Actually, it's worse.Car and Driverdid a test comparing the two, and they found that text messaging while driving is worse than driving while intoxicated.
The reason? My guess is that when you're driving buzzed, at least you're (hopefully) giving the road your undivided attention.
But then, there's studies that have found that driving immediately after waking from a sound sleep is worse than drunk driving. Shall we make that illegal too?
Case-driven legislation doesn't do any good; it just gives officers excuses to pull over people they don't like the looks of. California already has legislation which makes it illegal to do anything while driving that may distract you or compromise your control of the car; the law specifically gives the examples of smoking and eating. I've never heard of someone geting a ticket for eating or smoking while driving, though. Why do we need ANOTHER law about talking while driving, or typing while driving? Is there a law that specifically prohibits reading while driving? If there is, does it refer to "printed matter" and give me a loophole to enjoy my Kindle while driving? But what if I'm using Text-to-speech? I might be distracted when the automated voice gets the cadence wrong, and glance at the page. But if that's illegal, what about books on tape? And if I can't listen to an audiobook, maybe I shouldn't listen to the radio? I know I missed an exit because I was too busy singing along to the Into the Woods soundtrack one time. Just imagine what COULD HAVE happened.
Or... maybe the problem is that we haven't taught people how to drive properly and take some damned responsibility for the piloting of thousands of pounds of metal at speeds faster than any human can travel unassisted. Maybe you shouldn't have to take a Transportation Engineering course to learn what affects stopping distance or why you shouldn't go around a curve too fast. Maybe our driving courses and tests should see how people do on the freeway.
Maybe the problem isn't the technology, but the skill of the user.
Simply use low tax rates to draw workers from other, better-educated states, and get the benefits of an educated workforce for free.
One would assume that those better-educated workers would want the same educational benefits to be available to their children......
No, the better-educated workers will scoff at the notion of public schooling for THEIR children, and will turn their windfall of lower property values and taxes into private school tuition or homeschooling.
Then they'll complain about the crime rate because of all these hooligans whose parents "just don't care" about them (while those uncaring parents are working 60 hour weeks to put food on the table because the minimum wage is too low, and don't have any time or energy left over to try to improve the school system their more affluent neighbors abandoned).
Which is why my kids will always go to public school. If it's not good enough for them, it's not good enough for everyone else, and we need to work to FIX that.
I don't believe in free market anymore. There's just too many loopholes, lobbying being the biggest.
If government is so involved in the economy that lobbying is worth the effort, then it's not a truly free market. In a real free market, the government simply wouldn't have the power.
In a TRULY free market, the government wouldn't have power to establish currency, protect ownership, extend licensure... all sorts of things that the economy depends on.
The "hypothetical free market" requires perfect information, perfect competition, and perfect mobility. As none of these are feasible to attain, government regulation is required to simulate them or compensate for their lack. For example, legal definitions of what "organic" produce is, and establishment of certifying bodies (which are private enterprises, but have some sort of charter or something from the government that establishes their certification as adequate for usage of the term "organic") help compensate for the lack of perfect information about farming practices. Without them, someone could say "Yeah, my produce is organic!" after spraying it with tons of pesticides, and you wouldn't really have any way of verifying that unless you traveled out to their farm yourself and watched them for a while... or brought your own lab kit to the market.
So, markets that work on the scale we expect them to will always require SOME amount of regulation, and insofar as there is such regulation, there will be disagreements about how that regulation should be put in place. Some methods would favor the producer or the consumer. Hence, there's a business interest in attempting to shape the regulatory process.
I'm all for making lobbying illegal... but that, some say, is over-regulating the market.
Moral of the story: If you don't like the service you're getting from someone, let them know, and then take action. Then let them know again. and again. and again.
Oh, and then tell everyone you know about how poor customer service they gave you.
In the same way the Russians still use thermionic valves for aircraft and spacecraft, and indeed high-end audiophiles use them for sound systems, there may be contexts in 25th century engineering where a mechanical keyboard is safer/superior to a touchscreen panel.
You're overthinking this. There would still be needs to input text manually in certain situations. They do use touchscreens... why wouldn't QWERTY have survived on a touch surface? The difference doesn't need to be as exotic as telegraph to telephone; it might just be manual typewriter to electric typewriter.
Gosh, you'd think something that's FDA-approved to be present in visible quantities in foods marketed heavily to children wouldn't need *additional* FDA approval for these clinical trials... you mean, blue dye might not be entirely safe? Who woulda thunk?
I prefer my chocolate to be chocolate-covered, thank you. Artificial chemicals are best left to things like debilitating spinal injuries or cancer treatment.
Um. I hardly think venting about a landlord is in the same class as posting pics of someone without their permission (and if someone's under 18, they can't legally consent to it) or insulting your boss. Then again, it sounds like you didn't RTFA at all.
So here's what I don't get (and maybe a lawyer or wannabe-lawyer can explain it to me). We have the first amendment which protects us from government interference in speech. If I criticize a government official or policy the government is not allowed to retaliate in any way. Yet for some reason.... the private sector can? We've seen this before (Scientology, Streisand, etc.), and it never fails to boggle my mind that what the constitution protects from government interference, it doesn't protect from private sector lawyers.
There are certain limitations on free speech. When I last studied the constitution (in 12th grade Government, which was [mumble mumble] years ago), there were seven categories of exceptions. Libel is one, slander another; there's also the Rosenberg exception (which limits the ability to promote illegal activity), the fire-in-a-crowded-theater exception, "fighting words" which was of more use when everyone had a sidearm on them, incitement to riot, fraud... and maybe that's all of them. Or maybe some of those are the same thing.
And most of these are criminal, not civil, matters, so the government absolutely can step in.
Private entities can restrict speech as much as they want on their private property, though. If Twitter didn't want anyone talking smack about Horizon Realty on their network, they could delete the posts, warn or ban the user, whatever they wanted to as long as it was in their T&Cs that they could. In fact, Horizon Realty would have been MUCH better off just sending a C&D to Twitter, rather than filing suit.
Only possible legit suit you could have is one for libel. Ok well libel requires three things:
1) That the respondent made a false statement. Truth is the ultimate defense against libel. If there was, in fact, mold in the apartment then the landlord is done right here.
No, not really... because the post claimed that Horizon Realty thinks it's ok [to sleep in a moldy apartment]. So, if there was a complaint about mold (the mold doesn't even have to be there, because her post didn't claim there was any), and Horizon Realty was dismissive of the complaint because they felt there was no harm to mold, then she's got the truth defense.
Bullshit. I suppose people 25 years ago couldn't learn anything because they had no access to the internet, eh? I suppose people 10 years ago couldn't do much of anything either because the internet was small and slow, eh?
10 years ago...
* My phone company published a pretty decent phone directory, which was delivered to my door. It included listings for the entire city. * 411 was free on pay phones and only 25 cents from my landline. (A while before that, it was free from the landline too.) Now it costs $3.49 each time we call 411. (Unless we use GOOG-411... but I found out about that on the internet.) * I could dial 853-1212 and check the time to set my clocks. * There were pay phones all over the place, and for 25 cents I could talk as long as I wanted to local numbers. The phones had phone books attached in many cases. * Local businesses stocked all manner of items that were rarely needed, because when they were needed, they were the only way of getting them in the area. * You could use a telephone to enroll in your classes at the largest public university in the largest state in the US. (A year later it was all online.)
Things have changed a lot in the last 10 years. If you have internet access (and everyone on this thread likely does) you wouldn't notice it as much... but there's a LOT that doesn't exist anymore because you can get it easier online.
Am I the only one who has seen the same level of incompetance in the private sector?
In the private sector, you don't have nearly the burden to justify purchases and performance, so you're a lot more likely to have really wasteful implementations perpetuated endlessly.
So, for my part, I've seen a lot MORE incompetence in the private sector.
Most of them do that here. The ones that think they're clever and don't still use very easily hacked systems, like
The other uses a bank id, password and question/answer pair chosen by me,
...which is only as good as the person choosing the password and challenge/response pair. Most people will pick stuff like My First Pet's Name, and since their computer desktop at work is "My Beloved Fido," everyone they know knows the answer already. There was even a story here about it recently.
which is reasonably secure, or, for telephone contact, a telephone PIN which goes through an automated system the operator doesn't hear.
Which keeps the operator from hearing your PIN, but doesn't prevent someone who actually tries from recording it.
I'm sure you'll agree that asking for something like an SSN is almost as bad as asking a predictable question like your mother's maiden name. That's not proof of ID at all. They should at least establish a password or PIN with you when you first open the account and require that as verification.
Oh, they do establish that PIN. You use it at the ATM, and when you walk into the bank to deposit checks. BUT, it's soooooo important to keep secure, they will NOT allow you to use it for online transactions; you have to set up a *different* PIN there. And of course, you can't use it for telephone transactions either, for the same reason.
Yeah, our banks know just enough about information security to be dangerous.
The method you outline means anyone who has seen your payment details and SSN (at an employer, or recruitment agency say), could withdraw money from your bank account. Ouch. It's so scarily insecure I'd consider changing banks for that alone.
Unfortunately, Lloyd's closed my account when my UK residency expired. I had a heck of a time even getting them to give me an account, since I was just there on a temporary work permit. They wouldn't let me have a checking account at all, just savings.
Here, all banks are pretty similar. The ones who are more "secure" just ADD things like security questions to the pile, without really thinking hard about security.
It was in writing; that's why "NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION" was on the cards. As with other well-known governmental entitites, they chose to change the agreement and inform complainers that they should be hopeful there would be no further changes.
Uhhh... the problem isn't the government using SSNs for identification (they don't; that's what passports and DLs are for). It's private companies using the SSN to (a) key your information to a (hopefully) unique ID for the purposes of tracking your transactions and records (i.e. credit card bureaus) and (b) verify your identity as though the SSN was a confidential password. They have done these things DESPITE the government asking that the SSN not be used this way, and it's causing all sorts of problems.
So, apparently, the government has to explicitly prohibit the request of SSNs except in certain whitelisted cases, because if they don't, private entities will ask for it, and mainstream people will provide it.
If some illegal worker-wannabe takes a lucky guess - known to happen - and picks an existing number, how will you find that out?
These days, the SSA randomly sends out summaries of your current account status on a rolling basis. I've gotten three or four of them in the last 10 years. They detail the earnings reported to SSA under my number each year, and how much has been deducted, and make some projections about what will be available to me when I'm 65. There's also useful info about what SS is and how it works... but the main reason they do this, I gather, is so that people may say "What! I didn't make THAT much money last year!" and they'll detect someone else using their SSN for employment.
But then... why should they report it? It's like someone else depositing money into your bank account for you. What's the motivation to blow the whistle?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it's worse. Car and Driver did a test comparing the two, and they found that text messaging while driving is worse than driving while intoxicated.
The reason? My guess is that when you're driving buzzed, at least you're (hopefully) giving the road your undivided attention.
But then, there's studies that have found that driving immediately after waking from a sound sleep is worse than drunk driving. Shall we make that illegal too?
Case-driven legislation doesn't do any good; it just gives officers excuses to pull over people they don't like the looks of. California already has legislation which makes it illegal to do anything while driving that may distract you or compromise your control of the car; the law specifically gives the examples of smoking and eating. I've never heard of someone geting a ticket for eating or smoking while driving, though. Why do we need ANOTHER law about talking while driving, or typing while driving? Is there a law that specifically prohibits reading while driving? If there is, does it refer to "printed matter" and give me a loophole to enjoy my Kindle while driving? But what if I'm using Text-to-speech? I might be distracted when the automated voice gets the cadence wrong, and glance at the page. But if that's illegal, what about books on tape? And if I can't listen to an audiobook, maybe I shouldn't listen to the radio? I know I missed an exit because I was too busy singing along to the Into the Woods soundtrack one time. Just imagine what COULD HAVE happened.
Or... maybe the problem is that we haven't taught people how to drive properly and take some damned responsibility for the piloting of thousands of pounds of metal at speeds faster than any human can travel unassisted. Maybe you shouldn't have to take a Transportation Engineering course to learn what affects stopping distance or why you shouldn't go around a curve too fast. Maybe our driving courses and tests should see how people do on the freeway.
Maybe the problem isn't the technology, but the skill of the user.
Simply use low tax rates to draw workers from other, better-educated states, and get the benefits of an educated workforce for free.
One would assume that those better-educated workers would want the same educational benefits to be available to their children......
No, the better-educated workers will scoff at the notion of public schooling for THEIR children, and will turn their windfall of lower property values and taxes into private school tuition or homeschooling.
Then they'll complain about the crime rate because of all these hooligans whose parents "just don't care" about them (while those uncaring parents are working 60 hour weeks to put food on the table because the minimum wage is too low, and don't have any time or energy left over to try to improve the school system their more affluent neighbors abandoned).
Which is why my kids will always go to public school. If it's not good enough for them, it's not good enough for everyone else, and we need to work to FIX that.
I don't believe in free market anymore. There's just too many loopholes, lobbying being the biggest.
If government is so involved in the economy that lobbying is worth the effort, then it's not a truly free market. In a real free market, the government simply wouldn't have the power.
In a TRULY free market, the government wouldn't have power to establish currency, protect ownership, extend licensure... all sorts of things that the economy depends on.
The "hypothetical free market" requires perfect information, perfect competition, and perfect mobility. As none of these are feasible to attain, government regulation is required to simulate them or compensate for their lack. For example, legal definitions of what "organic" produce is, and establishment of certifying bodies (which are private enterprises, but have some sort of charter or something from the government that establishes their certification as adequate for usage of the term "organic") help compensate for the lack of perfect information about farming practices. Without them, someone could say "Yeah, my produce is organic!" after spraying it with tons of pesticides, and you wouldn't really have any way of verifying that unless you traveled out to their farm yourself and watched them for a while... or brought your own lab kit to the market.
So, markets that work on the scale we expect them to will always require SOME amount of regulation, and insofar as there is such regulation, there will be disagreements about how that regulation should be put in place. Some methods would favor the producer or the consumer. Hence, there's a business interest in attempting to shape the regulatory process.
I'm all for making lobbying illegal... but that, some say, is over-regulating the market.
Moral of the story: If you don't like the service you're getting from someone, let them know, and then take action. Then let them know again. and again. and again.
Oh, and then tell everyone you know about how poor customer service they gave you.
Just don't use Twitter to do it.
Mental notes:
* Park legally
* Check you're getting in the right car and your driver is still there
* Don't talk to metermaids
Thanks to Slashdot, my next bank robbery should go much more smoothly! I love this site.
Actually, no, I didn't... that was the GP. I replied to jd.
why's my head tingling?
Are you sure it's not itching?
In the same way the Russians still use thermionic valves for aircraft and spacecraft, and indeed high-end audiophiles use them for sound systems, there may be contexts in 25th century engineering where a mechanical keyboard is safer/superior to a touchscreen panel.
You're overthinking this. There would still be needs to input text manually in certain situations. They do use touchscreens... why wouldn't QWERTY have survived on a touch surface? The difference doesn't need to be as exotic as telegraph to telephone; it might just be manual typewriter to electric typewriter.
Hello - this is slashdot
Nobody RTFA.
Obviously you must be new here.
Obviously I must be. There's just a digit missing from my UID. ;-)
If nobody RTFA, then I must be nobody. Good news: I'm perfect!
I prefer my chocolate to be chocolate-covered
chocolate COLORED, not covered. Bah.
Then again, chocolate-covered chocolate does sound pretty good...
Gosh, you'd think something that's FDA-approved to be present in visible quantities in foods marketed heavily to children wouldn't need *additional* FDA approval for these clinical trials... you mean, blue dye might not be entirely safe? Who woulda thunk?
I prefer my chocolate to be chocolate-covered, thank you. Artificial chemicals are best left to things like debilitating spinal injuries or cancer treatment.
When will companies learn that if they mistreat their customers, someone else *may* find out about it?
Really, it's not that hard.
Um. I hardly think venting about a landlord is in the same class as posting pics of someone without their permission (and if someone's under 18, they can't legally consent to it) or insulting your boss. Then again, it sounds like you didn't RTFA at all.
So here's what I don't get (and maybe a lawyer or wannabe-lawyer can explain it to me). We have the first amendment which protects us from government interference in speech. If I criticize a government official or policy the government is not allowed to retaliate in any way. Yet for some reason.... the private sector can? We've seen this before (Scientology, Streisand, etc.), and it never fails to boggle my mind that what the constitution protects from government interference, it doesn't protect from private sector lawyers.
There are certain limitations on free speech. When I last studied the constitution (in 12th grade Government, which was [mumble mumble] years ago), there were seven categories of exceptions. Libel is one, slander another; there's also the Rosenberg exception (which limits the ability to promote illegal activity), the fire-in-a-crowded-theater exception, "fighting words" which was of more use when everyone had a sidearm on them, incitement to riot, fraud... and maybe that's all of them. Or maybe some of those are the same thing.
And most of these are criminal, not civil, matters, so the government absolutely can step in.
Private entities can restrict speech as much as they want on their private property, though. If Twitter didn't want anyone talking smack about Horizon Realty on their network, they could delete the posts, warn or ban the user, whatever they wanted to as long as it was in their T&Cs that they could. In fact, Horizon Realty would have been MUCH better off just sending a C&D to Twitter, rather than filing suit.
Only possible legit suit you could have is one for libel. Ok well libel requires three things:
1) That the respondent made a false statement. Truth is the ultimate defense against libel. If there was, in fact, mold in the apartment then the landlord is done right here.
No, not really... because the post claimed that Horizon Realty thinks it's ok [to sleep in a moldy apartment]. So, if there was a complaint about mold (the mold doesn't even have to be there, because her post didn't claim there was any), and Horizon Realty was dismissive of the complaint because they felt there was no harm to mold, then she's got the truth defense.
Bullshit. I suppose people 25 years ago couldn't learn anything because they had no access to the internet, eh? I suppose people 10 years ago couldn't do much of anything either because the internet was small and slow, eh?
10 years ago...
* My phone company published a pretty decent phone directory, which was delivered to my door. It included listings for the entire city.
* 411 was free on pay phones and only 25 cents from my landline. (A while before that, it was free from the landline too.) Now it costs $3.49 each time we call 411. (Unless we use GOOG-411... but I found out about that on the internet.)
* I could dial 853-1212 and check the time to set my clocks.
* There were pay phones all over the place, and for 25 cents I could talk as long as I wanted to local numbers. The phones had phone books attached in many cases.
* Local businesses stocked all manner of items that were rarely needed, because when they were needed, they were the only way of getting them in the area.
* You could use a telephone to enroll in your classes at the largest public university in the largest state in the US. (A year later it was all online.)
Things have changed a lot in the last 10 years. If you have internet access (and everyone on this thread likely does) you wouldn't notice it as much... but there's a LOT that doesn't exist anymore because you can get it easier online.
There must be a million of them.
I'll bet that's EXACTLY why the OP is asking for recs.
Am I the only one who has seen the same level of incompetance in the private sector?
In the private sector, you don't have nearly the burden to justify purchases and performance, so you're a lot more likely to have really wasteful implementations perpetuated endlessly.
So, for my part, I've seen a lot MORE incompetence in the private sector.
"Youth" usually refers to people who haven't reached the age of majority, but are in many respects taking on adult roles.
See how far you get calling a program for adolescents a "Child..." anything.
Deb already married Ian. They should put out a distro.
But what if it's a girl? Would she be Distra?
You forgot adding a 200-dpi eInk screen. As shiny as this thing is, I doubt I'll be reading a book at 10-point type in broad daylight on it.
Damn, my mod points expired... honorary +1 funny!
You should change bank, seriously.
Most of them do that here. The ones that think they're clever and don't still use very easily hacked systems, like
The other uses a bank id, password and question/answer pair chosen by me,
...which is only as good as the person choosing the password and challenge/response pair. Most people will pick stuff like My First Pet's Name, and since their computer desktop at work is "My Beloved Fido," everyone they know knows the answer already. There was even a story here about it recently.
which is reasonably secure, or, for telephone contact, a telephone PIN which goes through an automated system the operator doesn't hear.
Which keeps the operator from hearing your PIN, but doesn't prevent someone who actually tries from recording it.
I'm sure you'll agree that asking for something like an SSN is almost as bad as asking a predictable question like your mother's maiden name. That's not proof of ID at all. They should at least establish a password or PIN with you when you first open the account and require that as verification.
Oh, they do establish that PIN. You use it at the ATM, and when you walk into the bank to deposit checks. BUT, it's soooooo important to keep secure, they will NOT allow you to use it for online transactions; you have to set up a *different* PIN there. And of course, you can't use it for telephone transactions either, for the same reason.
Yeah, our banks know just enough about information security to be dangerous.
The method you outline means anyone who has seen your payment details and SSN (at an employer, or recruitment agency say), could withdraw money from your bank account. Ouch. It's so scarily insecure I'd consider changing banks for that alone.
Unfortunately, Lloyd's closed my account when my UK residency expired. I had a heck of a time even getting them to give me an account, since I was just there on a temporary work permit. They wouldn't let me have a checking account at all, just savings.
Here, all banks are pretty similar. The ones who are more "secure" just ADD things like security questions to the pile, without really thinking hard about security.
It was in writing; that's why "NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION" was on the cards. As with other well-known governmental entitites, they chose to change the agreement and inform complainers that they should be hopeful there would be no further changes.
Uhhh... the problem isn't the government using SSNs for identification (they don't; that's what passports and DLs are for). It's private companies using the SSN to (a) key your information to a (hopefully) unique ID for the purposes of tracking your transactions and records (i.e. credit card bureaus) and (b) verify your identity as though the SSN was a confidential password. They have done these things DESPITE the government asking that the SSN not be used this way, and it's causing all sorts of problems.
So, apparently, the government has to explicitly prohibit the request of SSNs except in certain whitelisted cases, because if they don't, private entities will ask for it, and mainstream people will provide it.
If some illegal worker-wannabe takes a lucky guess - known to happen - and picks an existing number, how will you find that out?
These days, the SSA randomly sends out summaries of your current account status on a rolling basis. I've gotten three or four of them in the last 10 years. They detail the earnings reported to SSA under my number each year, and how much has been deducted, and make some projections about what will be available to me when I'm 65. There's also useful info about what SS is and how it works... but the main reason they do this, I gather, is so that people may say "What! I didn't make THAT much money last year!" and they'll detect someone else using their SSN for employment.
But then... why should they report it? It's like someone else depositing money into your bank account for you. What's the motivation to blow the whistle?