Any given thing should be cheaper now (in real terms) then in the 1960s. And it is...if you look at SpaceX.
SpaceX is doing things that have already been done. They aren't breaking major new technical ground. They are breaking new economic ground by improving already existing technology. Don't get me wrong, that's SUPER important but SpaceX isn't going to send us to Mars. They aren't working on that problem in any meaningful way because they can't. No private company can make a credible business case for going to Mars. The economic and physical risks are large and mostly unquantified, the cost is enormous, the technology needed is substantial and well beyond any one company to develop, etc. No business could possibly hope to do it.
The ONLY institution with enough money and the ability to absorb the risk of pure exploration is a nation state. They might contract SpaceX to do something but the only realistic route to the first boots on Mars is through NASA or some other nation's equivalent agency.
Showing NASA's budget as a percentage of the entire Federal budget isn't a very good comparison
There are plenty of others if you prefer. Pick any one of them. My point stands. We are spending less on the space program by whatever inflation adjusted measure you care to use. Thinking we are going to get to Mars which is MUCH harder than getting to the moon while spending less is pretty naive I think.
I think more important things need to be done on Earth then a sending people to Mars. So far, all the unmanned vehicles have not provided any real reason to send a human to Mars.
Sure they have. It's another freakin' planet. Or haven't you seen the photographs? You think another planet wouldn't be awfully interesting to explore in person?
It's like not being able to go to Hawaii so let's go to Disney World again. We go go to Mars many times for the price of one human trip. Why would we do that? To plant yet another flag?
Because we would hugely advance human knowledge by going. On trip involving humans would require advances in medicine, life support, shielding, power, communications, propulsion, ground transport, and even possibly agriculture just to start with. More technology would have to be developed than you will see from 100 years of robotic probes. You also will get FAR more excitement about humans going. Only science geeks really give a shit about sending probes but pretty much everyone will be interested (at least for a while) in a human setting foot on Mars. Sending a person to Mars can inspire entire generations of engineers and scientists. Robots not so much.
We can make the choice to not invest in sending people outside of low earth orbit but I think that is extremely foolish and short sighted. A manned space program is among the very best investments in our future I can think of. Economically, socially and experientially.
The problem is not a particular president or a particular Congress. It's the fact that space missions have, somehow, become politicized.
When you are spending taxpayer money it is ALWAYS political. This was true back during the Apollo era too. We just ignored it because of the Cold War.
The real problem is that to fund something like a space program you either need to be doing it for national security (see Cold War) or there needs to be economic opportunity. The economic opportunity is actually there but unfortunately the benefits are indirect and long term which makes it a hard sell to politicians who only care about the next election cycle.
The panel found a number of areas of concern surrounding the Journey to Mars program, virtually all of them stemming from inadequate funding.
They needed a panel to figure this out? Shit, I have nothing at all to do with NASA and I thought that was bleeding obvious from the cheap seats where I sit. The Apollo program required funding about 4X what we see today as a percent of federal budget. I don't really see us getting back to the moon within my lifetime (much less mars) without a very substantial budget increase. It's been 40 years since we landed on the moon and we haven't been out of low orbit since. I see nothing in the current plans that will change that.
You making more money than you need to live is not particularly important to society either
What does a feeling of independence have to do with actually making cash? You or I making more money absolutely is important to society. It employs more people, it results in more taxes and raises all boats. The fact that people some people feel a bit of independence by getting a car is nice but doesn't matter nearly as much as the economic utility they achieve with one.
Actually, no. Many people can stop a car faster than relying on ABS alone will.
That's simply not true unless you are talking about specific conditions. I'm an automotive engineer. I work with this stuff. UNDER THE RIGHT CONDITIONS (those are important words) ABS will stop you faster. It's not a matter of opinion. It's a demonstrated fact. Car companies didn't put that technology into cars because it performs worse. People cannot pump the brakes faster than ABS. Any situation where pumping the brakes would be helpful you will stop faster with ABS. There are cases where ABS isn't helpful but you can find corner cases for pretty much any technology. The net result however is not in dispute. Other safety technologies are similar.
Anyone who can keep the tires at the limit of traction can easily stop faster than this.
A specious argument. You are talking about a razor edge there under a different set of conditions with a fairly small percentage of the driving population. Fact is that most people are not professional drivers (or even close to it) and they certainly aren't good keeping the tires at the limit of traction nor do they want to. I understand the appeal of wanting a car you can drive right to the edge (I own a sports car for a reason) but asking most drivers to do that is a recipe for thousands of needless deaths a year. We put technologies like ABS on cars to keep people away from the limit of traction because most people demonstrably cannot handle it.
It is hard to argue when you put "in the right conditions" as a preface to your remark...
That's why it is there. ANYTHING in automotive engineering is condition dependent. ABS isn't useful in every case - it is useful in corner cases. That's also why it doesn't kick on most of the time. You can find some even narrower corner cases where ABS degrades performance but there are a lot fewer of those.
In summary, the guy you are responding to loves his high quality, well tuned, and very sharp tools. In summary to the summary, you are not an artisan and could care less about the tool that you have to use and want lots of safeguards built in... and wanting to require such things of people who are masters at using the tool. Because society.
Wow, you have awfully detailed opinions about someone you know nothing about. The guy I'm responding to has an outdated notion of "controlling his car" which the facts suggest is almost certainly more perception than probable fact. I have owned a number of very fast sporty cars and I like driving them fast but I have no illusion about control, or independence or driving talent. I care very much about my "tools" and I want the very best ones available which means getting something that improves my ability to handle them. If you want to pretend that you are such a talented driver that you don't ever need the technologies baked into cars these days please tell me which Formula 1 team you drive for.
We're talking about the general public. Asking/allowing them to driver cars too close to their performance envelope is simply dumb most of the time. People die because of that every day needlessly. If you want to blather on about artisans and other nonsense, fine but my point stands. Just because you like risking your life (for art?) doesn't mean you should have the right to risk mine on a public road. Cars are transportation first and foremost. Whatever else they represent is a second order effect. If I have to sacrifice a bit of my own driving pleasure so that we can save a few thousand lives then so be it.
A car used to be about independence, it was really the BIG first step in becoming and independent person from your parents, and was a symbol of individual freedom.
Independence comes in many forms. A car is merely one way to get it. It's a state of mind. Are kids in NYC somehow less independent just because they don't need a car to get around their city? I live near Detroit and people celebrate cars around here but it's more of a fetish than a practical necessity. Cars are transportation first and foremost. Any sense of independence you get from them is secondary and to a large degree perceptual.
My question is, are you really that scared? Are you that scared of your driving ability to avoid wrecks? Are you that worried about people around you?
No, No, Yes. But if you asked me about other people my answers would be different. Put my grandmother behind the wheel and the answers are Yes, Yes and Yes. And frankly you aren't scared because you are accustomed to how things work. The objective safety record of cars is rather bad and much of that is based in human error.
I want to be the one in control of my car. I like to drive.
That's nice but not really particularly important to society. I like to drive too but most of the time I wouldn't miss it, particularly when commuting. Much of the time driving is merely a waste of time and not much fun. You might be a great driver and you might like to drive but the objective evidence is clear. Lots of people are NOT good drivers. Lots of people who are generally good drivers make mistakes while driving. Tens of thousands of people die in auto accidents each year and many of these are possibly avoidable with automation. Furthermore we waste vast numbers of hours driving that could be put to better use. Your desire to have some fun driving a car is understandable but there will be ways to maintain that in the future.
I like to be in control. I like to have a car that stops as well as it accelerates and handles. I don't want a computer intervening in my driving.
Really? The plain fact of the matter is that without computer assistance your ability to control the vehicle is limited, particularly in difficult corner cases. In the right conditions you WILL stop faster with ABS brakes than without. In the right conditions you WILL accelerate better with traction control than without. Etc. With a well designed computer assistance you will be a measurably better and safer driver. I love computer controls in cars that help me drive better and I love them even more in other people's cars so they don't crash and hurt anyone.
Think of it this way. Fighter jets are computer controlled but nobody complains about the computer interfering with the pilot's control.
Aren't fallout and collateral damage the main problems people have with nuclear weapons?
No. The main problem is that they are weapons of mass destruction that can vaporize entire cities in an instant. They are weapons that are specifically designed to kill a large number of people over a large area very quickly. THAT is the main problem with them. Let's not lose sight of why nukes are scary. The fallout merely adds the problem.
The term collateral damage when applied to nukes is kind of meaningless. The entire point of a nuke is to destroy everything in a rather large radius. There really is no such thing as collateral damage when using explosions of that size because you are unavoidably and intentionally targeting non-combatants and infrastructure when you make the decision to use one. Yes this remains true for "tactical nukes" too.
I was a "free range" kid long before that term existed.
I think most of us who are adults now were. The constantly hovering parent phenomena seems to have been in the last 10-15 years or so. People have gotten weirdly over protective of their spawn even when it clearly doesn't matter.
Personally I think referring to humans as "free range" is pretty degrading. I'm guessing it was meant as a joke but it isn't a very funny one.
Today Li-ion cells have got so many layers of belts and suspenders it's perfectly safe to be carrying a 3500 mAh battery in your pocket -- as I am dong right now.
That typo could not possibly have been an accident...
If I learned anything from watching Star Trek, the secondary regulator should kick in when the primary regulator overheats.
Nah, they just fix everything by realigning the dilithium crystal chamber. Unless the Particle Of The Week can be invoked and then they use that instead.
Statistically, children are far more likely to run into pedophiles in their family or in positions of authority than randomly on the street.
True but any teacher will be happy to provide all the empirical and anecdotal evidence you want. I'm on staff at a local school (part time) and I run into kids who are abused all the time to varying degrees. It is almost always from a parent or near relative. I had a kid I worked with just last year who had to go live with his aunt because his dad was an abusive drunk. (Fortunately the kid was 6'2", weighed 230lbs and a good wrestler and was capable of defending himself) Strangers rarely are the problem kids have to deal with. In most cases I'd worry more about certain parents being with some of these kids than the kids walking themselves.
There's some good news for "free-range" parents and fans of children being allowed to walk places on their own.
If you refer to someone who gives their children the freedom to be out of your sight for more than 5 seconds as "free range parents" then you are an asshole. If you are someone who calls the cops on someone else because their kids are walking to school, then you should be in jail yourself for harassment. I spent my childhood roaming my neighborhood with my friends exploring and it was fine. We were perfectly safe where we lived and my parents knew that. It would be fine for most children in most places. I walked almost a half mile to catch the bus by myself every morning, year round.
A recently approved federal education law will allow students to take alternative forms of transportation to and from school with parental permission. Fastcoexist reports: "Relax, parents. Now you can allow your kids to walk, ride a bike, or take a bus to school, without you or your children getting arrested.
I'm not aware of ANY location where children are required by law to arrive at school escorted by an adult. I work in a school part time as staff and we have children coming and going on their own routinely. Maybe it's different in some other places but I see kids walk, bike and drive themselves to school all the time with nobody getting arrested or in a huff. Most are delivered by bus or by a parent but if a kid lives withing walking distance of the school why shouldn't they be able to go themselves?
And before anyone talks about "throwing your vote away" consider this: Your vote is only wasted when you don't use it.
A vote not used is merely a vote abdicated to someone else and it still has an effect. You are giving more weight to the votes of others by not voting. Not voting is in practical terms, still a vote. It just is less direct.
The reason Iowa is chosen as the first primary is because it is supposed to represent "middle America," and give an idea of how a candidate will fare in a general election.
If you wanted a state that does represents the general election the best choice would probably be Ohio. It's demographics are eerily similar to the national demographics and if votes that way too. Generally as Ohio goes, so does the election and it's the very definition of a swing state. Iowa has a lot of farms but not that much industry. Ohio has both. It's more liberal in the north and conservative down south just like the national elections.
What is it with US politics. Do these people actually go out there and actually talk to real people.
Not really, no. And many of the ones they do talk to are fairly hysterical, racist, fearful and dumb. The republican base in the last few years seems to be particularly panicky and nuts. Used to be that the republicans were pragmatic economically and had a wing of the party where the kooks hung out that could be safely ignored. Now the tail is waging the dog and the religious nuts and the tea party loonies have gained enough power that they can't be ignored anymore. Combined with gerrymandered voting districts we've had both parties (but especially the republicans) getting more extreme for the last 10-15 years. If a politician isn't "pure" enough for their party they never make it out of the primary election.
Is the fear mongering that effective that people are actually wanting this?
Short answer? Sadly, yes.
Long answer? We've got a lot of dumb, fearful people who are religious bigots and racists. They'll vote for anything that gives them a way to act on these us vs them tribal fears and the mechanisms to keep the politicians from responding to these idiots are broken or badly damaged.
All this talk of spending more in surveillance and military makes me sick. Education is where money needs to be spent. Local infrastructure, innovation...
I couldn't not agree more. Education, infrastructure, research, clean energy, etc are badly needed. A larger military and surveillance state is not. We're borrowing to pay for a military that is way larger than we need and an inefficient and badly designed health care system.
"Edward Snowden is a traitor. He took our intelligence information and gave it to the Chinese and gave it to the Russians. We cannot afford to have a commander-in-chief who thinks people like Edward Snowden are doing a good public service."
See I prefer a Commander In Chief who actually treats the civil rights of US citizens as something more than an inconvenience to be trampled over at their whim. We don't need more "intelligence tools" that demonstrably do not make us any safer but manage to oppress us in the process.
I look forward to the day when we have a republican candidate for president who doesn't ear big shoes, a colorful wig and have a red squeaky nose.
However, modern logistics and tracking mean that it doesn't have to be a mystery, and stage of a product's production can in theory be traced
Sure it can. IF someone is willing to pay the cost of doing the tracking. What? You thought material traceability was free? Someone has to keep track of all this stuff, store the records, make them available, audit them in some cases, etc. Even if you do all that there is basically no way to force your suppliers to comply unless you are a vital part of their business. A company like GM can force suppliers to track stuff if they think it is important enough. A company like mine (small manufacturer) will be studiously ignored.
The fact is however that most people aren't willing to pay for the overhead of a fully traceable supply chain. The benefit rarely outweighs the cost. Right now my company is getting routine requests for Conflict Minerals certifications which are mandated under US law under the Dodd-Frank Act. However it has little effect other than to burden business with pointless overhead for something most have no control over. The goal is to interfere with the financing of groups like the Congolese National Army. In practice it has had little meaningful effect on the finances of these groups but has created a lot of cost for businesses.
Pirating is copyright infringement. Why does the government even protect copyright?
The reason we have copyright (and patents) is because of the free rider problem. If you have a way to deal with that problem more effectively then maybe we can do away with copyright. But so far nobody has come up with a better solution. The free rider problem has huge and measurable economic costs. It results in Pareto Inefficiency which I recommend you study.
Many people would rather live in a world without copyright.
Many people want all kinds of crazy things. Doesn't make it a good idea.
In that sense I think anarchy would be great.
So go live someplace like Somalia where anarchy is basically the de-facto system of government. I think you'll find it isn't so pleasant as you imagine.
Having footage of actual events is generally a good thing but my worry is that the footage may get edited in "post production" so to speak. Look at any reality TV show and it's pretty easy with some clever (or not so clever) editing to make someone appear far worse or far better than their actual actions. How long before cops learn how to start editing their footage? Who watches the watchmen? I know this stuff is covered under chain of evidence rules but I suspect there will be some loopholes and unforeseen problems to deal with.
Which means you don't actually work with tape very much if you actually believe that. Duct tape and WD-40 are probably the most overused and routinely misapplied products ever made. They're fine for some applications but people use them all the time for tasks they aren't designed for and their performance in these tasks is predictably shitty.
Go read "Player Piano" and tell me that Vonnegut did not nail the current economy.
I have and he did not nail the current economy unless you are reading things so broadly as to be meaningless.
A small number of automation engineers making tons of money? check.
Since I actually work with a lot of this stuff I'm curious where you think automation engineers are making all this bank off of automation. Seriously, give me examples. The automation engineers I know do ok but they are hardly in danger doing a Scrooge McDuck dive into a pile of gold.
Society scrambling to find "make work" jobs for the masses that include the army and pointless infra projects?
"Pointless infrastructure projects"? Seriously? If anything we aren't spending enough money on infrastructure. In the US we've got tons of crumbling roads and bridges, a nearly non-existent passenger rail system, air traffic control systems that are in desperate need of upgrades, dams that are faulty, an electrical grid that collapses every time there is a stiff breeze, insufficient renewable energy sources, water and sewage systems, and the list goes on and on and on. If you want to see the effect of bad infrastructure go to India sometime. Their shitty infrastructure has a devastating effect on their economy.
While we do spend WAY too much money on the military in the US that is a choice, not a necessity. Certainly not an economic necessity.
However, if you don't have that sort of cash to throw around (and it ain't cheap), then little baubles like this are god-send.
You think this thing will be priced like a cheap "little bauble"? The ENTIRE point of gear like this is to give the appliance maker a reason to jack up the margins. No matter how cheap they make this (useless IMO) feature it will be a lot more expensive than not having it.
You won't be there enough time and it would exhaust you to do it.
If you don't have enough time to peek in the fridge once a day would be exhausted by that task, probably when preparing a meal then you have no business caring for another human being of any age. Suck it up buttercup. People took care of you when you were helpless and a burden as a child. Time to return the favor to someone else.
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Any given thing should be cheaper now (in real terms) then in the 1960s. And it is...if you look at SpaceX.
SpaceX is doing things that have already been done. They aren't breaking major new technical ground. They are breaking new economic ground by improving already existing technology. Don't get me wrong, that's SUPER important but SpaceX isn't going to send us to Mars. They aren't working on that problem in any meaningful way because they can't. No private company can make a credible business case for going to Mars. The economic and physical risks are large and mostly unquantified, the cost is enormous, the technology needed is substantial and well beyond any one company to develop, etc. No business could possibly hope to do it.
The ONLY institution with enough money and the ability to absorb the risk of pure exploration is a nation state. They might contract SpaceX to do something but the only realistic route to the first boots on Mars is through NASA or some other nation's equivalent agency.
Showing NASA's budget as a percentage of the entire Federal budget isn't a very good comparison
There are plenty of others if you prefer. Pick any one of them. My point stands. We are spending less on the space program by whatever inflation adjusted measure you care to use. Thinking we are going to get to Mars which is MUCH harder than getting to the moon while spending less is pretty naive I think.
I think more important things need to be done on Earth then a sending people to Mars. So far, all the unmanned vehicles have not provided any real reason to send a human to Mars.
Sure they have. It's another freakin' planet. Or haven't you seen the photographs? You think another planet wouldn't be awfully interesting to explore in person?
It's like not being able to go to Hawaii so let's go to Disney World again. We go go to Mars many times for the price of one human trip. Why would we do that? To plant yet another flag?
Because we would hugely advance human knowledge by going. On trip involving humans would require advances in medicine, life support, shielding, power, communications, propulsion, ground transport, and even possibly agriculture just to start with. More technology would have to be developed than you will see from 100 years of robotic probes. You also will get FAR more excitement about humans going. Only science geeks really give a shit about sending probes but pretty much everyone will be interested (at least for a while) in a human setting foot on Mars. Sending a person to Mars can inspire entire generations of engineers and scientists. Robots not so much.
We can make the choice to not invest in sending people outside of low earth orbit but I think that is extremely foolish and short sighted. A manned space program is among the very best investments in our future I can think of. Economically, socially and experientially.
The problem is not a particular president or a particular Congress. It's the fact that space missions have, somehow, become politicized.
When you are spending taxpayer money it is ALWAYS political. This was true back during the Apollo era too. We just ignored it because of the Cold War.
The real problem is that to fund something like a space program you either need to be doing it for national security (see Cold War) or there needs to be economic opportunity. The economic opportunity is actually there but unfortunately the benefits are indirect and long term which makes it a hard sell to politicians who only care about the next election cycle.
The panel found a number of areas of concern surrounding the Journey to Mars program, virtually all of them stemming from inadequate funding.
They needed a panel to figure this out? Shit, I have nothing at all to do with NASA and I thought that was bleeding obvious from the cheap seats where I sit. The Apollo program required funding about 4X what we see today as a percent of federal budget. I don't really see us getting back to the moon within my lifetime (much less mars) without a very substantial budget increase. It's been 40 years since we landed on the moon and we haven't been out of low orbit since. I see nothing in the current plans that will change that.
You making more money than you need to live is not particularly important to society either
What does a feeling of independence have to do with actually making cash? You or I making more money absolutely is important to society. It employs more people, it results in more taxes and raises all boats. The fact that people some people feel a bit of independence by getting a car is nice but doesn't matter nearly as much as the economic utility they achieve with one.
Actually, no. Many people can stop a car faster than relying on ABS alone will.
That's simply not true unless you are talking about specific conditions. I'm an automotive engineer. I work with this stuff. UNDER THE RIGHT CONDITIONS (those are important words) ABS will stop you faster. It's not a matter of opinion. It's a demonstrated fact. Car companies didn't put that technology into cars because it performs worse. People cannot pump the brakes faster than ABS. Any situation where pumping the brakes would be helpful you will stop faster with ABS. There are cases where ABS isn't helpful but you can find corner cases for pretty much any technology. The net result however is not in dispute. Other safety technologies are similar.
Anyone who can keep the tires at the limit of traction can easily stop faster than this.
A specious argument. You are talking about a razor edge there under a different set of conditions with a fairly small percentage of the driving population. Fact is that most people are not professional drivers (or even close to it) and they certainly aren't good keeping the tires at the limit of traction nor do they want to. I understand the appeal of wanting a car you can drive right to the edge (I own a sports car for a reason) but asking most drivers to do that is a recipe for thousands of needless deaths a year. We put technologies like ABS on cars to keep people away from the limit of traction because most people demonstrably cannot handle it.
It is hard to argue when you put "in the right conditions" as a preface to your remark...
That's why it is there. ANYTHING in automotive engineering is condition dependent. ABS isn't useful in every case - it is useful in corner cases. That's also why it doesn't kick on most of the time. You can find some even narrower corner cases where ABS degrades performance but there are a lot fewer of those.
In summary, the guy you are responding to loves his high quality, well tuned, and very sharp tools. In summary to the summary, you are not an artisan and could care less about the tool that you have to use and want lots of safeguards built in... and wanting to require such things of people who are masters at using the tool. Because society.
Wow, you have awfully detailed opinions about someone you know nothing about. The guy I'm responding to has an outdated notion of "controlling his car" which the facts suggest is almost certainly more perception than probable fact. I have owned a number of very fast sporty cars and I like driving them fast but I have no illusion about control, or independence or driving talent. I care very much about my "tools" and I want the very best ones available which means getting something that improves my ability to handle them. If you want to pretend that you are such a talented driver that you don't ever need the technologies baked into cars these days please tell me which Formula 1 team you drive for.
We're talking about the general public. Asking/allowing them to driver cars too close to their performance envelope is simply dumb most of the time. People die because of that every day needlessly. If you want to blather on about artisans and other nonsense, fine but my point stands. Just because you like risking your life (for art?) doesn't mean you should have the right to risk mine on a public road. Cars are transportation first and foremost. Whatever else they represent is a second order effect. If I have to sacrifice a bit of my own driving pleasure so that we can save a few thousand lives then so be it.
A car used to be about independence, it was really the BIG first step in becoming and independent person from your parents, and was a symbol of individual freedom.
Independence comes in many forms. A car is merely one way to get it. It's a state of mind. Are kids in NYC somehow less independent just because they don't need a car to get around their city? I live near Detroit and people celebrate cars around here but it's more of a fetish than a practical necessity. Cars are transportation first and foremost. Any sense of independence you get from them is secondary and to a large degree perceptual.
My question is, are you really that scared? Are you that scared of your driving ability to avoid wrecks? Are you that worried about people around you?
No, No, Yes. But if you asked me about other people my answers would be different. Put my grandmother behind the wheel and the answers are Yes, Yes and Yes. And frankly you aren't scared because you are accustomed to how things work. The objective safety record of cars is rather bad and much of that is based in human error.
I want to be the one in control of my car. I like to drive.
That's nice but not really particularly important to society. I like to drive too but most of the time I wouldn't miss it, particularly when commuting. Much of the time driving is merely a waste of time and not much fun. You might be a great driver and you might like to drive but the objective evidence is clear. Lots of people are NOT good drivers. Lots of people who are generally good drivers make mistakes while driving. Tens of thousands of people die in auto accidents each year and many of these are possibly avoidable with automation. Furthermore we waste vast numbers of hours driving that could be put to better use. Your desire to have some fun driving a car is understandable but there will be ways to maintain that in the future.
I like to be in control. I like to have a car that stops as well as it accelerates and handles. I don't want a computer intervening in my driving.
Really? The plain fact of the matter is that without computer assistance your ability to control the vehicle is limited, particularly in difficult corner cases. In the right conditions you WILL stop faster with ABS brakes than without. In the right conditions you WILL accelerate better with traction control than without. Etc. With a well designed computer assistance you will be a measurably better and safer driver. I love computer controls in cars that help me drive better and I love them even more in other people's cars so they don't crash and hurt anyone.
Think of it this way. Fighter jets are computer controlled but nobody complains about the computer interfering with the pilot's control.
Aren't fallout and collateral damage the main problems people have with nuclear weapons?
No. The main problem is that they are weapons of mass destruction that can vaporize entire cities in an instant. They are weapons that are specifically designed to kill a large number of people over a large area very quickly. THAT is the main problem with them. Let's not lose sight of why nukes are scary. The fallout merely adds the problem.
The term collateral damage when applied to nukes is kind of meaningless. The entire point of a nuke is to destroy everything in a rather large radius. There really is no such thing as collateral damage when using explosions of that size because you are unavoidably and intentionally targeting non-combatants and infrastructure when you make the decision to use one. Yes this remains true for "tactical nukes" too.
I was a "free range" kid long before that term existed.
I think most of us who are adults now were. The constantly hovering parent phenomena seems to have been in the last 10-15 years or so. People have gotten weirdly over protective of their spawn even when it clearly doesn't matter.
Personally I think referring to humans as "free range" is pretty degrading. I'm guessing it was meant as a joke but it isn't a very funny one.
Today Li-ion cells have got so many layers of belts and suspenders it's perfectly safe to be carrying a 3500 mAh battery in your pocket -- as I am dong right now.
That typo could not possibly have been an accident...
If I learned anything from watching Star Trek, the secondary regulator should kick in when the primary regulator overheats.
Nah, they just fix everything by realigning the dilithium crystal chamber. Unless the Particle Of The Week can be invoked and then they use that instead.
Statistically, children are far more likely to run into pedophiles in their family or in positions of authority than randomly on the street.
True but any teacher will be happy to provide all the empirical and anecdotal evidence you want. I'm on staff at a local school (part time) and I run into kids who are abused all the time to varying degrees. It is almost always from a parent or near relative. I had a kid I worked with just last year who had to go live with his aunt because his dad was an abusive drunk. (Fortunately the kid was 6'2", weighed 230lbs and a good wrestler and was capable of defending himself) Strangers rarely are the problem kids have to deal with. In most cases I'd worry more about certain parents being with some of these kids than the kids walking themselves.
There's some good news for "free-range" parents and fans of children being allowed to walk places on their own.
If you refer to someone who gives their children the freedom to be out of your sight for more than 5 seconds as "free range parents" then you are an asshole. If you are someone who calls the cops on someone else because their kids are walking to school, then you should be in jail yourself for harassment. I spent my childhood roaming my neighborhood with my friends exploring and it was fine. We were perfectly safe where we lived and my parents knew that. It would be fine for most children in most places. I walked almost a half mile to catch the bus by myself every morning, year round.
A recently approved federal education law will allow students to take alternative forms of transportation to and from school with parental permission. Fastcoexist reports: "Relax, parents. Now you can allow your kids to walk, ride a bike, or take a bus to school, without you or your children getting arrested.
I'm not aware of ANY location where children are required by law to arrive at school escorted by an adult. I work in a school part time as staff and we have children coming and going on their own routinely. Maybe it's different in some other places but I see kids walk, bike and drive themselves to school all the time with nobody getting arrested or in a huff. Most are delivered by bus or by a parent but if a kid lives withing walking distance of the school why shouldn't they be able to go themselves?
And before anyone talks about "throwing your vote away" consider this: Your vote is only wasted when you don't use it.
A vote not used is merely a vote abdicated to someone else and it still has an effect. You are giving more weight to the votes of others by not voting. Not voting is in practical terms, still a vote. It just is less direct.
The reason Iowa is chosen as the first primary is because it is supposed to represent "middle America," and give an idea of how a candidate will fare in a general election.
If you wanted a state that does represents the general election the best choice would probably be Ohio. It's demographics are eerily similar to the national demographics and if votes that way too. Generally as Ohio goes, so does the election and it's the very definition of a swing state. Iowa has a lot of farms but not that much industry. Ohio has both. It's more liberal in the north and conservative down south just like the national elections.
What is it with US politics. Do these people actually go out there and actually talk to real people.
Not really, no. And many of the ones they do talk to are fairly hysterical, racist, fearful and dumb. The republican base in the last few years seems to be particularly panicky and nuts. Used to be that the republicans were pragmatic economically and had a wing of the party where the kooks hung out that could be safely ignored. Now the tail is waging the dog and the religious nuts and the tea party loonies have gained enough power that they can't be ignored anymore. Combined with gerrymandered voting districts we've had both parties (but especially the republicans) getting more extreme for the last 10-15 years. If a politician isn't "pure" enough for their party they never make it out of the primary election.
Is the fear mongering that effective that people are actually wanting this?
Short answer? Sadly, yes.
Long answer? We've got a lot of dumb, fearful people who are religious bigots and racists. They'll vote for anything that gives them a way to act on these us vs them tribal fears and the mechanisms to keep the politicians from responding to these idiots are broken or badly damaged.
All this talk of spending more in surveillance and military makes me sick. Education is where money needs to be spent. Local infrastructure, innovation...
I couldn't not agree more. Education, infrastructure, research, clean energy, etc are badly needed. A larger military and surveillance state is not. We're borrowing to pay for a military that is way larger than we need and an inefficient and badly designed health care system.
"Edward Snowden is a traitor. He took our intelligence information and gave it to the Chinese and gave it to the Russians. We cannot afford to have a commander-in-chief who thinks people like Edward Snowden are doing a good public service."
See I prefer a Commander In Chief who actually treats the civil rights of US citizens as something more than an inconvenience to be trampled over at their whim. We don't need more "intelligence tools" that demonstrably do not make us any safer but manage to oppress us in the process.
I look forward to the day when we have a republican candidate for president who doesn't ear big shoes, a colorful wig and have a red squeaky nose.
However, modern logistics and tracking mean that it doesn't have to be a mystery, and stage of a product's production can in theory be traced
Sure it can. IF someone is willing to pay the cost of doing the tracking. What? You thought material traceability was free? Someone has to keep track of all this stuff, store the records, make them available, audit them in some cases, etc. Even if you do all that there is basically no way to force your suppliers to comply unless you are a vital part of their business. A company like GM can force suppliers to track stuff if they think it is important enough. A company like mine (small manufacturer) will be studiously ignored.
The fact is however that most people aren't willing to pay for the overhead of a fully traceable supply chain. The benefit rarely outweighs the cost. Right now my company is getting routine requests for Conflict Minerals certifications which are mandated under US law under the Dodd-Frank Act. However it has little effect other than to burden business with pointless overhead for something most have no control over. The goal is to interfere with the financing of groups like the Congolese National Army. In practice it has had little meaningful effect on the finances of these groups but has created a lot of cost for businesses.
Pirating is copyright infringement. Why does the government even protect copyright?
The reason we have copyright (and patents) is because of the free rider problem. If you have a way to deal with that problem more effectively then maybe we can do away with copyright. But so far nobody has come up with a better solution. The free rider problem has huge and measurable economic costs. It results in Pareto Inefficiency which I recommend you study.
Many people would rather live in a world without copyright.
Many people want all kinds of crazy things. Doesn't make it a good idea.
In that sense I think anarchy would be great.
So go live someplace like Somalia where anarchy is basically the de-facto system of government. I think you'll find it isn't so pleasant as you imagine.
Having footage of actual events is generally a good thing but my worry is that the footage may get edited in "post production" so to speak. Look at any reality TV show and it's pretty easy with some clever (or not so clever) editing to make someone appear far worse or far better than their actual actions. How long before cops learn how to start editing their footage? Who watches the watchmen? I know this stuff is covered under chain of evidence rules but I suspect there will be some loopholes and unforeseen problems to deal with.
Do I really need the /sarc?
Evidently yes
The word tape means strip of something that is sticky on one side.
Umm, you do know that there is such a thing as double sided tape, right? You do know that there is tape that is not sticky, right?
Don't need me no specialty tapes.
Which means you don't actually work with tape very much if you actually believe that. Duct tape and WD-40 are probably the most overused and routinely misapplied products ever made. They're fine for some applications but people use them all the time for tasks they aren't designed for and their performance in these tasks is predictably shitty.
Go read "Player Piano" and tell me that Vonnegut did not nail the current economy.
I have and he did not nail the current economy unless you are reading things so broadly as to be meaningless.
A small number of automation engineers making tons of money? check.
Since I actually work with a lot of this stuff I'm curious where you think automation engineers are making all this bank off of automation. Seriously, give me examples. The automation engineers I know do ok but they are hardly in danger doing a Scrooge McDuck dive into a pile of gold.
Society scrambling to find "make work" jobs for the masses that include the army and pointless infra projects?
"Pointless infrastructure projects"? Seriously? If anything we aren't spending enough money on infrastructure. In the US we've got tons of crumbling roads and bridges, a nearly non-existent passenger rail system, air traffic control systems that are in desperate need of upgrades, dams that are faulty, an electrical grid that collapses every time there is a stiff breeze, insufficient renewable energy sources, water and sewage systems, and the list goes on and on and on. If you want to see the effect of bad infrastructure go to India sometime. Their shitty infrastructure has a devastating effect on their economy.
While we do spend WAY too much money on the military in the US that is a choice, not a necessity. Certainly not an economic necessity.
However, if you don't have that sort of cash to throw around (and it ain't cheap), then little baubles like this are god-send.
You think this thing will be priced like a cheap "little bauble"? The ENTIRE point of gear like this is to give the appliance maker a reason to jack up the margins. No matter how cheap they make this (useless IMO) feature it will be a lot more expensive than not having it.
You won't be there enough time and it would exhaust you to do it.
If you don't have enough time to peek in the fridge once a day would be exhausted by that task, probably when preparing a meal then you have no business caring for another human being of any age. Suck it up buttercup. People took care of you when you were helpless and a burden as a child. Time to return the favor to someone else.