the general conclusion was that red light cameras at properly set up intersections don't make enough money to justify their existence; especially after people figure out they're there.
That's a long-winded way of saying that they're stopping a lot of people from running red lights. : )
Where can I find a copy of that data? Without exception, the "studies" I've seen condemning red light cameras have been woefully biased and flawed. Even then, they often conclude that red light cameras "only" trade side impacts for rear impacts, which is actually very much a net win for safety, as the latter cause fewer and less-severe human injuries.
Many of the studies contain irritating circular references back to a handful of cases where suspect yellow timing was supposedly employed to increase revenue. While reprehensible if true, none of that would discredit red light cameras in general, but people generally dislike the cameras and are all-too-happy to suspend critical thinking.
Ultimately, safety-based arguments against cameras reduce to arguments against any red light enforcement. I'm a fan of evidence-based decision making, and there are plenty of reasons to be wary of the cameras (such as the fact that they are usually administered by private companies that also share in much of the revenue) but I call BS on the safety argument unless someone can produce some un-flimsy data.
Is there some explicit "no unlocking whatsoever" clause in the DMCA? As far as I'm aware, the only thing that's happened is that the explicit exemption for unlocking has expired. While I'm not volunteering to be the test case, it seems like there's a good case to be made that the generic DMCA language doesn't forbid unlocking.
In most cases, I'm not altering the software on the phone by unlocking it. I'm merely entering a code, and the phone already has software onboard specifically for the purpose of unlocking that phone when I enter said code.
I'm not impressed with "most people". 256k is a waste of bandwidth while still being a far cry from lossless. I can pack 60-70% more Vorbis tracks on my player, and the codec is entirely transparent on the portable player at those rates.
Auto-rip raises an interesting question about resales. It appears that Amazon is granting downloads for CD purchases (even retroactively, for CDs purchased years ago). If I've since sold the physical CD, Amazon would not know that. Furthermore, I could deliberately game the system by buying CDs and immediately reselling them.
I know, it's a stupid edge case, and I could already do this by ripping my own CDs today and subsequently selling them, but it's exactly the type of "problem" that keeps the recording industry up at night.
a per-mile tax after 2015 to offset the loss in tax revenue for fuel efficient cars
Right, because the last thing we'd want to incentivize is fuel efficiency. Maybe those selfish economical drivers will see the error of their ways, man up, and start driving Hummers.
Only if you take it to a logical extreme. If your house is one mile from the store, metrification will not require you to move your house to make it 1 km from the store. We can actually use fractional units (e.g. 1.6 km) and everything is fine.
Metrification is one means toward standardization. In the specific case of socket drives, standardization has already been achieved with no external dependencies of consequence, so changing anything would cause harm while accomplishing nothing useful.
Note to mods: He's talking about the square socket drive (from, e.g. the ratchet handle), not the size of the socket wrenches themselves.
Just curious, are there any metric drive standards in Europe, and why haven't they found their way to the US?
They're already here because they are the same. They are 6.35mm (1/4"), 9.5mm (3/8"), and 12.7mm (1/2").
There would be absolutely no upside to fragmentation in this standard (the only point of which is interchangeability). If you think the point of the metric system is to have everything in some integer measurement, then you're converting for the wrong reason.
Within two or three decades the difference between automated driving and human driving will be so great you may not be legally allowed to drive your own car, and even if you are allowed, it would immoral of you to drive, because the risk of you hurting yourself or another person will be far greater than if you allowed a machine to do the work.
This presumes some kind of rational analysis of relative risks, and humans are terrible at that.
If we cared about such things, we'd already ban cars today in favor of vastly-safer public transit. And before some doofus starts tossing Amtrak safety records around, I'm talking about public transit in a first world country, not the designed-to-fail idiocy that passes for transit in the USA.
The U.S. and Europe aren't to blame, Sparky. Our CO2 emissions have been either steady on on a downward trend for some time. If you want to point fingers, look at China.
Maybe in absolute terms, and only just barely. Go back and take a look per capita, and get your pointer finger ready.
[...] leave nuclear energy too hazardous to be a reliable alternative.
Maybe it seems that way to your emotions, but by any evidence-based thought process nuclear power is the safest means of energy production ever devised by humans.
Coal power kills more people (by several orders of magnitude), and generates more radioactive waste, and releases said waste into the atmosphere. Nuclear energy is imperfect, but the time to discuss shutting it down is after the last coal plant is gone.
So, in my family of 6, I pay $36,000 more for healthcare than a family in the U.K. Well, let's see, I paid about $4,500 last year, so in the U.K., the healthcare system pays the average family more than $31,500 a year?
That's not what "per capita" means. If you are paying only $4500 per year, and that includes both your and your employer's share of the costs, and you have a $0 deductible, pay no co-payments or other charges, and you spend $0 on prescription and over-the-counter medications, then you are astronomically fortunate.
Such anecdotal information is irrelevant, though, since we're talking about per-capita (i.e. average) costs, which are exceedingly well documented at about $3000/year in the UK, and nearly $9000 in the USA (probably higher in 2012).
That's a separate issue. In the UK, nearly all health care expenses are paid from general taxation. In the US, it's a mixture. But, irrespective of the source, the total expenses in the US are about $6000 per capita per year higher than the total UK expenses.
Good thing there's no chance of the US going to a single-payer system...er...am I right?
As I noted elsewhere, every british citizen could get ripped off in this fashion at least twice per year and still pay less for health care (per capita) than we do in the USA. The USA spends about $6000 per capita *more* than the UK (and despite this the USA does not even manage to cover everyone).
Every british citizen could get ripped off in this manner twice each year, and still come out way ahead compared to the USA. As bad as the $2000 fee sounds, if he moved to the USA he would pay an average of $6000 extra per year for his health care.
It's time for single payer, and if you disagree, this price differential is the bar your alternative proposal needs to clear before I bother paying attention to you.
IRV is not that different to the current system in the US.
Huh? Except in the ways that it's better. It differs significantly in that voters can vote for whom they want instead of against the lesser of the two likely-to-win evils.
If you don't understand the difference, then please watch this.
Slashdot Mirror
the general conclusion was that red light cameras at properly set up intersections don't make enough money to justify their existence; especially after people figure out they're there.
That's a long-winded way of saying that they're stopping a lot of people from running red lights. : )
Quoth TFS:
The data, in fact, does not really prove it.
Where can I find a copy of that data? Without exception, the "studies" I've seen condemning red light cameras have been woefully biased and flawed. Even then, they often conclude that red light cameras "only" trade side impacts for rear impacts, which is actually very much a net win for safety, as the latter cause fewer and less-severe human injuries.
Many of the studies contain irritating circular references back to a handful of cases where suspect yellow timing was supposedly employed to increase revenue. While reprehensible if true, none of that would discredit red light cameras in general, but people generally dislike the cameras and are all-too-happy to suspend critical thinking.
Ultimately, safety-based arguments against cameras reduce to arguments against any red light enforcement. I'm a fan of evidence-based decision making, and there are plenty of reasons to be wary of the cameras (such as the fact that they are usually administered by private companies that also share in much of the revenue) but I call BS on the safety argument unless someone can produce some un-flimsy data.
Is there some explicit "no unlocking whatsoever" clause in the DMCA? As far as I'm aware, the only thing that's happened is that the explicit exemption for unlocking has expired. While I'm not volunteering to be the test case, it seems like there's a good case to be made that the generic DMCA language doesn't forbid unlocking.
In most cases, I'm not altering the software on the phone by unlocking it. I'm merely entering a code, and the phone already has software onboard specifically for the purpose of unlocking that phone when I enter said code.
Indeed. I would rather have too many comments, to the point that some are not needed, than too few, and remain confused.
And I would rather have no comments than comments that are incorrect or misleading which cause me to become confused.
...and that's a false dichotomy. No one is defending a need for incorrect or misleading comments.
most people will be fine with 256k
I'm not impressed with "most people". 256k is a waste of bandwidth while still being a far cry from lossless. I can pack 60-70% more Vorbis tracks on my player, and the codec is entirely transparent on the portable player at those rates.
Ah, but with Amazon's service you can get the mp3's legally without having to use the disc. So you can sell the CD as "new/sealed" for a higher price.
Good one; hadn't thought of that. All the more emphasis, then, on whether those mp3s are actually legal or not.
Auto-rip raises an interesting question about resales. It appears that Amazon is granting downloads for CD purchases (even retroactively, for CDs purchased years ago). If I've since sold the physical CD, Amazon would not know that. Furthermore, I could deliberately game the system by buying CDs and immediately reselling them.
I know, it's a stupid edge case, and I could already do this by ripping my own CDs today and subsequently selling them, but it's exactly the type of "problem" that keeps the recording industry up at night.
Can anyone who has used it confirm if amazon's service really mp3-only? (Sources seems to imply that it is.)
I don't want shitty mp3s--just give me lossless files (you know, like what I could get from the CD and let me shift them to the format of my choosing.
How confident are you that that will be $50 worth of bitcoins tomorrow?
Well, his customers came to his website because they wanted to gamble, didn't they?
Couldn't agree more. You and I are going to get along just fine.
a per-mile tax after 2015 to offset the loss in tax revenue for fuel efficient cars
Right, because the last thing we'd want to incentivize is fuel efficiency. Maybe those selfish economical drivers will see the error of their ways, man up, and start driving Hummers.
No, but that is the goal of metrification.
Only if you take it to a logical extreme. If your house is one mile from the store, metrification will not require you to move your house to make it 1 km from the store. We can actually use fractional units (e.g. 1.6 km) and everything is fine.
Metrification is one means toward standardization. In the specific case of socket drives, standardization has already been achieved with no external dependencies of consequence, so changing anything would cause harm while accomplishing nothing useful.
Note to mods: He's talking about the square socket drive (from, e.g. the ratchet handle), not the size of the socket wrenches themselves.
Just curious, are there any metric drive standards in Europe, and why haven't they found their way to the US?
They're already here because they are the same. They are 6.35mm (1/4"), 9.5mm (3/8"), and 12.7mm (1/2").
There would be absolutely no upside to fragmentation in this standard (the only point of which is interchangeability). If you think the point of the metric system is to have everything in some integer measurement, then you're converting for the wrong reason.
This legislation was prompted by reports that Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza was a gamer.
He probably was also a fan of breakfast cereals. So what?
Within two or three decades the difference between automated driving and human driving will be so great you may not be legally allowed to drive your own car, and even if you are allowed, it would immoral of you to drive, because the risk of you hurting yourself or another person will be far greater than if you allowed a machine to do the work.
This presumes some kind of rational analysis of relative risks, and humans are terrible at that.
If we cared about such things, we'd already ban cars today in favor of vastly-safer public transit. And before some doofus starts tossing Amtrak safety records around, I'm talking about public transit in a first world country, not the designed-to-fail idiocy that passes for transit in the USA.
The first-order cause for the falling per-capita divorce rate is the falling per-capita marriage rate.
The U.S. and Europe aren't to blame, Sparky. Our CO2 emissions have been either steady on on a downward trend for some time. If you want to point fingers, look at China.
Maybe in absolute terms, and only just barely. Go back and take a look per capita, and get your pointer finger ready.
90% were bullied for being too intelligent? How can *everybody* be overly intelligent? Was the survey was conducted in Lake Wobegon, by any chance?
[...] leave nuclear energy too hazardous to be a reliable alternative.
Maybe it seems that way to your emotions, but by any evidence-based thought process nuclear power is the safest means of energy production ever devised by humans.
Coal power kills more people (by several orders of magnitude), and generates more radioactive waste, and releases said waste into the atmosphere. Nuclear energy is imperfect, but the time to discuss shutting it down is after the last coal plant is gone.
So, in my family of 6, I pay $36,000 more for healthcare than a family in the U.K. Well, let's see, I paid about $4,500 last year, so in the U.K., the healthcare system pays the average family more than $31,500 a year?
That's not what "per capita" means. If you are paying only $4500 per year, and that includes both your and your employer's share of the costs, and you have a $0 deductible, pay no co-payments or other charges, and you spend $0 on prescription and over-the-counter medications, then you are astronomically fortunate.
Such anecdotal information is irrelevant, though, since we're talking about per-capita (i.e. average) costs, which are exceedingly well documented at about $3000/year in the UK, and nearly $9000 in the USA (probably higher in 2012).
Yes, but how high are your taxes?
That's a separate issue. In the UK, nearly all health care expenses are paid from general taxation. In the US, it's a mixture. But, irrespective of the source, the total expenses in the US are about $6000 per capita per year higher than the total UK expenses.
It's true because the countries' respective health care expenditures are well-documented facts.
Good thing there's no chance of the US going to a single-payer system...er...am I right?
As I noted elsewhere, every british citizen could get ripped off in this fashion at least twice per year and still pay less for health care (per capita) than we do in the USA. The USA spends about $6000 per capita *more* than the UK (and despite this the USA does not even manage to cover everyone).
Some perspective:
Every british citizen could get ripped off in this manner twice each year, and still come out way ahead compared to the USA. As bad as the $2000 fee sounds, if he moved to the USA he would pay an average of $6000 extra per year for his health care.
It's time for single payer, and if you disagree, this price differential is the bar your alternative proposal needs to clear before I bother paying attention to you.
IRV is not that different to the current system in the US.
Huh? Except in the ways that it's better. It differs significantly in that voters can vote for whom they want instead of against the lesser of the two likely-to-win evils.
If you don't understand the difference, then please watch this.