This is also a common problem with spacing: it's tempting to think, we have N passengers an hour and run a bus every 10 minutes, but N/2 totally fit in a bus, so we could really improve our finances if we just ran a bus every 30 minutes instead. But when the bus runs every 30 minutes rather than 10 minutes, a lot fewer people take it.
Doesn't matter. If you nominally run the bus every 10 minutes, what really happens is every half-hour, three buses come by at once.
Drivers already bear the cost of traffic congestion.
But not in proportion to the amount of traffic congestion each driver causes.
Really? Because it seems to me that in as much as that's a well-defined quantity, drivers DO bear the cost of traffic congestion in proportion to the congestion they cause. Someone driving on an otherwise empty road bears no cost of congestion, and contributes not at all to it. Someone driving on a heavily congested road bears the same cost of congestion as everyone else around him -- and is contributing to that congestion just as much. Roughly, anyway; much larger vehicles such as buses and trucks cause more congestion but bear the same costs.
Actually, the gas tax only covers your emissions. It doesn't cover your impact on traffic congestion, which is higher when the road is congested or approaching it;
Drivers already bear the cost of traffic congestion.
Yes, fuel tax already does that. However it doesn't differentiate between "good" mileage (the lorries that transport food/goods around) and the "bad" mileage such as driving little Johnny a quarter of a mile to school in the 4x4 every day (and then back again, later).
That is a feature and not a bug. A Bureau of Motor Vehicle Virtue and Vice using a "complex rating system" to determine what driving is virtuous and can be taxed lightly, and what driving is sinful and should be taxed punitively, is neither necessary nor desirable.
I can tell that you've never commuted on a bicycle.
Wrong. I actually do a bike-train-bike commute fairly regularly.
There are also hybrid methods of transportation: motorized bicycles are becoming more common, to tackle the hills; transit systems facilitate cyclists on both busses and trains; park-and-ride lots for motorists who can do part of the commute on trains; and so forth.
Theory, meet reality. Reality, in this case, being a New Jersey to NYC commute, with a hill. Park and ride lots? Ha... the waiting list for a spot in the rather small train station lots is nominally 5 years, in reality indefinite (because they don't acknowledge requests to be put on the waiting list). Motorized bicycles? Illegal in both states (and I've got a ticket to demonstrate that). Cyclists on buses? Forget about it. Maybe a few buses do, most do not. Trains? Sure, if it's a folding bicycle; otherwise, permitted only outside commuting hours.
The final consideration is that cities are unfriendly to alternative forms of transportation because they were designed for the private automobile, and things aren't really going to change because the lobby groups that support the automobile (including people like yourself) fight tooth and nail against accomodations being made for other modes of transportation.
NYC was not designed for the automobile, nor the bicycle. There's lots of accomodation for bicycles, including bike lanes. Which tend to be occupied with garbage trucks, pedestrians, street sweepers, taxis, homeless people pushing shopping carts, pushcarts, police and police cars, etc.
harkening back to the days of manufacturing before the CPSC, Americans basked in the glory of such products as stainless steel lawn darts and carcinogenic drink additives.
Lawn darts weren't banned until 1988, the CPSC having been founded in 1972. Carcinogenic drink additives were not regulated by the CPSC, but rather the FDA. The two additives you are most likely referring to were actually both eventually ruled non-carcinogenic; one was never banned in the first place.
or a bicycle path or a number of other transportation solutions? why pour more money into a system that has proven to be so destructive, not only to safety, but to the environment and human health?
Because cars work so damned well compared to everything else. Sure, bicycles are safe. They're also slow as hell, can only be practically used by a relatively small portion of the population, suck in bad weather, are terrible when hills are involved, and require a lot of effort to use.
Trains aren't quite as bad; just about anyone can get on them and use them, and they aren't so bad in bad weather. However, unlike roads, they don't go everywhere, not even close. They aren't so good at hills either. Train systems tend to be vulnerable (even more so than automobiles) to single failures causing delays throughout the system. And they're incredibly expensive on a per-passenger-mile basis.
I'm not sure what being a "car-hater" has to do with task allocation. Objectively, cars kill -- they kill about 3000 pedestrians per year, versus about 1 for bicycles. A big Danish study found a 39% higher mortality rate for people who did NOT ride their bikes to work (correlation, not causation, but seriously, "get plenty of exercise" is about the only medical advice that has not been revised or retracted in all these years). So, just by counting dead bodies, worse than terrorists.
Like I said, scratch a bicycle advocate, reveal a car hater.
You must be joking because anyone capable of coming up with such an elaborate plan would be smart enough to post a confession on a public forum. At least, I like to think so.
Hey! The hacker who maxed out my credit cards got my slashdot account too! Good thing he didn't change the password!
Workstation, battery, sink and Nelson lamp? Wow, these sound dangerous, you are a terrorist planning nasty things with your Schedules Direct for sure. Don't be surprised when suddenly you'll get much more thorough searches in the airports. It's for the children, you know.
If they could draw such conclusions from that data, they could make them from any given set of data or no data at all. This is probably true, but it still means that my information being out there is harmless to me -- whereas the TSA is not, whether or not my information is out there.
There are not a "huge number" of these tasks. There are a few, and even with these plans, it's still perfectly fine and possible to drive.
Whether there are a huge number or not depends on how you break them up. And unfortunately, often enough, if you scratch a bicycle advocate you reveal a car-hater: take a look at the earlier posts advocating ripping up the roads.
I remember watching a show quite a while back about suburban living centers. They tried setting up housing and shops within walking distance. They setup the community to be self sustaining but people felt more imprisoned, like they were being segregated. I want to say it was Harlem, but I can't a related article or story.
It's not Harlem; Harlem is a neighborhood to the north of Central Park in NYC, about as far from suburban as you can get. These kinds of BS projects exist or are proposed all over the place, and they never work; you can't do it on a small scale in modern society. Sure, if everyone worked at generic "jobs" and shopped at generic "stores" and lived in generic "apartments", you could do it. But in fact, most of us work in particular types of jobs and there aren't enough of them to put into every single little community, or even 5% of communities. Similarly, our tastes aren't all the same and you can't put every store everywhere, or even a significant fraction of them. And though New Urbanists (or whatever they are calling themselves nowadays) don't care about this, a lot of people don't want to live in the apartments allotted to them in these communities.
and not doing financial transactions or other very confidential things there
I went to DefCon, logged into my bank, logged out, logged in from a different machine, took out the max advance on all my credit cards, transferred the money into a series of other accounts, then withdrew those as gambling chips, had a lot of fun gambling it all away, then claimed I got hacked.
True story: my wife found an image when searching for "purple bedroom set" that, when you clicked on it, took you to a Bing search for same. Now that was scary!
Your email, your most intimate thoughts and angriest words along with your buying habits are all in there.
My most intimate thoughts aren't on the net. My angriest words I want people to hear; the problem with them isn't too little privacy, but that they're drowned out in the noise. As for my buying habits, if you care that I bought a battery (9V 2000mah), a sink, a workstation (a table, not a computer), a Nelson lamp, and a Schedules Direct subscription, you're welcome to that information; that's all Google Checkout has.
The way to beat them is to stop consuming.. Stop worrying about Twitter. Stop booking face. Stop trying to feed an endless desire for the music, movies, and media created. By trying to feed our own lust for this stuff, we're creating the war. SImply stop fighting, and they completely lose.
That doesn't work. It's not enough for me and those like me to stop "consuming"; they don't need my money to make bad laws. There's plenty of other people to feed the beast.
In typical fashion, the technical elite focus primarily on the technical solutions.
In typical fashion, the pseudointelligensia object to technical solutions, but have no solutions of their own ("well nigh unassailable"). Yeah, we fucking know they won't meet us on that battlefield, and will instead concentrate on jailing us. But what else are we to do, throw up our hands and say "Oh, you've taken away our DNS resolution, we are wounded, we will behave exactly as you desire now"?
You want to defeat the enemy's ability to create legislation against freedom? Me too? Thought of any ways to do it besides "educating" (rather, indoctrinating) the public to our position when they not only control, but ARE the media? Well, I have, but it's no easier to accomplish, and anyway you might term it a "technical" solution, though it's pretty low-tech.
OK, Western governments (and corporations) know damn well China is conducting cyber-attacks. Suppose Secretary of State Clinton goes to the Chinese and makes a formal accusation, what do they do? Deny it, of course, complain about how the West is oppressing them, threaten to do various nasty things.
OK, suppose she brings irrefutable proof that the attacks originate from China? Well, they deny some more and complain some more, but maybe they get pinned down. Now they blame some "rogue elements", execute a few random people they wanted to execute anyway, and continue doing what they've been doing.
Suppose she brings and demonstrates proof it originates within a certain department of the Chinese Government itself? Again, same reaction: denial, rhetorical counterattacks, and maybe execution of a few scapegoats.
To who's benefit is any of this? They aren't going to stop. Nobody is going to think any better of the United States or worse of China if the accusation is made. It's just a waste of diplomatic effort.
BTW, I'm pretty sure that despite was implied in the rest of the article, Google is still not censoring search results in China.
Macs aren't as vulnerable because they don't have a big enough footprint so they aren't stumbling upon the infected sites or aren't being targeted directly. Windows, including Windows 7, is still more prevalent and more vulnerable.
How many times are we going to get the same stories?
Until the Microsoft propaganda machine stops pumping them out, I suppose.
Almost seems, with Google's search tech, they'd be able to have an automated process scan patent applications, compare to all others and, almost completely automatically, submit counter claims to every patent requested with piles of similar patents and prior art.
We could have an Automated Patent Rejection Form.
We have examined your patent and rejected it for the following reasons: ( ) It's already been done before. ( ) Anyone skilled in the art could come up with it. ( ) It fails to teach what it claims. ( ) It's trivial. ( ) It's incomprehensible. Specifically, your patent ( ) claims the wheel ( ) claims a linked list, binary tree, or other standard data structure ( ) claims XML, HTML, or other standard markup language ( ) claims Unix ( ) claims run length encoding, dictionary encoding, or other existing lossless compression method ( ) claims an existing lossy encoding method
( ) and in addition claims it as a lossless one. ( ) is an "on the Internet" patent ( ) is an "on a mobile device" patent ( ) claims a goal rather than a method or implementation ( ) claims a method of playing with a pet ( ) claims a method of using playground equipment ( ) claims a method of using a technique in a manner that technique was specifically developed for ( ) uses standard terms in a nonstandard way ( ) uses obscure terms for common things ( ) Is not written in English, Russian, Sanskrit, Klingon, or any other known language In summary, ( ) Nice try, but Larry and Sergey came up with that one at Stanford ( ) Never apply for a patent again ( ) Yes, we like cats and laser pointers too, but everyone plays with them that way ( ) A review of the literature would show that was invented by Charles Babbage ( ) Calling it a device with a shape bounded by a constant-radius curve with a fixed point of rotation isn't fooling anyone.
Slashdot Mirror
Doesn't matter. If you nominally run the bus every 10 minutes, what really happens is every half-hour, three buses come by at once.
Really? Because it seems to me that in as much as that's a well-defined quantity, drivers DO bear the cost of traffic congestion in proportion to the congestion they cause. Someone driving on an otherwise empty road bears no cost of congestion, and contributes not at all to it. Someone driving on a heavily congested road bears the same cost of congestion as everyone else around him -- and is contributing to that congestion just as much. Roughly, anyway; much larger vehicles such as buses and trucks cause more congestion but bear the same costs.
Drivers already bear the cost of traffic congestion.
That is a feature and not a bug. A Bureau of Motor Vehicle Virtue and Vice using a "complex rating system" to determine what driving is virtuous and can be taxed lightly, and what driving is sinful and should be taxed punitively, is neither necessary nor desirable.
Wrong. I actually do a bike-train-bike commute fairly regularly.
Theory, meet reality. Reality, in this case, being a New Jersey to NYC commute, with a hill. Park and ride lots? Ha... the waiting list for a spot in the rather small train station lots is nominally 5 years, in reality indefinite (because they don't acknowledge requests to be put on the waiting list). Motorized bicycles? Illegal in both states (and I've got a ticket to demonstrate that). Cyclists on buses? Forget about it. Maybe a few buses do, most do not. Trains? Sure, if it's a folding bicycle; otherwise, permitted only outside commuting hours.
NYC was not designed for the automobile, nor the bicycle. There's lots of accomodation for bicycles, including bike lanes. Which tend to be occupied with garbage trucks, pedestrians, street sweepers, taxis, homeless people pushing shopping carts, pushcarts, police and police cars, etc.
Lawn darts weren't banned until 1988, the CPSC having been founded in 1972. Carcinogenic drink additives were not regulated by the CPSC, but rather the FDA. The two additives you are most likely referring to were actually both eventually ruled non-carcinogenic; one was never banned in the first place.
Because cars work so damned well compared to everything else. Sure, bicycles are safe. They're also slow as hell, can only be practically used by a relatively small portion of the population, suck in bad weather, are terrible when hills are involved, and require a lot of effort to use.
Trains aren't quite as bad; just about anyone can get on them and use them, and they aren't so bad in bad weather. However, unlike roads, they don't go everywhere, not even close. They aren't so good at hills either. Train systems tend to be vulnerable (even more so than automobiles) to single failures causing delays throughout the system. And they're incredibly expensive on a per-passenger-mile basis.
Like I said, scratch a bicycle advocate, reveal a car hater.
Hey! The hacker who maxed out my credit cards got my slashdot account too! Good thing he didn't change the password!
If they could draw such conclusions from that data, they could make them from any given set of data or no data at all. This is probably true, but it still means that my information being out there is harmless to me -- whereas the TSA is not, whether or not my information is out there.
Whether there are a huge number or not depends on how you break them up. And unfortunately, often enough, if you scratch a bicycle advocate you reveal a car-hater: take a look at the earlier posts advocating ripping up the roads.
It's not Harlem; Harlem is a neighborhood to the north of Central Park in NYC, about as far from suburban as you can get. These kinds of BS projects exist or are proposed all over the place, and they never work; you can't do it on a small scale in modern society. Sure, if everyone worked at generic "jobs" and shopped at generic "stores" and lived in generic "apartments", you could do it. But in fact, most of us work in particular types of jobs and there aren't enough of them to put into every single little community, or even 5% of communities. Similarly, our tastes aren't all the same and you can't put every store everywhere, or even a significant fraction of them. And though New Urbanists (or whatever they are calling themselves nowadays) don't care about this, a lot of people don't want to live in the apartments allotted to them in these communities.
I went to DefCon, logged into my bank, logged out, logged in from a different machine, took out the max advance on all my credit cards, transferred the money into a series of other accounts, then withdrew those as gambling chips, had a lot of fun gambling it all away, then claimed I got hacked.
True story: my wife found an image when searching for "purple bedroom set" that, when you clicked on it, took you to a Bing search for same. Now that was scary!
My most intimate thoughts aren't on the net. My angriest words I want people to hear; the problem with them isn't too little privacy, but that they're drowned out in the noise. As for my buying habits, if you care that I bought a battery (9V 2000mah), a sink, a workstation (a table, not a computer), a Nelson lamp, and a Schedules Direct subscription, you're welcome to that information; that's all Google Checkout has.
Your second link was about Christians rioting in retaliation to Muslim rioting, which doesn't really strengthen your case.
Similarly, your third link has Hindus as the aggressors.
Your first link was rioting over the destruction of the livelihood of the rioters, which is hardly "idiotic".
I'd suggest some sort of televised tournament involving fights to the death.
That doesn't work. It's not enough for me and those like me to stop "consuming"; they don't need my money to make bad laws. There's plenty of other people to feed the beast.
Sure, but The Register is anti-everyone.
In typical fashion, the pseudointelligensia object to technical solutions, but have no solutions of their own ("well nigh unassailable"). Yeah, we fucking know they won't meet us on that battlefield, and will instead concentrate on jailing us. But what else are we to do, throw up our hands and say "Oh, you've taken away our DNS resolution, we are wounded, we will behave exactly as you desire now"?
You want to defeat the enemy's ability to create legislation against freedom? Me too? Thought of any ways to do it besides "educating" (rather, indoctrinating) the public to our position when they not only control, but ARE the media? Well, I have, but it's no easier to accomplish, and anyway you might term it a "technical" solution, though it's pretty low-tech.
OK, Western governments (and corporations) know damn well China is conducting cyber-attacks. Suppose Secretary of State Clinton goes to the Chinese and makes a formal accusation, what do they do? Deny it, of course, complain about how the West is oppressing them, threaten to do various nasty things.
OK, suppose she brings irrefutable proof that the attacks originate from China? Well, they deny some more and complain some more, but maybe they get pinned down. Now they blame some "rogue elements", execute a few random people they wanted to execute anyway, and continue doing what they've been doing.
Suppose she brings and demonstrates proof it originates within a certain department of the Chinese Government itself? Again, same reaction: denial, rhetorical counterattacks, and maybe execution of a few scapegoats.
To who's benefit is any of this? They aren't going to stop. Nobody is going to think any better of the United States or worse of China if the accusation is made. It's just a waste of diplomatic effort.
BTW, I'm pretty sure that despite was implied in the rest of the article, Google is still not censoring search results in China.
Until the Microsoft propaganda machine stops pumping them out, I suppose.
We could have an Automated Patent Rejection Form.
We have examined your patent and rejected it for the following reasons:
( ) It's already been done before.
( ) Anyone skilled in the art could come up with it.
( ) It fails to teach what it claims.
( ) It's trivial.
( ) It's incomprehensible.
Specifically, your patent
( ) claims the wheel
( ) claims a linked list, binary tree, or other standard data structure
( ) claims XML, HTML, or other standard markup language
( ) claims Unix
( ) claims run length encoding, dictionary encoding, or other existing lossless compression method
( ) claims an existing lossy encoding method
( ) and in addition claims it as a lossless one.
( ) is an "on the Internet" patent
( ) is an "on a mobile device" patent
( ) claims a goal rather than a method or implementation
( ) claims a method of playing with a pet
( ) claims a method of using playground equipment
( ) claims a method of using a technique in a manner that technique was specifically developed for
( ) uses standard terms in a nonstandard way
( ) uses obscure terms for common things
( ) Is not written in English, Russian, Sanskrit, Klingon, or any other known language
In summary,
( ) Nice try, but Larry and Sergey came up with that one at Stanford
( ) Never apply for a patent again
( ) Yes, we like cats and laser pointers too, but everyone plays with them that way
( ) A review of the literature would show that was invented by Charles Babbage
( ) Calling it a device with a shape bounded by a constant-radius curve with a fixed point of rotation isn't fooling anyone.
IBM also has the Nazgul. And a patent war chest that would make your eyes bug out.
Slightly greater than the average for the entire rest of the house for those 4 hours. Or, in other words, "that much".