Several months ago, the "Save BeOS" campaign sponsored an auction, designed to raise money for and gauge interest in BeOS. I signed up for a "Save BeOS" T-shirt and a limited-edition BeOS CD. Only 154 of the numbered CDs were made, and they were sold on a "first-come, first-served" basis. In case someone ordered a limited-edition CD too late, charges were not billed to credit cards until the final products were shipped.
I just got my merchandise in the mail today (January 2, 2002). I have the prize! I got SAVE BeOS Limited Edition CD-ROM Number 000057!! And, yes, my whole point in posting is to brag and show off my prize! I am *so* thrilled! I'm almost afraid to touch it (but, I'll manage, I assure you).
I salute a really great operating system, and the developers who worked to make it so.
Slashdot: "User would go to download a game demo or something, receive pieces from several different places, and knit them together?"
DOsinga: "The file sharing networks based on fasttrack technology do that. You download a movie or game from different users at the same time. Kazaa stitches it back together."
Pooua: More to the point of the sarcastic Slashdot comment, *Napster* does that.
A patent cannot be obtained upon a mere idea or suggestion.
I believe this single sentence from the patent office goes to the heart of this entire thread, covering the majority that could be said on this subject. I've known a lot of people who are confused by the idea, and I have reason to believe it is a common delusion. Bruce Williams, the practical advice man heard on many radio stations, often said on his program that ideas, "are a dime a dozen." It isn't the idea that is important; it is actually working out the idea! I listened to several people call Mr. Williams' show, believing that because they had an idea that someone else later developed, they should get a share of the profits. As I see it, much of the science fiction community has this same over-inflated sense of self-worth. Some people seem to think that because they have imagined some fantastic idea that they are a father of future civilization. Many people who think that way coincidentally are unlikely to benefit society significantly beyond showing off their ideas.
I think that Liberal Arts majors are some of the most useless people in an honest society, with entertainers, artists and actors being at the lowest end. Some of them, however, redeem themselves by pursuing a worthy profession, such as medicine or engineering or science.
Most of the great ideas in science fiction weren't invented by the writer's anyway; the most successful prognosticators do a lot of careful research before they publish, thus lowering the chances that they will say something too quickly outdated. Of course, it's the people doing the real development work that would make the science fiction outdated.
The trailer you mention should have made you want to watch II, because the trailer lines you cited were from the fan trailer made for II. I guess I should also point out that the person who made the fan trailer has no way of knowing what's in Episode II; he just pulled together a bunch of stuff. The scene with the mob running with lightsabers is a doctored scene from "Braveheart."
Alternate building materials are common in the SouthWest US. The grand-daddy of them all is, of course, adobe, which is basically bricks made from sun-dried mud (maybe some straw added). I've also seen plastic flying saucer homes, straw homes, newspaper homes, rubber tire homes, garbage homes and airblown insulation homes, among others. The problem these homes have generally isn't durability or safety; it's licensing. Even adobe, which has been commonly used for centuries in the SouthWest, took years to win approval from local US approving agencies. The woman who built the straw house fought tooth-and-nail for years to get approval, before she finally convinced the permit people that her house wasn't a fire hazard.
I don't see the athiest connection here at all. Is posing nude considered 'Athiest'?
I wasn't referring *only* to nude movie scenes, though my wording probably didn't make that clear. With Star Trek, I wouldn't have thought that I would need to make it clear. The franchise repeatedly does questionable things (from a religious perspective). That would not mean so much, if not for the knowledge that Roddenbury was, if not atheistic, at least humanistic. It would be a simple matter to make a long list of Star Trek episodes that cast religion in a questionable light, beginning with some of the first episodes, until the most recent. Why, just tonight, I watched Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, whose plot centered around a Vulcan who attempts to find God, only to find that the entity claiming to be God (and identified by Spock's brother--and by the credits list--as God) is really an imprisoned, vengeful, cruel being who zaps anyone who doubts him. However, what called all this to mind in this instance was recalling the specific films in which the actresses had appeared nude. It wasn't just that they had appeared nude that tipped me off as to their atheistic leanings; it was the films, themselves, in which they had appeared. None of these people are angels.
I suspect that one reason that Star Trek scripts are so lackluster and contrived is the sufficating atmosphere inherent to secular humanism. It obviously isn't very difficult to put all kinds of fancy gizmos into a film; what is difficult is having a message worth delivering.
$220 is a lot of money when the Abit VP6 dual PIII can be had for $130.
Does the VP6 support 1+ GHz CPU clock speeds? I doubt it. Does it support a 266 MHz FSB? How about DDR? Even if it does, I'd rather have a 1 GHz Athlon than a 1 GHz Pentium; even if you like Intel over AMD, you would still have to admit that an Athlon is from a more advanced generation than the PIII.
I've noticed, in my wanderings around Usenet binary groups, that many of the "Star Trek" actresses have previously appeared in various nude scenes. It almost seems like a job requirement for getting on "Star Trek." Could this have something to do with the particular life philosophy of the people who coordinate the show? Sometimes, it seems as if the directors belong to "American Atheist," or something.
If you were to read the headline, Linux gets this in Q1 2002. WinXP is gold *now*, meaning that it'll be out before then.
I would guess that Microsoft is preparing their USB 2.0 support as a update to the gold release, instead of including it in the gold release, based on the following story:
"Windows XP won't support USB 2.0"
By Joe Wilcox
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
April 10, 2001, 9:10 a.m. PT
"The Redmond, Wash.-based software maker said it will not include support for USB 2.0, the latest iteration of the universal serial bus connection technology, in Windows XP, its next-generation operating system expected later this year. Microsoft will instead throw its support behind IEEE 1394, also known as FireWire, which was developed by Apple."
I have been using pppoe for 2 weeks now via my linux box that serves as both firewall and router and it's quite stable
I hooked up DSL to SuSE Linux 7.2 for the first time last week, using pppoe. It worked OK, except that it timed out every 2 minutes or so if I left it idle. I haven't figured out what to do to change that.
I have a friend (who is a Ricochet customer) who wants to start a wireless access service. We both live in North Dallas. So, I've looked up a few Freenet sources, to learn a bit about what we might be getting into. I'd be interested in hearing from you. You can e-mail my AOL account if you hit it early in the day (it tends to get full in the late afternoons). Or, you can look at my Web page for an alternate e-mail address.
Aren't they hoping on selling all their equipment, technology, and customer base to someone else?
They might like to, but who is going to buy it before they have to liquidate?/. carried an article on this within the last week, in which some potential buyers were named, but it is unlikely that anyone is going to buy them.
Yes, but I wonder if that all changes with fusion reactors. I am not as educated on the inner workings of them as I'd like. I understand the basic concept, but the energy requirements needed to sustain the magnetic field are probably the largest single energy expense in the reactor model.
How are you going to get electricity from the fusion reactor (heat)? No, we probably won't be using free electrons from the reaction (heat). The fusion reaction produces a lot more energy in other forms (heat). So (heat), you (heat) probably (heat) would (heat) use (heat) that (heat) energy (heat). Perhaps you would use heat (heat!).
If we use heat, we probably would use some sort of fluid to capture the heat energy for conversion to kinetic energy, and from that on to electricity, just like a conventional power plant. So, no matter what characteristics the reactor has, it would be tied to the characteristics of fluid turbines of some sort. As it happens, generally the bigger the turbine, the more efficient it is.
I might also wonder how the extreme amount of equipment redundancy (lots of expensive equipment) could make clusters of reactors competitive. These aren't mere computer cases; each facility would have to have immense amounts of control equipment. All of that control equipment is redundant--one could work as well as 50, if there were only one reactor, instead of 50--but actually becomes *less* safe as the redundancy increases. That's because if any one of those control units fails, that system fails. If the control equipment is preventing a toxic leak of some sort, that failure could be disasterous.
During Mao's Cultural Revolution in China, someone sold the leader on the idea of each family having its own iron smelting furnace, as a means of modernizing China's manufacturing process. The result was a disaster. It is more efficient for a group of trained people and a dedicated location to manage large amounts of iron smelting than it is for millions (or billions) of people to do their regular work and smelt iron on the side. It is also less toxic.
If roofers said they could roof your house for $1000 in 3 months, and then ran up your bill to $10k in a year, you would have reason to hold the roofers accountable. This is the sort of thing that has happened at NASA. NASA is looking at 4 billion US dollars worth of budget over-runs for only one project--the International Space Station--not for all of its projects. A lack of budget increases has nothing to do with it; ISS has cost NASA several times more than it was supposed to cost. No budget increase could change that fact.
Here's an interesting article:
"I'm on board with them that a supplemental appropriation -- $300 million or so -- is required to maintain value of the ISS project. But I'm coming to think that in exchange, the space industry should be forced to confront reality and see that their problems aren't caused by Bush, they're caused by a consistent policy of make-believe and tolerance of mismanagement. Acknowledgement of that -- and a sound get-well plan -- strike me as a reasonable requirement for approval of the extra moneys. But at the rally there was no trace of any notions that the problems were self-inflicted, or that it wasn't much more fun to blame yet another outsider for the mess NASA finds itself in. That was the saddest part of the event -- that and the pitiful, exploited 8-yr-olds with the anti-Bush posters."
Oh, I just wanted to add one more thought to my other post. If you think that it's bad for private companies to police the public (even though it is a billion-dollar, century-old practice), you will really hate this article from the Dallas Morning News:
"'Designer districts' benefit developers: Broad powers flow from Legislature."
Just beyond San Antonio's city limits, a taxing authority has been set up for the exclusive benefit of a proposed golf-course resort.
Anothre such special district covers nearly 600 acres in the Hill Country outside Austin, where another developer envisions a hotel complex.
A third lets a builder near Tyler and his employees serve on a nominally public board that will make financial decisions affecting his planned truck stop.
Texas lawmakers made it all possible in the last legislative session--with no dissenting votes. They passed at least nine bills whose sole purpose was to give individual developers government powers: selling low-interest bonds and levying taxes to build roads, water lines and sewer systems.
***
If you thought it was bad for a private company to fine people who broke the law by using company equipment, I would hope you would be alarmed that now private companies in Texas can pass their own taxes on people who live in their districts.
I didn't see anyone else point out that the cartoon character plastered on the front of Marvin the Robot is Warner Brother's "Marvin the Martian," not Marvin from "Hitchhiker's Guide."
Too bad they aren't fining you based on your average speed.
What do you think they are using to calculate your speed; specific velocity? No, they most certainly *are* taking your average speed. It looks to me that you think they have to average your speed from one end of the state to the other to get an average speed, instead of finding the average from only a few thousand feet.
I don't know how it is in Australia, but here in the US if you are BREAKING THE LAW, only the LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY WHO HAS JURISDICTION can cite you or arrest you for it. We do not support vigilante law enforcement.
Hogwash. Maybe if you live in a Left Wing state that's true, but in any free and civil part of the country, there is such a thing as citizen's arrest and private security. If you shoplift, it isn't a government agent who will arrest you; it could be a private security guard, or even just the bag boy! If I see you stealing my neighbor's truck, I am in my full rights to hold you at gun point until police arrive. If I see you painting a swashtika on the side of a church building, I have full right to hog-tie you for the police to pick up. Indeed, when I was an armed security guard in Virginia, if you broke into my facility, I would have been in my full rights to have killed you (though we were taught not to shoot someone who was running away, unless they were running towards other people--but we were also taught to shoot to kill).
This nonsense that only officers of law should enforce the law is contradictory to the founding principles of the US; the empowerment of the private citizen. Law enforcement is the duty of all citizens, not just some priesthood. Forgetting that is what made Germany Nazi, and Europe Socialist.
This ploy of Acme's sounds very nasty. It's tantamount to privatisation of law enforcement.
Have you ever heard of Pinkerton Security or Wackenhut Security? I was an employee of both companies (a state-certified armed guard for the latter--taught to shoot to kill). How about citizen's arrest?
People make the mistake of relying on authorities for things that are the common responsibilities of all people. Morality and soul-saving is not the exclusive job of pastors, and law enforcement is not the exclusive domain of civil officers. The law is open and applies to all; if I see you stealing from my neighbor, or attacking an innocent, I am in my full right to use appropriate force to stop you. Centuries before there were police forces protecting private citizens, there were private security arrangements. I am grateful for the police, but the police cannot be everywhere and do everything. They make civilian life safer, and they form part of the bedrock of civil order, but they cannot be the only form of legal enforcement in a safe society.
A private company should not be able to levy fines for speeding.
Why not? Should private companies not be able to charge a fee for bad checks? Should private companies not be able to add fines or fees for breaking their rules? Does your credit card company tack a fee on your account if you charge over your credit limit? Mine does, and it isn't even a violation of the law to exceed one's credit limit. So, if you are breaking an established law, isn't that an even stronger case for fining someone?
[snip]
The danger, as I see it, is that a company may start to see fines as a source of income, rather than as a tool to discourage undesirable actions.
Oh, like credit card charges or ATM charges or extended warrantee charges don't already do that!
I live in an apartment complex that doesn't have enough parking for all the residents. Recently, my apartment managers began another parking sticker program (this is the third one since I've moved in, two years ago, and the fifth time they've changed their parking policy). I neglected to get a parking sticker, and so, without any warning to me, they towed my vehicle. I acknowledge that the fee I had to pay, besides the trouble I went through to get my vehicle returned were strong motivators in my getting a parking sticker. Note, my truck wasn't breaking any laws; the only reason it was towed was that it did not have a private sticker on it.
As it happens, there has been a problem in my city (Dallas) with towing companies charging excessive amounts for vehicles they impound. I just read a message from the mayor pro tem stating that the towing company is not legally allowed to charge more than $50 for towing my vehicle, and no extra charges for equipment fees. The towing company charged me $99 for the tow, plus another $30 in added-in charges.
It would be well to consider that it is easier for a government to regulate a permanent business than to regulate private citizens. Thus, if private businesses regulate those with whom they conduct business (employees and customers), it is apt to be more successful than if government attempts to regulate the private citizens. If the business gets out of line--and they often do, being operated by humans--it is much easier for the government to prosecute them.
"Slower traffic keep right". See heavily loaded trucks and pintos/geos doing 30MPH on a 65MPH freeway on the long upgrade. This is most certainly NOT illegal.
There are a few issues I have with your comment.
1) If I am doing exactly the speed limit, then anyone going faster is breaking the law.
a) The person who is breaking the law by going faster than me should be punished first, as it is his illegal actions that make me relatively slow.
b) Complaining that my breaking the law by blocking your way is preventing you from breaking the law by speeding is inconsistent and illogical, not to mention, hypocritical.
c) It is an abuse of law to penalize someone who, but for the relative actions of lawbreakers around him, is completely within the law.
2) It depends on the state. To my knowledge, New Mexico does not have a law requiring anyone to remain in the right-hand lane. Texas has signs in some areas directing "slower" traffic to keep right. Again, "slower" traffic can only be logically and consistently referring to traffic that is below the speed limit, not traffic that is at the speed limit.
I realize that you specifically mentioned people who are traveling well below the speed limit. I agree that they are dangerous to the smooth flow of traffic. I believe that the goal of every driver should be to maintain a smooth, managable flow of traffic (road anarchy breaks that rule). Every time I hear G. Gordon Liddy mangle this subject, I want to throttle him.
The purpose of speed limits is primarily to raise revenue
I'd like to see someone make some attempt to substantiate that claim. I hear it quite often from speeders, but they never tell me who they know it to be true, apart from some vague anectdotal accounts.
The obvious solution will be for private citizens to be armed in their cars. When some idiot approaches my vehicle at >20 mph over the speed limit, it's time remove him from the roadway--permanently! Of course, one must be careful to minimize risk to others in the process.
There are over 40k traffic fatalities a year. You have no right to put my life in danger just because you are too much of a brat to obey the law. I, on the other hand, have a perfect right to defend myself, particularly if I happen to be obeying the law. The Left Wing's answer is not to address the person causing the initial threat; it's to force everyone else to be a vulnerable to him (gun control being one example, this consumer protection "cease and desist" order being another). Liberals love scoundrels, cheats, con men and liars.
Slashdot Mirror
Several months ago, the "Save BeOS" campaign sponsored an auction, designed to raise money for and gauge interest in BeOS. I signed up for a "Save BeOS" T-shirt and a limited-edition BeOS CD. Only 154 of the numbered CDs were made, and they were sold on a "first-come, first-served" basis. In case someone ordered a limited-edition CD too late, charges were not billed to credit cards until the final products were shipped.
I just got my merchandise in the mail today (January 2, 2002). I have the prize! I got SAVE BeOS Limited Edition CD-ROM Number 000057!! And, yes, my whole point in posting is to brag and show off my prize! I am *so* thrilled! I'm almost afraid to touch it (but, I'll manage, I assure you).
I salute a really great operating system, and the developers who worked to make it so.
Slashdot: "User would go to download a game demo or something, receive pieces from several different places, and knit them together?"
DOsinga: "The file sharing networks based on fasttrack technology do that. You download a movie or game from different users at the same time. Kazaa stitches it back together."
Pooua: More to the point of the sarcastic Slashdot comment, *Napster* does that.
A patent cannot be obtained upon a mere idea or suggestion.
I believe this single sentence from the patent office goes to the heart of this entire thread, covering the majority that could be said on this subject. I've known a lot of people who are confused by the idea, and I have reason to believe it is a common delusion. Bruce Williams, the practical advice man heard on many radio stations, often said on his program that ideas, "are a dime a dozen." It isn't the idea that is important; it is actually working out the idea! I listened to several people call Mr. Williams' show, believing that because they had an idea that someone else later developed, they should get a share of the profits. As I see it, much of the science fiction community has this same over-inflated sense of self-worth. Some people seem to think that because they have imagined some fantastic idea that they are a father of future civilization. Many people who think that way coincidentally are unlikely to benefit society significantly beyond showing off their ideas.
I think that Liberal Arts majors are some of the most useless people in an honest society, with entertainers, artists and actors being at the lowest end. Some of them, however, redeem themselves by pursuing a worthy profession, such as medicine or engineering or science.
Most of the great ideas in science fiction weren't invented by the writer's anyway; the most successful prognosticators do a lot of careful research before they publish, thus lowering the chances that they will say something too quickly outdated. Of course, it's the people doing the real development work that would make the science fiction outdated.
Have a look at http://www.brucewilliams.com/
The news release is dated November 14 (tomorrow, from my time zone, but the news came from Japan), and says the event occurred November 12.
I watched the trailer on CNN:
a r. wars.trailer/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2001/SHOWBIZ/Movies/11/05/st
Whoops! Too late! It's not on CNN, anymore...
The trailer you mention should have made you want to watch II, because the trailer lines you cited were from the fan trailer made for II. I guess I should also point out that the person who made the fan trailer has no way of knowing what's in Episode II; he just pulled together a bunch of stuff. The scene with the mob running with lightsabers is a doctored scene from "Braveheart."
I wasn't referring *only* to nude movie scenes, though my wording probably didn't make that clear. With Star Trek, I wouldn't have thought that I would need to make it clear. The franchise repeatedly does questionable things (from a religious perspective). That would not mean so much, if not for the knowledge that Roddenbury was, if not atheistic, at least humanistic. It would be a simple matter to make a long list of Star Trek episodes that cast religion in a questionable light, beginning with some of the first episodes, until the most recent. Why, just tonight, I watched Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, whose plot centered around a Vulcan who attempts to find God, only to find that the entity claiming to be God (and identified by Spock's brother--and by the credits list--as God) is really an imprisoned, vengeful, cruel being who zaps anyone who doubts him. However, what called all this to mind in this instance was recalling the specific films in which the actresses had appeared nude. It wasn't just that they had appeared nude that tipped me off as to their atheistic leanings; it was the films, themselves, in which they had appeared. None of these people are angels.
I suspect that one reason that Star Trek scripts are so lackluster and contrived is the sufficating atmosphere inherent to secular humanism. It obviously isn't very difficult to put all kinds of fancy gizmos into a film; what is difficult is having a message worth delivering.
Does the VP6 support 1+ GHz CPU clock speeds? I doubt it. Does it support a 266 MHz FSB? How about DDR? Even if it does, I'd rather have a 1 GHz Athlon than a 1 GHz Pentium; even if you like Intel over AMD, you would still have to admit that an Athlon is from a more advanced generation than the PIII.
I've noticed, in my wanderings around Usenet binary groups, that many of the "Star Trek" actresses have previously appeared in various nude scenes. It almost seems like a job requirement for getting on "Star Trek." Could this have something to do with the particular life philosophy of the people who coordinate the show? Sometimes, it seems as if the directors belong to "American Atheist," or something.
I would guess that Microsoft is preparing their USB 2.0 support as a update to the gold release, instead of including it in the gold release, based on the following story:
"Windows XP won't support USB 2.0"
By Joe Wilcox
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
April 10, 2001, 9:10 a.m. PT
"The Redmond, Wash.-based software maker said it will not include support for USB 2.0, the latest iteration of the universal serial bus connection technology, in Windows XP, its next-generation operating system expected later this year. Microsoft will instead throw its support behind IEEE 1394, also known as FireWire, which was developed by Apple."
I hooked up DSL to SuSE Linux 7.2 for the first time last week, using pppoe. It worked OK, except that it timed out every 2 minutes or so if I left it idle. I haven't figured out what to do to change that.
They might like to, but who is going to buy it before they have to liquidate? /. carried an article on this within the last week, in which some potential buyers were named, but it is unlikely that anyone is going to buy them.
How are you going to get electricity from the fusion reactor (heat)? No, we probably won't be using free electrons from the reaction (heat). The fusion reaction produces a lot more energy in other forms (heat). So (heat), you (heat) probably (heat) would (heat) use (heat) that (heat) energy (heat). Perhaps you would use heat (heat!).
If we use heat, we probably would use some sort of fluid to capture the heat energy for conversion to kinetic energy, and from that on to electricity, just like a conventional power plant. So, no matter what characteristics the reactor has, it would be tied to the characteristics of fluid turbines of some sort. As it happens, generally the bigger the turbine, the more efficient it is.
I might also wonder how the extreme amount of equipment redundancy (lots of expensive equipment) could make clusters of reactors competitive. These aren't mere computer cases; each facility would have to have immense amounts of control equipment. All of that control equipment is redundant--one could work as well as 50, if there were only one reactor, instead of 50--but actually becomes *less* safe as the redundancy increases. That's because if any one of those control units fails, that system fails. If the control equipment is preventing a toxic leak of some sort, that failure could be disasterous.
During Mao's Cultural Revolution in China, someone sold the leader on the idea of each family having its own iron smelting furnace, as a means of modernizing China's manufacturing process. The result was a disaster. It is more efficient for a group of trained people and a dedicated location to manage large amounts of iron smelting than it is for millions (or billions) of people to do their regular work and smelt iron on the side. It is also less toxic.
Here's an interesting article:
"I'm on board with them that a supplemental appropriation -- $300 million or so -- is required to maintain value of the ISS project. But I'm coming to think that in exchange, the space industry should be forced to confront reality and see that their problems aren't caused by Bush, they're caused by a consistent policy of make-believe and tolerance of mismanagement. Acknowledgement of that -- and a sound get-well plan -- strike me as a reasonable requirement for approval of the extra moneys. But at the rally there was no trace of any notions that the problems were self-inflicted, or that it wasn't much more fun to blame yet another outsider for the mess NASA finds itself in. That was the saddest part of the event -- that and the pitiful, exploited 8-yr-olds with the anti-Bush posters."
http://www.nasawatch.com/jsc/06.30.01.meeting.note s.html
"'Designer districts' benefit developers: Broad powers flow from Legislature."
Just beyond San Antonio's city limits, a taxing authority has been set up for the exclusive benefit of a proposed golf-course resort.
Anothre such special district covers nearly 600 acres in the Hill Country outside Austin, where another developer envisions a hotel complex.
A third lets a builder near Tyler and his employees serve on a nominally public board that will make financial decisions affecting his planned truck stop.
Texas lawmakers made it all possible in the last legislative session--with no dissenting votes. They passed at least nine bills whose sole purpose was to give individual developers government powers: selling low-interest bonds and levying taxes to build roads, water lines and sewer systems.
***
If you thought it was bad for a private company to fine people who broke the law by using company equipment, I would hope you would be alarmed that now private companies in Texas can pass their own taxes on people who live in their districts.
Compare:
Marvin the Martian:
http://www.angelfire.com/pa/lkmarvin/
Marvin of Hitchhiker's Guide:
http://www.jeffbots.com/marvin.html
As in, how to win friends and influence people? At 35 km/h?
Just a note ... The Dale Carnegie who wrote, "How to Win Friends and Influence People," lived from 1888 to 1955.
What do you think they are using to calculate your speed; specific velocity? No, they most certainly *are* taking your average speed. It looks to me that you think they have to average your speed from one end of the state to the other to get an average speed, instead of finding the average from only a few thousand feet.
Hogwash. Maybe if you live in a Left Wing state that's true, but in any free and civil part of the country, there is such a thing as citizen's arrest and private security. If you shoplift, it isn't a government agent who will arrest you; it could be a private security guard, or even just the bag boy! If I see you stealing my neighbor's truck, I am in my full rights to hold you at gun point until police arrive. If I see you painting a swashtika on the side of a church building, I have full right to hog-tie you for the police to pick up. Indeed, when I was an armed security guard in Virginia, if you broke into my facility, I would have been in my full rights to have killed you (though we were taught not to shoot someone who was running away, unless they were running towards other people--but we were also taught to shoot to kill).
This nonsense that only officers of law should enforce the law is contradictory to the founding principles of the US; the empowerment of the private citizen. Law enforcement is the duty of all citizens, not just some priesthood. Forgetting that is what made Germany Nazi, and Europe Socialist.
Have you ever heard of Pinkerton Security or Wackenhut Security? I was an employee of both companies (a state-certified armed guard for the latter--taught to shoot to kill). How about citizen's arrest?
People make the mistake of relying on authorities for things that are the common responsibilities of all people. Morality and soul-saving is not the exclusive job of pastors, and law enforcement is not the exclusive domain of civil officers. The law is open and applies to all; if I see you stealing from my neighbor, or attacking an innocent, I am in my full right to use appropriate force to stop you. Centuries before there were police forces protecting private citizens, there were private security arrangements. I am grateful for the police, but the police cannot be everywhere and do everything. They make civilian life safer, and they form part of the bedrock of civil order, but they cannot be the only form of legal enforcement in a safe society.
A private company should not be able to levy fines for speeding.
Why not? Should private companies not be able to charge a fee for bad checks? Should private companies not be able to add fines or fees for breaking their rules? Does your credit card company tack a fee on your account if you charge over your credit limit? Mine does, and it isn't even a violation of the law to exceed one's credit limit. So, if you are breaking an established law, isn't that an even stronger case for fining someone?
[snip]
The danger, as I see it, is that a company may start to see fines as a source of income, rather than as a tool to discourage undesirable actions.
Oh, like credit card charges or ATM charges or extended warrantee charges don't already do that!
I live in an apartment complex that doesn't have enough parking for all the residents. Recently, my apartment managers began another parking sticker program (this is the third one since I've moved in, two years ago, and the fifth time they've changed their parking policy). I neglected to get a parking sticker, and so, without any warning to me, they towed my vehicle. I acknowledge that the fee I had to pay, besides the trouble I went through to get my vehicle returned were strong motivators in my getting a parking sticker. Note, my truck wasn't breaking any laws; the only reason it was towed was that it did not have a private sticker on it.
As it happens, there has been a problem in my city (Dallas) with towing companies charging excessive amounts for vehicles they impound. I just read a message from the mayor pro tem stating that the towing company is not legally allowed to charge more than $50 for towing my vehicle, and no extra charges for equipment fees. The towing company charged me $99 for the tow, plus another $30 in added-in charges.
It would be well to consider that it is easier for a government to regulate a permanent business than to regulate private citizens. Thus, if private businesses regulate those with whom they conduct business (employees and customers), it is apt to be more successful than if government attempts to regulate the private citizens. If the business gets out of line--and they often do, being operated by humans--it is much easier for the government to prosecute them.
There are a few issues I have with your comment.
1) If I am doing exactly the speed limit, then anyone going faster is breaking the law.
a) The person who is breaking the law by going faster than me should be punished first, as it is his illegal actions that make me relatively slow.
b) Complaining that my breaking the law by blocking your way is preventing you from breaking the law by speeding is inconsistent and illogical, not to mention, hypocritical.
c) It is an abuse of law to penalize someone who, but for the relative actions of lawbreakers around him, is completely within the law.
2) It depends on the state. To my knowledge, New Mexico does not have a law requiring anyone to remain in the right-hand lane. Texas has signs in some areas directing "slower" traffic to keep right. Again, "slower" traffic can only be logically and consistently referring to traffic that is below the speed limit, not traffic that is at the speed limit.
I realize that you specifically mentioned people who are traveling well below the speed limit. I agree that they are dangerous to the smooth flow of traffic. I believe that the goal of every driver should be to maintain a smooth, managable flow of traffic (road anarchy breaks that rule). Every time I hear G. Gordon Liddy mangle this subject, I want to throttle him.
I'd like to see someone make some attempt to substantiate that claim. I hear it quite often from speeders, but they never tell me who they know it to be true, apart from some vague anectdotal accounts.
There are over 40k traffic fatalities a year. You have no right to put my life in danger just because you are too much of a brat to obey the law. I, on the other hand, have a perfect right to defend myself, particularly if I happen to be obeying the law. The Left Wing's answer is not to address the person causing the initial threat; it's to force everyone else to be a vulnerable to him (gun control being one example, this consumer protection "cease and desist" order being another). Liberals love scoundrels, cheats, con men and liars.