A sensor net that is super accurate is likely to not ID a Honda Accord with a big dent in the side as an Accord. And good luck trying to deal with one that has a mountain bike attached to the the roof!
Hah! My rear wing not only makes my Accord
faster, it makes it stealthier! Ear your heart out, 007!
My highly developed ape remark was meant to echo creationists' view of what evolution implies about people. To someone at Mims' level, a blind spot of that nature is intentional, hence intellectual dishonesty.
...then there is no place for folks whose views are shaped by politics.
Agreed. pure science isn't a stone for grinding your axes. Your inference is flawed, however. Scientists can make silly political statements. Their view of the facts can lead them to overly optimistic policy wants. Politicians should not bring their views into science. Your political leanings can't change objective, scientifically proven facts.
I see no place for anti-evolutionist views in Scientific American, but he had promised not to put those views into his work. It appears that he was sacked just because they couldn't stand to have a person whose *private views* disagreed with them.
I see no place for someone holding anti-evolutionist views anywhere near something that uses the word science. I can't stand intellectual dishonesty. It doesn't take much in the way of practical science experiments to demonstrate evolution. It also doesn't take much of a brain to see the trend backwards and put 2 and 2 together. This Mims guy is apparently only a highly developed ape.
Jez, US public transport makes the UK system look good (how rude is that!).
Quite. When comparing mass transit, one must remember that your tiny little country is about the size of New England and has been heavily populated for a few years longer. New England is a very small part of the US and like the UK could very easily get lost in a country of this size.
I was over there in February and I tried to get a train from New York to Detroit. Kind of assumed I could wander down to the train station and book a ticket for the next day and it wouldn't cost too much. Bit like how you would pop into Kings Cross London and get a ticket for Edinburgh or Glasgow.
Look at a map. A NY-Detroit trip is more comparable to London-Edinburgh-London. Except that the people of NY and Detroit don't have such limited horizons. What is mass transit? It makes sense when a whole lot of people have one or two places that they are able to go. If they can go elsewhere, they will. In tiny little countries, it doesn't take long to carpet them with all the rails you'll ever need. It also doesn't take long to take a train from one end of the country to the other. Try maintaining the amount of rails we've got sometime. Then look at the number of New Yorkers that need to be in Detroit by lunchtime. After remembering that you can't go anywhere near as far as that in England without drowning, buy a plane ticket and stop whining.
It'll never happen. The fundamental problem is that it only works if all 50 states implement it, but it is against the interests of each individual state to do it.
Um, no. If you go the Maine/Nebraska route, you become more important. Say your population is split 60/40. If the 40% candidate is smart, he'll ignore your state entirely. With a split prize, there's going to be a lot of effort poured into your state.
The only problem is that winner-take-all favors the big parties, so the big parties favor winner-take-all. Only two parties are capable of running national campaigns, so they both want to keep campaigns as national as possible.
Nader wouldn't have hurt Gore, but he would have gotten a few electoral votes of his own, which would have hurt Bush. Neither party wants this sort of thing because they want to focus on a single opponent in the campaign. Neither party wants it because corporations would have to spread their money among more parties, and legislation would be a little more unpredictable- it's harder to get your own pet projects funded when there's more than just one party to make compromises with.
I moved here after living most of my life in Maryland, and when I got here, I didn't notice any kind of strong accent coming from anywone; that was my point.
Compared to Sub Mason-Dixon Americans, people from London don't have an accent. I lived there for a bit, and I just want to let all of the locals in on a secret: A yawl is a boat- not a person, damn it!
It doesn't take any talent to make a car go fast in a straight line.
BULLSHIT! Try rebuilding an engine every run, machining valves, pistons, just to squeak out a little more power. It takes talent to do ANYTHING at the top level.
He was referring to driver skill. Of course it takes skilled, dedicated mechanics.
This is always true, essentially. The only enforceable laws in a free society are the ones that the people want to obey anyway.
You mean like drug laws and speed limits? If we wanted to obey them, there wouldn't be any need for the laws in the first place. The only enforceable laws in a free society are the ones that people make sure are enforced. Like here.
Two thousand years later, people with degrees in architecture and engineering build houses (and even gigantic hotels) out on the beach...
They are hired to do it by pointy haired customers. If geeks only did what was Right and Good- no, scratch that. If geeks only did things that made sense, there would be no Microsoft.
...and then try to get the government to spend tax money on beach replenishment when the ocean comes to take away their buildings.
The people rich enough to build like that are used to having laws custom made for them. They all have to live somewhere, so there aren't many ideological differences among the very rich about whether or not the little taxpayers ought to bail them out.
Remember, you are supposed to be paying state tax on all of your catalog orders anyway. So this will not be a new law, just a new enforcement technique...
There are current, actual uses for nanotechnology, mostly in the realm of sensors so far.
And if the "paint" means not having to tape M-8 paper to things any more, that's awesome.
And I agree with you... this is not news, this is a notice that there may be news sometime in the future, that the army hopes there will be news if they throw enough money at the problem, and they are hoping for public support for their funding. Surprised?
Not letting the government keep perfect records of who owns what firearms makes more sense if you think the government may turn on the citizens in violation of the constitution.
And thanks to the USAPATRIOT act, that's exactly what's happening. Have you seen a list of who has been arrested so far? You're only a paranoid if you think it's specifically targeted at you. It is happening, though. What hurts is that none of this is in response to anything. The FBI had been asking for the USAPATRIOT act provisions for years, simply because they're jerks. Congress gave it to them last year simply because they're idiots. God help you if you happen to piss off the government now.
Using rifling information from all firearms would certainly allow us to narrow down the possibilities of a given bullet strike. I can't see how this idea would be objectionable to gun owners.
The tire tracks are right on. There is already caliber, which helps narrow down possibilities. "Fingerprinting" will just be a waste of time. It's too easy to change- so easy that changing it will become a standard part of buying a gun. Not for evasion, mind you, but upgrading or something. It gets "fingerprinted" at the factory, then the store can sell & install "high performance" firing pins and extractors, maybe with a "long life" barrel.
Ain't interchangable parts grand? This is objectionable to gun owners for the same reason the DMCA and PATRIOT act are to you. You aren't a terrorist, so you resent your email being read. You resent not being able to legally watch DVDs in Linux. Gun owners don't like government control any more than you do, and guns are a lot more final than software. Guns threaten the government, even if it's only government types who own them. It's kind of a real world balance of power. They're more motivated and effective than the/. crowd and the ACLU. They see threats a long way off and work the system to keep them from being passed. You could learn a thing or two from them. I don't see why that would be objectionable to you.
Adobe is a clear villian. Anyone who does business with them has no business considering themselves to be moral.
I would think that the Skylarov case would be the ultimate example of what is wrong with the DMCA and the DOJ in general. Adobe did everyone (except Skylarov himself) a huge favor by starting this mess. Forget about hypotheticals, drop the "this could become illegal"s. We've got a case that shows just how wrong this law is.
Refusing to grant a visa is the best way the feds have to avoid committing an atrocity here. He'll be convicted in absentia, but they'll never ask for extradition- you can't request extradition for someone that you denied entry to.
Washington gets their conviction without actually having to jail him- just some bureaucratic snafu over at State, you know. The DMCA is validated (?) by the conviction. Washington is spared the embarassment of jailing him, and we still have this travesty to point to.
Everyone wins except Skylarov, and he gets to stop losing. The State Dept. turned him down for a visa, and he doesn't have to apply for another. He can't come to the US again, but I'd imagine he isn't so hot on that idea anyway.
It's getting people to drive legally without issuing tickets.
Doesn't sound useless to me...
If everyone violates the law as a matter of course, we need to take one of the following positions:
1. Everyone is criminal.
2. Some laws need to be reexamined.
The flow of traffic tends to be 10-15 mph over the limit. I've noticed that during snowstorms, R1 (a relative speed based on reasonableness, you know the rest) tends to coincide with the speed limit. In good weather, going up a hill with a trailer is about the same. Is that a sane way to set a speed limit? Setting the all-round maximum limit according to what's comfortable in a handicapped vehicle is senseless. The vast majority of us ignore the limit because it's senseless, not because we're hardened criminals.
The biggest argument against red light cameras is the proportion of violators that cross in the first second of red. They aren't running a red light so much as going for too late a yellow. These violators aren't disregarding the principles that intersections are based on, they're just trying to get where they're going. Running a late yellow is fine, and getting clipped by the red is just as safe- the other lanes don't get a green immediately, and still could not be in an unsafe position even if they did. We know this and drive accordingly. Accidents from red light runners are just like accidents blamed on speed: the perp is probably drunk, on the phone or asleep. Cameras aren't going to help.
The only people who like cameras are insurance companies, camera companies and bad cops. Nobody else.
I would be willing to wager that 1/4 of the people on the street, in the *bad* part of town, on any given night at say... 2am, are indeed armed. Many of them are under the influence of drugs, and might indeed try to shoot an arresting officer.
And
Mostly white, young college goof offs out to have a good time. Sometimes that involved demolishing public property. Cameras stopped that FAST.
Wah?
Unless those goof offs would actually shoot a cop to be able to continue hanging around being asses, then you can't compare the two groups. The idiots just need to see a fake camera to make them remember that Daddy might stop bankrolling college if they make him get a lawyer, too. People who are likely to shoot a cop aren't even looking as far ahead as that cop's partner(s). WTF makes you think he'll worry about how a jury will react to the tape if he isn't even worried about an armed cop's reaction?
That said, I agree with you on backing the cops. We hired them to do a nasty job. As that job is protecting us, the cops need to be investigated, too, but they need to be given the tools they need. They don't need these cameras, though. Haven't you noticed that the cameras aren't to help in investigations, but simply to issue vast numbers of tickets?
As a taxpayer, a member of the group hiring the cops to do a job,I don't think it serves public safety. As a citizen, a member of the group that worries about power being abused, I know it scares me.
On a side note: (Ever notice how few people try to shoot back at the cops when there is a police chopper overhead with a spotlight on them?) I hope you were simply being unclear. No one shoud ever have to "shoot back" at a cop.
It's not a silly product, as such, but it is a silly patent.
Even the "take a number" system at the deli has a computer behind it, and the printer and scanner on the plane are so you'll have a number with you in the aisle to let the door know that you're the actually the one whose turn it is.
This isn't even an idea, much less a patentable one. There's no such thing as a harmless patent. The "sue people to get settlements" business model is too prevalent and successful to wantonly throw legal backing around.
Things would be so much better if the USP&TO staff didn't commute via short bus, though.
Yes, geeks like things that aren't sci-fi or anime. Like most social commentary, you can't put Koyaanisqatsi et al into a nutshell. Their scope is too big and there aren't any good lines.
Yes, you are responsible for this information. Yes, you'll be better off for having seen them. Take an evening, or a weekend day. Don't shoehorn it into a hectic schedule. Actual reflection is always better than drug induced reflection.
The author compares the bill that the RIAA bought to allow them to crack any box they want with the "spam vigilantes" that blacklist sites that don't obey "proper" e-mail etiquette and then by organizing automated boycotts of the sites on the list.
His explanation of the bill is Through his bill, these vigilantes would be granted immunity from liability as they deployed tools to hack peer-to-peer systems that they "reasonably believe" violate copyright laws. He compares the two as unaccountable processes that wrongfully victimize people.
He then proposes (drum roll) a law that spammers would have to follow, and a reward for geeks who catch them if they don't. Like they'll follow laws. Blacklisting servers is better; it slaps the stupid admins pretty hard for victimizing everyone else. It also slaps folks like that stupid "internet lawyer" and Bernie Schifman. There's a public good- actual, relevant punishment for offenders.
Maybe since slashdot's stories are being picked up by a big news site, this would be a good time to implement some spelling/grammar/fact checkers.
We'll never compete with mainstream media if we do that! CmdrTaco and CowboyNeal need to trade stupid banter before turning it over to JonKatz with what the weather would be like in an ideal world.
Helmets were first issued to troops to prevent death from grazing shots to the head as they were among the most common, if not THE most common cause of death...
No. Fragments are what helmets protect against. As artillery is the most casualty producing element in modern warfare (even WWI) it made, and still makes a lot of sense. People shoot for center mass, not the head, so a helmet is a stupid way to protect yourself from bullets. As a way of protecting you from bombs, shells and grenades (blowing up at ranges that don't turn you to soup), a helmet is well worth the money and discomfort. The rest of your body is less jam-packed with vital parts and tends to be less exposed than your head anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Hah! My rear wing not only makes my Accord faster, it makes it stealthier! Ear your heart out, 007!
Agreed. pure science isn't a stone for grinding your axes. Your inference is flawed, however. Scientists can make silly political statements. Their view of the facts can lead them to overly optimistic policy wants. Politicians should not bring their views into science. Your political leanings can't change objective, scientifically proven facts.
I see no place for someone holding anti-evolutionist views anywhere near something that uses the word science. I can't stand intellectual dishonesty. It doesn't take much in the way of practical science experiments to demonstrate evolution. It also doesn't take much of a brain to see the trend backwards and put 2 and 2 together. This Mims guy is apparently only a highly developed ape.
Quite. When comparing mass transit, one must remember that your tiny little country is about the size of New England and has been heavily populated for a few years longer. New England is a very small part of the US and like the UK could very easily get lost in a country of this size.
I was over there in February and I tried to get a train from New York to Detroit. Kind of assumed I could wander down to the train station and book a ticket for the next day and it wouldn't cost too much. Bit like how you would pop into Kings Cross London and get a ticket for Edinburgh or Glasgow.
Look at a map. A NY-Detroit trip is more comparable to London-Edinburgh-London. Except that the people of NY and Detroit don't have such limited horizons. What is mass transit? It makes sense when a whole lot of people have one or two places that they are able to go. If they can go elsewhere, they will. In tiny little countries, it doesn't take long to carpet them with all the rails you'll ever need. It also doesn't take long to take a train from one end of the country to the other. Try maintaining the amount of rails we've got sometime. Then look at the number of New Yorkers that need to be in Detroit by lunchtime. After remembering that you can't go anywhere near as far as that in England without drowning, buy a plane ticket and stop whining.
Not only that, but you need an MSDS if you have distilled water.
Um, no. If you go the Maine/Nebraska route, you become more important. Say your population is split 60/40. If the 40% candidate is smart, he'll ignore your state entirely. With a split prize, there's going to be a lot of effort poured into your state.
The only problem is that winner-take-all favors the big parties, so the big parties favor winner-take-all. Only two parties are capable of running national campaigns, so they both want to keep campaigns as national as possible.
Nader wouldn't have hurt Gore, but he would have gotten a few electoral votes of his own, which would have hurt Bush. Neither party wants this sort of thing because they want to focus on a single opponent in the campaign. Neither party wants it because corporations would have to spread their money among more parties, and legislation would be a little more unpredictable- it's harder to get your own pet projects funded when there's more than just one party to make compromises with.
Compared to Sub Mason-Dixon Americans, people from London don't have an accent. I lived there for a bit, and I just want to let all of the locals in on a secret: A yawl is a boat- not a person, damn it!
BULLSHIT! Try rebuilding an engine every run, machining valves, pistons, just to squeak out a little more power. It takes talent to do ANYTHING at the top level.
He was referring to driver skill. Of course it takes skilled, dedicated mechanics.
You mean like drug laws and speed limits? If we wanted to obey them, there wouldn't be any need for the laws in the first place. The only enforceable laws in a free society are the ones that people make sure are enforced. Like here.
They are hired to do it by pointy haired customers. If geeks only did what was Right and Good- no, scratch that. If geeks only did things that made sense, there would be no Microsoft.
The people rich enough to build like that are used to having laws custom made for them. They all have to live somewhere, so there aren't many ideological differences among the very rich about whether or not the little taxpayers ought to bail them out.
Actually, I live in New Hampshire.
And if the "paint" means not having to tape M-8 paper to things any more, that's awesome.
And I agree with you... this is not news, this is a notice that there may be news sometime in the future, that the army hopes there will be news if they throw enough money at the problem, and they are hoping for public support for their funding. Surprised?
No, in the Army we only salute people that we want snipers to hit. And it seems that people who want salutes are the ones we already want to salute...
And thanks to the USAPATRIOT act, that's exactly what's happening. Have you seen a list of who has been arrested so far? You're only a paranoid if you think it's specifically targeted at you. It is happening, though. What hurts is that none of this is in response to anything. The FBI had been asking for the USAPATRIOT act provisions for years, simply because they're jerks. Congress gave it to them last year simply because they're idiots. God help you if you happen to piss off the government now.
The tire tracks are right on. There is already caliber, which helps narrow down possibilities. "Fingerprinting" will just be a waste of time. It's too easy to change- so easy that changing it will become a standard part of buying a gun. Not for evasion, mind you, but upgrading or something. It gets "fingerprinted" at the factory, then the store can sell & install "high performance" firing pins and extractors, maybe with a "long life" barrel.
Ain't interchangable parts grand? This is objectionable to gun owners for the same reason the DMCA and PATRIOT act are to you. You aren't a terrorist, so you resent your email being read. You resent not being able to legally watch DVDs in Linux. Gun owners don't like government control any more than you do, and guns are a lot more final than software. Guns threaten the government, even if it's only government types who own them. It's kind of a real world balance of power. They're more motivated and effective than the /. crowd and the ACLU. They see threats a long way off and work the system to keep them from being passed. You could learn a thing or two from them. I don't see why that would be objectionable to you.
I would think that the Skylarov case would be the ultimate example of what is wrong with the DMCA and the DOJ in general. Adobe did everyone (except Skylarov himself) a huge favor by starting this mess. Forget about hypotheticals, drop the "this could become illegal"s. We've got a case that shows just how wrong this law is.
Refusing to grant a visa is the best way the feds have to avoid committing an atrocity here. He'll be convicted in absentia, but they'll never ask for extradition- you can't request extradition for someone that you denied entry to.
Washington gets their conviction without actually having to jail him- just some bureaucratic snafu over at State, you know. The DMCA is validated (?) by the conviction. Washington is spared the embarassment of jailing him, and we still have this travesty to point to.
Everyone wins except Skylarov, and he gets to stop losing. The State Dept. turned him down for a visa, and he doesn't have to apply for another. He can't come to the US again, but I'd imagine he isn't so hot on that idea anyway.
Doesn't sound useless to me...
If everyone violates the law as a matter of course, we need to take one of the following positions:
1. Everyone is criminal.
2. Some laws need to be reexamined.
The flow of traffic tends to be 10-15 mph over the limit. I've noticed that during snowstorms, R1 (a relative speed based on reasonableness, you know the rest) tends to coincide with the speed limit. In good weather, going up a hill with a trailer is about the same. Is that a sane way to set a speed limit? Setting the all-round maximum limit according to what's comfortable in a handicapped vehicle is senseless. The vast majority of us ignore the limit because it's senseless, not because we're hardened criminals.
The biggest argument against red light cameras is the proportion of violators that cross in the first second of red. They aren't running a red light so much as going for too late a yellow. These violators aren't disregarding the principles that intersections are based on, they're just trying to get where they're going. Running a late yellow is fine, and getting clipped by the red is just as safe- the other lanes don't get a green immediately, and still could not be in an unsafe position even if they did. We know this and drive accordingly. Accidents from red light runners are just like accidents blamed on speed: the perp is probably drunk, on the phone or asleep. Cameras aren't going to help.
The only people who like cameras are insurance companies, camera companies and bad cops. Nobody else.
And
Mostly white, young college goof offs out to have a good time. Sometimes that involved demolishing public property. Cameras stopped that FAST.
Wah?
Unless those goof offs would actually shoot a cop to be able to continue hanging around being asses, then you can't compare the two groups. The idiots just need to see a fake camera to make them remember that Daddy might stop bankrolling college if they make him get a lawyer, too. People who are likely to shoot a cop aren't even looking as far ahead as that cop's partner(s). WTF makes you think he'll worry about how a jury will react to the tape if he isn't even worried about an armed cop's reaction?
That said, I agree with you on backing the cops. We hired them to do a nasty job. As that job is protecting us, the cops need to be investigated, too, but they need to be given the tools they need. They don't need these cameras, though. Haven't you noticed that the cameras aren't to help in investigations, but simply to issue vast numbers of tickets?
As a taxpayer, a member of the group hiring the cops to do a job,I don't think it serves public safety. As a citizen, a member of the group that worries about power being abused, I know it scares me.
On a side note: (Ever notice how few people try to shoot back at the cops when there is a police chopper overhead with a spotlight on them?) I hope you were simply being unclear. No one shoud ever have to "shoot back" at a cop.
Even the "take a number" system at the deli has a computer behind it, and the printer and scanner on the plane are so you'll have a number with you in the aisle to let the door know that you're the actually the one whose turn it is.
This isn't even an idea, much less a patentable one. There's no such thing as a harmless patent. The "sue people to get settlements" business model is too prevalent and successful to wantonly throw legal backing around.
Things would be so much better if the USP&TO staff didn't commute via short bus, though.
"We've used the latest in biometric technology to confirm that the passenger manifest is accurate. You are cleared for takeoff."
Yes, you are responsible for this information. Yes, you'll be better off for having seen them. Take an evening, or a weekend day. Don't shoehorn it into a hectic schedule. Actual reflection is always better than drug induced reflection.
The author compares the bill that the RIAA bought to allow them to crack any box they want with the "spam vigilantes" that blacklist sites that don't obey "proper" e-mail etiquette and then by organizing automated boycotts of the sites on the list.
His explanation of the bill is Through his bill, these vigilantes would be granted immunity from liability as they deployed tools to hack peer-to-peer systems that they "reasonably believe" violate copyright laws. He compares the two as unaccountable processes that wrongfully victimize people.
He then proposes (drum roll) a law that spammers would have to follow, and a reward for geeks who catch them if they don't. Like they'll follow laws. Blacklisting servers is better; it slaps the stupid admins pretty hard for victimizing everyone else. It also slaps folks like that stupid "internet lawyer" and Bernie Schifman. There's a public good- actual, relevant punishment for offenders.
We'll never compete with mainstream media if we do that! CmdrTaco and CowboyNeal need to trade stupid banter before turning it over to JonKatz with what the weather would be like in an ideal world.
No. Fragments are what helmets protect against. As artillery is the most casualty producing element in modern warfare (even WWI) it made, and still makes a lot of sense. People shoot for center mass, not the head, so a helmet is a stupid way to protect yourself from bullets. As a way of protecting you from bombs, shells and grenades (blowing up at ranges that don't turn you to soup), a helmet is well worth the money and discomfort. The rest of your body is less jam-packed with vital parts and tends to be less exposed than your head anyway.