Personally, if I were to undergo a fuel tank fire/explosion, I'd much rather have hydrogen in the tank.
Huh? Liquid fuel is a hell of a lot safer. Seriously, how often do you hear about massive fires and explosions involving gas stations and/or gasoline-fueled vehicles? Answer: you don't. It's a fairly mature and comparatively safe technology... the real danger is the average American driver. Conversely, anyone who thinks a tank of pressurized, highly-flammable gas is a good thing in an automobile is nuts. Frankly, I feel the same way about big lithium-ion battery packs in cars: I'm waiting for a Prius to crash into a bridge siding and have a piece of rebar spike the battery.
The GP is right: if we're going to use hydrogen as an automotive fuel we need a better way to store it. Pressure tanks just don't cut it, not with hydrogen.
The point is that if someone sends you something unsolicited in the mail, it's yours to do with what you will.
Okay. The answer is probably going to be "no". I mean, the law is already going off the deep end here, so I don't expect anything rational from these people when Average Joe finds a funny black box stuck to his car, pulls it off and makes a few bucks from it. In fact, I fully expect them to make examples out of people they catch doing that.
On the other hand, it would be tough to prove that you removed and sold the unit (or otherwise disposed of the thing) unless you were dumb enough to put it up on EBay.
If I find one on my car, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to pull it off and attach it to the roof of my car. Then I'll put a big sign with an arrow pointing to the unit stating "Police GPS Tracking Device Located Here". If the tracker is cellular-based, it would be fun to spoof a cell tower, figure out where it's sending (usually they work by SMS or email, I understand) and send the cops a quick "Hi. How are ya. How's the wife and kids" note. That, or "Get this fucking thing off my car by Friday or the next message will be from my attorney."
Truth is, an honest cop would recognize when the government has gone too far, and would refuse to use this capability without oversight. But all law enforcement seems interested in nowadays is technology that will make their jobs easier, regardless of the civil liberties implications.
Maybe, maybe not but who knows how much info banks have on me.
Google, Microsoft, Yahoo et. al. are the least of your worries. So-called data aggregators like Choicepoint, for example, are far more of an issue, privacy-wise, because they don't just profile you with the intent to sell advertising and offer advanced free services. Choicepoint collects everything it can about us, in order to sell that information directly to anyone that can pay for it. No need to worry about security breaches (although Choicepoint has had their share of those) bad guys can just buy your personal info on the open market. Supposedly they only sell data to "legitimate" companies, but they got scammed a few years ago: some ne'er-do-wells set up fake companies so that Choicepoint would sell to them. Not that it cost Choicepoint anything, hell, they made money off the sale.
How is this different from the police sending you something unwanted via the mail?
Huh? If the cops send me something I don't want in the mail, I treat it like all unsolicited mail... I throw it in the garbage. How can you possible consider that to be anything remotely similar to attaching a tracking system to your car?
Criminals should have most of the rights the rest of us do.
And they do. But, what we are talking about here are people who aren't even alleged to have committed a crime: just people the cops have taken an interest in. I don't want to be "interesting" to law enforcement, but if for any reason I am, I'd like some judicial oversight please.
I imagine that a growing number of Americans do not agree with this sentiment.
Not necessarily... but there are a growing number of Americans who see that the scales of justice are tipping in the wrong direction.
Do we really need to acronymize The Supreme Court?
I'm assuming that you're referring to the Supreme Court Of The United States. Is this legal-speak or your own invention?
You could very easily argue that installing gear without your knowledge to your car while in your driveway would be considered vandalism
Or trespass... if he doesn't have any suspicion that there's a crime in progress he shouldn't be fooling around on private property in the first place.
There seems to be a war on oversight for the last decade and realistically even longer. When it become bad to have to justify your actions?
Power is just as addicting as any recreational drug, and like such drugs, you become inured to the effects over time, so it takes more to give you the same high.
No, no, if you're going to put GPS trackers on officials' vehicles, you don't want to just publish the coordinates of everywhere they go. That would very quickly lead to the discovery and removal of said device.
Wait till they go somewhere questionable, then "coincidentally" show up with a camera and publish pics instead. The tracker will survive longer, and the evidence will be much harder to refute.:)
Or just record the data continuously for as long as you can, and then publish it. You can bet that every news organization in the country will immediately scour it for anything even remotely compromising. Agree to turn over the tracking device for full immunity.
Probably not, and since it's not your property they'd probably get pissed if you sold it. Me, I think I'd just wrap the thing in a coil of heavy copper wire and discharge a hefty capacitor bank through it. Then I'd record the cop retrieving it and post the video on Youtube. Maybe some of officer so-and-so's neighbors might have something to say about it.
Does anyone else find the thought of ordinary cops skulking around after dark, attaching things to private vehicles just because they feel like it, more than a little disturbing? What the hell were these judges thinking? Or, more likely, smoking? Personally, I find it irritating when cops are sneaky: frankly, it's not what I pay them for. Worse yet, given the complete lack of oversight involved now, you can't tell me that these guys aren't going to be tracking their girlfriends, ex-wives, annoying neighbors and anyone else they want to get dirt on.
Do you think the local news could get their mouths off of the authorities' collective dick long enough to air something like that? No, they'd keep quiet about it.
I perceive a business opportunity in GPS tracker detectors... assuming that they're the kind that call in your location via a cellular transmitter. If it's the kind that just records your travels into local memory and has to be manually retrieved, well, best park your car in your garage and lock the door.
Yeah but then they have to test what's left to find out if it really was a bomb. And then you sue them for planting the device that resulted in your property being "controlled exploded"
That can be tough, depending upon where you live. In my State, for example, cops are immune from prosecution for false arrest and a whole bunch of other things. I had a cousin who suffered a false arrest a few years ago (the DMV made a MISTAKE and put through her driver's license as expired) and was rather badly treated by the arresting officers. I talked to my attorney about our options, and he said, "the law sucks, but there it is."
None of the money made collecting settlements from alleged infringers went to artists.
Nor was it ever intended to, just as the blank-CD levy instituted by the Audio Home Recording Act never went to the artists. It's interesting how having influence on Capitol Hill allows an amazing variety of racketeering and other criminal activities to go on unchallenged indefinitely.
I lost all respect for you right there. Not to wax too dramatic, but this statement is the very reason why we have so many problems across the globe. My ______ is more important than your ________.
And just to clarify your ridiculous misinterpretation and extrapolation, one should care more about one's wife, one's husband, one's children, one's parents, one's friends. It's fine to care deeply about other things, most of us do, but I stand by my statement. I will tell you this: my family is far more important to me than some anonymous blob of undifferentiated tissue will ever be, and I make no apology for that.
In spite of the opportunity to do so, I don't live in those places. Nor do I desire to do so.
Neither do I. But this discussion was not limited to the First World.
Adoption could handle unwanted children.
Could it? You're making another assumption that is probably unwarranted. At least, I'd want to see some numbers on the availability of suitable adoptive parents vs. the number of abandoned children. That's long been suggested as the answer to abortion-as-a-contraceptive, but it's not a solution either. Nor, just to be clear, am I advocating abortion as a method of birth control. The best answer to all of this is for women to not have unwanted pregnancies in the first place. Unfortunately, that will require education and ready access to contraceptives, and there are too many people in power who seem to have a problem with that. Look, people are going to have sex. They just are, and personally, I have no problem with some of my tax dollars providing both the knowledge and the means to avoid unwanted babies. It's one of the best investments in public health we can make.
He suggests considering primarily the minimum utility, not average.
That's why I said "if." I don't claim to have all the answers. Still, if you'd understood my basic argument, it was that we shouldn't take the obvious approach in these situations, shouldn't take the easy way out. The problem I have with most people, when it comes to such polarizing topics as abortion, stem cell research, politics, religion, etc. is that they are constitutionally unable to think outside the box proscribed by their upbringing. And that's unfortunate... our society needs to start making some good decisions, and the emotion and fear-mongering that always surrounds contentious subjects just gets in the way.
I tend to agree here. And there are enough other ways to get stem cells (left over from in vitro) that it can be done with "doomed embryos".
IF that's truly the case (and I'm not qualified to argue with you either way, so I won't), that's great. People get to keep their sensibilities intact, and medical science continues to progress. But again, I want people that see such research as "evil", amoral or otherwise unacceptable, to understand that the likely consequence of their position, should it prevail as a matter of public policy, is human suffering and real loss of life. So, I'm not about to let them get off scott-free: whichever way we jump, there will be a price to pay.
The people who will ultimately benefit from stem-cell-derived medical treatments need to figure into this equation. They really do, otherwise the debate is one-sided and serves little purpose.
I hope you are never treated as you seek to treat others. I do not wish such inhumanity upon anyone.
I just lost all respect for you with that comment. At what point did I say I wished to visit anything bad upon anyone? If you'd read the rest of the comment (and I suspect you didn't) you'd have understood the context in which I made that statement. Oddly enough, we agree that we should strive to better than we are: my complaint is that people are far more concerned about doing what makes gives them the warm fuzzies, as opposed to actually doing the right thing. That latter often requires more courage, more understanding, more awareness that is common among human beings.
I think the meerling was saying that the artists "working with the RIAA" seem to be doing ok.
Yes, but by and large they're not. Well, if they are it's not because they're making much from their RIAA member contracts. It's because they tour and sell merchandise, and do anything else they can to bring in money while their record label milks their work for all its worth and returns as little as possible. That's the game, and it was the only one in town for a long, long time. But not now, not anymore..
Online mediums have essentially ruined the need for physical mediums
Yes, and online development processes have essentially eliminated the need for team members to even be in the same country, at least for project types that are amenable to distributed development.
More likely they will modify hover drones to play music in public places and take photos of those in earshot and send bills via facial recognition software for the music you just heard.
The things will need some serious armor, I can tell you that. One bill, one drone. Two bills, two drones. You get the idea.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, if I were to undergo a fuel tank fire/explosion, I'd much rather have hydrogen in the tank.
Huh? Liquid fuel is a hell of a lot safer. Seriously, how often do you hear about massive fires and explosions involving gas stations and/or gasoline-fueled vehicles? Answer: you don't. It's a fairly mature and comparatively safe technology ... the real danger is the average American driver. Conversely, anyone who thinks a tank of pressurized, highly-flammable gas is a good thing in an automobile is nuts. Frankly, I feel the same way about big lithium-ion battery packs in cars: I'm waiting for a Prius to crash into a bridge siding and have a piece of rebar spike the battery.
The GP is right: if we're going to use hydrogen as an automotive fuel we need a better way to store it. Pressure tanks just don't cut it, not with hydrogen.
Make that Lexis-Nexis. They bought out Choicepoint a while back and now basically corner the market.
I did not know that. And you're right, that should have been subject to some Federal scrutiny. Not hard to guess why it wasn't.
Earlier today in "Google testing voice calling in Gmail", u235meltdown brought up a very good point about how this creates a problem for Google defending itself against AT&T who says Google Voice should have Common Carrier status. This destroys Google's arguments.
Does it? Does Google provide the connectivity?
The point is that if someone sends you something unsolicited in the mail, it's yours to do with what you will.
Okay. The answer is probably going to be "no". I mean, the law is already going off the deep end here, so I don't expect anything rational from these people when Average Joe finds a funny black box stuck to his car, pulls it off and makes a few bucks from it. In fact, I fully expect them to make examples out of people they catch doing that.
On the other hand, it would be tough to prove that you removed and sold the unit (or otherwise disposed of the thing) unless you were dumb enough to put it up on EBay.
If I find one on my car, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to pull it off and attach it to the roof of my car. Then I'll put a big sign with an arrow pointing to the unit stating "Police GPS Tracking Device Located Here". If the tracker is cellular-based, it would be fun to spoof a cell tower, figure out where it's sending (usually they work by SMS or email, I understand) and send the cops a quick "Hi. How are ya. How's the wife and kids" note. That, or "Get this fucking thing off my car by Friday or the next message will be from my attorney."
Truth is, an honest cop would recognize when the government has gone too far, and would refuse to use this capability without oversight. But all law enforcement seems interested in nowadays is technology that will make their jobs easier, regardless of the civil liberties implications.
No one can still claim something as theirs after attaching it to your vehicle.
Sure they can, and believe me, they will. And if we bitch too loudly, they'll just make it a felony to even touch the damn things.
Maybe, maybe not but who knows how much info banks have on me.
Google, Microsoft, Yahoo et. al. are the least of your worries. So-called data aggregators like Choicepoint, for example, are far more of an issue, privacy-wise, because they don't just profile you with the intent to sell advertising and offer advanced free services. Choicepoint collects everything it can about us, in order to sell that information directly to anyone that can pay for it. No need to worry about security breaches (although Choicepoint has had their share of those) bad guys can just buy your personal info on the open market. Supposedly they only sell data to "legitimate" companies, but they got scammed a few years ago: some ne'er-do-wells set up fake companies so that Choicepoint would sell to them. Not that it cost Choicepoint anything, hell, they made money off the sale.
How is this different from the police sending you something unwanted via the mail?
Huh? If the cops send me something I don't want in the mail, I treat it like all unsolicited mail ... I throw it in the garbage. How can you possible consider that to be anything remotely similar to attaching a tracking system to your car?
Criminals should have most of the rights the rest of us do.
And they do. But, what we are talking about here are people who aren't even alleged to have committed a crime: just people the cops have taken an interest in. I don't want to be "interesting" to law enforcement, but if for any reason I am, I'd like some judicial oversight please.
I imagine that a growing number of Americans do not agree with this sentiment.
Not necessarily ... but there are a growing number of Americans who see that the scales of justice are tipping in the wrong direction.
Do we really need to acronymize The Supreme Court? I'm assuming that you're referring to the Supreme Court Of The United States. Is this legal-speak or your own invention?
I don't know ... why don't you ask the POTUS.
I agree - RELEASE THE KAGAN!
Because, as we all know full well ... there can be only one.
Oh, sorry. That was "Kurgan". My bad.
You could very easily argue that installing gear without your knowledge to your car while in your driveway would be considered vandalism
Or trespass ... if he doesn't have any suspicion that there's a crime in progress he shouldn't be fooling around on private property in the first place.
There seems to be a war on oversight for the last decade and realistically even longer. When it become bad to have to justify your actions?
Power is just as addicting as any recreational drug, and like such drugs, you become inured to the effects over time, so it takes more to give you the same high.
No, no, if you're going to put GPS trackers on officials' vehicles, you don't want to just publish the coordinates of everywhere they go. That would very quickly lead to the discovery and removal of said device.
Wait till they go somewhere questionable, then "coincidentally" show up with a camera and publish pics instead. The tracker will survive longer, and the evidence will be much harder to refute. :)
Or just record the data continuously for as long as you can, and then publish it. You can bet that every news organization in the country will immediately scour it for anything even remotely compromising. Agree to turn over the tracking device for full immunity.
And can I sell it?
Probably not, and since it's not your property they'd probably get pissed if you sold it. Me, I think I'd just wrap the thing in a coil of heavy copper wire and discharge a hefty capacitor bank through it. Then I'd record the cop retrieving it and post the video on Youtube. Maybe some of officer so-and-so's neighbors might have something to say about it.
Does anyone else find the thought of ordinary cops skulking around after dark, attaching things to private vehicles just because they feel like it, more than a little disturbing? What the hell were these judges thinking? Or, more likely, smoking? Personally, I find it irritating when cops are sneaky: frankly, it's not what I pay them for. Worse yet, given the complete lack of oversight involved now, you can't tell me that these guys aren't going to be tracking their girlfriends, ex-wives, annoying neighbors and anyone else they want to get dirt on.
Truly stupid decision.
Do you think the local news could get their mouths off of the authorities' collective dick long enough to air something like that? No, they'd keep quiet about it.
I perceive a business opportunity in GPS tracker detectors ... assuming that they're the kind that call in your location via a cellular transmitter. If it's the kind that just records your travels into local memory and has to be manually retrieved, well, best park your car in your garage and lock the door.
Yeah but then they have to test what's left to find out if it really was a bomb. And then you sue them for planting the device that resulted in your property being "controlled exploded"
That can be tough, depending upon where you live. In my State, for example, cops are immune from prosecution for false arrest and a whole bunch of other things. I had a cousin who suffered a false arrest a few years ago (the DMV made a MISTAKE and put through her driver's license as expired) and was rather badly treated by the arresting officers. I talked to my attorney about our options, and he said, "the law sucks, but there it is."
Be careful what you say, we are GPS tracking you.
GPS tracking our online activities? What does that mean, Google Plus Slashdot?
None of the money made collecting settlements from alleged infringers went to artists.
Nor was it ever intended to, just as the blank-CD levy instituted by the Audio Home Recording Act never went to the artists. It's interesting how having influence on Capitol Hill allows an amazing variety of racketeering and other criminal activities to go on unchallenged indefinitely.
Sorry. It's just a state of mind. You either get over depression or you kill yourself. It's pretty simple, really.
Mr. Travolta, is that you?
I lost all respect for you right there. Not to wax too dramatic, but this statement is the very reason why we have so many problems across the globe. My ______ is more important than your ________.
And just to clarify your ridiculous misinterpretation and extrapolation, one should care more about one's wife, one's husband, one's children, one's parents, one's friends. It's fine to care deeply about other things, most of us do, but I stand by my statement. I will tell you this: my family is far more important to me than some anonymous blob of undifferentiated tissue will ever be, and I make no apology for that.
In spite of the opportunity to do so, I don't live in those places. Nor do I desire to do so.
Neither do I. But this discussion was not limited to the First World.
Adoption could handle unwanted children.
Could it? You're making another assumption that is probably unwarranted. At least, I'd want to see some numbers on the availability of suitable adoptive parents vs. the number of abandoned children. That's long been suggested as the answer to abortion-as-a-contraceptive, but it's not a solution either. Nor, just to be clear, am I advocating abortion as a method of birth control. The best answer to all of this is for women to not have unwanted pregnancies in the first place. Unfortunately, that will require education and ready access to contraceptives, and there are too many people in power who seem to have a problem with that. Look, people are going to have sex. They just are, and personally, I have no problem with some of my tax dollars providing both the knowledge and the means to avoid unwanted babies. It's one of the best investments in public health we can make.
He suggests considering primarily the minimum utility, not average.
That's why I said "if." I don't claim to have all the answers. Still, if you'd understood my basic argument, it was that we shouldn't take the obvious approach in these situations, shouldn't take the easy way out. The problem I have with most people, when it comes to such polarizing topics as abortion, stem cell research, politics, religion, etc. is that they are constitutionally unable to think outside the box proscribed by their upbringing. And that's unfortunate ... our society needs to start making some good decisions, and the emotion and fear-mongering that always surrounds contentious subjects just gets in the way.
I tend to agree here. And there are enough other ways to get stem cells (left over from in vitro) that it can be done with "doomed embryos".
IF that's truly the case (and I'm not qualified to argue with you either way, so I won't), that's great. People get to keep their sensibilities intact, and medical science continues to progress. But again, I want people that see such research as "evil", amoral or otherwise unacceptable, to understand that the likely consequence of their position, should it prevail as a matter of public policy, is human suffering and real loss of life. So, I'm not about to let them get off scott-free: whichever way we jump, there will be a price to pay.
The people who will ultimately benefit from stem-cell-derived medical treatments need to figure into this equation. They really do, otherwise the debate is one-sided and serves little purpose.
I hope you are never treated as you seek to treat others. I do not wish such inhumanity upon anyone.
I just lost all respect for you with that comment. At what point did I say I wished to visit anything bad upon anyone? If you'd read the rest of the comment (and I suspect you didn't) you'd have understood the context in which I made that statement. Oddly enough, we agree that we should strive to better than we are: my complaint is that people are far more concerned about doing what makes gives them the warm fuzzies, as opposed to actually doing the right thing. That latter often requires more courage, more understanding, more awareness that is common among human beings.
Knee-jerk reaction indeed.
I think the meerling was saying that the artists "working with the RIAA" seem to be doing ok.
Yes, but by and large they're not. Well, if they are it's not because they're making much from their RIAA member contracts. It's because they tour and sell merchandise, and do anything else they can to bring in money while their record label milks their work for all its worth and returns as little as possible. That's the game, and it was the only one in town for a long, long time. But not now, not anymore..
Oh, but you actually want to because you think they're good.
No, because they're free and readily available. Next question.
Online mediums have essentially ruined the need for physical mediums
Yes, and online development processes have essentially eliminated the need for team members to even be in the same country, at least for project types that are amenable to distributed development.
More likely they will modify hover drones to play music in public places and take photos of those in earshot and send bills via facial recognition software for the music you just heard.
The things will need some serious armor, I can tell you that. One bill, one drone. Two bills, two drones. You get the idea.