Also own and operate Knotts Berry Farm (california), Valleyfair (minnesota, and the "fair" in "cedar fair", the company that owns all these parks), Worlds of Fun (too lazy to look up state), Michigan's Adventure (michigan) and they operate Knott's Camp Snoopy in the Mall of America.
Sounds like an urban legend. Wait, it is. This never happened, and roller coasters have sophisitcated "blocking" systems to prevent this situation from ever occuring. The way it works is, on a 3-train coaster for example, there can be 1 train on the lift, 1 train in the station, and 1 train after the mid-course brake. If the ride sensors detect that continued operation would cause two trains in the same block (a "blocking violation"), it will stop trains from leaving the station, stop the lift hill, and activate all brakes.
The only way this COULD occur is exceptionally high winds. When I have been in parks when there have been high winds, they limit the number of trains on the course to prevent this from happening even if there WAS a roll back. By the way, roll backs occur on a monthly basis. Nobody has died from them.
"People are killed by falling from the (broken) track" Happened once. Maybe. Roller coasters are inspected each and every morning by trained mechanics. Every inch of track is thouroughly inspected for problems.
"or by sudden stops of the roller coaster" Approx. 0-1 incidents each year.
"or kids are killed by climbing out of inadequate restraints during the ride." Approx. 1-2 incidents each year.
Can't tell if you're serious, but think of how many people ride 10+ coasters there in one day each year. At least one million. Deaths directly related to the ride: 0. Excludes people with pre-existing conditions - they should read the warning signs and obey their doctors.
Their are many more people involved in car or train or plane or street-crossing related injuries each year than on roller coasters. The government cannot regulate and oversee everything, and should stick to bigger issues. A 1 in 25 million chance of death is nowhere near big enough for the government to seriously oversee. If you expect better than that, you're insane (sorry).
"Think about it the theme park (large multimillion dollar corporation) makes a ride without thinking about the safety of people riding it."
Okay, I've thought about it and determined that they DO think about the safety. What is at risk? Their multimillion dollar international corporation running the park. The company that designed the coaster. The jobs of thousands of people. And insurance coverage. "Hey, Bob, it's Jim. Yeah, we just built a coaster that is unsafe. Can we get some insurance?"...no
"The rollercoaster corporations aren't considering our safety and just building massive things with g-forces that'll knock your brain into your ass"
It is in their best interests to make a safe ride, for financial reasons. They are not out to bankrupt their company just to kill some people.
"the only way they'll understand is if when they walk away from the ride one of them drops dead. "
Show me a record of every time this has happened, and been CONFIRMED by an educated, LICENSED medical expert (means: not the media, not a congressperson, etc.). Once? Twice? Yeah, I'm fearing for my life. This is a 1 in 25 million chance. I think I'll go buy a lottery ticket.
This is not a problem. The coaster was designed to do this. The "damage" it causes is well known. The year is 2002, and the effects of G-forces on the human body are, believe it or not, known. And you are not endangared by this. Read about the dangers of brief, rare "high"-G exposure on rides like this and you will discover that it IS NOT a health problem.
In modern coaster riding, the number of people killed by the forces of a roller coaster is, as I remember 2. That is perhaps even too high. The forces on a roller coaster are not deadly, no matter how much you have been lead to believe. Read up on it.
"There were far fewer than 57 cases of anthrax in the U.S. mail terrorism of last fall. Even more people use the mail than use roller coasters, so would you regard government actions to prevent the spread of anthrax through the mails as similar foolishness?"
No. It is possible to prevent anthrax deaths through mail by a variety of methods. However, roller coasters are machines. No amount of regulation or maintenance will completely eliminate deaths. Nearly all of the deaths on roller coasters were caused by the rider or a freak accident. Government oversight of ride maintenance might, MIGHT reduce the average number of US coaster deaths per year (what is it, about 2? yeah...) by.01. Anthrax and roller coasters are completely different situations, and it is inappropiate to compare them like this.
Most roller coasters are designed by large, professional companies employing well-educated college graduates. I could find only 2 coasters in New Jersey, out of 17 parks, not designed by a well-known (in the enthusiast community) company or with no designer listed. So almost certainly poor design is not at fault here. Maintenance can be a problem, however. You say that regulation is a good idea because of this, however, regulation of speed is not the solution. A low speed coaster can still cause injury and death if poorly maintained. A better solution to the problem you bring up here would be to have government officials inspect roller coaster maintenance to ensure they are being maintained safely.
1. "Last year, according to a study by Peter Hart Research Associates (commissioned by the RIAA), two in five music consumers owned a CD burner, as compared with 14 percent in 1999."
One reason for this is that many computers now come with a CD burner standard - "Many new computers now come equipped with burners". I'm sure there are very many computers out there with burners that are never used. Yeah, my computer has a floppy drive. I've used it once. Just because there is a burner in the computer does not mean it is used.
2. "Sales of blank CDs - used for recording purposes - have skyrocketed to the point that, for the first time, more blank CDs (1.1 billion) were sold last year than prerecorded CDs (968 million)."
Okay, I have so far used about 10% of the 100 CD-R "tower" I purchased four months ago. Buying large numbers of them is cheaper, and more convenient - fewer trips to the store. With the prerecoreded CDs, you know they will be used. But with a blank CD, it may go unused for quite some time. And even if all the blank CDs were used, this is still a poor comparison. Not all CD-Rs are used for the illegal burning of copyrighted music. A person may be burning their own music (as in music they personally produced), they may be backing up files, or burning the files to bring elsewhere. Maybe they're making a video CD. Or maybe they're doing something else that's illegal with the CD. Blank CDs are not just for music.
3. "Dreese notes that CD sales were down 4 percent last year from the year before. They are down 9 percent so far in 2002 and he predicts a 13 percent overall decline this year, based on how many consumers will buy new CD burners. "
CD sales are down?! Can you believe it?! I can. Listen to the most heavily promoted artists out there. Many of them are just the same old mass-produced crap they've been pushing for years. Britney, Nsync, etc. Many of the good bands are not promoted at all. Surely people would buy the CDs if they knew about them, but they don't.
4. "There's a ''sex appeal'' to burning CDs, says Crow, adding that it is a social event for young people, just as listening to 45s was once a social event for their parents."
Yeah, when I walk down the street with my CD-Rs the women are all over me. Pleeeaaaaaseeee. This is not a social event. Nobody is having cd burning parties. LISTENING to the burnt CDs is a better comparison here. But wasn't listening to CDs something that happened before cd burners?
5. "''None of the [copy-prevention technologies] totally work yet, but the best minds in the business are spending copious amounts of time to find a solution,'' says Ron Fair, president of A&M Records."
There will NEVER be a copy-proof solution. Hook the headphone-out on your cd player into your computer's sound card. If it gets really bad, hold a microphone up to the speakers. Somebody will always find a way around. All copy protection systems do is prevent people from dragging and dropping songs to their desktop. It only takes one person to "break" a copy protection method and get the songs across the Internet. Copy protection is a waste of the industry's time and money.
6. "In the meantime, the industry is mounting a massive public-education campaign"
Oh yeah, that'll work. [insert rolling eyes graphic here]
7. "'The amount you have to pay for CDs is horrendous,'' says Gregory."
Take a hint from Gregory, RIAA. CDs are too expensive. Either drop the price, or get artists to fill the disc with quality songs, not 2 singles and 10 filler crap.
8. "but Rosen does not rule out seeking legal redress against individuals who ignore copyright protection. It's a last resort, but she says ''individuals are liable.''"
Going to be kind of hard to prosecute 10 million people across the country, isn't it? ----------------- As for the the artists going away because they don't get my CD-buying money support, I don't care. Someone else will pop up and replace them.
VeriSign/NSI is the worst domain registrar available. They overcharge you, do stupid stuff like this, charge excessive fees to transfer a domain, and a whole bunch of other stuff designed so that they get CASH!!! $$$$$$$$$!!!! I'm leaving them ASAP.
Are AT&T Broadband customers who did not use @home affected by this? Or are we already capped? It seems like I always lose when comparing my speeds to other cable users...
AT&T is going crazy lately. Trying to buy @Home, dropping @Home, billion dollar mergers. Why? Hopefully they won't decide to raise prices again. They seem to enjoy doing that. Oh yeah, and digital cable TV isn't as good as it sounds.
Of course, I wonder. The article says, "..and leaves AT&T with its shrinking consumer and business long-distance telephone and data operations." Are they TRYING to destroy themselves? Sell a good chunk of the customers! Raise prices! Drop out half our customer's internet service for a week and replace it with slower service! This does not sound like a good company.
Buy one. Even though almost no new games are coming out for it, the games that are currently out are some of the best. And since they're only 20-40 dollars each, you can buy a whole lot. If you're getting a Dreamcast, I'd recommend: Soul Calibur, Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, Jet Grind Radio, Shenmue, Crazy Taxi (original), Virtua Tennis (or Tennis 2K2, i suppose), and Phantasy Star Online (they're both good). Believe me, you won't regret it. Even if you can't run Linux on it...
Complain to them. With strong language. Worked for me, after [nsi story]two weeks and four faxes I went to their webchat and after waiting an ungodly amount of time they informed me that I should not use the normal fax number. Apparently that is a decoy they put on the website to weed out pranksters. You have to contact them for the top secret real fax number, I learned. So I faxed it to the number and - WOW! - the changes took place. But they were the wrong changes. So I transfered my domain[/nsi story]. Move somewhere else. Fast.
I don't know if they're great geek gift ideas, but here's what I'll probably be getting:
GameCube
Super Monkey Ball
Tony Hawk 3
Wave Race
Star Wars
SSB Melee (rated "T" for comic mischief and mild violence? must be some pretty bloody comic mischief)
---
XBox
DVD Kit
Project Gotham
Tony Hawk 2x
Airforce Delta Storm
SSX Tricky
---
Tennis 2K2
(for the dreamcast. wonderful dreamcast)
---
Civilization 3
For some reason I think the XBox controller resembles the Dreamcast controller more than anything else... hmm. Why couldn't Microsoft just put the word(s) X-Box on the controller instead of making that ugly green thing? They could've done something like Sega's VMU, because they do have slots for cards on the controllers (I think). Also, they shouldn't have used a tray DVD/CD drive. If I have 10 immature people running around in my not-huge basement, they'll probably end up breaking the XBox tray... that's not good. Hopefully it automatically closes when you turn off the XBox, otherwise, I just know it'll get broken. AAlsooo..., the CD/DVD drive should be in the middle, it's... bad looking... over on the left. AND I think that IGN.Com did a better job putting their logo on the XBox than Microsoft did. The white XBOX on a black console just doesn't look right, they should have used gray. That's all I can think of for now...
Sounds like the kind of place I'd like to be. For some reason, I've always loved monitoring stuff and obnoxious alarms and looking suspicious... I couldn't have made something better for myself if I'd tried. Maybe there's another one I could buy... so many benefits... mmm...
Woohoo, call the relatives.
Seriously, who cares? I don't see why it's such a big deal that Gnome was in a movie. It's just not that exciting, and it's certainly not going to affect you at all. I hope...
Slashdot Mirror
Also own and operate Knotts Berry Farm (california), Valleyfair (minnesota, and the "fair" in "cedar fair", the company that owns all these parks), Worlds of Fun (too lazy to look up state), Michigan's Adventure (michigan) and they operate Knott's Camp Snoopy in the Mall of America.
http://www.cedarfair.com/
Sounds like an urban legend. Wait, it is. This never happened, and roller coasters have sophisitcated "blocking" systems to prevent this situation from ever occuring. The way it works is, on a 3-train coaster for example, there can be 1 train on the lift, 1 train in the station, and 1 train after the mid-course brake. If the ride sensors detect that continued operation would cause two trains in the same block (a "blocking violation"), it will stop trains from leaving the station, stop the lift hill, and activate all brakes.
The only way this COULD occur is exceptionally high winds. When I have been in parks when there have been high winds, they limit the number of trains on the course to prevent this from happening even if there WAS a roll back. By the way, roll backs occur on a monthly basis. Nobody has died from them.
"People are killed by falling from the (broken) track"
Happened once. Maybe. Roller coasters are inspected each and every morning by trained mechanics. Every inch of track is thouroughly inspected for problems.
"or by sudden stops of the roller coaster"
Approx. 0-1 incidents each year.
"or kids are killed by climbing out of inadequate restraints during the ride."
Approx. 1-2 incidents each year.
So dangerous! 1-2 incidents!
"That place is deadly"
Can't tell if you're serious, but think of how many people ride 10+ coasters there in one day each year. At least one million. Deaths directly related to the ride: 0. Excludes people with pre-existing conditions - they should read the warning signs and obey their doctors.
Having trouble telling if you're serious, but oh well. A company will not build a ride with unsafe G-forces. The risk? The company.
Their are many more people involved in car or train or plane or street-crossing related injuries each year than on roller coasters. The government cannot regulate and oversee everything, and should stick to bigger issues. A 1 in 25 million chance of death is nowhere near big enough for the government to seriously oversee. If you expect better than that, you're insane (sorry).
Good post. Note - anneuyrsm on Goliath was just chance. Could have happened anywhere - even sitting on a bench. Going to outlaw benches now?
;)
BENCHES: A PUBLIC MENACE
"Think about it the theme park (large multimillion dollar corporation) makes a ride without thinking about the safety of people riding it."
...no
Okay, I've thought about it and determined that they DO think about the safety. What is at risk? Their multimillion dollar international corporation running the park. The company that designed the coaster. The jobs of thousands of people. And insurance coverage. "Hey, Bob, it's Jim. Yeah, we just built a coaster that is unsafe. Can we get some insurance?"
"The rollercoaster corporations aren't considering our safety and just building massive things with g-forces that'll knock your brain into your ass"
It is in their best interests to make a safe ride, for financial reasons. They are not out to bankrupt their company just to kill some people.
"the only way they'll understand is if when they walk away from the ride one of them drops dead. "
Show me a record of every time this has happened, and been CONFIRMED by an educated, LICENSED medical expert (means: not the media, not a congressperson, etc.). Once? Twice? Yeah, I'm fearing for my life. This is a 1 in 25 million chance. I think I'll go buy a lottery ticket.
This is not a problem. The coaster was designed to do this. The "damage" it causes is well known. The year is 2002, and the effects of G-forces on the human body are, believe it or not, known. And you are not endangared by this. Read about the dangers of brief, rare "high"-G exposure on rides like this and you will discover that it IS NOT a health problem.
In modern coaster riding, the number of people killed by the forces of a roller coaster is, as I remember 2. That is perhaps even too high. The forces on a roller coaster are not deadly, no matter how much you have been lead to believe. Read up on it.
"There were far fewer than 57 cases of anthrax in the U.S. mail terrorism of last fall. Even more people use the mail than use roller coasters, so would you regard government actions to prevent the spread of anthrax through the mails as similar foolishness?"
.01. Anthrax and roller coasters are completely different situations, and it is inappropiate to compare them like this.
No. It is possible to prevent anthrax deaths through mail by a variety of methods. However, roller coasters are machines. No amount of regulation or maintenance will completely eliminate deaths. Nearly all of the deaths on roller coasters were caused by the rider or a freak accident. Government oversight of ride maintenance might, MIGHT reduce the average number of US coaster deaths per year (what is it, about 2? yeah...) by
Most roller coasters are designed by large, professional companies employing well-educated college graduates. I could find only 2 coasters in New Jersey, out of 17 parks, not designed by a well-known (in the enthusiast community) company or with no designer listed. So almost certainly poor design is not at fault here. Maintenance can be a problem, however. You say that regulation is a good idea because of this, however, regulation of speed is not the solution. A low speed coaster can still cause injury and death if poorly maintained. A better solution to the problem you bring up here would be to have government officials inspect roller coaster maintenance to ensure they are being maintained safely.
1. "Last year, according to a study by Peter Hart Research Associates (commissioned by the RIAA), two in five music consumers owned a CD burner, as compared with 14 percent in 1999."
One reason for this is that many computers now come with a CD burner standard - "Many new computers now come equipped with burners". I'm sure there are very many computers out there with burners that are never used. Yeah, my computer has a floppy drive. I've used it once. Just because there is a burner in the computer does not mean it is used.
2. "Sales of blank CDs - used for recording purposes - have skyrocketed to the point that, for the first time, more blank CDs (1.1 billion) were sold last year than prerecorded CDs (968 million)."
Okay, I have so far used about 10% of the 100 CD-R "tower" I purchased four months ago. Buying large numbers of them is cheaper, and more convenient - fewer trips to the store. With the prerecoreded CDs, you know they will be used. But with a blank CD, it may go unused for quite some time. And even if all the blank CDs were used, this is still a poor comparison. Not all CD-Rs are used for the illegal burning of copyrighted music. A person may be burning their own music (as in music they personally produced), they may be backing up files, or burning the files to bring elsewhere. Maybe they're making a video CD. Or maybe they're doing something else that's illegal with the CD. Blank CDs are not just for music.
3. "Dreese notes that CD sales were down 4 percent last year from the year before. They are down 9 percent so far in 2002 and he predicts a 13 percent overall decline this year, based on how many consumers will buy new CD burners. "
CD sales are down?! Can you believe it?! I can. Listen to the most heavily promoted artists out there. Many of them are just the same old mass-produced crap they've been pushing for years. Britney, Nsync, etc. Many of the good bands are not promoted at all. Surely people would buy the CDs if they knew about them, but they don't.
4. "There's a ''sex appeal'' to burning CDs, says Crow, adding that it is a social event for young people, just as listening to 45s was once a social event for their parents."
Yeah, when I walk down the street with my CD-Rs the women are all over me. Pleeeaaaaaseeee. This is not a social event. Nobody is having cd burning parties. LISTENING to the burnt CDs is a better comparison here. But wasn't listening to CDs something that happened before cd burners?
5. "''None of the [copy-prevention technologies] totally work yet, but the best minds in the business are spending copious amounts of time to find a solution,'' says Ron Fair, president of A&M Records."
There will NEVER be a copy-proof solution. Hook the headphone-out on your cd player into your computer's sound card. If it gets really bad, hold a microphone up to the speakers. Somebody will always find a way around. All copy protection systems do is prevent people from dragging and dropping songs to their desktop. It only takes one person to "break" a copy protection method and get the songs across the Internet. Copy protection is a waste of the industry's time and money.
6. "In the meantime, the industry is mounting a massive public-education campaign"
Oh yeah, that'll work. [insert rolling eyes graphic here]
7. "'The amount you have to pay for CDs is horrendous,'' says Gregory."
Take a hint from Gregory, RIAA. CDs are too expensive. Either drop the price, or get artists to fill the disc with quality songs, not 2 singles and 10 filler crap.
8. "but Rosen does not rule out seeking legal redress against individuals who ignore copyright protection. It's a last resort, but she says ''individuals are liable.''"
Going to be kind of hard to prosecute 10 million people across the country, isn't it?
-----------------
As for the the artists going away because they don't get my CD-buying money support, I don't care. Someone else will pop up and replace them.
VeriSign/NSI is the worst domain registrar available. They overcharge you, do stupid stuff like this, charge excessive fees to transfer a domain, and a whole bunch of other stuff designed so that they get CASH!!! $$$$$$$$$!!!! I'm leaving them ASAP.
Are AT&T Broadband customers who did not use @home affected by this? Or are we already capped? It seems like I always lose when comparing my speeds to other cable users...
Those pictures on the Danger page are very entertaining. I wish there was a video. Oooo that would be great!
AT&T is going crazy lately. Trying to buy @Home, dropping @Home, billion dollar mergers. Why? Hopefully they won't decide to raise prices again. They seem to enjoy doing that. Oh yeah, and digital cable TV isn't as good as it sounds.
Of course, I wonder. The article says, "..and leaves AT&T with its shrinking consumer and business long-distance telephone and data operations." Are they TRYING to destroy themselves? Sell a good chunk of the customers! Raise prices! Drop out half our customer's internet service for a week and replace it with slower service! This does not sound like a good company.
Buy one. Even though almost no new games are coming out for it, the games that are currently out are some of the best. And since they're only 20-40 dollars each, you can buy a whole lot. If you're getting a Dreamcast, I'd recommend: Soul Calibur, Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, Jet Grind Radio, Shenmue, Crazy Taxi (original), Virtua Tennis (or Tennis 2K2, i suppose), and Phantasy Star Online (they're both good). Believe me, you won't regret it. Even if you can't run Linux on it...
Complain to them. With strong language. Worked for me, after [nsi story]two weeks and four faxes I went to their webchat and after waiting an ungodly amount of time they informed me that I should not use the normal fax number. Apparently that is a decoy they put on the website to weed out pranksters. You have to contact them for the top secret real fax number, I learned. So I faxed it to the number and - WOW! - the changes took place. But they were the wrong changes. So I transfered my domain[/nsi story]. Move somewhere else. Fast.
I don't know if they're great geek gift ideas, but here's what I'll probably be getting:
GameCube
Super Monkey Ball
Tony Hawk 3
Wave Race
Star Wars
SSB Melee (rated "T" for comic mischief and mild violence? must be some pretty bloody comic mischief)
---
XBox
DVD Kit
Project Gotham
Tony Hawk 2x
Airforce Delta Storm
SSX Tricky
---
Tennis 2K2
(for the dreamcast. wonderful dreamcast)
---
Civilization 3
Excellent.
For some reason I think the XBox controller resembles the Dreamcast controller more than anything else... hmm. Why couldn't Microsoft just put the word(s) X-Box on the controller instead of making that ugly green thing? They could've done something like Sega's VMU, because they do have slots for cards on the controllers (I think). Also, they shouldn't have used a tray DVD/CD drive. If I have 10 immature people running around in my not-huge basement, they'll probably end up breaking the XBox tray... that's not good. Hopefully it automatically closes when you turn off the XBox, otherwise, I just know it'll get broken. AAlsooo..., the CD/DVD drive should be in the middle, it's... bad looking... over on the left. AND I think that IGN.Com did a better job putting their logo on the XBox than Microsoft did. The white XBOX on a black console just doesn't look right, they should have used gray. That's all I can think of for now...
!-!_!-!_!-!
Sounds like the kind of place I'd like to be. For some reason, I've always loved monitoring stuff and obnoxious alarms and looking suspicious... I couldn't have made something better for myself if I'd tried. Maybe there's another one I could buy... so many benefits... mmm...
!-!_!-!_!-!
Finally, a use for my new mac :&
!-!_!-!_!-!
Woohoo, call the relatives. Seriously, who cares? I don't see why it's such a big deal that Gnome was in a movie. It's just not that exciting, and it's certainly not going to affect you at all. I hope...
!-!_!-!_!-!
Saddam'll be dead by then, hopefully