none of the hell that comes along with modern air travel...
I don't know how long that will last, truly. I have heard rumblings that TSA is really eyeing up Amtrak as a great expansion to their mini empire. Ah, yes, a few years old but: http://www.dhs.gov/xnews/releases/press_release_0401.shtm
I'm waiting for the first train to get blown up in the US. I suspect the only reason it hasn't happened is because no one rides trains here.
I can't wait until the federal government decides to try to build fencing around major rail corridors.
The cops pretty much ONLY care about the speed you're going.
While I understand your frustration, you're wrong about this. It will be enforced, because it's easy to prove and is quick money.
For example, a couple of years ago, police in Maryland were using night vision equipment (bought by Homeland Security grant money, of course) to find and cite drivers without seatbelts at night.
Believe you me, if this ends up being law (which it will be in Maryland starting tomorrow), it *will* be enforced. Especially with state budges running as tight as they are these days.
Hmmm... Let me add a spin to what you said: (yes, I know this irritates some people, sorry...)
"You never need to listen to the radio while driving. You can pull your ass over to listen to a song, it's not that hard to take an extra 5 minutes to get to your destination. Anyone saying otherwise is arguing semantics. Name one instant (sic) where you need to listen to the ratio while driving without pulling off somewhere and stopping your car."
In my egotistical opinion, bans on texting and phone usage are just stupid. There are tons of distractions available, and having excessive amounts of laws to ban every one of them is just downright unnecessary. We're computer people, we're SUPPOSED to be all about making code generic and re-usable.
Personally, I've had one at-fault accident. It was a distracted driving accident. I was arguing with someone over the radio. I rear ended someone (more a love tap, really), and it was my fault. For the literally tens of thousands of miles I've driven while talking on a phone, I have never had an at fault accident. In fact, I've *avoided* countless accidents while on the phone. Plenty of stupid people get on the phone and tune out the world around them. That's not the fault of the phone, that's the fault of the driver, just like it was my fault for being distracted by the radio.
I should have gotten a citation for my distracted driving. So you have two possibilities:
There is a law against distracted driving, which thus should cover texting as well
There is not a law against distracted driving, and adding a texting law would only cover texting and not the dozens of other distracted driving scenarios like mine.
So my take: Just ban distracted driving and move on. If a person is obviously distracted by operating their phone, radio, eating, shaving, reading, sexual encounters, whatever, then by all means, leverage the generic law and cite them.
Yes, the plural of anecdote is not data, I'm just trying to use my personal experience as an illustration.
How can the law which every citizen expected to comply with be allowed to exist under Copyright?
Happens all the time. Concrete example: the National Electric Code. Following it is usually mandated by law, but a copy costs a sizeable chunk of change.
I hear there's a copy on Bittorrent. I theoretically wouldn't have any moral problem whatsoever snagging a copy of it, in spite of copyright law.
It sure as hell is Christianity holding back the space program.
Odd. I'm a Christian. I work for NASA. I know several of us who work there. Among my church, most everyone whom I've ever discussed NASA with is interested in or excited about human spaceflight.
What's holding back the space program is the fact that NASA is constantly being jacked around politically, for various reasons. Always has been, and I'm afraid to say, always will be.
Space shuttle? Political jacking around (You need to play nice with the DoD and make your spacecraft serve their inane purposes as well as yours. Oh, and on a tighter budget.) Space Station? Same. It goes on and on.
Christians believe that they will be abducted by a sky-zombie and taken to fairy-land.
Aside from Scientologists, I don't really mock anyone's religion. I think they're all wrong, I think you're wrong, but I try to not be obnoxious about it. Perhaps you were trying to be funny, and I missed it.
I pay about $15/month for a phone, no long distance, 60 calls. I don't get all these folks with the $70/month phone bills.
The phone just *works*, when I dial 911, someone will definitely know where I am. When I'm on the phone chatting it up with the girlfriend, I know the dropped call is on *her* end, not mine. And I'm not using up minutes.
By my memory, I have only picked up a real, ILEC controlled landline ONCE and not had a dialtone, and that was right after a tornado.
Not to mention I can send and receive faxes.
It's an old technology, yes, but it's a well-understood, well-characterized technology that most certainly has a place at least in *my* world.
Theres not much glorious in SysAdmin job actually. Most sysadmins are underpaid, underrespected and rarely loved, but still our love for the technology (or sufficient amounts of single malt after hours) keeps us doing our thing and keeping the industry running.
I think we're also uncommonly empathetic toward plumbers.
I do get your point really. But my dad (read: the boss) would not be happy if he missed a deal cause a million people who got spoofed got 1 mail from us telling them to call us if their message wasn't spam.
...
I am not the problem, I just tackle the problem in the best way for both me and our customers.
I really, truly hope you and your dad both are victims of a joe-job some time in the near future. I'm reasonably certain that this is the only way you'll truly understand.
(Not that you'd actually see it with your current setup.)
I have NO problem with the government madating what can and can't be on your work machine if they are paying your check. This is just common sense, just as no admin with a brain would allow someone to run Kazaa or Limewire on the corporate Intranet.
I work at a government site. Said government site has extended such bans to BitTorrent, Skype, etc. Which are technically peer to peer. But have perfectly legitimate uses.
Existing security controls should already note the lack of business necessity of things like Kazaa or Limewire. No need for additional regulations, which are always poorly written and blanket mis-interpreted (or worse, ignored due to infeasability).
Come to think about it, it's not the cops job to prevent crime either.
Wait, what? Police is supposed to execute the laws which tell what people shouldn't do. It certainly isn't limited to investigating the wrongs that people have already done.
In the US, this is strangely true.
See Jessica Gonzalez vs. The United States (http://www.aclu.org/womensrights/violence/gonzalesvusa.html), as a good example of this.
Try suing the police for failing to show up when you call 911. This is one of the hotbutton issues for the gun lobby -- if the police have no legal obligation to actually protect you, then you need the means to do it yourself.
What would be the point of identifying the sounds?
It would be kind of cool if, say, my phone said: "Ahh, Lee is at church! I'll go into silent/vibrate mode. Ahh, Lee is in the bathroom! I'll go into silent/vibrate mode. Ahh, Lee is at a rock concert! I'll go full volume ring and vibrate mode. Ahh, Lee is on the motorcycle! I'll just give up even trying to alert him of a call."
There are plenty of nifty applications for this. And quite a few nefarious ones, at that. Don't poo poo it just because you can't think of an idea off the top of your head.:)
(I think they are rated for 70% capacity after 5 years, so you probably want to replace at least every 6-8 years).
Is that based on charge/discharge cycles and average annual mileage? Or is it really a time-based thing? I have a good sense that someone like me (who drives ~130 round trip for work every day) will find themselves replacing batteries every 2-3 years...
sudo mod me up
TheRaven64 is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
For example lets assume you think I'm a doctor and I write you a prescription for "Coumatetralyl" (a rat poison). I give you a sample below what I think is the lethal dose.
This is where that great legal principal of "a reasonable person" comes in.
A reasonable person should have reason to believe that rat poison has a significant potential to harm you.
Would a reasonable person have good reason to believe that emotionally tormenting another person has a significant potential to harm them?
It's an arguable point either way, but in no way is it a slam dunk guilty, IMHO.
I think it has more to do with the fact that I have to dismount my bike to come to a full stop. Unless you have a special bike, your feet don't touch the ground and you'll fall over.
Nope, you're not getting off that easy, I'm also a motorcyclist. Who stops at stop signs.:)
My point really boils down to something simple: Bicyclists so often throw the letter of the law at other motorists (the whole "we have just as much of a right to be there as a car" thing) while ignoring the letter of the law when it inconveniences them. *shrug*
Now granted, I've never met a speed limit that I abode by, but then again, I don't claim moral high ground.:)
I both bike and drive a lot, and in certain situations when biking, I admit that I will treat a stop sign as a yield instead. In my residential neighborhood, there are some stops that I can see for blocks in any direction, and it's a four way stop. Any car visible at all will reach the stop before me. If there are no visible cars at all, then I slow down as much as possible, then speed back up. It is actually safer for me to keep moving a little bit than to stop completely.
Ummm, and yeah, the same holds true for cars when there is sufficient visibility in all directions. That doesn't keep neighborhoods from lobbying to have 4-way stop signs placed on every corner, in blatant violation of MUTCD guidelines.
Slashdot Mirror
An airbus A340 seats up to 800
I think you mean an A380. An A340 seats maybe 350ish?
none of the hell that comes along with modern air travel...
I don't know how long that will last, truly. I have heard rumblings that TSA is really eyeing up Amtrak as a great expansion to their mini empire. Ah, yes, a few years old but: http://www.dhs.gov/xnews/releases/press_release_0401.shtm
I'm waiting for the first train to get blown up in the US. I suspect the only reason it hasn't happened is because no one rides trains here.
I can't wait until the federal government decides to try to build fencing around major rail corridors.
Living in a country where you can't sue people for amounts like forty million dollars for Facebook postings sounds, well, friggin ridiculous.
It sounds ridiculous in America, too.
The cops pretty much ONLY care about the speed you're going.
While I understand your frustration, you're wrong about this. It will be enforced, because it's easy to prove and is quick money.
For example, a couple of years ago, police in Maryland were using night vision equipment (bought by Homeland Security grant money, of course) to find and cite drivers without seatbelts at night.
Believe you me, if this ends up being law (which it will be in Maryland starting tomorrow), it *will* be enforced. Especially with state budges running as tight as they are these days.
hehe, I said "ratio"... durrr...
Hmmm... Let me add a spin to what you said: (yes, I know this irritates some people, sorry...)
"You never need to listen to the radio while driving. You can pull your ass over to listen to a song, it's not that hard to take an extra 5 minutes to get to your destination. Anyone saying otherwise is arguing semantics. Name one instant (sic) where you need to listen to the ratio while driving without pulling off somewhere and stopping your car."
In my egotistical opinion, bans on texting and phone usage are just stupid. There are tons of distractions available, and having excessive amounts of laws to ban every one of them is just downright unnecessary. We're computer people, we're SUPPOSED to be all about making code generic and re-usable.
Personally, I've had one at-fault accident. It was a distracted driving accident. I was arguing with someone over the radio. I rear ended someone (more a love tap, really), and it was my fault. For the literally tens of thousands of miles I've driven while talking on a phone, I have never had an at fault accident. In fact, I've *avoided* countless accidents while on the phone. Plenty of stupid people get on the phone and tune out the world around them. That's not the fault of the phone, that's the fault of the driver, just like it was my fault for being distracted by the radio.
I should have gotten a citation for my distracted driving. So you have two possibilities:
So my take: Just ban distracted driving and move on. If a person is obviously distracted by operating their phone, radio, eating, shaving, reading, sexual encounters, whatever, then by all means, leverage the generic law and cite them.
Yes, the plural of anecdote is not data, I'm just trying to use my personal experience as an illustration.
Bah, who needs that newfangled stuff. This always works for me:
msav c:
Kids these days...
How can the law which every citizen expected to comply with be allowed to exist under Copyright?
Happens all the time. Concrete example: the National Electric Code. Following it is usually mandated by law, but a copy costs a sizeable chunk of change.
I hear there's a copy on Bittorrent. I theoretically wouldn't have any moral problem whatsoever snagging a copy of it, in spite of copyright law.
Sorry, I wanted to reply to this earlier but it was a pretty insane day.
Didn't you just say you were a Christian?
Yeah, what I meant was that I believe other religions are wrong. In my head that was implicit. I was on the phone when I wrote it, sorry. :)
It sure as hell is Christianity holding back the space program.
Odd. I'm a Christian. I work for NASA. I know several of us who work there. Among my church, most everyone whom I've ever discussed NASA with is interested in or excited about human spaceflight.
What's holding back the space program is the fact that NASA is constantly being jacked around politically, for various reasons. Always has been, and I'm afraid to say, always will be.
Space shuttle? Political jacking around (You need to play nice with the DoD and make your spacecraft serve their inane purposes as well as yours. Oh, and on a tighter budget.) Space Station? Same. It goes on and on.
Christians believe that they will be abducted by a sky-zombie and taken to fairy-land.
Aside from Scientologists, I don't really mock anyone's religion. I think they're all wrong, I think you're wrong, but I try to not be obnoxious about it. Perhaps you were trying to be funny, and I missed it.
which is a rather silly thing to argue about.
Don't argue with him! He's in the top 1 percentile intelligence!
Landlines, for me, Just Work.
Likewise.
I pay about $15/month for a phone, no long distance, 60 calls. I don't get all these folks with the $70/month phone bills.
The phone just *works*, when I dial 911, someone will definitely know where I am. When I'm on the phone chatting it up with the girlfriend, I know the dropped call is on *her* end, not mine. And I'm not using up minutes.
By my memory, I have only picked up a real, ILEC controlled landline ONCE and not had a dialtone, and that was right after a tornado.
Not to mention I can send and receive faxes.
It's an old technology, yes, but it's a well-understood, well-characterized technology that most certainly has a place at least in *my* world.
Theres not much glorious in SysAdmin job actually. Most sysadmins are underpaid, underrespected and rarely loved, but still our love for the technology (or sufficient amounts of single malt after hours) keeps us doing our thing and keeping the industry running.
I think we're also uncommonly empathetic toward plumbers.
murdoch didn't become as powerful and influential as he did by completely misunderstanding new avenues of monetization.
Yeah, I mean, this is the guy who bought MySpace. And look what he's done with it! He is a force to be reckoned with! :)
Speeding is bad too - we should give all people caught speeding jail time.
You have clearly never been to Virginia.
I do get your point really. But my dad (read: the boss) would not be happy if he missed a deal cause a million people who got spoofed got 1 mail from us telling them to call us if their message wasn't spam.
...
I am not the problem, I just tackle the problem in the best way for both me and our customers.
I really, truly hope you and your dad both are victims of a joe-job some time in the near future. I'm reasonably certain that this is the only way you'll truly understand.
(Not that you'd actually see it with your current setup.)
I have NO problem with the government madating what can and can't be on your work machine if they are paying your check. This is just common sense, just as no admin with a brain would allow someone to run Kazaa or Limewire on the corporate Intranet.
I work at a government site. Said government site has extended such bans to BitTorrent, Skype, etc. Which are technically peer to peer. But have perfectly legitimate uses.
Existing security controls should already note the lack of business necessity of things like Kazaa or Limewire. No need for additional regulations, which are always poorly written and blanket mis-interpreted (or worse, ignored due to infeasability).
Similar thing happened to the mayor of Berwyn Heights, MD. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/30/AR2008073003299.html
oops!
Come to think about it, it's not the cops job to prevent crime either.
Wait, what? Police is supposed to execute the laws which tell what people shouldn't do. It certainly isn't limited to investigating the wrongs that people have already done.
In the US, this is strangely true.
See Jessica Gonzalez vs. The United States (http://www.aclu.org/womensrights/violence/gonzalesvusa.html), as a good example of this.
Try suing the police for failing to show up when you call 911. This is one of the hotbutton issues for the gun lobby -- if the police have no legal obligation to actually protect you, then you need the means to do it yourself.
What would be the point of identifying the sounds?
It would be kind of cool if, say, my phone said: "Ahh, Lee is at church! I'll go into silent/vibrate mode. Ahh, Lee is in the bathroom! I'll go into silent/vibrate mode. Ahh, Lee is at a rock concert! I'll go full volume ring and vibrate mode. Ahh, Lee is on the motorcycle! I'll just give up even trying to alert him of a call."
There are plenty of nifty applications for this. And quite a few nefarious ones, at that. Don't poo poo it just because you can't think of an idea off the top of your head. :)
(I think they are rated for 70% capacity after 5 years, so you probably want to replace at least every 6-8 years).
Is that based on charge/discharge cycles and average annual mileage? Or is it really a time-based thing? I have a good sense that someone like me (who drives ~130 round trip for work every day) will find themselves replacing batteries every 2-3 years...
sudo mod me up
TheRaven64 is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
IANAL.
For example lets assume you think I'm a doctor and I write you a prescription for "Coumatetralyl" (a rat poison). I give you a sample below what I think is the lethal dose.
This is where that great legal principal of "a reasonable person" comes in.
A reasonable person should have reason to believe that rat poison has a significant potential to harm you.
Would a reasonable person have good reason to believe that emotionally tormenting another person has a significant potential to harm them?
It's an arguable point either way, but in no way is it a slam dunk guilty, IMHO.
Fair enough to me. :)
Quite honestly, I'm rarely bothered by cyclists anyhow. I'm pretty good at passing them safely. Used to bicycle a lot myself, so I know how to do it.
Happy trails!
I think it has more to do with the fact that I have to dismount my bike to come to a full stop. Unless you have a special bike, your feet don't touch the ground and you'll fall over.
Nope, you're not getting off that easy, I'm also a motorcyclist. Who stops at stop signs. :)
My point really boils down to something simple: Bicyclists so often throw the letter of the law at other motorists (the whole "we have just as much of a right to be there as a car" thing) while ignoring the letter of the law when it inconveniences them. *shrug*
Now granted, I've never met a speed limit that I abode by, but then again, I don't claim moral high ground. :)
I both bike and drive a lot, and in certain situations when biking, I admit that I will treat a stop sign as a yield instead. In my residential neighborhood, there are some stops that I can see for blocks in any direction, and it's a four way stop. Any car visible at all will reach the stop before me. If there are no visible cars at all, then I slow down as much as possible, then speed back up. It is actually safer for me to keep moving a little bit than to stop completely.
Ummm, and yeah, the same holds true for cars when there is sufficient visibility in all directions. That doesn't keep neighborhoods from lobbying to have 4-way stop signs placed on every corner, in blatant violation of MUTCD guidelines.
Sorry, that argument doesn't hold water.