That information already is public. Campaigns hire campaign staffing companies and they conduct opposition research. Why would I be concerned about FOIA data coming out about XYZ doing their job?
Because today if they want to insulate their side, they do it either anonymously or with an alias.
1: Rim Damage (obvious) 2: Engine wont rev AT ALL when the brake is applied 3: You will come to a complete stop way before that happens, see #2 4: Traction control kicks in immediately even if you manage to get the transmission to go into gear above idle RPM 5: Traction control wont turn off 6: Brakes override throttle, see #2 again
You really have no idea how much joy they have managed to suck out of modern cars. But "rental rage" should be a lot better than it was in days gone by.
OK I work for XYZ campaign corporation. We provide state level officials with campaign managers, fundraisers.. We have ties to print, radio... and make some extra on referrals.
1) I apply and get it 2) I comply with the FOIA and openly state what I'm requesting and why.
3) You run the risk that someone on the "other side" or even just a journalist looking to make the front page will dig up FOIA data on YOU specifically, and the elected officials that are associated with you will be implicated in wasteful one-sided political gamesmanship. Sure, it can still happen on both sides, but at least this way the public knows what is going on at that level. Right now they are in the dark thinking that Cuomo (in this case) is trying to hide something from the public when all he is doing is making his and his staffers jobs markedly less logjammed due solely to the presence of a layer of politics that is currently not visible to the layperson.
That means a registered press where certain people have much greater FOIA rights than others. Essentially a group of journalists and/or organizations are registered for insider access and they get accurate information. You are tossing #2. That's essentially what we had in the first term of the Bush administration where access required obedience.
1: Give press creds to anyone who successfully applies for them. 2: Give FOIA responses to any journalist under the stipulation that the request itself is recorded and FOIA-able. 3: Sit back as the press starts watchdogging itself.
Its not a perfect solution but better than what we have now.
The "pick any two" canard is for when there are actual constraints making all three impossible. There's no reason beyond corruption that we can't have all three of those.
There is a way to get beyond corruption? What planet do you live on?
They will take a public statement play it out of context, and they will think that guy is pure evil, or grossly out of touch. To run a government you need to work with your competition, and with groups who you are not a big fan of.
We get the government we deserve... Your notion that elected officials should be competing or playing favorites is exactly what is wrong. Since when did it make sense that in order for government to work there needs to be a constant struggle to prove, using almost exclusively disingenuous means, that the other side should "lose"? How about an elected official working for every person in their district, not just the ones that vote (or buy votes) for them?
The two parties exist because everyone is so eager to see winners and losers. Guess what, politicians are the winners and WE are the losers. Nine out of ten politicians elected to the US House of Representatives did so by being the candidate that raised the most amount of money. What that means in simple terms to contributors, is that if you give a candidate enough money, they have a 90% chance of winning. What that means in simple terms to a candidate, is that if you sell yourself to donors better than the other guy, you have a 90% chance of winning. What that means to voters, is that if you like a candidate there is a 90% chance he is already bought and paid for by someone else and is headed to Washington to do THEIR bidding, and not yours. And if you pick the guy who isn't? Well, they have a 10% chance of winning. Sorry about your luck.
We have a classic problem with the freedom of information requests:
1) We want accurate historical records maintained of how decision were made, by whom and why. 2) We want a have an open press and legal system to have access to those records so our legal processes and our political processes are based on accurate information. 3) We want to have an open campaign system where all available information is discussed as part of the process of choosing leaders.
Pick any 2.
The true problem is that instead of FOIA being used by journalists or investigators for specific issues, they are used by political firms who are trying to dig up dirt on the "other side" (and most of those FOIA requests are overly broad to boot). Throw away #3 and the FOIA process isn't a zoo anymore. Let reputable journalists investigate, not anonymous trolls who get paid to encourage the other side to waste time.
There are studies that show when male:female populations skew where there are significantly more males than females, the level of crime committed by males begins to increase.
You are correct. Clearly, we need to make females that aren't attracted to criminals; that would solve the problem right?
You don't have an automatic, unlike 94% of cars sold? That's easy, this program is not for you.
Agreed, the grandparent used a bad example, but there are lots of ways that careless/malicious renters could abuse a car with an automatic. They can still drag race, do donuts in a parking lot, and so on.
Try "Drag racing" or "doing donuts" with a new car that has all of the "safety features" enabled and see how that goes. The car wont let you break the tires loose at all, plus it will force a shift well below redline, and (in my imagined future) it won't let you speed either (in the present, the car can still tell on you for speeding). So, those two pastimes basically never leave the operational envelope of the car (and are totally boring). The most you could do is attempt high-speed maneuvers like drifting in turns, but that really only compromises the tires and unless you are really good at tricking the stability control system, it won't even do that very much.
So when my car is rented by someone who slips the clutch like a driver's ed student and puts five years worth of wear on the clutch plates in two days, I'm supposed to be happy about this because hey, Onstar?
No thanks.
You don't have an automatic, unlike 94% of cars sold? That's easy, this program is not for you. I bet they wont even enroll a standard transmission car, it's not worth the hassle of requiring another check box on the web form.
Great news for people who want the shit beat out of their cars by random strangers.
Modern cars are so depressingly hard to abuse that this is almost a non-issue. The old gags, like neutral dropping the transmission to do a burnout in an automatic, are a thing of the past thanks to hyper-aware engine computers that know when not to let the operator do things that might hurt the engine. We are almost at a point where a service like OnStar could even put the car into "no speeding mode" and prevent the operator from violating the speed limit at any given moment. About the only thing that can really "hurt" the car is what will leave a scar, i.e. hopping a curb and bending a rim, or just outright crashing the thing. These incidents would be easy to spot, report, and claim insurance for.
were I rich, I would be all over autonomous vehicle for a few reasons: 1) you can probably drive it yourself if you want to speed 2) I could hit the pub and get wrecked and have the car drive me home without worrying about getting arrested for DUI
Self driving cars will be the vehicle of choice for non-rich people. The cars will be programmed to do ride sharing to reduce costs. People who primarily use autonomous vehicles won't need to own a car. Basically they will be like mini-busses that don't follow set routes or schedules. They will be used by people who are taking the bus today.
Rich people will own their own cars and pay the increased insurance rates to keep the option to drive manually.
Finally, some thinking outside the box. A city that implements an autonomous bus system would be HUGELY desirable to live in for any urbanites who wish to live car-free. Having a solution that doesn't rely on awkward routes and even more awkward time schedules (not to mention, is dramatically scalable) would be a game changer.
Damn those rich people screwing us over again. Do you actually sit around all days trying to come up with new ways to be outraged at rich people or what?
Slashdot seems to have become the last, best hope for Communism on the Internet in the last couple of years. Probably as the technical content has declined, the libertarians have moved elsewhere.
Why the outrage at this? I mean, if we are going to compete with the Chinese (a constant theme both on/. and in the rest of society) then the first step is obviously to become better communists than them.
I am not an expert but some quick calculations reveal that if they can launch 225kg payload for $10M that puts it at pretty close to the same cost other vehicles have been providing for years, like an Athena 2 or Taurus launch vehicle (which can also support much heavier payloads). Is this unique in that it is specifically for smaller payloads? Or, is the ability to do launches "wherever, whenever"? This has interesting implications but doesnt seem like it would shake up the market too much given that most satellites are planned out pretty far in advance of going to orbit.
That's got to be a serious contender for the record of fastest funded project on Kickstarter in the category of nearly a million dollars... But anyway, I hope this means we'll get to see what they come up with - a 99 dollar console is just about in the range of 'sure, I'll bite - see what it's like' in terms of risk to the consumer.
The first thing I thought of is "god I hope they don't take the extra money (they asked for only 950,000 and to date have $3.1M) and do something really stupid" like totally over-engineer the shit out of their hardware/software to the point where they completely miss the deadline and everything falls apart. It's happened before and it will happen again. Will it happen to them? Who knows. But why does Kickstarter even let the goal be blown away by such a large margin? It would make a lot more sense (and prevent a lot of complaints) if all the money past the original kick was put into escrow until the units were delivered. I mean as of now, they could technically skip to Mexico with the cash and say hasta la vista to all the donors...
Once you are inside well.... its just a matter of popping out the ignition lock cylinder with a screw driver on many cars (I know a few that wont work at all on...like my old buick that basically had a resistor built into the key that it would read)
So the vast majority of cars are... a bit easier to steal than these BMWs.
Not to be pedantic but there is a very simple, very effective measure: RFID chipped key + Keyless Entry. The keyless radio uses an encrypted rolling code that has proven exceptionally difficult to crack (it's been in use for decades and there are no major weaknesses even close to as serious as this ODBC one). Lock the car with the keyless and the computer completely refuses to do anything until its been unlocked again. RFID prox in the key means that even if you forget to lock it, or someone pulls the battery cord to reset the state, the computer still wont do anything until it senses the right key placed next to the ignition column. Again, proven very strong from a brute force or exploit standpoint.
And the price for this sophistication? Most respectable auto makers (like Honda) have been putting them on EVERY car they sell with power locks, for over a decade. Car theft statistics bear this out, the most commonly stolen cars are ones without this system in place, and models that have this feature standard are almost never "conventionally" stolen (as in, glass busted, ignition hotwired, and driven away.)
I'm not sure it's all so doom and gloom like TFA suggests. Telefonica needs a niche, or a gimmick, and this might be the right choice. At the very least, it might be enough to make a respectable ROI before the curtain closes. And, yes, it's fledgling, and being the first on the bandwagon would work out really well if the bandwagon (metaphorically) becomes a limousine.
It's doom and gloom since product complexity in the mobile space creeps in SO fast you won't even know what hit you. A phone running nothing more than a lightweight browser which supports HTML5 seems great, it would be fast at browsing and it would basically "do" anything the web site was coded to do... until you ask "where are the contacts stored?" or "why won't my bluetooth headset stay paired?" and then it all goes to shit because all of the developers time is spent dealing with corner cases that each affect 500,000 users (after all, money isnt made in the mobile space until you have a few hundred million phones out there).
So basically you need to put your cards on the table: Do you go the route of Apple and publish a very polished OS that lacks some very basic features for the first few years until you get your legs under you? Or, do you do things the Google way, and kitchen sink the hell out of your OS with so much whizbang crap that it all crumbles apart between versions?
Excellent points, no one seems to want to consider all the details they just want to cast blame or make stereotypes.
The average U.S. customer loses power for 214 minutes per year. That compares to 70 in the United Kingdom, 53 in France, 29 in the Netherlands, 6 in Japan, and 2 minutes per year in Singapore. (source, Natl Academy of Science)
Electricity costs in the UK are about 2x what they are in the US, and in the Netherlands they are almost 3x. What is that extra 3 hours of electricity worth, compared to what you paid for the other 8757 hours the rest of the year?
Slashdot Mirror
That information already is public. Campaigns hire campaign staffing companies and they conduct opposition research. Why would I be concerned about FOIA data coming out about XYZ doing their job?
Because today if they want to insulate their side, they do it either anonymously or with an alias.
1: Rim Damage (obvious)
2: Engine wont rev AT ALL when the brake is applied
3: You will come to a complete stop way before that happens, see #2
4: Traction control kicks in immediately even if you manage to get the transmission to go into gear above idle RPM
5: Traction control wont turn off
6: Brakes override throttle, see #2 again
You really have no idea how much joy they have managed to suck out of modern cars. But "rental rage" should be a lot better than it was in days gone by.
OK I work for XYZ campaign corporation. We provide state level officials with campaign managers, fundraisers.. We have ties to print, radio... and make some extra on referrals.
1) I apply and get it
2) I comply with the FOIA and openly state what I'm requesting and why.
3) You run the risk that someone on the "other side" or even just a journalist looking to make the front page will dig up FOIA data on YOU specifically, and the elected officials that are associated with you will be implicated in wasteful one-sided political gamesmanship. Sure, it can still happen on both sides, but at least this way the public knows what is going on at that level. Right now they are in the dark thinking that Cuomo (in this case) is trying to hide something from the public when all he is doing is making his and his staffers jobs markedly less logjammed due solely to the presence of a layer of politics that is currently not visible to the layperson.
Being electronic, the operation is easily overridden in software (for example, by the owners request whenever the car is in "rental" mode.)
That means a registered press where certain people have much greater FOIA rights than others. Essentially a group of journalists and/or organizations are registered for insider access and they get accurate information. You are tossing #2. That's essentially what we had in the first term of the Bush administration where access required obedience.
1: Give press creds to anyone who successfully applies for them. 2: Give FOIA responses to any journalist under the stipulation that the request itself is recorded and FOIA-able. 3: Sit back as the press starts watchdogging itself.
Its not a perfect solution but better than what we have now.
The "pick any two" canard is for when there are actual constraints making all three impossible. There's no reason beyond corruption that we can't have all three of those.
There is a way to get beyond corruption? What planet do you live on?
The problem is the the Public is really stupid.
They will take a public statement play it out of context, and they will think that guy is pure evil, or grossly out of touch. To run a government you need to work with your competition, and with groups who you are not a big fan of.
We get the government we deserve... Your notion that elected officials should be competing or playing favorites is exactly what is wrong. Since when did it make sense that in order for government to work there needs to be a constant struggle to prove, using almost exclusively disingenuous means, that the other side should "lose"? How about an elected official working for every person in their district, not just the ones that vote (or buy votes) for them?
The two parties exist because everyone is so eager to see winners and losers. Guess what, politicians are the winners and WE are the losers. Nine out of ten politicians elected to the US House of Representatives did so by being the candidate that raised the most amount of money. What that means in simple terms to contributors, is that if you give a candidate enough money, they have a 90% chance of winning. What that means in simple terms to a candidate, is that if you sell yourself to donors better than the other guy, you have a 90% chance of winning. What that means to voters, is that if you like a candidate there is a 90% chance he is already bought and paid for by someone else and is headed to Washington to do THEIR bidding, and not yours. And if you pick the guy who isn't? Well, they have a 10% chance of winning. Sorry about your luck.
We have a classic problem with the freedom of information requests:
1) We want accurate historical records maintained of how decision were made, by whom and why.
2) We want a have an open press and legal system to have access to those records so our legal processes and our political processes are based on accurate information.
3) We want to have an open campaign system where all available information is discussed as part of the process of choosing leaders.
Pick any 2.
The true problem is that instead of FOIA being used by journalists or investigators for specific issues, they are used by political firms who are trying to dig up dirt on the "other side" (and most of those FOIA requests are overly broad to boot). Throw away #3 and the FOIA process isn't a zoo anymore. Let reputable journalists investigate, not anonymous trolls who get paid to encourage the other side to waste time.
This is one of those 'a duh' articles.
There are studies that show when male:female populations skew where there are significantly more males than females, the level of crime committed by males begins to increase.
You are correct. Clearly, we need to make females that aren't attracted to criminals; that would solve the problem right?
Does this count as a "modest" proposal?
You don't have an automatic, unlike 94% of cars sold? That's easy, this program is not for you.
Agreed, the grandparent used a bad example, but there are lots of ways that careless/malicious renters could abuse a car with an automatic. They can still drag race, do donuts in a parking lot, and so on.
Try "Drag racing" or "doing donuts" with a new car that has all of the "safety features" enabled and see how that goes. The car wont let you break the tires loose at all, plus it will force a shift well below redline, and (in my imagined future) it won't let you speed either (in the present, the car can still tell on you for speeding). So, those two pastimes basically never leave the operational envelope of the car (and are totally boring). The most you could do is attempt high-speed maneuvers like drifting in turns, but that really only compromises the tires and unless you are really good at tricking the stability control system, it won't even do that very much.
So when my car is rented by someone who slips the clutch like a driver's ed student and puts five years worth of wear on the clutch plates in two days, I'm supposed to be happy about this because hey, Onstar?
No thanks.
You don't have an automatic, unlike 94% of cars sold? That's easy, this program is not for you. I bet they wont even enroll a standard transmission car, it's not worth the hassle of requiring another check box on the web form.
Great news for people who want the shit beat out of their cars by random strangers.
Modern cars are so depressingly hard to abuse that this is almost a non-issue. The old gags, like neutral dropping the transmission to do a burnout in an automatic, are a thing of the past thanks to hyper-aware engine computers that know when not to let the operator do things that might hurt the engine. We are almost at a point where a service like OnStar could even put the car into "no speeding mode" and prevent the operator from violating the speed limit at any given moment. About the only thing that can really "hurt" the car is what will leave a scar, i.e. hopping a curb and bending a rim, or just outright crashing the thing. These incidents would be easy to spot, report, and claim insurance for.
were I rich, I would be all over autonomous vehicle for a few reasons:
1) you can probably drive it yourself if you want to speed
2) I could hit the pub and get wrecked and have the car drive me home without worrying about getting arrested for DUI
Just don't try the voice activated car options...
"car, take me to the pub so i can get wrecked"
"Okay, we are going to wreck into the pub."
Self driving cars will be the vehicle of choice for non-rich people. The cars will be programmed to do ride sharing to reduce costs. People who primarily use autonomous vehicles won't need to own a car. Basically they will be like mini-busses that don't follow set routes or schedules. They will be used by people who are taking the bus today.
Rich people will own their own cars and pay the increased insurance rates to keep the option to drive manually.
Finally, some thinking outside the box. A city that implements an autonomous bus system would be HUGELY desirable to live in for any urbanites who wish to live car-free. Having a solution that doesn't rely on awkward routes and even more awkward time schedules (not to mention, is dramatically scalable) would be a game changer.
Damn those rich people screwing us over again. Do you actually sit around all days trying to come up with new ways to be outraged at rich people or what?
Slashdot seems to have become the last, best hope for Communism on the Internet in the last couple of years. Probably as the technical content has declined, the libertarians have moved elsewhere.
Why the outrage at this? I mean, if we are going to compete with the Chinese (a constant theme both on /. and in the rest of society) then the first step is obviously to become better communists than them.
I am not an expert but some quick calculations reveal that if they can launch 225kg payload for $10M that puts it at pretty close to the same cost other vehicles have been providing for years, like an Athena 2 or Taurus launch vehicle (which can also support much heavier payloads). Is this unique in that it is specifically for smaller payloads? Or, is the ability to do launches "wherever, whenever"? This has interesting implications but doesnt seem like it would shake up the market too much given that most satellites are planned out pretty far in advance of going to orbit.
That's got to be a serious contender for the record of fastest funded project on Kickstarter in the category of nearly a million dollars... But anyway, I hope this means we'll get to see what they come up with - a 99 dollar console is just about in the range of 'sure, I'll bite - see what it's like' in terms of risk to the consumer.
The first thing I thought of is "god I hope they don't take the extra money (they asked for only 950,000 and to date have $3.1M) and do something really stupid" like totally over-engineer the shit out of their hardware/software to the point where they completely miss the deadline and everything falls apart. It's happened before and it will happen again. Will it happen to them? Who knows. But why does Kickstarter even let the goal be blown away by such a large margin? It would make a lot more sense (and prevent a lot of complaints) if all the money past the original kick was put into escrow until the units were delivered. I mean as of now, they could technically skip to Mexico with the cash and say hasta la vista to all the donors...
Once you are inside well.... its just a matter of popping out the ignition lock cylinder with a screw driver on many cars (I know a few that wont work at all on...like my old buick that basically had a resistor built into the key that it would read)
So the vast majority of cars are... a bit easier to steal than these BMWs.
Not to be pedantic but there is a very simple, very effective measure: RFID chipped key + Keyless Entry. The keyless radio uses an encrypted rolling code that has proven exceptionally difficult to crack (it's been in use for decades and there are no major weaknesses even close to as serious as this ODBC one). Lock the car with the keyless and the computer completely refuses to do anything until its been unlocked again. RFID prox in the key means that even if you forget to lock it, or someone pulls the battery cord to reset the state, the computer still wont do anything until it senses the right key placed next to the ignition column. Again, proven very strong from a brute force or exploit standpoint.
And the price for this sophistication? Most respectable auto makers (like Honda) have been putting them on EVERY car they sell with power locks, for over a decade. Car theft statistics bear this out, the most commonly stolen cars are ones without this system in place, and models that have this feature standard are almost never "conventionally" stolen (as in, glass busted, ignition hotwired, and driven away.)
I'm not sure it's all so doom and gloom like TFA suggests. Telefonica needs a niche, or a gimmick, and this might be the right choice. At the very least, it might be enough to make a respectable ROI before the curtain closes. And, yes, it's fledgling, and being the first on the bandwagon would work out really well if the bandwagon (metaphorically) becomes a limousine.
It's doom and gloom since product complexity in the mobile space creeps in SO fast you won't even know what hit you. A phone running nothing more than a lightweight browser which supports HTML5 seems great, it would be fast at browsing and it would basically "do" anything the web site was coded to do... until you ask "where are the contacts stored?" or "why won't my bluetooth headset stay paired?" and then it all goes to shit because all of the developers time is spent dealing with corner cases that each affect 500,000 users (after all, money isnt made in the mobile space until you have a few hundred million phones out there).
So basically you need to put your cards on the table: Do you go the route of Apple and publish a very polished OS that lacks some very basic features for the first few years until you get your legs under you? Or, do you do things the Google way, and kitchen sink the hell out of your OS with so much whizbang crap that it all crumbles apart between versions?
And don't get me even started on the psychological aspect of having the necessary coping skills to be a celebrity and always on spotlight.
Sounds good. 99% of celebrities haven't gotten started on coping skills either.
That is the same reason I won't use Android. Google is a marketing company, nothing more.
For the record, I won't use Apple products either.
Let me guess, you only trust phones from RIM, a company that can neither market nor innovate!
To manipulate it's properties would would be something like LHC.
For now, but let's be practical; how long could it possibly take to miniaturize a 27km ring that spits out one boson every few hours?
Excellent points, no one seems to want to consider all the details they just want to cast blame or make stereotypes.
The average U.S. customer loses power for 214 minutes per year. That compares to 70 in the United Kingdom, 53 in France, 29 in the Netherlands, 6 in Japan, and 2 minutes per year in Singapore. (source, Natl Academy of Science)
Electricity costs in the UK are about 2x what they are in the US, and in the Netherlands they are almost 3x. What is that extra 3 hours of electricity worth, compared to what you paid for the other 8757 hours the rest of the year?
Movies, not reason, dictates their city policy.
You should see the stockpile of shotguns and Patrick Swayze clones they have on hand just in case Red Dawn comes true...
The stick would be shaking and an artificial voice would be warning: "pull up, pull up".
That's giving them a lot of credit, the current outlook seems more like "we're out of gas and the ground is coming up pretty fast"...