I want it for my house, for the same reason -- to help heat it in winter and help cool it in summer. As a side bonus, it would let you know where the insulation Needs Improvement. Either put up with a blotchy house, or invest in better insulation -- or sue the yahoo who built your house and lied about the R-38 walls.
"Four wheel drives allows you to get stuck in more inaccessable places." -- Paul Harvey
(Equally valid with or without a hyphen after "more":)
The problem there, tho, is sheer incompetence. A lot of idiots thinks 4WD automagically confers immunity to all depths and types of mud and snow, and it just ain't so. Frex, I have an old Ford F-100 2WD, and my neighbour in Montana had some big 4WD truck. I never got stuck in the deep snow going down our road, but he did so regularly. Why? I put chains on... BEFORE I reached the deep part. With 4WD, he didn't think he needed to. Ooops. Of course who actually knew how to handle 4WD, rather than being a cowboy, wouldn't have had any trouble.
Before that I had a '63 Olds F-85 (4-door, RWD) and it could go anywhere the snowplow could -- cuz it was perfectly balanced front to back, and skimmed over deep snow like a snowmobile. Typical example: Once I went down this back road in midwinter, and all there was to see was a flat area between the fence lines. So I quite reasonably drove down the middle, thinking that's where the road lay between the ditches. Went back in the spring and learned that the road actually meandered back and forth, and half the time I'd been sailing over a ditch full of 10 feet of snow!! (And with four studded snow tires, there was no making it skid, even on glare ice.)
Anyway, that makes me wonder... FWD is supposed to let you climb up and out of trouble in the snow, but how much of that lies in the fact that they're front-heavy AND light in the rear? The main weight is over the power wheels, as is needed for such tasks. But a full trunk on a FWD is bloody dangerous on ice -- the front end comes up and control goes out the window.
Very interesting. Tho I wonder how much it has to do with poor quality brakes, and more so, the driving habits engendered by stick shifts? 1) I don't know how it is now, but I remember when European-made cars were notorious for randomly failed brakes.
2) Everyone I know who has a stick shift has a tendency to let the vehicle sit in neutral at stoplights, and relies on that to stay stationary, rather than actually keeping a foot on the brake. Likely this is because of the interaction one learns to make between acceleration and clutch, and few folk are blessed with a third leg and foot. However, everyone has a hand to spare for the handbrake, at least while at the halt.
(Personally, I don't have enough arms and legs to drive a stick shift, even tho I'm told I have the same number as everyone else.:)
True about borderline cases vs intelligent system design... however, I read with interest a post here by someone who has had one of the bigname GPS units for a couple years (IIRC as a tester) and he notes that it often has no clue what speed or direction he was going. From his description, it sounds like the unit makes radical "corrections" (frex, he cites it claiming he's doing 300mph -- going the wrong direction!) for periods when it is out of contact with the satellite, and fails to do any rationality check.
And as others noted, there is the issue that satellite contact doesn't work well under negative weather condition.
If that's the accuracy level we can expect, I think borderline cases are the least of our worries.
Also, as others have posted, speed limits are often more about generating ticket revenue than about safety (this is a common issue in the farming midwest); given that, I expect borderline cases may not be so ignored as would be wise from a safety standpoint.
That's a very good point. We've been debating what happens when YOUR car won't let you speed, but I think you've hit on a much more likely scenario -- what happens when some idiot's car takes control from the idiot, at just the wrong moment? does he then crash into you, because his car slows down and he can't make the traffic slot he was aiming for?
A lot of "idiots" on the road are clearly extremely skilled drivers, but who drive with total disregard for the heart failure they're giving everyone else. While it's nice to believe that we can technologize these idiots out of existence, as you say the effort is more likely to put others in danger, when the idiot suddenly discovers that his normal highspeed maneuvers don't work -- while he's in mid-maneuver.
I read somewhere that the fuel cutoff was designed in at the request of law enforcement, so no one can outrun the cops.
I have no idea if my old truck has a fuel cutoff, and it wouldn't matter if it did... you can't get the thing above 80mph floored, downhill with a tailwind.
I dunno, maybe to counteract a tendency of brakes and/or clutch to slip? I remember back in the 1960s and 70s, a lot of VW (both bug and van) owners used the handbrake whenever they came to a halt. Haven't seen it elsewhere, tho.
Personally I think the safety issue is the worst problem with this incredibly stupid idea.
How can some GPS know whether you need emergency acceleration or not?? How can it know whether you're passing a long string of cars (oh, I see -- by *their* GPS tags) or maybe serving as an unofficial emergency transport, where you might need to speed significantly for more than a few moments? And imagine this being applied where the driving conditions are already hazardous, and any unplanned or unexpected change of acceleration could be disastrous.
As to the accuracy of a GPS -- there are areas where the speed limit is reduced only "when children are present" (regardless of the time of day). How will the GPS know kids are present -- by the kids' implanted GPS/RFID tags??
As to map accuracy -- sometimes the speed limit is different depending on which side of the street you're driving on. (I once asked the Calif. Highway Patrol about this weirdity, and was told it's because of zoning issues, where both sides of the street are not the same zone.) I've also seen places where the speed limit varied by which LANE you were in. Is this GPS thing so accurate that it can tell which lane you're drivig in??
Next they'll want to install a gadget that slams on the brakes if it thinks you're about to run a red light. Hope the street's not icy, and there's no heavy vehicle tailgating you...
While the pharmaceuticals had most of the initial influence regarding which drugs are criminalized, in today's world, I've become convinced that the drug lords themselves are the primary motivators behind the 'war on drugs' -- after all, so long as drugs that are in high demand are also illegal, this keeps their street prices artificially high, and profits maximized. Legalize (and regulate and tax) these same drugs, their street prices plummet to market reality, and the drug lords' economy falls apart overnight.
This is actually a pretty good parallel to filesharing vs the RIAA. If filesharing of these copyright-restricted materials was legal, the RIAA's distribution monopoly would lose much of its profitability.
Naturally, those currently in monopoly/cartel control of profit channels wish to maintain maximum money flow in their direction, without competition from every yahoo with a patch of weed in his back yard or a broadband connection. But why spend your own manpower to crush competition when you can get the gov't to do it for you, at taxpayer expense?!
[I also don't use drugs, but if you want to curdle your brain in the privacy of your own home, it's no skin off my ass. -- Interesting constitutional points you make.]
"...Where as this woman's computer has commited a crime, no matter how small it is a crime."
Maybe not intentional (how can an inanimate object** commit a crime?), but nonetheless an interesting way of putting it, and leads me to this thought:
If corporations have "personhood" in the eyes of the law, maybe it's just as reasonable that some other nonhuman entity, such as a computer, could be prosecuted under the same system of law.
Of course that ends in absurdities ("But Judge, I didn't kill that man; my gun did it!") but since we've started from the legal fiction of corporate personhood....
** To which my computer says, "Speak for yourself!";)
All well and good, except for the horrid detail that we voters elected these too-corruptable scumbags who pass such laws:(
Unfortunately, one doesn't always have advance notice, let alone full disclosure, of a given candidate's inclinations toward scumbagness. Or sometimes, the available alternative candidates are worse.
Side thought: I wonder how many of the 65M file traders also happened to vote for someone who proved to be "an enemy of the people's will"??
"Democracy: that ultimate triumph of quantity over quality." -- Peter H. Peel
BTW I've been told that ancient CGA monitors work real nice with cheap surveillance equipment. No idea what X10 hooks to or uses, but could be time for a quick run to the junkyard:)
Yeah, but now that you know what an X10 is, and have been chased all over the net by their popups... do you want to buy one, or do you want to see them in hell?:)
Good point tho, that advertisers clients (that is, the retailers) need to distinguish how people respond to a given ad in a particular location, and not just assume that because one ad worked well, 50 ads would work better, and turning the entire net into a billboard would be perfect!
True, but you also have to distinguish between the people who clicked the ad due to genunie interest, and those who were chasing an ill-mannered ad around the screen whilst trying to kill it.
It's only reasonable to assume that advertisers (whose market is retailers, NOT consumers) will inflate the "positive click" numbers as much as they can get away with, to enhance their product's attraction for retailers.
And unfortuntely, over time your new hull will grow its own barnacles and weed, and you'll find that some of the planks used weren't as sound or warp-free as they appeared, and maybe the craftsmen who designed it weren't quite as expert as they thought, either. So sooner or later you'll have to tar that hull's leaks too. And the more rough seas and heavy cargo the boat experiences, the more often you'll have to tar it.
Not to mention that a new hull design, or switching from sail to diesel, might require that you retrain all your sailors too!
When I was a kid (I'm of 1955 vintage), fat kids were so rare that there was never more than one in any given public school (that is, one in every several hundred students). And that unfortunate kid could probably be explained by some metabolic issue. Hefty adults weren't common either.
Starting about 20 years ago, chubby teens became common, then the norm. And the excess weight has been creeping youthward ever since -- now, the majority of gradeschoolers are between chubby and morbidly obese. Now I regularly see 5 year old kids who are toting around a good extra 20 lbs of lard.
Last year I saw a tape of a recent concert in France, where the audience (around a thousand kids are clearly visible) ranged from about 16 to 21. NONE of these kids were overweight.
Goes to show what all the "healthy eating" and "healthy lifestyles" have done for America. We were a lot slimmer when the diet revolved around red meat and potatoes, and kids had time to just "be a kid".
Any competent dog breeder (myself, for instance:) soon becomes aware that you can indeed select for (or against) a certain intrinsic activity level. This is especially obvious in a large kennel, where multiple generations of dogs all live under identical conditions.
What are less evident, but nonetheless can also be selected for, are the genetic factors that sum up as an individual's predisposed activity level, such as intelligence, curiosity, tendency toward "nervous activity", response to activity by other animals, etc.
All else being equal, being even slightly pudgy tends to markedly reduce the desire to be active, even in naturally very active dogs; they also become about 30% more efficient, thus need less food. Conversely, underfeeding a naturally sedate dog will make it prone to nervous activity, and turn it into a "poor keeper" (needing a lot more food to maintain the same body weight).
Sufficient training can override some inborn behaviours, but that just masks the genetic components -- it doesn't alter them. Hence a naturally very active dog, that has been trained to be quiet, will nonetheless tend to produce very active puppies.
Maybe we need another cold war, to turn attention back toward protecting citizens from the rest of the world, rather than the current apparent goal of protecting the government from its citizens.:(
Hark! I hear someone banging their shoe on the table...
Slashdot Mirror
I want it for my house, for the same reason -- to help heat it in winter and help cool it in summer. As a side bonus, it would let you know where the insulation Needs Improvement. Either put up with a blotchy house, or invest in better insulation -- or sue the yahoo who built your house and lied about the R-38 walls.
"Four wheel drives allows you to get stuck in more inaccessable places." -- Paul Harvey
:)
(Equally valid with or without a hyphen after "more"
The problem there, tho, is sheer incompetence. A lot of idiots thinks 4WD automagically confers immunity to all depths and types of mud and snow, and it just ain't so. Frex, I have an old Ford F-100 2WD, and my neighbour in Montana had some big 4WD truck. I never got stuck in the deep snow going down our road, but he did so regularly. Why? I put chains on... BEFORE I reached the deep part. With 4WD, he didn't think he needed to. Ooops. Of course who actually knew how to handle 4WD, rather than being a cowboy, wouldn't have had any trouble.
Before that I had a '63 Olds F-85 (4-door, RWD) and it could go anywhere the snowplow could -- cuz it was perfectly balanced front to back, and skimmed over deep snow like a snowmobile. Typical example: Once I went down this back road in midwinter, and all there was to see was a flat area between the fence lines. So I quite reasonably drove down the middle, thinking that's where the road lay between the ditches. Went back in the spring and learned that the road actually meandered back and forth, and half the time I'd been sailing over a ditch full of 10 feet of snow!! (And with four studded snow tires, there was no making it skid, even on glare ice.)
Anyway, that makes me wonder... FWD is supposed to let you climb up and out of trouble in the snow, but how much of that lies in the fact that they're front-heavy AND light in the rear? The main weight is over the power wheels, as is needed for such tasks. But a full trunk on a FWD is bloody dangerous on ice -- the front end comes up and control goes out the window.
Very interesting. Tho I wonder how much it has to do with poor quality brakes, and more so, the driving habits engendered by stick shifts?
:)
1) I don't know how it is now, but I remember when European-made cars were notorious for randomly failed brakes.
2) Everyone I know who has a stick shift has a tendency to let the vehicle sit in neutral at stoplights, and relies on that to stay stationary, rather than actually keeping a foot on the brake. Likely this is because of the interaction one learns to make between acceleration and clutch, and few folk are blessed with a third leg and foot. However, everyone has a hand to spare for the handbrake, at least while at the halt.
(Personally, I don't have enough arms and legs to drive a stick shift, even tho I'm told I have the same number as everyone else.
True about borderline cases vs intelligent system design... however, I read with interest a post here by someone who has had one of the bigname GPS units for a couple years (IIRC as a tester) and he notes that it often has no clue what speed or direction he was going. From his description, it sounds like the unit makes radical "corrections" (frex, he cites it claiming he's doing 300mph -- going the wrong direction!) for periods when it is out of contact with the satellite, and fails to do any rationality check.
And as others noted, there is the issue that satellite contact doesn't work well under negative weather condition.
If that's the accuracy level we can expect, I think borderline cases are the least of our worries.
Also, as others have posted, speed limits are often more about generating ticket revenue than about safety (this is a common issue in the farming midwest); given that, I expect borderline cases may not be so ignored as would be wise from a safety standpoint.
[laughing] I'd forgotten about that ...I've heard of other folk buying the very same beast. Enough money buys anything! :)
"Too bad no other decent American car has RWD as an option."
I don't like the feel of FWD myself; it feels a lot like towing a trailer with inadequate brakes. What's your gripe with it?
That's a very good point. We've been debating what happens when YOUR car won't let you speed, but I think you've hit on a much more likely scenario -- what happens when some idiot's car takes control from the idiot, at just the wrong moment? does he then crash into you, because his car slows down and he can't make the traffic slot he was aiming for?
A lot of "idiots" on the road are clearly extremely skilled drivers, but who drive with total disregard for the heart failure they're giving everyone else. While it's nice to believe that we can technologize these idiots out of existence, as you say the effort is more likely to put others in danger, when the idiot suddenly discovers that his normal highspeed maneuvers don't work -- while he's in mid-maneuver.
Cops get different models from the public; why shouldn't magazines get a special edition too? :(
I read somewhere that the fuel cutoff was designed in at the request of law enforcement, so no one can outrun the cops.
I have no idea if my old truck has a fuel cutoff, and it wouldn't matter if it did... you can't get the thing above 80mph floored, downhill with a tailwind.
I dunno, maybe to counteract a tendency of brakes and/or clutch to slip? I remember back in the 1960s and 70s, a lot of VW (both bug and van) owners used the handbrake whenever they came to a halt. Haven't seen it elsewhere, tho.
Personally I think the safety issue is the worst problem with this incredibly stupid idea.
How can some GPS know whether you need emergency acceleration or not?? How can it know whether you're passing a long string of cars (oh, I see -- by *their* GPS tags) or maybe serving as an unofficial emergency transport, where you might need to speed significantly for more than a few moments? And imagine this being applied where the driving conditions are already hazardous, and any unplanned or unexpected change of acceleration could be disastrous.
As to the accuracy of a GPS -- there are areas where the speed limit is reduced only "when children are present" (regardless of the time of day). How will the GPS know kids are present -- by the kids' implanted GPS/RFID tags??
As to map accuracy -- sometimes the speed limit is different depending on which side of the street you're driving on. (I once asked the Calif. Highway Patrol about this weirdity, and was told it's because of zoning issues, where both sides of the street are not the same zone.) I've also seen places where the speed limit varied by which LANE you were in. Is this GPS thing so accurate that it can tell which lane you're drivig in??
Next they'll want to install a gadget that slams on the brakes if it thinks you're about to run a red light. Hope the street's not icy, and there's no heavy vehicle tailgating you...
"It's not, fictional characters were never ever alive to begin with."
Hmmph. Speak for yourself!!
While the pharmaceuticals had most of the initial influence regarding which drugs are criminalized, in today's world, I've become convinced that the drug lords themselves are the primary motivators behind the 'war on drugs' -- after all, so long as drugs that are in high demand are also illegal, this keeps their street prices artificially high, and profits maximized. Legalize (and regulate and tax) these same drugs, their street prices plummet to market reality, and the drug lords' economy falls apart overnight.
This is actually a pretty good parallel to filesharing vs the RIAA. If filesharing of these copyright-restricted materials was legal, the RIAA's distribution monopoly would lose much of its profitability.
Naturally, those currently in monopoly/cartel control of profit channels wish to maintain maximum money flow in their direction, without competition from every yahoo with a patch of weed in his back yard or a broadband connection. But why spend your own manpower to crush competition when you can get the gov't to do it for you, at taxpayer expense?!
[I also don't use drugs, but if you want to curdle your brain in the privacy of your own home, it's no skin off my ass. -- Interesting constitutional points you make.]
"...Where as this woman's computer has commited a crime, no matter how small it is a crime."
;)
Maybe not intentional (how can an inanimate object** commit a crime?), but nonetheless an interesting way of putting it, and leads me to this thought:
If corporations have "personhood" in the eyes of the law, maybe it's just as reasonable that some other nonhuman entity, such as a computer, could be prosecuted under the same system of law.
Of course that ends in absurdities ("But Judge, I didn't kill that man; my gun did it!") but since we've started from the legal fiction of corporate personhood....
** To which my computer says, "Speak for yourself!"
All well and good, except for the horrid detail that we voters elected these too-corruptable scumbags who pass such laws :(
Unfortunately, one doesn't always have advance notice, let alone full disclosure, of a given candidate's inclinations toward scumbagness. Or sometimes, the available alternative candidates are worse.
Side thought: I wonder how many of the 65M file traders also happened to vote for someone who proved to be "an enemy of the people's will"??
"Democracy: that ultimate triumph of quantity over quality." -- Peter H. Peel
LOL! Yep, that's karma for ya :)
:)
BTW I've been told that ancient CGA monitors work real nice with cheap surveillance equipment. No idea what X10 hooks to or uses, but could be time for a quick run to the junkyard
Yeah, but now that you know what an X10 is, and have been chased all over the net by their popups... do you want to buy one, or do you want to see them in hell? :)
Good point tho, that advertisers clients (that is, the retailers) need to distinguish how people respond to a given ad in a particular location, and not just assume that because one ad worked well, 50 ads would work better, and turning the entire net into a billboard would be perfect!
LOL! best meta-response ever :D
Of course there is! The pirates fire a broadside, and your new boat sinks. :)
True, but you also have to distinguish between the people who clicked the ad due to genunie interest, and those who were chasing an ill-mannered ad around the screen whilst trying to kill it.
It's only reasonable to assume that advertisers (whose market is retailers, NOT consumers) will inflate the "positive click" numbers as much as they can get away with, to enhance their product's attraction for retailers.
And unfortuntely, over time your new hull will grow its own barnacles and weed, and you'll find that some of the planks used weren't as sound or warp-free as they appeared, and maybe the craftsmen who designed it weren't quite as expert as they thought, either. So sooner or later you'll have to tar that hull's leaks too. And the more rough seas and heavy cargo the boat experiences, the more often you'll have to tar it.
Not to mention that a new hull design, or switching from sail to diesel, might require that you retrain all your sailors too!
I had a related thought -- namely, that given the gov't climate of the day, this story oughta be filed under "privacy" rather than under "security". :/
When I was a kid (I'm of 1955 vintage), fat kids were so rare that there was never more than one in any given public school (that is, one in every several hundred students). And that unfortunate kid could probably be explained by some metabolic issue. Hefty adults weren't common either.
Starting about 20 years ago, chubby teens became common, then the norm. And the excess weight has been creeping youthward ever since -- now, the majority of gradeschoolers are between chubby and morbidly obese. Now I regularly see 5 year old kids who are toting around a good extra 20 lbs of lard.
Last year I saw a tape of a recent concert in France, where the audience (around a thousand kids are clearly visible) ranged from about 16 to 21. NONE of these kids were overweight.
Goes to show what all the "healthy eating" and "healthy lifestyles" have done for America. We were a lot slimmer when the diet revolved around red meat and potatoes, and kids had time to just "be a kid".
Any competent dog breeder (myself, for instance :) soon becomes aware that you can indeed select for (or against) a certain intrinsic activity level. This is especially obvious in a large kennel, where multiple generations of dogs all live under identical conditions.
What are less evident, but nonetheless can also be selected for, are the genetic factors that sum up as an individual's predisposed activity level, such as intelligence, curiosity, tendency toward "nervous activity", response to activity by other animals, etc.
All else being equal, being even slightly pudgy tends to markedly reduce the desire to be active, even in naturally very active dogs; they also become about 30% more efficient, thus need less food. Conversely, underfeeding a naturally sedate dog will make it prone to nervous activity, and turn it into a "poor keeper" (needing a lot more food to maintain the same body weight).
Sufficient training can override some inborn behaviours, but that just masks the genetic components -- it doesn't alter them. Hence a naturally very active dog, that has been trained to be quiet, will nonetheless tend to produce very active puppies.
[eyes insightful quote; steals sig for my tagline file]
Actually, there seems little functional difference between the two concepts.
My thought went: When does "but the only tool I have is a hammer" cascade-fail into malice -- at the point of total incompetence?
This is relevant to topic, as Sony is brandishing DRM as a hammer, without regard for whether we're "nails" or not.
Nails in their coffin, maybe...
Maybe we need another cold war, to turn attention back toward protecting citizens from the rest of the world, rather than the current apparent goal of protecting the government from its citizens. :(
Hark! I hear someone banging their shoe on the table...