Right. Except in most of the world the dot (what we in America use as the decimal point) is actually the thousands separator and the comma (what we use as the thousands separator) is actually the decimal point.
No matter how clever you think you are, no matter how hard you work to prevent vulnerabilities, they will be in the release code in something as complex as a web browser (or an Operating System).
"I want software that is written correctly and has no exploits" is an unrealistic expectation. It's like saying "I want my power tools to be built in such a way that they cannot possibly harm me"
Most (certainly not all) software is built with very careful reviews, trying to figure out ways that black hats might exploit the software and code against it. But it's an arms race - the black hats are constantly working on ways to get by the software.
So, yeah, while I agree with GP that "I want software that is written correctly", this is the real world, where there are bad people who will think of things you didn't and break your software. So this cannot possibly be an "either/or" decision.
I want people who write software as correctly as feasibly possible, understanding that humans make mistakes and that other people are out there who are just as clever as the software authors and who do nothing but try to break it. I accept, in return, that I have to take a role in securing my system if I want control over my system.
More importantly, I want people who are open and honest about those flaws when they happen, acknowledge the flaws quickly, and fix them very rapidly. I can't defend myself against a flaw I do not know exists, and I want that flaw to go away very quickly once it is discovered. I have seen precious few teams who crank out fixes faster than Team Firefox.
So far, in the browser world, I have yet to find a team that releases consistently higher-quality (not perfect, but high-quality) code, is more open about their vulnerabilities, and responds to defects more quickly than the Firefox team. That's not to say that all other browsers out there are bad, or that Firefox is 100% secure, but the Firefox team appears to be doing about the best job one could realistically expect. And yet, it's still all free.
Leads to an interesting moral dilemma, doesn't it?
What happens if/when Google decides not to pull out of China, and they do something that the Chinese government disagrees with and China decides to do this anyway?
What happens if Google is told to help maintain the Great Firewall of China "or else" their employees will be arrested?
At least this way, the ex-employees are not Google employees and technically have nothing that they can be validly punished for. If the Chinese government decides to arrest and punish its own citizens for the actions of their ex-employer, that would be deeply unfortunate for the ex-employees, but it's MORE likely it would have happened if Google had remained in China and refused some demand or other in the future.
I'm actually more concerned about the implications of Google moving into Hong Kong and leveraging that scism. Google is playing pretty hard at kingmaking (or king-breaking, really) here. If such a move pisses the Chinese off enough, the HK employees will be at far greater risk than the soon-to-be-ex mainland China employees, and the somewhat fragile China/HK relationship could go very ugly big and fast. Google may be buying the whole world a real pissing match over this, especially if Western nations decide to intervene on HK's behalf.
I'd argue that this has been a long time coming, and that Google's actions would be little more than a straw that broke the camel's back, but how much power should a company be able to exercise? How do we even find, much less draw, a line between political brinksmanship and commercial brinksmanship that can turn violently political?
Could a sufficiently large corporation be capable of triggering a war by exacerbating already difficult tensions? If so, is there anything that should be done to temper their actions?
If that. The HOA at one of the houses I rented once was only visible when someone parked a car in their driveway for more than 2 days in a row (pink sticker, $10 fine) or on the roadside overnight (blue sticker, $20 fine) or washed their car on a Sunday ($10 fine) or mowed their lawn before 8AM ($10 fine).
Other than that, the roads were never maintained, snowplowing (when applicable) was done by the city, and all maintenance was done by the homeowner and if the HOA noticed a problem before you did there was a $10 daily fine until whatever it was got fixed "to their satisfaction" which was legalese for "by them, at very inflated prices, which doubled if you DARED have another company do the work".
My house was owned by the developer, who also managed the HOA. He tried to fine me once for a stress crack in the sidewalk he built improperly on the property he owned. I don't recall my exact response, but it was really short, and contained the words "hell" and "no" in that order.
I'm not entirely sure what the $50/year HOA fee bought, other than the right to be fined. The common areas were full of construction debris and weeds. The roads had constant potholes, and the sidewalks were constantly cracking, and the only rules that were ever enforced were cosmetic ones that involved a fine or a forced repair with their affiliated repair company.
I vividly recall an X-Files episode that very accurately portrays HOAs in my mind.:)
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with buying expensive wine to enjoy from time to time, and everything is relative to the enjoyer.
Heck, I've even been known to drop upwards of $20 for a decent bottle from time to time!:)
I usually buy "better" wines ($12+ a bottle) when I'm having friends over or taking a bottle over to enjoy with friends.
But it has to be budgeted along with everything else. If you buy wines above your price range occasionally for the promise of "transcendence", just remember that it's a transitory state. Eventually, it just becomes "wine" and you are still paying novelty prices for it. Your cost/benefit drops considerably.
I find that sticking to the cheapest drinkable wine I can find for my daily glass makes a really good wine that much more enjoyable when I splurge a little and buy something a tad nicer.
But, hey, that's me. If someone can afford $500/bottle wine for their daily table wine, more power to 'em! I can't, so I drink something I find enjoyable on a daily basis and keep a few bottles of something a little more special around for when the occasion warrants.
It is only when they are older that they recognize the folly of their youth.
Ah, but then they can at least sell their overpriced gear off to the next generation, usually at a markup, with arguments like "LP sounds better than even the best CD" or "vacuum tubes make better sound".
P&T used a garden hose out back of a nice restaurant. A critical factor is how good the water is in that restaurant's municipal supply. If it's not too terribly chlorinated, it might have lacked a heavy chlorine taste or smell, and therefore the absence of a really strong flavor allowed P&T to "invent" a flavor in the drinker's minds. I did chuckle at that episode, while fully recognizing that in that context I probably would have fallen for the exact same thing. Even after having seen the episode, I still might.:)
Personally, I can't tell the difference between tap and most bottled with the water here, but the tap water around here is actually pretty good. Our bottled water in the company bubbler is actually good-quality spring water (Poland Springs), but once I fill up my Nalgene, I literally could not tell you from taste whether I used the spring water dispenser or the drinking fountain.
In other areas, especially in more urban areas, the tap water is much more heavily chlorinated. I find it needs to be at least filtered in those areas (quick financial tip: a cheap filter makes a big difference, and is one hell of a lot cheaper than bottled water over time).
On the other hand, a lot of bottled water is actually chlorinated tap water that has been bottled and stored in plastic for various amounts of time. The advantage being that it's always the same tap water, so when you open a bottle of Deer Park or Evian, you always know what you are going to get. Municipal tap water, but always from the same municipality so any flavor is going to be relatively consistent from bottle to bottle.
It's rather like people going to a strange city and eating at McDonalds because they know the burger they buy is going to taste exactly like the last hundred burgers they bought from McDonalds. There are local restaurants that are almost certainly going to have better quality food, but they'll have their own take on a hamburger that you might or might not like.
Yes, there is a lot of bad wine out there. Surprisingly, very little of it seems to end up in boxes.
There's a LOT of decent (not fantastic, but decent) wine around the $10-12 price point for a 3L. I enjoy a nice bottle of wine every now and again, but for daily drinking table wine I pick up a 3L box and it lasts me for several weeks. Mondavi and Franzia are the only ones that comes to mind, but I shift brands around a lot.
Of course, "bad" wine is relative. Mondavi is not going to win me any connoisseur awards, but it's drinkable for my daily red, keeps very well for well over a month even after opening, and costs the equivalent of about $2-3 a bottle.
I like wine, but I also like having food with it and a roof over my head, so boxed wine works very well.
When I have friends over, or go visit friends, I buy bottles. For what my wife and I drink at home, we use a box.
As soon as they add a cell phone module, they probably COULD price it at $99(*)
(*) In the US market only, pricing based on a 2-year commitment to a $40+/month data plan with a 2GB monthly cap, overage charges of $0.10/MB and a $425 ETF. Actual price $499 with a $400 rebate in the form of a prepaid VISA card mailed to you 14 years after initial purchase, to an address that does not exist, already expired.
Yes, but Tolkien left a large gap in there that could be filled in with a story pretty easily.
When we leave "The Hobbit", Bilbo Baggins is still a young Hobbit in his 50s, flush with treasure. When we start "Lord of the Rings", he's 111 (a ripe old age only attained by liberal use of The One Ring) and his nephew Frodo takes over. There are a lot of good stories about what uses he put the Ring to, if nothing else. Frodo might deserve a bit of a back-story. I'm sure Sauron and Saruman weren't sitting around watching HBO and eating fried food. Gollum, for all that he was in a cave, had to have done something interesting during that period after losing the Ring to Bilbo.
Tolkien didn't see any grand adventures in there to write about, but that doesn't mean a 60-year gap in the action can't contain any interesting stuff.
I love "The Hobbit" and "Lord of the Rings". I truly do. But I finally accepted Jackson's LoTR as a different story from J.R.R. Tolkien's work. No less a masterpiece for all that, but a slightly different story. I expect "The Hobbit" to be the same, and in that context I'm perfectly OK with Jackson et al filling in some blanks that Tolkien himself left.
It's like Abram's reboot of "Star Trek" - based on, but different. Except without all the lens flare.
"Your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newslett..."
Ah, screw that. I want in.
How much for a cut in to the action? I'm good at woodworking, and can probably make the Quantum Duplication Cubicles for you. I also have a background in sales, and a 20+ year career in IT, so I can make the lights go blinkie and help with the marketing fluff.
Funny, it's almost the exact opposite here, but that's probably because our conditions don't generally get as bad as the Sierras.
I do occasionally see Subarus on the side of the road, but the per capita population of Subarus up here is amazingly high.
Most of the accidents are Jimmy to Suburban-sized SUVs, with the occasional smaller SUV Lite like RAV4 or Suzuki-Samurai-sized.
Very few pickup trucks, because pickups generally lack the weight in the back and and scare you early, so you don't get all nutso.
Personally, I've never owned a 4x4 (other than my plow truck, which isn't on the road a whole lot). But I pretty much only drive front-wheel-drive with a manual transmission. My current car is a Jetta Diesel, and the weight of the engine on the front end makes it a pretty decent car in snow.
One of these years, I should get snow tires, but I'm afraid they'd make me too confident.;)
It is rather like IFR for driving, and you're right - you have to have specific training and the tolerances are a lot looser in flying.
Also, keep in mind that IFR is not a valid method for landing a plane, only for approaching the runway. If you reach decision height and you still cannot see the runway, you go around or head to another airport.
The kind of fog that would severely affect your driving would prevent a plane from landing even with fully-functioning IFR. I mean, the equipment would technically allow you to do it, but there's too small a margin for error.
I think a system like this would be incredibly useful for additional information, but I fear the false sense of security it will impart. We already have a few people driving their cars into rivers in good visibility because their GPS units told them to. Now take away that visibility, and even an attentive driver can be led into a huge mistake by relying on the tech too much.
I'm all for augmented reality, and I love this idea, but for some it will be too confusing and for others it will allow them to drive way beyond their capabilities.
We'll certainly have some Darwinian forces at work for a while during the initial roll-out, and sadly the Darwin Award winners will probably take out a few people in their vicinities from time to time.
But I live in a college town, and have to drive through the vicinity of campus (busy road) at night. The campus put in fancy blinking lights in the roadway with a button the pedestrians should push, but few do so the lights are useless. Ee still get kids creamed every now and then when they walk out into the crosswalk at 2AM without checking traffic. Even if you look carefully, it's incredibly tough to see dark clothing at night. Especially in the rain.
In our downtown, we have diagonal parking on both sides of a busy 4-lane 25MPH road. It's a lot just looking for cars backing out of parking into the right lane, and people deciding they need to take the next left and stopping (with or without turn signals). Seeing pedestrians in the frequent crosswalks (or more often, not in a crosswalk at all) is surprisingly hard. The town has these bright yellow flags pedestrians can wave to make themselves more visible, but no one actually uses them, and the flags just sit in their holders flapping and adding even more visual distraction.
I'd pay good money to see an indication of any pedestrian within a foot of the roadside on a HUD, or a warning if a heat signature of any critter appears to be headed toward the road. I can't see a deer running through the woods, but there's a good chance that an IR camera could sense that something is there. Highlight it for me so I can see it coming.
I see a lot of benefit to a system like this, but not for the reasons GM appears to be selling it. Enhance my senses to show me unexpected risks, or reduce distractions involved in navigation, not to show me where the road is - if I don't know where the road is I need to slow the hell down.
Why the thruway is designed with ditches on both sides I'm not really sure, when I know the designers understood about snow and ice making people run off the road, but it sure makes a great trap for cars.
You've just answered your own question. I'm assuming by "ditches" you mean relatively gentle embankments, and not severe dropoffs.
If a car loses control at 65MPH on ice, it's a spinning hunk of metal ready to take out anything in its path, and that path will rarely line up with the direction of the road.
If you put a guardrail the side of the road, that vehicle will bounce back into traffic. You only want guardrails in places where it is MORE dangerous to go off the road (severe dropoff, going over a bridge, etc). In any other place, you want that vehicle off the road with as little drama as possible.
If you put level ground next to the road, the vehicle may drift back into traffic. Also, there's no place for the water to go in a heavy rain.
If you put a relatively gentle incline off the side of the road, that vehicle will slide off the road and down on the embankment, reducing the danger to both the out-of-control car and the traffic around it. The soft soil is there for a reason - it starts eating up the vehicle's momentum.
About the only real risk is being in a car with a high center of gravity, and the increased risk of a rollover. That's what makes SUVs generally so dangerous - you are in a vehicle with only OK road handling that makes you feel like you have more control than you think, and it's also the most likely vehicle type to roll over and hurt you badly if you lose control.
That's what scares me, too. It's like 4WD here in Maine - if you go down the highway after a snowstorm, you'll pretty much see only two types of cars - very small light cars and SUVs. The former because the cars simply can't handle the conditions, and the latter because some 4X4 drivers became severely overconfident in the capabilities of their vehicle and think 4X4 is some form of magic glue that sticks the wheels to the road. The 4x4s are the ones that get really banged up, because their drivers have been running at or above the speed limit.
That and the possibility of some sort of malfunction at an ill-timed moment. A bunch of drivers tootling down the highway in deep fog, all tailgating one another just like they do in clear conditions, and the second car in line has his sensors hit by a rock kicked up by the first car, and it knocks the sensors off kilter or out of order. Second driver is now completely blind in heavy traffic.
If used to enhance defensive driving, this kind of system could be really useful. Especially using senses like IR to detect problems that may not be very visible (pedestrian in dark clothing walking up to crosswalk at night) or providing useful safety information (paint the 3-foot barrier line around the cyclist, and estimate whether you have enough room to safely pass him based on the speed of oncoming traffic in the opposing lane). Combine this with GPS to "mark" the road you want to drive down, and maybe even "paint" the road names on roads you are passing by, and turn-by-turn GPS is suddenly a lot less distracting.
But that's not how it's going to be used, at least not exclusively. For every driver using this as additional information while driving at a speed they can support without the enhancements, you'll have at least one that turn the system on, put the "Top Gun" soundtrack in, crank it to 11, and drive down the highway in 20-foot-visibility fog at 70MPH following the painted lines.
Actually, this leads to an interesting question - positional accuracy.
This information is going to be projected on a windshield - a surface that is several feet from your head. Different drivers from different positions are going to have different viewpoints. Someone who is 5' 2" and is sitting in a seat cranked all the way forward is going to be looking through the windshield at a significantly different angle from someone like me (6' 3") sitting in a seat cranked all the way back, and even I sit in different positions based on whether someone is behind me, etc.
Heck, move a few inches to one side and the perspective is going to be thrown totally off.
This is irrelevant for the Buick HUD that displays your current speed, since it really doesn't matter exactly where that "floats", but if it's going to highlight the roadside or some other "position critical" information for me, this is going to be a problem.
There ARE good uses for the sensor technology they talk about. But I don't think a windshield HUD is going to be one of them, sadly.
You pirate a clip of "Beavis and Butt-head" snickering and muttering "heh heh, breaking the law" to listen to while you download it.
Or you support sites that use open standards.
Or you buy a license for each of the proprietary standards that "plugins-ugly" provides. There's a reason it's called "ugly", and it's not just a lack of rugged good looks.
To clarify, I was responding to the call center bit.
The collection agency bit is easy. They will continue spoofing numbers, but the people in Mississippi will simply lose their jobs when the collection agency moves to another state where their practices are legal. If this becomes a federal law, then the call will come from India, China, or any of a number of countries where the law does not apply. Or they'll just start blocking caller ID entirely.
You really need to read the law: "however, when a person making an authorized call on behalf of another person inserts the name, telephone number or name and telephone number of the person on whose behalf the call is being made, such information shall not be deemed false information."
Slashdot Mirror
Right. Except in most of the world the dot (what we in America use as the decimal point) is actually the thousands separator and the comma (what we use as the thousands separator) is actually the decimal point.
American: 1,000,000.00
Most of the rest of the world: 1.000.000,00
I'm sure we'll switch as soon as we go Metric. ;)
No matter how clever you think you are, no matter how hard you work to prevent vulnerabilities, they will be in the release code in something as complex as a web browser (or an Operating System).
"I want software that is written correctly and has no exploits" is an unrealistic expectation. It's like saying "I want my power tools to be built in such a way that they cannot possibly harm me"
Most (certainly not all) software is built with very careful reviews, trying to figure out ways that black hats might exploit the software and code against it. But it's an arms race - the black hats are constantly working on ways to get by the software.
So, yeah, while I agree with GP that "I want software that is written correctly", this is the real world, where there are bad people who will think of things you didn't and break your software. So this cannot possibly be an "either/or" decision.
I want people who write software as correctly as feasibly possible, understanding that humans make mistakes and that other people are out there who are just as clever as the software authors and who do nothing but try to break it. I accept, in return, that I have to take a role in securing my system if I want control over my system.
More importantly, I want people who are open and honest about those flaws when they happen, acknowledge the flaws quickly, and fix them very rapidly. I can't defend myself against a flaw I do not know exists, and I want that flaw to go away very quickly once it is discovered. I have seen precious few teams who crank out fixes faster than Team Firefox.
So far, in the browser world, I have yet to find a team that releases consistently higher-quality (not perfect, but high-quality) code, is more open about their vulnerabilities, and responds to defects more quickly than the Firefox team. That's not to say that all other browsers out there are bad, or that Firefox is 100% secure, but the Firefox team appears to be doing about the best job one could realistically expect. And yet, it's still all free.
Leads to an interesting moral dilemma, doesn't it?
What happens if/when Google decides not to pull out of China, and they do something that the Chinese government disagrees with and China decides to do this anyway?
What happens if Google is told to help maintain the Great Firewall of China "or else" their employees will be arrested?
At least this way, the ex-employees are not Google employees and technically have nothing that they can be validly punished for. If the Chinese government decides to arrest and punish its own citizens for the actions of their ex-employer, that would be deeply unfortunate for the ex-employees, but it's MORE likely it would have happened if Google had remained in China and refused some demand or other in the future.
I'm actually more concerned about the implications of Google moving into Hong Kong and leveraging that scism. Google is playing pretty hard at kingmaking (or king-breaking, really) here. If such a move pisses the Chinese off enough, the HK employees will be at far greater risk than the soon-to-be-ex mainland China employees, and the somewhat fragile China/HK relationship could go very ugly big and fast. Google may be buying the whole world a real pissing match over this, especially if Western nations decide to intervene on HK's behalf.
I'd argue that this has been a long time coming, and that Google's actions would be little more than a straw that broke the camel's back, but how much power should a company be able to exercise? How do we even find, much less draw, a line between political brinksmanship and commercial brinksmanship that can turn violently political?
Could a sufficiently large corporation be capable of triggering a war by exacerbating already difficult tensions? If so, is there anything that should be done to temper their actions?
In short, should we induct Google into the UN?
If that. The HOA at one of the houses I rented once was only visible when someone parked a car in their driveway for more than 2 days in a row (pink sticker, $10 fine) or on the roadside overnight (blue sticker, $20 fine) or washed their car on a Sunday ($10 fine) or mowed their lawn before 8AM ($10 fine).
Other than that, the roads were never maintained, snowplowing (when applicable) was done by the city, and all maintenance was done by the homeowner and if the HOA noticed a problem before you did there was a $10 daily fine until whatever it was got fixed "to their satisfaction" which was legalese for "by them, at very inflated prices, which doubled if you DARED have another company do the work".
My house was owned by the developer, who also managed the HOA. He tried to fine me once for a stress crack in the sidewalk he built improperly on the property he owned. I don't recall my exact response, but it was really short, and contained the words "hell" and "no" in that order.
I'm not entirely sure what the $50/year HOA fee bought, other than the right to be fined. The common areas were full of construction debris and weeds. The roads had constant potholes, and the sidewalks were constantly cracking, and the only rules that were ever enforced were cosmetic ones that involved a fine or a forced repair with their affiliated repair company.
I vividly recall an X-Files episode that very accurately portrays HOAs in my mind. :)
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with buying expensive wine to enjoy from time to time, and everything is relative to the enjoyer.
Heck, I've even been known to drop upwards of $20 for a decent bottle from time to time! :)
I usually buy "better" wines ($12+ a bottle) when I'm having friends over or taking a bottle over to enjoy with friends.
But it has to be budgeted along with everything else. If you buy wines above your price range occasionally for the promise of "transcendence", just remember that it's a transitory state. Eventually, it just becomes "wine" and you are still paying novelty prices for it. Your cost/benefit drops considerably.
I find that sticking to the cheapest drinkable wine I can find for my daily glass makes a really good wine that much more enjoyable when I splurge a little and buy something a tad nicer.
But, hey, that's me. If someone can afford $500/bottle wine for their daily table wine, more power to 'em! I can't, so I drink something I find enjoyable on a daily basis and keep a few bottles of something a little more special around for when the occasion warrants.
You know, I was given a little bit of gear for winemaking, and I really need to get in to it.
It is only when they are older that they recognize the folly of their youth.
Ah, but then they can at least sell their overpriced gear off to the next generation, usually at a markup, with arguments like "LP sounds better than even the best CD" or "vacuum tubes make better sound".
You think you've got problems? My 2010 "Temporal Anomaly" Malbec is actually a 2043. All I got was a couple of vines and a packet of yeast.
4. Always order Merlot. Everyone else leaves, more wine for you!
A lot of that depends on the bottle and the tap.
P&T used a garden hose out back of a nice restaurant. A critical factor is how good the water is in that restaurant's municipal supply. If it's not too terribly chlorinated, it might have lacked a heavy chlorine taste or smell, and therefore the absence of a really strong flavor allowed P&T to "invent" a flavor in the drinker's minds. I did chuckle at that episode, while fully recognizing that in that context I probably would have fallen for the exact same thing. Even after having seen the episode, I still might. :)
Personally, I can't tell the difference between tap and most bottled with the water here, but the tap water around here is actually pretty good. Our bottled water in the company bubbler is actually good-quality spring water (Poland Springs), but once I fill up my Nalgene, I literally could not tell you from taste whether I used the spring water dispenser or the drinking fountain.
In other areas, especially in more urban areas, the tap water is much more heavily chlorinated. I find it needs to be at least filtered in those areas (quick financial tip: a cheap filter makes a big difference, and is one hell of a lot cheaper than bottled water over time).
On the other hand, a lot of bottled water is actually chlorinated tap water that has been bottled and stored in plastic for various amounts of time. The advantage being that it's always the same tap water, so when you open a bottle of Deer Park or Evian, you always know what you are going to get. Municipal tap water, but always from the same municipality so any flavor is going to be relatively consistent from bottle to bottle.
It's rather like people going to a strange city and eating at McDonalds because they know the burger they buy is going to taste exactly like the last hundred burgers they bought from McDonalds. There are local restaurants that are almost certainly going to have better quality food, but they'll have their own take on a hamburger that you might or might not like.
Yes, there is a lot of bad wine out there. Surprisingly, very little of it seems to end up in boxes.
There's a LOT of decent (not fantastic, but decent) wine around the $10-12 price point for a 3L. I enjoy a nice bottle of wine every now and again, but for daily drinking table wine I pick up a 3L box and it lasts me for several weeks. Mondavi and Franzia are the only ones that comes to mind, but I shift brands around a lot.
Of course, "bad" wine is relative. Mondavi is not going to win me any connoisseur awards, but it's drinkable for my daily red, keeps very well for well over a month even after opening, and costs the equivalent of about $2-3 a bottle.
I like wine, but I also like having food with it and a roof over my head, so boxed wine works very well.
When I have friends over, or go visit friends, I buy bottles. For what my wife and I drink at home, we use a box.
As soon as they add a cell phone module, they probably COULD price it at $99(*)
(*) In the US market only, pricing based on a 2-year commitment to a $40+/month data plan with a 2GB monthly cap, overage charges of $0.10/MB and a $425 ETF. Actual price $499 with a $400 rebate in the form of a prepaid VISA card mailed to you 14 years after initial purchase, to an address that does not exist, already expired.
Yes, but Tolkien left a large gap in there that could be filled in with a story pretty easily.
When we leave "The Hobbit", Bilbo Baggins is still a young Hobbit in his 50s, flush with treasure. When we start "Lord of the Rings", he's 111 (a ripe old age only attained by liberal use of The One Ring) and his nephew Frodo takes over. There are a lot of good stories about what uses he put the Ring to, if nothing else. Frodo might deserve a bit of a back-story. I'm sure Sauron and Saruman weren't sitting around watching HBO and eating fried food. Gollum, for all that he was in a cave, had to have done something interesting during that period after losing the Ring to Bilbo.
Tolkien didn't see any grand adventures in there to write about, but that doesn't mean a 60-year gap in the action can't contain any interesting stuff.
I love "The Hobbit" and "Lord of the Rings". I truly do. But I finally accepted Jackson's LoTR as a different story from J.R.R. Tolkien's work. No less a masterpiece for all that, but a slightly different story. I expect "The Hobbit" to be the same, and in that context I'm perfectly OK with Jackson et al filling in some blanks that Tolkien himself left.
It's like Abram's reboot of "Star Trek" - based on, but different. Except without all the lens flare.
Umm, wouldn't that be "cn and !cn hz cheezburger at saym timzorz?"
"Your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newslett..."
Ah, screw that. I want in.
How much for a cut in to the action? I'm good at woodworking, and can probably make the Quantum Duplication Cubicles for you. I also have a background in sales, and a 20+ year career in IT, so I can make the lights go blinkie and help with the marketing fluff.
Great, just what I need. Ads for "CHEEP QUANTUM C1@L1$ and V1@GR@ !"
Funny, it's almost the exact opposite here, but that's probably because our conditions don't generally get as bad as the Sierras.
I do occasionally see Subarus on the side of the road, but the per capita population of Subarus up here is amazingly high.
Most of the accidents are Jimmy to Suburban-sized SUVs, with the occasional smaller SUV Lite like RAV4 or Suzuki-Samurai-sized.
Very few pickup trucks, because pickups generally lack the weight in the back and and scare you early, so you don't get all nutso.
Personally, I've never owned a 4x4 (other than my plow truck, which isn't on the road a whole lot). But I pretty much only drive front-wheel-drive with a manual transmission. My current car is a Jetta Diesel, and the weight of the engine on the front end makes it a pretty decent car in snow.
One of these years, I should get snow tires, but I'm afraid they'd make me too confident. ;)
It is rather like IFR for driving, and you're right - you have to have specific training and the tolerances are a lot looser in flying.
Also, keep in mind that IFR is not a valid method for landing a plane, only for approaching the runway. If you reach decision height and you still cannot see the runway, you go around or head to another airport.
The kind of fog that would severely affect your driving would prevent a plane from landing even with fully-functioning IFR. I mean, the equipment would technically allow you to do it, but there's too small a margin for error.
I think a system like this would be incredibly useful for additional information, but I fear the false sense of security it will impart. We already have a few people driving their cars into rivers in good visibility because their GPS units told them to. Now take away that visibility, and even an attentive driver can be led into a huge mistake by relying on the tech too much.
I'm all for augmented reality, and I love this idea, but for some it will be too confusing and for others it will allow them to drive way beyond their capabilities.
We'll certainly have some Darwinian forces at work for a while during the initial roll-out, and sadly the Darwin Award winners will probably take out a few people in their vicinities from time to time.
But I live in a college town, and have to drive through the vicinity of campus (busy road) at night. The campus put in fancy blinking lights in the roadway with a button the pedestrians should push, but few do so the lights are useless. Ee still get kids creamed every now and then when they walk out into the crosswalk at 2AM without checking traffic. Even if you look carefully, it's incredibly tough to see dark clothing at night. Especially in the rain.
In our downtown, we have diagonal parking on both sides of a busy 4-lane 25MPH road. It's a lot just looking for cars backing out of parking into the right lane, and people deciding they need to take the next left and stopping (with or without turn signals). Seeing pedestrians in the frequent crosswalks (or more often, not in a crosswalk at all) is surprisingly hard. The town has these bright yellow flags pedestrians can wave to make themselves more visible, but no one actually uses them, and the flags just sit in their holders flapping and adding even more visual distraction.
I'd pay good money to see an indication of any pedestrian within a foot of the roadside on a HUD, or a warning if a heat signature of any critter appears to be headed toward the road. I can't see a deer running through the woods, but there's a good chance that an IR camera could sense that something is there. Highlight it for me so I can see it coming.
I see a lot of benefit to a system like this, but not for the reasons GM appears to be selling it. Enhance my senses to show me unexpected risks, or reduce distractions involved in navigation, not to show me where the road is - if I don't know where the road is I need to slow the hell down.
Why the thruway is designed with ditches on both sides I'm not really sure, when I know the designers understood about snow and ice making people run off the road, but it sure makes a great trap for cars.
You've just answered your own question. I'm assuming by "ditches" you mean relatively gentle embankments, and not severe dropoffs.
If a car loses control at 65MPH on ice, it's a spinning hunk of metal ready to take out anything in its path, and that path will rarely line up with the direction of the road.
If you put a guardrail the side of the road, that vehicle will bounce back into traffic. You only want guardrails in places where it is MORE dangerous to go off the road (severe dropoff, going over a bridge, etc). In any other place, you want that vehicle off the road with as little drama as possible.
If you put level ground next to the road, the vehicle may drift back into traffic. Also, there's no place for the water to go in a heavy rain.
If you put a relatively gentle incline off the side of the road, that vehicle will slide off the road and down on the embankment, reducing the danger to both the out-of-control car and the traffic around it. The soft soil is there for a reason - it starts eating up the vehicle's momentum.
About the only real risk is being in a car with a high center of gravity, and the increased risk of a rollover. That's what makes SUVs generally so dangerous - you are in a vehicle with only OK road handling that makes you feel like you have more control than you think, and it's also the most likely vehicle type to roll over and hurt you badly if you lose control.
That's what scares me, too. It's like 4WD here in Maine - if you go down the highway after a snowstorm, you'll pretty much see only two types of cars - very small light cars and SUVs. The former because the cars simply can't handle the conditions, and the latter because some 4X4 drivers became severely overconfident in the capabilities of their vehicle and think 4X4 is some form of magic glue that sticks the wheels to the road. The 4x4s are the ones that get really banged up, because their drivers have been running at or above the speed limit.
That and the possibility of some sort of malfunction at an ill-timed moment. A bunch of drivers tootling down the highway in deep fog, all tailgating one another just like they do in clear conditions, and the second car in line has his sensors hit by a rock kicked up by the first car, and it knocks the sensors off kilter or out of order. Second driver is now completely blind in heavy traffic.
If used to enhance defensive driving, this kind of system could be really useful. Especially using senses like IR to detect problems that may not be very visible (pedestrian in dark clothing walking up to crosswalk at night) or providing useful safety information (paint the 3-foot barrier line around the cyclist, and estimate whether you have enough room to safely pass him based on the speed of oncoming traffic in the opposing lane). Combine this with GPS to "mark" the road you want to drive down, and maybe even "paint" the road names on roads you are passing by, and turn-by-turn GPS is suddenly a lot less distracting.
But that's not how it's going to be used, at least not exclusively. For every driver using this as additional information while driving at a speed they can support without the enhancements, you'll have at least one that turn the system on, put the "Top Gun" soundtrack in, crank it to 11, and drive down the highway in 20-foot-visibility fog at 70MPH following the painted lines.
Actually, this leads to an interesting question - positional accuracy.
This information is going to be projected on a windshield - a surface that is several feet from your head. Different drivers from different positions are going to have different viewpoints. Someone who is 5' 2" and is sitting in a seat cranked all the way forward is going to be looking through the windshield at a significantly different angle from someone like me (6' 3") sitting in a seat cranked all the way back, and even I sit in different positions based on whether someone is behind me, etc.
Heck, move a few inches to one side and the perspective is going to be thrown totally off.
This is irrelevant for the Buick HUD that displays your current speed, since it really doesn't matter exactly where that "floats", but if it's going to highlight the roadside or some other "position critical" information for me, this is going to be a problem.
There ARE good uses for the sensor technology they talk about. But I don't think a windshield HUD is going to be one of them, sadly.
Can I get these laser beams on a Camaro Shark?
You pirate a clip of "Beavis and Butt-head" snickering and muttering "heh heh, breaking the law" to listen to while you download it.
Or you support sites that use open standards.
Or you buy a license for each of the proprietary standards that "plugins-ugly" provides. There's a reason it's called "ugly", and it's not just a lack of rugged good looks.
To clarify, I was responding to the call center bit.
The collection agency bit is easy. They will continue spoofing numbers, but the people in Mississippi will simply lose their jobs when the collection agency moves to another state where their practices are legal. If this becomes a federal law, then the call will come from India, China, or any of a number of countries where the law does not apply. Or they'll just start blocking caller ID entirely.
You really need to read the law: "however, when a person making an authorized call on behalf of another person inserts the name, telephone number or name and telephone number of the person on whose behalf the call is being made, such information shall not be deemed false information."