an anethesist with enough chemistry to make/extract any kind of painkiller would change the world. Remember "doctors" were generally judged on how fast they could chop off a limb, if the patient didn't die of shock from the pain that was a big plus.
A modern cryptographer with a good grounding in old fashioned codebreaking would rapidly find a place in an emperors court.
in most fields there's going to be a number of things you could carry back which don't take infrastructure, just understanding but yes, in most cases it's all about standing on the shoulders of giants.
Yes, the vast majority of my skills would be worthless, they require too much infrastructure. But some things would be both simple and game changing.
A certain amount of modern common sense ( cooking food properly, not making your water pipes out of lead etc) would make a big difference back then. Even a modern layperson could probably out-doctor the doctors of the day. Some basic elements of accounting and organisation would probably be a big step up as well.
personally I know enough crypto that I could change the outcome of history in a few cases back then. Codebreaking was a black art back then and stupidly simple and trivially breakable cyphers were in common use amongst the courts of kings and emperors.
AI has been moving along over the years, it's just that there's never been any huge sudden leap so it's always been tiny incremental steps.
People want an AI which asks the meaning of life monents after being turned on. What they get is AI which is slightly better at gathering data from images or slightly better at catagorizing data from text or navigating around an environment than the last version.
Also people don't hear about most of the products of AI research. It just quietly works in the background handling logistics or clasifying information or gets turned into dry uninteresting tools.
I thought the patent system had some worth... had something redeeming quality.... until I read that.
Primary Examiner:Manahan, Todd E. should be fired, then tarred and feathered.
"A method for inducing cats to exercise consists of directing a beam of invisible light produced by a hand-held laser apparatus onto the floor or wall or other opaque surface in the vicinity of the cat, then moving the laser so as to cause the bright pattern of light to move in an irregular way fascinating to cats, and to any other animal with a chase instinct. "
And no. people love to claim that the abstract isn't a big deal, that the claims section has the real material but no. just no.
Claims:What is claimed is:
1. A method of inducing aerobic exercise in an unrestrained cat comprising the steps of: (a) directing an intense coherent beam of invisible light produced by a hand-held laser apparatus to produce a bright highly-focused pattern of light at the intersection of the beam and an opaque surface, said pattern being of visual interest to a cat; and
(b) selectively redirecting said beam out of the cat's immediate reach to induce said cat to run and chase said beam and pattern of light around an exercise area.
2. The method of claim 1 wherein said bright pattern of light is small in area relative to a paw of the cat.
3. The method of claim 1 wherein said beam remains invisible between said laser and said opaque surface until impinging on said opaque surface.
4. The method of claim 1 wherein step (b) includes sweeping said beam at an angular speed to cause said pattern to move along said opaque surface at a speed in the range of five to twenty-five feet per second.
Description:BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to recreational and amusement devices for domestic animals and, more particularly, to a method for exercising and entertaining cats.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
Cats are not characteristically disposed toward voluntary aerobic exercise. It becomes the burden of the cat owner to create situations of sufficient interest to the feline to induce even short-lived and modest exertion for the health and well-being of the pet. Cats are, however, fascinated by light and enthralled by unpredictable jumpy movements, as for instance, by the bobbing end of a piece of hand-held string or yarn, or a ball rolling and bouncing across a floor. Intense sunlight reflected from a mirror or focused through a prism, if the room is sufficiently dark, will, when moved irregularly, cause even the more sedentary of cats to scamper after the lighted image in an amusing and therapeutic game of "cat and mouse." The disruption of having to darken a room to stage a cat workout and the uncertainty of collecting a convenient sunbeam in a lens or mirror render these approaches to establishing a regular life-enhancing cat exercise routine inconvenient at best.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an improved method of exercising a cat in normal day and night lighting environments.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a method of providing amusing, entertaining and healthy exercise for a cat.
It is yet another object of the present invention to teach a method of exercising a cat effortlessly at any time.
In accordance with the present invention, a light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation (laser) device in a small hand-held configuration is used to project and move a bright pattern of light around a room to amuse and exercise a cat.
The method is effective, simple, convenient and inexpensive to practice and provides healthy exercise for the cat and amusement and entertainment for both the cat and the owner.
These and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following description and accompanying drawings of one specific embo
Well of course it has to make or save money somehow or there's no point. But we're looking at costs, not net profit/loss.
And of course it varies by app. A small, simple and easy to maintain app it'd be fairly low, some software causes so little trouble that people forget it's there. some applications eat the majority of the time of a few highly skilled engineers to keep it from crashing and burning.
Sure some people make it to old age with minds as sharp as a tack but as I said. If people can justify not giving mature capable teenagers the vote because too many teenagers are idiots then I can justify not giving the occasional pensioner who's brain still works the vote on the basis of the huge number of their peers who are utterly gone in the head. I don't care what their opinions are but if their brains are turning to mush they're not capable of making good decisions.
It sucks for the over 75's who are still competent and would get treated as invalids but then it also sucks for the under 18's who are already competent and are treated as incompetents. fairs fair.
Why don't I stab my neighbour in the face and steal all his stuff? Stability, trade are good for everyone in the long run. If only because happy trading partners rarely end up blowing each other up.
it would hurt china more but it would still hurt the US and there's loads of other countries which would be happy to grab all the money, power and influence they can in the turmoil.
And I can assume they can do the same. Do american companies own much in china and do many US groups have money in chinese banks? Or course declaring that you're not going to pay your debts would mean getting loans from anyone else in future would become a lot more expensive with or without laws and wars .
Only a few little problems. If they do that the US would never again be able to borrow money in dollars. Or at least it could only ever borrow money from idiots. In other currencies at a higher interest rate sure but not in dollars.
You're a fucking idiot. But feel free to set up the worlds biggest and most absurd strawman. Ya, I'm not supporting setting up a fucking decent electronic system and requiring audited hardware and proven code.
No, I'm calling for MS access databases storing voting records and whatever POS diabold can pull out of it's arse! Great, now we've established that rather than advocating a sane system I'm actually advocating whatever your diseased little brain can imagine as the worst possible system feel free to make up an infinity of additional strawmen.
If you want you could claim I want to give the voting machines barbed penises with which to rape orphans to death.
That'd make your inane rants sound even better wouldn't it.
You sound as intelligent and reasonable as the homeless man who preaches from the corner downtown so I won't be expecting this to get through to you.
wow, you have a chip on your shoulder that's more of a boulder don't you.
"That is not a ballot problem, that is a voter roll problem. It can happen just as easy with electronic voting."
it's a problem with the system as a whole.
"Yes, in 1920s Chicago. Not in the actual modern world, where ballot boxes are kept fairly careful track of."
really? You think that kind of fraud never happens any more?
"That is not a ballot problem, that is a voter roll problem. It can happen just as easy with electronic voting."
Absolutely yet when listing problems with electronic voting people will full out electronic variants of all these things as if they have no paper equivalent.
"Uh, no. Ballots are not miscounted."
wow. i mean wow. You really are deluded. I guess all re-counts turn up the exact same numbers as the first count then.
"Except they aren't."
except they are.
"Hey, imbecile, try arguing in the actual real world."
on a related note there's no point trying these lightbulb things, they're obviously worse than good old lanterns and those noisy smelly automobiles are no match for a good horse. "Whereas with electronic voting, they could just stick the card in a machine and put on as many votes as they want if they were corrupt, you moron."
You've provided no stats that show people are worse off despite working longer hours.
How many 2 full time income young couples nowdays spend a significant amount of time living in an unfurnished house when they first get a place together and gradually over the course of years or months scrape together the money for the basics like a fridge, beds, chairs, tables etc, no car and little disposable income. That was not a remotely uncommon scenario amongst my parents peers either.
you have your searing conviction that the modern economy hasn't made us better off. I have reality.
people work longer, they work hard but they get more.
There's no shortage of people who spend stupidly even now, work insane hours, earn a lot and then piss the money away by buying more than the can afford and playing for everything 3 times over through credit card bills or pay far over the odds for what they purchase leaving them worse off than someone who earned less and spent wisely but that's a separate problem.
in the case of crimes that are not purely against self harm. yes. if they're doing nothing except costing money they're a waste of money that could be spent on actually improving some other situation.
Sorry to burst your deluded little bubble but you're simply wrong.
People work more now because they can. They want the money more than the time.
I outlined my situation which you didn't seem to read. My parents both worked full time jobs when they were our age and yet barely scraped by from week to week and had little or no disposable income.
Now both I and my girlfriend only work part time and we have a kitchen filled with fancy appliances, a few computers and I cook because I like cooking.
face it. your little dream of how we're all worse off nowdays is nothing more than a delusion. We're vastly better off than in my parents day, we're vastly wealthier and we can live a comfortable lifestyle working far less hours than they ever did. The economy is not a zero sum game. People who are sure they absolutely need that massive HD TV that will fill one wall of their living room, a house with 10 rooms per person actually living in it and a boat to be happy work far longer and harder than people in their parents day. People who have modest desires can get by far more easily.
On average people do work more hours now, they also orders of magnitude more wealthy.
You have an amazingly romantic view of bus and rail transport. And all it's problems are because of THE CONSPIRACY to make it artificially awful. The sad fact that you will never ever accept is that it is irredeemably and unsolvable awful. I have to live with it. I don't have the option of just taking the car when the only public transport options are awful. I'm stuck with it *All of the time*. I find myself wondering if you are actually forced to use public transport for anything but casual travel. because if you did you'd rapidly lose all romantic ideas about how it's so fantastic. It's hot, it's cold, it's exhausting, it's stuffy, it's cramped, it's inconvenient and even something as trivial as one fucking football game in the city where you have to go will utterly fuck up and chance of a smooth trip and might leave you stranded half way to your destination when all buses stop for the night.
By chance do you a) happen to live right next to a rail station which takes you right to where you normally what to go or b) not actually use public transport.
I don't drive, I'm fucking stuck with public transport and I can tell you. its fucking terrible. I always wonder if the people who spout this bullshit have ever actually tried to live with nothing rail and bus of if they merely *aspire* to use public transport.
One regular commute I'd have to make weekly a couple of years ago by rail and bus meant about 9 hours travelling one way and about 6 the other. 30 minutes walking to the train station, probably in the rain. 30 minutes waiting for the train, very cold, 90 minutes if the first train was full or had been diverted/broken down as it too often was. 60 minutes travelling on the train,(in the wrong direction for where I wanted to go but I had to go that way since there are no direct trains) 80 if the train is delayed without explanation at one of the stations, I always assumed it was the station where the drivers changed and the next guy was often late. 20 minutes walking, probably raining. 10 minutes or 110 minutes depending on if the 2 previous delays happened. If not I could now board an intercity bus.If they did I would arrive 10 minutes too late and have to wait for the next one 2 hours later.Shelter in doorway out of the wind, try to stay dry. 4 hour bus trip.(assuming the bus isn't full when it arrives in which case I turn around and go home if it's the last bus) 20 minutes waiting for local bus. 20 minute bus ride. 10 minute walk.
Min time 7 1/2 hours. Max time a little over 9 hours.
A few time I was able to hitch a ride with a friend who occasionally made the same commute. this is how his trip went.
walk out to car and get in- 1 minute. drive to destination- 150 minutes approx. get out of car and walk in the door- 1 minute.
Min time: 2 and a half hours. Max time: about 3 and a half hours.
anyone who can't understand why a sane human being would pick the car is utterly retarded. Mass transport sounds nice in theory but in practice you have to spend half your time going the wrong way or doubling back on yourself to get where you want to go.
thing is people genuinely are more wealthy now. When my parents were my age the first place they lived in was tiny and had no furniture while they both worked full time and they were still dirt poor.
Now both I and my girlfriend work part time, we have a fairly reasonably place, fully furnished, lots of stuff, a reasonable amount of disposable income and can save money.
In real terms we're far better off than our parents were, work shorter hours and have a higher standard of living. now of course if we both got full time jobs we'd be putting in more hours a week now than they did back in the day but we'd be making far far more as well.
wow. I didn't know that pretty much every right you have in any other situation where you're accused of a crime doesn't apply for DUI. That really was interesting
there's a lot of changes I'd like to see in schools (first of all some good math books rather than whatever colourful POS got shat out by the company with the best salesman) but computational power is not a problem.
The best educational program I ever encountered was unbelievably simple and ran easily on a desktop that was already ancient 20 years ago. No silly background pictures, no fancy cut-scenes. no bullshit. Just a blue screen with a simple sum like "2+5=" 2 coloured balloons under the 2, 5 under the 5. get it right and a tinny voice played one of 4 or 5 comments like "well done""Great" Wrong and you got a beep and the numbers flashed red for a moment. A little counter in the bottom right which incremented when you got a sum right. There were a few other counting games in it but that's the bit that stuck in my mind.
Incredibly simple, i'm tempted to recreate it some weekend. but when I was 3 it would keep me there for hours and gave me a head start in math that helped keep me ahead for the rest of my life.
Almost all educational kids programs now seem to get so stuck on the pretty bright colours and silly bouncing characters that they seem to forget to actually teach anything.
Computers in the classroom don't magically educate. Far too many teachers have no idea what to do with them if they have them. In highschool on the other hand I'd love to see basic programming being taught in more school since that would be a useful skill but that's a bit of a pipe dream.
actually I read a while back that there were effectively holes in the laws of many states since they refer to the driver of the car. In some states if there is nobody in the car at all then the car could speed without breaking the traffic laws.
Now in this case
"Safety has been our first priority in this project. Our cars are never unmanned. We always have a trained safety driver behind the wheel who can take over as easily as one disengages cruise control."
they did in fact have a licensed driver behind the wheel at all times so no these experiments were not illegal
As it stands yes you would be convicted of drunk driving even if the vehicle were autonomous because you still have "care and control". In the future if such systems prove capable of driving safely without any human intervention(ie with the occupant asleep on the back seat) such laws should change to merely treat it the same as a sober driver carrying a drunk passenger provided they're not behind the wheel.
what universe are you from? the dead rise to vote, ballot boxes appear in the counting room stuffed with "legitimate" ballots, people vote early and often and ballots are simply miscounted or lost. Most of the problems people raise with electronic voting are equally a problem in normal paper voting(but they pretend it it isn't) and the other claimed problems are down to stupid things like connecting all the voting machines to the net and shitty security (in all it's forms). Crappy physical security is a problem for paper ballots as well.
You have a ridiculously romantic view of paper ballots. They are none of those things. They are not hard to duplicate/forge, they are not proven or trackable while at the same time are theoretically open to many forms of abuse, hell if you could get hold of the ballots after and election you could even lift fingerprints of the ballots to identify who voted for who.(just to apply the same kind of silly worst case scenario people apply for electronic voting) Proper crypto should be better at providing both uniqueness and anonymity .
Slashdot Mirror
Fields vary.
an anethesist with enough chemistry to make/extract any kind of painkiller would change the world.
Remember "doctors" were generally judged on how fast they could chop off a limb, if the patient didn't die of shock from the pain that was a big plus.
A modern cryptographer with a good grounding in old fashioned codebreaking would rapidly find a place in an emperors court.
in most fields there's going to be a number of things you could carry back which don't take infrastructure, just understanding but yes, in most cases it's all about standing on the shoulders of giants.
Yes, the vast majority of my skills would be worthless, they require too much infrastructure.
But some things would be both simple and game changing.
A certain amount of modern common sense ( cooking food properly, not making your water pipes out of lead etc) would make a big difference back then.
Even a modern layperson could probably out-doctor the doctors of the day.
Some basic elements of accounting and organisation would probably be a big step up as well.
personally I know enough crypto that I could change the outcome of history in a few cases back then.
Codebreaking was a black art back then and stupidly simple and trivially breakable cyphers were in common use amongst the courts of kings and emperors.
AI has been moving along over the years, it's just that there's never been any huge sudden leap so it's always been tiny incremental steps.
People want an AI which asks the meaning of life monents after being turned on.
What they get is AI which is slightly better at gathering data from images or slightly better at catagorizing data from text or navigating around an environment than the last version.
Also people don't hear about most of the products of AI research.
It just quietly works in the background handling logistics or clasifying information or gets turned into dry uninteresting tools.
Or it's learned too much from the majority of internet posters.
singulariiiittttttyyyyyyyyy!
I googled it too... my god.
I thought the patent system had some worth... had something redeeming quality.... until I read that.
Primary Examiner:Manahan, Todd E. should be fired, then tarred and feathered.
"A method for inducing cats to exercise consists of directing a beam of invisible light produced by a hand-held laser apparatus onto the floor or wall or other opaque surface in the vicinity of the cat, then moving the laser so as to cause the bright pattern of light to move in an irregular way fascinating to cats, and to any other animal with a chase instinct. "
And no. people love to claim that the abstract isn't a big deal, that the claims section has the real material but no. just no.
Claims:What is claimed is:
1. A method of inducing aerobic exercise in an unrestrained cat comprising the steps of:
(a) directing an intense coherent beam of invisible light produced by a hand-held laser apparatus to produce a bright highly-focused pattern of light at the intersection of the beam and an opaque surface, said pattern being of visual interest to a cat; and
(b) selectively redirecting said beam out of the cat's immediate reach to induce said cat to run and chase said beam and pattern of light around an exercise area.
2. The method of claim 1 wherein said bright pattern of light is small in area relative to a paw of the cat.
3. The method of claim 1 wherein said beam remains invisible between said laser and said opaque surface until impinging on said opaque surface.
4. The method of claim 1 wherein step (b) includes sweeping said beam at an angular speed to cause said pattern to move along said opaque surface at a speed in the range of five to twenty-five feet per second.
Description:BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to recreational and amusement devices for domestic animals and, more particularly, to a method for exercising and entertaining cats.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
Cats are not characteristically disposed toward voluntary aerobic exercise. It becomes the burden of the cat owner to create situations of sufficient interest to the feline to induce even short-lived and modest exertion for the health and well-being of the pet. Cats are, however, fascinated by light and enthralled by unpredictable jumpy movements, as for instance, by the bobbing end of a piece of hand-held string or yarn, or a ball rolling and bouncing across a floor. Intense sunlight reflected from a mirror or focused through a prism, if the room is sufficiently dark, will, when moved irregularly, cause even the more sedentary of cats to scamper after the lighted image in an amusing and therapeutic game of "cat and mouse." The disruption of having to darken a room to stage a cat workout and the uncertainty of collecting a convenient sunbeam in a lens or mirror render these approaches to establishing a regular life-enhancing cat exercise routine inconvenient at best.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an improved method of exercising a cat in normal day and night lighting environments.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a method of providing amusing, entertaining and healthy exercise for a cat.
It is yet another object of the present invention to teach a method of exercising a cat effortlessly at any time.
In accordance with the present invention, a light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation (laser) device in a small hand-held configuration is used to project and move a bright pattern of light around a room to amuse and exercise a cat.
The method is effective, simple, convenient and inexpensive to practice and provides healthy exercise for the cat and amusement and entertainment for both the cat and the owner.
These and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following description and accompanying drawings of one specific embo
Well of course it has to make or save money somehow or there's no point.
But we're looking at costs, not net profit/loss.
And of course it varies by app.
A small, simple and easy to maintain app it'd be fairly low, some software causes so little trouble that people forget it's there.
some applications eat the majority of the time of a few highly skilled engineers to keep it from crashing and burning.
I've fairly sure TFA is more about the average.
Dementia,Senility, Alzheimer's.
Sure some people make it to old age with minds as sharp as a tack but as I said.
If people can justify not giving mature capable teenagers the vote because too many teenagers are idiots then I can justify not giving the occasional pensioner who's brain still works the vote on the basis of the huge number of their peers who are utterly gone in the head.
I don't care what their opinions are but if their brains are turning to mush they're not capable of making good decisions.
It sucks for the over 75's who are still competent and would get treated as invalids but then it also sucks for the under 18's who are already competent and are treated as incompetents.
fairs fair.
Why don't I stab my neighbour in the face and steal all his stuff?
Stability, trade are good for everyone in the long run.
If only because happy trading partners rarely end up blowing each other up.
it would hurt china more but it would still hurt the US and there's loads of other countries which would be happy to grab all the money, power and influence they can in the turmoil.
And I can assume they can do the same.
Do american companies own much in china and do many US groups have money in chinese banks?
Or course declaring that you're not going to pay your debts would mean getting loans from anyone else in future would become a lot more expensive with or without laws and wars .
Only a few little problems.
If they do that the US would never again be able to borrow money in dollars.
Or at least it could only ever borrow money from idiots.
In other currencies at a higher interest rate sure but not in dollars.
bullshit
You're a fucking idiot.
But feel free to set up the worlds biggest and most absurd strawman.
Ya, I'm not supporting setting up a fucking decent electronic system and requiring audited hardware and proven code.
No, I'm calling for MS access databases storing voting records and whatever POS diabold can pull out of it's arse!
Great, now we've established that rather than advocating a sane system I'm actually advocating whatever your diseased little brain can imagine as the worst possible system feel free to make up an infinity of additional strawmen.
If you want you could claim I want to give the voting machines barbed penises with which to rape orphans to death.
That'd make your inane rants sound even better wouldn't it.
You sound as intelligent and reasonable as the homeless man who preaches from the corner downtown so I won't be expecting this to get through to you.
wow, you have a chip on your shoulder that's more of a boulder don't you.
"That is not a ballot problem, that is a voter roll problem. It can happen just as easy with electronic voting."
it's a problem with the system as a whole.
"Yes, in 1920s Chicago. Not in the actual modern world, where ballot boxes are kept fairly careful track of."
really? You think that kind of fraud never happens any more?
"That is not a ballot problem, that is a voter roll problem. It can happen just as easy with electronic voting."
Absolutely yet when listing problems with electronic voting people will full out electronic variants of all these things as if they have no paper equivalent.
"Uh, no. Ballots are not miscounted."
wow. i mean wow. You really are deluded.
I guess all re-counts turn up the exact same numbers as the first count then.
"Except they aren't."
except they are.
"Hey, imbecile, try arguing in the actual real world."
on a related note there's no point trying these lightbulb things, they're obviously worse than good old lanterns and those noisy smelly automobiles are no match for a good horse.
"Whereas with electronic voting, they could just stick the card in a machine and put on as many votes as they want if they were corrupt, you moron."
not if the system is properly designed you moron.
How did stripping the right to vote from felons get through?
You've provided no stats that show people are worse off despite working longer hours.
How many 2 full time income young couples nowdays spend a significant amount of time living in an unfurnished house when they first get a place together and gradually over the course of years or months scrape together the money for the basics like a fridge, beds, chairs, tables etc, no car and little disposable income.
That was not a remotely uncommon scenario amongst my parents peers either.
you have your searing conviction that the modern economy hasn't made us better off. I have reality.
people work longer, they work hard but they get more.
There's no shortage of people who spend stupidly even now, work insane hours, earn a lot and then piss the money away by buying more than the can afford and playing for everything 3 times over through credit card bills or pay far over the odds for what they purchase leaving them worse off than someone who earned less and spent wisely but that's a separate problem.
in the case of crimes that are not purely against self harm. yes. if they're doing nothing except costing money they're a waste of money that could be spent on actually improving some other situation.
Sorry to burst your deluded little bubble but you're simply wrong.
People work more now because they can.
They want the money more than the time.
I outlined my situation which you didn't seem to read.
My parents both worked full time jobs when they were our age and yet barely scraped by from week to week and had little or no disposable income.
Now both I and my girlfriend only work part time and we have a kitchen filled with fancy appliances, a few computers and I cook because I like cooking.
face it. your little dream of how we're all worse off nowdays is nothing more than a delusion.
We're vastly better off than in my parents day, we're vastly wealthier and we can live a comfortable lifestyle working far less hours than they ever did.
The economy is not a zero sum game.
People who are sure they absolutely need that massive HD TV that will fill one wall of their living room, a house with 10 rooms per person actually living in it and a boat to be happy work far longer and harder than people in their parents day.
People who have modest desires can get by far more easily.
On average people do work more hours now, they also orders of magnitude more wealthy.
You have an amazingly romantic view of bus and rail transport.
And all it's problems are because of THE CONSPIRACY to make it artificially awful.
The sad fact that you will never ever accept is that it is irredeemably and unsolvable awful.
I have to live with it.
I don't have the option of just taking the car when the only public transport options are awful. I'm stuck with it *All of the time*.
I find myself wondering if you are actually forced to use public transport for anything but casual travel.
because if you did you'd rapidly lose all romantic ideas about how it's so fantastic.
It's hot, it's cold, it's exhausting, it's stuffy, it's cramped, it's inconvenient and even something as trivial as one fucking football game in the city where you have to go will utterly fuck up and chance of a smooth trip and might leave you stranded half way to your destination when all buses stop for the night.
Also the public transport cost far more in tickets than taking the car did in fuel.
Forgot that last little titbit.
By chance do you
a) happen to live right next to a rail station which takes you right to where you normally what to go
or
b) not actually use public transport.
I don't drive, I'm fucking stuck with public transport and I can tell you.
its fucking terrible.
I always wonder if the people who spout this bullshit have ever actually tried to live with nothing rail and bus of if they merely *aspire* to use public transport.
One regular commute I'd have to make weekly a couple of years ago by rail and bus meant about 9 hours travelling one way and about 6 the other.
30 minutes walking to the train station, probably in the rain.
30 minutes waiting for the train, very cold, 90 minutes if the first train was full or had been diverted/broken down as it too often was.
60 minutes travelling on the train,(in the wrong direction for where I wanted to go but I had to go that way since there are no direct trains) 80 if the train is delayed without explanation at one of the stations, I always assumed it was the station where the drivers changed and the next guy was often late.
20 minutes walking, probably raining.
10 minutes or 110 minutes depending on if the 2 previous delays happened. If not I could now board an intercity bus.If they did I would arrive 10 minutes too late and have to wait for the next one 2 hours later.Shelter in doorway out of the wind, try to stay dry.
4 hour bus trip.(assuming the bus isn't full when it arrives in which case I turn around and go home if it's the last bus)
20 minutes waiting for local bus.
20 minute bus ride.
10 minute walk.
Min time 7 1/2 hours.
Max time a little over 9 hours.
A few time I was able to hitch a ride with a friend who occasionally made the same commute.
this is how his trip went.
walk out to car and get in- 1 minute.
drive to destination- 150 minutes approx.
get out of car and walk in the door- 1 minute.
Min time: 2 and a half hours.
Max time: about 3 and a half hours.
anyone who can't understand why a sane human being would pick the car is utterly retarded.
Mass transport sounds nice in theory but in practice you have to spend half your time going the wrong way or doubling back on yourself to get where you want to go.
thing is people genuinely are more wealthy now.
When my parents were my age the first place they lived in was tiny and had no furniture while they both worked full time and they were still dirt poor.
Now both I and my girlfriend work part time, we have a fairly reasonably place, fully furnished, lots of stuff, a reasonable amount of disposable income and can save money.
In real terms we're far better off than our parents were, work shorter hours and have a higher standard of living.
now of course if we both got full time jobs we'd be putting in more hours a week now than they did back in the day but we'd be making far far more as well.
wow.
I didn't know that pretty much every right you have in any other situation where you're accused of a crime doesn't apply for DUI.
That really was interesting
there's a lot of changes I'd like to see in schools (first of all some good math books rather than whatever colourful POS got shat out by the company with the best salesman) but computational power is not a problem.
The best educational program I ever encountered was unbelievably simple and ran easily on a desktop that was already ancient 20 years ago.
No silly background pictures, no fancy cut-scenes. no bullshit.
Just a blue screen with a simple sum like "2+5="
2 coloured balloons under the 2, 5 under the 5.
get it right and a tinny voice played one of 4 or 5 comments like "well done""Great"
Wrong and you got a beep and the numbers flashed red for a moment.
A little counter in the bottom right which incremented when you got a sum right.
There were a few other counting games in it but that's the bit that stuck in my mind.
Incredibly simple, i'm tempted to recreate it some weekend.
but when I was 3 it would keep me there for hours and gave me a head start in math that helped keep me ahead for the rest of my life.
Almost all educational kids programs now seem to get so stuck on the pretty bright colours and silly bouncing characters that they seem to forget to actually teach anything.
Computers in the classroom don't magically educate.
Far too many teachers have no idea what to do with them if they have them.
In highschool on the other hand I'd love to see basic programming being taught in more school since that would be a useful skill but that's a bit of a pipe dream.
actually I read a while back that there were effectively holes in the laws of many states since they refer to the driver of the car.
In some states if there is nobody in the car at all then the car could speed without breaking the traffic laws.
Now in this case
"Safety has been our first priority in this project. Our cars are never unmanned. We always have a trained safety driver behind the wheel who can take over as easily as one disengages cruise control."
they did in fact have a licensed driver behind the wheel at all times so no these experiments were not illegal
As it stands yes you would be convicted of drunk driving even if the vehicle were autonomous because you still have "care and control".
In the future if such systems prove capable of driving safely without any human intervention(ie with the occupant asleep on the back seat) such laws should change to merely treat it the same as a sober driver carrying a drunk passenger provided they're not behind the wheel.
With paper it's easy.
what universe are you from?
the dead rise to vote, ballot boxes appear in the counting room stuffed with "legitimate" ballots, people vote early and often and ballots are simply miscounted or lost.
Most of the problems people raise with electronic voting are equally a problem in normal paper voting(but they pretend it it isn't) and the other claimed problems are down to stupid things like connecting all the voting machines to the net and shitty security (in all it's forms). Crappy physical security is a problem for paper ballots as well.
You have a ridiculously romantic view of paper ballots.
They are none of those things.
They are not hard to duplicate/forge, they are not proven or trackable while at the same time are theoretically open to many forms of abuse, hell if you could get hold of the ballots after and election you could even lift fingerprints of the ballots to identify who voted for who.(just to apply the same kind of silly worst case scenario people apply for electronic voting)
Proper crypto should be better at providing both uniqueness and anonymity .
But it's different so it's scary.