Re:modules, and why Rusty is wrong:
on
Kernel Summit Wrapup
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· Score: 5, Informative
"Your mouse has moved. Windows must be restarted for the changes to take effect. Reboot now? [OK]"
Watching karma fall through the floor for supporting Microsoft...
I have Windows 2000 on one of my systems, and this rebooting-after-everything is not nearly as much of a problem as it once was. Yes, after installing critical updates, the system does need to be rebooted, and some software still requests reboots on installation (which I typically ignore). But gone are the days where changing an IP address or other network settings would require a reboot. That's one of the big things Microsoft tried to do w/ W2K, cut down the number of trivial things that required reboots.
(Disclaimer: the system I'm typing this on is a Linux box that hasn't been rebooted in almost six months)
Re:Days of denial are over.
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Baked Alaska
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· Score: 2
Why would the burdon of proof be on me? I can't prove a negative...
Because if you're making an assertion, the burden of proving your assertion is on you. Just because your assertion happens to be a negative doesn't mean that you suddenly don't have to back up your argument.
As a matter of fact.. I'm sure they DO have one. I mean there are airplanes there right?
Then why would the terrorists of 9/11 have travelled to the United States to train on flight simulators there, rather than just going to Islamabad to train, where it is much less likely that anything foil their plans?
And who is going to define what drunk driving is? You can't have it be hardcoded, as different localities have different ratings.
Having it hard-coded to the highest BAC that is legal anywhere in the country seems reasonable to me. A quick google search revealed that all states but Massachusetts and South Carolina (which don't use a numerical limit) are either 0.08 or 0.10, and Mass and SC could work something out with car manufacturers (a la California emissions).
And how long before a device shows up on the black market to set it yourself? Or to ignore settings/disable it/etc? Or just instructions on bypassing it?
Devices for de-scrambling HBO and Cinemax exist, but no one seems to view that as a reason to make cable theft legal.
Who is going to handle the liability when that woman being chased hops in her car and it malfunctions and won't let her drive it to get away?
Who handles the liability when your brakes malfunction? Or when your gas pedal gets stuck in the full open position (this really happened at a Wal-Mart near me, an SUV pinned someone against the wall of the building and crushed him to death)? Or when the tread of your tire separates from the rest of the tire?
Who is going to pay for all the older cars to be retrofitted?
Presumably older cars will fall under a grandfather clause, just as they do for modern-day emissions laws.
And when that out of control truck is bearing down on you and you can't get away?
Umm, pull over and let it go by me, just as I would if I didn't have a speed governor in my car.
More children die from drowning in buckets per year than die in a gun related incident.
And more people die each year of heart disease than are murdered. Should murder not be illegal?
Again, what are you going to do when those "smart" guns fail and someone who desprately needed to protect themselves from a rapist, stalker, mugger, deranged psycho, etc can't do so because it fails?
Despite what people would like you to think, none of these happen that often. I'd be willing to bet that a person who pulls a gun on the rapist/stalker/mugger/deranged psycho is more likely to be killed than someone that doesn't, just like the person with the gun in their home is more likely to be killed by that gun than they are to use it to protect their family.
Most of your questions could also be asked of the ADC watermark checking law (i.e. how long before a device shows up on the black market to bypass it? Who is going to handle the liability when someone's [insert device which contains an ADC here] fails at an inopportune time, resulting in a serious accident or death, etc).
Finally, I'm not necessarily agreeing that all the things the original poster asked for should be made laws. But I agree with him that if legislators are so bored that they just NEED to write a new law, at least make it one that's going to save lives and not line the pockets of some rich, old white men in Hollywood that don't need any more money.
The problem isn't going to be solved by a symlink, because plugin distributions for Windows generally aren't of the tar.gz format where you just extract the plugin lib, and put it in your plugins directory. For Windows it generally comes with some sort of installation software that is of the "I know better than you do, so if I can't find Netscape I'm not going to let you have the plugin files" type. If you don't have anything to symlink to, there's not much you can do.
ummm... read the article and look at a map. CAnet3 stretches accross Canada... 4,500 miles. in my books, that is a ways.
ummm... read the original article and look at a map. Alaska is on one side of Canada, Amsterdam (Netherlands) is not only on the other side of Canada, but it's also across an ocean. Assuming there are no network cables running through the Arctic (so no great circle route is possible), it stands to reason that Alaska->Amsterdam is far longer than any point-to-point connection within Canada. And in fact, the original article states that the distance is 7,608 miles (12,272 km). In my book, that's farther than 4,500 miles.
the science of A.I. is simply _filled_ with algorithms that scale exponentially (and worse than exponentially) with increasing complexity? What kind of processor would ever be "enough" (ahem!) for those?
Forget faster processors, we just need someone to prove that P = NP:-)
But seriously, there are a lot of things that maybe we're trying to tackle from the wrong direction. Rather than just throwing more processing power at something, why not try to make that something more efficient? (This of course can be applied to Bush's view of energy consumption in the USA: why try to extend the usefulness of what energy we have when we can just drill for more oil or burn more coal?)
a) Saddam is an evil child-killer and "we"* are not.
I pick (a). Why? Because the people are dying in the country that he controls. He has more of a responsibility to his people than the U.S. has to his people. If the U.S. government suddenly decided it was going to channel all tax dollars to the creation of enormous churches (wouldn't surprise me considering who's in power) and palaces, and neglected to pay welfare and medicare, etc, and thousands of people started dying, would the rest of the world rush to our aid? No, they'd say "What the hell are you doing?? Stop it."
Besides, either way the U.S. is screwed: don't lift the sanctions, and everyone blames the U.S. for all the poor children that are dying in Iraq. Lift the sanctions, and five years from now when Saddam uses nukes against Israel, it'll all be the fault of the U.S. for lifting the sanctions.
When they drop nuclear bombs on another country's women and children, they consider it justifiable ("pearl harbour blah blah", what, 2K *soldiers* dead? Try hundreds of thousands of women and children).
If you'll recall, Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941. Atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945. The United States didn't sit on its hands for almost 4 years, patiently waiting for the A-bomb to be developed so we could show those japs who's boss. No, in fact it was fighting a war, one that killed THOUSANDS of Americans. Sure, they were all soldiers, but did all of them voluntarily go? No. Remember the draft during World War II? Thousands of 18 year-olds, still children, went overseas to die, so that people like you and me can live in a free world. So don't make it sound as if the Pacific campaign of WWII can be reduced to "Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Americans nuked two Japanese cities in retaliation."
"Two reasons. First of all, I think he's a good actor, ok? To me, that counts. Second, he looks like a guy that can get things done. Joe Pesci doesn't fuck around! In fact, Joe Pesci came through on a couple things God® was having trouble with. For years I asked God® to do something about my noisy neighbor with the barking dog. Joe Pesci straightened that cock-sucker out with one visit. It's amazing what you can accomplish with a simple baseball bat. So I've been praying to Joe for about a year now..." I could go on for hours:-)
Re:Copyright violation
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Mashed-Up Music
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· Score: 5, Interesting
It was the same revision that first allowed for corporate owners of copyright. I think maybe the 1909 Congress was being influenced by something other than the public good.
Yes, they were probably influenced by the 1886 Supreme Court case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, which decided that corporations have the same rights as living persons. Up until then, corporations couldn't hold copyrights because corporations didn't have the same rights as people.
And you make it sound as if the MPAA and RIAA have been around trying to squash our rights for the last 100 years, which is not true. In fact, when working on the 1909 copyright law, the House wrote this (from http://www.arl.org/info/frn/copy/timeline.html):
The main object to be desired in expanding copyright protection accorded to music has been to give the composer an adequate return for the value of his composition, and it has been a serious and difficult task to combine the protection of the composer with the protection of the public, and to so frame an act that it would accomplish the double purpose of
securing to the composer an adequate return for all use made of his composition and at the same time prevent the formation of oppressive monopolies [emphasis mine], which might be founded upon the very rights granted to the composer for the purpose of protecting his interests.
So Congress was actually trying to PREVENT entities like the RIAA, and was not influenced by them as you imply.
Allowing innovative uses of someone else's ideas IS for the public good.
Personally I don't see how copying two songs on top of each other can be considered a particularly "innovative use of someone else's ideas" considering that it's not just their ideas that are being used, but their entire work (nor do I find it particularly innovative, but some people may, so that's beside the point).
The public is supposed to be the beneficiary of copyright law - whatever benefits the author might see are coincidental.
No, the author is supposed to be the beneficiary of the copyright so that the public may benefit. Benefiting the author is not coincidental, it is a means to an end. And if you look at the blockquote above, you'll see that Congress WAS interested in benefiting the author of the work.
I used to bitch about the poor signs on the 5 interchange near down town LA, but after you see the signs in NY and MA you'll think twice.
I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about... I drive all over the northeast and I've never had a problem getting around an unfamiliar place simply by following the highway signs. Usually I'll look at a map, memorize which highways I have to take to get to a place, and never look at the map again because I can just follow the signs.
In the beautiful Northeast, streets are at weird messed up angles and they don't make any sense. That's what you get when streets are made where cows walked. Talk about a dumb idea.
You're right, it's unfortunate that the colonists and early citizens of America lacked the foresight to design the roads to accomodate a popultion of millions of people, all of whom drive automobiles 10 times faster than their horse-drawn carriages could go. Damn their ignorance.
Roundabouts are good for streets, but in the Northeast they are used on highways and freeways.
The only roundabouts I've ever seen on a highway are on Rt. 128 near Gloucester, Mass and where Cape Cod meets mainland Mass just on the mainland side of the Cape Cod Canal. I'm from upstate NY and drive all over the northeast, and these are the only ones I've ever come across. You make it sound as if every exit on the freeway in the northeast is a roundabout, and that's just not true.
No offense, but have you checked to see if there are any of these dot pattern changes or signs along your freeways?
No offense, but who cares if there are any dot pattern changes or signs along the freeway to indicate this? It's horrible and unsafe road design, for the simple reason that it is not what people expect. On my drive to work on the interstate through Rochester, NY, I would actually have to start in the leftmost of three lanes if I wanted to stay in the same lane for the entire trip, because the two lanes to my right were "exit only" at some point, and were replaced on the left. So I would start in the left-most of 3 and end up in the right-most of 3, without ever changing lanes. This is really stupid. Most people expect to get in a lane and be able to drive in that lane, not have to play musical lanes just to stay on the highway.
You'd think that the people in charge of the signs would notice that there was an addition that hadn't been authorized. Instead, Caltrans is apparently a big enough beaurocracy that nobody noticed the change, or if they did they assumed that somebody else had authorized it.
How many signs do you think there are on the freeways in the Los Angeles area? Even assuming that there is only a single person in Caltrans that all sign requests go to, what are the chances that he drives that particular route frequently enough to notice a difference? And if he does drive the route that frequently, he probably wouldn't even notice, since I'm sure most people have their route memorized and don't even look at the signs anymore. And if he's just randomly tooling around LA when he sees the sign, unless he's Rain Man, there's little chance that he has EVERY sign memorized and therefore wouldn't notice. The people that might notice are the blue-collar guys that are out driving the highways every day, and they are very justified in assuming that someone else made the change. I agree with the original poster, I don't see how this is art. Funny and useful, yes. But art? I don't see it.
Also these people are entirely too green and liberal for my tastes. At first it is a very thought provoking idea. But these people already have preconcevied conclusions... and that isn't very good science.
On the contrary, scientists first formulate a hypothesis (in other words, a preconceived notion; human activity has led to global warming, for instance) and then perform an experiment to test it. And like it or not, global warming is occurring. The average temperature of the planet is rising, which is all that is meant by global warming. Whether or not this is the result of human action is still being contested. <OPINION>But personally, I would be very shocked if human activity has had NO effect whatsoever on the climate of the planet.</OPINION>
You haven't checked the technology lately if you think you have to carry your weight in batteries. My GPS will (and does) run 10 hours on a set of batteries...Most of the time while hiking, the GPS is stowed not using batteries.
10 hours is fine if you're out for a day. But if you're out for several days (as I often am), and are hiking all day (as I often am), and using the thing constantly, then that's a lot of batteries you're going through. My original point with regards to this was that (as you said) the GPS should not be used constantly. But if it's not being used constantly, then you have to know how to use some alternate means of direction-finding, such as a compass. The GPS is not a 100% replacement for knowledge of how to use a compass.
I print my maps from the National Geographic topographic maps with the GPS grid on the map, so yes those numbers do mean something on my map.
My point was that without a map, those numbers mean absolutely nothing. Obviously with a map you can pinpoint your location (I've found UTM coords to be much better for this than lat/long, since I typically use USGS 7.5' maps with the UTM overlay). The reason I was trying to make that point was in response to the orginal's posters statement that knowing which way north is is useless, but with a GPS, he knows exactly where he is, which isn't necessarily true.
try Geocaching with a compass instead of a GPS.
I'm familiar with geocaching, and will never do it. I live near the largest wilderness area east of the Mississippi, and the only forests in the nation to have constitutional protection, and I'm not about to leave a tupperware container full of crap lying around in the woods. What ever happened to "if you carry it in, carry it out" or "leave no trace"? When I've hiked a dozen miles into the backcountry to a nice secluded lake, nothing ruins the wilderness feeling more than a blatant sign of mankind's disregard. Call me idealistic, but I'm just not a big fan of encouraging people to leave junk out in the woods.
I've seldom gotten found by using a compass. I can spend a lot less money on a watch that also has a GPS and will tell me where I am.
Ok, so you have a GPS, and your GPS tells you you're location is 75o45'38.3"W 43o13'08.52"N. Without any other resources, where are you? A GPS without any other knowledge is just as useful as knowing which direction north is without any other knowledge; in other words, completely useless.
GPS is not a magical thing, folks. I've hiked for miles off-trail with nothing more than a map and compass, with no problems whatsoever. I have also used a GPS, and found it useful for checking my location from time to time to make sure I was still where I thought I was, while using a compass to navigate in between GPS readings. Relying 100% on a GPS and just following the little arrow pointing towards your intended target is foolish, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that you'll have to carry your weight in batteries. What if you drop the thing and break it, or what if you're in a deep valley or another situation where the thing doesn't work? Having a compass (or two or three, as is often my case) as a backup and knowing how to use it is a key to successful off-trail backcountry navigation.
btw, decent compass is not $10 but more like $60 and might be as high as $200 for a high end compass.
Any watch that also claims to serve as a compass will not work as well as a high-end compass. The $10 compass is probably comparable, or possibly even better, since a cheapo compass would be more convenient to use with a map than something that simply reads out a heading. Plus, I have less faith in anything electronic when I'm out in the woods, it seems to have a high Murphy quotient.
Which is why I always ride on the road (not to mention the fact that in my area there are no bike lanes). I've yet to be hit by a car (knock on wood) but I've had a number of close calls, all of which were either: (a) a car passes me and then quickly turns right directly in front of me (I had a dump truck pulling a trailer do that to me once, that was slightly scary), or (b) an oncoming car turns left directly in front of me (which happened as recently as today).
I think part of the reason this happens so often is that people expect bicyclists to be in your first category (slow and wobbly), so they think they have more time to make a turn than they really do when encountering a rider in your second category (such as myself). Since I'm in the road and they just passed me 4 seconds ago, visibility to cars turning right shouldn't be an issue, though it may come into play in the oncoming cars turning left case.
If you are stopping that doesn't mean you go from full speed to 0 in the magical 15 feet after you hit the breaks [sic]
Well, actually it does. If you're crusing along at 14mph and you hit the brakes, you will come to a complete stop 15 feet from where you hit the brakes (these numbers are according to the original poster).
it's not going to be much more than bumping shoulders with someone on the sidewalk.
Ok bumping shoulders with a 250-pound person (or in this case a 175-pound person on a 75-pound segway) that's moving at just 3mph (walking pace) would most likely knock me on my ass. Is it enough to injure? Probably an elderly person or a kid, but otherwise most likely not. Would it piss me off? Damn well it would, and it would probably piss me off more than if a person on foot ran into me.
so far the cops using them haven't had any trouble running into people, and they use them on crowded Atlanta sidewalks.
I would expect cops to use the things more responsibly than the average joe. It's the guy in a hurry that decides he's going to cruise down the sidewalk full tilt (no pun intended), pedestrians be damned, that concerns me the most.
Slashdot Mirror
There's only one of Him.
I thought there were 3? Daddy, Junior, and Spook. Errr, I mean the father, son, and the holy ghost.
(For the humor impaired, it's a joke)
"Your mouse has moved. Windows must be restarted for the changes to take effect. Reboot now? [OK]"
Watching karma fall through the floor for supporting Microsoft...
I have Windows 2000 on one of my systems, and this rebooting-after-everything is not nearly as much of a problem as it once was. Yes, after installing critical updates, the system does need to be rebooted, and some software still requests reboots on installation (which I typically ignore). But gone are the days where changing an IP address or other network settings would require a reboot. That's one of the big things Microsoft tried to do w/ W2K, cut down the number of trivial things that required reboots.
(Disclaimer: the system I'm typing this on is a Linux box that hasn't been rebooted in almost six months)
Why would the burdon of proof be on me? I can't prove a negative...
Because if you're making an assertion, the burden of proving your assertion is on you. Just because your assertion happens to be a negative doesn't mean that you suddenly don't have to back up your argument.
And who was it that said verbing nouns is fun?
And yet you "verbed," the word 'verb,' which is a noun.
As a matter of fact.. I'm sure they DO have one. I mean there are airplanes there right?
Then why would the terrorists of 9/11 have travelled to the United States to train on flight simulators there, rather than just going to Islamabad to train, where it is much less likely that anything foil their plans?
And who is going to define what drunk driving is? You can't have it be hardcoded, as different localities have different ratings.
Having it hard-coded to the highest BAC that is legal anywhere in the country seems reasonable to me. A quick google search revealed that all states but Massachusetts and South Carolina (which don't use a numerical limit) are either 0.08 or 0.10, and Mass and SC could work something out with car manufacturers (a la California emissions).
And how long before a device shows up on the black market to set it yourself? Or to ignore settings/disable it/etc? Or just instructions on bypassing it?
Devices for de-scrambling HBO and Cinemax exist, but no one seems to view that as a reason to make cable theft legal.
Who is going to handle the liability when that woman being chased hops in her car and it malfunctions and won't let her drive it to get away?
Who handles the liability when your brakes malfunction? Or when your gas pedal gets stuck in the full open position (this really happened at a Wal-Mart near me, an SUV pinned someone against the wall of the building and crushed him to death)? Or when the tread of your tire separates from the rest of the tire?
Who is going to pay for all the older cars to be retrofitted?
Presumably older cars will fall under a grandfather clause, just as they do for modern-day emissions laws.
And when that out of control truck is bearing down on you and you can't get away?
Umm, pull over and let it go by me, just as I would if I didn't have a speed governor in my car.
More children die from drowning in buckets per year than die in a gun related incident.
And more people die each year of heart disease than are murdered. Should murder not be illegal?
Again, what are you going to do when those "smart" guns fail and someone who desprately needed to protect themselves from a rapist, stalker, mugger, deranged psycho, etc can't do so because it fails?
Despite what people would like you to think, none of these happen that often. I'd be willing to bet that a person who pulls a gun on the rapist/stalker/mugger/deranged psycho is more likely to be killed than someone that doesn't, just like the person with the gun in their home is more likely to be killed by that gun than they are to use it to protect their family.
Most of your questions could also be asked of the ADC watermark checking law (i.e. how long before a device shows up on the black market to bypass it? Who is going to handle the liability when someone's [insert device which contains an ADC here] fails at an inopportune time, resulting in a serious accident or death, etc).
Finally, I'm not necessarily agreeing that all the things the original poster asked for should be made laws. But I agree with him that if legislators are so bored that they just NEED to write a new law, at least make it one that's going to save lives and not line the pockets of some rich, old white men in Hollywood that don't need any more money.
The problem isn't going to be solved by a symlink, because plugin distributions for Windows generally aren't of the tar.gz format where you just extract the plugin lib, and put it in your plugins directory. For Windows it generally comes with some sort of installation software that is of the "I know better than you do, so if I can't find Netscape I'm not going to let you have the plugin files" type. If you don't have anything to symlink to, there's not much you can do.
ummm ... read the article and look at a map. CAnet3 stretches accross Canada ... 4,500 miles. in my books, that is a ways.
... read the original article and look at a map. Alaska is on one side of Canada, Amsterdam (Netherlands) is not only on the other side of Canada, but it's also across an ocean. Assuming there are no network cables running through the Arctic (so no great circle route is possible), it stands to reason that Alaska->Amsterdam is far longer than any point-to-point connection within Canada. And in fact, the original article states that the distance is 7,608 miles (12,272 km). In my book, that's farther than 4,500 miles.
ummm
the science of A.I. is simply _filled_ with algorithms that scale exponentially (and worse than exponentially) with increasing complexity? What kind of processor would ever be "enough" (ahem!) for those?
:-)
Forget faster processors, we just need someone to prove that P = NP
But seriously, there are a lot of things that maybe we're trying to tackle from the wrong direction. Rather than just throwing more processing power at something, why not try to make that something more efficient? (This of course can be applied to Bush's view of energy consumption in the USA: why try to extend the usefulness of what energy we have when we can just drill for more oil or burn more coal?)
a) Saddam is an evil child-killer and "we"* are not.
I pick (a). Why? Because the people are dying in the country that he controls. He has more of a responsibility to his people than the U.S. has to his people. If the U.S. government suddenly decided it was going to channel all tax dollars to the creation of enormous churches (wouldn't surprise me considering who's in power) and palaces, and neglected to pay welfare and medicare, etc, and thousands of people started dying, would the rest of the world rush to our aid? No, they'd say "What the hell are you doing?? Stop it."
Besides, either way the U.S. is screwed: don't lift the sanctions, and everyone blames the U.S. for all the poor children that are dying in Iraq. Lift the sanctions, and five years from now when Saddam uses nukes against Israel, it'll all be the fault of the U.S. for lifting the sanctions.
When they drop nuclear bombs on another country's women and children, they consider it justifiable ("pearl harbour blah blah", what, 2K *soldiers* dead? Try hundreds of thousands of women and children).
If you'll recall, Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941. Atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945. The United States didn't sit on its hands for almost 4 years, patiently waiting for the A-bomb to be developed so we could show those japs who's boss. No, in fact it was fighting a war, one that killed THOUSANDS of Americans. Sure, they were all soldiers, but did all of them voluntarily go? No. Remember the draft during World War II? Thousands of 18 year-olds, still children, went overseas to die, so that people like you and me can live in a free world. So don't make it sound as if the Pacific campaign of WWII can be reduced to "Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Americans nuked two Japanese cities in retaliation."
I prefer to pray to Joe Pesci.
:-)
Ahhh, Carlin...
"Two reasons. First of all, I think he's a good actor, ok? To me, that counts. Second, he looks like a guy that can get things done. Joe Pesci doesn't fuck around! In fact, Joe Pesci came through on a couple things God® was having trouble with. For years I asked God® to do something about my noisy neighbor with the barking dog. Joe Pesci straightened that cock-sucker out with one visit. It's amazing what you can accomplish with a simple baseball bat. So I've been praying to Joe for about a year now..." I could go on for hours
Yes, they were probably influenced by the 1886 Supreme Court case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, which decided that corporations have the same rights as living persons. Up until then, corporations couldn't hold copyrights because corporations didn't have the same rights as people.
And you make it sound as if the MPAA and RIAA have been around trying to squash our rights for the last 100 years, which is not true. In fact, when working on the 1909 copyright law, the House wrote this (from http://www.arl.org/info/frn/copy/timeline.html): So Congress was actually trying to PREVENT entities like the RIAA, and was not influenced by them as you imply.
Allowing innovative uses of someone else's ideas IS for the public good.
Personally I don't see how copying two songs on top of each other can be considered a particularly "innovative use of someone else's ideas" considering that it's not just their ideas that are being used, but their entire work (nor do I find it particularly innovative, but some people may, so that's beside the point).
The public is supposed to be the beneficiary of copyright law - whatever benefits the author might see are coincidental.
No, the author is supposed to be the beneficiary of the copyright so that the public may benefit. Benefiting the author is not coincidental, it is a means to an end. And if you look at the blockquote above, you'll see that Congress WAS interested in benefiting the author of the work.
It's not like we can't change the sign if a new language comes along.
Damn those stupid Egyptians for not updating all their heiroglyphic inscriptions to English.
I used to bitch about the poor signs on the 5 interchange near down town LA, but after you see the signs in NY and MA you'll think twice.
I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about... I drive all over the northeast and I've never had a problem getting around an unfamiliar place simply by following the highway signs. Usually I'll look at a map, memorize which highways I have to take to get to a place, and never look at the map again because I can just follow the signs.
In the beautiful Northeast, streets are at weird messed up angles and they don't make any sense. That's what you get when streets are made where cows walked. Talk about a dumb idea.
You're right, it's unfortunate that the colonists and early citizens of America lacked the foresight to design the roads to accomodate a popultion of millions of people, all of whom drive automobiles 10 times faster than their horse-drawn carriages could go. Damn their ignorance.
Roundabouts are good for streets, but in the Northeast they are used on highways and freeways.
The only roundabouts I've ever seen on a highway are on Rt. 128 near Gloucester, Mass and where Cape Cod meets mainland Mass just on the mainland side of the Cape Cod Canal. I'm from upstate NY and drive all over the northeast, and these are the only ones I've ever come across. You make it sound as if every exit on the freeway in the northeast is a roundabout, and that's just not true.
No offense, but have you checked to see if there are any of these dot pattern changes or signs along your freeways?
No offense, but who cares if there are any dot pattern changes or signs along the freeway to indicate this? It's horrible and unsafe road design, for the simple reason that it is not what people expect. On my drive to work on the interstate through Rochester, NY, I would actually have to start in the leftmost of three lanes if I wanted to stay in the same lane for the entire trip, because the two lanes to my right were "exit only" at some point, and were replaced on the left. So I would start in the left-most of 3 and end up in the right-most of 3, without ever changing lanes. This is really stupid. Most people expect to get in a lane and be able to drive in that lane, not have to play musical lanes just to stay on the highway.
You'd think that the people in charge of the signs would notice that there was an addition that hadn't been authorized. Instead, Caltrans is apparently a big enough beaurocracy that nobody noticed the change, or if they did they assumed that somebody else had authorized it.
How many signs do you think there are on the freeways in the Los Angeles area? Even assuming that there is only a single person in Caltrans that all sign requests go to, what are the chances that he drives that particular route frequently enough to notice a difference? And if he does drive the route that frequently, he probably wouldn't even notice, since I'm sure most people have their route memorized and don't even look at the signs anymore. And if he's just randomly tooling around LA when he sees the sign, unless he's Rain Man, there's little chance that he has EVERY sign memorized and therefore wouldn't notice. The people that might notice are the blue-collar guys that are out driving the highways every day, and they are very justified in assuming that someone else made the change. I agree with the original poster, I don't see how this is art. Funny and useful, yes. But art? I don't see it.
Also these people are entirely too green and liberal for my tastes. At first it is a very thought provoking idea. But these people already have preconcevied conclusions... and that isn't very good science.
On the contrary, scientists first formulate a hypothesis (in other words, a preconceived notion; human activity has led to global warming, for instance) and then perform an experiment to test it. And like it or not, global warming is occurring. The average temperature of the planet is rising, which is all that is meant by global warming. Whether or not this is the result of human action is still being contested. <OPINION>But personally, I would be very shocked if human activity has had NO effect whatsoever on the climate of the planet.</OPINION>
You haven't checked the technology lately if you think you have to carry your weight in batteries. My GPS will (and does) run 10 hours on a set of batteries...Most of the time while hiking, the GPS is stowed not using batteries.
10 hours is fine if you're out for a day. But if you're out for several days (as I often am), and are hiking all day (as I often am), and using the thing constantly, then that's a lot of batteries you're going through. My original point with regards to this was that (as you said) the GPS should not be used constantly. But if it's not being used constantly, then you have to know how to use some alternate means of direction-finding, such as a compass. The GPS is not a 100% replacement for knowledge of how to use a compass.
I print my maps from the National Geographic topographic maps with the GPS grid on the map, so yes those numbers do mean something on my map.
My point was that without a map, those numbers mean absolutely nothing. Obviously with a map you can pinpoint your location (I've found UTM coords to be much better for this than lat/long, since I typically use USGS 7.5' maps with the UTM overlay). The reason I was trying to make that point was in response to the orginal's posters statement that knowing which way north is is useless, but with a GPS, he knows exactly where he is, which isn't necessarily true.
try Geocaching with a compass instead of a GPS.
I'm familiar with geocaching, and will never do it. I live near the largest wilderness area east of the Mississippi, and the only forests in the nation to have constitutional protection, and I'm not about to leave a tupperware container full of crap lying around in the woods. What ever happened to "if you carry it in, carry it out" or "leave no trace"? When I've hiked a dozen miles into the backcountry to a nice secluded lake, nothing ruins the wilderness feeling more than a blatant sign of mankind's disregard. Call me idealistic, but I'm just not a big fan of encouraging people to leave junk out in the woods.
I've seldom gotten found by using a compass. I can spend a lot less money on a watch that also has a GPS and will tell me where I am.
Ok, so you have a GPS, and your GPS tells you you're location is 75o45'38.3"W 43o13'08.52"N. Without any other resources, where are you? A GPS without any other knowledge is just as useful as knowing which direction north is without any other knowledge; in other words, completely useless.
GPS is not a magical thing, folks. I've hiked for miles off-trail with nothing more than a map and compass, with no problems whatsoever. I have also used a GPS, and found it useful for checking my location from time to time to make sure I was still where I thought I was, while using a compass to navigate in between GPS readings. Relying 100% on a GPS and just following the little arrow pointing towards your intended target is foolish, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that you'll have to carry your weight in batteries. What if you drop the thing and break it, or what if you're in a deep valley or another situation where the thing doesn't work? Having a compass (or two or three, as is often my case) as a backup and knowing how to use it is a key to successful off-trail backcountry navigation.
btw, decent compass is not $10 but more like $60 and might be as high as $200 for a high end compass.
Any watch that also claims to serve as a compass will not work as well as a high-end compass. The $10 compass is probably comparable, or possibly even better, since a cheapo compass would be more convenient to use with a map than something that simply reads out a heading. Plus, I have less faith in anything electronic when I'm out in the woods, it seems to have a high Murphy quotient.
Which is why I always ride on the road (not to mention the fact that in my area there are no bike lanes). I've yet to be hit by a car (knock on wood) but I've had a number of close calls, all of which were either: (a) a car passes me and then quickly turns right directly in front of me (I had a dump truck pulling a trailer do that to me once, that was slightly scary), or (b) an oncoming car turns left directly in front of me (which happened as recently as today).
I think part of the reason this happens so often is that people expect bicyclists to be in your first category (slow and wobbly), so they think they have more time to make a turn than they really do when encountering a rider in your second category (such as myself). Since I'm in the road and they just passed me 4 seconds ago, visibility to cars turning right shouldn't be an issue, though it may come into play in the oncoming cars turning left case.
If you are stopping that doesn't mean you go from full speed to 0 in the magical 15 feet after you hit the breaks [sic]
Well, actually it does. If you're crusing along at 14mph and you hit the brakes, you will come to a complete stop 15 feet from where you hit the brakes (these numbers are according to the original poster).
it's not going to be much more than bumping shoulders with someone on the sidewalk.
Ok bumping shoulders with a 250-pound person (or in this case a 175-pound person on a 75-pound segway) that's moving at just 3mph (walking pace) would most likely knock me on my ass. Is it enough to injure? Probably an elderly person or a kid, but otherwise most likely not. Would it piss me off? Damn well it would, and it would probably piss me off more than if a person on foot ran into me.
so far the cops using them haven't had any trouble running into people, and they use them on crowded Atlanta sidewalks.
I would expect cops to use the things more responsibly than the average joe. It's the guy in a hurry that decides he's going to cruise down the sidewalk full tilt (no pun intended), pedestrians be damned, that concerns me the most.
If you are riding it on a crowded sidewalk do you really have any choice?
Ummm, yeah, you could not buy it and just walk on the crowded sidewalk, which was my original point.