The Economist had a great article a few months ago about 3G around the world. Asia does lead the US in 3G, and both places are way far ahead of Europe. Essentially, Europe's insistence on one standard, which worked nicely for 2G, screwed the pooch raw with 3G, that, and the fact that Asia and the US didn't license out 3G, so European cell carriers had to take on debt for billions for 3G whereas no one else did.
There's no doubt in my mind that Asia will continue leading in 3G...for the simple reason that while 3G is developing here in the US, it's been pretty hard to sell Americans on anything other than just talking on the phone. There is some cultural difference that makes Asians all giddy about spiffy 3G features, so it doesn't surprise me to see the newest and greatest 3G tech. over there.
The campaign finance debate is probably the most important political issue in the U.S. right now.
I definitely do not agree with this, but even if I did, campaign finance is just an awful unsolvable situation.
Take this into account, campaign finance is really about two issues:
a.) free speech b.) control of money
The first one is simply not controllable (except for auditing/identification restrictions) and I personally prefer it that way. I don't like Swiss style banning of political advertising on television (even though political commercials are very banal and unhelpful.) I don't care if I'm putting $500 into a radio ad about the bake sale for United Way or $5 million into John Smith, your canidate for US Senate, I find myself very uncomfortable thinking that the government could limit what can be said in the ways it can be said.
The second part of campaign finance is just a farce. It's impossible to control money, and, like the DARPA/internet systme, money will just find new ways of flowing. There's an advantage to allowing corporations donate directly to political campaigns. What is it? Well, this link talks about it, Microsoft has been exposed for trying using its campaign donations to influence power in senate committees. There's auditing, there's tracking, investigations can be done, et cetera.
Microsoft may or may not give money to candidates here in my Ohio, which does not allow corporations to donate money, only individuals. However we we'll never know--if Microsoft is, they are funneling the money through people first, and then individuals, whose connection to Microsoft is unknown, are then giving the money to the campaign. Given the idea that Microsoft will always be giving money to political campaigns, but in one instance they are actually declaring what they are giving, whereas in another it's being funneled through people, which would you take? (Of course I will admit that even if corporations can give money to campaigns, they may funnel it through individuals anyway, I do take this into account, but it's really surprising to me that they don't seem to. If anything, I believe they want Senator Smith and Representative Jones to remember where their money for campaigning came from.)
And of course, the funneling through other individuals thing applies to the farce which is contribution limits. In Ohio, the maximum I can give to a campaign is $2500. What stops me from giving John Smith for Congress $2500, then giving my mother $2500 to give to John Smith? (Can you imagine the pain in the ass involved in banning individuals from giving other individuals money in certain instances? And frankly, I just don't want the government watching my finances that closely, even if they may be doing that already for the perpetual war on drugs.:-) Either way, funneling large contributions through multiple people happens all the time--and keeping track of where the money is coming from is all the more difficult. By allowing all sorts of contributions, then you know exactly where the money is coming from.
I personally go back and forth on the idea that elections should be publicly funded. My initial reaction is and continues to be that politicians who are campaigning are *not* the government and they simply shouldn't be state supported. And since this is America, I worry that the one big party will create a system, in such a scenario, making it really easy for the republicrats to get the money, but making it extremely difficult for small parties to get the money (or alternatively, under the current system, making it so difficult for the small party peeps to get on the ballot, in order to get the money. Given all the things I've said above, I much rather see a reform in ballot access controls and a different voting system, like proportional representation. I'll also be willing to say that it is highly unlikely that campaign finance reforms would ever work, whereas proportional representation would truly change american "democracy.")
Finally, as a thought on the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill (i think that's the name) that bill is a disaster for 3rd parties; the paperwork requirements are huge hurdles, and it really attacks the heart of how the 3rd parties finance themselves. I'm pleased to see that quite a lot of groups are coming together to fight it in court.
We should provide radiotherapy patients with a hospital-issued ID so they do not have to suffer through security checks. It would not be much more difficult than issuing a driver's license.
It's funny that you should bring this up. I was just at the state legislature on Wednesday watching the discussion on the concealed weapon system, and I gave testimony saying that the permit should not be a photogrph based permit, and should instead be non-photo based, because it would be very likely that the photo based permit would be counterfeited for reasons other than carrying a concealed weapon, and would add a new front in ID theft.
Though this isn't so much the same reason, making up new reasons for photo ID's is a very bad idea...I've always said myself that photograph based drivers' licenses haven't solved the problems that they themselves caused when they appeared on the scene. More photo ID's cards are not a solution to anything except how to create spiffier forms of identity fraud.
Issuing driver's licenses are incidentally a pain in the ass, especially in New York, which no longer accepts a birth certificate as proof of identity (see the NY DMV website for more info. It's kinna interesting.) Funny, New York never made the photograph mandatory on their licenses--no point, since many of the states residents will never have had licenses in the first place, so the photo ID advantages were lost. (The NY DMV commmissioner has had, since 1994, the ability to issue licenses with photos at his discretion, but is not required to.)
And naturally, I am extremely bothered by the idea that someone has to be given a photo ID card because something about them is different. That's the whole situation here...type A citizens don't need photo ID card, type B citizens who radiate gamma level radiation, for reasons that aren't entirely our business, need photo ID card explaining that. That can't be good precedence.
While I hate making the comparison, the Nazi's did have a fucking photo ID card for just about everything...I think they had some sorta odd philosophy that the more photo ID cards a person had, the more difficult they were to fake an identity. Fortunately, underground counterfeiters sent many people to freedom by faking all those documents that the Nazi's made. Frankly, all it achieved was a lot of inconvenience for everyone.
I'm sure they said the same stuff back in the day when drivers licences came out, but now everyone has it, if not a drivers licence at least an ID so they can still get their beer.
(Not sure whom I'm replying to incidentally) but the photograph based driver's license is a new invention. Some states had it as earlier at the late 1960's...but most states did not adopt mandatory photo licenses until the early 1980's...New York didn't go to photo driver's licenses until 1994, New Jersey and Vermont still issue non-photo driver's licenses (in addition to all states who will, under differing levels of complexity, issue non-photo licenses to those with religious objections.)
The photograph on the license was undoubtedly added for reasons unrelated to driving a motor vehicle...indeed, many states switched in 1982, which corresponded with the enactment of the National Transportation Surface Act of 1982, which made...taa daa! the 21-year old national drinking age.
There really oughtta be a constitutional amendment to outlaw or discourage bills that address more than one issue... Or something...
State Constitutions often have em. My Ohio has a strongly worded "single subject" provision which allows the state supreme court to throw out anything passed in a bill that is not related (and they have proven suprisingly willing to do this.) Furthermore, the state constitution also prohibits naming of legislative bills--the names of bills are the summaries of what they propose to do, and can't be given cutesy misleading names like "Save the Children and Puppies act of 2002." (We do get a slightly inconvient result in the form of not having any good name for really important legislation once passed...so we end up referring to it by the bill number...HB 933, property tax reform...et cetera.)
Those two things above plus a federal constitution prohibition on tying federal funding to state laws would just be spiffy.
I could kinda see this being used for speed checking using the time elapsed between passing different sensors (like VASCAR) if the sensors could differentiate certain cars.
You could also do that with EZ-Pass transponders, or for that matter, when you get a toll ticket, it's got the time you entered onto the highway printed on it, and then when you leave the highway, they see how long it took you to get to the exit. But, no one does it. So perhaps nothing to really worry about.
First, I've always wondered if cars did indeed emit some type of unique magnetic signature. Because if they did, I would make a sensor to detect the precise signature emitted by the Ford Crown Victoria with the police package, which is drived by the vast majority of police departments in North America (well at least in my state. Add two or three more cars and you got 90% of the police car types.)
Then I would sell em as police detectors.:-)
Second thought, I'm particularly in love with this
"Omron is about to market a system that lets your car recognize you using your fingerprint."
Since we know that fingerprint devices are not that hard to fool...all ya have to do is dust the car you wanna steal for fingerprints (assuming that the owner of the car has indeed touched their car barehanded at some point in time) and do the elmer's glue thing. I'm excited.
It is my understanding that those individuals who work with lye, for long periods of time, will lose their fingerprints. (Brick layers work with lye in the brick mortar, and hair stylists work with lye in certain hair coloring/bleaching chemicals.) If they do stop working with lye, their fingerprints will grow back, though i hear you can keep some sandpaper around and file them down at that point.
We know your hair color, we know your eye color, we can ask your weight, what's the difference if we take an image of the swirls on your fingertip.
I agree that this is the reasoning...and it was established by the US Supreme Court sometime in late 1960's--that fingerprints were just another thing to be measured on the body. That was used in the basis of the California Supreme Court decision in the mid 1980's that protested the California driver's license fingerprint requirement (mandatory 1982, optional 1977. One of the great things discovered in that decision is that while the fingerprinting was optional from 1977 to 1982, the DMV nevertheless lifted fingerprints from the applications signed by those drivers who declined to be fingerprinted. That to me indicates just an unimagineable level of dishonesty and poor ethics.)
At any rate, the odd thing was that the Californa Supreme Court decision was based on the concept that the fingerprints were needed to protect the integrity of the photo driver's license document. Indeed, the court specifically cited that in 1982 2000 fraudulent licenses were issued by the DMV. However, 100,000 fraudulent licenses were issued by the DMV in 2000--and the DMV never really explained how fingerprinting was meant to stop fraudulent license issuance. Nor did the DMV ever get to explaining what to do with individuals whose fingerprints were unreadable (which I think offers a great way of introducing an equal protection situation, since a person could go through the complex process of becoming fingerprintless.) Finally, California is the only state I know of which has made the California DL/state ID card "officially recognized identification" which is just one step below mandatory identification, and fingerprints are required for either.
Some day, I hope to put that alltogether and have a lot of fun at the DMV's expense.:-)
That implies that between your statistic and the census's statistic...at least 2 million Arizonans evaporated recently! Thank god I live in the (mostly cool) mid-east.:-)
The lexus 430 LS (along with a bunch of other luxury cars these days)
I wanted to qualify that by saying that Navigation systems are now coming in what I consider "non-luxury" cars--like the new Honda Accord (which has admitted moved quite far up the line, but price wise and audience wise, is not entirely a luxury car. It woulda been five years ago though.) At any rate, the Honda style Navigation system is well designed, but costs $2000 (that's gotta come down soon though, and with the average car costing $27k anyway, what's it matter?)
In ten years...I expect almost all cars will have Nav. available.
Let's talk about faster in the normal two ways...0 to 60mph performance, and the quarter mile (in what time and at what max speed will a car, from a stop, travel one quarter of a mile.)
When we talk about engine power, we usually talk about horsepower, and you'll see many engines that have lots of horsepower--Honda, an oustanding engine maker, makes some small displacement engines with lots of horsepower. Horsepower though is simply the energy capacity of the engine--the higher horsepower a car has, the more weight it can pull at higher speeds. Even with a car heavily laden, it would have to take a very high speed before you start seeing the advantages of an engine with 100 horses versus 150 horses.
The thing that makes a car fast is torque. Your small displacement Honda engines aren't so good with torque--in fact, the torque comes at a very high end of the rpm scale (like...in the 6000-8000 rpm range.) That means you have to rev them up really high in order to get the maximum torque--and it's torque that actually accelerates the weight of the car (as opposed to just moving it.)
People talk about the viper..but that engine is so different, it's hard to compare. How about Saab turbocharged engines...for instance, the 2.3 liter 4 cylinder used in the 9-5 Aero--a small engine, with a powerful turbocharger, it makes 250 lb-ft worth of torque, which is quite a lot, and is actually pretty close to what the Acura NSX makes torque wise...however, the torque curve for the Saab engine makes maximum torque all the way from 2000RPM-4500RPM which means that all that wonderful torque is available to you pretty much no matter what the engine is doing (whereas even with an NSX...the torque is not available until the 4000 range, meaning you are always spinning the engine faster--sure it's fun, but that doesn't make the car any faster.)
If anything, if you want the car to be quantifiably faster, and not just faster in the sense of feeling faster, you want your maximum torque to come out as low as possible on the rpms. Large displacement engines, turbocharged engines, and to a certain extent, diesel engines, all have this.
I think you'd be amazed at how inconvenient voting can be in this country.
I think that was amazes me is that, every single election, you catch watch many people of an advanced age, with walkers and wheelchairs, come in time and time again to vote. I can attest this personally as a pollworker. Where there is a will there is a way--and many of these people did not consider themselves worth an absentee ballot. They showed up and voted.
I don't remember our constitution saying that you needed to own a car to be able to vote
I don't remember the Constitution saying that you were entitled to transportation to vote. But it is available.
What is there this mad rush to figure out how to make voting to work on the internet? I mean...you vote very close to where you live...you either care to vote, or you don't, online voting isn't going to change that. The technical hurdles are so big that I can't see how they are justifiable.
Furthermore, Canada already has its own little system of voting (piece of paper, put x in your preferred candidates box) and it's cheap, easy to count, difficult to mess up, et cetera. It's we Americans, obsessed with technology, who have varying levels of expensive technology most of which more or less works the majority of the time. (Unlike the Canadian system which works all the time for pennies per election.)
Consider for a second your state's major university
Not to severely nitpick, but ADA actually has much more stringent regulations for public universities and colleges. I go to Ohio State (which lo and behold is my state's largest university) and the things they have done to make everything accessible is pretty subtantial. (Though the feds do give funding for this purpose.)
Small and large businesses are held to different criteria.
"While it is not possible for many businesses, especially small businesses, to make their facilities fully accessible, there is much that can be done without much difficulty or expense to improve accessibility. Therefore, the ADA requires that accessibility be improved without taking on excessive expenses that could harm the business." (more text here)
Large businesses are expected under ADA to do more.
One thing I may add is that airlines are in some way a unique situation. There is of course the property they own, however their travel lanes are public, and they are uniquely licensed to take advantage of public airspace. The licensing, in some way, does put a bit of an obligation on air carriers to act in the best interest of the population. (You may not buy that concept, but sometimes the licensing is used that way.)
One of the most innovating things about the IRIX in the '90s were the vector icons it uses for its desktop and file/icon managers. IRIX had vector support by default in its desktop long before MacOSX ever existed.
Someone with a deeper background than I have should check this out, but my recollection is that vector support was implemented in NexTStep quite early in the 1990's in the form of its spiffy display postscript rendering system. Due to a licensing rights tussle between Adobe and Apple, Mac OS X uses disply.pdf instead (which is still vectoring based display system.) Therefore, in this regard, IRIX is/was not that revolutionary, and a lot of Mac OS X existed at that time in the form of NexTStep.
Incidentally, the careful eye will note a lot of similarities between IRIX and NexTStep in their interfaces.
Let's run this through Bruce Schneier's two basic questions concerning security systems (as noted in the Atlantic Monthly article recently.)
1. What problem does it solve?
Identifying people is not a goal. Nothing is achieved by figuring out someone's true name (though psychologically speaking humans seem to think that finding identity is somehow useful. Most of the time it isn't.)
Identity does not imply motive. What type of criminals tend to have criminal backgrounds? Well, small time criminals, and your serial rapists/killers/et cetera. The pre-determined criminals usually will have no record (whether it's because they haven't done anything, or because they have escaped justice.)
The proposed system is designed to take individuals who have "community standing", ferret them out and mark them as low security passengers. (An interesting example of this already in use--if you don't have a photo ID, some airlines will take a combination of different documents, one of which can be a motor vehicle insurance card--which is a great proof of "community standing" or in other words "an identity well used." A photo driver's license does not imply that the identity is "in use." Either way, what does it solve? I will maintain nothing.)
2. What happens when the system fails?
It's hard to say...what was it achieving in the first place? But it seems like the biggest problem is that "community standing" will manifest itself as low-security passengers, and people will be waived through when more of these individuals should go through the higher security checks.
I don't know if this system really has much of a failure, since it doesn't seem to achieve all that much in the first place. That's what bothers me so much--it's an expensive farce that violates civil liberties.
Schneier says that only two new security measures make any difference whatsoever--reinforced cockpit doors, and passengers who are now willing to fight back.
they are getting some other script writer to finish off Douglas Adams final installment (I pessimistically wonder how awful this will make it.)
As opposed to how awful Adams himself coulda made it?:-)....ok ok...that's really mean, but even Adams himself insisted that he kept on writing the series because his fans kept on wanting it, not because he thought that it should continue being written. he never really liked the new stuff anyway.
Now if I actually was paying attention, I woulda noticed that the gas price statistics do not include taxes.
However, my argument doesn't change.
And here you can see a state by state gas average with taxes included. The effect is smaller, but still there.
Finally, I forgot to add, one of the other advantages to NJ full service is that we can watch people from there fumble over filling their cars up when they leave NJ.:-)
New Jersey's gasoline tax is 14.5 cents/gallon. That's on the low side (and according to this makes it the fourth lowest in the nation.
Keep in mind however that a lot of New Jersey's roadways are financed through tolls--whereas most states finance highways through gasoline taxes.
Now let us take a look at this which is a summary of gasoline price per gallon in summer 01 and summer 02. The average price per gallon in New Jersey is quite a lot higher than most states (except those which are far from refineries, like your Wyoming and Alaska or require a different fuel mix, like California, which is also far from refineries.) Indeed, Connecticut asseses a tax which is some 20 cents higher than New Jersey's tax, but the cost in CT for a gallon of gas is about the same as it is in NJ. Delaware's tax is nearly ten cents higher than NJ's, but most of the time you'll get gas there for about ten cents cheaper. I use CT and DE as states to compare to because they are close by, often with similar population densities. NY would make a bad comparison because a lot of NY is not the NYC metro area, which I suspect has a bit of a inflation effect on gas prices for the tri-state area.)
My hypothesis is that since all stations in NJ have to pump gas for you, the price for that service is rolled into the cost of the gasoline, and the statistics do seem to indicate that gas in NJ, given it's pretty low sales tax, is more expensive than it is in other states.
Having said all that, I think I would be a little sad if NJ got rid of full service--it's one of those unique things that make NJ what it is. Like the Sopranos, non-photo driver licenses (which they are sadly getting rid of) and...umm...damn. I guess that's it.
Though, apples grow on cross-pollinating tress. So you gotta plant some seeds and then plant some more seeds just a bit away. So that the trees can pollinate each other when they grow. (One more little step)
I really dunno if I could deal with this. Part of the reason I live away from my family/parents is so that I don't have to deal with them causing guilt trips for things they've done/bought for me. And anyway, I end up dealing with it every christmas, birthday, et cetera.
"I'm sorry you didn't like the Britney Spears revue Dave. But what has the DVD player ever done for you?"
The UK AC plugs may be large, but they are safe, which is a lot more than I can say for the horrible US AC plug design.
As one poster already pointed out, some of this has to do with the different voltage.
I'm going to say that this also has to do with the fact that the British were also much more sensitive to electrocutions because it used to happen a lot. Why? For some reason, it was only in the last five or so years that electrical devices starting coming with electrical cords already attached. (One of those old laws on the books that no one can really explain.)
So, as late as the early 1990's, you would bring home a new lamp, and you were responsible for wiring it up with a new electrical cord as well. There was a time this was done in America as well (and for a few products is still done; if you insist on installing a new electric stove in your home yourself, you'll be installng the electrical cord on as well.) However the Brits were doing it for many years after the world stopped, and several dozen people per year were getting seriously electrocuted. Eventually Parliament changed the law, but they still take that sorta thing seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
Now if only these would make sense in the U.S...
The Economist had a great article a few months ago about 3G around the world. Asia does lead the US in 3G, and both places are way far ahead of Europe. Essentially, Europe's insistence on one standard, which worked nicely for 2G, screwed the pooch raw with 3G, that, and the fact that Asia and the US didn't license out 3G, so European cell carriers had to take on debt for billions for 3G whereas no one else did.
There's no doubt in my mind that Asia will continue leading in 3G...for the simple reason that while 3G is developing here in the US, it's been pretty hard to sell Americans on anything other than just talking on the phone. There is some cultural difference that makes Asians all giddy about spiffy 3G features, so it doesn't surprise me to see the newest and greatest 3G tech. over there.
The campaign finance debate is probably the most important political issue in the U.S. right now.
:-) Either way, funneling large contributions through multiple people happens all the time--and keeping track of where the money is coming from is all the more difficult. By allowing all sorts of contributions, then you know exactly where the money is coming from.
I definitely do not agree with this, but even if I did, campaign finance is just an awful unsolvable situation.
Take this into account, campaign finance is really about two issues:
a.) free speech
b.) control of money
The first one is simply not controllable (except for auditing/identification restrictions) and I personally prefer it that way. I don't like Swiss style banning of political advertising on television (even though political commercials are very banal and unhelpful.) I don't care if I'm putting $500 into a radio ad about the bake sale for United Way or $5 million into John Smith, your canidate for US Senate, I find myself very uncomfortable thinking that the government could limit what can be said in the ways it can be said.
The second part of campaign finance is just a farce. It's impossible to control money, and, like the DARPA/internet systme, money will just find new ways of flowing. There's an advantage to allowing corporations donate directly to political campaigns. What is it? Well, this link talks about it, Microsoft has been exposed for trying using its campaign donations to influence power in senate committees. There's auditing, there's tracking, investigations can be done, et cetera.
Microsoft may or may not give money to candidates here in my Ohio, which does not allow corporations to donate money, only individuals. However we we'll never know--if Microsoft is, they are funneling the money through people first, and then individuals, whose connection to Microsoft is unknown, are then giving the money to the campaign. Given the idea that Microsoft will always be giving money to political campaigns, but in one instance they are actually declaring what they are giving, whereas in another it's being funneled through people, which would you take? (Of course I will admit that even if corporations can give money to campaigns, they may funnel it through individuals anyway, I do take this into account, but it's really surprising to me that they don't seem to. If anything, I believe they want Senator Smith and Representative Jones to remember where their money for campaigning came from.)
And of course, the funneling through other individuals thing applies to the farce which is contribution limits. In Ohio, the maximum I can give to a campaign is $2500. What stops me from giving John Smith for Congress $2500, then giving my mother $2500 to give to John Smith? (Can you imagine the pain in the ass involved in banning individuals from giving other individuals money in certain instances? And frankly, I just don't want the government watching my finances that closely, even if they may be doing that already for the perpetual war on drugs.
I personally go back and forth on the idea that elections should be publicly funded. My initial reaction is and continues to be that politicians who are campaigning are *not* the government and they simply shouldn't be state supported. And since this is America, I worry that the one big party will create a system, in such a scenario, making it really easy for the republicrats to get the money, but making it extremely difficult for small parties to get the money (or alternatively, under the current system, making it so difficult for the small party peeps to get on the ballot, in order to get the money. Given all the things I've said above, I much rather see a reform in ballot access controls and a different voting system, like proportional representation. I'll also be willing to say that it is highly unlikely that campaign finance reforms would ever work, whereas proportional representation would truly change american "democracy.")
Finally, as a thought on the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill (i think that's the name) that bill is a disaster for 3rd parties; the paperwork requirements are huge hurdles, and it really attacks the heart of how the 3rd parties finance themselves. I'm pleased to see that quite a lot of groups are coming together to fight it in court.
We should provide radiotherapy patients with a hospital-issued ID so they do not have to suffer through security checks. It would not be much more difficult than issuing a driver's license.
It's funny that you should bring this up. I was just at the state legislature on Wednesday watching the discussion on the concealed weapon system, and I gave testimony saying that the permit should not be a photogrph based permit, and should instead be non-photo based, because it would be very likely that the photo based permit would be counterfeited for reasons other than carrying a concealed weapon, and would add a new front in ID theft.
Though this isn't so much the same reason, making up new reasons for photo ID's is a very bad idea...I've always said myself that photograph based drivers' licenses haven't solved the problems that they themselves caused when they appeared on the scene. More photo ID's cards are not a solution to anything except how to create spiffier forms of identity fraud.
Issuing driver's licenses are incidentally a pain in the ass, especially in New York, which no longer accepts a birth certificate as proof of identity (see the NY DMV website for more info. It's kinna interesting.) Funny, New York never made the photograph mandatory on their licenses--no point, since many of the states residents will never have had licenses in the first place, so the photo ID advantages were lost. (The NY DMV commmissioner has had, since 1994, the ability to issue licenses with photos at his discretion, but is not required to.)
And naturally, I am extremely bothered by the idea that someone has to be given a photo ID card because something about them is different. That's the whole situation here...type A citizens don't need photo ID card, type B citizens who radiate gamma level radiation, for reasons that aren't entirely our business, need photo ID card explaining that. That can't be good precedence.
While I hate making the comparison, the Nazi's did have a fucking photo ID card for just about everything...I think they had some sorta odd philosophy that the more photo ID cards a person had, the more difficult they were to fake an identity. Fortunately, underground counterfeiters sent many people to freedom by faking all those documents that the Nazi's made. Frankly, all it achieved was a lot of inconvenience for everyone.
I'm sure they said the same stuff back in the day when drivers licences came out, but now everyone has it, if not a drivers licence at least an ID so they can still get their beer.
(Not sure whom I'm replying to incidentally) but the photograph based driver's license is a new invention. Some states had it as earlier at the late 1960's...but most states did not adopt mandatory photo licenses until the early 1980's...New York didn't go to photo driver's licenses until 1994, New Jersey and Vermont still issue non-photo driver's licenses (in addition to all states who will, under differing levels of complexity, issue non-photo licenses to those with religious objections.)
The photograph on the license was undoubtedly added for reasons unrelated to driving a motor vehicle...indeed, many states switched in 1982, which corresponded with the enactment of the National Transportation Surface Act of 1982, which made...taa daa! the 21-year old national drinking age.
There really oughtta be a constitutional amendment to outlaw or discourage bills that address more than one issue... Or something...
State Constitutions often have em. My Ohio has a strongly worded "single subject" provision which allows the state supreme court to throw out anything passed in a bill that is not related (and they have proven suprisingly willing to do this.) Furthermore, the state constitution also prohibits naming of legislative bills--the names of bills are the summaries of what they propose to do, and can't be given cutesy misleading names like "Save the Children and Puppies act of 2002." (We do get a slightly inconvient result in the form of not having any good name for really important legislation once passed...so we end up referring to it by the bill number...HB 933, property tax reform...et cetera.)
Those two things above plus a federal constitution prohibition on tying federal funding to state laws would just be spiffy.
I could kinda see this being used for speed checking using the time elapsed between passing different sensors (like VASCAR) if the sensors could differentiate certain cars.
You could also do that with EZ-Pass transponders, or for that matter, when you get a toll ticket, it's got the time you entered onto the highway printed on it, and then when you leave the highway, they see how long it took you to get to the exit. But, no one does it. So perhaps nothing to really worry about.
First, I've always wondered if cars did indeed emit some type of unique magnetic signature. Because if they did, I would make a sensor to detect the precise signature emitted by the Ford Crown Victoria with the police package, which is drived by the vast majority of police departments in North America (well at least in my state. Add two or three more cars and you got 90% of the police car types.)
:-)
Then I would sell em as police detectors.
Second thought, I'm particularly in love with this
"Omron is about to market a system that lets your car recognize you using your fingerprint."
Since we know that fingerprint devices are not that hard to fool...all ya have to do is dust the car you wanna steal for fingerprints (assuming that the owner of the car has indeed touched their car barehanded at some point in time) and do the elmer's glue thing. I'm excited.
[sauerkraut tacos] Is that a euphamism for oral sex? (half german/half mexican)
I believe that's a wetback blitz.
It is my understanding that those individuals who work with lye, for long periods of time, will lose their fingerprints. (Brick layers work with lye in the brick mortar, and hair stylists work with lye in certain hair coloring/bleaching chemicals.) If they do stop working with lye, their fingerprints will grow back, though i hear you can keep some sandpaper around and file them down at that point.
We know your hair color, we know your eye color, we can ask your weight, what's the difference if we take an image of the swirls on your fingertip.
:-)
I agree that this is the reasoning...and it was established by the US Supreme Court sometime in late 1960's--that fingerprints were just another thing to be measured on the body. That was used in the basis of the California Supreme Court decision in the mid 1980's that protested the California driver's license fingerprint requirement (mandatory 1982, optional 1977. One of the great things discovered in that decision is that while the fingerprinting was optional from 1977 to 1982, the DMV nevertheless lifted fingerprints from the applications signed by those drivers who declined to be fingerprinted. That to me indicates just an unimagineable level of dishonesty and poor ethics.)
At any rate, the odd thing was that the Californa Supreme Court decision was based on the concept that the fingerprints were needed to protect the integrity of the photo driver's license document. Indeed, the court specifically cited that in 1982 2000 fraudulent licenses were issued by the DMV. However, 100,000 fraudulent licenses were issued by the DMV in 2000--and the DMV never really explained how fingerprinting was meant to stop fraudulent license issuance. Nor did the DMV ever get to explaining what to do with individuals whose fingerprints were unreadable (which I think offers a great way of introducing an equal protection situation, since a person could go through the complex process of becoming fingerprintless.) Finally, California is the only state I know of which has made the California DL/state ID card "officially recognized identification" which is just one step below mandatory identification, and fingerprints are required for either.
Some day, I hope to put that alltogether and have a lot of fun at the DMV's expense.
The Phoenix metro is huge, over 7 million people.
:-)
I am deeply alarmed by this statistic...since the US Census says that the 2001 population estimate for all of Arizona is 5,307,331.
That implies that between your statistic and the census's statistic...at least 2 million Arizonans evaporated recently! Thank god I live in the (mostly cool) mid-east.
The lexus 430 LS (along with a bunch of other luxury cars these days)
I wanted to qualify that by saying that Navigation systems are now coming in what I consider "non-luxury" cars--like the new Honda Accord (which has admitted moved quite far up the line, but price wise and audience wise, is not entirely a luxury car. It woulda been five years ago though.) At any rate, the Honda style Navigation system is well designed, but costs $2000 (that's gotta come down soon though, and with the average car costing $27k anyway, what's it matter?)
In ten years...I expect almost all cars will have Nav. available.
Let's talk about faster in the normal two ways...0 to 60mph performance, and the quarter mile (in what time and at what max speed will a car, from a stop, travel one quarter of a mile.)
When we talk about engine power, we usually talk about horsepower, and you'll see many engines that have lots of horsepower--Honda, an oustanding engine maker, makes some small displacement engines with lots of horsepower. Horsepower though is simply the energy capacity of the engine--the higher horsepower a car has, the more weight it can pull at higher speeds. Even with a car heavily laden, it would have to take a very high speed before you start seeing the advantages of an engine with 100 horses versus 150 horses.
The thing that makes a car fast is torque. Your small displacement Honda engines aren't so good with torque--in fact, the torque comes at a very high end of the rpm scale (like...in the 6000-8000 rpm range.) That means you have to rev them up really high in order to get the maximum torque--and it's torque that actually accelerates the weight of the car (as opposed to just moving it.)
People talk about the viper..but that engine is so different, it's hard to compare. How about Saab turbocharged engines...for instance, the 2.3 liter 4 cylinder used in the 9-5 Aero--a small engine, with a powerful turbocharger, it makes 250 lb-ft worth of torque, which is quite a lot, and is actually pretty close to what the Acura NSX makes torque wise...however, the torque curve for the Saab engine makes maximum torque all the way from 2000RPM-4500RPM which means that all that wonderful torque is available to you pretty much no matter what the engine is doing (whereas even with an NSX...the torque is not available until the 4000 range, meaning you are always spinning the engine faster--sure it's fun, but that doesn't make the car any faster.)
If anything, if you want the car to be quantifiably faster, and not just faster in the sense of feeling faster, you want your maximum torque to come out as low as possible on the rpms. Large displacement engines, turbocharged engines, and to a certain extent, diesel engines, all have this.
I think you'd be amazed at how inconvenient voting can be in this country.
I think that was amazes me is that, every single election, you catch watch many people of an advanced age, with walkers and wheelchairs, come in time and time again to vote. I can attest this personally as a pollworker. Where there is a will there is a way--and many of these people did not consider themselves worth an absentee ballot. They showed up and voted.
I don't remember our constitution saying that you needed to own a car to be able to vote
I don't remember the Constitution saying that you were entitled to transportation to vote. But it is available.
How about voting online?
What is there this mad rush to figure out how to make voting to work on the internet? I mean...you vote very close to where you live...you either care to vote, or you don't, online voting isn't going to change that. The technical hurdles are so big that I can't see how they are justifiable.
Furthermore, Canada already has its own little system of voting (piece of paper, put x in your preferred candidates box) and it's cheap, easy to count, difficult to mess up, et cetera. It's we Americans, obsessed with technology, who have varying levels of expensive technology most of which more or less works the majority of the time. (Unlike the Canadian system which works all the time for pennies per election.)
Consider for a second your state's major university
Not to severely nitpick, but ADA actually has much more stringent regulations for public universities and colleges. I go to Ohio State (which lo and behold is my state's largest university) and the things they have done to make everything accessible is pretty subtantial. (Though the feds do give funding for this purpose.)
Small and large businesses are held to different criteria.
"While it is not possible for many businesses, especially small businesses, to make their facilities fully accessible, there is much that can be done without much difficulty or expense to improve accessibility. Therefore, the ADA requires that accessibility be improved without taking on excessive expenses that could harm the business." (more text here)
Large businesses are expected under ADA to do more.
One thing I may add is that airlines are in some way a unique situation. There is of course the property they own, however their travel lanes are public, and they are uniquely licensed to take advantage of public airspace. The licensing, in some way, does put a bit of an obligation on air carriers to act in the best interest of the population. (You may not buy that concept, but sometimes the licensing is used that way.)
One of the most innovating things about the IRIX in the '90s were the vector icons it uses for its desktop and file/icon managers. IRIX had vector support by default in its desktop long before MacOSX ever existed.
.pdf instead (which is still vectoring based display system.) Therefore, in this regard, IRIX is/was not that revolutionary, and a lot of Mac OS X existed at that time in the form of NexTStep.
Someone with a deeper background than I have should check this out, but my recollection is that vector support was implemented in NexTStep quite early in the 1990's in the form of its spiffy display postscript rendering system. Due to a licensing rights tussle between Adobe and Apple, Mac OS X uses disply
Incidentally, the careful eye will note a lot of similarities between IRIX and NexTStep in their interfaces.
a driver's license to race these fun little cars!
Disclaimer: You will however need to present, given that this is radio shack and all
your name
your address
your blood type
your birthday
you SSN (SIN in Canada)
and the serial number from your cue cat
Let's run this through Bruce Schneier's two basic questions concerning security systems (as noted in the Atlantic Monthly article recently.)
1. What problem does it solve?
Identifying people is not a goal. Nothing is achieved by figuring out someone's true name (though psychologically speaking humans seem to think that finding identity is somehow useful. Most of the time it isn't.)
Identity does not imply motive. What type of criminals tend to have criminal backgrounds? Well, small time criminals, and your serial rapists/killers/et cetera. The pre-determined criminals usually will have no record (whether it's because they haven't done anything, or because they have escaped justice.)
The proposed system is designed to take individuals who have "community standing", ferret them out and mark them as low security passengers. (An interesting example of this already in use--if you don't have a photo ID, some airlines will take a combination of different documents, one of which can be a motor vehicle insurance card--which is a great proof of "community standing" or in other words "an identity well used." A photo driver's license does not imply that the identity is "in use." Either way, what does it solve? I will maintain nothing.)
2. What happens when the system fails?
It's hard to say...what was it achieving in the first place? But it seems like the biggest problem is that "community standing" will manifest itself as low-security passengers, and people will be waived through when more of these individuals should go through the higher security checks.
I don't know if this system really has much of a failure, since it doesn't seem to achieve all that much in the first place. That's what bothers me so much--it's an expensive farce that violates civil liberties.
Schneier says that only two new security measures make any difference whatsoever--reinforced cockpit doors, and passengers who are now willing to fight back.
they are getting some other script writer to finish off Douglas Adams final installment (I pessimistically wonder how awful this will make it.)
:-) ....ok ok...that's really mean, but even Adams himself insisted that he kept on writing the series because his fans kept on wanting it, not because he thought that it should continue being written. he never really liked the new stuff anyway.
As opposed to how awful Adams himself coulda made it?
Now if I actually was paying attention, I woulda noticed that the gas price statistics do not include taxes.
:-)
However, my argument doesn't change.
And here you can see a state by state gas average with taxes included. The effect is smaller, but still there.
Finally, I forgot to add, one of the other advantages to NJ full service is that we can watch people from there fumble over filling their cars up when they leave NJ.
New Jersey's gasoline tax is 14.5 cents/gallon. That's on the low side (and according to this makes it the fourth lowest in the nation.
Keep in mind however that a lot of New Jersey's roadways are financed through tolls--whereas most states finance highways through gasoline taxes.
Now let us take a look at this which is a summary of gasoline price per gallon in summer 01 and summer 02. The average price per gallon in New Jersey is quite a lot higher than most states (except those which are far from refineries, like your Wyoming and Alaska or require a different fuel mix, like California, which is also far from refineries.) Indeed, Connecticut asseses a tax which is some 20 cents higher than New Jersey's tax, but the cost in CT for a gallon of gas is about the same as it is in NJ. Delaware's tax is nearly ten cents higher than NJ's, but most of the time you'll get gas there for about ten cents cheaper. I use CT and DE as states to compare to because they are close by, often with similar population densities. NY would make a bad comparison because a lot of NY is not the NYC metro area, which I suspect has a bit of a inflation effect on gas prices for the tri-state area.)
My hypothesis is that since all stations in NJ have to pump gas for you, the price for that service is rolled into the cost of the gasoline, and the statistics do seem to indicate that gas in NJ, given it's pretty low sales tax, is more expensive than it is in other states.
Having said all that, I think I would be a little sad if NJ got rid of full service--it's one of those unique things that make NJ what it is. Like the Sopranos, non-photo driver licenses (which they are sadly getting rid of) and...umm...damn. I guess that's it.
Nice.
Though, apples grow on cross-pollinating tress. So you gotta plant some seeds and then plant some more seeds just a bit away. So that the trees can pollinate each other when they grow. (One more little step)
It apologises if the user rejects its selections.
I really dunno if I could deal with this. Part of the reason I live away from my family/parents is so that I don't have to deal with them causing guilt trips for things they've done/bought for me. And anyway, I end up dealing with it every christmas, birthday, et cetera.
"I'm sorry you didn't like the Britney Spears revue Dave. But what has the DVD player ever done for you?"
The UK AC plugs may be large, but they are safe, which is a lot more than I can say for the horrible US AC plug design.
As one poster already pointed out, some of this has to do with the different voltage.
I'm going to say that this also has to do with the fact that the British were also much more sensitive to electrocutions because it used to happen a lot. Why? For some reason, it was only in the last five or so years that electrical devices starting coming with electrical cords already attached. (One of those old laws on the books that no one can really explain.)
So, as late as the early 1990's, you would bring home a new lamp, and you were responsible for wiring it up with a new electrical cord as well. There was a time this was done in America as well (and for a few products is still done; if you insist on installing a new electric stove in your home yourself, you'll be installng the electrical cord on as well.) However the Brits were doing it for many years after the world stopped, and several dozen people per year were getting seriously electrocuted. Eventually Parliament changed the law, but they still take that sorta thing seriously.