They have a serious problem to real Linux acceptance. Besides all the chatter of DRM.
Here's the numbers at the moment, for games per platform. I'm just doing this by clicking the search without any search text,then selecting Games and then the OS. No text criteria used.
1,858 PC games
341 Mac games
38 Linux games.
Right now, they show 41 Linux games on the Linux link. I don't know what the difference is, and haven't bothered to look.:)
If my late night math is right, that gives 4,889% more games for Windows than Linux.
When we were discussing the Steam set-top boxes a little bit back, they had just about as many Linux games.
I love that they're embracing Linux. It would be nice if they actually had a lot of games.
I'll install it, just so there will be more in the numbers. I don't know how much I'll play. Just like the rest of the market, if there aren't enough games that people like, it won't be viable. The set-top box will help encourage developers, if it actually ends up in homes. At least they have a budget to push for it, but all the advertising in the world doesn't give you a high volume product.
There's actually *more* fun to be had there. You don't have just the luxury of making your online presence, but as many alter egos with the same name as you'd like. You can bury yourself in so much varied information that no one will know what to believe.
I found out the hard way, that there's always some asshole (or sometimes many) who want to find you. Let me tell you about one in particular.
I worked for a place for a long time. I got laid off because someone would do it cheaper (and worse). A few years later, some third party I knew absolutely nothing about decided to sue the company. Because I had access to so much information while I was there, they decided I would testify for them.
Part of this luxury paid witness gig I would have to spend at least a couple days about 400 miles from. At this particular time, I wasn't working, and my savings were dropping down below nil. Good gig, some may think. They gave me something like $20 in checks, and a subpoena for all kinds of paperwork that I either never had, or no longer had. I countered with an offer for my advertised hourly rate, and per diem expenses, which they responded with laughter and a bench warrant. Well, they said they had the bench warrant. It turns out it was a lie. Hmm.. Lawyers lying, say it's not so.
As the senior IT guy, I *had* access to every electronic document, and knew every password, and knew where all the secrets were kept. Oddly enough, the day I was cut loose was the day all the passwords were changed. All of my access to everything was lost. I made it a habit not to even archive my email at home. When they cut me loose, I dumped my email. I didn't want it any more. I sure as hell didn't keep it laying around for years. I needed the drive space for porn.:) Just kidding. With my newly found luxury time, I rotated through machines trying out different OSs, just because I could. I always kept one up to send out resumes every day.
So with no fundage, nothing to contribute to the court, and no way to get there, I wrote the judge a very nice letter, copied to the counsel on both sides, saying basically I didn't have anything they wanted (line item by line item), and that I didn't have funds to participate in their games.
I then started on a lucrative career in house sitting and transporting cars. Well, lucrative as in I had somewhere to sleep and food to eat, but no expendable cash. I did get around a bit, because I knew what was coming next.
The assholes that were suing, and I refer to them kindly as that, decided to go on a quest. They were going to find me, with law enforcement in tow, and "compel" me to testify. Basically, they had something in legaleeze that said handcuffs were acceptable to make someone testify in a BS civil lawsuit. Their private investigators with an off duty law enforcement officer, kept showing up to places I either used to be at, or claimed I was at online. Between MySpace, Facebook, FourSquare, and Twitter, I made a very clear trail to follow, and follow they did. Some of it was echoed back to me indirectly that they were going out to whenever I said I was, even though the echoing party didn't know that's what I was claiming.:)
I wasn't sure how much pull they had, so when I could borrow some cash, I'd pick up pre-paid credit cards (Like the Green Dot cards), and have them sent back to one of the known addresses in my name. They would then mail them off to other friends in other states for them to use. Those friends would send cash back to the person who paid for it, so nothing was really lost. It's strange, I can buy a tank of gas in California, have dinner in Seattle, and then buy cigarettes in Alaska, while my online presence said I was in New York, but chattering about recent earthquakes in Los Angeles.
At one point, I went my family financed cell phone on a cross country trip. I'd leave it turned on, so it would go as long as possible on
That's the best advice so far.. A big "who cares".:)
If you search my real name, you'll come up with thousands of people.
If you search my alias, you still get a bunch of people. If you start trying to figure out what "J" stands for, it opens the pool up to even more. Linking my site obviously points back to a small bit of me, but not the whole me.
Over the years, people have tried to piece together the "me" from the parts of "me" out there. They've come up with some pretty colorful ideas.
There was the occasional app that I'd use. Now, you're probably right, I should block them all.
And ya, I'm only still using Facebook because there are only a few friends that use Google+, and they don't even post on there. That's where Google needs to get on the ball. They have to give a good reason for people to want to use it. Facebook has games, so people will keep coming back to it. Google+ has nothing substantial.
They've stepped up their bastardery too. I got a spam today where a "friend" (someone I'd never heard of) invited me to play "Ruby Blast", which is on of their games.
The links are legit, they go to their game, so it's not a phisher. It's just them being rude. I've been blocking all their apps, as people start spamming me with FB invites.
Well, I'm not law enforcement, so it's not up to me to report anyone for doing something bad. I don't see where on the Road Hero site, they actually work with law enforcement to stop bad drivers.
I've only called the police a few times on traffic related matters. All but one were accidents that needed emergency response.
The one that wasn't an accident was a guy in a pickup truck swerving all over an interstate. I should explain that a bit more. He would literally go from driving in one lane, to swerving across the highway, into the breakdown lane and back. Sometimes he'd end up in the original lane, sometimes the other lane, and sometimes all the way across to the other shoulder.
The vehicle I was in didn't have the power to get around him safely, so all I could do is sit back and try not to get hit. We called the highway patrol emergency number. They dispatched immediately to where we said we were. We gave the approx year, make model, and license plate number, location, and direction of travel. They asked us to stay on the phone, and keep a safe observation distance, so we could keep them updated to where we were, and let them know if something worse happened.
At one point, he stopped in the highway, which was greeted with honking horns and screeching tires behind us.
Another car realized what was happening, and he sat in the lane beside us, rolling along at 45mph about 20 car lengths behind the hazard. The speed limit is 70 on that road, so other drivers weren't exactly entertained, but they were safe.
For us, the whole thing ended just after we passed a rest area. It appeared that he decided he wanted to go into the rest area, but missed the entrance by about 1/10 mile. He just turned right, ran off the road, and got stuck in the ditch.
We asked highway patrol if they needed anything more from us. They said our description would be all they'd need, but they had my phone number in case they needed more. The call was recorded, so if it went to court, they'd just use that.
Since we never got a call asking for anything, I'd guess the guy plead guilty to whatever they charged him with. Probably DUI or general dumbassery.
That's one I looked at.. Unfortunately, the G sensor isn't necessarily smart enough to know that something was important to record.
Use the video in the article as an example. Rather than being this specific car, imagine it being in the next car back. He wouldn't have been hit by debris or other cars. He would have just stopped safely and hopefully tried to help the survivors. Most of the apps have an option to save on high G events or to save on button push. There wouldn't have been a high G event, and I'd hope he'd be more concerned with helping people, than messing with his phone to hit the record button.
Secondary accidents happen a lot too. Stopping on a highway isn't always the safest thing to do. If someone approaching the accident doesn't notice that everyone stopped, they could (and frequently do) have other incidents that wouldn't be recorded if they didn't involve the car recording.
I plug it in and start it while I'm parked, and let it run for the entire drive. I don't stop it again until I get to my destination. So I don't look at or touch the phone during the whole drive.
That's why I'm bothered with the skewing in gauges. If I was recording short clips, it wouldn't matter. Since I'm doing anywhere from 30 to 90 minute drives, it would become significant if I encoded the vehicle data with the video.
But, you bring up a valid argument for the other side, if I ever use a clip in court. No court would allow a 90 minute video to show 1 minute around an accident. They'd only want the 1 minute played.
Having the longer recording is useful. Last Friday, I saw a guy drift into the breakdown lane on a highway twice. He almost hit the wall once. I don't know if he was on his phone, trying to figure out how to work his CD changer, or was otherwise distracted. If there was an accident, it most likely wouldn't have involved me, since I saw him swerving and left him lots of room. He could have gotten into an accident minutes later, which the video would be useful. It'd be bad for him, but would help prove the innocence of anyone he hit.
Video evidence of that guy would be far superior to my spoken or written testimony that I saw him swerving earlier.
To start, I'm an American, living in the United States.
I started recording all my driving a few months ago. I got a red light ticket, and I specifically remember the light being green until it was out of view, obscured by the roof of my car.
I've also been in car accidents, where people lie about what happened. There have also been incidents where the police make wild claims about my driving which just weren't true. "Careless driving" where you were swerving in the lane is hard to argue in court, but easier with video proof.
My logic is, rather than let my word stand up in court, let the video testify for me.
Since I'm recording with my phone, it eliminates any question of if I'm texting or talking on the phone while I'm driving. I can't. The phone is busy recording. If I had a second phone, you'd hear me talking. The only talking you hear is the radio, or if I dictate license plates.
I'm using the Android app "Torque Recorder". It's not perfect. Well, it's much less than perfect. It does record my OBDII information, but when it encodes to combine the data, the data and video skew. It's about 5 seconds in 15 minutes of driving. It also sucks down the battery in my phone horribly. In a 2.1A charger in the car, it drops about 2% in 30 minutes. Without charging, it will have sucked about 90% of the battery in 30 minutes.
The other problem is the video quality. It's fine for seeing which car did what, and ambient noises. You can't read license plates. That's why I dictate the occasional license plate. If someone is driving badly, and I think there might be a problem, I already have the plate dictated which can be heard on playback. It also gets confused about focus. There's no setting for manual focus, and sometimes it'll focus back to the windshield rather than the objects in front of the car. Like, if it's raining, the focus changes from windshield to cars when the wipers sweep by.
Sometimes the Torque Recorder encoding program can't actually encode the stored video. The video is just MP4, so it's fine. It just doesn't have the vehicle data included. If it had to go to court, I can provide the data file, since it's just a CSV.
So far, I've been lucky. There have been some lunatics. I've had to make extreme maneuvers to avoid them, but so far there has been no accident. Lately, I've caught the end result of two accidents resulting in fatalities (after the police arrived, not the accident itself), and lots of smoke from people locking up their tires skidding to a stop just short of accidents.
I don't worry about it while I'm driving. I just have to remember to start it when I start driving, and stop it when I get to my destination.
Since it's recording some select OBDII information, I have my throttle position and actual ground speed recorded, rather than trusting the
I intend to work on my own app, and hopefully fix the video quality, battery life, and encoding problems.
Hopefully I'll never be "lucky" enough to catch a plane crash.
I'd give you mine, but I'm pretty sure it's in a eccentric orbit around Sol. Somewhere around the orbits of Sol 6 and Sol 9 (Saturn and Pluto, in Earth terms). All the odds of hitting one of their little probes, and I managed to hit two on the last trip. I won't admit which ones, since they'll probably try to sue me.
If they ever do manage to find my repulsors or the part of the hull they were attached to, I believe one is still stuck in the side. If you get there first, can you give the crew who are probably floating around it, a proper space funeral?
We were lucky to even land. We followed this massive radio signal at 60.886ÂN, 101.894ÂE, assuming it was a landing beacon, Well, at least no one saw us come in. The atmospheric shock wave was pretty significant though.
Ahhh, I remember when AT&T Worldnet screwed that up for everyone. They gave "unlimited" and would periodically bump their users offline. Those of us who had our machines automatically reconnect and notify us of our new IP were apparently a pain. "Unlimited" became "Unlimited, yet limited to x hours per month" and if you did stay connected all month, it was something like a $5,000 charge for the extra time, even if you barely transferred anything.
I almost preferred the per minute billing. I couldn't get back to my home machine that way though.
Ya, I did that once. Then I found out the shitty part.
Sure, you can go blazing around the sun like doing your own recreation of the big bang, and zing back 1000 years. You can't go forward using the same method.
It'll only be another 1960 years until I'm born. You people won't have found how to leave this miserable rock for a couple hundred more years. That whole "whee, we're just outside the atmosphere" thing and "oohh, we have a RC car on the next planet", while quaint, doesn't even begin to give you a clue of what's out there.
What's worse is, if you go to your space agencies and tell them exactly how to make interstellar vehicles, they just laugh. Definitely don't try to tell them that you came from the future. They'll start quizzing you on who will win some sports event next year, or who a national leader will be next voting cycle. Hell if I know who your next figurehead leader will be. I bet you can't tell me who yours was 2000 years ago either.
I thought the witness only saw him hose out his car with no actual mention of blood. If the witness saw something more then water (blood) he couldn't have testified that it was for example paint or wine. BTW since she was strangled there shouldn't be much of her blood outside the body. He didn't misplace his seat he said he deliberately threw it out because he needed more room.
As I recall, which is probably horribly wrong, there was blood in the car, and that's why he was washing it out... I find it's more efficient to wash out with 5 gallons of gasoline and a match, once the ignition lock is broken and parked far away from home.:)
I don't quite get the need for more room to move the body. Most of the time, a corpse isn't substantially bigger than a body with a pulse.
Any which way, for someone who was smart, and researching how to do it properly, he really didn't do it very well. Myself, I have the better plan. Don't kill anyone, and then you don't have to hide the body or make excuses.:)
I would think the witnesses seeing him hose out the blood from his car, or the fact that he somehow misplaced the passenger seat, would be pretty good clues.
But when he lead them to the body, that was a dead giveaway.
I think there's something in the FAQ about this...
"Don't grouse about the good old days, when the folks running the site cared about the site. We don't care, we just want you to read, and click the ads. We want revenue. If the revenue dies, we'll just shut down the site."
They may sell the database, but it doesn't get published for general consumption. Heck, if I lived there, I could pointy-clicky around and steal more weapons than I'd have room to keep them. Too bad I'm a good guy.
Well, I will say there are *lots* of people out there who shouldn't own weapons, including (unfortunately) gun loving nuts and some law enforcement (your "chuckleheads").
The suggestions I'm seeing put forward are to allow any teacher to carry a firearm. Some are suggesting that they simply need a concealed weapons permit. Many of them are the same newbie firearms owners who will stick a firearm in their purse or desk drawer, and forget it's there. Those are the weapons that will hit the black market fast enough, and/or be used in unsavory ways.
Honestly, I'd rather see well trained school security guards patrolling the halls. The teachers should be focused on teaching, not breaking up fights and other escalated events.
When I was in school decades ago, it really wasn't hard to find my way into the halls, free to roam or do as I pleased. Luckily, I was a good kid, and only did so for "safe" purposes. Well, I'll just say it.. Flirting with girls in other classes, and occasionally taking photos for the yearbook.:)
We really do need a reform of firearms licensing. Before that, we need to reform drivers licenses. Poor drivers who haven't proved their proficiency in decades kill more people every day than die in firearms violence. In both they should require extensive training and testing for certification, as well as periodic training and retesting.
We've become horribly desensitized to death by vehicle accidents. They rarely make the front page of the newspaper, or a headline on the nightly news, unless there are some extreme events related to it.
You haven't talked with many people who own firearms in the real world, have you? They're usually in a dresser or nightstand drawer, on a shelf in the closet, or other seemingly easy places to retrieve them from in an emergency.
For those who do lock them up safely, the safes are barely a challenge for someone with a screwdriver. The minority of them are locked up in a decent safe.
But with that said, mine are.:) They're also in a somewhat "safe room". I can shut the door in a fraction of a second. It would take longer for someone to force their way in, than it will take me to open the safe, insert the magazine, and chamber a round.
On the other hand, if they locked themselves in the safe room thinking that they would get to the guns first, I could call the police and they'd have plenty of time to arrive before the intruder came out.
I actually agree with you entirely there. I was talking with someone about it. They wanted a mandate for teachers *TO* carry weapons. From the numerous teachers I had over the years, along with others that I have known, I will say I wouldn't want a lot of them to have firearms. "Having" a firearm wouldn't mean that it can sit in a desk drawer. That would almost definitely mean it would be in the hands of a student with the first few days. Most people don't want to wear one around all the time. Many teachers are easily overpowered, and even a holstered weapon can be lifted without being noticed.
At my high schools through the 1980's and 1990's, there were firearms on premises. There were typically two uniformed officers who did carry their sidearm. They were assigned to the schools as "resource officers". One year, I was in our ROTC program, and we had an armory. I was on the rifle team, so I did have access to firearms during school. They were "just".22LR, but that's still enough to put a hole in more than a piece of paper. I'm not sure if the military officers teaching the course had sidearms. It's a bit late for me to ask, they are long since retired. I would expect it would be possible though.
I'd trust trained law enforcement and military officers to carry weapons. It would be insanity to hand them out to anyone with less training and experience.
I see this ass an introduction on how a newspaper can be involved as a conspirator or accomplice to a variety of crimes.
I've known people who get firearms permits for all kinds of reasons. Some people get them to protect themselves because of their line of work. Like managers of stores carry because they are transporting the end of day cash to the bank. Some people get them for self defense after threat or action has threatened their lives. Some just do it because they do have the right.
In one jurisdiction, at least it was, off-duty police couldn't carry their firearms unless they had a permit. Their weapon went in the trunk of their car at the end of the shift, and then they moved it from the trunk to their home. So virtually all police officers were also concealed carry permit holders.
I am concealed weapons holder. I've carried a few times, for need. If I lived there, I really wouldn't want my name and address published. I'd be furious.
This list is not a list to inform. A dot map without specific names and addresses would have done that job. What they've done is made public a shopping list for criminals. They know they can observe a residence for a while, learn the patterns of the occupants, and when they aren't home, rob it. There's an increased chance of finding a home containing firearms.
While B&E to a home can get them some pretty high value items, not many items are as compact and easy to transport, and as valuable on the black market, as a firearm. A $500 pistol that can fit in your pocket can bring double that on the black market. A $500 TV doesn't fit in your pocket, and will only sell at a small percent of it's list price.
Slashdot Mirror
Who woulda thunk, matter in and around a galaxy tends to end up in the accretion disk. Mindblowing.
I'm not sure your links show much difference.
36 working games on the Reddit link. 67 from cdr.xpaw.ru.
They have a serious problem to real Linux acceptance. Besides all the chatter of DRM.
Here's the numbers at the moment, for games per platform. I'm just doing this by clicking the search without any search text,then selecting Games and then the OS. No text criteria used.
1,858 PC games
341 Mac games
38 Linux games.
Right now, they show 41 Linux games on the Linux link. I don't know what the difference is, and haven't bothered to look. :)
If my late night math is right, that gives 4,889% more games for Windows than Linux.
When we were discussing the Steam set-top boxes a little bit back, they had just about as many Linux games.
I love that they're embracing Linux. It would be nice if they actually had a lot of games.
I'll install it, just so there will be more in the numbers. I don't know how much I'll play. Just like the rest of the market, if there aren't enough games that people like, it won't be viable. The set-top box will help encourage developers, if it actually ends up in homes. At least they have a budget to push for it, but all the advertising in the world doesn't give you a high volume product.
There's actually *more* fun to be had there. You don't have just the luxury of making your online presence, but as many alter egos with the same name as you'd like. You can bury yourself in so much varied information that no one will know what to believe.
I found out the hard way, that there's always some asshole (or sometimes many) who want to find you. Let me tell you about one in particular.
I worked for a place for a long time. I got laid off because someone would do it cheaper (and worse). A few years later, some third party I knew absolutely nothing about decided to sue the company. Because I had access to so much information while I was there, they decided I would testify for them.
Part of this luxury paid witness gig I would have to spend at least a couple days about 400 miles from. At this particular time, I wasn't working, and my savings were dropping down below nil. Good gig, some may think. They gave me something like $20 in checks, and a subpoena for all kinds of paperwork that I either never had, or no longer had. I countered with an offer for my advertised hourly rate, and per diem expenses, which they responded with laughter and a bench warrant. Well, they said they had the bench warrant. It turns out it was a lie. Hmm.. Lawyers lying, say it's not so.
As the senior IT guy, I *had* access to every electronic document, and knew every password, and knew where all the secrets were kept. Oddly enough, the day I was cut loose was the day all the passwords were changed. All of my access to everything was lost. I made it a habit not to even archive my email at home. When they cut me loose, I dumped my email. I didn't want it any more. I sure as hell didn't keep it laying around for years. I needed the drive space for porn. :) Just kidding. With my newly found luxury time, I rotated through machines trying out different OSs, just because I could. I always kept one up to send out resumes every day.
So with no fundage, nothing to contribute to the court, and no way to get there, I wrote the judge a very nice letter, copied to the counsel on both sides, saying basically I didn't have anything they wanted (line item by line item), and that I didn't have funds to participate in their games.
I then started on a lucrative career in house sitting and transporting cars. Well, lucrative as in I had somewhere to sleep and food to eat, but no expendable cash. I did get around a bit, because I knew what was coming next.
The assholes that were suing, and I refer to them kindly as that, decided to go on a quest. They were going to find me, with law enforcement in tow, and "compel" me to testify. Basically, they had something in legaleeze that said handcuffs were acceptable to make someone testify in a BS civil lawsuit. Their private investigators with an off duty law enforcement officer, kept showing up to places I either used to be at, or claimed I was at online. Between MySpace, Facebook, FourSquare, and Twitter, I made a very clear trail to follow, and follow they did. Some of it was echoed back to me indirectly that they were going out to whenever I said I was, even though the echoing party didn't know that's what I was claiming. :)
I wasn't sure how much pull they had, so when I could borrow some cash, I'd pick up pre-paid credit cards (Like the Green Dot cards), and have them sent back to one of the known addresses in my name. They would then mail them off to other friends in other states for them to use. Those friends would send cash back to the person who paid for it, so nothing was really lost. It's strange, I can buy a tank of gas in California, have dinner in Seattle, and then buy cigarettes in Alaska, while my online presence said I was in New York, but chattering about recent earthquakes in Los Angeles.
At one point, I went my family financed cell phone on a cross country trip. I'd leave it turned on, so it would go as long as possible on
That's the best advice so far.. A big "who cares". :)
If you search my real name, you'll come up with thousands of people.
If you search my alias, you still get a bunch of people. If you start trying to figure out what "J" stands for, it opens the pool up to even more. Linking my site obviously points back to a small bit of me, but not the whole me.
Over the years, people have tried to piece together the "me" from the parts of "me" out there. They've come up with some pretty colorful ideas.
There was the occasional app that I'd use. Now, you're probably right, I should block them all.
And ya, I'm only still using Facebook because there are only a few friends that use Google+, and they don't even post on there. That's where Google needs to get on the ball. They have to give a good reason for people to want to use it. Facebook has games, so people will keep coming back to it. Google+ has nothing substantial.
They've stepped up their bastardery too. I got a spam today where a "friend" (someone I'd never heard of) invited me to play "Ruby Blast", which is on of their games.
The links are legit, they go to their game, so it's not a phisher. It's just them being rude. I've been blocking all their apps, as people start spamming me with FB invites.
Well, I'm not law enforcement, so it's not up to me to report anyone for doing something bad. I don't see where on the Road Hero site, they actually work with law enforcement to stop bad drivers.
I've only called the police a few times on traffic related matters. All but one were accidents that needed emergency response.
The one that wasn't an accident was a guy in a pickup truck swerving all over an interstate. I should explain that a bit more. He would literally go from driving in one lane, to swerving across the highway, into the breakdown lane and back. Sometimes he'd end up in the original lane, sometimes the other lane, and sometimes all the way across to the other shoulder.
The vehicle I was in didn't have the power to get around him safely, so all I could do is sit back and try not to get hit. We called the highway patrol emergency number. They dispatched immediately to where we said we were. We gave the approx year, make model, and license plate number, location, and direction of travel. They asked us to stay on the phone, and keep a safe observation distance, so we could keep them updated to where we were, and let them know if something worse happened.
At one point, he stopped in the highway, which was greeted with honking horns and screeching tires behind us.
Another car realized what was happening, and he sat in the lane beside us, rolling along at 45mph about 20 car lengths behind the hazard. The speed limit is 70 on that road, so other drivers weren't exactly entertained, but they were safe.
For us, the whole thing ended just after we passed a rest area. It appeared that he decided he wanted to go into the rest area, but missed the entrance by about 1/10 mile. He just turned right, ran off the road, and got stuck in the ditch.
We asked highway patrol if they needed anything more from us. They said our description would be all they'd need, but they had my phone number in case they needed more. The call was recorded, so if it went to court, they'd just use that.
Since we never got a call asking for anything, I'd guess the guy plead guilty to whatever they charged him with. Probably DUI or general dumbassery.
That's one I looked at.. Unfortunately, the G sensor isn't necessarily smart enough to know that something was important to record.
Use the video in the article as an example. Rather than being this specific car, imagine it being in the next car back. He wouldn't have been hit by debris or other cars. He would have just stopped safely and hopefully tried to help the survivors. Most of the apps have an option to save on high G events or to save on button push. There wouldn't have been a high G event, and I'd hope he'd be more concerned with helping people, than messing with his phone to hit the record button.
Secondary accidents happen a lot too. Stopping on a highway isn't always the safest thing to do. If someone approaching the accident doesn't notice that everyone stopped, they could (and frequently do) have other incidents that wouldn't be recorded if they didn't involve the car recording.
I plug it in and start it while I'm parked, and let it run for the entire drive. I don't stop it again until I get to my destination. So I don't look at or touch the phone during the whole drive.
That's why I'm bothered with the skewing in gauges. If I was recording short clips, it wouldn't matter. Since I'm doing anywhere from 30 to 90 minute drives, it would become significant if I encoded the vehicle data with the video.
But, you bring up a valid argument for the other side, if I ever use a clip in court. No court would allow a 90 minute video to show 1 minute around an accident. They'd only want the 1 minute played.
Having the longer recording is useful. Last Friday, I saw a guy drift into the breakdown lane on a highway twice. He almost hit the wall once. I don't know if he was on his phone, trying to figure out how to work his CD changer, or was otherwise distracted. If there was an accident, it most likely wouldn't have involved me, since I saw him swerving and left him lots of room. He could have gotten into an accident minutes later, which the video would be useful. It'd be bad for him, but would help prove the innocence of anyone he hit.
Video evidence of that guy would be far superior to my spoken or written testimony that I saw him swerving earlier.
To start, I'm an American, living in the United States.
I started recording all my driving a few months ago. I got a red light ticket, and I specifically remember the light being green until it was out of view, obscured by the roof of my car.
I've also been in car accidents, where people lie about what happened. There have also been incidents where the police make wild claims about my driving which just weren't true. "Careless driving" where you were swerving in the lane is hard to argue in court, but easier with video proof.
My logic is, rather than let my word stand up in court, let the video testify for me.
Since I'm recording with my phone, it eliminates any question of if I'm texting or talking on the phone while I'm driving. I can't. The phone is busy recording. If I had a second phone, you'd hear me talking. The only talking you hear is the radio, or if I dictate license plates.
I'm using the Android app "Torque Recorder". It's not perfect. Well, it's much less than perfect. It does record my OBDII information, but when it encodes to combine the data, the data and video skew. It's about 5 seconds in 15 minutes of driving. It also sucks down the battery in my phone horribly. In a 2.1A charger in the car, it drops about 2% in 30 minutes. Without charging, it will have sucked about 90% of the battery in 30 minutes.
The other problem is the video quality. It's fine for seeing which car did what, and ambient noises. You can't read license plates. That's why I dictate the occasional license plate. If someone is driving badly, and I think there might be a problem, I already have the plate dictated which can be heard on playback. It also gets confused about focus. There's no setting for manual focus, and sometimes it'll focus back to the windshield rather than the objects in front of the car. Like, if it's raining, the focus changes from windshield to cars when the wipers sweep by.
Sometimes the Torque Recorder encoding program can't actually encode the stored video. The video is just MP4, so it's fine. It just doesn't have the vehicle data included. If it had to go to court, I can provide the data file, since it's just a CSV.
So far, I've been lucky. There have been some lunatics. I've had to make extreme maneuvers to avoid them, but so far there has been no accident. Lately, I've caught the end result of two accidents resulting in fatalities (after the police arrived, not the accident itself), and lots of smoke from people locking up their tires skidding to a stop just short of accidents.
I don't worry about it while I'm driving. I just have to remember to start it when I start driving, and stop it when I get to my destination.
Since it's recording some select OBDII information, I have my throttle position and actual ground speed recorded, rather than trusting the
I intend to work on my own app, and hopefully fix the video quality, battery life, and encoding problems.
Hopefully I'll never be "lucky" enough to catch a plane crash.
I'd give you mine, but I'm pretty sure it's in a eccentric orbit around Sol. Somewhere around the orbits of Sol 6 and Sol 9 (Saturn and Pluto, in Earth terms). All the odds of hitting one of their little probes, and I managed to hit two on the last trip. I won't admit which ones, since they'll probably try to sue me.
If they ever do manage to find my repulsors or the part of the hull they were attached to, I believe one is still stuck in the side. If you get there first, can you give the crew who are probably floating around it, a proper space funeral?
We were lucky to even land. We followed this massive radio signal at 60.886ÂN, 101.894ÂE, assuming it was a landing beacon, Well, at least no one saw us come in. The atmospheric shock wave was pretty significant though.
Ahhh, I remember when AT&T Worldnet screwed that up for everyone. They gave "unlimited" and would periodically bump their users offline. Those of us who had our machines automatically reconnect and notify us of our new IP were apparently a pain. "Unlimited" became "Unlimited, yet limited to x hours per month" and if you did stay connected all month, it was something like a $5,000 charge for the extra time, even if you barely transferred anything.
I almost preferred the per minute billing. I couldn't get back to my home machine that way though.
Ya, I did that once. Then I found out the shitty part.
Sure, you can go blazing around the sun like doing your own recreation of the big bang, and zing back 1000 years. You can't go forward using the same method.
It'll only be another 1960 years until I'm born. You people won't have found how to leave this miserable rock for a couple hundred more years. That whole "whee, we're just outside the atmosphere" thing and "oohh, we have a RC car on the next planet", while quaint, doesn't even begin to give you a clue of what's out there.
What's worse is, if you go to your space agencies and tell them exactly how to make interstellar vehicles, they just laugh. Definitely don't try to tell them that you came from the future. They'll start quizzing you on who will win some sports event next year, or who a national leader will be next voting cycle. Hell if I know who your next figurehead leader will be. I bet you can't tell me who yours was 2000 years ago either.
As I recall, which is probably horribly wrong, there was blood in the car, and that's why he was washing it out... I find it's more efficient to wash out with 5 gallons of gasoline and a match, once the ignition lock is broken and parked far away from home. :)
I don't quite get the need for more room to move the body. Most of the time, a corpse isn't substantially bigger than a body with a pulse.
Any which way, for someone who was smart, and researching how to do it properly, he really didn't do it very well. Myself, I have the better plan. Don't kill anyone, and then you don't have to hide the body or make excuses. :)
My maths are 0.00074295 km from the Earth. :)
I would think the witnesses seeing him hose out the blood from his car, or the fact that he somehow misplaced the passenger seat, would be pretty good clues.
But when he lead them to the body, that was a dead giveaway.
I think there's something in the FAQ about this...
"Don't grouse about the good old days, when the folks running the site cared about the site. We don't care, we just want you to read, and click the ads. We want revenue. If the revenue dies, we'll just shut down the site."
And from the bottom of the page (scroll down)
Funny, they can show the copyright symbol correctly at the bottom, but you can't copy & paste it into a comment.
They may sell the database, but it doesn't get published for general consumption. Heck, if I lived there, I could pointy-clicky around and steal more weapons than I'd have room to keep them. Too bad I'm a good guy.
Well, I will say there are *lots* of people out there who shouldn't own weapons, including (unfortunately) gun loving nuts and some law enforcement (your "chuckleheads").
The suggestions I'm seeing put forward are to allow any teacher to carry a firearm. Some are suggesting that they simply need a concealed weapons permit. Many of them are the same newbie firearms owners who will stick a firearm in their purse or desk drawer, and forget it's there. Those are the weapons that will hit the black market fast enough, and/or be used in unsavory ways.
Honestly, I'd rather see well trained school security guards patrolling the halls. The teachers should be focused on teaching, not breaking up fights and other escalated events.
When I was in school decades ago, it really wasn't hard to find my way into the halls, free to roam or do as I pleased. Luckily, I was a good kid, and only did so for "safe" purposes. Well, I'll just say it.. Flirting with girls in other classes, and occasionally taking photos for the yearbook. :)
We really do need a reform of firearms licensing. Before that, we need to reform drivers licenses. Poor drivers who haven't proved their proficiency in decades kill more people every day than die in firearms violence. In both they should require extensive training and testing for certification, as well as periodic training and retesting.
We've become horribly desensitized to death by vehicle accidents. They rarely make the front page of the newspaper, or a headline on the nightly news, unless there are some extreme events related to it.
You haven't talked with many people who own firearms in the real world, have you? They're usually in a dresser or nightstand drawer, on a shelf in the closet, or other seemingly easy places to retrieve them from in an emergency.
For those who do lock them up safely, the safes are barely a challenge for someone with a screwdriver. The minority of them are locked up in a decent safe.
But with that said, mine are. :) They're also in a somewhat "safe room". I can shut the door in a fraction of a second. It would take longer for someone to force their way in, than it will take me to open the safe, insert the magazine, and chamber a round.
On the other hand, if they locked themselves in the safe room thinking that they would get to the guns first, I could call the police and they'd have plenty of time to arrive before the intruder came out.
I actually agree with you entirely there. I was talking with someone about it. They wanted a mandate for teachers *TO* carry weapons. From the numerous teachers I had over the years, along with others that I have known, I will say I wouldn't want a lot of them to have firearms. "Having" a firearm wouldn't mean that it can sit in a desk drawer. That would almost definitely mean it would be in the hands of a student with the first few days. Most people don't want to wear one around all the time. Many teachers are easily overpowered, and even a holstered weapon can be lifted without being noticed.
At my high schools through the 1980's and 1990's, there were firearms on premises. There were typically two uniformed officers who did carry their sidearm. They were assigned to the schools as "resource officers". One year, I was in our ROTC program, and we had an armory. I was on the rifle team, so I did have access to firearms during school. They were "just" .22LR, but that's still enough to put a hole in more than a piece of paper. I'm not sure if the military officers teaching the course had sidearms. It's a bit late for me to ask, they are long since retired. I would expect it would be possible though.
I'd trust trained law enforcement and military officers to carry weapons. It would be insanity to hand them out to anyone with less training and experience.
Amikacin. Ask for it by name. :)
Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 1982 December; 22(6): 985-989
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC185706/
and ... more information here.
I'm not sure what more I can provide.
If you'd prefer, you can do what most people do, and check Wikipedia. It's even referenced in there, with more citations.
I see this ass an introduction on how a newspaper can be involved as a conspirator or accomplice to a variety of crimes.
I've known people who get firearms permits for all kinds of reasons. Some people get them to protect themselves because of their line of work. Like managers of stores carry because they are transporting the end of day cash to the bank. Some people get them for self defense after threat or action has threatened their lives. Some just do it because they do have the right.
In one jurisdiction, at least it was, off-duty police couldn't carry their firearms unless they had a permit. Their weapon went in the trunk of their car at the end of the shift, and then they moved it from the trunk to their home. So virtually all police officers were also concealed carry permit holders.
I am concealed weapons holder. I've carried a few times, for need. If I lived there, I really wouldn't want my name and address published. I'd be furious.
This list is not a list to inform. A dot map without specific names and addresses would have done that job. What they've done is made public a shopping list for criminals. They know they can observe a residence for a while, learn the patterns of the occupants, and when they aren't home, rob it. There's an increased chance of finding a home containing firearms.
While B&E to a home can get them some pretty high value items, not many items are as compact and easy to transport, and as valuable on the black market, as a firearm. A $500 pistol that can fit in your pocket can bring double that on the black market. A $500 TV doesn't fit in your pocket, and will only sell at a small percent of it's list price.
Don't worry, it's not a new mystery bacteria. They just believe they've found a new problem it may cause.
Amikacin takes care of it.