Success or failure of a mission is a question of identifying & mitigating all the factors that may cause the conditions we define as "failure"
That is what Operational Risk Management is all about.
When "success" includes "the participants don't come back" as part of the mission, then it isn't a risk management decision anymore. Saying "it's too risky" because "they won't come back" is meaningless.
It's fatalism at its worst. Nobody will come back from any of the first 100 manned missions to other star systems. We better not do them, it's "too risky" and we might "fail" because people will "die" doing this. Let's just sit back and relax and have another beer.
Problem here is that you cannot ethically send anybody to certain death just to go explore Mars first hand.
Of course you can. This whole argument is ridiculous. YOUR ethical system may not allow YOU to voluntarily go to your death that way, or YOUR ethical system may not allow people to be forced to go, but MY ethical system says if they CHOOSE to go KNOWING the danger then let them. Why should you make that choice for them?
The radiation exposure required for a trip to Mars is significant. The total expected dose is high enough to warrant asking ethical questions about what risks we are asking people to take to make the trip.
The risks they will be facing on that trip are TECHNICAL issues, not ethical ones. Whether they want to risk it and whether we want to allow them to risk it are ethical issues, and it is reasonable to allow grown adults to make choices that allow then to face risks they freely accept. Remember that the next time you get behind the wheel of a car, or maybe decide you want to go skydiving. People DIE doing both activities, and can we ethically allow you to choose that you want to do either one? According to you, no, we cannot.
At some point, somebody needs to draw a line and say, over there is too much risk to be acceptable,
That task belongs to the persons taking the risks, not you.
If we don't have boundaries and stick by them, things like Challenger or Apollo 1 will happen and we will have needless loss of life because we didn't asses risks properly or take them seriously enough.
Things like Challenger can always happen. We're not perfect. Everyone on that vehicle knew there were risks. But we're not talking about accidents, we're talking about a deliberate decision to send someone where we know they won't come back. Guess what? We KNOW for a FACT that everyone we send on a long-term mission to another star system will die before they get back to Earth. If we cannot send out such missions when they become technically feasible then we might as well not bother making them technically feasible. Just stop right now. Resign ourselves to never going anywhere but to the corner grocery store for another six pack and then sit back and watch "I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here" on the telly.
People are willing to break their arms, legs and backs and yes, even die for my entertainment,
The participants in the Olympics are not there for your entertainment. They're there because they want to excel and need to compete against others to do so. There are many other events that they compete in that aren't globally televised, and their chance of death or injury is just as great for those.
People who climb and die on high mountains pay to suffer.
You clearly have no idea why people strive to be the best at something, or to do things that others cannot.
Travolta owns a 707 passenger jet. There aren't many private pilots with aircraft this large.
So you do actually know that private pilots can and do fly "large iron", and your presumed limitation to "50-year-old Cessnas" and 4 seats was fictional.
I'm sorry, I don't spy on my neighbors and relatives enough to know how they maintain their cars.
And I said no such thing. I said you have "some indication". You are probably going to know if Uncle Bob has gotten his fourth DUI and his license is suspended, and even if you don't you'll probably know that Uncle Bob is a lush who is lax in following the law. You have NO such clue about that taxi or "ride-share" driver who just pulled up. If Uncle Bob gets into a wreck with you in the car, you're probably going to know where to find him when you sue for damages, and even if he moves, someone in the family will probably know. That cabbie -- you don't know where he lives, and you may not even know his name. (The one time I was in a cab wreck -- he ran a yellow and got t-boned -- I have no idea who the cabbie was or what company.)
In any case, Uncle Bob isn't giving you a ride to make money so he's got no incentive to give you a ride despite mechanical troubles with the car, where that taxi driver has a boss who likely will tell him to keep driving and his hack will be fixed next week, maybe, if there is a problem.
If you think the majority of private pilots are flying King Airs, or anything made in the past 5 or 10 years, then you're a complete moron.
And I said no such thing yet again. It doesn't matter what the majority of private pilots fly, it has to do with what ALL of them are AUTHORIZED to fly. Yes, I need to have a multi-engine license to fly a multi-engine aircraft, but just a logbook signoff for complex and high-performance. And I'm still just a private pilot after getting all of that. I still can't charge anyone for my pilot services, even just one.
The number of passengers, contrary to what you write, is a huge point.
You are simply wrong. There is nothing in the FAR for private pilots that limits the number of passengers. Nothing. John Travolta doesn't have to say "I can only fly four of you" because there is some "four passenger limit" on his license. The differentiation between "private" and "commercial" is pretty clear from the name -- "commercial" is done "for compensation", and it has nothing to do with how many people are involved. A pilot who charges just one person for a ride needs to be operating under a commercial license.
There ARE no standards at all in most states. If you disagree, then you are woefully ignorant.
I know of no state that issues driver's licenses without any kind of test, nor do I know of any state that does not have some standards as to mechanical function of licenseable vehicles. My state does not have mandatory inspections (although the Portland/Metro area does), but it does require testing to get a license in the first place. While it doesn't require much for a renewal, that is a FAR cry from "no standards".
I have yet to see someones personal car in as bad a condition as the yellow cabs I took in texas
Proving the point. Imagine how bad those cabs would be were there no regulations covering them.
And I've seen personal cars in much worse condition than any cab I've ridden in. I drove two such for several years. In one, the driver's door would not open from the inside (in addition to all the other "deferred maintenance" issues.) The other one reached the point where it wouldn't immediately go into reverse (rev the engine a bit and it would finally clunk into gear), and you could see the ground from inside the trunk. Oh, I had a third one where the front CV boots were gone and the joints were thunking as I drove, and it shook enough at 55 that I didn't have to look at the speedometer to know how fast I was going. That was the one with the muffler/exhaust system held on by aluminum wire, until one day I backed out of a parking spot and I heard the most horrendous scraping noise.
While technically true perhaps, in reality it isn't unless you're talking about John Travolta.
It isn't just technically true, and it applies to more people than just John Travolta. (Why you use him as an example is a mystery.) It is true to the extent that if you are flying someone in a rental aircraft you cannot let them pay for the whole rental. That is considered to be "compensation" because you get to log the PIC time and can credit time towards currency requirements. THAT's how serious the "no compensation" part of the FAA regs are.
Private pilots fly very small (and comparatively inexpensive) aircraft, like 50-year-old Cessnas, which can't hold more than 4 people
Private pilots also fly multi-engine aircraft that were built in the last five years. If I wanted to, and had the money, I could drop a few million (at least 5.25 according to this, and 9-11 pax) on a King Air and fly it as a private pilot. The private pilot's license does not limit the pilot to "50-year-old Cessnas", and making that kind of statement shows you are ignorant of the reality of general aviation. The fact that you seem to think that "commercial" flight is limited to "commercial airlines" is also a clear sign of ignorance. Those 50-year-old Cessnas find service hauling passengers around for pay, too, even if there is a limited number of seats. One of my very first flights was on a Cessna (I think it was a 172) as a passenger going from Kansas City to Manhattan Kansas. The local FBO will fly people anywhere they want to go in the 172 they operate.
It simply isn't possible, in practice, for a private pilot to have the lives of hundreds of people in his hands.
"Number of passengers" has nothing to do with the difference between "private pilot" and "commercial pilot", and it is just as rare for a commercial pilot to have hundreds of passengers, too. By the time you get hired to fly the big iron you need to be an ATP -- one step above commercial. As a private pilot I can fly 14 of my dearest friends around in a Cessna Caravan (the beautiful aircraft that FedEx uses for cargo), but I couldn't charge any of them, nor can I charge any of the one passengers I could ferry around in a Skycatcher. No, the differentiation between needing a "private" versus "commercial" is not the number of passengers allowed, it is the paid vs. non-paid status.
As for your point #2, I don't see how it's any different if I hop in my friend's or neighbor's or relative's car as a passenger. I don't actually know that they've been maintaining their car properly.
You know them, and that will give you some indication of whether they are casual or rigorous about their standards of maintenance. You also know where they live, so if something bad happens they will be relatively easy to track down and they won't likely flee the area.
Also, it's pretty unusual for cabs to have more than 2 passengers,
So? Killing just 2 in a poorly maintained car is ok, three is not?
This isn't like planes at all.
The point of an analogy is not to show a congruence between two things, it is to highlight the similarities. Commercial aviation is similar to commercial ground transport because of the lack of ability to know the risks. The fact that the ground transport rarely gets above 0 AGL and aviation almost always does is irrelevant, as is the alleged number of passengers (which as I've already said, has nothing to do with the differentiation between "private" and "commercial" pilots.) I know of no limitation on number of passengers in Part 91 of the FAR, and I expect there is only an indirect limitation on a private pilot flying a 747 in that it would be hard to get the type rating for, or find someone who would rent one out for
At the end it's for the customer to decide if they want to take a risk on a rideshare (based on previous feedback perhaps).
Someone you've never met pulls up in a car you've never seen before and you're supposed to be able to make an informed decision on whether the risk is acceptable based solely upon unverified online "feedback"?
With the existing laws on taxis (and other forms of commercial transport) there is at least some reason to believe that the driver actually is licensed and the car is maintained to some standard. It's not perfect, but is has been decided that these regulations are an acceptable replacement for personal knowledge sufficient to allow informed consent.
Bad drivers and dangerously maintained cars affect the other drivers on the road already,
Secondary effects.
and they could have a passenger of their own choosing as well.
People who ride in my car know me and have chosen to accept a ride with that knowledge. I'm not trying to make a living by carrying as many people as many places as possible. People who ride in cabs rarely know the cabby, and the cabby is doing it for a profit. Skipping maintenance on things that don't actually disable the vehicle means more profit. It may not even be the cabby's decision to skip that maintenance, that decision may be made by someone who isn't ever going to ride in that vehicle.
Similarly, as a private pilot I can take people up for rides. Since they cannot pay me I have no incentive to take people up that I don't know. A commercial pilot who is selling transportation services deals with people who don't know him, and again, if delaying an oil change saves $200 then that's $200 bucks more profit he (or more likely, the aircraft operator) can make.
And another area of law that has nothing to do with transportation but demonstrates the difference between informed and uninformed risk -- radio exposure limits. There are two classes of exposure in the law: controlled and uncontrolled. Controlled exposure limits are based on a knowledge of and ability to control the exposure. That's similar to getting a ride from a friend or private pilot. Uncontrolled exposure limits are for persons who are unaware of the potential danger and/or cannot control it. Like hopping in a cab or paying someone to fly you around.
Also, as far as the whole "how can you trust a stranger in this system",
It's more than just "can you trust", it is whether there exists a motive for cutting costs and increasing risks. Your "ebay rating" system can deal with "was the cabby/ride provider nice and friendly", but it won't catch "the CV joints were shot and thus the car was a death trap".
Travel within and between the states is not a privilege it is a right.
If it is a right then how DARE those greedy airlines charge so much to do it that I cannot afford to do it. I think the government should step in and pay for airplane rides for poor people so they can enjoy their rights.
Now, if only someone could invent some means of interstate travel that didn't use airplanes, so those people whose right to travel interstate wasn't being stripped from them by being on a no-fly list. I mean, we can fly people from New York to London in just a few hours, you'd think someone could invent a way of traveling just a few hundred miles over land without having to fly. It isn't rocket science -- literally.
60% of accidents could be eliminated if people would stop using cellphones, texting and driving drunk.
That assumes that cellphones, texting, and driving drunk were the causal elements in the accidents and not just contributing or correlated with. I.e., I'm talking on a cellphone when an 18 wheeler runs a red light and t-bones me. Would not being on the cellphone have prevented that accident? Probably not.
And it also ignores the fact that eliminating some causal elements doesn't mean it eliminates the accidents altogether. I'm using a cellphone and am distracted, crash. Prohibit cellphone use, I may switch my attention to my new dash-mounted Sirius/XM radio and be flipping through the channels when I run into someone. If I'm someone who tends to allow distractions of one kind, I probably will be distracted and continue to allow distractions of other kinds.
Yeah, but they are not marketed for human consumption nor do they claim to contain no antibiotics.
I would not expect any animal antibiotics I buy to have a claim that they contain no antibiotics. That would defeat the purpose of animal antibiotics, wouldn't it?
Republicans have won the Presidential popular vote
There is no "Presidential popular vote". It's a myth created by... who knows? People who can't read the Constitution to see how the President is actually voted for. or people who were unhappy that their pet candidate lost the election but they needed something to whinge about. It is pushed by "news" organizations who think that the common man is too stupid or has too short an attention span to understand the real voting process. Joe Sixpack is happier, they think, being able to see that his candidate is winning! because the "popular vote" percentages say so (have another beer and go to bed), but then that creates the arguments when the truth comes out otherwise.
The interesting tidbit that the winning Republican President did not get the largest sum total of all the votes cast in all the states combined is irrelevant, just as the fact that Democrats can win without getting the largest sum total of all the votes from all the states. The relevant tidbit is that the winning Presidential candidate is the one who gets the majority of the Electoral College votes. Period.
You want to argue that this process should be changed? Fine. You'll also need to argue that the composition of the Senate needs to be changed, because the two systems are related by the Federal nature of our government, and were designed at the same time by the same people for the same reason. But until it is actually changed, your "fascinating data" means nothing. It's fodder for flames and nonsense is all. "X won the popular vote, oh noes, there's corruption and fraud!"
This is a physical access attack and therefore not very interesting.
This. Everyone knows all you have to do is play some music on the keypad and the ATM will give you money. "Take me down to the basement, fill the buckets with cheese..."
"And we won't, won't pay for this song 'cause it's pub-lic domain!"
"the MIT researchers were able to put bacteria to work
Hasn't slavery been illegal in the US for many years? Did anyone ask the bacteria if they wanted to work, and has the AFL-CIO been able to lobby them for unionization?
I'm not sure having e.coli as slaves is a good thing, especially in chairs. The first naked guy who sits on one will introduce the slaves in the chair to the free bacteria, and there may be a mass exodus of slaves from the chair up into the land of freedom and free food.
Does Fluke have a trademark on red meters shaped that way? A US trademark (your picture was from Fluke Germany)? And Fluke didn't put a stop to it, Customs did.
Sheesh. Fluke is GIVING its product to Sparkfun as a gesture of goodwill and people are STILL giving Fluke shit for what US Customs did. It's costing Fluke real money to protect Sparkfun from their own mistake and Fluke is still the bad guy.
Did those people call the manufacturer of the meter and cry "help me, it don't work no more?" Yeah, I didn't think so.
No, because those were cheap knock-off brand meters that you'd have a hard time finding a phone number to call for help. Unlike, you know, expensive Fluke meters that you expect to work and expect support for. Or the Keithley I mentioned, which I bought used, but still went to the website expecting to find support -- and I did. A full manual, including schematic. I'd expect no less from Fluke, even for a donated meter.
The point you ignored was that people who should know how to fix even simple things DON'T, so pretending that people who own Fluke meters will be smart enough to know how to deal with every problem they run across and wouldn't call for support is ridiculous.
Thanks for playing, though.
An insult from an anonymous coward. Oh, my day is just shattered.
as the city makes the choice based on what cable, and phone provider gives them the right bid to lay the lines.
Franchise fees are not a "bid", they are a contractually negotiated fee for using city rights of way. Once a fee is negotiated, it would be hard for a city to say "your fee will be higher" to a second company, since they've set the price for access.
What prevents a second cable system from overbuilding the first is not the franchise fee, it is the lower return on investment from having to compete with the existing system. No business would want to invest heavily in physical plant when there would be little profit in doing so. Their fixed costs would not be recouped by the sales, much less the incremental costs.
It's not like a grocery store where the fixed costs are relatively low to find and outfit a building and have the customer come to you. Cable requires the "grocery store" to go to the customer where he is, and simply lowering prices until the customers stop going to the competitor and start coming to you won't work. It is not economically viable to build the system as you get customers. The turn-on time would be long.
Calling support for a multimeter? What planet are you from? Short of it breaking and needing a replacement under warranty, you plug it in, spin the dial to the mode you want, and away you go.
And when it breaks, or behaves in a way you don't expect, are you going to call Sparkfun or Fluke? Fluke, of course.
Do people call Sears for tech support on a Craftsman wrench? I'll grant a multimeter is *slightly* more complicated of a tool,
A good quality multimeter is a LOT more complicated a tool than a wrench.
but really only slightly to someone who's the least bit experienced in that area of tech.
You expect your multimeter to be as reliable as a wrench, but that doesn't mean it is as simple as a wrench inside. Especially if those meters are being given out to DIY/school users. "Why doesn't my meter read Amps anymore? What do you mean there's a fuse? Where is the fuse? How do I replace it?"
I have a Keithley that reads negative voltage. That means if I test a nine volt battery, the display reads negative nine with the red lead on positive. Such a simple device, huh? How could it possibly fail in that mode? It took looking at the schematic, but sure enough, there's an inverting buffer that isn't anymore. That's in a device you think is almost as simple as a wrench.
I think I got my first MM when I was six years old. Took Dad about 10 minutes to show me how to measure voltage and resistance, and that was when you had to set the range yourself.
And as a six year old did you really learn not to try measuring the resistance of the mains? Or did you learn that by blowing up a meter? Even if your Dad told you not to, you never forgot and did it anyway? Sure. Or you never tried to see how many amps the mains could provide and blew the fuse? Or even just over-amped from an unexpected measurement and done the same?
I've had so many cheap crap multimeters die that I've lost count. I've also bought used meters by the box because they were all "failed", and some of them were really just a blown fuse, or some a bad battery lead. But they were ALL discarded and new ones put in their place because of those simple problems, by people who were using them to teach electronics. They didn't know how to fix their own meters, and I don't expect the recipients of the donations from Fluke will know, either.
It's obviously not a 1:1 replacement, and probably shouldn't be, but Sparkfun might still be coming out negative on this if they were planning on selling those original meters.
Of course Sparkfun was going to sell the original Chinese knock-offs. And they could just as well sell the better Fluke meters and they'd come out in the exact same place. Probably ahead of the game since they'd not have to stock so many meters (less shelf/warehouse space), or ship so many meters (less fixed costs to shipping). But they CHOOSE to give them away, so any losses Sparkfun has at this point are from their own choices, not the fault of Fluke (who didn't impound the original shipment) or the Chinese knock-off manufacturer.
The question is, did Sparkfun learn anything from this or will they make another order from the same Chinese company for the same meters and hope Customs doesn't catch them? After all, they got away with it for some time.
I think Sparkfun is out either way from what I understand. They're planning on giving the Fluke ones away...
Sparkfun is out only because they CHOOSE to give stuff away. Don't cry for them, they're being made whole by the generosity of a large evil corporation, or at least that was the opinion most people had of Fluke yesterday. It's Fluke who is out either way. Either Fluke becomes this evil company that is simply trying to keep its trademark and a few people stop buying from them, or they hand out $30k and the same people who would buy from them anyway keep buying from them.
And Fluke is out for support, too. Those people who get free Fluke meters from Sparcfun aren't going to call Sparcfun when they need help with the meter. They're going to call Fluke because Fluke's name is on them.
I think that's a pretty sweet deal for Sparcfun. They violated a trademark and they're not suffering one bit from it. The company whose trademark they infringed is the one losing money.
That's what I kept asking the OLPC project back when they had their buy one, get one offer. They took the money but could never seem to have any in stock when it came time to ship one to me. They kept telling me mine was about to be shipped, and they were shipping units to other people, but mine never seemed to make it into a box and to my door.
Eventually, it got close to the time limit for disputing charges (90 days, I think it was) so I cancelled the order. The fact they charged my card long before shipping and kept putting the delivery date off made it look like a fishy deal, so I bailed.
I think it had to be the lack of people standing just off camera shining flashlights into the lens. Everyone knows that modern sci-fi movies have to have lens flare to remind everyone that there is a camera and a lens and to occasionally blind the viewers so they don't see the crappy special effects.
Even when a fan is willing to give up all rights to the idea, just for the chance of seeing it maybe happen. It seems that such is prevented by all the legal suits.
Also prevented by any sane producer. Just what does "all rights" mean? Can you give up rights to things you don't know about or that didn't exist? It wouldn't be the "legal suits" driving the issue when the fan sues for a cut of a new form of distribution. "Your Honor, how could the plaintiff have intended to give up his rights to interstellar distribution when at the time of the contract there was no interstellar distribution?" Or even "the defendant clearly used my character as a basis for this spin-off character and I didn't sign away my rights to that." Even a losing plaintiff costs money.
Look at all the 80's actors who have no cut of DVD sales because nobody thought that those shows would ever be released to a home market. What's the next new use of today's media that we've yet to think up?
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Success or failure of a mission is a question of identifying & mitigating all the factors that may cause the conditions we define as "failure"
That is what Operational Risk Management is all about.
When "success" includes "the participants don't come back" as part of the mission, then it isn't a risk management decision anymore. Saying "it's too risky" because "they won't come back" is meaningless.
It's fatalism at its worst. Nobody will come back from any of the first 100 manned missions to other star systems. We better not do them, it's "too risky" and we might "fail" because people will "die" doing this. Let's just sit back and relax and have another beer.
Problem here is that you cannot ethically send anybody to certain death just to go explore Mars first hand.
Of course you can. This whole argument is ridiculous. YOUR ethical system may not allow YOU to voluntarily go to your death that way, or YOUR ethical system may not allow people to be forced to go, but MY ethical system says if they CHOOSE to go KNOWING the danger then let them. Why should you make that choice for them?
The radiation exposure required for a trip to Mars is significant. The total expected dose is high enough to warrant asking ethical questions about what risks we are asking people to take to make the trip.
The risks they will be facing on that trip are TECHNICAL issues, not ethical ones. Whether they want to risk it and whether we want to allow them to risk it are ethical issues, and it is reasonable to allow grown adults to make choices that allow then to face risks they freely accept. Remember that the next time you get behind the wheel of a car, or maybe decide you want to go skydiving. People DIE doing both activities, and can we ethically allow you to choose that you want to do either one? According to you, no, we cannot.
At some point, somebody needs to draw a line and say, over there is too much risk to be acceptable,
That task belongs to the persons taking the risks, not you.
If we don't have boundaries and stick by them, things like Challenger or Apollo 1 will happen and we will have needless loss of life because we didn't asses risks properly or take them seriously enough.
Things like Challenger can always happen. We're not perfect. Everyone on that vehicle knew there were risks. But we're not talking about accidents, we're talking about a deliberate decision to send someone where we know they won't come back. Guess what? We KNOW for a FACT that everyone we send on a long-term mission to another star system will die before they get back to Earth. If we cannot send out such missions when they become technically feasible then we might as well not bother making them technically feasible. Just stop right now. Resign ourselves to never going anywhere but to the corner grocery store for another six pack and then sit back and watch "I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here" on the telly.
People are willing to break their arms, legs and backs and yes, even die for my entertainment,
The participants in the Olympics are not there for your entertainment. They're there because they want to excel and need to compete against others to do so. There are many other events that they compete in that aren't globally televised, and their chance of death or injury is just as great for those.
People who climb and die on high mountains pay to suffer.
You clearly have no idea why people strive to be the best at something, or to do things that others cannot.
Travolta owns a 707 passenger jet. There aren't many private pilots with aircraft this large.
So you do actually know that private pilots can and do fly "large iron", and your presumed limitation to "50-year-old Cessnas" and 4 seats was fictional.
I'm sorry, I don't spy on my neighbors and relatives enough to know how they maintain their cars.
And I said no such thing. I said you have "some indication". You are probably going to know if Uncle Bob has gotten his fourth DUI and his license is suspended, and even if you don't you'll probably know that Uncle Bob is a lush who is lax in following the law. You have NO such clue about that taxi or "ride-share" driver who just pulled up. If Uncle Bob gets into a wreck with you in the car, you're probably going to know where to find him when you sue for damages, and even if he moves, someone in the family will probably know. That cabbie -- you don't know where he lives, and you may not even know his name. (The one time I was in a cab wreck -- he ran a yellow and got t-boned -- I have no idea who the cabbie was or what company.)
In any case, Uncle Bob isn't giving you a ride to make money so he's got no incentive to give you a ride despite mechanical troubles with the car, where that taxi driver has a boss who likely will tell him to keep driving and his hack will be fixed next week, maybe, if there is a problem.
If you think the majority of private pilots are flying King Airs, or anything made in the past 5 or 10 years, then you're a complete moron.
And I said no such thing yet again. It doesn't matter what the majority of private pilots fly, it has to do with what ALL of them are AUTHORIZED to fly. Yes, I need to have a multi-engine license to fly a multi-engine aircraft, but just a logbook signoff for complex and high-performance. And I'm still just a private pilot after getting all of that. I still can't charge anyone for my pilot services, even just one.
The number of passengers, contrary to what you write, is a huge point.
You are simply wrong. There is nothing in the FAR for private pilots that limits the number of passengers. Nothing. John Travolta doesn't have to say "I can only fly four of you" because there is some "four passenger limit" on his license. The differentiation between "private" and "commercial" is pretty clear from the name -- "commercial" is done "for compensation", and it has nothing to do with how many people are involved. A pilot who charges just one person for a ride needs to be operating under a commercial license.
There ARE no standards at all in most states. If you disagree, then you are woefully ignorant.
I know of no state that issues driver's licenses without any kind of test, nor do I know of any state that does not have some standards as to mechanical function of licenseable vehicles. My state does not have mandatory inspections (although the Portland/Metro area does), but it does require testing to get a license in the first place. While it doesn't require much for a renewal, that is a FAR cry from "no standards".
I have yet to see someones personal car in as bad a condition as the yellow cabs I took in texas
Proving the point. Imagine how bad those cabs would be were there no regulations covering them.
And I've seen personal cars in much worse condition than any cab I've ridden in. I drove two such for several years. In one, the driver's door would not open from the inside (in addition to all the other "deferred maintenance" issues.) The other one reached the point where it wouldn't immediately go into reverse (rev the engine a bit and it would finally clunk into gear), and you could see the ground from inside the trunk. Oh, I had a third one where the front CV boots were gone and the joints were thunking as I drove, and it shook enough at 55 that I didn't have to look at the speedometer to know how fast I was going. That was the one with the muffler/exhaust system held on by aluminum wire, until one day I backed out of a parking spot and I heard the most horrendous scraping noise.
While technically true perhaps, in reality it isn't unless you're talking about John Travolta.
It isn't just technically true, and it applies to more people than just John Travolta. (Why you use him as an example is a mystery.) It is true to the extent that if you are flying someone in a rental aircraft you cannot let them pay for the whole rental. That is considered to be "compensation" because you get to log the PIC time and can credit time towards currency requirements. THAT's how serious the "no compensation" part of the FAA regs are.
Private pilots fly very small (and comparatively inexpensive) aircraft, like 50-year-old Cessnas, which can't hold more than 4 people
Private pilots also fly multi-engine aircraft that were built in the last five years. If I wanted to, and had the money, I could drop a few million (at least 5.25 according to this, and 9-11 pax) on a King Air and fly it as a private pilot. The private pilot's license does not limit the pilot to "50-year-old Cessnas", and making that kind of statement shows you are ignorant of the reality of general aviation. The fact that you seem to think that "commercial" flight is limited to "commercial airlines" is also a clear sign of ignorance. Those 50-year-old Cessnas find service hauling passengers around for pay, too, even if there is a limited number of seats. One of my very first flights was on a Cessna (I think it was a 172) as a passenger going from Kansas City to Manhattan Kansas. The local FBO will fly people anywhere they want to go in the 172 they operate.
It simply isn't possible, in practice, for a private pilot to have the lives of hundreds of people in his hands.
"Number of passengers" has nothing to do with the difference between "private pilot" and "commercial pilot", and it is just as rare for a commercial pilot to have hundreds of passengers, too. By the time you get hired to fly the big iron you need to be an ATP -- one step above commercial. As a private pilot I can fly 14 of my dearest friends around in a Cessna Caravan (the beautiful aircraft that FedEx uses for cargo), but I couldn't charge any of them, nor can I charge any of the one passengers I could ferry around in a Skycatcher. No, the differentiation between needing a "private" versus "commercial" is not the number of passengers allowed, it is the paid vs. non-paid status.
As for your point #2, I don't see how it's any different if I hop in my friend's or neighbor's or relative's car as a passenger. I don't actually know that they've been maintaining their car properly.
You know them, and that will give you some indication of whether they are casual or rigorous about their standards of maintenance. You also know where they live, so if something bad happens they will be relatively easy to track down and they won't likely flee the area.
Also, it's pretty unusual for cabs to have more than 2 passengers,
So? Killing just 2 in a poorly maintained car is ok, three is not?
This isn't like planes at all.
The point of an analogy is not to show a congruence between two things, it is to highlight the similarities. Commercial aviation is similar to commercial ground transport because of the lack of ability to know the risks. The fact that the ground transport rarely gets above 0 AGL and aviation almost always does is irrelevant, as is the alleged number of passengers (which as I've already said, has nothing to do with the differentiation between "private" and "commercial" pilots.) I know of no limitation on number of passengers in Part 91 of the FAR, and I expect there is only an indirect limitation on a private pilot flying a 747 in that it would be hard to get the type rating for, or find someone who would rent one out for
At the end it's for the customer to decide if they want to take a risk on a rideshare (based on previous feedback perhaps).
Someone you've never met pulls up in a car you've never seen before and you're supposed to be able to make an informed decision on whether the risk is acceptable based solely upon unverified online "feedback"?
With the existing laws on taxis (and other forms of commercial transport) there is at least some reason to believe that the driver actually is licensed and the car is maintained to some standard. It's not perfect, but is has been decided that these regulations are an acceptable replacement for personal knowledge sufficient to allow informed consent.
Bad drivers and dangerously maintained cars affect the other drivers on the road already,
Secondary effects.
and they could have a passenger of their own choosing as well.
People who ride in my car know me and have chosen to accept a ride with that knowledge. I'm not trying to make a living by carrying as many people as many places as possible. People who ride in cabs rarely know the cabby, and the cabby is doing it for a profit. Skipping maintenance on things that don't actually disable the vehicle means more profit. It may not even be the cabby's decision to skip that maintenance, that decision may be made by someone who isn't ever going to ride in that vehicle.
Similarly, as a private pilot I can take people up for rides. Since they cannot pay me I have no incentive to take people up that I don't know. A commercial pilot who is selling transportation services deals with people who don't know him, and again, if delaying an oil change saves $200 then that's $200 bucks more profit he (or more likely, the aircraft operator) can make.
And another area of law that has nothing to do with transportation but demonstrates the difference between informed and uninformed risk -- radio exposure limits. There are two classes of exposure in the law: controlled and uncontrolled. Controlled exposure limits are based on a knowledge of and ability to control the exposure. That's similar to getting a ride from a friend or private pilot. Uncontrolled exposure limits are for persons who are unaware of the potential danger and/or cannot control it. Like hopping in a cab or paying someone to fly you around.
Also, as far as the whole "how can you trust a stranger in this system",
It's more than just "can you trust", it is whether there exists a motive for cutting costs and increasing risks. Your "ebay rating" system can deal with "was the cabby/ride provider nice and friendly", but it won't catch "the CV joints were shot and thus the car was a death trap".
Travel within and between the states is not a privilege it is a right.
If it is a right then how DARE those greedy airlines charge so much to do it that I cannot afford to do it. I think the government should step in and pay for airplane rides for poor people so they can enjoy their rights.
Now, if only someone could invent some means of interstate travel that didn't use airplanes, so those people whose right to travel interstate wasn't being stripped from them by being on a no-fly list. I mean, we can fly people from New York to London in just a few hours, you'd think someone could invent a way of traveling just a few hundred miles over land without having to fly. It isn't rocket science -- literally.
60% of accidents could be eliminated if people would stop using cellphones, texting and driving drunk.
That assumes that cellphones, texting, and driving drunk were the causal elements in the accidents and not just contributing or correlated with. I.e., I'm talking on a cellphone when an 18 wheeler runs a red light and t-bones me. Would not being on the cellphone have prevented that accident? Probably not.
And it also ignores the fact that eliminating some causal elements doesn't mean it eliminates the accidents altogether. I'm using a cellphone and am distracted, crash. Prohibit cellphone use, I may switch my attention to my new dash-mounted Sirius/XM radio and be flipping through the channels when I run into someone. If I'm someone who tends to allow distractions of one kind, I probably will be distracted and continue to allow distractions of other kinds.
Yeah, but they are not marketed for human consumption nor do they claim to contain no antibiotics.
I would not expect any animal antibiotics I buy to have a claim that they contain no antibiotics. That would defeat the purpose of animal antibiotics, wouldn't it?
Republicans have won the Presidential popular vote
There is no "Presidential popular vote". It's a myth created by ... who knows? People who can't read the Constitution to see how the President is actually voted for. or people who were unhappy that their pet candidate lost the election but they needed something to whinge about. It is pushed by "news" organizations who think that the common man is too stupid or has too short an attention span to understand the real voting process. Joe Sixpack is happier, they think, being able to see that his candidate is winning! because the "popular vote" percentages say so (have another beer and go to bed), but then that creates the arguments when the truth comes out otherwise.
The interesting tidbit that the winning Republican President did not get the largest sum total of all the votes cast in all the states combined is irrelevant, just as the fact that Democrats can win without getting the largest sum total of all the votes from all the states. The relevant tidbit is that the winning Presidential candidate is the one who gets the majority of the Electoral College votes. Period.
You want to argue that this process should be changed? Fine. You'll also need to argue that the composition of the Senate needs to be changed, because the two systems are related by the Federal nature of our government, and were designed at the same time by the same people for the same reason. But until it is actually changed, your "fascinating data" means nothing. It's fodder for flames and nonsense is all. "X won the popular vote, oh noes, there's corruption and fraud!"
This is a physical access attack and therefore not very interesting.
This. Everyone knows all you have to do is play some music on the keypad and the ATM will give you money. "Take me down to the basement, fill the buckets with cheese..."
"And we won't, won't pay for this song 'cause it's pub-lic domain!"
"the MIT researchers were able to put bacteria to work
Hasn't slavery been illegal in the US for many years? Did anyone ask the bacteria if they wanted to work, and has the AFL-CIO been able to lobby them for unionization?
I'm not sure having e.coli as slaves is a good thing, especially in chairs. The first naked guy who sits on one will introduce the slaves in the chair to the free bacteria, and there may be a mass exodus of slaves from the chair up into the land of freedom and free food.
Why aren't they under a simple flap or in the battery compartment?
As I recall, in one of the Flukes I have it is in the battery compartment. It is a very old tan colored one.
Sheesh. Fluke is GIVING its product to Sparkfun as a gesture of goodwill and people are STILL giving Fluke shit for what US Customs did. It's costing Fluke real money to protect Sparkfun from their own mistake and Fluke is still the bad guy.
Did those people call the manufacturer of the meter and cry "help me, it don't work no more?" Yeah, I didn't think so.
No, because those were cheap knock-off brand meters that you'd have a hard time finding a phone number to call for help. Unlike, you know, expensive Fluke meters that you expect to work and expect support for. Or the Keithley I mentioned, which I bought used, but still went to the website expecting to find support -- and I did. A full manual, including schematic. I'd expect no less from Fluke, even for a donated meter.
The point you ignored was that people who should know how to fix even simple things DON'T, so pretending that people who own Fluke meters will be smart enough to know how to deal with every problem they run across and wouldn't call for support is ridiculous.
Thanks for playing, though.
An insult from an anonymous coward. Oh, my day is just shattered.
as the city makes the choice based on what cable, and phone provider gives them the right bid to lay the lines.
Franchise fees are not a "bid", they are a contractually negotiated fee for using city rights of way. Once a fee is negotiated, it would be hard for a city to say "your fee will be higher" to a second company, since they've set the price for access.
What prevents a second cable system from overbuilding the first is not the franchise fee, it is the lower return on investment from having to compete with the existing system. No business would want to invest heavily in physical plant when there would be little profit in doing so. Their fixed costs would not be recouped by the sales, much less the incremental costs.
It's not like a grocery store where the fixed costs are relatively low to find and outfit a building and have the customer come to you. Cable requires the "grocery store" to go to the customer where he is, and simply lowering prices until the customers stop going to the competitor and start coming to you won't work. It is not economically viable to build the system as you get customers. The turn-on time would be long.
Calling support for a multimeter? What planet are you from? Short of it breaking and needing a replacement under warranty, you plug it in, spin the dial to the mode you want, and away you go.
And when it breaks, or behaves in a way you don't expect, are you going to call Sparkfun or Fluke? Fluke, of course.
Do people call Sears for tech support on a Craftsman wrench? I'll grant a multimeter is *slightly* more complicated of a tool,
A good quality multimeter is a LOT more complicated a tool than a wrench.
but really only slightly to someone who's the least bit experienced in that area of tech.
You expect your multimeter to be as reliable as a wrench, but that doesn't mean it is as simple as a wrench inside. Especially if those meters are being given out to DIY/school users. "Why doesn't my meter read Amps anymore? What do you mean there's a fuse? Where is the fuse? How do I replace it?"
I have a Keithley that reads negative voltage. That means if I test a nine volt battery, the display reads negative nine with the red lead on positive. Such a simple device, huh? How could it possibly fail in that mode? It took looking at the schematic, but sure enough, there's an inverting buffer that isn't anymore. That's in a device you think is almost as simple as a wrench.
I think I got my first MM when I was six years old. Took Dad about 10 minutes to show me how to measure voltage and resistance, and that was when you had to set the range yourself.
And as a six year old did you really learn not to try measuring the resistance of the mains? Or did you learn that by blowing up a meter? Even if your Dad told you not to, you never forgot and did it anyway? Sure. Or you never tried to see how many amps the mains could provide and blew the fuse? Or even just over-amped from an unexpected measurement and done the same?
I've had so many cheap crap multimeters die that I've lost count. I've also bought used meters by the box because they were all "failed", and some of them were really just a blown fuse, or some a bad battery lead. But they were ALL discarded and new ones put in their place because of those simple problems, by people who were using them to teach electronics. They didn't know how to fix their own meters, and I don't expect the recipients of the donations from Fluke will know, either.
...but Fluke apparently considers it worth the cost to be the good guy.
Yep. And because of that, there is no need for pity for Sparkfun.
It's obviously not a 1:1 replacement, and probably shouldn't be, but Sparkfun might still be coming out negative on this if they were planning on selling those original meters.
Of course Sparkfun was going to sell the original Chinese knock-offs. And they could just as well sell the better Fluke meters and they'd come out in the exact same place. Probably ahead of the game since they'd not have to stock so many meters (less shelf/warehouse space), or ship so many meters (less fixed costs to shipping). But they CHOOSE to give them away, so any losses Sparkfun has at this point are from their own choices, not the fault of Fluke (who didn't impound the original shipment) or the Chinese knock-off manufacturer.
The question is, did Sparkfun learn anything from this or will they make another order from the same Chinese company for the same meters and hope Customs doesn't catch them? After all, they got away with it for some time.
I think Sparkfun is out either way from what I understand. They're planning on giving the Fluke ones away...
Sparkfun is out only because they CHOOSE to give stuff away. Don't cry for them, they're being made whole by the generosity of a large evil corporation, or at least that was the opinion most people had of Fluke yesterday. It's Fluke who is out either way. Either Fluke becomes this evil company that is simply trying to keep its trademark and a few people stop buying from them, or they hand out $30k and the same people who would buy from them anyway keep buying from them.
And Fluke is out for support, too. Those people who get free Fluke meters from Sparcfun aren't going to call Sparcfun when they need help with the meter. They're going to call Fluke because Fluke's name is on them.
I think that's a pretty sweet deal for Sparcfun. They violated a trademark and they're not suffering one bit from it. The company whose trademark they infringed is the one losing money.
I seem to be left behind. Where is my laptop?
That's what I kept asking the OLPC project back when they had their buy one, get one offer. They took the money but could never seem to have any in stock when it came time to ship one to me. They kept telling me mine was about to be shipped, and they were shipping units to other people, but mine never seemed to make it into a box and to my door.
Eventually, it got close to the time limit for disputing charges (90 days, I think it was) so I cancelled the order. The fact they charged my card long before shipping and kept putting the delivery date off made it look like a fishy deal, so I bailed.
I think it had to be the lack of people standing just off camera shining flashlights into the lens. Everyone knows that modern sci-fi movies have to have lens flare to remind everyone that there is a camera and a lens and to occasionally blind the viewers so they don't see the crappy special effects.
Even when a fan is willing to give up all rights to the idea, just for the chance of seeing it maybe happen. It seems that such is prevented by all the legal suits.
Also prevented by any sane producer. Just what does "all rights" mean? Can you give up rights to things you don't know about or that didn't exist? It wouldn't be the "legal suits" driving the issue when the fan sues for a cut of a new form of distribution. "Your Honor, how could the plaintiff have intended to give up his rights to interstellar distribution when at the time of the contract there was no interstellar distribution?" Or even "the defendant clearly used my character as a basis for this spin-off character and I didn't sign away my rights to that." Even a losing plaintiff costs money.
Look at all the 80's actors who have no cut of DVD sales because nobody thought that those shows would ever be released to a home market. What's the next new use of today's media that we've yet to think up?