of course, the secret is that once they have bots parsing for "remove-me-to-reply-bob@bob.com" is to have email addresses that ACTUALLY have the "remove-me" text in them - so that if you remove the "remove-me" you have an invalid (or at least other) email address.:)
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.
When changing lanes, one is required to look over the shoulder and check to see if there are any cars in the blindspot. This can take half a second or more. During that time, the eye is not on the road, and indeed the untrained driver will swerve because they don't know how to drive on a road while glancing away momentarily. A trained driver will _not_ swerve, they will stay more or less on the road. Likewise glancing at a map, a fuel gauge, a rear-view mirror, a clock, a radio tuner, a cd player, any of the things that one does while in a car. I agree that for any extended period the likelihood that you are properly on the road decreases with time, I think that any reasonably good driver can glance away for a few seconds - indeed, HAS TO glance away for a few seconds occasionally - and still be in their lane, even if it's curved somewhat (although that's tougher).
What's really the issue for driving safety isn't the lack of looking at the road (although if your eyes aren't on the road for more than, say, two seconds, then you may not see something that's happened in front of you and may end up in a lot of trouble). The real issue is lack of attention span. To drive safely you should really be aware of what's going on - looking in front, side, back, etc, with regularity. If your mind is on reading the news, discussing stocks on a cell phone (forgive the stereotype), or anything like that, then you may not be fully attentive and may not notice the car slowing down in front of you. I think this is MUCH more of an issue.
and, just for the heck of it, i'm going to point out that there aren't principal laws of physics determining human understanding of position and speed in an environment with no reference points. at least not in any meaningfully precise definition of 'physics'.
and also that just because some people say they can handle something and cannot does not mean that nobody cannot handle it.
This argument is like saying that "well, some people who buy handguns won't use them to murder people. but some will! so we should ban all handguns"... except that using a cell phone is perhaps more useful than using a handgun to the average person.
can you argue that _more_ people would use cell phones and be unable to drive with them than would murder people? probably. can you also argue that using a cell phone is a problem because (without a headset) you lose the ability to turn your head all the way and also lose one hand? certainly. can you even argue that talking on the phone at all is distracting? i've heard it. can you argue that talking to a person in your car is equally distracting? yes.
some people are such bad drivers that they are less safe than a good driver who can use the cell phone while driving. is it fair to discriminate against people who _can_ do something just because some people _cannot_?
(for the record, i think cell phones should not be used in cars without a headset - i'd never do it myself because i feel it's very dangerous, and perhaps can even be argued to definitively hamper your abilities enough to be outlawed - but using a headset is a good way to deal with it, since i don't think it's more distracting than talking to a person).
Those who don't own cars should not have their tax dollars spent on such projects.
If that's true, then those who DO own cars should not have their tax dollars spent on projects like public transportation...
Have you ever even driven on the old artery? It was a fucking mess. It was also one of the most unsafe stretches in the Interstate Highway System. 10 exits in just over a mile - weave lanes of 600 feet, narrow clearance, no breakdown lanes - it was a mess.
Sounds to me like any highway in the New York City five boroughs area...
What you're not realizing is that the big dig benefits not so much the people who live and work in Boston, but the people who commute to/from Boston from the outer towns, who don't really have an option but to drive in as the commuter trains are surprisingly slow.
Isn't a fundamental problem that the big dig isn't really going to be as expandable in the future? Assuming that traffic needs will be constant for X years is like, well, assuming that 640K will be enough for anybody...
Everyone knows about the traffic lights equipped with cameras that will take a picture if you run a red light. Clearly we have the technology - why aren't they making automated cameras with associated speedometers that take pictures (which can be digitally unblurred or just taken with high-speed cameras) and send you a ticket - WITHOUT EZPass.
My point being that while this is always a possibility, it is not really an enabling technology - they could have implemented something that automatically sends speeding tickets before, using cameras, or doing (as I hear) what they do in Europe and checking when you enter and exit the highways (using tollbooths).
After reading a lot of these slashdot postings on the stability of Win95/98/NT/ME/2k/XP, it seems to be that no one can agree on anything. Some people have had Win98 running for months on their machine without a reboot (OR a reinstall;), and have only had XP running for a few weeks at a time before a crash. Others have had the opposite experience.
There are certainly concrete arguments one can make for the NT line of Windows that would imply it won't crash as much - namely concepts like protected memory, which means that when a rogue program crashes, it can't take the OS down with it. So how does it keep crashing?
The answer (in all likelihood) is drivers (or something similar). If you have a driver misconfiguration, buggy drivers (of which there are tons - more than wads of stepped on squished chewing gum on city streets) or the like, then the OS will crash all it wants, because drivers aren't protected like applications are. So, if you've got a relatively stable Win98 machine and a WinXP machine that crashes a lot more, you've probably got bad drivers on the XP machine. If your situation is reversed, then well, the situation is probably reversed.
Of the three factors that could cause an OS crash (rogue application, buggy OS, buggy drivers), I would say with a good deal of certainty that a LOT of the time, it's the buggy drivers. This conclusion is based on having run tons of Windows machines with all the different versions as an end user with a lot of custom hardware, and noting that if you tweak it just right and dig up enough information (google, deja) about the hardware and drivers you're running (soundblaster was always a big problem for me), you can get a rather stable system - the only time I reboot my XP box is to upgrade something, and that's maybe twice a year.
(note: i don't have much experience with WinME and it may be a glaring scary exception which emphasizes the "buggy OS" clause - any thoughts? is it just the Win98 drivers or something?)
If there is any logic in the Canadian supreme court, they will see that the ISP is just the enabling technology. The ISP is doing nothing illegal. They should not be held accountable. Yeah I know that this cannot be used as a precident in a Canadian court, but I think its more of a logical argument, not a setting of a precident.
so, what happened with the napster case? why didn't the "enabling technology" defense work for them..?
So if two ppl plan a crime using a phone is the phone company partly to blame?? Of cource not.
... if the RIAA had a stake in it, i'm sure they would argue something like "well, if we made the phone companies responsible for it, then surely they would put more effort into preventing crimes!"
is it true? maybe. is it a good idea (morally or practically)? probably not.
One can always hope that employers who can't discern a good programmer from a bad one will go the way Darwinian laws would imply they should.. However, I think that in business survival formulae, often enough sales tactics and BS skills weigh much higher than product/skill (be it from the company, or indeed, from maybe the programmers themselves).
... but one can always hope, and it's certainly not ALWAYS bad by any means.:)
I'm curious - was the code of sufficient quality that maintenance and updates will be possible by a newcomer to the group (or someone not initially involved, like yourself?)..
Although it's debatable whether the accents are an issue (see Alladeen), much more of an issue in customer service - abroad or domestically - is the scripted responses. No company who is paying good money for support should want to deal with the ridiculous scripting-hierarchy that one must go through to finally talk to someone in support who actually knows anything...
Yes, it is, but sometimes the cost overhead required in getting an at-first-seemingly-cheaper solution to actually work (i.e. language coaches, code reviews, international flights, etc), or the loss of reputation by having actually shoddier products, can certainly end up making the "cheaper" solution cost more at the "bottom line".
They're saying they store a gigabyte of information per cubic centimeter - but the devices they plan to sell are fingertip-sized and paper-thin -- and thus will hold (presumably much?) less than a gigabyte.:)
Compact discs could be history within five years, superseded by a new generation of fingertip-sized memory tabs with no moving parts.
Scientists say each paper-thin device could store more than a gigabyte of information - equivalent to 1,000 high quality images - in one cubic centimetre of space.
So they are fingertip sized, paper thin, and a cubic centimeter? I'm having trouble forming a mental image of this...
After reading that article very closely, thinking "that doesn't make any sense", thinking some more, reading some other posts, and _finally_ getting the basics of this technology (as badly named as it is)...
I can only suggest that this James Clark seek a career working for SCO's legal department. With his ability to confuse an issue and their desire to do so, it's a match like peanut butter and jelly.
There's nothing wrong with an attorney owning part of its client, is there? A client can even defend _itself_, so why can't an attorney have more than a professional interest in the client?
Really, though, the worry isn't about what California can do right now given their budget, but what having the infrastructure set up to stop _anyone's_ car implies about what might happen in the future... and of course the tremendous abuses having such a thing could imply.
(for example, if a 'bad guy' was able to stop someone's car...)
Slashdot Mirror
of course, the secret is that once they have bots parsing for "remove-me-to-reply-bob@bob.com" is to have email addresses that ACTUALLY have the "remove-me" text in them - so that if you remove the "remove-me" you have an invalid (or at least other) email address. :)
When changing lanes, one is required to look over the shoulder and check to see if there are any cars in the blindspot. This can take half a second or more. During that time, the eye is not on the road, and indeed the untrained driver will swerve because they don't know how to drive on a road while glancing away momentarily. A trained driver will _not_ swerve, they will stay more or less on the road. Likewise glancing at a map, a fuel gauge, a rear-view mirror, a clock, a radio tuner, a cd player, any of the things that one does while in a car. I agree that for any extended period the likelihood that you are properly on the road decreases with time, I think that any reasonably good driver can glance away for a few seconds - indeed, HAS TO glance away for a few seconds occasionally - and still be in their lane, even if it's curved somewhat (although that's tougher).
What's really the issue for driving safety isn't the lack of looking at the road (although if your eyes aren't on the road for more than, say, two seconds, then you may not see something that's happened in front of you and may end up in a lot of trouble). The real issue is lack of attention span. To drive safely you should really be aware of what's going on - looking in front, side, back, etc, with regularity. If your mind is on reading the news, discussing stocks on a cell phone (forgive the stereotype), or anything like that, then you may not be fully attentive and may not notice the car slowing down in front of you. I think this is MUCH more of an issue.
and, just for the heck of it, i'm going to point out that there aren't principal laws of physics determining human understanding of position and speed in an environment with no reference points. at least not in any meaningfully precise definition of 'physics'.
and also that just because some people say they can handle something and cannot does not mean that nobody cannot handle it.
can you argue that _more_ people would use cell phones and be unable to drive with them than would murder people? probably. can you also argue that using a cell phone is a problem because (without a headset) you lose the ability to turn your head all the way and also lose one hand? certainly. can you even argue that talking on the phone at all is distracting? i've heard it. can you argue that talking to a person in your car is equally distracting? yes.
some people are such bad drivers that they are less safe than a good driver who can use the cell phone while driving. is it fair to discriminate against people who _can_ do something just because some people _cannot_?
(for the record, i think cell phones should not be used in cars without a headset - i'd never do it myself because i feel it's very dangerous, and perhaps can even be argued to definitively hamper your abilities enough to be outlawed - but using a headset is a good way to deal with it, since i don't think it's more distracting than talking to a person).
Of course a good deal of the problem with Boston is those resident-only zones, which are like everywhere!!
I did!! :)
Those who don't own cars should not have their tax dollars spent on such projects. If that's true, then those who DO own cars should not have their tax dollars spent on projects like public transportation...
Sounds to me like any highway in the New York City five boroughs area...
What you're not realizing is that the big dig benefits not so much the people who live and work in Boston, but the people who commute to/from Boston from the outer towns, who don't really have an option but to drive in as the commuter trains are surprisingly slow.
Isn't a fundamental problem that the big dig isn't really going to be as expandable in the future? Assuming that traffic needs will be constant for X years is like, well, assuming that 640K will be enough for anybody...
My point being that while this is always a possibility, it is not really an enabling technology - they could have implemented something that automatically sends speeding tickets before, using cameras, or doing (as I hear) what they do in Europe and checking when you enter and exit the highways (using tollbooths).
There are certainly concrete arguments one can make for the NT line of Windows that would imply it won't crash as much - namely concepts like protected memory, which means that when a rogue program crashes, it can't take the OS down with it. So how does it keep crashing?
The answer (in all likelihood) is drivers (or something similar). If you have a driver misconfiguration, buggy drivers (of which there are tons - more than wads of stepped on squished chewing gum on city streets) or the like, then the OS will crash all it wants, because drivers aren't protected like applications are. So, if you've got a relatively stable Win98 machine and a WinXP machine that crashes a lot more, you've probably got bad drivers on the XP machine. If your situation is reversed, then well, the situation is probably reversed.
Of the three factors that could cause an OS crash (rogue application, buggy OS, buggy drivers), I would say with a good deal of certainty that a LOT of the time, it's the buggy drivers. This conclusion is based on having run tons of Windows machines with all the different versions as an end user with a lot of custom hardware, and noting that if you tweak it just right and dig up enough information (google, deja) about the hardware and drivers you're running (soundblaster was always a big problem for me), you can get a rather stable system - the only time I reboot my XP box is to upgrade something, and that's maybe twice a year.
(note: i don't have much experience with WinME and it may be a glaring scary exception which emphasizes the "buggy OS" clause - any thoughts? is it just the Win98 drivers or something?)
Elephant-Watermelon sin(theta)!!
What do you get when you cross a mountain climber with a mosquito?
You can't, because a mountain climber is a scalar!!
so, what happened with the napster case? why didn't the "enabling technology" defense work for them..?
is it true? maybe. is it a good idea (morally or practically)? probably not.
don't forget the companies that release the music in the first place, and don't copy-protect it enough so that people can rip it and distribute it!!
"a Hungarian is the only man who can enter a revolving door after you and come out first."
I'm curious - was the code of sufficient quality that maintenance and updates will be possible by a newcomer to the group (or someone not initially involved, like yourself?)..
Although it's debatable whether the accents are an issue (see Alladeen), much more of an issue in customer service - abroad or domestically - is the scripted responses. No company who is paying good money for support should want to deal with the ridiculous scripting-hierarchy that one must go through to finally talk to someone in support who actually knows anything...
Yes, it is, but sometimes the cost overhead required in getting an at-first-seemingly-cheaper solution to actually work (i.e. language coaches, code reviews, international flights, etc), or the loss of reputation by having actually shoddier products, can certainly end up making the "cheaper" solution cost more at the "bottom line".
Also interesting though only tangentially related: "is it worse to do a shoddy job on something people love?".
They're saying they store a gigabyte of information per cubic centimeter - but the devices they plan to sell are fingertip-sized and paper-thin -- and thus will hold (presumably much?) less than a gigabyte. :)
Compact discs could be history within five years, superseded by a new generation of fingertip-sized memory tabs with no moving parts.
Scientists say each paper-thin device could store more than a gigabyte of information - equivalent to 1,000 high quality images - in one cubic centimetre of space.
So they are fingertip sized, paper thin, and a cubic centimeter? I'm having trouble forming a mental image of this...
I can only suggest that this James Clark seek a career working for SCO's legal department. With his ability to confuse an issue and their desire to do so, it's a match like peanut butter and jelly.
If it were the judge that owned 20%, then well...
(for example, if a 'bad guy' was able to stop someone's car...)