As far as wear and tear on roads, passenger vehicles and light trucks (including SUVs) are generally responsible for a miniscule portion of road wear. The VAST majority of road wear due to vehicle travel (as opposed to weather/expansion/settling/etc.) is from large trucks and buses. A fully loaded semi has up to about 10,000 times the impact of a passenger car (more commonly in the 500-2,000 range) as far as road wear goes. The big issue is not paying for road wear (if we based taxes entirely on road wear due to vehicle use every trucking company in the country would be taxed out of business over night) caused by vehicles, but rather the road capacity they necessitate. A semi needs about 2-3 times the capacity (space) of a passenger car; passenger cars, SUVs, light trucks, etc. basically require the same road capacity. The purpose of this GPS system (which seems overly intrusive to me, even if it does make a lot of sense in many respects) is to base taxes on the actual cost incurred by a car - not for repairs due to wear inflicted by the car, but costs incurred by building and sustaining a road system with enough capacity to handle the traffic. The vast majority of maintenance work done on roads is not due to traffic volume, it is due to natural processes like weathering. Larger, higher-capacity roads cost more to build and maintain than smaller roads. From this perspecitve it makes a lot of sense to tax people based on how much they drive (how much capacity they use) rather than how much gas they use (which, as far as road wear and capacity goes, has little do do with the costs incurred). In my opinion we shouldn't be looking at reducing gas taxes (they should and do provide an added incentive for people to drive more efficient cars), but it is reasonable to look at other criteria for basing taxes on as well. This GPS is just way to invasive; law enforcement already uses things like FasTrak passes to track people's movements, you know that they aren't going to be able to help themselves from getting hold of the GPS data (and in many ways it would be their responsibility to do so).
Notice that in the picture the X-43 is the little black thing at the tip - the rest of the pod is the booster to get the X-43 up to speed before its scramjet can take over.
I decided to head on over to wikipedia to see what hte Hamilton article said now... unfortunately I was confronted with the image of a man holding his asshole open (a featured article on the front page about Felix the Cat, but, uh, I think the image might have been changed). Next to that, in the day's news brief next to "# U.S. President George W. Bush nominates National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice (pictured right) to succeed Colin Powell as Secretary of State." was a picture of a nude man with a very large... appendage.
This really makes me want to rely on wikipedia as a source of information... (I know, it will be fixed in a few seconds probably, but still).
The author says there are "no means to resolve" but I beg to differ. There is clearly a means to resolve these inconsistencies in that particular article! Edit it!!
I think you misunderstand what he was saying. His point is that a reader who is looking for information on Alexander Hamilton would come away from the article not knowing which date was correct. Someone could edit it, but every time you look for information on Wikipedia you have to ask yourself that question - does the article I am reading right now need editing to make it accurate, or is it accurate the way it is? Or, as with the case pointed out, I see an inconsistency so I know this article is inaccurate (at least partially), so what is the correct answer to my question?
This is a horrible fallacy. ..just look at US foreign policy failures over the last 50 years to understand in depth why these are NOT words of wisdom.
Not a fallacy - it just depends on the scale (time scale, in this instance). The enemy of my enemy is my friend, at least as long as our mutual enemy is more of a threat than we are. As long as the SU was percieved by the Afghans, etc. as more of a threat than the US, they were our friends.
He who can destroy a thing, can control a thing.
This is also not often true... unless you define control as "determining how limited or non-functional something becomes". A few examples: 1) Computer Software 2) Love 3) the environment
Computer software: definitely true. The key is having the power to destroy, though. If I can threaten Microsoft with the complete and utter desruction of Windows, then I have control of it - either they do what I want, or they no longer have it. The trouble is that it is basically impossible to actually get that kind of control - there is no real way to completely destroy software. But the truism still holds.
Love: This is not a "thing", so it really isn't an exception; also, one party alone cannot destroy love, as it is shared between two or more people - both of them have to stop loving for it to be destroyed, so no one has complete control over it
Environment: If one and only one group had the power to destroy the environment, then that group would have power over it - they would decide exactly what controls there were, etc. The trouble is, multiple groups hold this power over the environment - there are innumerable groups that can damage or destroy the environment, so no one group has control over it.
Sure, everyone else can jump straight to ultraviolet, but I'm sticking with my proprietary PurpleRay format - it may not compete with ultraviolet in terms of data density, but nothing says "I'm a bad mother f*****" like a PurpleRay.
Since the days of my 386, I've basically upgraded my computer when a game comes out that I really want to play but can't run decently. This has worked out to waiting for ~3-4x increase in clock speed (386 33 -> Pentium 120 -> Pentium 166 (magic smoke escaped from 120) -> PII 350 -> Athlon 1200). So I could upgrade now following my pattern, but I don't really have time to play many games anymore so I've lost that driving force. Without games, there is much less drive to upgrade - I still want to, but it doens't seem worth it.
Home theater stuff tends to be upgraded more piecemeal - new receiver one year, a few new speakers the next, maybe someday a new TV (someday soon; my TV only has RF inputs).
I tend to avoid electronic gadgets - no mp3 player, no PDA, though I do have a cell phone. The cell phone tends to be upgraded whenever I can get a new one for free - like yesterday. My last contract ran out a few months ago, but I was happy with my phone so I kept it. The battery started seriously dying a few weeks ago, so instead of paying ~$30-$40 for a new battery, I just signed a new contract and got a new phone for free (sicne it came with earbud, home charger and car charger, I wasn't even out the cost of accessories). Granted, I can only do this because I couldn't care less about having a camera phone, internet on my phone, or much of anything else (the damn text messaging is already pissing me off, since the provider apparently decided they needed to send me 20 messages last night informing me that my phone was properly set up and registered), but it does give me the joy of having a new toy to play with for free.
Basically the point of my long, un-interesting (to anyone but myself) email is that I upgrade whenever I can get something better for free or very cheap, when my current equipment does not allow me to do something that I would really like to do, or, like my home theater equipment, as a slow process of improving the overall system piece by piece.
For example, in preparation for hl2 I'll be swapping out an athlon xp 1900 for the athlon64 3000 (as opposed to a 3400 or better) this weekend.
I do something similar. In preparation for Duke Nukem Forever, I have upgraded to a Pentium 133 w/ 64 megabytes of RAM. I might toss in a Voodoo II, maybe even SLI if I can get a good deal on two of them.
That's niether funny nor flamebait - it's the truth. In America, the surest way to change an "undecided" voter's mind against what you want is to tell him or her how to vote.*
* Unless you happen to be a member of the clergy, or anyone who can "convincingly" say Vote for Candidate X or you will go straight to hell.
Anandtech also has a reveiw up. I haven't taken a real close look, but I think they actually compare performance with the ATI chipset with an early nForce4 board.
I was expecting to find at least one thing in the article that I would enjoy having in my car... but I didn't. Cars are expensive enough as it is. Hell, I don't even want navigation - I've never really missed it yet, so all it would do is add a couple grand to the price of the car. I use my car to drive from point A to point B (although often by the most indirect route - driving is fun given the right roads).
I think one reason (beyond the obvious issues of litigation - isn't it nice to hear about places where people are actually assumed to be responsible for their own actions?) these sorts of systems haven't caught on in the U.S. is that the car is one of the last places we Americans can go to escape TV, email, etc., etc... we (I) don't want these things in our (my) cars.
Basically, if you've fucked up the code, it reboots the device or skips a line of code after a set amount of time. It's usually a few seconds, but newer chips can have a delay of a few minutes. (The one I'm working on today goes up to 4:28.) If you do anything with a chip that nobody will ever see again, you enable the watchdog timer. It's pretty easy to incorporate and lets your system recover from lockups or hangs.
According to the article, this was going on for an hour.
There are large touring bikes out that that are virtually impossible for ANYONE to pick up. Does that mean they shouldn't be ridden? The difference is, you shouldn't be riding a bike like that unless you are experienced enough to PREVENT it from dropping.
It isn't a matter of being experienced enough "to prevent dropping" - as any truly experienced rider will tell you, it isn't if you will be going down, it is when you will be going down. It doens't matter how good, how quick, or how smart you are, at some point you will hit a patch of gravel or a slick of oil and you will be down before you know what happened. If you think otherwise you are merely fooling yourself.
"I stomped on the brakes as hard as I could and the car finally stopped," he said.
Yeah; it doesn't sound like he was trying too hard to get the car to stop before. The Vel Vetis has plain old hydraulic brakes (albeit with ABS and "electronic brake distribution") - a malfunction in the cruise control isn't going to affect the mechanical linkage, and obviously the brakes did work as he was able to stop just before reaching a toll booth. Sounds like BS to me, someone afraid of "no more keys" trying to invent a scenario where this new-fangled technology could be life-threatening (not that I completely disagree - I find the notion of using smart cards instead of keys to be rather pointless, myself - another solution in search of a problem).
The bluegene may be faster, but the Earth Simulator sure looks cooler. Obviously, this proves that the Earth Simulator is the superior (superer?) computer.
I "just" signed up for the $37 a month one. Actually, I signed up back in July, and I still don't have it. I did get notice that they are going to be bumping the upstream speeds up higher - I think to 256 for those who currently have 128 (later going up to 384) and up to 412 for the plan I signed up for - eventually going up to 512. Pretty cool, since they are leaving the price the same (if only they would get around to installing the damn thing - six weeks to set up a DSL line is ridiculuos).
If you don't know a resistor or a capacitor when you see one, you probably don't need to build your own pc
That is a load of crap. There is no need whatsoever to know the difference between a capacitor and resistor to put together your own computer. You just plug the pieces in - it doesn't really matter what the things on the MB or any other component are unless you actually have to plug them into something. The fact that I know ecxactly what each chip, resistor, jumper, capacitor, etc. is has never once helped me put together a computer (okay, knowing the jumpers used to help, but now you pretty much never have to touch them, except maybe on hard drives). I mean realy, unless you go around knocking pieces off your motherboard, how does it help to know that "that thing is a resistor" and "that thing is a capacitor"? It doesn't. Just be a good monkey and plug tab A into slot B.
I've been having a problem lately where I get an error message saying something like "/. not found" when I try to go back to Slashdot. Not really related, I just found it funny - I often times can't go back to Slashdot by hitting the back button.
Slashdot Mirror
As far as wear and tear on roads, passenger vehicles and light trucks (including SUVs) are generally responsible for a miniscule portion of road wear. The VAST majority of road wear due to vehicle travel (as opposed to weather/expansion/settling/etc.) is from large trucks and buses. A fully loaded semi has up to about 10,000 times the impact of a passenger car (more commonly in the 500-2,000 range) as far as road wear goes.
The big issue is not paying for road wear (if we based taxes entirely on road wear due to vehicle use every trucking company in the country would be taxed out of business over night) caused by vehicles, but rather the road capacity they necessitate. A semi needs about 2-3 times the capacity (space) of a passenger car; passenger cars, SUVs, light trucks, etc. basically require the same road capacity. The purpose of this GPS system (which seems overly intrusive to me, even if it does make a lot of sense in many respects) is to base taxes on the actual cost incurred by a car - not for repairs due to wear inflicted by the car, but costs incurred by building and sustaining a road system with enough capacity to handle the traffic. The vast majority of maintenance work done on roads is not due to traffic volume, it is due to natural processes like weathering. Larger, higher-capacity roads cost more to build and maintain than smaller roads. From this perspecitve it makes a lot of sense to tax people based on how much they drive (how much capacity they use) rather than how much gas they use (which, as far as road wear and capacity goes, has little do do with the costs incurred).
In my opinion we shouldn't be looking at reducing gas taxes (they should and do provide an added incentive for people to drive more efficient cars), but it is reasonable to look at other criteria for basing taxes on as well. This GPS is just way to invasive; law enforcement already uses things like FasTrak passes to track people's movements, you know that they aren't going to be able to help themselves from getting hold of the GPS data (and in many ways it would be their responsibility to do so).
Notice that in the picture the X-43 is the little black thing at the tip - the rest of the pod is the booster to get the X-43 up to speed before its scramjet can take over.
I decided to head on over to wikipedia to see what hte Hamilton article said now... unfortunately I was confronted with the image of a man holding his asshole open (a featured article on the front page about Felix the Cat, but, uh, I think the image might have been changed). Next to that, in the day's news brief next to "# U.S. President George W. Bush nominates National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice (pictured right) to succeed Colin Powell as Secretary of State." was a picture of a nude man with a very large... appendage.
This really makes me want to rely on wikipedia as a source of information... (I know, it will be fixed in a few seconds probably, but still).
I think you misunderstand what he was saying. His point is that a reader who is looking for information on Alexander Hamilton would come away from the article not knowing which date was correct. Someone could edit it, but every time you look for information on Wikipedia you have to ask yourself that question - does the article I am reading right now need editing to make it accurate, or is it accurate the way it is? Or, as with the case pointed out, I see an inconsistency so I know this article is inaccurate (at least partially), so what is the correct answer to my question?
This is a horrible fallacy. .
Not a fallacy - it just depends on the scale (time scale, in this instance). The enemy of my enemy is my friend, at least as long as our mutual enemy is more of a threat than we are. As long as the SU was percieved by the Afghans, etc. as more of a threat than the US, they were our friends.
He who can destroy a thing, can control a thing.
This is also not often true... unless you define control as "determining how limited or non-functional something becomes". A few examples:
1) Computer Software
2) Love
3) the environment
Computer software: definitely true. The key is having the power to destroy, though. If I can threaten Microsoft with the complete and utter desruction of Windows, then I have control of it - either they do what I want, or they no longer have it. The trouble is that it is basically impossible to actually get that kind of control - there is no real way to completely destroy software. But the truism still holds.
Love: This is not a "thing", so it really isn't an exception; also, one party alone cannot destroy love, as it is shared between two or more people - both of them have to stop loving for it to be destroyed, so no one has complete control over it
Environment: If one and only one group had the power to destroy the environment, then that group would have power over it - they would decide exactly what controls there were, etc. The trouble is, multiple groups hold this power over the environment - there are innumerable groups that can damage or destroy the environment, so no one group has control over it.
Completely off topic, but hey.
Sure, everyone else can jump straight to ultraviolet, but I'm sticking with my proprietary PurpleRay format - it may not compete with ultraviolet in terms of data density, but nothing says "I'm a bad mother f*****" like a PurpleRay.
Since the days of my 386, I've basically upgraded my computer when a game comes out that I really want to play but can't run decently. This has worked out to waiting for ~3-4x increase in clock speed (386 33 -> Pentium 120 -> Pentium 166 (magic smoke escaped from 120) -> PII 350 -> Athlon 1200). So I could upgrade now following my pattern, but I don't really have time to play many games anymore so I've lost that driving force. Without games, there is much less drive to upgrade - I still want to, but it doens't seem worth it.
Home theater stuff tends to be upgraded more piecemeal - new receiver one year, a few new speakers the next, maybe someday a new TV (someday soon; my TV only has RF inputs).
I tend to avoid electronic gadgets - no mp3 player, no PDA, though I do have a cell phone. The cell phone tends to be upgraded whenever I can get a new one for free - like yesterday. My last contract ran out a few months ago, but I was happy with my phone so I kept it. The battery started seriously dying a few weeks ago, so instead of paying ~$30-$40 for a new battery, I just signed a new contract and got a new phone for free (sicne it came with earbud, home charger and car charger, I wasn't even out the cost of accessories). Granted, I can only do this because I couldn't care less about having a camera phone, internet on my phone, or much of anything else (the damn text messaging is already pissing me off, since the provider apparently decided they needed to send me 20 messages last night informing me that my phone was properly set up and registered), but it does give me the joy of having a new toy to play with for free.
Basically the point of my long, un-interesting (to anyone but myself) email is that I upgrade whenever I can get something better for free or very cheap, when my current equipment does not allow me to do something that I would really like to do, or, like my home theater equipment, as a slow process of improving the overall system piece by piece.
I do something similar. In preparation for Duke Nukem Forever, I have upgraded to a Pentium 133 w/ 64 megabytes of RAM. I might toss in a Voodoo II, maybe even SLI if I can get a good deal on two of them.
Okay already, I'll go buy Halo 2...
Uh, this is about Halo, right?
* Unless you happen to be a member of the clergy, or anyone who can "convincingly" say Vote for Candidate X or you will go straight to hell.
Anandtech also has a reveiw up. I haven't taken a real close look, but I think they actually compare performance with the ATI chipset with an early nForce4 board.
Did you happen to look at The Onion recently? This article cracked me up.
Cars are expensive enough as it is. Hell, I don't even want navigation - I've never really missed it yet, so all it would do is add a couple grand to the price of the car. I use my car to drive from point A to point B (although often by the most indirect route - driving is fun given the right roads).
I think one reason (beyond the obvious issues of litigation - isn't it nice to hear about places where people are actually assumed to be responsible for their own actions?) these sorts of systems haven't caught on in the U.S. is that the car is one of the last places we Americans can go to escape TV, email, etc., etc... we (I) don't want these things in our (my) cars.
Yeah. Thats what the college of business is there for.
I find your lack of respect disturbing, slashdotter... or should I say John Doe #1!?!
Basically, if you've fucked up the code, it reboots the device or skips a line of code after a set amount of time. It's usually a few seconds, but newer chips can have a delay of a few minutes. (The one I'm working on today goes up to 4:28.) If you do anything with a chip that nobody will ever see again, you enable the watchdog timer. It's pretty easy to incorporate and lets your system recover from lockups or hangs.
According to the article, this was going on for an hour.
It isn't a matter of being experienced enough "to prevent dropping" - as any truly experienced rider will tell you, it isn't if you will be going down, it is when you will be going down. It doens't matter how good, how quick, or how smart you are, at some point you will hit a patch of gravel or a slick of oil and you will be down before you know what happened. If you think otherwise you are merely fooling yourself.
Yeah; it doesn't sound like he was trying too hard to get the car to stop before. The Vel Vetis has plain old hydraulic brakes (albeit with ABS and "electronic brake distribution") - a malfunction in the cruise control isn't going to affect the mechanical linkage, and obviously the brakes did work as he was able to stop just before reaching a toll booth. Sounds like BS to me, someone afraid of "no more keys" trying to invent a scenario where this new-fangled technology could be life-threatening (not that I completely disagree - I find the notion of using smart cards instead of keys to be rather pointless, myself - another solution in search of a problem).
The bluegene may be faster, but the Earth Simulator sure looks cooler. Obviously, this proves that the Earth Simulator is the superior (superer?) computer.
I "just" signed up for the $37 a month one. Actually, I signed up back in July, and I still don't have it. I did get notice that they are going to be bumping the upstream speeds up higher - I think to 256 for those who currently have 128 (later going up to 384) and up to 412 for the plan I signed up for - eventually going up to 512. Pretty cool, since they are leaving the price the same (if only they would get around to installing the damn thing - six weeks to set up a DSL line is ridiculuos).
Lol, as I read this I got a new email message advertising Oprah's secret diet.
Dammit Oprah, quit spamming me! Wait, maybe that is her secret diet! She sends all her spam to other people!
Don't kick the baby!
That is a load of crap. There is no need whatsoever to know the difference between a capacitor and resistor to put together your own computer. You just plug the pieces in - it doesn't really matter what the things on the MB or any other component are unless you actually have to plug them into something. The fact that I know ecxactly what each chip, resistor, jumper, capacitor, etc. is has never once helped me put together a computer (okay, knowing the jumpers used to help, but now you pretty much never have to touch them, except maybe on hard drives).
I mean realy, unless you go around knocking pieces off your motherboard, how does it help to know that "that thing is a resistor" and "that thing is a capacitor"? It doesn't. Just be a good monkey and plug tab A into slot B.
until I can get the LOTR:ROTK WS EE DVD for my DLP HDTV - I only use DVI IC's for superior IQ.
I've been having a problem lately where I get an error message saying something like "/. not found" when I try to go back to Slashdot. Not really related, I just found it funny - I often times can't go back to Slashdot by hitting the back button.