Nice of you to jump to irrelevant conclusions, first of all. It's "news". This is a contrived "news site", so it belong on this site.
But, to answer your question, I'll take a gander...
It's a protectionary measure introduced to curb COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT not PIRACY. Stop being a tool. They're not the same thing. While I suppose it's possible, I doubt you'll see some swashbucking pirate with a flintlock pistol in one hand and a camcorder in the other.
That being the case, it's the job of the respective movie studios to go after the people recording in the cinema.
It frightens me to no end that this country is so pathetically blinded by constant corporate and governmental corruption that they don't even notice more and more laws appear that criminalize things that were previously handled through civil litigation. It is not the cops' or the DA's job to prosecute people infringining copyright. Each movie studio is responsible for protecting their copyright. The only reason law enforcement gets in rumbles with REAL pirates, a la the rings in southern asia, is that they're actually dangerous criminals engaging in organized, sometimes violent crime rackets.
I pose a question. If it's punishable by prison and fine if someone records a movie in the theatre, can I expect the same help from the law if someone steals a big chunk of my code? No? Thought not.
You people that think the cops don't have better things to do than run around chasing overwieght middle aged guys with camcorders and middle school kids with cable modems need to get your heads out of your motherfucking asses and take notice as to just how much the "law" and government have impeded where it doesn't belong over the last half century. Keep this pace up, and you'll have S.W.A.T. teams busting into your house for breaking EULAs in a few years. Oh, but then we'll just keep trotting out the tired old "well, if they hadn't done something wrong"... yea.. right.
And, on a less logical, more personal note:
Boo..... fucking..... hoo.
Did technology weave the poor wittle executives in the dust again? Awwww....
While it's (somewhat) unfortunate that people are going to be hurt unfairly as a result of this horrible crime of camcording, I can think of much graver injustices in the world that need to be dealt with at a criminal level. I'm not going to give up too many (read: any) tears because some preening pretty-boy actor had to take a salary cut to $5 million dollars for a single movie from $20 million. You won't see me bawling when some executive can't afford to replace his beater 2 year old Ferrari because of the horrible, horrible "pirates".
It's called, you don't know what you're talking about.
Binary nVidia drivers update, Linux 2.4.x kernel: under 5 minutes.
Linmodem from Netodragon, driver compile, setup, and install + setup time for wvdial: under 10 minutes.
Driver compile and installation for oddball cd-rom: under 5 minutes.
Networking problems with Linux in the last month: none.
Forced upgrades with Linux in the last month: none.
Necessary patch fixes in the last month. Rough estimate? 2 hours tops including download times, and that's without up2date or apt-get type tools.
Total estimated time to bring my XP machine up to snuff with all the patches and other bullshit that's come out since I installed it: easily 5+ hours not including download times.
Oh, and by the way: time spent maintaining my minimal Linux firewall/router: 1 hour. Compiled a new kernel. All that time is COMPLETELY rebuilding the OS to suit a changed need, something that is beyond a mere "hassle" with Windows.
Sorry, the bias is justified. Maintaining Windows is an ENORMOUS hassle thanks to all the locked down, zipped up, "it's our way or no way" attitude of the Redmond elite. Swing it whatever way you want. Spend time maintaining average Linux and average Windows distros and you'll pick up a nasty addiction to painkillers from Windows, not Linux (unless you're one of those morons that expects Linux, a completely different operating system that was derived from a completely different philosophy for computer systems, to work just like Windows in which case you'll just ditch it because you're too dumb to realize it's not the same O/S ["you" is used figuratively, not referring to "you the poster" personally]). Spend time maintaining "wierd" configurations for pretty much any system and you're in for trouble.
While that's unfortunate for you, the end customer, it's just too bad. If they're not playing by the rules and they're stealing peoples' code, then the problem is that they were crooks, not that they used free software. Wouldn't be much different from Microsoft stealing Sun code.
Perhaps it's a dawning age when businesses will be afraid to use proprietary software for fear that the company integrated GPL'ed source into their binaries without giving poper credit and/or providing the sources? Imagine, all the manadrones going from "Open Source is untrustworthy, we might get sued" or other such nonsense to "Proprietary systems are untrustworthy, they might get sued and we'd lose support".
I think we'd all rather see an elegant solution here.
I don't WANT regulation, plain and simple. The government fucks up enough things without sticking its nose in the Internet too. It would be nice, however, if they'd bother to investigate and prosecute spammers and spam-virus writers the way they go after the "real Bad Guys" like Mitnick or Phiber Optik.
I think we'd all rather see an elegant solution here. I think we'd all rather NOT see More DOS attacks.
Agreed on both counts. But, I don't see any elegant solutions in the works and the ones that are on the way are already under attack. Bayesian filtering is trivially circumvented with blocks of "real" text to drive down the % likelihood of a spam being labeled as such and, at the same time, drive UP the likelihood that a legitimate message is labeled as spam. It's the best stopgap to date, but it will fail eventually. As for the DDoSs - a good way to put a total stop to them would be to wipe out the spammers. Sure, there'd be a huge spike for awhile if people DDoSed in return, but that's a clunky, temporary solution to them. There's far more "elegant" ways to fight back.
And, physical violence? Sort of. It's more akin to someone driving past your mailbox and bashing it in every time you get a new one. When you call the cops and they don't or can't do anything about it, what do you do? I'll tell you a good counter-measure: when you hear them coming down the street *pok* *pok* *pok* - grab a crowbar and hide in the bushes. As they slow down to pop your mailbox next, jump out and smash the back windshield of the car.
Never saw 'em again.
If the law can't be bothered to handle it (prosecution), and it can't be settled peacefully ("elegant" technology), I have no problem with a gun battle in the streets as long as the "victims" that you're fighting for approve of it.
Now, if someone has a serious proposal for retooling the SMTP or has some other workable solution to the problem, and has a plan for rolling it out, I'm all ears. However, I don't see a serious proposal that will be ready NOW and spam is a HUGE problem NOW. A solution that's going to take another 5 years to develop and implement is NOT ACCEPTABLE. The spammers are going to destroy e-mail in the process. They are not playing by the rules, they are not playing by the law, and nobody has a realistic solution that will be ready in time. Why should anybody else play by the rules if the law's not going to deal with them?
Shooting the proverbial messenger is just fine when the problem is the message itself. Shooting the messenger only becomes a problem when you don't want to hear a message about a DIFFERENT problem.
Of course, in this case, I have no problems with shooting the messenger AND the person who sent him...
A twin turbo TA? Well, we got to the meat of that. Launching a TT T/A is not safe on the street, I know. I have driven a Stage 3 Roush Mustang, and I imagine that's about the same, handling-wise. Keep it straight-line, you're golden. Twist the wheels a little and let those turbos kick in, you're gonna drive sideways a bit, then launch into a parked car. I guess that settles the issue of safety knowledge (not to be a smart ass like I've been - seriously, that's NOT a safe setup, as impressive as the power must be).
However, on the subject of overheating...
Did you replace the exhaust with a high flow cat-back system? Preferably, with a MUCH larger outlet and high flow cats. Headers might help a bit too. If your exhaust isn't escaping right, it might be backing up as it comes off the engine and getting pushed back into the system. That would really push a big engine's temps up when the turbo kicked in.
Also, there's some really nice water cooling setups out there for Twin Turbos and, if you have the ram air hood, you might want to cut away the ram air flap (I assume they use a flap in your model) and let the air blow onto the engine instead of into the intake. When you're on the road, the increased wind resistance might hurt gas mileage some since your turbo's never going to suck power, but when you're driving, the air flow might help keep the motor cooler.
Barring highpriced oil coolers and whatnot, however, I don't see much that could be done in a high cid engine with TTs on it. You ought to see how Lingenfelter cools that 427 TT Corvette they built and take a cue from them.
I hate Fast and the Furious. Nothing irritates me more than those twits that think a Civic with 20k in it is any match for a Mustang GT/TA/Vette with 20k in it. Drop a NO2 system in a Civic, will it beat me GT? Yep. It'll mop the streat with it. Of course, if I were to do the same thing, the Civic would like it was sitting still as I ripped it up. When you have a Skyline GT-R or something like that, come talk to me. I always like to point out to the little ricer punks that, while a Prelude may rule the streets, that's only because a big cid engine can be so beefed up that it just can't be street legal anymore (gee... is there a REASON that I always see Civics and Preludes and Integras at the track, but all top 10 times are held by 5.0 Mustangs, 5.7 Trans Ams and Camaros and Corvettes?)
No, it's not bullshit, you're just an idiot and you have a problem with context.
Now, if you can show me where I said anyone SHOULD do it, as opposed to the entire post which is a hypothetical question regarding what would happen if an army of hackers DID do it, I'll eat those words.
And, please, just knock off the moralistic white-hat hacker bs. I'm sick and tired of people continuing the "play by the rules even if the rules are crooked" credo with their inflated egos and pomp. If the solution to the problem is a brute force assault, that's the solution. What sort of self-respecting geek would overlook the solution to a problem because they had a different one in mind to begin with? Mark my words: withing a year Bayesian filtering will be another dead suggestion in the pile of stopgap solutions to the problem. Whitelisting is already a solution only for those few mortals who can afford to miss random / unknown contacts and don't receive enough mail to make the overwhelmingly execruciating maintenance completely offset the benefits. Blacklists are under illegal assault as we speak and nobody is lifting a finger to help them. Computers are being zombified and mobilized on a daily basis making innocent users who just want to send pictures of their kids to grandma unwitting weapons in the arsenal of anyone with a little technical skill and some ill intent.
Hate to tell yah buddy, but the Internet is, in fact, a warzone. The technical solution is a total revamp of protocols, and it's unlikely that the implementation would be anywhere close to being construed as successful given the widespread nature of the network.
And for those of you who've been wondering about the obvious anarchist slant to these last two posts, no, I'm not anarchist, but the Internet IS an anarchy. As a result, it's the responsibility of the clueful few to handle problems in whatever manner the majority community sees fit (including the clueless ones in the community, not just the geeks). The Internet can route around physical damage, but it can't route around social problems like spam. Trying to solve a social problem like spam with a technical solution is stupid. That's like trying to "cure" racism with pills. A strong message needs to be sent, and, unfortunately, it would appear that nobody within the bounds of the law is willing to send it.
So, I ask again: what would happen if the community took care of the problem for them?
Seriously... what would happen if everyone here went rogue, said "fuck it", and just actively blew away spammers (online, mind you, we don't need any gun-toting geeks for the love of god)?
With 700,000+ people on slashdot, a less than 1% high techno-competency rate (let the jokes fly...) would yield 7000 individuals from this site alone capable of tracking spam, breaking down proxies and ISPs, stealing and altering logs, etc. How long would it take before 7000 militant hackers working together broke down the spammers under an onslaught of attacks as underhanded as the ones the spammers are using? People like Ralsky aren't even that smart, technologically. I'm willing to bet that once the tough part is done: tracking them, actually beating the daylights out of their systems and them wouldn't be that hard.
Of course, each individual would have to be willing to deal with the fact that they could be one of the people that gets arrested and charged with a couple of felonies. Sort of like the old trick "yep - all three of you can surely beat me, but the first one in to try it dies". Who wants to be the hero?
Gee, for one thing, you didn't say anything about watching your car's internals on a laptop, you said:
I see lots of people reading books on the road, and it takes more concentration for me to read in my car than glance over at mapquest on laptop.
So EXCUSE me if I took "glance over at mapquest on laptop" to mean you were glancing at mapquest on a laptop (barring the fact, of course, that if you're using mapquest you're getting directions and that means you need to break concentration on the road to either read the directions or analyze the map). I can't imagine where I got THAT idea from. We'll also ignore for a moment that that's like saying "I see lots of people lifting 400 lb. weights. It takes a lot more strength for me to lift a 400 lb. weight than it does to pick up a baseball". That is: it's totally irrelevant and, in context, doesn't even make a point of any kind. Besides, other people being incredibly stupid doesn't justify your behavior. Other people are out there raping, murdering, and stealing. Does that make it okay for me to beat a kid up and steal his lunch money?
And for another thing, WTF are you doing with your car that requires you to monitor it like that and why don't you have analog guages mounted? Assuming you're monitoring a turbo/super setup, I can't imagine how much crap you'd have to be monitoring to have no way of placing analog guages and if you're car is so tuned that you need the pinpoint accuracy (relatively speaking, mind you) of a digital setup, you need to get a life and stop driving a near race-tuned car on the street like you were, well, in a race.
If it's a NOS setup you're monitoring, you're still out of your mind because if you're firing off shots of nitrous ON THE STREET, you SERIOUSLY need to lose your license (and, almost certainly will if you get caught). Assuming you were watching the canisters for a leak, all you need is a warning signal, you don't need to actually monitor it yourself continuously.
Sorry, but I can't picture any situation where, under normal driving, you'd need to monitor the detailed internal workings of your engine with a laptop. Race? Yes. However, if you're racing on the streets, or you're driving a race-tuned car on the streets, you're really in trouble in this discussion as far as your credibility on safety matters goes.
What amazes me most about people like you is that my point is very simple:
Concentrating on something other than driving decreases driving skill by distracting you.
Distracting yourself endangers everyone around you.
Intentionally endangering other people is stupid and you shouldn't do it.
And you're STILL arguing with me! How self-centered can you possibly get when you'd argue against the fact that if you distract yourself while driving, you increase the risk of an accident? Not only that, you argue that it's okay for you to do this!
And, I swear to god... the next moron that says something like "looking over your shoulder is distracting".... LOOKING OVER YOUR SHOULDER IS A LEGITIMATE PART OF DRIVING, DUMBASSES! If you can invent something that eliminates this occasional need, you'd make a fucking fortune! Stop trying to use regular driving tactics as justification for doing dangerous things unnecessarily!
So.... your theory is that people who have already proven themselves to be untrustworthy and dangerous, and have undergone no rehabilitation at all, should be as equally trusted as people who have posessed firearms for decades without using them to detrimental effect?
While I applaud your optimism and faith in humanity, I'm far more skeptical. Until we stop just arbitrarily caging people, drop the pretense of "rehabilitation", and actually make some effort to find out why violent criminals are the way they are and how this issue can be addressed to move them back into "normal" society; I don't think it's wise to trust people with a history of violent crime to possess weapons that make violent crime magnitudes easier to carry out.
As much as people like to bitch and moan about the second amendment, rights are not absolute. Whenever your rights interfere with another person's well-being or safety, your rights stop. It's the "your right to swing your fist ends at my nose" argument. If a violent criminal has proven that they can and will hurt people if allowed to exercise second amendment rights, they have, through their own choices, forfeited their rights in favor of the rights of innocent people.
This holds even more when you consider how many violent criminals are released on "good behavior" solely due to overcrowding and how many violent criminals simply return to prison anyway.
Your brilliant analytical mind sure has felled the opponents in this thread, hasn't it?
That was sarcasm, kid. You know, over on Sitepoint, where I no longer participate because it's full of morons like you, there was an idiot named "Darryl" who thought it was oooohhhhh so hilarious that he got a ticket for driving some 115 mph up the freeway in a Sunfire. His infallible "logic" for why this was perfectly acceptable behavior"?
I can handle it.
Well guess what, shithead, I don't think you can. And, until you can show me that you've passed some high-speed driving test that says "we have verified that this guy can drive as safely at 115 mph as everyone else can at 65", Darryl is nothing more than a total fucking moron.
Much like yourself.
First point: navigational equipment is an integrated part of flying a helicopter or airplane. It is meant to be there and it is meant to be viewed while flying. In addition, other systems are handling the small possibility of a midair collision. None of this exists in your mapquest-enabled vehicle which has, effectively, three navigational tools: the steering wheel, the brakes, and the accelerator. Your comparison was illogical, irrelevant, and the shelter of someone who knows they've been called bullshit on and can't keep up the fight, but doesn't want to admit they're wrong.
Second point: Looking in two different directions is not an issue, because the parent poster was pointing out that, while viewing mapquest, you are not looking in ANY direction that is relevant to driving the vehicle. When looking left, right, forward, or back, however, you are covering a path of travel. That is countless times better than looking in no directions at all, especially given that fact that you CANNOT properly steer the car while not looking out through the windshield. Do not even argue this fact. You CANNOT. You have NO point of reference for determining where your vehicle is on the roadway or how fast it's traveling, much less where it is in relation to moving objects around you. If you try to argue against this point, you are arguing against some of the very principle laws of physics determining human understanding of position and speed in an environment with no reference points. Unless you're psychic, you simply cannot - it is IMPOSSIBLE. You may be able to steer it well enough to keep it in your lane and infer a very rough estimate of speed based on pressure on the gas pedal and current gear, but if you're already close to the double yellow, all it takes is minor drifting and you've gone head on with a van full of schoolchildren.
To put it quite bluntly: I don't care if you THINK you can drive and look at a computer screen at the same time. I'm not going to put my life or the lives of my loved ones in the hands of a marauding moron who THINKS they can do something. There are a lot of idiots like you out there who THINK they can drink five beers and drive home. They kill a lot of people. There are a lot of idiots out there like you who THINK they can talk on a cell and drive at the same time. Coincidentally, those idiots are typically all over the road.
You CANNOT effectively drive a vehicle by NOT looking at the road. It really is that simple, and if you can't get that through that thick chunk of bone you call a skull, then the only thing that's even simpler is YOU.
I bid you good day and will be praying that you drive into a telephone pole on the way home so you don't hurt any innocent people when the time comes that you cause an accident while trying to concentrate on something other than driving.
Yea, nothing like claiming that the "court of media opinion" is weighing in on the matter with a link to a NY Post article. That's like saying that the "court of military opinion" is weighing in on the Iraqi situation and then linking to a blog post by a night guard at a factory where they make those little green army men.
And, if you'd like a flamefest.. Fucktard? How clever. I'm sure it took those old, rusty, grinding gears an awful long time to think that stinging retort up. Maybe you should spend less time with the NY Post and "Bat Boy" (my bad, I guess that's National Inqurirer's freak show) and actually try reading something with a little bit of literary value. Might upgrade your IQ a few points so you could at least come up with insults that don't make you sound like a greasy, pre-pubescent, mullet-afflicted hick.
Slashdot can REALLY get on my fucking nerves now and then. I think I'm going to have to use a Louisville slugger to beat this point into the editors' and submitters' thick skulls...
The NY Post is NOT a credible news source. The NY Post is a TABLOID RAG that INTENTIONALLY writes up utterly ridiculous bullshit for the sole purpose of entertaining and/or selling magazines (and, it might be noted that the NY Post sells like week old baked horseshit, and for good reason).
I'm in Pennsylvania and they sell the NY Post here. However, they pull a dirty trick - most places put it with the regular newspapers instead of with crap like National Inquirer and Weekly World News. Then, people buy it and mistake it for upstanding journalism with some level of integrity. They wrote the piece to incite people. I mod the entire NY Post staff, and the writer of that article in particular, with -1 Flamebait.
PLEASE stop thinking that the NY Post is a newspaper. It is a tabloid, nothing more. It doesn't represent popular opinion, and, in fact, when they write garbage like that, it doesn't even necessarily represent the NY Post's opinion. It's JUST A TABLOID.
No, the NYPost is tricky. In most of the places I've seen it sold here in PA, they don't sell it up on the newstand with the National Inquirer and Weekly World News, they sell it NEAR legitimate newspapers, but not actually on the same stand. People who don't know any better (such as, apparently, the submitter, the editors, and a lot of Slashdot readers) mistake it for legitimate news because of this dirty trick. It BELONGS near WWN, they actually PLACE it on the rack near local papers.
I forget exactly what the article was about, but at one point they ran a front page article that was something to the effect of Nostradamus predicting the WTC attacks. Obviously, other places like History Channel have treated the subject with a bit of humorous investigation, but they made it out to be dead serious. It's just a tabloid, folks. Move along. While the article writer is obviously a sick individual who would rather molest children than play GTA3 (I can only pray, for the children's sake, that if he ever acts on this they've played enough GTA3 that they shoot him dead), it's all being done in the spirit of tabloid "journalism". Only an idiot or a slashdotter would take it seriously.
But when I read three stories, all in reputable news outlets, well, that's a trend.
Okay, chicken little. Whatever you say. Three stories in reputable news outlets is a trend. Let's see. If.05% of the 290M+ population of the U.S. owns a laptop, that means what, 2.06 x 10^-6 % of all the notebook owners in the U.S. experienced that in the past several months (someone might want to check my math.. it's really early)? That's a trend? If that's the case, aren't you far more likely to win the lottery several times than have your laptop battery explode?
Imbecile. There's an enormous difference between something being a possibility and being even remotely likely. Sounds like those idiotic news reports networks show to get stupid people to watch ("WILL YELLOW STICKY NOTES KILL YOU? FIND OUT HOW YOU CAN PROTECT YOU AND YOUR FAMILY AT SIX!!!!")
Actually, chicks dig those pretty-boy ricers I repeatedly cream on the street. You know - the ones that take a Civic Ex and drop $3000 worth of body mods and lights, a big tailpipe and maybe, just maybe, an intake system into the car.
Heh.. I saw a 350hp, street-legal Eclipse GS in Autoweek for $14k though. That'd be a pretty sweet ride with the AWD and all that. A car that light with AWD with that much power would whoop a silly stock WS6 six ways to Sunday any day!
Except, downloads of the OS drivers will increase with the purchases if people are buying them solely for that reason.
Marketeers are good at that crap. If the "9200 series" sales increase and the "9200 series drivers" downloads increase in tandem and at a relatively similar rate, they'll put two and two toghether. Whether they'll care is a whole different story.
You've either been unbelievably lucky in your driving to date, you're lying about even having a license yet, or you lead a very, very sheltered life.
ASCII Art:
|c|o|i| | |x| | |d| | | | | | |
Why don't you now explain to me (o) how, as idiot1 (i) is merging left without a clue and idiot2 (x) who has just merged IMMEDIATELY behind me, I am supposed to avoid hitting anyone without accelerating? I see one opening there, and it's directly ahead of me. Given that nobody is ahead of me, all other avenues of escape are blocked, and I have a split second before the merging moron crashes into my side, what would you suggest? And as an added bonus, the moron that merged behind me WAS STILL ACCELERATING because they were trying to swerve into the far lane to cut off (d). They barely missed swiping me in the process.
If a kid is flying directly at the side of my car on a one lane street (that means "no swerving without hitting parked cars" in case your sheltered driving experience has never taken you into such an area), why don't you explain to me how to avoid him without speeding up? Swerving is not an option as it's one lane. Slowing down ensures that he slams into my car since he's already on a vector to hit it. So what would YOU do oh brilliant one?
And, I'm sorry for the ad hominem here, but, you are a TOTAL IDIOT. NOBODY in their right fucking mind would "tap their brakes" to "scare" a tailgating trucker. That's surefire suicide. I don't know if you've ever dealt with a trucker with an attitude, but they are not even remotely concerned with running your ass over. They're in a vehicle that could roll over you like a tin can and all they'd temporarily get is a slighter rougher ride. On top of that, if they're right on your ass, THEY CAN'T SEE YOUR TAILLIGHTS. If YOU want to risk your life and the lives of your passengers by "tapping your brakes to scare them" be my guest. I'll be sure to remember you for the statistic you become.
I've been in ONE accident, never caused one. The one accident I was in was caused by my "defensive driving" (ignoring, of course, the fact that speeding up to avoid an accident is a defensive manuever). If I'd have sped up instead of trying to swerve around the oncoming car that t-boned me by running out of a driveway without looking or even slowing, I'd have not been hit.
That works great in market situations where people have a tiny clue as to what they're buying. The PC industry is, for the most part, clueless from stem to stern.
Joe Schmoe goes to buy a new car. He gets in a Ford Focus and the fast talking lipman tries to sell it. But Joe Schmoe doesn't like it, it's too slow.
The Lipman puts Joe in a Focus SVT. Okay, not as slow, but Joe's not very comfortable.
Lipman puts Joe in a Mustang, but that's not comfortable either, so he puts him in a Taurus. The Taurus isn't much Joe's style, but it's not too terribly sluggish and it's comfy, so he takes an SeS. Joe has made an intelligent buying decision by weighing his desires against his wallet and picked a reasonable compromise between all of the things that are important to him. Joe's car will work everywhere, and if someone tries to interfere with that, he'll notice. Joe is reasonably clued about this market.
Now, Joe needs a computer. Joe don't know electronics, so Joe goes to Circuit City and starts looking at computers. Joe knew what "200 hp" meant and even had a reasonable understanding of how the torque came into play in his new Taurus. But, Joe doesn't know how the combination of an "onboard video card" and the processor and the "memory" and the speed of the hard drive all come into play. Joe knows he wants to watch DVDs and he wants to surf for porn. The Lipman in Circuit City tells him that this new Compaq has everything he needs. Joe pretends to know what he's looking at, then buys it because it has a soundcard and a DVD-ROM. Joe doesn't know what DRM is, nobody mentioned it, and since he has a DRM'ed system, he'll almost never notice things not working because it always silently grants him access because he's "trusted". Anything that doesn't work will be written off as "broken".
The geeks, on the other hand, being a horribly underwhelming minority, are screaming bloody murder because they can't access half the sites on the net. Google sucks now and we can no longer listen to mp3 samples or watch movie trailers.
Tens of millions of Joes never know anything about the troubles of a couple hundred thousand geeks. DRM has been slipped into everything because the target market has no clue what it is, nobody tells them, and they don't think to ask.
So yes, it's an open market. But, it's an open market controlled by idiots.
Last night I had to stomp the accelerator and shoot up from 55 to 70 to avoid an idiot that decided "merging" at a yield sign meant "pulling into uncoming traffic without looking". Slowing down was not an option thanks to the moron tailgaiting me.
A kid came careening down his driveway on a bike a few months back and almost slapped the back of my car while I was doing 45. If I hadn't stomped the gas and shot up to 55 he might be dead now.
I had to drive my girlfriend's father to the hospital after he severly injured himself with a power tool. Ambulances are notoriously slow in the area because of the extremely rural setting. I spent most of the time on open road with a 45 speed limit doing upwards of 80 mph while he gushed blood in the backseat.
I regularly have to speed up to get away from psychopathic tail-gaiting rigs, pickups, and SUVs that don't appreciate you doing the speed limit on the open highway.
In all of these cases, I had to travel well over the speed limit to PREVENT accidents.
In short - when you're a little older, you'll realize that "defensive driving" is a good way to get somebody killed in some fairly common situations. Once you finally have a little bit of experience driving in the real world where everything doesn't always play out like it does in the driving manual, why not come back and share your thoughts with us on the subject?
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Nice of you to jump to irrelevant conclusions, first of all. It's "news". This is a contrived "news site", so it belong on this site.
But, to answer your question, I'll take a gander...
It's a protectionary measure introduced to curb COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT not PIRACY. Stop being a tool. They're not the same thing. While I suppose it's possible, I doubt you'll see some swashbucking pirate with a flintlock pistol in one hand and a camcorder in the other.
That being the case, it's the job of the respective movie studios to go after the people recording in the cinema.
It frightens me to no end that this country is so pathetically blinded by constant corporate and governmental corruption that they don't even notice more and more laws appear that criminalize things that were previously handled through civil litigation. It is not the cops' or the DA's job to prosecute people infringining copyright. Each movie studio is responsible for protecting their copyright. The only reason law enforcement gets in rumbles with REAL pirates, a la the rings in southern asia, is that they're actually dangerous criminals engaging in organized, sometimes violent crime rackets.
I pose a question. If it's punishable by prison and fine if someone records a movie in the theatre, can I expect the same help from the law if someone steals a big chunk of my code? No? Thought not.
You people that think the cops don't have better things to do than run around chasing overwieght middle aged guys with camcorders and middle school kids with cable modems need to get your heads out of your motherfucking asses and take notice as to just how much the "law" and government have impeded where it doesn't belong over the last half century. Keep this pace up, and you'll have S.W.A.T. teams busting into your house for breaking EULAs in a few years. Oh, but then we'll just keep trotting out the tired old "well, if they hadn't done something wrong"... yea.. right.
And, on a less logical, more personal note:
Boo..... fucking..... hoo.
Did technology weave the poor wittle executives in the dust again? Awwww....
While it's (somewhat) unfortunate that people are going to be hurt unfairly as a result of this horrible crime of camcording, I can think of much graver injustices in the world that need to be dealt with at a criminal level. I'm not going to give up too many (read: any) tears because some preening pretty-boy actor had to take a salary cut to $5 million dollars for a single movie from $20 million. You won't see me bawling when some executive can't afford to replace his beater 2 year old Ferrari because of the horrible, horrible "pirates".
It's called bias.
It's called, you don't know what you're talking about.
Binary nVidia drivers update, Linux 2.4.x kernel: under 5 minutes.
Linmodem from Netodragon, driver compile, setup, and install + setup time for wvdial: under 10 minutes.
Driver compile and installation for oddball cd-rom: under 5 minutes.
Networking problems with Linux in the last month: none.
Forced upgrades with Linux in the last month: none.
Necessary patch fixes in the last month. Rough estimate? 2 hours tops including download times, and that's without up2date or apt-get type tools.
Total estimated time to bring my XP machine up to snuff with all the patches and other bullshit that's come out since I installed it: easily 5+ hours not including download times.
Oh, and by the way: time spent maintaining my minimal Linux firewall/router: 1 hour. Compiled a new kernel. All that time is COMPLETELY rebuilding the OS to suit a changed need, something that is beyond a mere "hassle" with Windows.
Sorry, the bias is justified. Maintaining Windows is an ENORMOUS hassle thanks to all the locked down, zipped up, "it's our way or no way" attitude of the Redmond elite. Swing it whatever way you want. Spend time maintaining average Linux and average Windows distros and you'll pick up a nasty addiction to painkillers from Windows, not Linux (unless you're one of those morons that expects Linux, a completely different operating system that was derived from a completely different philosophy for computer systems, to work just like Windows in which case you'll just ditch it because you're too dumb to realize it's not the same O/S ["you" is used figuratively, not referring to "you the poster" personally]). Spend time maintaining "wierd" configurations for pretty much any system and you're in for trouble.
While that's unfortunate for you, the end customer, it's just too bad. If they're not playing by the rules and they're stealing peoples' code, then the problem is that they were crooks, not that they used free software. Wouldn't be much different from Microsoft stealing Sun code.
Perhaps it's a dawning age when businesses will be afraid to use proprietary software for fear that the company integrated GPL'ed source into their binaries without giving poper credit and/or providing the sources? Imagine, all the manadrones going from "Open Source is untrustworthy, we might get sued" or other such nonsense to "Proprietary systems are untrustworthy, they might get sued and we'd lose support".
Ahhhh.... sweet sweet vindication... maybe.
I think we'd all rather see an elegant solution here.
I don't WANT regulation, plain and simple. The government fucks up enough things without sticking its nose in the Internet too. It would be nice, however, if they'd bother to investigate and prosecute spammers and spam-virus writers the way they go after the "real Bad Guys" like Mitnick or Phiber Optik.
I think we'd all rather see an elegant solution here. I think we'd all rather NOT see More DOS attacks.
Agreed on both counts. But, I don't see any elegant solutions in the works and the ones that are on the way are already under attack. Bayesian filtering is trivially circumvented with blocks of "real" text to drive down the % likelihood of a spam being labeled as such and, at the same time, drive UP the likelihood that a legitimate message is labeled as spam. It's the best stopgap to date, but it will fail eventually. As for the DDoSs - a good way to put a total stop to them would be to wipe out the spammers. Sure, there'd be a huge spike for awhile if people DDoSed in return, but that's a clunky, temporary solution to them. There's far more "elegant" ways to fight back.
And, physical violence? Sort of. It's more akin to someone driving past your mailbox and bashing it in every time you get a new one. When you call the cops and they don't or can't do anything about it, what do you do? I'll tell you a good counter-measure: when you hear them coming down the street *pok* *pok* *pok* - grab a crowbar and hide in the bushes. As they slow down to pop your mailbox next, jump out and smash the back windshield of the car.
Never saw 'em again.
If the law can't be bothered to handle it (prosecution), and it can't be settled peacefully ("elegant" technology), I have no problem with a gun battle in the streets as long as the "victims" that you're fighting for approve of it.
Now, if someone has a serious proposal for retooling the SMTP or has some other workable solution to the problem, and has a plan for rolling it out, I'm all ears. However, I don't see a serious proposal that will be ready NOW and spam is a HUGE problem NOW. A solution that's going to take another 5 years to develop and implement is NOT ACCEPTABLE. The spammers are going to destroy e-mail in the process. They are not playing by the rules, they are not playing by the law, and nobody has a realistic solution that will be ready in time. Why should anybody else play by the rules if the law's not going to deal with them?
Shooting the proverbial messenger is just fine when the problem is the message itself. Shooting the messenger only becomes a problem when you don't want to hear a message about a DIFFERENT problem.
Of course, in this case, I have no problems with shooting the messenger AND the person who sent him...
A twin turbo TA? Well, we got to the meat of that. Launching a TT T/A is not safe on the street, I know. I have driven a Stage 3 Roush Mustang, and I imagine that's about the same, handling-wise. Keep it straight-line, you're golden. Twist the wheels a little and let those turbos kick in, you're gonna drive sideways a bit, then launch into a parked car. I guess that settles the issue of safety knowledge (not to be a smart ass like I've been - seriously, that's NOT a safe setup, as impressive as the power must be).
However, on the subject of overheating...
Did you replace the exhaust with a high flow cat-back system? Preferably, with a MUCH larger outlet and high flow cats. Headers might help a bit too. If your exhaust isn't escaping right, it might be backing up as it comes off the engine and getting pushed back into the system. That would really push a big engine's temps up when the turbo kicked in.
Also, there's some really nice water cooling setups out there for Twin Turbos and, if you have the ram air hood, you might want to cut away the ram air flap (I assume they use a flap in your model) and let the air blow onto the engine instead of into the intake. When you're on the road, the increased wind resistance might hurt gas mileage some since your turbo's never going to suck power, but when you're driving, the air flow might help keep the motor cooler.
Barring highpriced oil coolers and whatnot, however, I don't see much that could be done in a high cid engine with TTs on it. You ought to see how Lingenfelter cools that 427 TT Corvette they built and take a cue from them.
I hate Fast and the Furious. Nothing irritates me more than those twits that think a Civic with 20k in it is any match for a Mustang GT/TA/Vette with 20k in it. Drop a NO2 system in a Civic, will it beat me GT? Yep. It'll mop the streat with it. Of course, if I were to do the same thing, the Civic would like it was sitting still as I ripped it up. When you have a Skyline GT-R or something like that, come talk to me. I always like to point out to the little ricer punks that, while a Prelude may rule the streets, that's only because a big cid engine can be so beefed up that it just can't be street legal anymore (gee... is there a REASON that I always see Civics and Preludes and Integras at the track, but all top 10 times are held by 5.0 Mustangs, 5.7 Trans Ams and Camaros and Corvettes?)
No, it's not bullshit, you're just an idiot and you have a problem with context.
Now, if you can show me where I said anyone SHOULD do it, as opposed to the entire post which is a hypothetical question regarding what would happen if an army of hackers DID do it, I'll eat those words.
And, please, just knock off the moralistic white-hat hacker bs. I'm sick and tired of people continuing the "play by the rules even if the rules are crooked" credo with their inflated egos and pomp. If the solution to the problem is a brute force assault, that's the solution. What sort of self-respecting geek would overlook the solution to a problem because they had a different one in mind to begin with? Mark my words: withing a year Bayesian filtering will be another dead suggestion in the pile of stopgap solutions to the problem. Whitelisting is already a solution only for those few mortals who can afford to miss random / unknown contacts and don't receive enough mail to make the overwhelmingly execruciating maintenance completely offset the benefits. Blacklists are under illegal assault as we speak and nobody is lifting a finger to help them. Computers are being zombified and mobilized on a daily basis making innocent users who just want to send pictures of their kids to grandma unwitting weapons in the arsenal of anyone with a little technical skill and some ill intent.
Hate to tell yah buddy, but the Internet is, in fact, a warzone. The technical solution is a total revamp of protocols, and it's unlikely that the implementation would be anywhere close to being construed as successful given the widespread nature of the network.
And for those of you who've been wondering about the obvious anarchist slant to these last two posts, no, I'm not anarchist, but the Internet IS an anarchy. As a result, it's the responsibility of the clueful few to handle problems in whatever manner the majority community sees fit (including the clueless ones in the community, not just the geeks). The Internet can route around physical damage, but it can't route around social problems like spam. Trying to solve a social problem like spam with a technical solution is stupid. That's like trying to "cure" racism with pills. A strong message needs to be sent, and, unfortunately, it would appear that nobody within the bounds of the law is willing to send it.
So, I ask again: what would happen if the community took care of the problem for them?
Seriously... what would happen if everyone here went rogue, said "fuck it", and just actively blew away spammers (online, mind you, we don't need any gun-toting geeks for the love of god)?
With 700,000+ people on slashdot, a less than 1% high techno-competency rate (let the jokes fly...) would yield 7000 individuals from this site alone capable of tracking spam, breaking down proxies and ISPs, stealing and altering logs, etc. How long would it take before 7000 militant hackers working together broke down the spammers under an onslaught of attacks as underhanded as the ones the spammers are using? People like Ralsky aren't even that smart, technologically. I'm willing to bet that once the tough part is done: tracking them, actually beating the daylights out of their systems and them wouldn't be that hard.
Of course, each individual would have to be willing to deal with the fact that they could be one of the people that gets arrested and charged with a couple of felonies. Sort of like the old trick "yep - all three of you can surely beat me, but the first one in to try it dies". Who wants to be the hero?
Gee, for one thing, you didn't say anything about watching your car's internals on a laptop, you said:
I see lots of people reading books on the road, and it takes more concentration for me to read in my car than glance over at mapquest on laptop.
So EXCUSE me if I took "glance over at mapquest on laptop" to mean you were glancing at mapquest on a laptop (barring the fact, of course, that if you're using mapquest you're getting directions and that means you need to break concentration on the road to either read the directions or analyze the map). I can't imagine where I got THAT idea from. We'll also ignore for a moment that that's like saying "I see lots of people lifting 400 lb. weights. It takes a lot more strength for me to lift a 400 lb. weight than it does to pick up a baseball". That is: it's totally irrelevant and, in context, doesn't even make a point of any kind. Besides, other people being incredibly stupid doesn't justify your behavior. Other people are out there raping, murdering, and stealing. Does that make it okay for me to beat a kid up and steal his lunch money?
And for another thing, WTF are you doing with your car that requires you to monitor it like that and why don't you have analog guages mounted? Assuming you're monitoring a turbo/super setup, I can't imagine how much crap you'd have to be monitoring to have no way of placing analog guages and if you're car is so tuned that you need the pinpoint accuracy (relatively speaking, mind you) of a digital setup, you need to get a life and stop driving a near race-tuned car on the street like you were, well, in a race.
If it's a NOS setup you're monitoring, you're still out of your mind because if you're firing off shots of nitrous ON THE STREET, you SERIOUSLY need to lose your license (and, almost certainly will if you get caught). Assuming you were watching the canisters for a leak, all you need is a warning signal, you don't need to actually monitor it yourself continuously.
Sorry, but I can't picture any situation where, under normal driving, you'd need to monitor the detailed internal workings of your engine with a laptop. Race? Yes. However, if you're racing on the streets, or you're driving a race-tuned car on the streets, you're really in trouble in this discussion as far as your credibility on safety matters goes.
What amazes me most about people like you is that my point is very simple:
- Concentrating on something other than driving decreases driving skill by distracting you.
- Distracting yourself endangers everyone around you.
- Intentionally endangering other people is stupid and you shouldn't do it.
And you're STILL arguing with me! How self-centered can you possibly get when you'd argue against the fact that if you distract yourself while driving, you increase the risk of an accident? Not only that, you argue that it's okay for you to do this!And, I swear to god... the next moron that says something like "looking over your shoulder is distracting".... LOOKING OVER YOUR SHOULDER IS A LEGITIMATE PART OF DRIVING, DUMBASSES! If you can invent something that eliminates this occasional need, you'd make a fucking fortune! Stop trying to use regular driving tactics as justification for doing dangerous things unnecessarily!
I imagine he's either monitoring a turbo/super charger's boost or he's watching the engine closely because he has nitrous.
So.... your theory is that people who have already proven themselves to be untrustworthy and dangerous, and have undergone no rehabilitation at all, should be as equally trusted as people who have posessed firearms for decades without using them to detrimental effect?
While I applaud your optimism and faith in humanity, I'm far more skeptical. Until we stop just arbitrarily caging people, drop the pretense of "rehabilitation", and actually make some effort to find out why violent criminals are the way they are and how this issue can be addressed to move them back into "normal" society; I don't think it's wise to trust people with a history of violent crime to possess weapons that make violent crime magnitudes easier to carry out.
As much as people like to bitch and moan about the second amendment, rights are not absolute. Whenever your rights interfere with another person's well-being or safety, your rights stop. It's the "your right to swing your fist ends at my nose" argument. If a violent criminal has proven that they can and will hurt people if allowed to exercise second amendment rights, they have, through their own choices, forfeited their rights in favor of the rights of innocent people.
This holds even more when you consider how many violent criminals are released on "good behavior" solely due to overcrowding and how many violent criminals simply return to prison anyway.
Your brilliant analytical mind sure has felled the opponents in this thread, hasn't it?
That was sarcasm, kid. You know, over on Sitepoint, where I no longer participate because it's full of morons like you, there was an idiot named "Darryl" who thought it was oooohhhhh so hilarious that he got a ticket for driving some 115 mph up the freeway in a Sunfire. His infallible "logic" for why this was perfectly acceptable behavior"?
I can handle it.
Well guess what, shithead, I don't think you can. And, until you can show me that you've passed some high-speed driving test that says "we have verified that this guy can drive as safely at 115 mph as everyone else can at 65", Darryl is nothing more than a total fucking moron.
Much like yourself.
First point: navigational equipment is an integrated part of flying a helicopter or airplane. It is meant to be there and it is meant to be viewed while flying. In addition, other systems are handling the small possibility of a midair collision. None of this exists in your mapquest-enabled vehicle which has, effectively, three navigational tools: the steering wheel, the brakes, and the accelerator. Your comparison was illogical, irrelevant, and the shelter of someone who knows they've been called bullshit on and can't keep up the fight, but doesn't want to admit they're wrong.
Second point: Looking in two different directions is not an issue, because the parent poster was pointing out that, while viewing mapquest, you are not looking in ANY direction that is relevant to driving the vehicle. When looking left, right, forward, or back, however, you are covering a path of travel. That is countless times better than looking in no directions at all, especially given that fact that you CANNOT properly steer the car while not looking out through the windshield. Do not even argue this fact. You CANNOT. You have NO point of reference for determining where your vehicle is on the roadway or how fast it's traveling, much less where it is in relation to moving objects around you. If you try to argue against this point, you are arguing against some of the very principle laws of physics determining human understanding of position and speed in an environment with no reference points. Unless you're psychic, you simply cannot - it is IMPOSSIBLE. You may be able to steer it well enough to keep it in your lane and infer a very rough estimate of speed based on pressure on the gas pedal and current gear, but if you're already close to the double yellow, all it takes is minor drifting and you've gone head on with a van full of schoolchildren.
To put it quite bluntly: I don't care if you THINK you can drive and look at a computer screen at the same time. I'm not going to put my life or the lives of my loved ones in the hands of a marauding moron who THINKS they can do something. There are a lot of idiots like you out there who THINK they can drink five beers and drive home. They kill a lot of people. There are a lot of idiots out there like you who THINK they can talk on a cell and drive at the same time. Coincidentally, those idiots are typically all over the road.
You CANNOT effectively drive a vehicle by NOT looking at the road. It really is that simple, and if you can't get that through that thick chunk of bone you call a skull, then the only thing that's even simpler is YOU.
I bid you good day and will be praying that you drive into a telephone pole on the way home so you don't hurt any innocent people when the time comes that you cause an accident while trying to concentrate on something other than driving.
Yea, nothing like claiming that the "court of media opinion" is weighing in on the matter with a link to a NY Post article. That's like saying that the "court of military opinion" is weighing in on the Iraqi situation and then linking to a blog post by a night guard at a factory where they make those little green army men.
And, if you'd like a flamefest.. Fucktard? How clever. I'm sure it took those old, rusty, grinding gears an awful long time to think that stinging retort up. Maybe you should spend less time with the NY Post and "Bat Boy" (my bad, I guess that's National Inqurirer's freak show) and actually try reading something with a little bit of literary value. Might upgrade your IQ a few points so you could at least come up with insults that don't make you sound like a greasy, pre-pubescent, mullet-afflicted hick.
Slashdot can REALLY get on my fucking nerves now and then. I think I'm going to have to use a Louisville slugger to beat this point into the editors' and submitters' thick skulls...
The NY Post is NOT a credible news source. The NY Post is a TABLOID RAG that INTENTIONALLY writes up utterly ridiculous bullshit for the sole purpose of entertaining and/or selling magazines (and, it might be noted that the NY Post sells like week old baked horseshit, and for good reason).
I'm in Pennsylvania and they sell the NY Post here. However, they pull a dirty trick - most places put it with the regular newspapers instead of with crap like National Inquirer and Weekly World News. Then, people buy it and mistake it for upstanding journalism with some level of integrity. They wrote the piece to incite people. I mod the entire NY Post staff, and the writer of that article in particular, with -1 Flamebait.
PLEASE stop thinking that the NY Post is a newspaper. It is a tabloid, nothing more. It doesn't represent popular opinion, and, in fact, when they write garbage like that, it doesn't even necessarily represent the NY Post's opinion. It's JUST A TABLOID.
Catch it with the space shuttle and it's current tools?
Imagine the space shuttle as a catcher in baseball. Made of wood. Manipulated by strings like a puppet.
Now, imagine trying to use that contraption to catch a rocket-propelled grenade.
Freudian slip?
No, the NYPost is tricky. In most of the places I've seen it sold here in PA, they don't sell it up on the newstand with the National Inquirer and Weekly World News, they sell it NEAR legitimate newspapers, but not actually on the same stand. People who don't know any better (such as, apparently, the submitter, the editors, and a lot of Slashdot readers) mistake it for legitimate news because of this dirty trick. It BELONGS near WWN, they actually PLACE it on the rack near local papers.
I forget exactly what the article was about, but at one point they ran a front page article that was something to the effect of Nostradamus predicting the WTC attacks. Obviously, other places like History Channel have treated the subject with a bit of humorous investigation, but they made it out to be dead serious. It's just a tabloid, folks. Move along. While the article writer is obviously a sick individual who would rather molest children than play GTA3 (I can only pray, for the children's sake, that if he ever acts on this they've played enough GTA3 that they shoot him dead), it's all being done in the spirit of tabloid "journalism". Only an idiot or a slashdotter would take it seriously.
But when I read three stories, all in reputable news outlets, well, that's a trend.
Okay, chicken little. Whatever you say. Three stories in reputable news outlets is a trend. Let's see. If .05% of the 290M+ population of the U.S. owns a laptop, that means what, 2.06 x 10^-6 % of all the notebook owners in the U.S. experienced that in the past several months (someone might want to check my math.. it's really early)? That's a trend? If that's the case, aren't you far more likely to win the lottery several times than have your laptop battery explode?
Imbecile. There's an enormous difference between something being a possibility and being even remotely likely. Sounds like those idiotic news reports networks show to get stupid people to watch ("WILL YELLOW STICKY NOTES KILL YOU? FIND OUT HOW YOU CAN PROTECT YOU AND YOUR FAMILY AT SIX!!!!")
Actually, chicks dig those pretty-boy ricers I repeatedly cream on the street. You know - the ones that take a Civic Ex and drop $3000 worth of body mods and lights, a big tailpipe and maybe, just maybe, an intake system into the car.
Heh.. I saw a 350hp, street-legal Eclipse GS in Autoweek for $14k though. That'd be a pretty sweet ride with the AWD and all that. A car that light with AWD with that much power would whoop a silly stock WS6 six ways to Sunday any day!
Except, downloads of the OS drivers will increase with the purchases if people are buying them solely for that reason.
Marketeers are good at that crap. If the "9200 series" sales increase and the "9200 series drivers" downloads increase in tandem and at a relatively similar rate, they'll put two and two toghether. Whether they'll care is a whole different story.
You've either been unbelievably lucky in your driving to date, you're lying about even having a license yet, or you lead a very, very sheltered life.
ASCII Art:
Why don't you now explain to me (o) how, as idiot1 (i) is merging left without a clue and idiot2 (x) who has just merged IMMEDIATELY behind me, I am supposed to avoid hitting anyone without accelerating? I see one opening there, and it's directly ahead of me. Given that nobody is ahead of me, all other avenues of escape are blocked, and I have a split second before the merging moron crashes into my side, what would you suggest? And as an added bonus, the moron that merged behind me WAS STILL ACCELERATING because they were trying to swerve into the far lane to cut off (d). They barely missed swiping me in the process.If a kid is flying directly at the side of my car on a one lane street (that means "no swerving without hitting parked cars" in case your sheltered driving experience has never taken you into such an area), why don't you explain to me how to avoid him without speeding up? Swerving is not an option as it's one lane. Slowing down ensures that he slams into my car since he's already on a vector to hit it. So what would YOU do oh brilliant one?
And, I'm sorry for the ad hominem here, but, you are a TOTAL IDIOT. NOBODY in their right fucking mind would "tap their brakes" to "scare" a tailgating trucker. That's surefire suicide. I don't know if you've ever dealt with a trucker with an attitude, but they are not even remotely concerned with running your ass over. They're in a vehicle that could roll over you like a tin can and all they'd temporarily get is a slighter rougher ride. On top of that, if they're right on your ass, THEY CAN'T SEE YOUR TAILLIGHTS. If YOU want to risk your life and the lives of your passengers by "tapping your brakes to scare them" be my guest. I'll be sure to remember you for the statistic you become.
I've been in ONE accident, never caused one. The one accident I was in was caused by my "defensive driving" (ignoring, of course, the fact that speeding up to avoid an accident is a defensive manuever). If I'd have sped up instead of trying to swerve around the oncoming car that t-boned me by running out of a driveway without looking or even slowing, I'd have not been hit.
That works great in market situations where people have a tiny clue as to what they're buying. The PC industry is, for the most part, clueless from stem to stern.
Joe Schmoe goes to buy a new car. He gets in a Ford Focus and the fast talking lipman tries to sell it. But Joe Schmoe doesn't like it, it's too slow.
The Lipman puts Joe in a Focus SVT. Okay, not as slow, but Joe's not very comfortable.Lipman puts Joe in a Mustang, but that's not comfortable either, so he puts him in a Taurus. The Taurus isn't much Joe's style, but it's not too terribly sluggish and it's comfy, so he takes an SeS. Joe has made an intelligent buying decision by weighing his desires against his wallet and picked a reasonable compromise between all of the things that are important to him. Joe's car will work everywhere, and if someone tries to interfere with that, he'll notice. Joe is reasonably clued about this market.
Now, Joe needs a computer. Joe don't know electronics, so Joe goes to Circuit City and starts looking at computers. Joe knew what "200 hp" meant and even had a reasonable understanding of how the torque came into play in his new Taurus. But, Joe doesn't know how the combination of an "onboard video card" and the processor and the "memory" and the speed of the hard drive all come into play. Joe knows he wants to watch DVDs and he wants to surf for porn. The Lipman in Circuit City tells him that this new Compaq has everything he needs. Joe pretends to know what he's looking at, then buys it because it has a soundcard and a DVD-ROM. Joe doesn't know what DRM is, nobody mentioned it, and since he has a DRM'ed system, he'll almost never notice things not working because it always silently grants him access because he's "trusted". Anything that doesn't work will be written off as "broken".
The geeks, on the other hand, being a horribly underwhelming minority, are screaming bloody murder because they can't access half the sites on the net. Google sucks now and we can no longer listen to mp3 samples or watch movie trailers.
Tens of millions of Joes never know anything about the troubles of a couple hundred thousand geeks. DRM has been slipped into everything because the target market has no clue what it is, nobody tells them, and they don't think to ask.
So yes, it's an open market. But, it's an open market controlled by idiots.
I have a Mustang GT and I don't get chicks. Where are my chicks? I WANT CHICKS!
Last night I had to stomp the accelerator and shoot up from 55 to 70 to avoid an idiot that decided "merging" at a yield sign meant "pulling into uncoming traffic without looking". Slowing down was not an option thanks to the moron tailgaiting me.
A kid came careening down his driveway on a bike a few months back and almost slapped the back of my car while I was doing 45. If I hadn't stomped the gas and shot up to 55 he might be dead now.
I had to drive my girlfriend's father to the hospital after he severly injured himself with a power tool. Ambulances are notoriously slow in the area because of the extremely rural setting. I spent most of the time on open road with a 45 speed limit doing upwards of 80 mph while he gushed blood in the backseat.
I regularly have to speed up to get away from psychopathic tail-gaiting rigs, pickups, and SUVs that don't appreciate you doing the speed limit on the open highway.
In all of these cases, I had to travel well over the speed limit to PREVENT accidents.
In short - when you're a little older, you'll realize that "defensive driving" is a good way to get somebody killed in some fairly common situations. Once you finally have a little bit of experience driving in the real world where everything doesn't always play out like it does in the driving manual, why not come back and share your thoughts with us on the subject?
you'll just say we planted them.
It's just as well that we don't find them. I don't think they'll grow well in the middle of the desert anyhow.