That article from the BBC is from 2005 - three years ago when the cameras were still quite new.
Here's an article from the Times: Drivers will have no escape from new speed cameras. It's not the one from the BBC from a few months ago that I was looking for, but it makes the point. One penalty per 10000 drivers is near 100 per cent compliance in my book.
Here's another article: Speed Really Does Kill. As the article acknowledges, people don't like the evidence, but
On a section of the M1 with a contraflow system in place casualty numbers fell by half when a simple pairing of average speed cameras - the precursor to the new system - was installed.
In Nottingham, average speed cameras appear to have delivered a 53 per cent long-term reduction in deaths and serious injuries on one stretch of dual carriageway, and a 75 per cent casualty reduction on another. Data from similar projects in Northampton and South Yorkshire are even more impressive.
But for those still unconvinced, there is some consolation. Where average speed cameras have been tried, compliance is so high that the revenue to local authorities from fines is virtually nil.
I was once front passenger with a friend driving back from Scotland. He is quite a strong character and has a car that could reach 150 mph without breaking into a sweat. He likes to set the cruise control to 90 (legal limit 70), and on this occasion he asked me to help keep an eye out for speed traps.
I have to say that I was completely at a loss. I felt morally obliged to help since he was giving me a lift, but at the same time deeply uneasy at the thought of helping him to cheat the system.
As it happened, I am so unused to watching for speed traps that he was the one who spotted all of them anyway.
Here in Nottingham we have average speed cameras all the way around the ring road. As you suggest, the system is impossible to beat - you simply cannot get from one end to the other in less time than it would take at the legal speed limit, without paying a fine.
As a result, compliance is almost 100%. The system doesn't make any money. In fact it costs considerably more to administer than it brings in by fines.
I personally think this is an excellent system. The council cannot be accused of installing 'revenue cameras'. Everyone obeys the law. There are no cheats (you know, the ones who have the speed trap gadget on their dashboard and endanger everyone by slamming on the brakes at each camera, but never get caught) and everyone is equal.
Similar systems are now being introduced along motorway road works too.
And contrary to what a few other respondents suggest, nobody stops just before the exit camera '"just to be sure" they don't get a ticket', and nobody takes the back roads - they are even slower. It just works - in every respect other than making revenue for the authorities, which is how it should be.
The fundamental mystery is still "Why is there anything at all?"
This is not necessarily a fundamental mystery. It could just be that there is no 'why'. It's not clear that there is *any* requirement for a 'why' to exist - 'because we want it to' is not good enough.
The only requirement for a 'why' ever to exist is that someone has asked 'why?'
I just typed a whole load more, and then deleted it because I realised I really have no idea what the parent is driving at. What is this about a 'why' needing a 'requirement'? Just asking the question 'why' is enough to make that question exist.
To say that a question doesn't exist simply because you can't answer it (or can't believe any of the answers that have been suggested by others) is a complete cop-out.
... writing prototype code in... VB... because then there is NO temptation to ship it
Can anyone else see this idea going very terribly wrong indeed?
Re:The Story of the Semantic Web--Slashdot Style!
on
Untangling Web Information
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I don't think the computers are supposed to do the thinking for us. My understanding of the Semantic Web is an attempt by humans to encode meaning into the markup.
I'll believe it works when I can finally do a search on a keyword like "digicam" and choose an option to exclude any website that is trying to sell me something.
You may respond: "That won't work. Sellers will game the system in some way." Maybe. Or maybe it can be designed in such a way that in order to be able to sell anything they will have to give something on their site "selling" semantics. And the moment they do this it will be possible for a computer to identify them as selling something and exclude them from the search. They can't sell things and not sell things at the same time.
Of course, this cannot possibly work with HTML as we know it, because HTML is just too loose and general. A semantic web will only really work once it becomes impossible to create content that has no semantics. And there lies the problem - the web as we know it is already too deeply entrenched, a bit like the QWERTY keyboard perhaps?
I'd even put making a pc more power efficient, or making the manufacturing more environmentally friendly as more important than shaving a few more seconds off my boot time.
The most power-efficient PC is one that is switched off and unplugged at the mains.
Perhaps more people would do this if when they switched it back on it was ready to use right then.
The sole reason most people leave their PCs on is because they want that 5-second email check to take 5 seconds, not five minutes.
When your computer is in standby mode it is still using power.
In a company of hundreds of PCs, this adds up to a considerable, and completely unnecessary, power drain. It costs the company and it puts CO2 into the atmosphere.
Anyway, I reckon hoping for 15 second boot time shows a real lack of ambition. Why can't we have 1 second boot times?
it's fair to point out that the aggravation associated with her 'stand' may be far greater than just switching numbers.
I'm sure she's well aware of that. The fact remains that it is usually better to say "I don't have an answer for her" than to given an answer that violates one of the constraints.
As a bemused observer from the US, it seems strange to me that you don't see attorneys as able to solve problems. I'll leave it to others to decide what this says...
That either: a) you've never had anything to do with lawyers b) you are a lawyer?;-)
The thing is, the lady is well aware that she could change her number - so much is obvious from the original question. But it seems that she has already chosen not to go down that route.
To suggest an answer that has already been rejected is at best unhelpful, and at worst quite insulting if it implies that her views are not taken seriously.
I respect her decision to take a stand on this. I also respect her wish to find a solution that doesn't compromise that stand.
Why should she change her phone number for goodness sake? She has done nothing wrong. She's had that number for over 50 years. Seriously, you should be outraged against those who have actually done wrong here, not suggesting she take the rap herself.
It's a Renault Clio 1.5 dCi, but any similar small diesel will produce similar results.
Here's an interesting list of high mpg cars. Obviously I've not verified this information myself. (Scroll down past the electric ones.) My Clio is too old to be on this list - there's an 86 bhp model listed; mine is the 65 bhp one, which interestingly has poorer official mpg than the 86 model.
Yawn. Yes, this isn't all that exceptional. (By the way 77 mp(Imperial)g = 64 mp(US)g.) I average 65 mpg in my six-year-old hatchback, and can get 73 mpg if I try. The newest cars are starting to get into the 90s. These are diesels by the way.
What we in Europe can't understand is how our US friends just haven't yet caught onto this, and still think 30 mpg is pretty acceptable.
The killer with Virgin though is that they have an explicit company policy of trying to make deals to charge content providers for the bandwidth used by Virgin's own customers, and deliberately throttling the traffic of those content providers that don't pay up.
I write this with tongue slightly in cheek, but there is also a serious point...
I think there is a whole class of problems missing that if solved could have an immediate impact on every day life. I'm thinking of underspecified problems where you have made an 'investment' that looks like it might fail and you have to decide whether to bail out:
1. You are waiting for a bus but the bus is late. How long should you keep waiting before giving up and looking for an alternative? You don't know how often buses run on this route or whether the bus you are waiting for has been cancelled or is just late. You want to arrive as soon as possible, but trying to find an alternative mode of transport will take a long time.
2. You are in a checkout queue. The one to your right seems to be moving faster. Should you switch?
3. You have invested in shares that are on a downward slide. Do you bail out, or hold on in the hope that they recover?
The problem with all of these is you don't have any estimate for how likely the 'investment' is to succeed. With the waiting for the bus example, the probability of it arriving in the next minute ought to increase the longer you wait, but the longer you wait the greater the 'cost' if it doesn't arrive at all.
You may argue that if you can't estimate the probability then the problem has no solution. I'd just argue that this makes it a 'hard' problem;-)
You appear to know what I think better than I do, so I'm probably wasting my time giving you my own opinion since you already know it so well.
Have you studied religions other than your own?
Yes.
All your rationalizations about WHY you believe what you believe ultimately boil down to personal faith.
To someone whose personal faith rules out the possibility of God then there can be no rational explanation for God. However, my belief in God does in fact rest on a wide variety of evidence. Read the books. Some of them make some good points.
What I don't have to respect is an opinion that a faith-based explanation for anything is as equally valid as a scientific-based explanation.
I completely agree with you. Surprised?
But the idea that some random woman was impregnated by an unseen, all-powerful deity (hello, Greek mythology anyone?), and that the offspring of this union is somehow his own father and who sent himself to be sacrificed as part of some scheme to absolve us all of original sin makes sense?
No, that makes no sense to me either, but then I'm a Christian; that's not what Christians believe.
You lack insight, and you are willfully ignorant.
I honestly don't know how to respond to that. If you can't see your blatant hypocrisy, then I doubt that any further explanation by me is going to help.
The truth is best understood via the scientific method. Sure if it's not provable or ther is some leeway for interpreting the truth, there is room for a moral code...
I'm not sure what you think morality has to do with uncertainty in science or leeway in interpreting it. Science describes what actually happens in the natural world, doesn't it? Morality describes what you or I think ought to happen.
By the way, Christianity does not insist that the world was created in 6 days by God. This view is largely restricted to an admitedly influential and large group of Christians in the USA, but elsewhere in the world it is not a view commonly held. You are quite right though that this does cause a big credibility gap for Christianity in the minds of those who are influenced by the creationist group.
Just to briefly address your final paragraph: Would it make science as we know it less credible if there were many competing and mutually exclusive 'sciences' in the world, and that which one you were taught from birth depended on where you were born? I think not, because though difficult, it would be possible for anyone to investigate the matter thoroughly and weigh the evidence. The same is true of Christianity amongst all of the other religions. The existance of many falsehoods does not make a competing truth less true.
I'm not sure who these "plenty of other people" are, exactly, but I suspect they're not real scientists if they're comfortable with allowing dogmatic religion to coexist alongside science.
I'm afraid you lost me right there. You are setting up a dichotomy between "real scientists" and "dogmatic religionists" as if there were no other category.
I am a Christian and also a scientist by training. I believe that science is a great way to describe the natural world and that probably the vast majority of what we think we know from science is correct, including evolution by natural selection. I also believe that the Christian Bible is the reliable word of God and I don't think that the Bible, when properly understood, contradicts correct science.
(By the way, if you think that there is no such thing as a 'proper understanding' of the Bible, would you say the same about the natural world?)
I suspect that the "plenty of other people" would have broadly similar views to myself. Perhaps that just means that they are not "dogmatic religionists" (whatever that means), but it certainly doesn't mean they don't take the Bible seriously.
It [failth] could be... trust in the virtues of a person...such as believing that he will follow through on a promise or some such.
Leave religion completely aside for a moment and ask yourelf what you meant last time you said you had faith in someone. If you are anything like me, you meant that you trusted them to deliver on what they had promised, and you trusted them to do that because of past personal experience with them, or perhaps a testimonial of them from someone else that you trust. Whatever it was, it almost certainly was based on some reason, and almost certainly was not just a shot in the dark.
For me, this is a pretty good definition of faith when applied to Christianity and God. The problem with this definition is as you say that it doesn't really correspond with the common use of the word when applied to religion, a use which has become completely divorced from the meaning I've described above and has come to mean something blind, irrational.
I'm not sure whether anything can be done about this, apart from patient explanation like I've tried here.
Slashdot Mirror
That article from the BBC is from 2005 - three years ago when the cameras were still quite new.
Here's an article from the Times: Drivers will have no escape from new speed cameras. It's not the one from the BBC from a few months ago that I was looking for, but it makes the point. One penalty per 10000 drivers is near 100 per cent compliance in my book.
Here's another article: Speed Really Does Kill. As the article acknowledges, people don't like the evidence, but
I completely agree.
I was once front passenger with a friend driving back from Scotland. He is quite a strong character and has a car that could reach 150 mph without breaking into a sweat. He likes to set the cruise control to 90 (legal limit 70), and on this occasion he asked me to help keep an eye out for speed traps.
I have to say that I was completely at a loss. I felt morally obliged to help since he was giving me a lift, but at the same time deeply uneasy at the thought of helping him to cheat the system.
As it happened, I am so unused to watching for speed traps that he was the one who spotted all of them anyway.
Here in Nottingham we have average speed cameras all the way around the ring road. As you suggest, the system is impossible to beat - you simply cannot get from one end to the other in less time than it would take at the legal speed limit, without paying a fine.
As a result, compliance is almost 100%. The system doesn't make any money. In fact it costs considerably more to administer than it brings in by fines.
I personally think this is an excellent system. The council cannot be accused of installing 'revenue cameras'. Everyone obeys the law. There are no cheats (you know, the ones who have the speed trap gadget on their dashboard and endanger everyone by slamming on the brakes at each camera, but never get caught) and everyone is equal.
Similar systems are now being introduced along motorway road works too.
And contrary to what a few other respondents suggest, nobody stops just before the exit camera '"just to be sure" they don't get a ticket', and nobody takes the back roads - they are even slower. It just works - in every respect other than making revenue for the authorities, which is how it should be.
The only requirement for a 'why' ever to exist is that someone has asked 'why?'
I just typed a whole load more, and then deleted it because I realised I really have no idea what the parent is driving at. What is this about a 'why' needing a 'requirement'? Just asking the question 'why' is enough to make that question exist.
To say that a question doesn't exist simply because you can't answer it (or can't believe any of the answers that have been suggested by others) is a complete cop-out.
I think you needed to glance at the article:
We're not taking about perfect shuffling here.
Lisp Cycles
Still one of my all-time favourites.
Can anyone else see this idea going very terribly wrong indeed?
I don't think the computers are supposed to do the thinking for us. My understanding of the Semantic Web is an attempt by humans to encode meaning into the markup.
I'll believe it works when I can finally do a search on a keyword like "digicam" and choose an option to exclude any website that is trying to sell me something.
You may respond: "That won't work. Sellers will game the system in some way." Maybe. Or maybe it can be designed in such a way that in order to be able to sell anything they will have to give something on their site "selling" semantics. And the moment they do this it will be possible for a computer to identify them as selling something and exclude them from the search. They can't sell things and not sell things at the same time.
Of course, this cannot possibly work with HTML as we know it, because HTML is just too loose and general. A semantic web will only really work once it becomes impossible to create content that has no semantics. And there lies the problem - the web as we know it is already too deeply entrenched, a bit like the QWERTY keyboard perhaps?
The most power-efficient PC is one that is switched off and unplugged at the mains.
Perhaps more people would do this if when they switched it back on it was ready to use right then.
The sole reason most people leave their PCs on is because they want that 5-second email check to take 5 seconds, not five minutes.
When your computer is in standby mode it is still using power.
In a company of hundreds of PCs, this adds up to a considerable, and completely unnecessary, power drain. It costs the company and it puts CO2 into the atmosphere.
Anyway, I reckon hoping for 15 second boot time shows a real lack of ambition. Why can't we have 1 second boot times?
Sorry, it was a cheap joke at an easy target.
It's always people that are the problem. Football hooligans, religious extremists, politicians who have lost their sense of principle...
I'm sure she's well aware of that. The fact remains that it is usually better to say "I don't have an answer for her" than to given an answer that violates one of the constraints.
Oh, but I forgot - this is Ask Slashdot :-(
That either: ;-)
a) you've never had anything to do with lawyers
b) you are a lawyer?
The thing is, the lady is well aware that she could change her number - so much is obvious from the original question. But it seems that she has already chosen not to go down that route.
To suggest an answer that has already been rejected is at best unhelpful, and at worst quite insulting if it implies that her views are not taken seriously.
I respect her decision to take a stand on this. I also respect her wish to find a solution that doesn't compromise that stand.
Why should she change her phone number for goodness sake? She has done nothing wrong. She's had that number for over 50 years. Seriously, you should be outraged against those who have actually done wrong here, not suggesting she take the rap herself.
It must be right, because the answer came from a computer.
It's a Renault Clio 1.5 dCi, but any similar small diesel will produce similar results.
Here's an interesting list of high mpg cars. Obviously I've not verified this information myself. (Scroll down past the electric ones.) My Clio is too old to be on this list - there's an 86 bhp model listed; mine is the 65 bhp one, which interestingly has poorer official mpg than the 86 model.
Yawn. Yes, this isn't all that exceptional. (By the way 77 mp(Imperial)g = 64 mp(US)g.) I average 65 mpg in my six-year-old hatchback, and can get 73 mpg if I try. The newest cars are starting to get into the 90s. These are diesels by the way.
What we in Europe can't understand is how our US friends just haven't yet caught onto this, and still think 30 mpg is pretty acceptable.
The killer with Virgin though is that they have an explicit company policy of trying to make deals to charge content providers for the bandwidth used by Virgin's own customers, and deliberately throttling the traffic of those content providers that don't pay up.
I write this with tongue slightly in cheek, but there is also a serious point...
I think there is a whole class of problems missing that if solved could have an immediate impact on every day life. I'm thinking of underspecified problems where you have made an 'investment' that looks like it might fail and you have to decide whether to bail out:
1. You are waiting for a bus but the bus is late. How long should you keep waiting before giving up and looking for an alternative? You don't know how often buses run on this route or whether the bus you are waiting for has been cancelled or is just late. You want to arrive as soon as possible, but trying to find an alternative mode of transport will take a long time.
2. You are in a checkout queue. The one to your right seems to be moving faster. Should you switch?
3. You have invested in shares that are on a downward slide. Do you bail out, or hold on in the hope that they recover?
The problem with all of these is you don't have any estimate for how likely the 'investment' is to succeed. With the waiting for the bus example, the probability of it arriving in the next minute ought to increase the longer you wait, but the longer you wait the greater the 'cost' if it doesn't arrive at all.
You may argue that if you can't estimate the probability then the problem has no solution. I'd just argue that this makes it a 'hard' problem ;-)
You appear to know what I think better than I do, so I'm probably wasting my time giving you my own opinion since you already know it so well.
Yes.
To someone whose personal faith rules out the possibility of God then there can be no rational explanation for God. However, my belief in God does in fact rest on a wide variety of evidence. Read the books. Some of them make some good points.
I completely agree with you. Surprised?
No, that makes no sense to me either, but then I'm a Christian; that's not what Christians believe.
I honestly don't know how to respond to that. If you can't see your blatant hypocrisy, then I doubt that any further explanation by me is going to help.
I'm not sure what you think morality has to do with uncertainty in science or leeway in interpreting it. Science describes what actually happens in the natural world, doesn't it? Morality describes what you or I think ought to happen.
By the way, Christianity does not insist that the world was created in 6 days by God. This view is largely restricted to an admitedly influential and large group of Christians in the USA, but elsewhere in the world it is not a view commonly held. You are quite right though that this does cause a big credibility gap for Christianity in the minds of those who are influenced by the creationist group.
Just to briefly address your final paragraph: Would it make science as we know it less credible if there were many competing and mutually exclusive 'sciences' in the world, and that which one you were taught from birth depended on where you were born? I think not, because though difficult, it would be possible for anyone to investigate the matter thoroughly and weigh the evidence. The same is true of Christianity amongst all of the other religions. The existance of many falsehoods does not make a competing truth less true.
I'm afraid you lost me right there. You are setting up a dichotomy between "real scientists" and "dogmatic religionists" as if there were no other category.
I am a Christian and also a scientist by training. I believe that science is a great way to describe the natural world and that probably the vast majority of what we think we know from science is correct, including evolution by natural selection. I also believe that the Christian Bible is the reliable word of God and I don't think that the Bible, when properly understood, contradicts correct science.
(By the way, if you think that there is no such thing as a 'proper understanding' of the Bible, would you say the same about the natural world?)
I suspect that the "plenty of other people" would have broadly similar views to myself. Perhaps that just means that they are not "dogmatic religionists" (whatever that means), but it certainly doesn't mean they don't take the Bible seriously.
Except that if ISPs like Virgin Media get their way, only the big boys will be able to deliver content at acceptable speed anyway.
I think you've answered your own question:
Leave religion completely aside for a moment and ask yourelf what you meant last time you said you had faith in someone. If you are anything like me, you meant that you trusted them to deliver on what they had promised, and you trusted them to do that because of past personal experience with them, or perhaps a testimonial of them from someone else that you trust. Whatever it was, it almost certainly was based on some reason, and almost certainly was not just a shot in the dark.
For me, this is a pretty good definition of faith when applied to Christianity and God. The problem with this definition is as you say that it doesn't really correspond with the common use of the word when applied to religion, a use which has become completely divorced from the meaning I've described above and has come to mean something blind, irrational.
I'm not sure whether anything can be done about this, apart from patient explanation like I've tried here.