it have no legitimate need for your phone number, there are plenty of scenarios when it will cause you problems if you have given out a fake number.
Having recently moved to the US I am gobsmacked by the sheer quantity of junk mail that gets delivered practically every day, 99% of which is local business flyers and coupons addressed to 'the occupier'. Every delivery half-fills my mailbox and I've hardly even started giving out my new address.
There are over 10 supermarket/drug store chains sending me fat brochures of their latest offers at least once a week - who on earth has the time to go scouring through these and work out exactly which store to buy each item on your grocery list from in order to get the best deals?
The waste of resources is staggering - I've been dumping them into a box to save filling up the regular trash and in a single month I've collected a 2 foot cube of this useless dross.
Next up I think I'll do my own mix and get a loop of children screaming over some offensively light classical. There is a bright future ahead of you as a pop music producer.
It acts as a deterrent from casual theft of the cards from the machines. I think many more people would consider taking a can of coke from an unattended cupboard than from a vending machine, even if the vending machine lock were as trivial to pick as the Diebold one - it's more effective as a psychological barrier than a physical one.
We probably should put something similar on our demo units - a sharp-eyed colleague spotted an attendee at CES this year trying to walk away with the memory card from one of our stand demos. It seemed jaw-droppingly daft given how cheap the cards are (particularly compared to CES entry) and the potential dent in your reputation for getting caught doing so. I suppose it could conceivably have been a half-arsed espionage attempt, but a fairly incompetent one given that nearly all of the demo software is freely available on our website.
I remember hearing a story that I would dearly love to be true about someone who kept forgetting their ATM PIN so rather than make the mistake of writing it on a bit of paper that they carry with the card, they wrote it in permanent marker on the housing of their local ATM.
I've been noticing the opposite - an increasing number of ATMs with windows error dialog boxes visible on the screen.
It could be because the screens are also getting brighter so it's easier to see than an out-of-order message on one of the older models, but at least with those you got the impression that the ATM software had noticed the fault - when the interface appears to be carrying on running behind an error message it comes across as a bit schizophrenic.
By-the-by, does anyone still lock their luggage? It seems rather pointless these days when the locks have to have an easily-picked TSA bypass which hundreds of people have the keys for anyway.
That article also seems to imply that people got warm fuzzy feelings about it simply because it looks more high-tech than paper ballots.
The security of the voting system is not validated simply because the users like the interface more. A more helpful and accessible interface is a welcome improvement but not if it compromises the underlying ability to count the votes in a verifiable manner.
Let's see, you called a bunch of people you don't know extreme, strident, unforgiving, tediously sanctimonious, lacking humor, and prone to preaching. No, he called a bunch of people he does know "extreme, strident, unforgiving, tediously sanctimonious, lacking humor, and prone to preaching" then noted that a large number of them were atheists.
Me too. I can see the rationale for buying Trolltech to gain control of the Qt development but I can't see any incentive for them turning it from a relatively self-sustaining business to being essentially all funded by Nokia.
It doesn't make good business sense unless there's a compelling reason why changing the Qt licensing would help them earn more profit in another area, and I just don't see one.
Despite the implication of CYA in GP post as being a distasteful PHB thing (sick of the TLAs yet?;)), it works both ways. Precisely. You are not just covering your ass against the incompetence/malice of others, but also against your own human weaknesses. I find it well worth having as much as possible in emails for the occasions where a few months down the line I have forgotten the reasoning behind a decision. Having a complete record of the whole discussion is much better than trying to reconstruct it from the minutes of a phone conversation that only say what was decided without detailing the arguments behind them (assuming one of us remembers to type up a record of the call in the first place).
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One of the reasons for this overcorrection is that brakelights are boolean.
To tell how hard someone is braking you have to observe them for enough time to judge their change in speed for yourself. In heavy traffic it is often unlikely you'll have enough distance in front of you to brake lightly, judge that actually they are braking hard, then react and do so yourself. It is much safer to assume they are braking hard when the lights come on and do so yourself, leading to overcorrection when they're just slowing down slightly to adjust the distance in front of them. Auto transmissions also don't help because they give you less control over using engine braking for minor speed adjustments so your brake lights will come on more often.
As has already been pointed out, watching the traffic as far ahead as possible helps to mitigate this but there has also been some design work on LED brakelights that vary in brightness or number of LEDs lit depending on how hard you press the pedal, giving the driver behind you a clearer idea of your intentions and reducing the need to overcorrect.
Mercedes have been working on more advanced systems. They have already developed automated systems for adjusting the cruise control speed to maintain a safe distance from the car in front, and for warning the driver and applying the brakes if that distance is suddenly decreased (aimed at emergency situations where the driver has failed to notice traffic suddenly slow/stop ahead).
A neat combination of the two was that when braking the car would encode information about the rate of braking into flashes of the brakelights (high enough frequency that the light is still perceived as being a solid glow). If the car behind was suitably equipped it would detect the braking information and use it to adjust the cruise control or trigger the emergency warning/brakes faster than having to wait to measure the speed change.
Personally I think some level of automation using system like this, plus additional technology with enough intelligence to understand merging traffic and slow down just enough to open a gap and allow smooth merging, is the answer to avoiding the shockwave traffic problems. It's certainly more likely to work than hoping people will improve their driving habits on their own.
It's no wonder the war on drugs isn't succeeding - most people prefer cooked eggs to raw ones :)
Absolutely not true (for the US at least). When your green card application is accepted there is a scary bit of of paper tucked in amongst the leaflets pointing out that the US government reserves the right to include you in any military draft if you fall into the right age range.
If I understood it correctly you have the option to return to your home country instead but I wouldn't count on being let back into the country ever again once the war is over.
Part of me fervently hopes that your notebooks survive to be discovered by archaeologists centuries from now. That'll really confuse their theories about the 21st century...
You're absolutely right. It's high time fashion advice for poultry was made a central part of the curriculum.
I always wondered why SW came in such big boxes when essentially it's a CD and a couple of flimsy bits of paper telling you to look at the website.
I guess it makes it less easy to stick it under your coat...
(Out of interest, what are the penalties for getting caught shoplifting a copy of windows compared to downloading a cracked copy?)
Which works really well until your bank needs to contact you to warn you of a suspicious transaction, your hospital needs to call you about a mixup in your test results, your garage needs to call you to tell you your car is fixed, your airline needs to contact you to tell you of a flight cancellation, ...
While many companies that ask for it have no legitimate need for your phone number, there are plenty of scenarios when it will cause you problems if you have given out a fake number.
That idea always tickled me, as did the idea of taping the prepaid envelopes to bricks and posting them.
http://www.bash.org/?127039 for another good one.
Having recently moved to the US I am gobsmacked by the sheer quantity of junk mail that gets delivered practically every day, 99% of which is local business flyers and coupons addressed to 'the occupier'. Every delivery half-fills my mailbox and I've hardly even started giving out my new address.
There are over 10 supermarket/drug store chains sending me fat brochures of their latest offers at least once a week - who on earth has the time to go scouring through these and work out exactly which store to buy each item on your grocery list from in order to get the best deals?
The waste of resources is staggering - I've been dumping them into a box to save filling up the regular trash and in a single month I've collected a 2 foot cube of this useless dross.
It acts as a deterrent from casual theft of the cards from the machines. I think many more people would consider taking a can of coke from an unattended cupboard than from a vending machine, even if the vending machine lock were as trivial to pick as the Diebold one - it's more effective as a psychological barrier than a physical one.
We probably should put something similar on our demo units - a sharp-eyed colleague spotted an attendee at CES this year trying to walk away with the memory card from one of our stand demos. It seemed jaw-droppingly daft given how cheap the cards are (particularly compared to CES entry) and the potential dent in your reputation for getting caught doing so. I suppose it could conceivably have been a half-arsed espionage attempt, but a fairly incompetent one given that nearly all of the demo software is freely available on our website.
...and if you go back and read the start of the conversation you'll see the parent poster knew this already :)
I remember hearing a story that I would dearly love to be true about someone who kept forgetting their ATM PIN so rather than make the mistake of writing it on a bit of paper that they carry with the card, they wrote it in permanent marker on the housing of their local ATM.
Seemed pretty smart, as dumb ideas go.
That would certainly explain firefox's load time :b
Find a couple of million here, a couple of million there and sooner or later it starts adding up to real money.
I've been noticing the opposite - an increasing number of ATMs with windows error dialog boxes visible on the screen.
It could be because the screens are also getting brighter so it's easier to see than an out-of-order message on one of the older models, but at least with those you got the impression that the ATM software had noticed the fault - when the interface appears to be carrying on running behind an error message it comes across as a bit schizophrenic.
When I last used it, Orange broadband seemed to subscribe wholeheartedly to rule 3.
By-the-by, does anyone still lock their luggage? It seems rather pointless these days when the locks have to have an easily-picked TSA bypass which hundreds of people have the keys for anyway.
Our hearts go out to the 2,472 victims of the internet fraud.
(http://www.bash.org/?434593)
That article also seems to imply that people got warm fuzzy feelings about it simply because it looks more high-tech than paper ballots.
The security of the voting system is not validated simply because the users like the interface more. A more helpful and accessible interface is a welcome improvement but not if it compromises the underlying ability to count the votes in a verifiable manner.
Me too. I can see the rationale for buying Trolltech to gain control of the Qt development but I can't see any incentive for them turning it from a relatively self-sustaining business to being essentially all funded by Nokia.
It doesn't make good business sense unless there's a compelling reason why changing the Qt licensing would help them earn more profit in another area, and I just don't see one.
Which dribbling retard tagged this with 'whatcouldpossiblygowrong'? Even the summary makes it perfectly bloody obvious what could go wrong.