Many cities have been adjusting the timing of signals to be lower than standard lengths required by national standards to increase ticket revenue.
They could also be doing it to try to squeeze a little better level of service out of their capacity analysis so they don't have to spend money widening (maybe that extra couple of seconds per phase is the difference between a "D" and an "E"), or because they're ignorant of the national standards and don't realize they're being stupid.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to answer the "malice or stupidity?" question by saying that malice isn't a possibility. I'm just saying that among traffic engineers -- especially ones employed by jurisdictions -- there's plenty of stupidity to go around.
If you did that, then some stupid pedestrian would walk too close to the road, not see the signal change, get hit by a car and sue. Then the blinder would be removed again.
Or, even if that wouldn't actually happen, the excessively-risk-averse legal department (either at the signal manufacturer, or at the jurisdiction controlling the intersection) would still use such an argument to nix the idea before it would ever get installed.
We're not talking about cars sitting at the stop bar, we're talking about cars who have a green light who are approaching the intersection. The difference in angle between a pedestrian on the sidewalk and a car in the lane 15 feet to the side and 300 feet back up the road is only about 3 degrees.
there is no excuse for hitting a pedestrian in a cross walk or for a car to hit car at a cross walk
Of course there is! If the car has the right of way and is coming through the intersection at speed, but a pedestrian steps into the crosswalk against a "don't walk" signal when the car is too close to stop, then the resulting collision is the [now ex-]pedestrian's fault.
You can enter the intersection on yellow, and (legally speaking) it doesn't count as running the red even if it turns red while you're still in it. The point of the yellow light, however, is that you "shouldn't" enter on yellow unless it's physically impossible for you to stop. (But "shouldn't" is unenforceable.)
What they were thinking is that the phase needed to be longer to let all the vehicles through.
In other words, the minimum length of the green phase is determined by two factors: the time it takes for a pedestrian to cross (starting as soon as the light turns green) (X seconds), and the time it takes for the maximum design-capacity number of cars to cross (Y seconds). If Y > X, the light stays green after the pedestrian countdown ends.
The problem is not drivers looking at the pedestrian signal for the crosswalk perpendicular to the, the problem is drivers looking at the signal for the crosswalk parallel to them. If I'm a driver with a green light, and I can see that the ped countdown timer for the same direction currently reads "7," then I know I have 7 seconds to get to the light before it turns yellow.
In contrast, looking at perpendicular pedestrian countdowns is useful when you're at a red light and wanting to know when it will turn green, although that's less reliable because you also have to know whether there will be any left turn phases.
(This assumes the limiting factor on the phase length is pedestrian crossing time, which is often the case.)
And the worst part is when there's a "courteous" dumbass with a gap behind him and then a platoon of cars behind that. If he just went immediately then I could pull out behind him. But because he tried to wait on me instead of just getting out of the way (but then eventually went when he realized that I refused to go out-of-turn), the gap behind him closed and now I have to wait for the whole damn platoon. Thanks, dumbass!
Of course, the reality may be that there's evidence of further illegal activities that he hasn't admitted to in the encrypted files. That might make the case for self-incrimination.
But in making such an argument, wouldn't he then be admitting them, thus invalidating the case for self-incrimination? Sure, it's a catch-22 (and therefore should not be true), but the judicial system doesn't seem to care about that anymore...
Some people might suggest that you could just make it bigger, but that's often not a feasible idea, even if it is lighter than the usual materials. For one example is why skyscrapers are not made of brick. It doesn't matter how wide your walls of brick would be, after a certain point, the weight of the bricks would crush the lower ones, and then the whole building collapses. The steel reinforced concrete we use can sustain much larger loads, and so is used for tall and heavy projects instead of bricks. Of course tethered satellite has to withstand much greater stresses, whether it's crushing down, pulling up, or swaying to the side. That's why super light but otherwise more conventional materials won't work.
Your own example disproves your argument: if the bricks in your skyscraper weighed much less (but had the same compression strength), then you could stack many more of them on top before the bottom brick would be crushed, allowing you to build a taller skyscraper.
Look, if you're so partisan that it blinds you to the blatant problems with this situation, then nothing I could say will convince you. I, however, can see that Republicans abusing their 501c3 status and Democrats corrupting the IRS to pursue a witch-hunt are both entirely possible. I don't know which of those happened -- cynically, I suspect both -- but I'm not going to pretend anybody is squeaky-clean just because they're on "my side!"
There is a saying: "once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is enemy action." Even if each thing could plausibly be a mistake due to incompetence when considered individually, the combination suggests that somebody is acting in bad faith.
Unless you consider it gross incompetence to allow users to delete emails. Even the cat joke ones.
Disk space is cheap, and the Federal Records Act (etc.) says that stuff should be FOIA-able. So yes, I think that if somebody FOIAs the cat jokes then the IRS should be able to provide them!
Okay, fine. In that case, add a "...and the Federal Records Act (among other things) explicitly makes the kind of IT gross incompetence you mention illegal..." clause to my previous statement!
Why is it that one of the few instances where the argument "we have sovereign immunity; go fuck yourself" is legitimate is one of the few instances where they don't use it?!
When it's the user's hard drive and the contents of the mail server and the backups of the hard drive and the backups of the mail server and the user seems reluctant to tell the truth about what the emails actually say and there are allegations of misconduct involving said emails and (as far as we know) the IRS isn't also missing a whole bunch of non-related emails, only "coincidentally" the potentially-damaging ones... then maybe it really is a fucking conspiracy!
Oh yeah, once I got properly transferred to Comcast's cablecard activation line it was fine. The problem is that the first couple of people I talked to were too incompetent to even do that (i.e., one of them didn't know the difference between Comcast's cablecard activation line and TiVo's customer service).
This was about a year ago, by the way. Comcast had "forced" me to get cable by offering a lower price for internet + cable than for internet alone, and I figured that if I'm forced to get TV then I will damn well use it. Now, thankfully, I'm back on a relatively good Internet-only deal so the cablecard has been returned.
The problem is your modern TV does not have enough horsepower to keep up with the cable card. Sure a TV *could* have that horsepower but when a consumer is presented with a $300 tv that plugs into their $10/mo cable box vs a $900 tv that allows you to forego the cable box you can bet consumers will pick the former option becuase it's less money upfront.
So what you're saying is that all these "smart TVs" that do have enough horsepower must support CableCard, right? Except they don't, so you're wrong.
With that said, doing a search for cablecard on various shopping sites brings up a plethora of devices under $200.
[Citation Needed]. I know of exactly two, the TiVo and the HDHomeRun. I own a HDHomeRun, and it was a bitch to set up because even Comcast customer support had never heard of it (at one point, they told me to call TiVo!).
No, they hate it because it's a massive pain in the ass to deal with.
The cable industry designed the CableCard standard themselves, so that's their own goddamn fault!
Yes, all of us programmers are smart enough to realize you could just trigger the auto-wake a minute or two early, but they don't do that... and that's not the fault of your cable company it's the fault of Motorola, ARRIS, Pace, and the other makers of the actual equipment. Their code is clunky and shit, and to top it off someone asswipe company probably has a software patent on 'waking up the box prior to the recording start time to minimize power consumption'. Yes, really.
Bullshit.
It is the cable company's fault precisely because the cable company, not the user, is choosing which cable boxes to buy and the cable company (unlike the user) doesn't give a shit about user experience. If cable boxes / DVRs were sold retail instead of rented there would be competition and the manufacturers would be forced to get their shit together!
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They could also be doing it to try to squeeze a little better level of service out of their capacity analysis so they don't have to spend money widening (maybe that extra couple of seconds per phase is the difference between a "D" and an "E"), or because they're ignorant of the national standards and don't realize they're being stupid.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to answer the "malice or stupidity?" question by saying that malice isn't a possibility. I'm just saying that among traffic engineers -- especially ones employed by jurisdictions -- there's plenty of stupidity to go around.
If you did that, then some stupid pedestrian would walk too close to the road, not see the signal change, get hit by a car and sue. Then the blinder would be removed again.
Or, even if that wouldn't actually happen, the excessively-risk-averse legal department (either at the signal manufacturer, or at the jurisdiction controlling the intersection) would still use such an argument to nix the idea before it would ever get installed.
We're not talking about cars sitting at the stop bar, we're talking about cars who have a green light who are approaching the intersection. The difference in angle between a pedestrian on the sidewalk and a car in the lane 15 feet to the side and 300 feet back up the road is only about 3 degrees.
Of course there is! If the car has the right of way and is coming through the intersection at speed, but a pedestrian steps into the crosswalk against a "don't walk" signal when the car is too close to stop, then the resulting collision is the [now ex-]pedestrian's fault.
You can enter the intersection on yellow, and (legally speaking) it doesn't count as running the red even if it turns red while you're still in it. The point of the yellow light, however, is that you "shouldn't" enter on yellow unless it's physically impossible for you to stop. (But "shouldn't" is unenforceable.)
What they were thinking is that the phase needed to be longer to let all the vehicles through.
In other words, the minimum length of the green phase is determined by two factors: the time it takes for a pedestrian to cross (starting as soon as the light turns green) (X seconds), and the time it takes for the maximum design-capacity number of cars to cross (Y seconds). If Y > X, the light stays green after the pedestrian countdown ends.
And what if they don't? You're gonna deck them?
The problem is not drivers looking at the pedestrian signal for the crosswalk perpendicular to the, the problem is drivers looking at the signal for the crosswalk parallel to them. If I'm a driver with a green light, and I can see that the ped countdown timer for the same direction currently reads "7," then I know I have 7 seconds to get to the light before it turns yellow.
In contrast, looking at perpendicular pedestrian countdowns is useful when you're at a red light and wanting to know when it will turn green, although that's less reliable because you also have to know whether there will be any left turn phases.
(This assumes the limiting factor on the phase length is pedestrian crossing time, which is often the case.)
And the worst part is when there's a "courteous" dumbass with a gap behind him and then a platoon of cars behind that. If he just went immediately then I could pull out behind him. But because he tried to wait on me instead of just getting out of the way (but then eventually went when he realized that I refused to go out-of-turn), the gap behind him closed and now I have to wait for the whole damn platoon. Thanks, dumbass!
You already need a pole there for the button (unless your signals are unactuated and operate on every cycle).
On the contrary, I think he's saying we should give up "foreign" foods like pizza and hamburgers and eat more tacos, sopes and tamales instead!~
But in making such an argument, wouldn't he then be admitting them, thus invalidating the case for self-incrimination? Sure, it's a catch-22 (and therefore should not be true), but the judicial system doesn't seem to care about that anymore...
I have a suspicion that in that context, procedurally generated is a synonym for "boringly symmetrical," "unfair and exploitable," or both.
Your own example disproves your argument: if the bricks in your skyscraper weighed much less (but had the same compression strength), then you could stack many more of them on top before the bottom brick would be crushed, allowing you to build a taller skyscraper.
Look, if you're so partisan that it blinds you to the blatant problems with this situation, then nothing I could say will convince you. I, however, can see that Republicans abusing their 501c3 status and Democrats corrupting the IRS to pursue a witch-hunt are both entirely possible. I don't know which of those happened -- cynically, I suspect both -- but I'm not going to pretend anybody is squeaky-clean just because they're on "my side!"
There is a saying: "once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is enemy action." Even if each thing could plausibly be a mistake due to incompetence when considered individually, the combination suggests that somebody is acting in bad faith.
Disk space is cheap, and the Federal Records Act (etc.) says that stuff should be FOIA-able. So yes, I think that if somebody FOIAs the cat jokes then the IRS should be able to provide them!
Okay, fine. In that case, add a "...and the Federal Records Act (among other things) explicitly makes the kind of IT gross incompetence you mention illegal..." clause to my previous statement!
I do not like green eggs and ham!
Why is it that one of the few instances where the argument "we have sovereign immunity; go fuck yourself" is legitimate is one of the few instances where they don't use it?!
Sure, that's reasonable... if that's the only issue and if you know you have functioning backups.
The problem is that it starts looking a lot less reasonable in the context that every other place the emails were stored was also "lost."
When it's the user's hard drive and the contents of the mail server and the backups of the hard drive and the backups of the mail server and the user seems reluctant to tell the truth about what the emails actually say and there are allegations of misconduct involving said emails and (as far as we know) the IRS isn't also missing a whole bunch of non-related emails, only "coincidentally" the potentially-damaging ones... then maybe it really is a fucking conspiracy!
Oh yeah, once I got properly transferred to Comcast's cablecard activation line it was fine. The problem is that the first couple of people I talked to were too incompetent to even do that (i.e., one of them didn't know the difference between Comcast's cablecard activation line and TiVo's customer service).
This was about a year ago, by the way. Comcast had "forced" me to get cable by offering a lower price for internet + cable than for internet alone, and I figured that if I'm forced to get TV then I will damn well use it. Now, thankfully, I'm back on a relatively good Internet-only deal so the cablecard has been returned.
...or a loss of confidence in the US's ability or willingness to provide protection.
So what you're saying is that all these "smart TVs" that do have enough horsepower must support CableCard, right? Except they don't, so you're wrong.
[Citation Needed]. I know of exactly two, the TiVo and the HDHomeRun. I own a HDHomeRun, and it was a bitch to set up because even Comcast customer support had never heard of it (at one point, they told me to call TiVo!).
The cable industry designed the CableCard standard themselves, so that's their own goddamn fault!
Bullshit.
It is the cable company's fault precisely because the cable company, not the user, is choosing which cable boxes to buy and the cable company (unlike the user) doesn't give a shit about user experience. If cable boxes / DVRs were sold retail instead of rented there would be competition and the manufacturers would be forced to get their shit together!