The thing is, Oregon cannot require California-registered cars (or cars registered to any of the 49 other states) to have their tracking devices.
But they can -- and probably already do -- require Oregon residents to drive cars registered in Oregon. And they could make the GPS box required to pass inspection, prior to getting registration. This'll only affect Oregonians, unless it works, in which case some blockhead will immediately call for a nationwide system to collect tolls on, say, the Interstates.
*Sigh* I have this problem with my students, too. The "GPS signal" is actually many radio signals, all of them out in the open and conveying no position data on you. That's right -- the GPS satellites don't tell you where you are. The GPS satellites tell you where the GPS satellites are, via the timing data they broadcast. Note that, too: they broadcast.
A tracking system needs something more than a GPS receiver (and note that, too: "receiver"). There must be some sort of transmitter as well; that's not part of GPS. It's probably be some cell-based thing, but could be just a radio.
So all your paranoids can go dig your shiny new GPS receiver out of the trash. A receiver can't betray your location to The Man.
the statement should either qualified as purely editorial material or backed up with a whole lot more examples than the scant article contains.
Well, I counted 13 examples of abuse in the "scant" article... not counting the warnings about three other abuses being quietly pushed. I think there's enough there to justify a little hyperbole.
My goodnes. Did I just defend Phyllis Schlafly? Must be part of that Twilight Zone marathon on SciFi...:)
I agree Reboot was excellent and its a shame I never got to see more than two series over here either.
If you only saw the first two seasons, it's almost as if you didn't see ReBoot at all. The third season -- when the makers were liberated from the strait-jacket that was ABC's Bureau of Standards and Practices -- blossomed into a really sharp show. Luckily for you, you can get all 16 episodes of the third season on DVD.
I only saw the first half of the fourth season. (Cartoon Network, in its infinite wisdom, only ran the episodes once... so when I missed a pair, it was over.) It was OK but not, IMHO, on par with the third. Although, I really liked the nature of the Daemon virus -- woo hoo, go Unix geeks!:)
They scheduled it for 7pm and, like every football game every season, the game ran long and they pre-empted Futurama again.
What amazes me is, you've got these highly-paid TV execs, in league with highly-paid NFL media managers, and none of them is clueful enough to notice, "Gee, every game has run 27 minutes long for the past 10 years. Maybe we should program the game to last until 7:30...."
DIVX was the failed Circuit City rental DVD thing that sucked, hard.
DivX is the video codec, coined from cute creators who were poking fun at the disaster of the DIVX product. It was, at one point, named 'DivX;-)' in a futile effort to differentiate itself.
Yeah, and that switch from uppper to lower case is so much more erffective at that differentiation...
On the contrary, one of the most challenging parts of building a nuclear weapon is making sure that it doesn't do just that. If you gather enough fissionable material in one place it will "go off" on it's own.
Yes, but not usefully. Unless the pieces are assembled quickly, their proximinity in sub-critical density will release enough heat to vaporize and disperse the uranium before it truly chain-reacts. You get a big, messy, hot puddle of uranium but not a (gigantic) explosion... just a "fizzle" and a lot of radiation.
While obtaining the U235 was the hardest part of the Manhattan Project, it was also considered a major accomplishment to wrangle injection of the critical mass...
"organic" is an artists' word. They use it to indicate that something is life-like, real-worldly, fuzzily defined, synergized with nature, etc. They don't really intend to imply the scientific meaning.
Then they probably shouldn't invoke the air of science by using the scientific formula, H20, either...
provided that they truly vote randomly (if uninformed). Here's my rationale: If lots of people vote truly randomly, then it'll basically cancel out.
WRONG! They will vote toward political TV commercials with the best gimmick.
Then it won't be truly random, will it?
I'm having trouble seeing why slashdotters are having difficulty with the concept of "random". I don't tell them "Go into the voting booth and pull the lever you most feel like". It's got to be random -- the flip of a coin or the roll of a die. And yes, we spend some time on what that means and why it's important. (I teach physics and random processes are significant enough that I can justify to myself this digression.)
If the vote is truly random, then nothing can affect it -- not a flattering tie, not a catchy slogan, not a gimmicky TV commerical. All of those things influence the subjective judgment of the voter... but the voter's judgment isn't playing a role in this case. Thus, if this is done by large numbers of people, it will generally wash out.
Disclaimer: Since, in the end, elections are winner-take-all and can be decided on a knife's edge, this method could tip a close race one way or the other. On the other hand, if the race is that close, it's probably being decided by other random factors as well, such as the weather, error rates in the machine, etc.
The problem with your approach is that the randomness will be mostly effected by the amount of exposure they have had to a certain name or a catchy slogan. Advertising has a powerful influence.
No. If you read more carefully you'd see that my advice hinges on their vote being truly random... a point that I make to them many, many times. It can't be "I like the name Bob, so I'll vote for Bob Smith" or "What a flattering necktie he wore during the debate" or "I just don't feel right about Candidate X". It has to be random: In a two-candidate race, flip a coin.
What's the point? Well, a lot of people use the excuse "I don't really know anything about the candidates, so I can't vote." Of course we want informed voters... but somehow no one makes the leap to "Well, then, I'd better get myself informed." My argument is, raising voter participation rates -- again, assuming that if you can't be informed, you will at least be honestly random -- is itself a public good. What's more, if someone goes through the trouble of going to the polls, eventually he/she might decide to actually get informed.
It's absolutely crucial, for this system to work, that certain names or catchy slogans not be allowed to play a role. We don't want to reward bad campaigns, or to drive them toward focusing on marketing. But you know what? Almost everyone knows how to flip a coin. It's really that simple. It's a way to contribute to the civic good even if you happen not to be informed. And it might lead to greater genuine participation.
Not that signing Kyoto would reduce the amount of oil exported, or even potentially used in the aggregate. All it would do is require U.S. businesses to buy pollution credits from other countries in order to maintain the status quo.
It's funny how people believe in capitalism... right up until it's inconvenient. If a business buys a pollution credit, it reduces its profitability. A company doing the same work but not polluting will be able to offer a lower price while realizing the same profit. Consumers will choose the lower-priced work, thereby rewarding the desired behavior. PolluteCo will have to shell out for pollution credits -- and they'll pay to CleanCo (which therefore derives more profit). Again, the desired behavior is rewarded.
In the long term, one of two things happens:
PolluteCo gets wise, invests in cleaner technology, reduces its emissions, and so escapes the need to buy credits. End result: The industry as a whole is cleaner.
PolluteCo never wises up, remains dirty, fails to invest in clean tech, continues to pay for the credits. CleanCo continues to derive economic benefit from its clean technologies, so it maintains its lower prices and draws more of the market to it. PolluteCo ramps down production (due to falling orders) and/or eventually goes out of business. End result: The industry as a whole is cleaner.
Either way, pollution credits lead to the desired result. And amazingly they do so through clear, clean market efficiency. (For those who complain that the setting of credits is an intervention, I riposte that costs and prices are measures of desires, which lie outside the market paradigm. Why did everyone want a beanie baby? Not due to market forces.)
All it would do is require U.S. businesses to buy pollution credits from other countries in order to maintain the status quo. These costs will be passed on to you, the consumer, so that foreign countries can prop up their economies on your hard work.
The cost is already being passed onto me, and other American citizens: In the health damage associated with petro pollution. In the incoherence of foreign policy. In the instability in the Middle East and South America. In the sons and daughters sent to die to maintain our petroleum addicition -- and in the conscience and psyche of our sons and daughters sent to kill others to maintain our petroluem addiction.
Not all value is economic value. We are already paying for these failures... we might as well translate it to simple economic cost (and safeguard the environment while we're at it).
I would be concerned, however, about people going in and randomly filling out a ballot just to keep their govt. services.
I wouldn't. In fact, I teach 17- and 18-year-olds, and every year I tell them this: They should vote even if they're uninformed -- provided that they truly vote randomly (if uninformed). Here's my rationale: If lots of people vote truly randomly, then it'll basically cancel out. But voter turnout will have risen -- and the politicians won't know which votes were random. From their point of view, they'll have to conclude that voter interest really is rising, which means that voters count -- which will de-emphasize the current "play to my base" logic.
Let's be honest here: Many of the ills of American democracy follow from the pathetically low participation rate. Corruption, ideology triumphant, slash ads... they all result from the (justified) assumption by politicians that only a small fraction of people actually care.
Where exactly is the Pioneer headed to. Is it intended to eventually make a circular path and eventually head home, or will it just continue to wander out into space?
Pioneer 10 was meant to do a fly-by of Jupiter and Saturn. To quote the current project manager,
"Pioneer 10 was only intended to last 21 months, but it's been going for nearly 30 years."
So it's going wherever it happens to be headed, but we didn't send it that way on purpose.
These people are asking authors to pay $1500 per paper to cover the editorial costs. This is a Bad Idea.
Maybe, maybe not. In any event, in many fields of science, the investigator already pays. That's right -- for some journals, the author pays to publish, the subscriber pays to receive, and the journal holds the copyright! When I was a grad student, way back in the early 1990s, Astrophysical Journal charged about $100 per page.
The paths the railways followed were those travelled by those who came before
Sometimes, but not always. Read Empire Express for a decent treatment of how much the transcontinental railroads followed known paths and how much they actually blazed new paths -- including levelling or raising the grade, if need be.
With support from nearly every level of the digital industry, including Hollywood studios, Internet technology companies, computer and consumer electronics suppliers, and chip vendors, the DVB's ad hoc group on copy protection technology "stands the best chance" of finding a solution that all parties to the debate will accept, said Peter MacAvock, executive director of the DVB Project Office in Geneva.
Nearly every level, except the most important one: the consumers themsevles. Time will tell whether this will be a boon for the broadcasting industry or a DIVX debacle on an epic scale...
Re:Which is all well and good, for *you*
on
Decentralization
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Blockquoth the poster:
Me, I think specialization is for insects, but that's me. Your milage may vary.
Wow. I'm impressed that you have time to code at all -- much less post to slashdot -- what with all the farming and milling and weaving and such that you must be doing.
Oh, wait. You mean you buy food from a market and clothes from a store, rather than growing or making your own? Gasp! It sounds like you've specialized a tad... you've given up direct exercise of some skills and now "depend" on someone else to provide some of your needs. In return, one imagines, you've become more efficient at the skills you do directly exercise, and so has the other. And so the system operates at a higher level than would be otherwise.
The usual and current rant against "specialization" is just as much a load of crap now as it was when Thoreau screeched "Simplify, simplify, simplify" while using a printing press (a pretty complicated piece of machinery).
Slashdot Mirror
But they can -- and probably already do -- require Oregon residents to drive cars registered in Oregon. And they could make the GPS box required to pass inspection, prior to getting registration. This'll only affect Oregonians, unless it works, in which case some blockhead will immediately call for a nationwide system to collect tolls on, say, the Interstates.
*Sigh* I have this problem with my students, too. The "GPS signal" is actually many radio signals, all of them out in the open and conveying no position data on you. That's right -- the GPS satellites don't tell you where you are. The GPS satellites tell you where the GPS satellites are, via the timing data they broadcast. Note that, too: they broadcast.
A tracking system needs something more than a GPS receiver (and note that, too: "receiver"). There must be some sort of transmitter as well; that's not part of GPS. It's probably be some cell-based thing, but could be just a radio.
So all your paranoids can go dig your shiny new GPS receiver out of the trash. A receiver can't betray your location to The Man.
Are you kidding? Fifty-four fourty or fight, dude!
Well, I counted 13 examples of abuse in the "scant" article
My goodnes. Did I just defend Phyllis Schlafly? Must be part of that Twilight Zone marathon on SciFi...
If you only saw the first two seasons, it's almost as if you didn't see ReBoot at all. The third season -- when the makers were liberated from the strait-jacket that was ABC's Bureau of Standards and Practices -- blossomed into a really sharp show. Luckily for you, you can get all 16 episodes of the third season on DVD.
I only saw the first half of the fourth season. (Cartoon Network, in its infinite wisdom, only ran the episodes once
What amazes me is, you've got these highly-paid TV execs, in league with highly-paid NFL media managers, and none of them is clueful enough to notice, "Gee, every game has run 27 minutes long for the past 10 years. Maybe we should program the game to last until 7:30...."
What are these guys paid for, anyhow?
Yeah, and that switch from uppper to lower case is so much more erffective at that differentiation...
Enough people join this trend, and the spammer soon won't be.
Yes, but not usefully. Unless the pieces are assembled quickly, their proximinity in sub-critical density will release enough heat to vaporize and disperse the uranium before it truly chain-reacts. You get a big, messy, hot puddle of uranium but not a (gigantic) explosion
While obtaining the U235 was the hardest part of the Manhattan Project, it was also considered a major accomplishment to wrangle injection of the critical mass...
Then they probably shouldn't invoke the air of science by using the scientific formula, H20, either...
I would conclude that, as solid water -- ice -- is crystalline, it isn't dynamic at all.
Then it won't be truly random, will it?
I'm having trouble seeing why slashdotters are having difficulty with the concept of "random". I don't tell them "Go into the voting booth and pull the lever you most feel like". It's got to be random -- the flip of a coin or the roll of a die. And yes, we spend some time on what that means and why it's important. (I teach physics and random processes are significant enough that I can justify to myself this digression.)
If the vote is truly random, then nothing can affect it -- not a flattering tie, not a catchy slogan, not a gimmicky TV commerical. All of those things influence the subjective judgment of the voter... but the voter's judgment isn't playing a role in this case. Thus, if this is done by large numbers of people, it will generally wash out.
Disclaimer: Since, in the end, elections are winner-take-all and can be decided on a knife's edge, this method could tip a close race one way or the other. On the other hand, if the race is that close, it's probably being decided by other random factors as well, such as the weather, error rates in the machine, etc.
No. If you read more carefully you'd see that my advice hinges on their vote being truly random
What's the point? Well, a lot of people use the excuse "I don't really know anything about the candidates, so I can't vote." Of course we want informed voters... but somehow no one makes the leap to "Well, then, I'd better get myself informed." My argument is, raising voter participation rates -- again, assuming that if you can't be informed, you will at least be honestly random -- is itself a public good. What's more, if someone goes through the trouble of going to the polls, eventually he/she might decide to actually get informed.
It's absolutely crucial, for this system to work, that certain names or catchy slogans not be allowed to play a role. We don't want to reward bad campaigns, or to drive them toward focusing on marketing. But you know what? Almost everyone knows how to flip a coin. It's really that simple. It's a way to contribute to the civic good even if you happen not to be informed. And it might lead to greater genuine participation.
It's funny how people believe in capitalism
In the long term, one of two things happens:
PolluteCo gets wise, invests in cleaner technology, reduces its emissions, and so escapes the need to buy credits. End result: The industry as a whole is cleaner.
PolluteCo never wises up, remains dirty, fails to invest in clean tech, continues to pay for the credits. CleanCo continues to derive economic benefit from its clean technologies, so it maintains its lower prices and draws more of the market to it. PolluteCo ramps down production (due to falling orders) and/or eventually goes out of business. End result: The industry as a whole is cleaner.
Either way, pollution credits lead to the desired result. And amazingly they do so through clear, clean market efficiency. (For those who complain that the setting of credits is an intervention, I riposte that costs and prices are measures of desires, which lie outside the market paradigm. Why did everyone want a beanie baby? Not due to market forces.)
The cost is already being passed onto me, and other American citizens: In the health damage associated with petro pollution. In the incoherence of foreign policy. In the instability in the Middle East and South America. In the sons and daughters sent to die to maintain our petroleum addicition -- and in the conscience and psyche of our sons and daughters sent to kill others to maintain our petroluem addiction.
Not all value is economic value. We are already paying for these failures... we might as well translate it to simple economic cost (and safeguard the environment while we're at it).
I wouldn't. In fact, I teach 17- and 18-year-olds, and every year I tell them this: They should vote even if they're uninformed -- provided that they truly vote randomly (if uninformed). Here's my rationale: If lots of people vote truly randomly, then it'll basically cancel out. But voter turnout will have risen -- and the politicians won't know which votes were random. From their point of view, they'll have to conclude that voter interest really is rising, which means that voters count -- which will de-emphasize the current "play to my base" logic.
Let's be honest here: Many of the ills of American democracy follow from the pathetically low participation rate. Corruption, ideology triumphant, slash ads
Pioneer 10 was meant to do a fly-by of Jupiter and Saturn. To quote the current project manager,
So it's going wherever it happens to be headed, but we didn't send it that way on purpose.
Well, that's only fair. I mean, it's pretty obvious they've lost their own...
Well, I would think a century of popular mass media would have settled that question. The answer of course is "Yes".
No. The Hobbit is a story created for his children. The rest of his sweeping work -- The Lord of the Rings, etc. -- was not meant for children.
"If not all fruits are oranges, it stands to reason that not all oranges are fruits, either." Um, no... it exactly does not stand to reason.
Maybe, maybe not. In any event, in many fields of science, the investigator already pays. That's right -- for some journals, the author pays to publish, the subscriber pays to receive, and the journal holds the copyright! When I was a grad student, way back in the early 1990s, Astrophysical Journal charged about $100 per page.
Sometimes, but not always. Read Empire Express for a decent treatment of how much the transcontinental railroads followed known paths and how much they actually blazed new paths -- including levelling or raising the grade, if need be.
Nearly every level, except the most important one: the consumers themsevles. Time will tell whether this will be a boon for the broadcasting industry or a DIVX debacle on an epic scale...
Wow. I'm impressed that you have time to code at all -- much less post to slashdot -- what with all the farming and milling and weaving and such that you must be doing.
Oh, wait. You mean you buy food from a market and clothes from a store, rather than growing or making your own? Gasp! It sounds like you've specialized a tad
The usual and current rant against "specialization" is just as much a load of crap now as it was when Thoreau screeched "Simplify, simplify, simplify" while using a printing press (a pretty complicated piece of machinery).