How? They have only odometer readings. Why should they share anything with other states.
Because they're affected by the same problem of people not from their state using their roads too! This is not the first situation like this. In some situations the agreement is called 'reciprocity'. It takes some extra bureaucracy but like they care -- they'll need some kind of interstate agreement even with the GPS system because it will be measured in one state but taxes sent to another. They also know a lot more than just individual's odometer readings, they know a lot about general traffic patterns that can be used to make fair reciprocal agreements.
The very fact you say "set the state tax to whatever they want" shows you have not thought through the problem. WHAT TAX?
This response shows you haven't thought at all. THEIR STATE MILEAGE TAX THAT REPLACES THE GAS TAX, DUH!
Your way of thinking totally pummels popular tourist destinations with an unfair amount of extra wear they are not getting any money for.
You mean your lack of thinking, which by the way screws us all. Good job.
It's a tricky problem, and the odometer alone simply cannot provide the data needed to distribute funds properly.
Yes, you have to combine it with other knowledge not necessarily tied to specific cars and with diplomacy with other states. No, wait, I'm sorry, I forgot to shut off my brain. It's either odometers or GPS. There is no other option. There, now we agree.
Oh, I'd love it if they did it during "emmissions checking." I live in Indiana, where we don't such a "big brother" concept.
You can damn well bet Indiana will start believing in them, even if they don't actually do any emissions testing and are only checking to make sure your GPS device still works and is accurately reporting how much money you're going to be giving them.
The problem with relying on the odometer for tax purposes is that there are a number of clever ways to prevent it from racking up miles.
A problem that of course doesn't exist with GPS.
Heck I've even owned a couple cars that didn't have working odometers.
Well whether it's odometers or GPS, if this tax is put in place then you can expect your state to start requiring annual inspections if they don't already. And probably a penalty harsher than not having an up-to-date inspection sticker because now it's essentially tax evasion.
hy not just continue to raise the fuel taxes to generate revenue? That would serve to continue to reduce fuel consumption which would be a good thing.
Well the funny thing is that this isn't about being green and reducing fossil fuel consumption. For that, a gas tax does work much better. No, this is about ensuring revenue for the federal highway fund and for the states' road funds continues to come in even as fuel economies go up and alternative fuel vehicles become more popular.
The article mentions the Chevy Volt, which for a typical commuter would consume just about zero gas and thus generate about zero revenue for road repair with a gas tax. Nevertheless, the Volt, Tesla Roadster, and so on aren't magic, they still damage roads. Currently the gas tax is essentially acting as a proxy for a road use tax. They're worried about when that won't work anymore.
Using GPS to do it is still either a stupid or evil idea -- and it can be both in the hands of different parts of the government.
The Feds at least since the federal commission was first talking about a federal tax. In the case of state taxes
Currently if I am driving in a state the state usually gets some percentage of the gas tax. If you are just checking the odometer, my home state gets all the money even if I travel out of state often?
Yeah but so what? They can set their state tax to whatever they want, and set up whatever revenue sharing deals with other states that they want. Since the major concern for a state wrt travelers from another state is wear and tear on the highways and especially interstates, then the federal highway fund which you're paying into regardless of what state you live/drive in can take care of that.
I don't like the GPS idea one bit, I'm just saying checking the odometer does not solve the problem.
As much as there is a 'problem' to begin with, there are basic ways to solve it without a GPS device recording your every movement. It's not like states have never had to deal with an issue like tax income being sent to another state that should theoretically have been theirs. This is not a problem which requires a technological solution.
"Ooh what about interstate travel?" isn't a problem that justifies tracking everywhere you go. It's a justification for upgrading the scheme from a simple and straightforward one that only serves the intended purpose (measuring road usage and taxing accordingly), to one that has many, many other uses
Huh. Is there a 'why' to this conspiracy? I could never imagine any reason for the Z button to even exist, except for that the N64 controller had a Z button also, except that one was a trigger under the handle with the analog stick that worked really well. The GC controller had handles that could have had a trigger, maybe, but I don't know of any reason why N64 compatibility would have mattered, other than some GC games were ports from in-development N64 games, but that still doesn't make a lot of sense.
You know, I always thought it was pretty weird how your crew would be mad at you if you sold a bunch of them to the Druuge, but they never seemed to care when dozens of them would die because I was too drunk to avoid smacking the ship into a planet.
There are so many ways you are being tracked already, the 'Tracking cattle now, tracking you soon" fear isn't paranoia, it's whistling in the dark.
Well there's only one thing that I know how to do well, and I've often been told that you can only do what you know how to do well -- and that's be you! Be what you're like. Be like yourself. And so I'm having a wonderful time but I'd rather be whistling in the dark.
Don't you realize that every violation of rights starts really really small?
Aside from the fact that my post entire post was essentially a set up for a gag involving people being tranqed and tagged on the street, I was serious when I said this isn't a violation of rights of any kind whatsoever. They're cows. Making them trackable is no more a violation of rights than zoologists tagging birds to track migrations and populations like they've been doing for a long time now. It's nothing like tracking people. And the "right" of the rancher to sell unregulated meat was lost a long time ago, thank goodness, because I'd like to have more assurance that I'm not going to get sick eating some beef than a Consumer Reports grade or a complaint-ridden web forum.
The Classic Controller is focused on SNES games, thus all the dpad and buttons are in the location where they where on the SNES, leaving only the button two spots for the analogsticks.
Yeah, exactly. The Classic Controller is a SNES controller with analog sticks hacked on, just like the original DS was a PSX controller with analog sticks hacked on.
The fact that neither is ideal for analog-focused games (though I think the DS is the better of the two) is no surprise.
Ha! As if. Look, we grant cattle no rights, so it's not infringing their rights to have them be tracked. So it's a far step from there to tracking humans. It's like saying "Squashing spiders with slippers today, squashing people with slippers soon'. It's nonsensical. Besides, the reason cows have no rights is because they aren't capable of even thinking about the concept of rights much less engaging in protests etc to gain them. So not only are they different morally, they're different practically because it's not like the government could just come and start tracking us all without us noticing and burning down the Capitol.
Hmm? What do you mean "what's that hanging from my ear?" Some piece of plastic with a number on it? Well so there is! Geeze, I don't remember getting my ear pierced, but I did get pretty drunk last Friday... I remember somebody in a suit pointing at me and then I felt like I wanted to lie down... But I must have gone into the tattoo and piercing parlor and gotten pierced. With a tacky and crappy earring too, that doesn't seem to want to come off... I hope I didn't get tattooed too... Oh geeze, what the hell?! "19273g"? What the hell kind of tattoo is that? Alright that's it, no more Friday night benders for me.
Now what was I saying? Oh yeah. Some people are so paranoid!
Why Nintendo put it like that in new classic controller then? They are suddenly "misjudged"?
Nintendo put it like that for the classic controller because it had to bridge the gap between NES, SNES, and N64 games, so the analog stick is not necessarily the primary input. When they are designing a controller where the analog input is primary, like the nunchuck, it's still in the same ol' analog-stick-where-your-thumb-lays-naturally position. Not down and to the right like the DS.
This is similar to how when the DS was created, the D-Pad was the primary input (because there was no other at the time), and thus the analog stick was put in the deliberately inferior position. That this was actually the ideal position for the primary input would have been a surprise to the designers of the DS.
Both are examples of how history and context affect controller design. When neither is a factor in where the analog stick goes, and the designer can put it where optimal, it goes where the D-Pad used to go, and where the face buttons still go.
Or didn't you notice direct succesion Saturn analog -> Dreamcast -> Xbox as the real reason behind current layout of X360? (and they've still made it quite close to DS...)
I'm not sure how you think that's a 'direct succession' other than that the Xbox controller design was similar to the Dreamcast in terms of left analog and button placements, though it was equally similar to the GC controller modulo the GC's weird face buttons. Direct succession, or convergent design when multiple companies, not hampered by history, tried to design good a controller?
(if you hold it properly, two fingers on triggers; most people don't, that's the most major fault of DS) you're unable to use that much strenght, but fine movements work great. When inline - a bit the other way around.
Held properly, the DS requires flexing the thumb outward which causes muscle strain. Both strength and fine control are reduced when you aren't flexing muscles just to hold your thumb in position. You can move your thumb faster, easier, and with more precision when you start from the relaxed position.
I still find it funny that people attribute all these advantages to the DS design as though they were deliberate, rather than at best an accident and more likely an artifact of familiarity.
Hehe. Or if I designed the wheelchair: "... and as you can clearly see, if we don't do something about resonance increasing pressure in the fuel lines then the whole system could explode-" KABOOOOOOOOM!
Which, I have to admit, was a pretty good reason for them to not hire me.
which is why Sony put the stick in the opposite place, I suppose
No, Sony put the stick there because when they made the Dual Shock for the PSX it was an add-on for a console that had already been out two years and had a huge library of games that assumed only a D-Pad. They didn't know if analog controls would take off, both from the standpoint of popularity and from the standpoint of developers supporting it. So they deliberately placed it in a sub-optimal position, leaving the D-Pad where it is so that it wouldn't hinder playing any existing games. A pretty rational choice given the context, even though with hindsight we know that analog was going to dominate practically overnight.
However over the years Sony Fanboys and eventually Sony themselves deluded themselves into thinking that this was actually the ideal design for an analog-centric controller. So here they are two generations later still using a controller based around the D-Pad.
Anyway, yeah, the GC d-pad sucks. So does the Z-button. The face buttons are good, except for in games like Soul Calibur where you need to hit multiple at once. Otherwise it's a good controller.
Bullshit. The upper location, where every controller ever put the primary inputs including the DS because when made the D-Pad was still considered the primary input, is the natural position. When relaxed, a person's thumb is in line with the first two joins of their index finger, such that if your index finger was on the outside of a controller facing up, your thumb would be in line with it and ~1 inch in. I.e. where the primary inputs are on non-DS controllers. Not angled 45 degrees away. This is also why the primary inputs for the right hand, the buttons, are in that location on every controller ever, including the DS.
This notion that every controller maker, including Sony, misjudged the shape of the relaxed hand and put the primary inputs in the wrong spot, only to accidentally put the analog sticks in a superior position in what was a deliberate attempt to not disturb the ideal placement of the D-Pad, is ridiculous.
Dual Shock fans are like people with a terrible task chair -- they get used to the extra strain, and eventually forget that it's actually unecessary strain and think it's how things are supposed to be. And in the particular case of Sony controllers, they retro-actively take what was a deliberate decision to de-emphasize the analog sticks when D-Pad and buttons were still the primary inputs, and try to make it sound like it is a marvel of controller design for the era of analog-only input. And thus 3rd party vendors make DS-like joypads to appeal to this market of deliberately-bad-placement-is-actually-awesome folks.
I mean this in the politest way, but you're wrong. Read Steve Squyres's Roving Mars. He was the head of the entire project. It's amazing how many things almost didn't work (for example, they got one chance to test their chute - and it shredded to pieces. And it was like 30 days before launch). It's an amazing book.
Just to be clear, since I don't have the book handy, what aspect is wrong? Were there other parts of the rover that were actually designed or spec'ed to last 90 days? I mean I'm not saying everything was perfectly designed to last forever, but I'd always heard that it was the solar panels that created the 90 day mission time, and that if everything else worked there was no reason the rover to die that quickly. Having to cross your fingers when the parachute deploys or the rover tries to get off the lander is a different matter.:) Either way that's interesting.
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How? They have only odometer readings. Why should they share anything with other states.
Because they're affected by the same problem of people not from their state using their roads too! This is not the first situation like this. In some situations the agreement is called 'reciprocity'. It takes some extra bureaucracy but like they care -- they'll need some kind of interstate agreement even with the GPS system because it will be measured in one state but taxes sent to another. They also know a lot more than just individual's odometer readings, they know a lot about general traffic patterns that can be used to make fair reciprocal agreements.
The very fact you say "set the state tax to whatever they want" shows you have not thought through the problem. WHAT TAX?
This response shows you haven't thought at all. THEIR STATE MILEAGE TAX THAT REPLACES THE GAS TAX, DUH!
Your way of thinking totally pummels popular tourist destinations with an unfair amount of extra wear they are not getting any money for.
You mean your lack of thinking, which by the way screws us all. Good job.
It's a tricky problem, and the odometer alone simply cannot provide the data needed to distribute funds properly.
Yes, you have to combine it with other knowledge not necessarily tied to specific cars and with diplomacy with other states. No, wait, I'm sorry, I forgot to shut off my brain. It's either odometers or GPS. There is no other option. There, now we agree.
Whoa, man, watch your step! You almost fell in the Sar Chasm!
Oh, I'd love it if they did it during "emmissions checking." I live in Indiana, where we don't such a "big brother" concept.
You can damn well bet Indiana will start believing in them, even if they don't actually do any emissions testing and are only checking to make sure your GPS device still works and is accurately reporting how much money you're going to be giving them.
The problem with relying on the odometer for tax purposes is that there are a number of clever ways to prevent it from racking up miles.
A problem that of course doesn't exist with GPS.
Heck I've even owned a couple cars that didn't have working odometers.
Well whether it's odometers or GPS, if this tax is put in place then you can expect your state to start requiring annual inspections if they don't already. And probably a penalty harsher than not having an up-to-date inspection sticker because now it's essentially tax evasion.
hy not just continue to raise the fuel taxes to generate revenue? That would serve to continue to reduce fuel consumption which would be a good thing.
Well the funny thing is that this isn't about being green and reducing fossil fuel consumption. For that, a gas tax does work much better. No, this is about ensuring revenue for the federal highway fund and for the states' road funds continues to come in even as fuel economies go up and alternative fuel vehicles become more popular.
The article mentions the Chevy Volt, which for a typical commuter would consume just about zero gas and thus generate about zero revenue for road repair with a gas tax. Nevertheless, the Volt, Tesla Roadster, and so on aren't magic, they still damage roads. Currently the gas tax is essentially acting as a proxy for a road use tax. They're worried about when that won't work anymore.
Using GPS to do it is still either a stupid or evil idea -- and it can be both in the hands of different parts of the government.
So who gets the money from that?
The Feds at least since the federal commission was first talking about a federal tax. In the case of state taxes
Currently if I am driving in a state the state usually gets some percentage of the gas tax. If you are just checking the odometer, my home state gets all the money even if I travel out of state often?
Yeah but so what? They can set their state tax to whatever they want, and set up whatever revenue sharing deals with other states that they want. Since the major concern for a state wrt travelers from another state is wear and tear on the highways and especially interstates, then the federal highway fund which you're paying into regardless of what state you live/drive in can take care of that.
I don't like the GPS idea one bit, I'm just saying checking the odometer does not solve the problem.
As much as there is a 'problem' to begin with, there are basic ways to solve it without a GPS device recording your every movement. It's not like states have never had to deal with an issue like tax income being sent to another state that should theoretically have been theirs. This is not a problem which requires a technological solution.
"Ooh what about interstate travel?" isn't a problem that justifies tracking everywhere you go. It's a justification for upgrading the scheme from a simple and straightforward one that only serves the intended purpose (measuring road usage and taxing accordingly), to one that has many, many other uses
Huh. Is there a 'why' to this conspiracy? I could never imagine any reason for the Z button to even exist, except for that the N64 controller had a Z button also, except that one was a trigger under the handle with the analog stick that worked really well. The GC controller had handles that could have had a trigger, maybe, but I don't know of any reason why N64 compatibility would have mattered, other than some GC games were ports from in-development N64 games, but that still doesn't make a lot of sense.
Maybe soon people will eat you.
Can we maybe reverse that? I'd have no problem with that. As long as they're free-range organically raised people.
I'm agreeing with you.
That's just what you want me to think!
It only means that I had nothing serious to say, and that there was a They Might Be Giants fan with mod points. :)
Druuge ships, Star Control II.
You know, I always thought it was pretty weird how your crew would be mad at you if you sold a bunch of them to the Druuge, but they never seemed to care when dozens of them would die because I was too drunk to avoid smacking the ship into a planet.
Well it certainly was abstract!
Damnit I got jipped. :(
Seriously, that last sentence of your post is somewhat ironic considering your sig.
Would that still be ironic if the sentence was meant to be taken ironically?
BTW, when they come for the ducks, some shit's going to go down. Do what you want to cattle, but don't mess with my duck bros.
There are so many ways you are being tracked already, the 'Tracking cattle now, tracking you soon" fear isn't paranoia, it's whistling in the dark.
Well there's only one thing that I know how to do well, and I've often been told that you can only do what you know how to do well -- and that's be you! Be what you're like. Be like yourself. And so I'm having a wonderful time but I'd rather be whistling in the dark.
Don't you realize that every violation of rights starts really really small?
Aside from the fact that my post entire post was essentially a set up for a gag involving people being tranqed and tagged on the street, I was serious when I said this isn't a violation of rights of any kind whatsoever. They're cows. Making them trackable is no more a violation of rights than zoologists tagging birds to track migrations and populations like they've been doing for a long time now. It's nothing like tracking people. And the "right" of the rancher to sell unregulated meat was lost a long time ago, thank goodness, because I'd like to have more assurance that I'm not going to get sick eating some beef than a Consumer Reports grade or a complaint-ridden web forum.
Typical slippery slope fallacy.
I see what you did there! =D
The Classic Controller is focused on SNES games, thus all the dpad and buttons are in the location where they where on the SNES, leaving only the button two spots for the analogsticks.
Yeah, exactly. The Classic Controller is a SNES controller with analog sticks hacked on, just like the original DS was a PSX controller with analog sticks hacked on.
The fact that neither is ideal for analog-focused games (though I think the DS is the better of the two) is no surprise.
'Tracking cattle now, tracking you soon.'
Ha! As if. Look, we grant cattle no rights, so it's not infringing their rights to have them be tracked. So it's a far step from there to tracking humans. It's like saying "Squashing spiders with slippers today, squashing people with slippers soon'. It's nonsensical. Besides, the reason cows have no rights is because they aren't capable of even thinking about the concept of rights much less engaging in protests etc to gain them. So not only are they different morally, they're different practically because it's not like the government could just come and start tracking us all without us noticing and burning down the Capitol.
Hmm? What do you mean "what's that hanging from my ear?" Some piece of plastic with a number on it? Well so there is! Geeze, I don't remember getting my ear pierced, but I did get pretty drunk last Friday... I remember somebody in a suit pointing at me and then I felt like I wanted to lie down... But I must have gone into the tattoo and piercing parlor and gotten pierced. With a tacky and crappy earring too, that doesn't seem to want to come off... I hope I didn't get tattooed too... Oh geeze, what the hell?! "19273g"? What the hell kind of tattoo is that? Alright that's it, no more Friday night benders for me.
Now what was I saying? Oh yeah. Some people are so paranoid!
There is a moral difference between "devour to survive" and "killing living things to power your clock".
How else am I going to know when it's dinner time?
Why Nintendo put it like that in new classic controller then? They are suddenly "misjudged"?
Nintendo put it like that for the classic controller because it had to bridge the gap between NES, SNES, and N64 games, so the analog stick is not necessarily the primary input. When they are designing a controller where the analog input is primary, like the nunchuck, it's still in the same ol' analog-stick-where-your-thumb-lays-naturally position. Not down and to the right like the DS.
This is similar to how when the DS was created, the D-Pad was the primary input (because there was no other at the time), and thus the analog stick was put in the deliberately inferior position. That this was actually the ideal position for the primary input would have been a surprise to the designers of the DS.
Both are examples of how history and context affect controller design. When neither is a factor in where the analog stick goes, and the designer can put it where optimal, it goes where the D-Pad used to go, and where the face buttons still go.
Or didn't you notice direct succesion Saturn analog -> Dreamcast -> Xbox as the real reason behind current layout of X360? (and they've still made it quite close to DS...)
I'm not sure how you think that's a 'direct succession' other than that the Xbox controller design was similar to the Dreamcast in terms of left analog and button placements, though it was equally similar to the GC controller modulo the GC's weird face buttons. Direct succession, or convergent design when multiple companies, not hampered by history, tried to design good a controller?
(if you hold it properly, two fingers on triggers; most people don't, that's the most major fault of DS) you're unable to use that much strenght, but fine movements work great. When inline - a bit the other way around.
Held properly, the DS requires flexing the thumb outward which causes muscle strain. Both strength and fine control are reduced when you aren't flexing muscles just to hold your thumb in position. You can move your thumb faster, easier, and with more precision when you start from the relaxed position.
I still find it funny that people attribute all these advantages to the DS design as though they were deliberate, rather than at best an accident and more likely an artifact of familiarity.
Hehe. Or if I designed the wheelchair: "... and as you can clearly see, if we don't do something about resonance increasing pressure in the fuel lines then the whole system could explode-" KABOOOOOOOOM!
Which, I have to admit, was a pretty good reason for them to not hire me.
which is why Sony put the stick in the opposite place, I suppose
No, Sony put the stick there because when they made the Dual Shock for the PSX it was an add-on for a console that had already been out two years and had a huge library of games that assumed only a D-Pad. They didn't know if analog controls would take off, both from the standpoint of popularity and from the standpoint of developers supporting it. So they deliberately placed it in a sub-optimal position, leaving the D-Pad where it is so that it wouldn't hinder playing any existing games. A pretty rational choice given the context, even though with hindsight we know that analog was going to dominate practically overnight.
However over the years Sony Fanboys and eventually Sony themselves deluded themselves into thinking that this was actually the ideal design for an analog-centric controller. So here they are two generations later still using a controller based around the D-Pad.
Anyway, yeah, the GC d-pad sucks. So does the Z-button. The face buttons are good, except for in games like Soul Calibur where you need to hit multiple at once. Otherwise it's a good controller.
Bullshit. The upper location, where every controller ever put the primary inputs including the DS because when made the D-Pad was still considered the primary input, is the natural position. When relaxed, a person's thumb is in line with the first two joins of their index finger, such that if your index finger was on the outside of a controller facing up, your thumb would be in line with it and ~1 inch in. I.e. where the primary inputs are on non-DS controllers. Not angled 45 degrees away. This is also why the primary inputs for the right hand, the buttons, are in that location on every controller ever, including the DS.
This notion that every controller maker, including Sony, misjudged the shape of the relaxed hand and put the primary inputs in the wrong spot, only to accidentally put the analog sticks in a superior position in what was a deliberate attempt to not disturb the ideal placement of the D-Pad, is ridiculous.
Dual Shock fans are like people with a terrible task chair -- they get used to the extra strain, and eventually forget that it's actually unecessary strain and think it's how things are supposed to be. And in the particular case of Sony controllers, they retro-actively take what was a deliberate decision to de-emphasize the analog sticks when D-Pad and buttons were still the primary inputs, and try to make it sound like it is a marvel of controller design for the era of analog-only input. And thus 3rd party vendors make DS-like joypads to appeal to this market of deliberately-bad-placement-is-actually-awesome folks.
Aw man. I was hoping the error message would include a graphic of the Fail Shuttle.
I mean this in the politest way, but you're wrong. Read Steve Squyres's Roving Mars. He was the head of the entire project. It's amazing how many things almost didn't work (for example, they got one chance to test their chute - and it shredded to pieces. And it was like 30 days before launch). It's an amazing book.
Just to be clear, since I don't have the book handy, what aspect is wrong? Were there other parts of the rover that were actually designed or spec'ed to last 90 days? I mean I'm not saying everything was perfectly designed to last forever, but I'd always heard that it was the solar panels that created the 90 day mission time, and that if everything else worked there was no reason the rover to die that quickly. Having to cross your fingers when the parachute deploys or the rover tries to get off the lander is a different matter. :) Either way that's interesting.