That's the odometer. The other piece of test gear is the number-of-gallons display on the fuel pump at the gas station. This gadget is just reading the onboard diagnostics and guessing at whether or not the readings indicate inefficient driving. I suppose they could read off the VIN and use that to load a set of analyzers that have been tweaked for each model, but imagine the pain that would be to implement.
That's already factored in. Why do you think insurance policies vary by region? I'm not a fan of being billed twice for the same thing. In that example, the road is as unsafe for me as it would be for any other driver. That's not a reason to penalize an individual.
Of course it'd be disguised as a "discount program for safe drivers"
Or, as safe drivers would say, "a means to stop subsidizing bad drivers' car insurance policies"
You're assuming that someone is actually an unsafe driver is they set off this stupid gizmo. I might have to accelerate quickly to merge onto a busy highway. There are plenty of old on-ramps in my area that should be longer than they actually are. That doesn't make me an unsafe driver, all it means is that I use those particular on-ramps. Now consider drivers that have this tattler installed. They'd stop on the on-ramp to wait for a long gap in traffic so they don't get ratted out. That's actually far less safe because now they're likely to be rear-ended. It's the stupid red light cameras all over again. People panic brake at those lights to avoid a ticket and end up causing accidents.
Why would you buy this if you're trying to be green? If you're already driving efficiently, you don't need it. You'd be wasting the energy and raw materials required to construct and ship the device to you.
The only use I can see for this is for the hyper-mile-tards to put their score in their forum sigs and for insurers to penalize folks for either not having one or for setting it off repeatedly.
I can easily imagine auto insurers requesting that their insured install one of these. It could report the driving offenses right to the insurer's smartphone app. Of course it'd be disguised as a "discount program for safe drivers". One of them already has something similar using a dash cam.
Of course, that would foster the creation of an emulator that sends info to that app describing you as being a perfect driver. As an added bonus, it could fake out the emissions data for states that use the onboard diagnostics instead of a tailpipe sniff test for emissions testing.
Not only that, but the summary is assuming that everyone uses Facebook and Twitter. I don't, and I'm sure I'm not alone. A lot of people wouldn't know where to look on Twitter or Facebook to see the latest information. They may know some of the local news outlets and visit their web sites. By re-posting info from social media, the news sites are enabling the non-Facebook, non-Twitter crowd to be as up to date as everyone else. This is far more useful (aside from the danger of misinformation) than a vague news article that might only get updated every half hour or so.
My first thought on seeing news sites re-posting social media wasn't "that's crass". My first thought was "that's a really clever idea". The sites I visited also had their own content.
Remember back to 9/11. CNN was reduced to a text-only, single page site in order to handle the load. The small number of well known news sites made it difficult to access information as it unfolded. Internet forums picked up some of the slack. Now with social media coupled with the news sites, it's less likely people will hit a single point of failure or bottleneck. The data is everywhere, pick your aggregator. In the case of emergency, this seems like a good thing.
She refused the store's request for her to leave. The store calls the cops. When the cops arrive, why wouldn't they also ask her to leave? It's not like it takes a lot of effort on their part.
The only way out I can see would be if the business made some sort of a citizen's arrest and brought the people to the police themselves instead of calling on the police do it. I doubt there's a company out there dumb enough to try it.
Though in practice, I've never seen anyone arrested for trespass for being asked to leave and not complying before the police arrived (unless there was some other circumstance, like breaking and entering or vandalism). If it has happened, I'd like to hear about it so I can stop pretending it never happens, but at this moment, as far as I know, there has never been a case in US law where a person on open private property was arrested for trespass for not leaving when asked by someone other than a police officer.
Isn't it better to know that a student was learning disabled?
That's not for us to decide on behalf of someone else. If they want to bring it up with the potential employer, that's their business.
As for being accessible to "the school system", that *is* the federal government.
No, that's typically the town with some state oversight. The feds are overstepping their boundaries by interfering with them.
As for the right to privacy, just like a person walking on a public street has no right to prohibit people from photographing or listening to them, a student in a public school should have no right to prohibit the taxpayer from observing them.
What? Are you going to stick cameras in the stalls of public restrooms too? I mean.. they're paid for by taxpayer money, right? How do we know what's going on there if there's no video record?
Now the bar codes - that's an interesting idea.
Is this your gimmick account?
Imagine, for example, if instead of a right to privacy, we asserted a right to *identity* - that is, you could arbitrarily change your identity at any time, to something unattached to your previous identities.
You already have a right to your identity.. ever hear of "identity theft"? You can also change your name if you like. Heck, you can even post as anonymous coward.. which might be advisable in your case.
You're suggesting with your village parable that there can be only two types of information. Information that is public, and that which is private. Student records are in between. Those with an actual purpose get to see them. Parents, for example. They can also be shared by the student with colleges. The taxpayers of a town and state have a right to a statistical summary of certain data to gauge the school's performance, but they have no business accessing data of individual students, not if it can be matched to a particular student.
What next? Do I have to post my performance reviews from work? I don't work for the government, but I do pay taxes. I might be slacking off or something. Off to the gulag! And no, that's not interesting and it's not something we should do. Good grief.
You can't see harm? If a student is tagged as learning disabled and it's published to that database, it could have irreparable harm to their future. What employer would choose that person as a new hire over one that hasn't been tagged? Even if it later turns out to be false, that's as permanent as a glitch on a person's credit report. Heck, we had people wanting President Obama's college transcripts. Well, they can't get that.. but they'd be able to get any public school records (assuming he went to a public school). It's pointless data, but parts of the public would run wild with it regardless.
This data should not be accessible to the federal government at all. It should not be accessible to anyone other than the school system, the student, and the parents. It should also be destroyed by the student's request upon reaching the age of eighteen.
There is no accountability to be had from this data. It's entered by the same people in the same system that you wish to hold accountable. That'd be like having a tax cheat perform their own audit. As for surrender of rights, this is an all-out assault on the right to privacy. Would you like to barcode the nation's children as well? It'd make it that much easier to pull up their data.
There's a difference between able-bodied people living in generational welfare and children going to government funded schools. Our country was set up such that the states had a duty to provide education to the nation's children. I agree with the broader point you're making, but not this specific instance. Regardless of whatever the parents are up to, there should be no interference or surrender of rights by having a child attend one school versus another. This database doesn't get you any accountability. Test scores, attendance and such are recorded by the same system you wish to monitor. It's not useful and comes at a significant sacrifice of privacy rights.
Government funded research should be public, other than for research that would significantly affect our national security. Sex offenders should be private if they are no longer on parole/probation. If the system says they have completed their sentence, that's it. Personally, I'd rather see most of them executed, but that's not likely to happen. I don't agree with the courts letting them free if they're still a risk to society. This public registry thing they're doing does not protect the public. You can't escape them, nor should anyone feel obligated to.
I see the moderator nazis nuked your first comment. Pity. This is a valid avenue of discussion related to the OP. -1 disagree! -1 disagree!
Children don't have a choice of where they go to school. The parents send them. If your parents insisted you go to government funded school, would you want a database like that tracking your every move and broadcasting it to anyone and everyone? What if you had learning disabilities? Still no problem?
They show up with guns. This incident was a prolonged siege that took place in NH. They're not poster children, especially if you heard their interviews on local radio, but none the less, it proves the point.
How much money was wasted on the Microsoft trial, and what, if anything, was actually accomplished?
This is a problem for the market. iTunes had a similar issue with music until Amazon started selling tracks without DRM and charging less for them. This isn't a monopoly situation, this a ripe opportunity for competition.
If that's true, then the courts show throw the case out. The courts shouldn't be hearing cases that hinge on hypothetical future crimes. If anything, this would be a matter for the legislature.
I don't see what DRM has to do with this. I would think that file formats are the issue. Kindles can read raw.mobi files among other formats. I assume other e-readers can do the same. I don't know of a single reader that ONLY supports DRM content. It could be onerous for an independent to support a ton of different formats, but I don't see what barrier optional DRM creates.
Even if they somehow get to argue this in court, Amazon has an out. I've seen material lately on their site that is marked "At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software applied." Look up "Bowl of Heaven" as an example.
I think we're in agreement then. Once the contract is up, absolutely they should unlock the phone. I have a suspicion that people are wanting more than that.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I thought the law dealt only with phones that are still under contract.
That's the thing, isn't it? They're locking it to ensure that you pay the amount you agreed to. I "own" a home, but the deed is "locked" until I pay off the mortgage. I "own" a car, but the title is "locked" until I pay off the car loan. There are finance companies that can actually remotely disable a vehicle if the loan payments aren't being made (there were/. stories on this).
You can already replace the battery on phones yourself if it's not a sealed up iPhone. There's no reason you couldn't have a screen replaced or other similar service done. To me, and to the person I replied to, this seems like an attempt by the people to get a brand new smartphone for $100 with contract and then immediately walk away from the contract leaving the carriers at a loss. I don't cry for the carriers because they do a lot of awful things, but that doesn't make screwing them on a subsidized phone a correct thing to do.
If they separated the phone subsidy from the wireless contract and called the subsidy a loan, do you think this argument would go away? I don't know. I don't think that's what people are really after.
Your comment deserves to be posted right below the summary. If folks did get the government to force carriers to only provide unlocked phones, say bye bye to paying for a pricey phone over time. Everyone will be stuck either paying full price or leasing the phone and never owning it. The only thing that should be required of carriers is that once the contract has reached its end date, they unlock the phone. I believe the bigger US carriers already do that.
Slashdot Mirror
How often do these things fall out of the sky, and does the added revenue offset the lives lost when they do?
Ummm, the whole point of drones is, they're unmanned. There may be loss of money when they fail, but not life.
You're assuming that they don't hit anything when they fall out of the sky.
Not all opponents of the president are racist.
On the other hand, all of the racists are opponents of the president.
Are you sure about that?
"According to CNN exit polls, 93% of African-Americans, 71% of Hispanics and 73% of Asians supported Obama over Romney."
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/09/blacks-outvoted-whites-in-2012-the-first-time-on-record/
You're condemning all the people at the rallies by referring to some forum posts as evidence?
If people made that kind of sweeping generalization using comments here, imagine what they'd be saying about the computing industry.
That's the odometer. The other piece of test gear is the number-of-gallons display on the fuel pump at the gas station. This gadget is just reading the onboard diagnostics and guessing at whether or not the readings indicate inefficient driving. I suppose they could read off the VIN and use that to load a set of analyzers that have been tweaked for each model, but imagine the pain that would be to implement.
That's already factored in. Why do you think insurance policies vary by region? I'm not a fan of being billed twice for the same thing. In that example, the road is as unsafe for me as it would be for any other driver. That's not a reason to penalize an individual.
Of course it'd be disguised as a "discount program for safe drivers"
Or, as safe drivers would say, "a means to stop subsidizing bad drivers' car insurance policies"
You're assuming that someone is actually an unsafe driver is they set off this stupid gizmo. I might have to accelerate quickly to merge onto a busy highway. There are plenty of old on-ramps in my area that should be longer than they actually are. That doesn't make me an unsafe driver, all it means is that I use those particular on-ramps. Now consider drivers that have this tattler installed. They'd stop on the on-ramp to wait for a long gap in traffic so they don't get ratted out. That's actually far less safe because now they're likely to be rear-ended. It's the stupid red light cameras all over again. People panic brake at those lights to avoid a ticket and end up causing accidents.
Yea, that's the one I was thinking of.
Why would you buy this if you're trying to be green? If you're already driving efficiently, you don't need it. You'd be wasting the energy and raw materials required to construct and ship the device to you.
The only use I can see for this is for the hyper-mile-tards to put their score in their forum sigs and for insurers to penalize folks for either not having one or for setting it off repeatedly.
I can easily imagine auto insurers requesting that their insured install one of these. It could report the driving offenses right to the insurer's smartphone app. Of course it'd be disguised as a "discount program for safe drivers". One of them already has something similar using a dash cam.
Of course, that would foster the creation of an emulator that sends info to that app describing you as being a perfect driver. As an added bonus, it could fake out the emissions data for states that use the onboard diagnostics instead of a tailpipe sniff test for emissions testing.
Ahh, technology.
Not only that, but the summary is assuming that everyone uses Facebook and Twitter. I don't, and I'm sure I'm not alone. A lot of people wouldn't know where to look on Twitter or Facebook to see the latest information. They may know some of the local news outlets and visit their web sites. By re-posting info from social media, the news sites are enabling the non-Facebook, non-Twitter crowd to be as up to date as everyone else. This is far more useful (aside from the danger of misinformation) than a vague news article that might only get updated every half hour or so.
My first thought on seeing news sites re-posting social media wasn't "that's crass". My first thought was "that's a really clever idea". The sites I visited also had their own content.
Remember back to 9/11. CNN was reduced to a text-only, single page site in order to handle the load. The small number of well known news sites made it difficult to access information as it unfolded. Internet forums picked up some of the slack. Now with social media coupled with the news sites, it's less likely people will hit a single point of failure or bottleneck. The data is everywhere, pick your aggregator. In the case of emergency, this seems like a good thing.
That's a semantic argument, isn't it?
She refused the store's request for her to leave. The store calls the cops. When the cops arrive, why wouldn't they also ask her to leave? It's not like it takes a lot of effort on their part.
The only way out I can see would be if the business made some sort of a citizen's arrest and brought the people to the police themselves instead of calling on the police do it. I doubt there's a company out there dumb enough to try it.
Though in practice, I've never seen anyone arrested for trespass for being asked to leave and not complying before the police arrived (unless there was some other circumstance, like breaking and entering or vandalism). If it has happened, I'd like to hear about it so I can stop pretending it never happens, but at this moment, as far as I know, there has never been a case in US law where a person on open private property was arrested for trespass for not leaving when asked by someone other than a police officer.
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/12/12/video-shows-nashua-police-using-taser-on-woman-after-iphone-dispute/
Yep, it was on the front page not too long ago.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/03/04/135248/100-million-student-database-worries-parents
Interesting point - arguably already a reality, since the rich already can pay for additional privacy today :)
Not really. Ever heard of "paparazzi"? This maybe true for non-celebrity rich people, if there is actually such a thing.
Isn't it better to know that a student was learning disabled?
That's not for us to decide on behalf of someone else. If they want to bring it up with the potential employer, that's their business.
As for being accessible to "the school system", that *is* the federal government.
No, that's typically the town with some state oversight. The feds are overstepping their boundaries by interfering with them.
As for the right to privacy, just like a person walking on a public street has no right to prohibit people from photographing or listening to them, a student in a public school should have no right to prohibit the taxpayer from observing them.
What? Are you going to stick cameras in the stalls of public restrooms too? I mean.. they're paid for by taxpayer money, right? How do we know what's going on there if there's no video record?
Now the bar codes - that's an interesting idea.
Is this your gimmick account?
Imagine, for example, if instead of a right to privacy, we asserted a right to *identity* - that is, you could arbitrarily change your identity at any time, to something unattached to your previous identities.
You already have a right to your identity.. ever hear of "identity theft"? You can also change your name if you like. Heck, you can even post as anonymous coward.. which might be advisable in your case.
You're suggesting with your village parable that there can be only two types of information. Information that is public, and that which is private. Student records are in between. Those with an actual purpose get to see them. Parents, for example. They can also be shared by the student with colleges. The taxpayers of a town and state have a right to a statistical summary of certain data to gauge the school's performance, but they have no business accessing data of individual students, not if it can be matched to a particular student.
What next? Do I have to post my performance reviews from work? I don't work for the government, but I do pay taxes. I might be slacking off or something. Off to the gulag! And no, that's not interesting and it's not something we should do. Good grief.
You can't see harm? If a student is tagged as learning disabled and it's published to that database, it could have irreparable harm to their future. What employer would choose that person as a new hire over one that hasn't been tagged? Even if it later turns out to be false, that's as permanent as a glitch on a person's credit report. Heck, we had people wanting President Obama's college transcripts. Well, they can't get that.. but they'd be able to get any public school records (assuming he went to a public school). It's pointless data, but parts of the public would run wild with it regardless.
This data should not be accessible to the federal government at all. It should not be accessible to anyone other than the school system, the student, and the parents. It should also be destroyed by the student's request upon reaching the age of eighteen.
There is no accountability to be had from this data. It's entered by the same people in the same system that you wish to hold accountable. That'd be like having a tax cheat perform their own audit. As for surrender of rights, this is an all-out assault on the right to privacy. Would you like to barcode the nation's children as well? It'd make it that much easier to pull up their data.
There's a difference between able-bodied people living in generational welfare and children going to government funded schools. Our country was set up such that the states had a duty to provide education to the nation's children. I agree with the broader point you're making, but not this specific instance. Regardless of whatever the parents are up to, there should be no interference or surrender of rights by having a child attend one school versus another. This database doesn't get you any accountability. Test scores, attendance and such are recorded by the same system you wish to monitor. It's not useful and comes at a significant sacrifice of privacy rights.
Government funded research should be public, other than for research that would significantly affect our national security. Sex offenders should be private if they are no longer on parole/probation. If the system says they have completed their sentence, that's it. Personally, I'd rather see most of them executed, but that's not likely to happen. I don't agree with the courts letting them free if they're still a risk to society. This public registry thing they're doing does not protect the public. You can't escape them, nor should anyone feel obligated to.
I see the moderator nazis nuked your first comment. Pity. This is a valid avenue of discussion related to the OP.
-1 disagree!
-1 disagree!
Children don't have a choice of where they go to school. The parents send them. If your parents insisted you go to government funded school, would you want a database like that tracking your every move and broadcasting it to anyone and everyone? What if you had learning disabilities? Still no problem?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_and_Elaine_Brown
They show up with guns. This incident was a prolonged siege that took place in NH. They're not poster children, especially if you heard their interviews on local radio, but none the less, it proves the point.
How much money was wasted on the Microsoft trial, and what, if anything, was actually accomplished?
This is a problem for the market. iTunes had a similar issue with music until Amazon started selling tracks without DRM and charging less for them. This isn't a monopoly situation, this a ripe opportunity for competition.
If that's true, then the courts show throw the case out. The courts shouldn't be hearing cases that hinge on hypothetical future crimes. If anything, this would be a matter for the legislature.
I don't see what DRM has to do with this. I would think that file formats are the issue. Kindles can read raw .mobi files among other formats. I assume other e-readers can do the same. I don't know of a single reader that ONLY supports DRM content. It could be onerous for an independent to support a ton of different formats, but I don't see what barrier optional DRM creates.
Even if they somehow get to argue this in court, Amazon has an out. I've seen material lately on their site that is marked "At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software applied." Look up "Bowl of Heaven" as an example.
I think we're in agreement then. Once the contract is up, absolutely they should unlock the phone. I have a suspicion that people are wanting more than that.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I thought the law dealt only with phones that are still under contract.
That's the thing, isn't it? They're locking it to ensure that you pay the amount you agreed to. I "own" a home, but the deed is "locked" until I pay off the mortgage. I "own" a car, but the title is "locked" until I pay off the car loan. There are finance companies that can actually remotely disable a vehicle if the loan payments aren't being made (there were /. stories on this).
You can already replace the battery on phones yourself if it's not a sealed up iPhone. There's no reason you couldn't have a screen replaced or other similar service done. To me, and to the person I replied to, this seems like an attempt by the people to get a brand new smartphone for $100 with contract and then immediately walk away from the contract leaving the carriers at a loss. I don't cry for the carriers because they do a lot of awful things, but that doesn't make screwing them on a subsidized phone a correct thing to do.
If they separated the phone subsidy from the wireless contract and called the subsidy a loan, do you think this argument would go away? I don't know. I don't think that's what people are really after.
Your comment deserves to be posted right below the summary. If folks did get the government to force carriers to only provide unlocked phones, say bye bye to paying for a pricey phone over time. Everyone will be stuck either paying full price or leasing the phone and never owning it. The only thing that should be required of carriers is that once the contract has reached its end date, they unlock the phone. I believe the bigger US carriers already do that.