Did the driver have a medical emergency such that his hands remained on the wheel but he was incapable of reacting to events? The driver could have been incapacitated minutes before the crash. He may have already been clinically dead from a heart attack when the crash happened. If the car did not have the computer assisted driving capability, it may well have stopped miles before the crash, maybe in a ditch, probably at a much lower speed as the driver's foot would probably come off the accelerator.
No matter how good the collision avoidance system, these self-driving cars need a better deadman switch than simply whether a hand is on the steering wheel. Some trains have deadman switches where the train's driver has to deliberately hold a spring loaded lever forward or the train begins braking.
But of course implementing anything that would actually be effective would cause potential buyers to recognize more of the dangers inherent in self-driving cars, and that would have a negative impact on sales.
Active headphones do not fit under helmets. Since the mics on active headphones are forward-facing, they limit situational awareness to just what you happen to be looking at.
I've used active headphones with sound dampening on the target range for several years now. They are much better than earplugs or earmuffs, and I can dial up the volume to eavesdrop on every conversation within about 30 yards without loss of protective dampening. The microphones provide limited stereo: they are forward facing so sounds behind me are muffled.
The high price of the Army earbuds can be justified partly by the cost of developing the miniaturization and better stereo (omnidirectional mics). Also, I hope that part of the high cost is that the contract stipulates sales only to the USA military since I see no reason to allow representatives of ISIS to pick up several dozen of these at a Walmart.
Yes, a good cyclist in training can easily pedal faster than 20 mph under many conditions, and racing cyclists often exceed 35 mph especially when working in a peloton.
But by the time a cyclist has reached the ability to pedal faster than 19 mph on the flat, he has gained enough experience, and probably enough judgment, to not be a threat to himself or others. E-bike riders, though, take a shortcut to speed and can get up to very risky speeds before they have the experience or judgment to know how to handle themselves. E-bikes are okay, but new e-bike riders need to be told that they are a danger to themselves and others until they have acquired bicycling experience.
It is true that e-bikes are not designed as motorcycle replacements.
The rest of parent post is so wrong it is evident that the poster has no experience with e-bikes and has done no serious reading about their design, capabilities, and uses.
While AC's point is valid, it misses the truth that the skills a bicyclist needs in assessing road risks are very different, and much more critical, than the skills a motorist needs. The parent post implies that a skilled motorist would be just as safe on a bicycle as he is in a car, and that is so very wrong. A skilled motorist has a vast amount of more learning to do before he is safe on bike (and not a threat to others on the road).
Parent post makes a good case for low powered e-bikes.
Another case: when I was recovering from back surgery for a fractured spine, I got a used e-bike with a 500W motor, lead-acid batteries, sprung front fork, beach tires. My total moving weight was around 325 lbs, 340 lbs with baskets of groceries. Top speed was around 18 mph with lots of pedaling, best cruising speed using the motor in pedal-assist mode was 10 - 12 mph. This was excellent therapy as my bones knit together and I got back in shape after the months of very limited activity. One of the best parts is that the e-bike gave me the confidence to do 12 mile rides almost daily, knowing that the motor could get me back home if I over-estimated my capability or started getting back spasms.
But I got rid of it as soon as I was healed enough to ride my road bike (no motor, cruising around 12 - 15 mph, good for 50 mile day trips by the end of the season). Now that I'm closer to 70 than 60 years old, I ride my "comfort bike" with its upright position and fat tires more than the road bike, and settle for 30 - 40 mile day trips. I will not willingly ride an e-bike ever again. They ain't much fun.
E-bikes that can exceed 20 mph need to be limited to cyclists who can pass a motorcycle license exam. At 35 mph an e-bike with its smaller tire-to-road surface area and poorer braking behavior is more dangerous than a motorcycle and requires more skill in the instantaneous risk assessment that is critical to safe driving of any vehicle. E-bikes in traffic lanes at faster than pedaling speeds are not only a threat to their riders, they are a hazard to all other drivers on the road.
If the e-bike riders were not so frakken dangerous, I'd support parent post's pov.
But the truth is that e-bikes enable Momma and Poppa Chubbs to get out on the bike paths at the same speeds that bikers with years of adult experience attain, and these super fast idiots who haven't been on a bike since their middle school years are a danger to everyone. They are all over the road. They don't know how to stop. They don't know how to assess potential risks before it is too late to avoid them. They go sliding on leaves and other loose stuff. They bash themselves up, and cause crashes that involve other bicyclists.
Just because you once were proud of being able to ride your first bike faster than your other grade school buddies could run at maybe 5 or 6 mph, does not mean you can control your 200+ pounds of person, bike, motor, and battery at 15 or 20 mph on a busy bike path. You've got a lot more inertia now, but the contact surface between tires and road is no bigger than when you and your bike weighed half as much, and more than likely you are not even as strong as you were back then.
We do need more people biking, walking, and using buses and trolleys. But the word has to be spread widely and loudly: If you have not learned to handle a conventional multigear bike as an adult, you would be a total danger to yourself and others in taking an e-bike out on a public path or road.
There is very good evidence showing reaction times are impaired a minimum of 50% at what are now legal blood limits even in the most tolerant drunk.
Then test directly for impaired reaction times and f*cked up judgment. We have the technology now: portable driver simulation software. Who cares whether it is THC, alcohol, or some other reason the idiot should be taken off the road? Just get him the hell off the road. Let AA, NA, or his doctor handle the cause.
This is an instance where the conservatives are right and the law needs to be reduced to the minimum that will work, rather than attempting to diagnose the cause of dangerous behavior.
Then do behavioral testing, since it is the dangerous behavior, and not its cause, that is the problem.
Portable driving simulators could be carried in cop cars at less cost than the current system of maintaining breathalyzers and doing blood alcohol tests. They would also catch all dangerous drivers, including those who are now too old, those who have screwed up their diabetes therapy, and those who are abusing all kinds of drugs that the law currently ignores.
So if given the choice? I'd rather be a little late to an appointment because some pothead was driving slow than see some drunk weaving all over the road at 90 MPH + heading my way.
This is marginally off-topic, but needs to be said.
I live in Portland Oregon where for various reasons that include narrow streets and bicycles, traffic delays are often caused by excessive courtesy. However I do enough driving in eastern Oregon and Washington State to know that the stoners who are insistent on going exactly at the speed limit are blocking traffic and tending to incite road rage. I don't have any good answers for this-- most vehicles and drivers can safely do 80 mph where the legal limit is 60 mph, and 85 mph in the 70 mph zones. Where it is really bad is on the two lane 55 mph roads where a stoner doing 55 will develop a following of many cars and trucks before he has a place to pull over, or the road provides a passing opportunity.
Stoners who tend to insist on following the letter of the law are an impediment and source of irritation to the general driving public who regard the speed limits to be advisories, applicable to others perhaps, but not to them in their well maintained cars and excellent driving skills.
Using blood chemistry to legislate behavioral limits is stupid with THC, and has been stupid with alcohol as well. But with blood alcohol levels there was the excuse that at the time they were put in place there was no better way to get drunks off the road. Now there is.
Virtually every cop car in the USA now carries an on-board computer with much more power than would be needed to run a driving simulator. The interface could be stored in the trunk. A driver's capability could be tested at the scene of the crash or traffic stop. If he is impaired, action could be taken immediately. It does not matter why he is impaired--- the idea is to get dangerous drivers off the road, not determine whether he is drunk, high on THC, screwing up his diabetic regimen, or affected by any number of other drugs or conditions. If he lacks the judgment and reflexes to pass a driving simulation, he should not be driving. The world would immediately be a safer place.
Once the software is developed, the start-up cost of a driver simulation test would be comparable to the cost of issuing and maintaining portable breathalyzer gear, and much less than the cost of doing any kind of blood analysis. If the software was developed as FOSS under Google, Microsoft, or FaceBook sponsorship, there would be no cost to the states that adopted this approach. I have no doubt that this could be done.
We have the technology. We owe it to ourselves and our society to get this done.
Agreed, but I am not a consumer. I am a retired guru.
I bought my first computer (a used Apple ][+) in 1980. From 1988 until my retirement in 2010, my career revolved around computers and software. There was a long period where I had to upgrade every couple of years to keep current, but that ended somewhere around 2005. Since then my computer purchases have been mostly pieces to replace worn out or damaged equipment-- sometimes a failing hard drive, frequently keyboards and mice that no longer work well enough.
What is important to me now are Ubuntu and Firefox upgrades, new WordPress themes, and the like. One of the great things about retirement is never having to deal with Microsoft products or people again, and I had always stayed well away from the poisonous attractions of Apple's walled garden. FOSS is good, FOSS is great!
I cannot speak for the AC, but I can say that the way I read his post, I figured that
either he felt compelled to say something but was not able to come up with wording that he wanted associated with his name (perhaps something was making him too angry to think clearly),
or he was concerned about the kind of retribution that might happen if the fans of the poster he was responding to were an organized and retaliatory group. It does seem like he did a little more background research than is commonly done in responding on/. Maybe something he came across got his dander up.
Or maybe he had been moderating the thread and did not want to waste the points he had spent. Although I think anyone who has been awarded moderation points knows how to say they are posting anonymously to protect them.
If he has been around for as long as some of us old timers who go back to the days of CompuServe and BBSs (the era before the Internet), he may have used anonymity to avoid today's equivalent of mail bombing, etc. Or he may have history with the Scientologists and be a bit more paranoid than some of us because of that. Hard to say. Maybe he felt compelled to put on a Guy Fawkes mask when he typed his reply.
The main thing, though, is whether the content of the post furthers the discussion. Not whether the AC is truly a coward. Even cowards can be insightful at times.
Science is nothing more than making models of what may or may not be, and determining which of those models is closer to reality than the others. It has nothing at all to do with reality itself: that is way too complex for the human mind to comprehend. But if we can come up with simple models that are close enough to what is Really Out There, then we can devise some neat things like cell phones and maybe sustainable fusion generators that make our lives more fun. And that making of neat things is called technology.
If you accept the premise that the universe is fractal and self-similar on different levels, and the premise that at least some human beings are sentient, then the logic is inescapable: She is sentient.
Of course it is easier to get your religion out of a book written by some dead guys back in the days before science, arithmetic that used zero as a placeholder, or most of today's technology. When you bind a God between the pages of an ancient story book, then you do not have to worry about how to interact with Him (or Her) while you mess about with your cell phone and Internet connection. There is, for example, no possibility that some random slashdot post by an AC was actually authored by Her. Or be concerned that She might have no more regard for you than you have for the cells that form the callus on your left heel.
Ah, the enlightening words of someone who has been around slashdot since the 100,000 days, and has managed to accrue an abysmal fan-to-freak ratio (3:18). That clearly takes a devoted effort; nobody can engender such statistics without deliberately working to screw up the discourse.
$quote = '
In every case that we know of there is more than one way to usefully carve up the universe into conceptual chunks. Stupid people think that one of these must be the One True Way, which is, well, stupid. The universe is what it is, but how we carve it up is as much about what we are as about what it is.
';
$quote ~= s/carve up/model/g; # makes above quote truthier
Point being that the underlying fault is not in the way some peep believe so strongly in the particular way they chunk the Universe into categories. The really basic fault is the rock-bottom premise that the human mind can perform any manipulation on the Universe at all. Our intellect can only work on the models that we build within our heads; how things are really chunked together is forever beyond our ken (literally, outside what one can see by the light of one's torch). It is uncomfortable to work with the constant recognition that not a single one of the models you might conceive of is going to accurately reflect reality. But it is absurd to pursue knowledge without recognizing that all we have to work with are simplified models in our heads that can never be more than "good enough" for some small subset of what is Out There.
To wit: "centrifugal force" is part of a physics model that is good enough for analysing a traffic accident. Of course it is not good enough for modeling celestial mechanics— we need inertia and Newton's laws for that. But within its appropriate realm, centrifugal force is as true a model as classical physics or quantum mechanics.
The Sugar Beets described this insight in song, and I don't think anyone has put it more elegantly than they have:
I can't believe I used to think that what I thought was happening was really going on.
Unfortunately, this is the first answer that begins to make any kind of sense in my experience.
For more than 10 years my primary responsibility through several different jobs and titles has been developing web sites (NOT visual design crap) and repurposing technical word processing documents to web pages (like policy books and procedural manuals). I routinely have used skills in handcoding HTML, CSS, and Javascript, and more recently adding skills on the server side with PHP and MySQL. Typically I'm working with a lot legacy content that cannot be shoe-horned into a CMS in a cost-effective way. I spend most of my time working in text editors. I sometimes go on month-long Perl binges where I build specialized regex parser/lexer structures to rewrite specific libraries from.rtf or.odt files into.html (or more commonly, into an intermediate form I call stf-- simple text format-- that is somewhat easier to debug than nests of <ol>s). I do a lot of development of custom PHP and Javascript to take technical input from users and cast it into bog standard formating. I do quite a bit of web page template construction. So that kind of stuff.
I don't have a good name for what I do. "Web Developer" comes closest, but that implies activities with CMS, Apache, IIS, and so on, which isn't my thing. I like "Web Scribe", with the implication that what I'm doing is similar to the work the scribes did in holding together the world of the Pharoahs' Egypt. But Web Scribe is not widely used. Yet.
Yes, I've had the unpleasant experience of providing this kind of training through a state agency (not Washington state). The training material will be from existing companies that are Microsoft-approved to do the teaching; the dollars Microsoft pays out will stay within the Microsoft ecosystem. The training will cover basic Windows operations and portions of MS Office (typically Access training is weak or non-existent, while PowerPoint is unduly emphasized). Graduates will have skills in such things as creating form letters and mailing lists, and doing arithmetic operations in a spreadsheet. The result is similar to training someone who has never driven a vehicle in how to "drive" a truck-- turn the wheel, work the pedals-- without actually teaching them how to back up to a loading dock, what adding 10 ton of gravel will do to their stopping distance, or what common road hazards they need to know about. (I'm so sorry, my fellow slashdotters, but I couldn't think of a car analogy.)
It should be noted that these training materials are tightly integrated into the version of MS software they were developed for. That is, the materials for MS Office 2003 cannot be used effectively with MS Office 2007, because they identify tasks by keystroke and menu selections that change with each version, leaving students hopelessly confused. So undoubtedly all these training vouchers will need to be used on Win7 computers loaded with Office 2007. Graduates will need some retraining if they are hired by employers using WinXP and Office 2003.
Graduates of these courses are definitely better off than they were beforehand. But there are really serious questions about whether this level of "pull the blue knob A until the yellow dial C shows 950 rpm" is the most effective way to prepare someone for the work force. There are probably less costly and more effective ways of making someone employable. Most of the good the students I've worked with have received has been in secondary benefits (improved self-confidence; how to actually follow instructions, learning to get along in a classroom / office setting, etc), and these would be part of any other training program. It takes about 6 months to bring someone through all the MS courses, and even if the courses are free, that's 6 months State paid benefits and support invested in the student. Which far outweighs the costs of the training itself. If that much is going to be invested, maybe there needs to be some serious evaluation of whether the training is actually going to make student more job-capable than putting him or her through other training.
In under 6 months, I could train someone who had never sat at a computer to maintain and develop effective web pages using commonly available tools like Firefox and a text editor. By the end of that time, these students would be competent at repurposing word processor documents into web pages, constructing simpler web sites, applying CSS, and working with Javascript to achieve common DHTML effects. They would have skills in breaking down jobs into constituent tasks, tracking their progress toward completion, and finding resources and assistance as needed. If they could not find a full time employer (can be difficult for a single mother with tots at home), they would be capable of free lance work from a low cost computer on their kitchen table.
Linux isn't for just everyone, you know. You sound like one of those for whom Linux isn't intended.
Go back to your virtual reality of 1999 and be happy in your matrix life, for as long as you can afford it. Don't bother with those of us who are trying to drag the world into the twenty-first century. You won't understand the issues, and you'll just cause yourself, and anyone who listens to you, unnecessary frustration and aggravation.
Don't try to lead me, for I won't follow. Don't try to follow me, for I won't lead you. Don't try to walk beside me, either. In fact, why don't you just go away. Reduce, re-use, recycle... and go away. Griefer.
This is a step in the right direction. However Walter Mooney (NPR interview) never specifies who he means when he says "we": he might be attempting to represent all geologists everywhere, but it is more likely that he is representing only the experts with the US Geological Survey, and much more likely that he is representing only his colleagues at Menlo Park. There is also the possibility he is representing only his own household (himself, his dog, his cat, and his goldfish), but that is as absurd as thinking that he is speaking for all of Science.
Best guess: Mooney is saying that his group at Menlo Park has not found a way to predict earthquakes by monitoring radon levels. If he had been asked to do so, he would most likely would have been able to easily count off the methods his group explored, and he would most likely have been able to imagine several other possible methods that were not explored for one reason or another.
Main points: Mooney appears to have the background to assess Giuliani's work, and is familiar with similar approaches that have not led anywhere. But he does not offer a critique of Giuliani's work, nor does he say he knows anything about Giuliani's methods. His statement condenses down to "We tried some things that are probably similar to what Giuliani did, and we couldn't make any of them work."
The LA Times story is similar to other rehashes of the story. Basically, it is saying that authorities on earthquake prediction have found that none of the other work to date has shown radon emissions to be good predictors of earthquakes. Again notable for its absence is any statement by any scientist that he has looked at Giuliana's specific methodology and data.
Basically, Giuliani's work is being dismissed in the media based on statements of authority, not on scientific principles. We don't know what Giuliani based his predictions upon (perhaps he was seeing radon spikes a hundred times greater than anyone else had ever seen; perhaps he was seeing a perfect correlation between radon spikes and pre-shocks... who knows?)
Undoubtedly Mooney's group at Menlo Park will review Giuliani's data, methods, and conclusions when these become available. It would be imprudent to do otherwise. So at some point we can expect a judgment based on scientific principles. But that hasn't happened yet.
</rant>
Yeah, above is a rant. As I get older, I get increasingly intolerant of the failure of intelligent people to use critical reading skills. Especially with regard to confusing the current beliefs of "scientific authorities" with the actual practice of the scientific method. Yeah, reporters are not making the distinction and it would be good if they would do so, but they are simply reporters, fercryinoutloud, not rocket surgeons. Besides, the responsibility for assessing the value of the written word always belongs to the reader, and cannot be reassigned.
However it is regrettable that the authorities decided to dismiss the warning out of hand. They could have dusted off their emergency plans, checked the inventories of bottled water and blankets, done some drills, done some public education on how to save yourself in an earthquake, etc. That could all be done without starting a public panic, and would have been an appropriate, and responsible, way of addressing the warning.
Perhaps no public official was actually negligent in their duties, but there was certainly a lot of room for a more prudent response than attempting to discredit the warning.
Slashdot Mirror
Did the driver have a medical emergency such that his hands remained on the wheel but he was incapable of reacting to events? The driver could have been incapacitated minutes before the crash. He may have already been clinically dead from a heart attack when the crash happened. If the car did not have the computer assisted driving capability, it may well have stopped miles before the crash, maybe in a ditch, probably at a much lower speed as the driver's foot would probably come off the accelerator.
No matter how good the collision avoidance system, these self-driving cars need a better deadman switch than simply whether a hand is on the steering wheel. Some trains have deadman switches where the train's driver has to deliberately hold a spring loaded lever forward or the train begins braking.
But of course implementing anything that would actually be effective would cause potential buyers to recognize more of the dangers inherent in self-driving cars, and that would have a negative impact on sales.
No.
Active headphones do not fit under helmets. Since the mics on active headphones are forward-facing, they limit situational awareness to just what you happen to be looking at.
But pooh-poohers just gotta pooh, eh?
I've used active headphones with sound dampening on the target range for several years now. They are much better than earplugs or earmuffs, and I can dial up the volume to eavesdrop on every conversation within about 30 yards without loss of protective dampening. The microphones provide limited stereo: they are forward facing so sounds behind me are muffled.
The high price of the Army earbuds can be justified partly by the cost of developing the miniaturization and better stereo (omnidirectional mics). Also, I hope that part of the high cost is that the contract stipulates sales only to the USA military since I see no reason to allow representatives of ISIS to pick up several dozen of these at a Walmart.
Yes, a good cyclist in training can easily pedal faster than 20 mph under many conditions, and racing cyclists often exceed 35 mph especially when working in a peloton.
But by the time a cyclist has reached the ability to pedal faster than 19 mph on the flat, he has gained enough experience, and probably enough judgment, to not be a threat to himself or others. E-bike riders, though, take a shortcut to speed and can get up to very risky speeds before they have the experience or judgment to know how to handle themselves. E-bikes are okay, but new e-bike riders need to be told that they are a danger to themselves and others until they have acquired bicycling experience.
It is true that e-bikes are not designed as motorcycle replacements.
The rest of parent post is so wrong it is evident that the poster has no experience with e-bikes and has done no serious reading about their design, capabilities, and uses.
While AC's point is valid, it misses the truth that the skills a bicyclist needs in assessing road risks are very different, and much more critical, than the skills a motorist needs. The parent post implies that a skilled motorist would be just as safe on a bicycle as he is in a car, and that is so very wrong. A skilled motorist has a vast amount of more learning to do before he is safe on bike (and not a threat to others on the road).
Parent post makes a good case for low powered e-bikes.
Another case: when I was recovering from back surgery for a fractured spine, I got a used e-bike with a 500W motor, lead-acid batteries, sprung front fork, beach tires. My total moving weight was around 325 lbs, 340 lbs with baskets of groceries. Top speed was around 18 mph with lots of pedaling, best cruising speed using the motor in pedal-assist mode was 10 - 12 mph. This was excellent therapy as my bones knit together and I got back in shape after the months of very limited activity. One of the best parts is that the e-bike gave me the confidence to do 12 mile rides almost daily, knowing that the motor could get me back home if I over-estimated my capability or started getting back spasms.
But I got rid of it as soon as I was healed enough to ride my road bike (no motor, cruising around 12 - 15 mph, good for 50 mile day trips by the end of the season). Now that I'm closer to 70 than 60 years old, I ride my "comfort bike" with its upright position and fat tires more than the road bike, and settle for 30 - 40 mile day trips. I will not willingly ride an e-bike ever again. They ain't much fun.
E-bikes that can exceed 20 mph need to be limited to cyclists who can pass a motorcycle license exam. At 35 mph an e-bike with its smaller tire-to-road surface area and poorer braking behavior is more dangerous than a motorcycle and requires more skill in the instantaneous risk assessment that is critical to safe driving of any vehicle. E-bikes in traffic lanes at faster than pedaling speeds are not only a threat to their riders, they are a hazard to all other drivers on the road.
If the e-bike riders were not so frakken dangerous, I'd support parent post's pov.
But the truth is that e-bikes enable Momma and Poppa Chubbs to get out on the bike paths at the same speeds that bikers with years of adult experience attain, and these super fast idiots who haven't been on a bike since their middle school years are a danger to everyone. They are all over the road. They don't know how to stop. They don't know how to assess potential risks before it is too late to avoid them. They go sliding on leaves and other loose stuff. They bash themselves up, and cause crashes that involve other bicyclists.
Just because you once were proud of being able to ride your first bike faster than your other grade school buddies could run at maybe 5 or 6 mph, does not mean you can control your 200+ pounds of person, bike, motor, and battery at 15 or 20 mph on a busy bike path. You've got a lot more inertia now, but the contact surface between tires and road is no bigger than when you and your bike weighed half as much, and more than likely you are not even as strong as you were back then.
We do need more people biking, walking, and using buses and trolleys. But the word has to be spread widely and loudly: If you have not learned to handle a conventional multigear bike as an adult, you would be a total danger to yourself and others in taking an e-bike out on a public path or road.
There is very good evidence showing reaction times are impaired a minimum of 50% at what are now legal blood limits even in the most tolerant drunk.
Then test directly for impaired reaction times and f*cked up judgment. We have the technology now: portable driver simulation software. Who cares whether it is THC, alcohol, or some other reason the idiot should be taken off the road? Just get him the hell off the road. Let AA, NA, or his doctor handle the cause.
This is an instance where the conservatives are right and the law needs to be reduced to the minimum that will work, rather than attempting to diagnose the cause of dangerous behavior.
Then do behavioral testing, since it is the dangerous behavior, and not its cause, that is the problem.
Portable driving simulators could be carried in cop cars at less cost than the current system of maintaining breathalyzers and doing blood alcohol tests. They would also catch all dangerous drivers, including those who are now too old, those who have screwed up their diabetes therapy, and those who are abusing all kinds of drugs that the law currently ignores.
So if given the choice? I'd rather be a little late to an appointment because some pothead was driving slow than see some drunk weaving all over the road at 90 MPH + heading my way.
This is marginally off-topic, but needs to be said.
I live in Portland Oregon where for various reasons that include narrow streets and bicycles, traffic delays are often caused by excessive courtesy. However I do enough driving in eastern Oregon and Washington State to know that the stoners who are insistent on going exactly at the speed limit are blocking traffic and tending to incite road rage. I don't have any good answers for this-- most vehicles and drivers can safely do 80 mph where the legal limit is 60 mph, and 85 mph in the 70 mph zones. Where it is really bad is on the two lane 55 mph roads where a stoner doing 55 will develop a following of many cars and trucks before he has a place to pull over, or the road provides a passing opportunity.
Stoners who tend to insist on following the letter of the law are an impediment and source of irritation to the general driving public who regard the speed limits to be advisories, applicable to others perhaps, but not to them in their well maintained cars and excellent driving skills.
Using blood chemistry to legislate behavioral limits is stupid with THC, and has been stupid with alcohol as well. But with blood alcohol levels there was the excuse that at the time they were put in place there was no better way to get drunks off the road. Now there is.
Virtually every cop car in the USA now carries an on-board computer with much more power than would be needed to run a driving simulator. The interface could be stored in the trunk. A driver's capability could be tested at the scene of the crash or traffic stop. If he is impaired, action could be taken immediately. It does not matter why he is impaired--- the idea is to get dangerous drivers off the road, not determine whether he is drunk, high on THC, screwing up his diabetic regimen, or affected by any number of other drugs or conditions. If he lacks the judgment and reflexes to pass a driving simulation, he should not be driving. The world would immediately be a safer place.
Once the software is developed, the start-up cost of a driver simulation test would be comparable to the cost of issuing and maintaining portable breathalyzer gear, and much less than the cost of doing any kind of blood analysis. If the software was developed as FOSS under Google, Microsoft, or FaceBook sponsorship, there would be no cost to the states that adopted this approach. I have no doubt that this could be done.
We have the technology. We owe it to ourselves and our society to get this done.
Agreed, but I am not a consumer. I am a retired guru.
I bought my first computer (a used Apple ][+) in 1980. From 1988 until my retirement in 2010, my career revolved around computers and software. There was a long period where I had to upgrade every couple of years to keep current, but that ended somewhere around 2005. Since then my computer purchases have been mostly pieces to replace worn out or damaged equipment-- sometimes a failing hard drive, frequently keyboards and mice that no longer work well enough.
What is important to me now are Ubuntu and Firefox upgrades, new WordPress themes, and the like. One of the great things about retirement is never having to deal with Microsoft products or people again, and I had always stayed well away from the poisonous attractions of Apple's walled garden. FOSS is good, FOSS is great!
I cannot speak for the AC, but I can say that the way I read his post, I figured that
either he felt compelled to say something but was not able to come up with wording that he wanted associated with his name (perhaps something was making him too angry to think clearly),
or he was concerned about the kind of retribution that might happen if the fans of the poster he was responding to were an organized and retaliatory group. It does seem like he did a little more background research than is commonly done in responding on /. Maybe something he came across got his dander up.
Or maybe he had been moderating the thread and did not want to waste the points he had spent. Although I think anyone who has been awarded moderation points knows how to say they are posting anonymously to protect them.
If he has been around for as long as some of us old timers who go back to the days of CompuServe and BBSs (the era before the Internet), he may have used anonymity to avoid today's equivalent of mail bombing, etc. Or he may have history with the Scientologists and be a bit more paranoid than some of us because of that. Hard to say. Maybe he felt compelled to put on a Guy Fawkes mask when he typed his reply.
The main thing, though, is whether the content of the post furthers the discussion. Not whether the AC is truly a coward. Even cowards can be insightful at times.
Very well put.
Science is nothing more than making models of what may or may not be, and determining which of those models is closer to reality than the others. It has nothing at all to do with reality itself: that is way too complex for the human mind to comprehend. But if we can come up with simple models that are close enough to what is Really Out There, then we can devise some neat things like cell phones and maybe sustainable fusion generators that make our lives more fun. And that making of neat things is called technology.
If you accept the premise that the universe is fractal and self-similar on different levels, and the premise that at least some human beings are sentient, then the logic is inescapable: She is sentient.
Of course it is easier to get your religion out of a book written by some dead guys back in the days before science, arithmetic that used zero as a placeholder, or most of today's technology. When you bind a God between the pages of an ancient story book, then you do not have to worry about how to interact with Him (or Her) while you mess about with your cell phone and Internet connection. There is, for example, no possibility that some random slashdot post by an AC was actually authored by Her. Or be concerned that She might have no more regard for you than you have for the cells that form the callus on your left heel.
And that simplifies your life oh so much.
You are an idiot.
Ah, the enlightening words of someone who has been around slashdot since the 100,000 days, and has managed to accrue an abysmal fan-to-freak ratio (3:18). That clearly takes a devoted effort; nobody can engender such statistics without deliberately working to screw up the discourse.
Asshole.
You now have 186 freaks. And counting.
$quote = ' In every case that we know of there is more than one way to usefully carve up the universe into conceptual chunks. Stupid people think that one of these must be the One True Way, which is, well, stupid. The universe is what it is, but how we carve it up is as much about what we are as about what it is. ';
$quote ~= s/carve up/model/g; # makes above quote truthier
Point being that the underlying fault is not in the way some peep believe so strongly in the particular way they chunk the Universe into categories. The really basic fault is the rock-bottom premise that the human mind can perform any manipulation on the Universe at all. Our intellect can only work on the models that we build within our heads; how things are really chunked together is forever beyond our ken (literally, outside what one can see by the light of one's torch). It is uncomfortable to work with the constant recognition that not a single one of the models you might conceive of is going to accurately reflect reality. But it is absurd to pursue knowledge without recognizing that all we have to work with are simplified models in our heads that can never be more than "good enough" for some small subset of what is Out There.
To wit: "centrifugal force" is part of a physics model that is good enough for analysing a traffic accident. Of course it is not good enough for modeling celestial mechanics— we need inertia and Newton's laws for that. But within its appropriate realm, centrifugal force is as true a model as classical physics or quantum mechanics.
The Sugar Beets described this insight in song, and I don't think anyone has put it more elegantly than they have:
I can't believe I used to think that what I thought was happening was really going on.
Rude names. :)
Unfortunately, this is the first answer that begins to make any kind of sense in my experience.
For more than 10 years my primary responsibility through several different jobs and titles has been developing web sites (NOT visual design crap) and repurposing technical word processing documents to web pages (like policy books and procedural manuals). I routinely have used skills in handcoding HTML, CSS, and Javascript, and more recently adding skills on the server side with PHP and MySQL. Typically I'm working with a lot legacy content that cannot be shoe-horned into a CMS in a cost-effective way. I spend most of my time working in text editors. I sometimes go on month-long Perl binges where I build specialized regex parser/lexer structures to rewrite specific libraries from .rtf or .odt files into .html (or more commonly, into an intermediate form I call stf-- simple text format-- that is somewhat easier to debug than nests of <ol>s). I do a lot of development of custom PHP and Javascript to take technical input from users and cast it into bog standard formating. I do quite a bit of web page template construction. So that kind of stuff.
I don't have a good name for what I do. "Web Developer" comes closest, but that implies activities with CMS, Apache, IIS, and so on, which isn't my thing. I like "Web Scribe", with the implication that what I'm doing is similar to the work the scribes did in holding together the world of the Pharoahs' Egypt. But Web Scribe is not widely used. Yet.
Yes, I've had the unpleasant experience of providing this kind of training through a state agency (not Washington state). The training material will be from existing companies that are Microsoft-approved to do the teaching; the dollars Microsoft pays out will stay within the Microsoft ecosystem. The training will cover basic Windows operations and portions of MS Office (typically Access training is weak or non-existent, while PowerPoint is unduly emphasized). Graduates will have skills in such things as creating form letters and mailing lists, and doing arithmetic operations in a spreadsheet. The result is similar to training someone who has never driven a vehicle in how to "drive" a truck-- turn the wheel, work the pedals-- without actually teaching them how to back up to a loading dock, what adding 10 ton of gravel will do to their stopping distance, or what common road hazards they need to know about. (I'm so sorry, my fellow slashdotters, but I couldn't think of a car analogy.)
It should be noted that these training materials are tightly integrated into the version of MS software they were developed for. That is, the materials for MS Office 2003 cannot be used effectively with MS Office 2007, because they identify tasks by keystroke and menu selections that change with each version, leaving students hopelessly confused. So undoubtedly all these training vouchers will need to be used on Win7 computers loaded with Office 2007. Graduates will need some retraining if they are hired by employers using WinXP and Office 2003.
Graduates of these courses are definitely better off than they were beforehand. But there are really serious questions about whether this level of "pull the blue knob A until the yellow dial C shows 950 rpm" is the most effective way to prepare someone for the work force. There are probably less costly and more effective ways of making someone employable. Most of the good the students I've worked with have received has been in secondary benefits (improved self-confidence; how to actually follow instructions, learning to get along in a classroom / office setting, etc), and these would be part of any other training program. It takes about 6 months to bring someone through all the MS courses, and even if the courses are free, that's 6 months State paid benefits and support invested in the student. Which far outweighs the costs of the training itself. If that much is going to be invested, maybe there needs to be some serious evaluation of whether the training is actually going to make student more job-capable than putting him or her through other training.
In under 6 months, I could train someone who had never sat at a computer to maintain and develop effective web pages using commonly available tools like Firefox and a text editor. By the end of that time, these students would be competent at repurposing word processor documents into web pages, constructing simpler web sites, applying CSS, and working with Javascript to achieve common DHTML effects. They would have skills in breaking down jobs into constituent tasks, tracking their progress toward completion, and finding resources and assistance as needed. If they could not find a full time employer (can be difficult for a single mother with tots at home), they would be capable of free lance work from a low cost computer on their kitchen table.
Linux isn't for just everyone, you know. You sound like one of those for whom Linux isn't intended.
Go back to your virtual reality of 1999 and be happy in your matrix life, for as long as you can afford it. Don't bother with those of us who are trying to drag the world into the twenty-first century. You won't understand the issues, and you'll just cause yourself, and anyone who listens to you, unnecessary frustration and aggravation.
Don't try to lead me, for I won't follow. Don't try to follow me, for I won't lead you. Don't try to walk beside me, either. In fact, why don't you just go away. Reduce, re-use, recycle... and go away. Griefer.
This is a step in the right direction. However Walter Mooney (NPR interview) never specifies who he means when he says "we": he might be attempting to represent all geologists everywhere, but it is more likely that he is representing only the experts with the US Geological Survey, and much more likely that he is representing only his colleagues at Menlo Park. There is also the possibility he is representing only his own household (himself, his dog, his cat, and his goldfish), but that is as absurd as thinking that he is speaking for all of Science.
Best guess: Mooney is saying that his group at Menlo Park has not found a way to predict earthquakes by monitoring radon levels. If he had been asked to do so, he would most likely would have been able to easily count off the methods his group explored, and he would most likely have been able to imagine several other possible methods that were not explored for one reason or another.
Main points: Mooney appears to have the background to assess Giuliani's work, and is familiar with similar approaches that have not led anywhere. But he does not offer a critique of Giuliani's work, nor does he say he knows anything about Giuliani's methods. His statement condenses down to "We tried some things that are probably similar to what Giuliani did, and we couldn't make any of them work."
The LA Times story is similar to other rehashes of the story. Basically, it is saying that authorities on earthquake prediction have found that none of the other work to date has shown radon emissions to be good predictors of earthquakes. Again notable for its absence is any statement by any scientist that he has looked at Giuliana's specific methodology and data.
Basically, Giuliani's work is being dismissed in the media based on statements of authority, not on scientific principles. We don't know what Giuliani based his predictions upon (perhaps he was seeing radon spikes a hundred times greater than anyone else had ever seen; perhaps he was seeing a perfect correlation between radon spikes and pre-shocks... who knows?)
Undoubtedly Mooney's group at Menlo Park will review Giuliani's data, methods, and conclusions when these become available. It would be imprudent to do otherwise. So at some point we can expect a judgment based on scientific principles. But that hasn't happened yet.
</rant>
Yeah, above is a rant. As I get older, I get increasingly intolerant of the failure of intelligent people to use critical reading skills. Especially with regard to confusing the current beliefs of "scientific authorities" with the actual practice of the scientific method. Yeah, reporters are not making the distinction and it would be good if they would do so, but they are simply reporters, fercryinoutloud, not rocket surgeons. Besides, the responsibility for assessing the value of the written word always belongs to the reader, and cannot be reassigned.
The call to evacuate was stupid, I agree.
However it is regrettable that the authorities decided to dismiss the warning out of hand. They could have dusted off their emergency plans, checked the inventories of bottled water and blankets, done some drills, done some public education on how to save yourself in an earthquake, etc. That could all be done without starting a public panic, and would have been an appropriate, and responsible, way of addressing the warning.
Perhaps no public official was actually negligent in their duties, but there was certainly a lot of room for a more prudent response than attempting to discredit the warning.