That's the point. While it may be legal, it has been shown in studies to be unsafe (hands free or otherwise). Government has failed to act to address this safety issue.
I never realized it was the government's duty to protect you from every single possible way that you might come to harm.
The obvious question to ask was why someone would do such a thing.
Now, if it was a movie theater, I could see someone jamming cell phones. But on a road? Why?
Was he using an over-powered machine and doing it by mistake? Was he just insane?
You have some mighty strong words for the person trying to jam cell signals in order to feel safer on the freeway.
Who should we really be labeling insane here, the man trying to make things safer around him,
Yes.
Because "feeling safe" and "being safe" are completely different things.
What if, instead of jamming communications, he decided in order to "feel safer on the freeway" he needed to shoot out people's tires with a shotgun?
Human emotions do not equate to objective logic, no matter how hard you might try to rationalize the behavior. Don't "feel safe" driving down the highway? then don't fucking drive down the highway. You have zero right to interfere in and endanger the lives of others.
Definitely stopped several talking and driving accidents. This needs to be weighed fairly on the scales of justice.
That's a pretty big claim. How do you know it didn't actually cause some?
He doesn't - presumably, OP supports the act of "vandalizing" communications infrastructure for his own selfish purposes, and thus, has chosen to marginalize the safety concerns.
Kinda like how oligarchs and terrorists justify harming civilians as a "means to an end."
Writing it isn't the problem - we could write a law that made it illegal to do anything other than pay attention to the road when you're behind the wheel, but it would be essentially unenforceable.
Where I live, it's currently only illegal to text while driving, and even then, only if you're under a certain age (21, I believe), although there is legislation in the state Legislature that would expand the texting ban to all ages.
Which just goes to show how idiotic our legislative processes can be; I can only presume they didn't make texting while driving illegal for everyone in the first round had something to do with the law being passed in an election year.
Regarding diesel fuels, I've personally witnessed both used vegetable oil and kerosene* run through an old 1980's vintage diesel pickup, and they both do indeed work as fuels. I've even heard rumors that people have put gasoline in a diesel tank and driven around for half a day before realizing that the engine was running a little rough (but running nonetheless).
Of course, if anecdotal evidence isn't your thing, check out this clip from Mythbusters
This item has not been powered up or tested. Sold as is, but there are no visible signs of damage
So, if you're lucky, the drive isn't toast... now all you have to do is find working media, a computer to interface the drive with, and oh yea, the source code for all the software used in a US military nuclear missile silo facility, which I doubt is OSS.
If you're not lucky, you just spent $150 bucks on a vintage paperweight. Thus, my original premise remains unblemished: using vintage computing equipment is inherently more secure than using modern equipment due to the scarcity of functioning, vintage hardware.
...but you'd be hard pressed to find a working 8" floppy, drive, and computer to write it with.
Brand new in box on ebay for $195
If it was that easy, one would presume you would have included a link to the auction page.
Of course, the fact that one has to scour sites like Ebay to find an (allegedly) working unit (and not the media, nor the computer necessary to interface with the drive, that also need to be working units) only serves to strengthen my point - you don't have to do nearly as much legwork to acquire flash drives and blank optical media.
Sure, you can get the same security by isolating modern machines from a network and loading code using USB's or CD's and DVD's,
Except that's not the same security - Anybody these days can get their hands on USB drives, CDs, and DVDs, but you'd be hard pressed to find a working 8" floppy, drive, and computer to write it with.
quoth ICBM forces commander Maj. Gen. Jack Weinstein
"Those older systems provide us some, I will say, huge safety, when it comes to some cyber issues that we currently have in the world.""
Note that the guy in charge of all the nuclear missiles in the United States invokes a security-though-obscurity argument to justify obsolete systems.
Well, he does have a point.
For starters, if there's no modern input method (i.e., network connection, USB ports), there's no way to hack the system with modern electronics, and I doubt you could successfully sneak an era-specific "portable" computer in unnoticed.
The other good reason I thought of* is the fact that old, analog electronics are more likely to survive the EMP from a nuclear blast than modern, solid-state stuff. To wit, if a well-placed air-burst nuke drops EM radiation across the continental US, my 2009 pickup will be effectively dead, but my 1967 Mustang, with it's points-type ignition and lack of electronics, will fire and run like always.
* of course, this only applies if the systems in use at the missile silos are analog.
But a large part of your poor NETFLIX performance was intently "allowed to happen" by Verizon in the first place, even though you were paying them for quality service.
That's the part that pisses me off about this entire situation - I, the customer, am paying X amount of dollars for Y amount of bandwidth; I am not paying them to spy on me, or throttle my connection, or limit what parts of the internet I can reasonably access, nor did I ever ask for or authorize such activity. Classic bait-and-switch, except nobody gets their ass handed to them for it.
Having the first product mass-adopted is not the same thing as having the first product;
And "having the first product" is not something I ever said they did. Perhaps read what you are replying to before knee-jerking?
Perhaps you should define what "doesn't... enter existing markets. They make new ones." means, if it doesn't mean having the first product (i.e. "making" a new market for said product type).
there were shit-tons of MP3 players on the market when Apple introduced the iPod, and people bought them, their suckiness notwithstanding.
Very few people bought them. There was hardly any market at all for them. Until Apple came along
Which means the market did exist, and therefore Apple created shit, market-wise. "hardly any market" != "no market."
Maybe if you spent less time coming up with snarky accusations, and more time considering what you're saying before hitting the 'Post" button, you'd be less likely to contradict yourself in a single post, as you've done here. In fact, you could have avoided this entire conversation by wording your first post a bit differently:
Apple doesn't really "enter" existing markets - They make them profitable.
Still inaccurate, but at least it's not an outright fabrication colored by fanboyism.
I think you grossly underestimate how low the standards of many men actually are. The requirements are pretty much just a pulse, and even that has some wiggle room.
A theory easily verified by a trip to your local Wal-Mart.
Yea, mine is an el-cheapo model, no battery to be found. That's actually part of the reason I chose it, along with the cool see-through casement, and the fact that I'm too rough on watches to regularly wear expensive ones, awesome though they may be. I break 1 or 2 of them every year.
Of course there is a distinction between "POTs as infrastructure" and "POTs as an interface".
The former is likely to slowly go away in many places as maintaining paralell infrastructure for phones and data doesn't really make much sense.
The latter I don't see going away any time soon. Even when fixed phone service is delivered over fiber, coax or even cellular (some unlucky americans have been having their POTS lines replaced with fixed cellular services, YUCK) the end user interface is nearly always a POTs port. It's just that the digitisation happens at the customer premsis rather than at the telephone exchange.
One of my major clients is planning on getting away from POTS infrastructure in the next couple of years, with the intention of having a single carrier for phone and data service over a T1.
They also purchase a ton of top-of-the-line VoIP capable systems to go along with the new T1 service... and they're making me configure them as key systems that don't use any of the VoIP features... sigh...
Slashdot Mirror
It would mutate into 'driving while looking at a police officer in an insulting manner.'
So then, better than the current system of 'driving while looking like someone the police officer might want to fuck with.'
Legality only counts if you're caught and actually prosecuted.
FTFY. I've personally seen numerous people get off scott-free for some pretty heinous shit, purely as a result of who they/their daddy happens to be.
Cool clip by the way, but I've rarely seen Mythbusters do any real statistics or larger samples - I personally count them as very nice anecdotes :)
Yea, I hate using Mythbusters as a reference due to their decidedly un-scientific methods, but that clip is an exception to the rule (and super-neat).
I'm a bit unsure if I would do that to my own car tough, which runs on dieselas it's of the newer, fuel-injected variety.
Hence the reason we tested it on an old pickup, and not the wife's brand new TDI. She'd kill me if she fired it up one day and smelled french fries.
It also jammed the frequency that emergency services use to communicate, so presumably it could have cost lives as well.
That's the point. While it may be legal, it has been shown in studies to be unsafe (hands free or otherwise). Government has failed to act to address this safety issue.
I never realized it was the government's duty to protect you from every single possible way that you might come to harm.
Oh, right - it's not.
The obvious question to ask was why someone would do such a thing.
Now, if it was a movie theater, I could see someone jamming cell phones. But on a road? Why?
Was he using an over-powered machine and doing it by mistake? Was he just insane?
You have some mighty strong words for the person trying to jam cell signals in order to feel safer on the freeway.
Who should we really be labeling insane here, the man trying to make things safer around him,
Yes.
Because "feeling safe" and "being safe" are completely different things.
What if, instead of jamming communications, he decided in order to "feel safer on the freeway" he needed to shoot out people's tires with a shotgun?
Human emotions do not equate to objective logic, no matter how hard you might try to rationalize the behavior. Don't "feel safe" driving down the highway? then don't fucking drive down the highway. You have zero right to interfere in and endanger the lives of others.
Wideband, eh? So he wasn't just jamming cell phones, he very well may have been jamming the communications systems of emergency services personnel.
Seems to me he got off light, all considered.
Totally agree on the community service.
You think you own this piece of highway, hotshot? Alright, then, you get to keep it clean for the next 6 months.
Definitely stopped several talking and driving accidents. This needs to be weighed fairly on the scales of justice.
That's a pretty big claim. How do you know it didn't actually cause some?
He doesn't - presumably, OP supports the act of "vandalizing" communications infrastructure for his own selfish purposes, and thus, has chosen to marginalize the safety concerns.
Kinda like how oligarchs and terrorists justify harming civilians as a "means to an end."
Writing it isn't the problem - we could write a law that made it illegal to do anything other than pay attention to the road when you're behind the wheel, but it would be essentially unenforceable.
There are one or more seats in almost every vehicle where people can legally operate phones.
FTFY - some of us do drive pickups and sports coupes, you know.
Depends on the state/county/locale.
Where I live, it's currently only illegal to text while driving, and even then, only if you're under a certain age (21, I believe), although there is legislation in the state Legislature that would expand the texting ban to all ages.
Which just goes to show how idiotic our legislative processes can be; I can only presume they didn't make texting while driving illegal for everyone in the first round had something to do with the law being passed in an election year.
Regarding diesel fuels, I've personally witnessed both used vegetable oil and kerosene* run through an old 1980's vintage diesel pickup, and they both do indeed work as fuels. I've even heard rumors that people have put gasoline in a diesel tank and driven around for half a day before realizing that the engine was running a little rough (but running nonetheless).
Of course, if anecdotal evidence isn't your thing, check out this clip from Mythbusters
*runs a little lean, thanks to a lack of sulphur
From the item description:
This item has not been powered up or tested. Sold as is, but there are no visible signs of damage
So, if you're lucky, the drive isn't toast... now all you have to do is find working media, a computer to interface the drive with, and oh yea, the source code for all the software used in a US military nuclear missile silo facility, which I doubt is OSS.
If you're not lucky, you just spent $150 bucks on a vintage paperweight. Thus, my original premise remains unblemished: using vintage computing equipment is inherently more secure than using modern equipment due to the scarcity of functioning, vintage hardware.
Doesn't change the absolute fact that modern technology is easier to acquire and deploy than obsolete stuff.
Really, I'm not sure what point you guys are trying to argue here, considering the content of my original post...
Interesting; more interesting is the amount of debate on the topic.
Here's a couple links that all show different opinions of the potential dangers:
http://jalopnik.com/5937778/ho... (good one, has link to an actual study)
http://www.straightdope.com/co... (OK source, no study links but dude seems to know his stuff)
http://www.godlikeproductions.... (buncha freakin' morons, but worth reading so you can laugh at them)
...but you'd be hard pressed to find a working 8" floppy, drive, and computer to write it with.
Brand new in box on ebay for $195
If it was that easy, one would presume you would have included a link to the auction page.
Of course, the fact that one has to scour sites like Ebay to find an (allegedly) working unit (and not the media, nor the computer necessary to interface with the drive, that also need to be working units) only serves to strengthen my point - you don't have to do nearly as much legwork to acquire flash drives and blank optical media.
Methinks, through really, really bad analogy, thou hast missed my point.
You didn't seriously compare public roads to private services, did you?
Sure, you can get the same security by isolating modern machines from a network and loading code using USB's or CD's and DVD's,
Except that's not the same security - Anybody these days can get their hands on USB drives, CDs, and DVDs, but you'd be hard pressed to find a working 8" floppy, drive, and computer to write it with.
quoth ICBM forces commander Maj. Gen. Jack Weinstein
"Those older systems provide us some, I will say, huge safety, when it comes to some cyber issues that we currently have in the world.""
Note that the guy in charge of all the nuclear missiles in the United States invokes a security-though-obscurity argument to justify obsolete systems.
Well, he does have a point.
For starters, if there's no modern input method (i.e., network connection, USB ports), there's no way to hack the system with modern electronics, and I doubt you could successfully sneak an era-specific "portable" computer in unnoticed.
The other good reason I thought of* is the fact that old, analog electronics are more likely to survive the EMP from a nuclear blast than modern, solid-state stuff. To wit, if a well-placed air-burst nuke drops EM radiation across the continental US, my 2009 pickup will be effectively dead, but my 1967 Mustang, with it's points-type ignition and lack of electronics, will fire and run like always.
* of course, this only applies if the systems in use at the missile silos are analog.
But a large part of your poor NETFLIX performance was intently "allowed to happen" by Verizon in the first place, even though you were paying them for quality service.
That's the part that pisses me off about this entire situation - I, the customer, am paying X amount of dollars for Y amount of bandwidth; I am not paying them to spy on me, or throttle my connection, or limit what parts of the internet I can reasonably access, nor did I ever ask for or authorize such activity. Classic bait-and-switch, except nobody gets their ass handed to them for it.
Having the first product mass-adopted is not the same thing as having the first product;
And "having the first product" is not something I ever said they did. Perhaps read what you are replying to before knee-jerking?
Perhaps you should define what "doesn't... enter existing markets. They make new ones." means, if it doesn't mean having the first product (i.e. "making" a new market for said product type).
there were shit-tons of MP3 players on the market when Apple introduced the iPod, and people bought them, their suckiness notwithstanding.
Very few people bought them. There was hardly any market at all for them. Until Apple came along
Which means the market did exist, and therefore Apple created shit, market-wise. "hardly any market" != "no market."
Maybe if you spent less time coming up with snarky accusations, and more time considering what you're saying before hitting the 'Post" button, you'd be less likely to contradict yourself in a single post, as you've done here. In fact, you could have avoided this entire conversation by wording your first post a bit differently:
Apple doesn't really "enter" existing markets - They make them profitable.
Still inaccurate, but at least it's not an outright fabrication colored by fanboyism.
I think you grossly underestimate how low the standards of many men actually are. The requirements are pretty much just a pulse, and even that has some wiggle room.
A theory easily verified by a trip to your local Wal-Mart.
Yea, mine is an el-cheapo model, no battery to be found. That's actually part of the reason I chose it, along with the cool see-through casement, and the fact that I'm too rough on watches to regularly wear expensive ones, awesome though they may be. I break 1 or 2 of them every year.
Of course there is a distinction between "POTs as infrastructure" and "POTs as an interface".
The former is likely to slowly go away in many places as maintaining paralell infrastructure for phones and data doesn't really make much sense.
The latter I don't see going away any time soon. Even when fixed phone service is delivered over fiber, coax or even cellular (some unlucky americans have been having their POTS lines replaced with fixed cellular services, YUCK) the end user interface is nearly always a POTs port. It's just that the digitisation happens at the customer premsis rather than at the telephone exchange.
One of my major clients is planning on getting away from POTS infrastructure in the next couple of years, with the intention of having a single carrier for phone and data service over a T1.
They also purchase a ton of top-of-the-line VoIP capable systems to go along with the new T1 service... and they're making me configure them as key systems that don't use any of the VoIP features... sigh...