Arguably the best way to prevent war and eliminate poverty would be to scatter billions of condoms from high flying aeroplanes throughout the third world.
Using asset tags works fine until you get some special machine that was built up out of a dozen purchase orders and has twenty asset tags as a result!
The worst I ever saw was a $20K lab computer that was built up out of $500 chunks because the various managers could sign for that much without further approval. There were several boards that has five or six asset tags!
Worse yet the entire department was laid off a month after the thing was put together!
When I left the company there were still raging debates about how to classify that machine and which department actually owned it!
Me, personally, would be impressed if you can get better hardware support and either work around Flash or pinch Adobe into supporting Flash on Linux.
Hardware support is essentially a question of OS market share!
Sad but true.
As Firefox has gained market share the support suddenly appeared and you are starting to see the same thing happening with OSX.
You can see that from the number of websites which now support Firefox, a couple of years ago at least 60% of websites I visited required IE, now there are hardly any!
Even those websites that require IE are almost all stuck on "IE 6" - which by itself says a lot about the website support!
You simply show up at DMV with the trust documents filled out properly (there are many how to books for this) and a title transfer to the trust name. It can be any trust, LLC or Corporation BTW - just so it has a legal identity.
As for the picture on your driver license, I understand that most people have cousins who look amazingly like them. The key thing here that there is no mechanism to enforce these tickets outside the US so they just don't bother sending one.
People I know who have done this simply send in the form for "someone else was driving" (included in the ticket) and in a couple of weeks get back a letter telling them that the case was dismissed.
Yes the license plate covers could never work for long and are unlawful now anyway. I did lie the idea of covering the state name though - that had style!
Some sort of decal (flag?) on your windshield (roughly behind your rear view mirror) would be quite effective though - it would obscure your face without getting in the way of your sight line to the road. This works because the camera must be mounted at an angle to your car and the paralax allows you to obscure the camera without obscuring the road.
Check it out the next time you are waiting for a red light.
There are a lot of flaws in the system which are being carefully hidden.
I got interested in this subject when I had to give up driving due to severe cataracts and parked my car in my garage for six months. During that time I got two robo-cop ("photo radar") tickets even though my car was parked in a locked garage! The judge agreed that there was something wrong and dismissed them both (I had to show my eye doctors report and the schedule for the surgery.) The car and plate looked like mine (a Grey Camry - no surprise), but the driver did not look at all like me or anyone I know.
The biggest surprise came when I went to reactivate my license - they couldn't FIND the current license which was suspended due to blindness, only a very old one which had expired about 15 years ago! They happily renewed that one so I am OK to drive. However it leaves me wondering what happens the NEXT time the system writes me a ticket and finds that my license is suspended due to blindness!
The people that I have talked to in the court system tell me that the personal service is the only way that ANY of the tickets get paid - that is why it is as high as 10%! The trick of just ignoring the first letter is pretty well known now it seems.
It seems that there are a whole lot of tricks as well as many flaws in the system so this little game will likely go on for quite some time.
Actually this reflects the incredible cost of keeping someone on Death Row, it really does work out that you could house the murderers in the general population (still not cheap!) for about 200 years for the cost of the execution and extra security.
Don't you have a cousin from Mexico (or Thailand, or...) who was visiting that day? Looks a whole lot like you too?
Of course you could also re-register your vehicle in a living trust for "Estate Planning" purposes and then the tickets never get issued in the first place! They are ONLY issued to individuals!
These are only two of the reasons why less than 10% of the tickets actually get paid!
I think the level of discussion and explanation needed in what is really a very simple problem serves to illustrate why people have such a lot of problems with more complex problems!
Add in some emotions like frustration and impatience and you have a ticking time bomb.
Defused more than a few of those and missed a few as well, haven't we all?
Just like other criminals, spammers must quickly respond to what actually works. In essence this is the flaw in any "security by obscurity" scheme, the bad guys simply respond to whatever works. If you get to try several billion times a day then you can try a whole lot of combinations.
A database is copyrightable, but the applicable case law from when I practised (YEARS AGO!) was the phone directory - it was held to be sufficient that the copier rearranged and reorganised the information to provide a "mere spark of creativity".
Problem is that this has already been tried for several years and no one has managed to make it work! Emule right now returns 4 bogus "search results" for any global search (not a KAD search!) for example.
How often do you think someone will be fooled by that or any reasonablee derivative.
I agree, but my point was that the same logic does not apply to computer cables run from 120/240V AC as to some "way out" stereo system installed in a car!
The current levels are far lower and the cabling (especially the CAT5) is much more noise resistant than almost anything on a 12V system, especially the typical car audio that is designed for "show" not "go":-)
A whole lot of work has gone into making sure that this DOES NOT happen with computer cables of one sort and another! About the only one you might have to worry about is the MIC input line, everything else is either balanced, shielded or just doesn't care.
Don't make coils (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Wed Jul 22, '09 06:41 PM (#28789059)
Don't make coils out of excess cable. Loops of cable act as an inductance. When you switch on a device which is connected via a long power cable in loops, the extra load from the inductance can be enough to blow the fuse of the circuit.
Electrical load goes up as resistance and/or reactance goes down. Coiling a wire increases inductance. This increases inductive reactance. This delays direct current from reaching maximum and reduces alternating current. In other words, less load, not more.
That doesn't mean that I'm recommending loops in long power cords, just that the loops will not increase current draw.
Ok I just HAVE to challenge this.
IF(AND ONLY IF!) you are talking MILES of cable and THOUSANDS of loops it will be significant at 60hz, otherwise forget it!
Do the arithmetic: a single turn loop has about 0.1ohm impedance at 100khz!
The really ugly truth is that "the people" don't count for anything but cannon fodder in places like that!
Probably the best example is the novel "Gorky Park", where solving a murder was deemed "contrary to the interests of the state", the victim just didn't matter!
Perhaps you need to spend a little time in a totalitarian country where everything is controlled and/or forbidden.
They are countries run by overgrown playground bullies with all the incompetence and brutality that implies.
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Arguably the best way to prevent war and eliminate poverty would be to scatter billions of condoms from high flying aeroplanes throughout the third world.
I don't think the idea is to set up a coal burning plant off planet though.
Even coal buring is MUCH cleaner in a fixed plant where you can put in all kinds of heavy pollution control equipment though.
Pictures of water vapour coming out of the plant chimneys on a cold morning don't count!
Gee I don't have a digital clock in my house yet ...
Using asset tags works fine until you get some special machine that was built up out of a dozen purchase orders and has twenty asset tags as a result!
The worst I ever saw was a $20K lab computer that was built up out of $500 chunks because the various managers could sign for that much without further approval. There were several boards that has five or six asset tags!
Worse yet the entire department was laid off a month after the thing was put together!
When I left the company there were still raging debates about how to classify that machine and which department actually owned it!
The original filtering is done at the ISP level and was working in 2000 to 2005 when I was there.
I tried it on "banned" websites regularly. It was well enough done as to be difficult to detect, but it was very real.
Australia started a crude filtering system when I visited in 2000.
This one merely extends the idiocy.
Am I just paranoid in thinking that this is related to Iran's and Australia's recent success at filtering "objectionable" content at the ISP level?
Certainly it is much easier to administer at that level with only a relatively few portals.
This sounds like it validates the work on Fastnet and TOR.
Me, personally, would be impressed if you can get better hardware support and either work around Flash or pinch Adobe into supporting Flash on Linux.
Hardware support is essentially a question of OS market share!
Sad but true.
As Firefox has gained market share the support suddenly appeared and you are starting to see the same thing happening with OSX.
You can see that from the number of websites which now support Firefox, a couple of years ago at least 60% of websites I visited required IE, now there are hardly any!
Even those websites that require IE are almost all stuck on "IE 6" - which by itself says a lot about the website support!
You simply show up at DMV with the trust documents filled out properly (there are many how to books for this) and a title transfer to the trust name. It can be any trust, LLC or Corporation BTW - just so it has a legal identity.
As for the picture on your driver license, I understand that most people have cousins who look amazingly like them. The key thing here that there is no mechanism to enforce these tickets outside the US so they just don't bother sending one.
People I know who have done this simply send in the form for "someone else was driving" (included in the ticket) and in a couple of weeks get back a letter telling them that the case was dismissed.
Yes the license plate covers could never work for long and are unlawful now anyway. I did lie the idea of covering the state name though - that had style!
Some sort of decal (flag?) on your windshield (roughly behind your rear view mirror) would be quite effective though - it would obscure your face without getting in the way of your sight line to the road. This works because the camera must be mounted at an angle to your car and the paralax allows you to obscure the camera without obscuring the road.
Check it out the next time you are waiting for a red light.
There are a lot of flaws in the system which are being carefully hidden.
I got interested in this subject when I had to give up driving due to severe cataracts and parked my car in my garage for six months. During that time I got two robo-cop ("photo radar") tickets even though my car was parked in a locked garage! The judge agreed that there was something wrong and dismissed them both (I had to show my eye doctors report and the schedule for the surgery.) The car and plate looked like mine (a Grey Camry - no surprise), but the driver did not look at all like me or anyone I know.
The biggest surprise came when I went to reactivate my license - they couldn't FIND the current license which was suspended due to blindness, only a very old one which had expired about 15 years ago! They happily renewed that one so I am OK to drive. However it leaves me wondering what happens the NEXT time the system writes me a ticket and finds that my license is suspended due to blindness!
The people that I have talked to in the court system tell me that the personal service is the only way that ANY of the tickets get paid - that is why it is as high as 10%! The trick of just ignoring the first letter is pretty well known now it seems.
It seems that there are a whole lot of tricks as well as many flaws in the system so this little game will likely go on for quite some time.
Actually this reflects the incredible cost of keeping someone on Death Row, it really does work out that you could house the murderers in the general population (still not cheap!) for about 200 years for the cost of the execution and extra security.
Just imagine if the Federal Government did this and Madoff ended up owning the jail that he is living in!
I wonder how many well connected criminals are in the Arizona Jails and what loopholes their high price dlawyers can find in the leases!
The mind boggles ...
Don't you have a cousin from Mexico (or Thailand, or ...) who was visiting that day? Looks a whole lot like you too?
Of course you could also re-register your vehicle in a living trust for "Estate Planning" purposes and then the tickets never get issued in the first place! They are ONLY issued to individuals!
These are only two of the reasons why less than 10% of the tickets actually get paid!
I think the level of discussion and explanation needed in what is really a very simple problem serves to illustrate why people have such a lot of problems with more complex problems!
Add in some emotions like frustration and impatience and you have a ticking time bomb.
Defused more than a few of those and missed a few as well, haven't we all?
Just like other criminals, spammers must quickly respond to what actually works. In essence this is the flaw in any "security by obscurity" scheme, the bad guys simply respond to whatever works. If you get to try several billion times a day then you can try a whole lot of combinations.
A database is copyrightable, but the applicable case law from when I practised (YEARS AGO!) was the phone directory - it was held to be sufficient that the copier rearranged and reorganised the information to provide a "mere spark of creativity".
Problem is that this has already been tried for several years and no one has managed to make it work! Emule right now returns 4 bogus "search results" for any global search (not a KAD search!) for example.
How often do you think someone will be fooled by that or any reasonablee derivative.
Lets me see if we substitute "not approved by the fearless leader" for "unlawful copyright violator" how does that change the what they are doing?
IMHO this is yet another attempt at FUDD to scare off people who would spread ideas that those in power do not like.
The enormous success of these approaches can easily be seen by a quick check of Emule/Bittorent which shows over 6 million users right now.
I agree, but my point was that the same logic does not apply to computer cables run from 120/240V AC as to some "way out" stereo system installed in a car!
The current levels are far lower and the cabling (especially the CAT5) is much more noise resistant than almost anything on a 12V system, especially the typical car audio that is designed for "show" not "go" :-)
A whole lot of work has gone into making sure that this DOES NOT happen with computer cables of one sort and another! About the only one you might have to worry about is the MIC input line, everything else is either balanced, shielded or just doesn't care.
Again some basic EE stuff.
The impedance of the cables is low enough and the interfering current (magnetic field) si small enough that this simply won't matter!
Running 1000amps though a 12v "thumper" is a whole different thing that 20ms (0.002amps) for a "wall wort" supply!
Lets compare apples with zebras and see who flys the best shall we? ...
Don't make coils (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wed Jul 22, '09 06:41 PM (#28789059)
Don't make coils out of excess cable. Loops of cable act as an inductance. When you switch on a device which is connected via a long power cable in loops, the extra load from the inductance can be enough to blow the fuse of the circuit.
Electrical load goes up as resistance and/or reactance goes down. Coiling a wire increases inductance. This increases inductive reactance. This delays direct current from reaching maximum and reduces alternating current. In other words, less load, not more.
That doesn't mean that I'm recommending loops in long power cords, just that the loops will not increase current draw.
Ok I just HAVE to challenge this.
IF(AND ONLY IF!) you are talking MILES of cable and THOUSANDS of loops it will be significant at 60hz, otherwise forget it!
Do the arithmetic: a single turn loop has about 0.1ohm impedance at 100khz!
At 60hz that will be about 0.00001 ohms!!!
The rest is Ohm's law ...
Let me see, the FIRST 5 can be guessed by knowing place and date of birht and the LAST 4 can be overheard or read form paychecks etc.
Gee I think that gives out the whole err 5+4 = 9(!) digits doesn't it?
The really ugly truth is that "the people" don't count for anything but cannon fodder in places like that!
Probably the best example is the novel "Gorky Park", where solving a murder was deemed "contrary to the interests of the state", the victim just didn't matter!
Perhaps you need to spend a little time in a totalitarian country where everything is controlled and/or forbidden.
They are countries run by overgrown playground bullies with all the incompetence and brutality that implies.