See the 6 different instances of "slow down" explaining when they stop speeding at F1 races on wikipedia.
There are rules for a reason in racing and in hacking competitions. There are no rules if you do it outside a group event, and as a result the risks are significantly higher.
by reducing the price for a two-ounce First-Class flat-shaped round-trip DVD mailer to the price of a one-ounce mailer First-Class letter-shaped round-trip DVD mailer
They see the DVD mailing as competing with the internet option, therefore giving them cause to support DVD mailing by discounting the price.
I'll tell you the truth and its up to you to live with it.
Oh cool! I known that shutdown -r -t 600 works on Windows when I expect it to finish installing an update and I'm ready to go for a coffee, but I never remember what it is in Linux. Thanks to your tip, I now know I can use shutdown -h but I know the Linux guy had to put a number, so let me try shutdown -h 0 and see what it tells me about how
I'm surprised to see this comment rated so highly.
If you are paying $15 a cup for coffee then presumably you have super awesome taste buds. So why do you need chemically analyse your coffee to tell if it's the real deal? You're coffee is either worth $15 or it isn't based on what it tastes like.
Taste is a very variable thing. If you're trying to train yourself to distinguish different tastes, then you need to try different things to learn what tastes you are capable of recognizing. If you're basing your experience on faulty information, then you're being cheated of your option to learn something. If you are going to try to learn the difference in sushi or wines and you are trying to learn the differences in tastes of different options, being lied to about what you're tasting means you won't be able to tell the difference between different grades of tuna, or different types of dry red wines. As a result, you're robbed of your ability to learn what brings you pleasure and what is worth spending the extra money on.
What a pointless bit of research. Have we now solved so many of the world's important problems that the top of the list is now "make sure hipsters are drinking genuine cat's bum coffee."
If you know absolutely everything that is important to know then you're a terrible person for not sharing your insight into how to solve every world problem. For everyone else, doing research that you are able to do that adds to the sum of human knowledge is valuable. Just because you don't know how to cure cancer yet doesn't mean you shouldn't put effort into finding a malaria cure. Curing world hunger is something we'd all like to know how to do, but if you don't know how to do that, it doesn't mean that there is no value in studying computer science. The best thing to spend money learning about is something where you can hope to find some success in learning something useful. Building a machine that can detect organic compounds may sound useless to you because you don't care about coffee, but good research results may mean that same technology can be applied to better bomb detection or allow computers to do what animals already do and actually detect cancer better. Saying the research shouldn't have money spent on something you don't care about is saying that people shouldn't do what good they're able to actually able to do.
If everybody had the mentality that nothing should be done if it wasn't working toward the big problems, we'd loose all the little great things that contribute to a better world.
So we know that the NSA lied to Congress and about half of the representatives want to stop the spying that Snowden told us about. That would seem to make the implication that Congress has realized that the few people who actually seem to care are in the majority against it. So Snowden shouldn't be that big a fish. We have federal laws against illegal immigration but the feds have decided not to put any effort into enforcement since it isn't popular. We have federal laws against marajuana, but with states making it legal, the feds have decided not to put any effort into enforcement. Now we have one guy and enforcement isn't popular, but yet they're making a big deal of enforcement?
On the one hand, I kinda get it, you have to enforce the laws to keep your secrets safe. On the other hand they're doing that already and have made it impossible for Snowden to return to the US without likely imprisonment. Isn't that more than enough? I'm surprised they'd do something to harm international relations over it.
Is it possible that Snowden has more information they're afraid that he'll turn over to another government? If he does, what could it be to be worth this witchhunt? It reminds me of Assuange which became a much bigger witchhunt than it seemed to warrant. I'm beginning to think that there must be some really ugly skeletons in the closet if Congress is this worried about people spilling secrets.
I'm with you in spirit but stuck in a situation where our single most important software vendor has incorporated interactive forms using Adobe PDF reader. Replacing it is so far beyond our budget that just discussing what it would take turns the discussion into a five year plan.
Doing our own software to replace it is even worse in terms of budgeting. If you'd like to make yourself a couple million dollars and a career for the next twenty years, you can go for it, but the initial investment requirements are going to be in the same range and it'll probably take a minimum of five years for you to get a new system past all the regulatory hurdles and any adoption.
If you do all that, drop me a line. We'll be looking for somebody new about that time.
For people stuck in reality: Our solution is to try to be very suspicious of PDFs that come into the system, but trust the ones already in there. It's not a great situation to be in but I hope this forum will give me some ideas on how we can better protect ourselves from the potential dangerous PDFs coming in.
Good points. I rather like the idea of something that removes every PDF from the incoming email but sends a follow up message "Your recent email with the subject line 'blah blah blah' sent at 'sentdate' had an unsafe type of attachment. You can download a safe version with 'this link' or you can contact the administrator if you require the unsafe version."
Really? Personal Computer means Windows only in the heads of Microsoft marketing drones. It wasn't that long ago that PC was synonymous with Home Computer which certainly would have included Apple computers.
I was thinking pretty much the same thing. The right approach for this is to figure out how to answer these questions:
Who gets paid?
When?
For what?
How should they be paid? (not how they are paid)
How do you maintain it?
The questions are simple. The process of answering them is hard. Building the software to handle the result is moderately complex but not nearly as hard as getting the answers.
The question of "how did the old software do it" should be irrevelant and it shouldn't matter that it was written in COBOL or how it worked. Fixing the software is the wrong approach and I suspect a doomed attempt from the beginning. They should have been working on how to build the right system instead.
What, you want more? If you give me a billion dollars I will take it and make a very convinicing show of working hard to deliver whatever you want while I build up my "disappear and retire accounts" with only a small percentage of the money.
"By denying someone the right to a federally approved marriage of their preference, you're treating them as less than human." I've seen variations this argument repeatedly and that weakness never occurred to me. Whether you agree or disagree, I think you should consider the legitimacy of any argument worth discussing... and I totally missed that insight.
Stigma? My first thought was "I better tag my house" because even though I don't actually have a gun, I would like any potential thieves to think I do. Plus, where I come from (yes, Texas) gun ownership is seen as a good thing. People use their concealed carry permits as their preferred bragging type of state issued ID around here.
When you buy a computer you own it and should be able to do anything with it because you paid for it. In reality, you pretty much could but if you do some things, you're breaking various laws. The same is true for a DVD of course, you can copy it and sell the copies or stream them online but that's not legal either.
So long as you do what you want with your computer without interacting with other people, nobody cares. You can download youtube videos, copy DVDs, build your own versions of movies with your voiceovers in it or whatever you like because nobody cares (even if it isn't legal.) But as soon as you sell something or even give something away that breaks those laws, you get in a heap of trouble.
If I wrote the same app that MS did for my own phone and put it on my phone and computer and tablet, Google wouldn't notice me. I can make copies of videos and pass them around all my devices and Google still wouldn't notice me or care. But if I was Microsoft and did that for my customers... yeah, they notice and care.
Now is it ethical? You skip commercials and block ads, but regardless of what people want you to do, it is your computer/dvd player/iphone and you can do what you like. If you choose to view ads, support sponsors etc, that's being a good member of the community, and kudos for it. However, if you don't, so long as you aren't affecting other people, I wouldn't say it was unethical.
A long time ago, I had a friend whose father was one of the most honest and respectable people I knew. I found out that he was descrambling satellite TV and it surprised me. I asked my friend about it and he explained his father said something like "If they put it in my yard without asking me, I feel free to do with it as I like without asking them." I still think about that today when I'm questioning the difference between what is legal and what is ethical.
I'm not particularly surprised and after being rear ended myself, I now drive much differently and pay a lot more attention to what's going on behind me. Several times since that accident, I've avoided having others because I changed the way I drive. In particular, I take a LOT longer to slow down than I used to. If you stop on our freeways when the cars in front of you stop, there is a good chance the person behind you won't. The trick is to slow down for a while before you have to stop so that they have time to look up and start paying attention again while your brake lights are on. Maybe you're already doing that, but a lot of people assume that having accidents that aren't their fault also means they don't need to change their behavior. (Sometimes there is nothing you can do to avoid it, and I totally get that, but... three times?)
Besides, I can't tell if you're just sharing your story or actually trying to disagree with something. The number of crashes? That doesn't have anything to do with what people report. Maybe the number of deaths? That doesn't have anything to do with what people report. The only thing left is the Erie study, but I get the feeling you didn't read it. I suspect you didn't even read the simple article about it that I linked to. You can just say "I don't care, the facts don't support my fantasy" or maybe you can specifically explain what about the study is wrong.
It's astonishing, what with all the various gadgets enticing people's attention in the 1970s and 1980s, that it's only now become a problem.
I wonder what changed between now and then that has dramatically increased the incidence of accidents caused by driver distractions. But I suppose we needed something to make up for all mechanic and doctor billing lost after seat-belts and crackdowns on drunk drivers. Those people have mouths to feed, after all.
A few things here: other than things that impaired driving (and there were appropriate laws about that back in the 70's and 80's), what we have now are roadways designed for faster speeds, and vehicles with different safety standards (mostly significantly better). However, we also have significantly more vehicles on the road, and it is significantly easier to get your license and to afford a vehicle. Link this to a culture with isolationist tendencies, and you get a situation where something that would have been relatively safe in a 70's car can be incredibly dangerous today, even with improved standards. Plus, with the improved flow of information, people actually find out about all the bad stuff that goes on now, whereas back then, the problem wasn't assumed to be as big as it actually was.
Lie: Texting is making the roads more dangerous than they used to be. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, "In 2011, traffic deaths fell 2% to 32,367 from the previous year, making traffic deaths in 2011 at the lowest level since 1949 -- and a 26% decline since 2005."
Lie: Texting is causing the majority of distracted driving accidents. In the news today, "According to the report, which was published earlier this week, 62 percent of the drivers studied were 'generally distracted or lost in thought.'
Conversely, the study found that only 12 percent of those examined were using their cell phones - either texting, talking, or dialing.
Lie: The solution to texting accidents is a ban A "study by researchers at the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI) finds no reductions in crashes after laws take effect that ban texting by all drivers. In fact, such bans are associated with a slight increase in the frequency of insurance claims filed under collision coverage for damage to vehicles in crashes."
Opinion: We're focusing on the wrong problem. I spend about two hours a day commuting and get to observe both great and courteous drivers and and also dangerous and rude drivers. People like to focus on banning gadgets because it gives a false sense of hope, they hope that the answer is simple and safer roadways can be had by stopping people from doing something. My opinion is that safer driving comes by education, training, testing and enforcement. I believe that gadget bans are as ineffective as the distracted driving laws that are ignored already. Focusing on a specific detail like a phone causes people to do the same thing they would without the ban, but they do it in a more clandestine way which actually makes the real problem, distraction, worse.
Don't take my word for these facts. Search for statistics about traffic fatalities and for the study done by Erie Insurance Group.
Here are a couple links to get you started:
Just because people have urges to act like animals, doesn't mean we should. In fact we have rules and laws to keep us from giving into those urges. That was part of my point.
I suspect that you drew that one phrase from the larger context because you wanted to make the point that hunting and killing animals is bad, but rather you made the point that it is unnecessary because you prefer an honest tone instead of a belligerent one. I'd agree with you on both counts actually in most situations. Personally, I don't own a hunting gun (or bow) or hunt for sport because my environment (urban) doesn't make it a useful activity. But I add the qualifier "in most situations" because it isn't always true. You added the qualifier "most" as well and I suspect for the same reason.
The featured article is about the attempt to limit the damage of a non-native invasive species. In this particular instance, the only practical method of limiting the damage is to kill as many of the invasive animals as possible. I am not arguing that it is a good thing to kill them, but rather that in order to preserve the environment we treasure, it is an unfortunate necessity. I admit that I can see the appeal of hunting even if it isn't a strong appeal to me personally and therefore I can see how appealing to hunters to participate is a useful methodology.
I did grow up in a rural environment and was and remain exposed to many hunters. For many hunters, the actual kill is more of a proof of your skill as a hunter than a necessity, but it does provide the benefit of food for many of them. In trade for investments in time, getting a hunting license, requisite training and certification, and the necessary equipment, many of them provide a year's worth of meat for their families with their skills. I can also tell you from personal experience that the challenge of planning a hunt and the process of stalking is something that appeals to most of them. I actually managed to stalk within arms reach of a deer once, and it was thrilling. I had no desire or plan to kill anything because there was no benefit for me, yet the confirmation of my prowess and being able to see them so closely in the wild is one of my fonder memories.
That's a secondary point though. My first and hopefully less subtle point was that it is absurd to draw the conclusions or make the generalities found in the post I to which I was replying.
I didn't choose, but I am an animal. By most definitions, yes, we are in fact animals. We have all the instincts of carnivores, an urge to stalk, an urge to hunt and yes, an urge to kill prey.
Now if I stalk around the house and pounce on things, my family looks at me a little funny because of society or whatever. But if I buy a permit and a bow and go after deer, that's totally acceptable.
If I'm wandering around the savanna in my PJs and get taken out by a pride of lions, then nobody is going to be blaming the lions, calling them gutless cowards, asking them how brave they're going to be when somebody kills them. They're lions, that's what they do and we're perfectly fine with that.
If anything, it's human hunters that are on the highroad here. We have rules about when and how we're allowed to kill other animals (and each other.) We're at the top of a food chain, and rather than just killing whatever we can, we restrict ourselves. I can't think of any other predator that does that. That's kind of an intelligent thing and telling a bunch of gun toting predators that they have to do things your way kind of takes guts.
So yeah, pretty much the opposite of everything you said. Wait, were you being deliberately ironic? It'd be funny if you'd included something that actually had... well humor in it.
The fact is, Google is just like the phone books... Google's only able to do it for free because they operate at such large volume and with such low costs...
There is a bit of a difference and it is a significant one. Phone books don't have the content of today's news. I can go to Google and search for "Pizzeria news" and see headlines and brief news snippits. I can't do that with the phone book. If I want to get Pizzeria News using the phone book, I have to call my local newspaper company. Google cuts out the need to make that call for a lot of people.
Now there are some things that are fairly compared to phone books and some things that aren't but the news people have a complaint that isn't fairly addressed unless Google stops showing anything but a link to the news agency. (Which might be a fair and reasonable response actually.)
Still they news agencies absolutely could have set to not have Google spider and they choose not to because they don't want Google to stop. I think that sums up the real issue right there.
Interesting. I was with you up until you got to "just compare the European and Asian railroads to American ones" because you don't account for any of the drastically different environments or outcomes. Without some reference, it's a completely unreasonable comparison.
The US freight rail system is widely held as the best in the world and it seems like that should make it reasonable for us to ramp up passenger rail. So I looked into it. I'm still enamored with the idea of reliable and reasonable public transport, but my hopes have been somewhat dampened by the realities after I started reading on the subject.
Wanna read a little? Here are a couple articles that each cover good and bad.
In the end, I actually find myself rooting against rail but not because I don't believe it could work. I root against it because the history I see of US pork barrel politics.
That code reminds me of... well mine. Sorry about that. Odds are it isn't actually mine, but there have been a few coding sessions where I was a little heavy on the Merlot and %s/originalvariable/whatimeannow/g. Once it runs and looks like the output is good, you sleep. When you revisit your code, generally much later, to fix something minor, you discover that the worst coder in the world has apparently been going through your elegant programs with a randomizer and a blindfold. Touch one thing and suddenly you're cursing that freak with a passion.
I've got one such project going right now and I think I'm in the third or fourth rewrite attempt since I gave up on fixing past-me's functional but fragile apparent attempt to win an obfuscated coding contest. I mean it looks like it makes sense but I keep running into these functions that don't look like they should be where they are and I have a fuzzy memory of putting them there and why, but when I try to do things the right way I get locked out of my firewall, kill my VPN or crash browsers. (Yes, you guessed it, manipulating iptables dynamically and I am indeed over my head sometimes.) Thankfully it is in what I'd call pre-pre-release state. If I had to maintain this stuff for a client right now, I'd be having a very bad week.
Budget! I can do it cheap too. It'll only cost about 40 million, 1 million for research and development to make a very realistic looking stargate, another 1 million to get the right magician involved and pay for his silence, a few thousand for a pig, a grinder and high powered pneumatic cannon, a couple million to ensure that 'davidwr' can be depended on to stay gone after the demo and the remainder to pay for my plastic surgery, new identity and personal lifetime vacation.
Talk about a challenge. I love these requests because you can pretty much talk about what it would take to develop solutions that are beyond current technology. (Some extravagant requests are doable with just an insane rather than the impossible budget this one will take.)
the time for getting messages between widely separated places on the planet.
You need to do it faster than 299,792,458 m/s? Okay, but we'll have to invest in some serious R&D. In 1998 Morris, Thorne and Yurtsever worked out a possible solution, but to have a good chance of solving it in our lifetime as a practical application will require a budget in the quadrillion range or at least a team of research engineers who are going to cost our company trillions to finance. Now's a good time too, because we can pick up the SSC as an exploratory tool at a discount. Can you get me that budget to work with, because I'd love to manage the project!
Slashdot Mirror
See the 6 different instances of "slow down" explaining when they stop speeding at F1 races on wikipedia.
There are rules for a reason in racing and in hacking competitions. There are no rules if you do it outside a group event, and as a result the risks are significantly higher.
From TFA:
by reducing the price for a two-ounce First-Class flat-shaped round-trip DVD mailer to the price of a one-ounce mailer First-Class letter-shaped round-trip DVD mailer
They see the DVD mailing as competing with the internet option, therefore giving them cause to support DVD mailing by discounting the price.
I'll tell you the truth and its up to you to live with it.
Oh cool! I known that shutdown -r -t 600 works on Windows when I expect it to finish installing an update and I'm ready to go for a coffee, but I never remember what it is in Linux. Thanks to your tip, I now know I can use shutdown -h but I know the Linux guy had to put a number, so let me try shutdown -h 0 and see what it tells me about how
I'm surprised to see this comment rated so highly.
Taste is a very variable thing. If you're trying to train yourself to distinguish different tastes, then you need to try different things to learn what tastes you are capable of recognizing. If you're basing your experience on faulty information, then you're being cheated of your option to learn something. If you are going to try to learn the difference in sushi or wines and you are trying to learn the differences in tastes of different options, being lied to about what you're tasting means you won't be able to tell the difference between different grades of tuna, or different types of dry red wines. As a result, you're robbed of your ability to learn what brings you pleasure and what is worth spending the extra money on.
If you know absolutely everything that is important to know then you're a terrible person for not sharing your insight into how to solve every world problem. For everyone else, doing research that you are able to do that adds to the sum of human knowledge is valuable. Just because you don't know how to cure cancer yet doesn't mean you shouldn't put effort into finding a malaria cure. Curing world hunger is something we'd all like to know how to do, but if you don't know how to do that, it doesn't mean that there is no value in studying computer science. The best thing to spend money learning about is something where you can hope to find some success in learning something useful. Building a machine that can detect organic compounds may sound useless to you because you don't care about coffee, but good research results may mean that same technology can be applied to better bomb detection or allow computers to do what animals already do and actually detect cancer better. Saying the research shouldn't have money spent on something you don't care about is saying that people shouldn't do what good they're able to actually able to do.
If everybody had the mentality that nothing should be done if it wasn't working toward the big problems, we'd loose all the little great things that contribute to a better world.
So we know that the NSA lied to Congress and about half of the representatives want to stop the spying that Snowden told us about. That would seem to make the implication that Congress has realized that the few people who actually seem to care are in the majority against it. So Snowden shouldn't be that big a fish. We have federal laws against illegal immigration but the feds have decided not to put any effort into enforcement since it isn't popular. We have federal laws against marajuana, but with states making it legal, the feds have decided not to put any effort into enforcement. Now we have one guy and enforcement isn't popular, but yet they're making a big deal of enforcement?
On the one hand, I kinda get it, you have to enforce the laws to keep your secrets safe. On the other hand they're doing that already and have made it impossible for Snowden to return to the US without likely imprisonment. Isn't that more than enough? I'm surprised they'd do something to harm international relations over it.
Is it possible that Snowden has more information they're afraid that he'll turn over to another government? If he does, what could it be to be worth this witchhunt? It reminds me of Assuange which became a much bigger witchhunt than it seemed to warrant. I'm beginning to think that there must be some really ugly skeletons in the closet if Congress is this worried about people spilling secrets.
I'm with you in spirit but stuck in a situation where our single most important software vendor has incorporated interactive forms using Adobe PDF reader. Replacing it is so far beyond our budget that just discussing what it would take turns the discussion into a five year plan.
Doing our own software to replace it is even worse in terms of budgeting. If you'd like to make yourself a couple million dollars and a career for the next twenty years, you can go for it, but the initial investment requirements are going to be in the same range and it'll probably take a minimum of five years for you to get a new system past all the regulatory hurdles and any adoption.
If you do all that, drop me a line. We'll be looking for somebody new about that time.
For people stuck in reality: Our solution is to try to be very suspicious of PDFs that come into the system, but trust the ones already in there. It's not a great situation to be in but I hope this forum will give me some ideas on how we can better protect ourselves from the potential dangerous PDFs coming in.
Good points. I rather like the idea of something that removes every PDF from the incoming email but sends a follow up message "Your recent email with the subject line 'blah blah blah' sent at 'sentdate' had an unsafe type of attachment. You can download a safe version with 'this link' or you can contact the administrator if you require the unsafe version."
I wonder if procmail could do that for you?
Really? Personal Computer means Windows only in the heads of Microsoft marketing drones. It wasn't that long ago that PC was synonymous with Home Computer which certainly would have included Apple computers.
I was thinking pretty much the same thing. The right approach for this is to figure out how to answer these questions:
The questions are simple. The process of answering them is hard. Building the software to handle the result is moderately complex but not nearly as hard as getting the answers.
The question of "how did the old software do it" should be irrevelant and it shouldn't matter that it was written in COBOL or how it worked. Fixing the software is the wrong approach and I suspect a doomed attempt from the beginning. They should have been working on how to build the right system instead.
Give me a billion dollars.
What, you want more? If you give me a billion dollars I will take it and make a very convinicing show of working hard to deliver whatever you want while I build up my "disappear and retire accounts" with only a small percentage of the money.
Of all the comments and passion I've seen on this story, this is the first time something got to me and made me actually sad.
Ow. You make me feel dense.
"By denying someone the right to a federally approved marriage of their preference, you're treating them as less than human." I've seen variations this argument repeatedly and that weakness never occurred to me. Whether you agree or disagree, I think you should consider the legitimacy of any argument worth discussing... and I totally missed that insight.
Stigma? My first thought was "I better tag my house" because even though I don't actually have a gun, I would like any potential thieves to think I do. Plus, where I come from (yes, Texas) gun ownership is seen as a good thing. People use their concealed carry permits as their preferred bragging type of state issued ID around here.
When you buy a computer you own it and should be able to do anything with it because you paid for it. In reality, you pretty much could but if you do some things, you're breaking various laws. The same is true for a DVD of course, you can copy it and sell the copies or stream them online but that's not legal either.
So long as you do what you want with your computer without interacting with other people, nobody cares. You can download youtube videos, copy DVDs, build your own versions of movies with your voiceovers in it or whatever you like because nobody cares (even if it isn't legal.) But as soon as you sell something or even give something away that breaks those laws, you get in a heap of trouble.
If I wrote the same app that MS did for my own phone and put it on my phone and computer and tablet, Google wouldn't notice me. I can make copies of videos and pass them around all my devices and Google still wouldn't notice me or care. But if I was Microsoft and did that for my customers... yeah, they notice and care.
Now is it ethical? You skip commercials and block ads, but regardless of what people want you to do, it is your computer/dvd player/iphone and you can do what you like. If you choose to view ads, support sponsors etc, that's being a good member of the community, and kudos for it. However, if you don't, so long as you aren't affecting other people, I wouldn't say it was unethical.
A long time ago, I had a friend whose father was one of the most honest and respectable people I knew. I found out that he was descrambling satellite TV and it surprised me. I asked my friend about it and he explained his father said something like "If they put it in my yard without asking me, I feel free to do with it as I like without asking them." I still think about that today when I'm questioning the difference between what is legal and what is ethical.
I'm not particularly surprised and after being rear ended myself, I now drive much differently and pay a lot more attention to what's going on behind me. Several times since that accident, I've avoided having others because I changed the way I drive. In particular, I take a LOT longer to slow down than I used to. If you stop on our freeways when the cars in front of you stop, there is a good chance the person behind you won't. The trick is to slow down for a while before you have to stop so that they have time to look up and start paying attention again while your brake lights are on. Maybe you're already doing that, but a lot of people assume that having accidents that aren't their fault also means they don't need to change their behavior. (Sometimes there is nothing you can do to avoid it, and I totally get that, but ... three times?)
Besides, I can't tell if you're just sharing your story or actually trying to disagree with something. The number of crashes? That doesn't have anything to do with what people report. Maybe the number of deaths? That doesn't have anything to do with what people report. The only thing left is the Erie study, but I get the feeling you didn't read it. I suspect you didn't even read the simple article about it that I linked to. You can just say "I don't care, the facts don't support my fantasy" or maybe you can specifically explain what about the study is wrong.
It's astonishing, what with all the various gadgets enticing people's attention in the 1970s and 1980s, that it's only now become a problem.
I wonder what changed between now and then that has dramatically increased the incidence of accidents caused by driver distractions. But I suppose we needed something to make up for all mechanic and doctor billing lost after seat-belts and crackdowns on drunk drivers. Those people have mouths to feed, after all.
A few things here: other than things that impaired driving (and there were appropriate laws about that back in the 70's and 80's), what we have now are roadways designed for faster speeds, and vehicles with different safety standards (mostly significantly better). However, we also have significantly more vehicles on the road, and it is significantly easier to get your license and to afford a vehicle. Link this to a culture with isolationist tendencies, and you get a situation where something that would have been relatively safe in a 70's car can be incredibly dangerous today, even with improved standards. Plus, with the improved flow of information, people actually find out about all the bad stuff that goes on now, whereas back then, the problem wasn't assumed to be as big as it actually was.
Or something like that.
Actually, it hasn't only now become a problem. If anything, the other problems have decreased to the point that it's finally significant enough to focus on. Traffic fatalities have gone down at the same time as the use of gadgets have gone up. In fact, you're 5 times as likely to be in a distracted driving accident due to daydreaming as you are to be in one due to mobile phone use. The bans don't work, they just give lawmakers something to do that has the appearance of addressing the real problem while they ignore what really works because what really works doesn't get votes.
Lie: Texting is making the roads more dangerous than they used to be. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, "In 2011, traffic deaths fell 2% to 32,367 from the previous year, making traffic deaths in 2011 at the lowest level since 1949 -- and a 26% decline since 2005."
Lie: Texting is causing the majority of distracted driving accidents. In the news today, "According to the report, which was published earlier this week, 62 percent of the drivers studied were 'generally distracted or lost in thought.' Conversely, the study found that only 12 percent of those examined were using their cell phones - either texting, talking, or dialing.
Lie: The solution to texting accidents is a ban A "study by researchers at the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI) finds no reductions in crashes after laws take effect that ban texting by all drivers. In fact, such bans are associated with a slight increase in the frequency of insurance claims filed under collision coverage for damage to vehicles in crashes."
Opinion: We're focusing on the wrong problem. I spend about two hours a day commuting and get to observe both great and courteous drivers and and also dangerous and rude drivers. People like to focus on banning gadgets because it gives a false sense of hope, they hope that the answer is simple and safer roadways can be had by stopping people from doing something. My opinion is that safer driving comes by education, training, testing and enforcement. I believe that gadget bans are as ineffective as the distracted driving laws that are ignored already. Focusing on a specific detail like a phone causes people to do the same thing they would without the ban, but they do it in a more clandestine way which actually makes the real problem, distraction, worse.
Don't take my word for these facts. Search for statistics about traffic fatalities and for the study done by Erie Insurance Group. Here are a couple links to get you started:
Yup. Thanks for agreeing with me.
Just because people have urges to act like animals, doesn't mean we should. In fact we have rules and laws to keep us from giving into those urges. That was part of my point.
I suspect that you drew that one phrase from the larger context because you wanted to make the point that hunting and killing animals is bad, but rather you made the point that it is unnecessary because you prefer an honest tone instead of a belligerent one. I'd agree with you on both counts actually in most situations. Personally, I don't own a hunting gun (or bow) or hunt for sport because my environment (urban) doesn't make it a useful activity. But I add the qualifier "in most situations" because it isn't always true. You added the qualifier "most" as well and I suspect for the same reason.
The featured article is about the attempt to limit the damage of a non-native invasive species. In this particular instance, the only practical method of limiting the damage is to kill as many of the invasive animals as possible. I am not arguing that it is a good thing to kill them, but rather that in order to preserve the environment we treasure, it is an unfortunate necessity. I admit that I can see the appeal of hunting even if it isn't a strong appeal to me personally and therefore I can see how appealing to hunters to participate is a useful methodology.
I did grow up in a rural environment and was and remain exposed to many hunters. For many hunters, the actual kill is more of a proof of your skill as a hunter than a necessity, but it does provide the benefit of food for many of them. In trade for investments in time, getting a hunting license, requisite training and certification, and the necessary equipment, many of them provide a year's worth of meat for their families with their skills. I can also tell you from personal experience that the challenge of planning a hunt and the process of stalking is something that appeals to most of them. I actually managed to stalk within arms reach of a deer once, and it was thrilling. I had no desire or plan to kill anything because there was no benefit for me, yet the confirmation of my prowess and being able to see them so closely in the wild is one of my fonder memories.
That's a secondary point though. My first and hopefully less subtle point was that it is absurd to draw the conclusions or make the generalities found in the post I to which I was replying.
[Checked a mirror, yup, canines.]
I didn't choose, but I am an animal. By most definitions, yes, we are in fact animals. We have all the instincts of carnivores, an urge to stalk, an urge to hunt and yes, an urge to kill prey.
Now if I stalk around the house and pounce on things, my family looks at me a little funny because of society or whatever. But if I buy a permit and a bow and go after deer, that's totally acceptable.
If I'm wandering around the savanna in my PJs and get taken out by a pride of lions, then nobody is going to be blaming the lions, calling them gutless cowards, asking them how brave they're going to be when somebody kills them. They're lions, that's what they do and we're perfectly fine with that.
If anything, it's human hunters that are on the highroad here. We have rules about when and how we're allowed to kill other animals (and each other.) We're at the top of a food chain, and rather than just killing whatever we can, we restrict ourselves. I can't think of any other predator that does that. That's kind of an intelligent thing and telling a bunch of gun toting predators that they have to do things your way kind of takes guts.
So yeah, pretty much the opposite of everything you said. Wait, were you being deliberately ironic? It'd be funny if you'd included something that actually had ... well humor in it.
The fact is, Google is just like the phone books... Google's only able to do it for free because they operate at such large volume and with such low costs ...
There is a bit of a difference and it is a significant one. Phone books don't have the content of today's news. I can go to Google and search for "Pizzeria news" and see headlines and brief news snippits. I can't do that with the phone book. If I want to get Pizzeria News using the phone book, I have to call my local newspaper company. Google cuts out the need to make that call for a lot of people.
Now there are some things that are fairly compared to phone books and some things that aren't but the news people have a complaint that isn't fairly addressed unless Google stops showing anything but a link to the news agency. (Which might be a fair and reasonable response actually.)
Still they news agencies absolutely could have set to not have Google spider and they choose not to because they don't want Google to stop. I think that sums up the real issue right there.
Sorry to reply to myself, but I should have included this:
It's Official: Western Europeans Have More Cars Per Person Than Americans
Interesting. I was with you up until you got to "just compare the European and Asian railroads to American ones" because you don't account for any of the drastically different environments or outcomes. Without some reference, it's a completely unreasonable comparison.
The US freight rail system is widely held as the best in the world and it seems like that should make it reasonable for us to ramp up passenger rail. So I looked into it. I'm still enamored with the idea of reliable and reasonable public transport, but my hopes have been somewhat dampened by the realities after I started reading on the subject.
Wanna read a little? Here are a couple articles that each cover good and bad.
In the end, I actually find myself rooting against rail but not because I don't believe it could work. I root against it because the history I see of US pork barrel politics.
That code reminds me of... well mine. Sorry about that. Odds are it isn't actually mine, but there have been a few coding sessions where I was a little heavy on the Merlot and %s/originalvariable/whatimeannow/g. Once it runs and looks like the output is good, you sleep. When you revisit your code, generally much later, to fix something minor, you discover that the worst coder in the world has apparently been going through your elegant programs with a randomizer and a blindfold. Touch one thing and suddenly you're cursing that freak with a passion.
I've got one such project going right now and I think I'm in the third or fourth rewrite attempt since I gave up on fixing past-me's functional but fragile apparent attempt to win an obfuscated coding contest. I mean it looks like it makes sense but I keep running into these functions that don't look like they should be where they are and I have a fuzzy memory of putting them there and why, but when I try to do things the right way I get locked out of my firewall, kill my VPN or crash browsers. (Yes, you guessed it, manipulating iptables dynamically and I am indeed over my head sometimes.) Thankfully it is in what I'd call pre-pre-release state. If I had to maintain this stuff for a client right now, I'd be having a very bad week.
Budget! I can do it cheap too. It'll only cost about 40 million, 1 million for research and development to make a very realistic looking stargate, another 1 million to get the right magician involved and pay for his silence, a few thousand for a pig, a grinder and high powered pneumatic cannon, a couple million to ensure that 'davidwr' can be depended on to stay gone after the demo and the remainder to pay for my plastic surgery, new identity and personal lifetime vacation.
Talk about a challenge. I love these requests because you can pretty much talk about what it would take to develop solutions that are beyond current technology. (Some extravagant requests are doable with just an insane rather than the impossible budget this one will take.)
You need to do it faster than 299,792,458 m/s? Okay, but we'll have to invest in some serious R&D. In 1998 Morris, Thorne and Yurtsever worked out a possible solution, but to have a good chance of solving it in our lifetime as a practical application will require a budget in the quadrillion range or at least a team of research engineers who are going to cost our company trillions to finance. Now's a good time too, because we can pick up the SSC as an exploratory tool at a discount. Can you get me that budget to work with, because I'd love to manage the project!