Interesting, and thanks for posting part of the text from the bill here. I wonder if this bill isn't being snuck through to give the likes of Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Target, etc., more ammunition in their once and future suits against folks such as fatwallet.com - particualy around this time of year. (Amungtst all the other "Corporate entitities" who'd love to see something like this)
If they can successfuly claim the publication of their price lists ("facts" in anyone's book) is somehow part of a " database (that) was generated, gathered, or maintained through a substantial expenditure of financial resources or time;" it'll just be more ammunition for them to keep simple facts "secret."
Of course, considering how much influence large corporations have over the legislature in protecting their interests at the expense of the Public Good, is a bill like this any real surprise?
This comment shouldn't have been moderated "Flamebait." It's an honest opinion of the game, and many of it's laments are shared by long time and hard core NwN players. Some of the experienced module designers would kill to have full 3D terrain, and the fact that even Water Elementals can't cross water tiles deeper than a stream is a disapointment.
The other comments are all valid. Both pro and con.
As for HotU, it looks like it will be a good expansion with new monsters, spells, classes, FX, tilesets, etc. The down side is the Epic Level characters. It's already very common (on Local Vault servers at least) to see people putting every effort into optimizing their characters to the nth degree. With Epic Characters, it will become almost laughable to try and find "reasonable" characters in the wild.
Also, any custom module builder who chooses to include the HotU content is probably (I haven't confirmed this, bit it was with SoU) condeming their players to a forced upgrade. The game engine will be upgraded automatically to handle the new spells and such, but but if you include placables or tiles, your players will need the expansion.
If it's a hardware, physical, device, I'm not sure how their licensing scheme can apply. It's a THING, not a piece of code. Worse, the "can't lend, sell, etc.," won't fly. If I have the physical object I CAN bloody well sell it if I want to. Even the idiot software EULA's usually state I can sell the software as long as I remove it from my system. In this case, if I sell the physical object, I certainly don't have it any more.
These clowns could learn a lot from the folks who wrote Poser. They have a "Like a book" license. You can't have it -running- on more than one system at a time, but you can use it, install it, loan it, whatever, as long as you "treat it like a book." ie. Only one person can be reading it at a time.
Now, without delving into their hardware itself, and the insanity of putting a EULA on a physical object, I'll say this even conceptually is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. It's almost as bad as SCO's "derivitave works" crap. Or the RIAA trying desperately to piss off their users.
"If you use our jig to make a jig, you can't let anyone else use that jig."
Fuck you very much. I made it. I'll do whatever I want to with the stuff I MAKE. Like, say, make more jigs . ..
The Horsepower and Torque numbers tell the real story - plus the last report where they were bragging about beating gas engined sports cars, but only in a 1/8th mile drag. If you gear it to take advantage of the torque for acceleration, you will out accelerate machines with less raw power, but taller gearing. You're using the gearbox for torque amplification, and that peters out once you run out of revs.
About a dozen years ago I raced motorcycles. An obsolete one at that. If I geared down for acceleration I could keep pace with a (then) modern Suzuki GSX/R on my aged KZ650. At least until I ran out of revs and they pulled away, where I was hitting red-line at 118. If I regeared for higher speed, they'd pull away under acceleration. Racing was finding the balance and relying on the rider not the power. (Mid pack finishes in 750SS and Formula 1 - not bad for a 12 year old bike at the time)
The T-Zero is playing the Acceleration game for publicity. The numbers look nice, but I can get better range, speed, etc., from a well tuned gas burner for 1/10th the price. Hell, but 1/10th the price I can get a new Prius and be Eco_friendly and out run the T-Zero on a long straight!
Oldest still in-service piece of computer equipment in the house. Hooked up to the Video and Audio out of the VCR in the exercise room. Still has better picture than most modern TV's . ..
So, basically, it's okay to break the law when you don't get caught? You are therefore advocating lawlessness?
You seem to be taking things rather literaly, but I'll address them anyway.
First, laws have a purpose. In most cases they are there to protect the "public good." Traffic laws are, on the whole, intended to protect public safety. Speed limits, et al, are there to regulate the flow of traffic to help maintain driver safety. While I am certainly not advocating lawlessness (which I am quite sure you know, but seem to have gone trolling anyway) I DO state that it is my belief that if an act is neither unethical or immoral, AND causes no harm to anyone, then being persecuted for it simply because it is "against the law" is a failure of the law, not the person.
If I'm safe at 95, alone, on an open stretch of road, I should be allowed to drive at that speed. The Black Box has very little understanding of "safe for conditions" and absolutely no concept of Right and Wrong.
This is precisely the idea: to download your driving data, and fine you for every infraction you did to the law. The idea is to get rid the road of careless drivers who have no regard for the law and the safety of others.
You seem to be missing the point. The data should be used to aid the investigation (which is what I said) but NOT to be arbitrarily downloaded at any time, randomly, then used to issue citations based on that data.
I can name far to many cases where "was against the law" != "careless driver" to count. There are FAR better ways to deal with careless drivers, such as mandatory retraining after an accident than simply fining them.
You don't understand. The idea is to get rid of the rampant lawlessness that is so prevalent on the roads nowadays. Errant drivers should simply be removed from the road, and by consistenly punishing bad behaviour, you go towards that goal.
Bad Driving != Lawlessness. The ultimate issue is driver skill, or, more correctly, the overall lack thereof. Arbitrarily having some black box issues tickets "Oops! You went 69 in a 65 zone! Here's your ticket!" defeats the purpose when you were doing that to pass the Blue Hair who was merging at 32 because she couldn't see over the dash board. Grandma was an active hazard, which I was avoiding. Why should I be punished for HER bad driving?
Don't take the simplistic approach of assuming every traffic statute is perfect and by obeying them all bad drivers will disappear and the roads will be suddenly safer.
More accidents happen in rush hour traffic, at legal speeds, than do in the dark of night on open roads.
That is a reason why California's deficit is so disastrous...
Bullshit. But we're not going into California budget politics here.
Indeed it is, but posting cops on every streetcorner would not be viewed as such. As I said before, there is no expectation of privacy when you are on a public space, especially when you are exercing your PRIVILEGE of moving about in several tons of metal, a most lethat weapon if you ask me.
Cops are people. They are observers. If they are on the streetcorner, I am obviously under observation and therefor have no expectation of privacy. Having a black box in yoru car that records everything you do and is then randomly downloaded and used against you simply reeks of Big Brother.
While I am a strong advocate of vastly improved driver education as a way to make the roads safer, I find big brother tactics loathesome.
We certainly agree it's a privilege, not a right. However I am in favor of improved driver education and making it somewhat more difficult to achieve that privlige, while you seem to advocate the status quo on education, but using big brother tactics to punish people into compliance.
I'm sorry, but until it says somewhere in writing (in the law you
Driving a vehicle on a public road is an eminently public act, and those who do it shall have no more expectations of privacy than someone picking his nose in front of Sack's Fifth Avenue on the morning rush-hour.
True, it is an eminently public act. HOWEVER, to abuse your Fifth Ave analogy, picking your nose at 0237 is a more or less private act because you have a reasonable expectation that no one will see you do it.
The collection of vehicle control evidence is a crucial step in the investigation of traffic accidents. Sheltering that information from the authorities has only one purpose, to shield delinquent drivers from retribution for their unlawful acts.
Certainly AFTER THERE HAS BEEN AN ACCIDENT. Which is what this California law is intended to protect. Your remote download proposal leads down the slippery slope of downloading your logs and fining you based on infractions that it recorded.
Yes, there are traffic laws. But the fact is nearly everyone pushes them to one extant or another. Whether it's 5 miles an hour over - or 15 over because that's how fast traffic is going. Most traffic laws are in place to guard the public safety. It's been shown in numerous studies (look them up) that it's the DIFFERENCE in speed between vehicles, not the absolute speed that matters.
There's a reason the California Highway Patrol will cruise merrily past a pack of cars travelling at 72 in a 65 zone. They are all technically speeding, but none of them are posing a hazard.
(Of course, CA doesn't use Highway Patrol fines as a major revenue stream as some other states do.)
What this law should do is prevent municipalities and insurance companies et al from abusing the data gathered with the cars onboard systems. Your suggestion reeks of Big Brother.
Regretably, unless more people stand up for their civil liberties, we'll see just the kind of invasive data collection you propose.
Shall we also say again that driving a car is a mere PRIVILEGE and far from being a right????
No argument there. But I won't go into my argument about why it should be considerably more difficult to get a license in the first place. Simple fact is that if drivers were better trained, traffic incidents would drop dramatically.
Makes sense. I don't remember seeing a spec for the transmission (if any) on the cars website.
Though this thing brings back memories from the mid 80's of the ESR (Electric Sports Racer) showing up t Laguna Seca for an SCCA event and running as an experimental with the DSR's.
Essentially it was a DSR chassis, with a fairly hefty electric and a lot of batteries. Motor was hooked to a VW 4 speed transaxle.
Interesting machine. Barely had the range to complete a single 30 minute race session, after which the car's paddock mates got the dubious pleasure of listening to an 8 Kw Honda GenSet running for the next three hours recharging the car's batteries. It was also somewhat hobbled by the sheer weight of its battery packs. Compared to the DSR's (Most of which ran motorcycle engines of one form or another) it was at a considerable disadvantage in power and weight.
Wes definately eerie hearing it go by at more then adequate speed with only a faint hum and a whoosh of air.
As a racing class it died a forgotten death. But it showed almost 20 years ago that there was more than a little interest in high performance electrics.
Who knows. With modern battery technology, it might have taken off.
I notice the races were all 1/8 mile rather than the standard 1/4 mile we're used to in drag racing. Could that be because the electric motor's torque curve tapers off at higher speed/RPM where the high strung exotics shine?
Electric motors have max torque at 0 RPM, which is great for off the line acceleration. The Porsche is producing maximum grunt much higher in the rev range, which will show further down the track.
Off the line, it's no surprise the electric could win. I'd be much more interested in it's performance at higher speeds and how it handles under extremes of cornering. Little sports cars handle well because they don't weigh anything. Battery packs are still heavy if you want any usable range.
The point is that the kids should not have had access to that game.
No. The point is the kids shouldn't have taken potshots at cars.
The whole point is: STUPID KIDS DO STUPID SHIT
Amen!
Ultimately, I think all of us agree this is an inane lawsuit. The incident happened because the kids were stupid, and their parents failed to teach them that "shooting at innocent people is BAD."
I feel for the victims here. It sucks to lose someone to someone elses stupidity. But in our litiginous society, the lawyers will steer them towards the deepest pockets. In our courts, those same lawyers will probably manage to convince some hand picked jury of people who believe the deep pockets should pay because they have deep pockets that they SHOULD pay. It's not about taking responsibility, it's about placing blame and getting compensation.
"Well, the parents have no money, and these poor people need to be compensated for their loss!"
That's what life insurance is for.
I feel for the people who were hurt here, but engaging in stupid lawsuits burns off a lot of the good will.
Taking you at face value in "this is not a troll" I'll dispute your "distro that nobody wants" comment. As far as I understand, Mandrake is #3 in popularity behind RedHat and SuSE. It's popularity is with desktop and home users, not corpoprate users.
Having used most of the major distros at one point or another (RH, SuSE, Slack, Debian, Mandrake, Turbo, etc.) MDK is as "different" as SuSE is from RedHat. Which is to say not much at the core. They do have a very nice installer, and the purchased version has an extensive software library.
As for the business model, you're probably quite right about them not having the revenue stream to stay comfortable. However, the ads are only on their download version (which is stripped down a bit from their commercial release already), which is where, from a business sense, they're bleeding money.
Most of us download as many distros as we buy. Probably a good deal more downloads, in fact. If they can come up with a way to make a little money off those downloads without charging us, that's great. It's one more company that can stay afloat marketing and developing Linux.
Nothing wrong with that.
And, as many have pointed out, removing the ads (other than the install screen ads) will be a no brainer.
Pffft, there arn't enough radio operators for that to even happen. As I've mentioned before, Amatuer radio has been dying for years due to things like computers and the Internet especially.
I don't know. There are more hams now that there have been in the past, and a quick browse through any of the local radio stores shows how much gear there is to buy. It's still a going concern. (Caveat on gear: They sell us what's new and happening at the time. There are some bands that are left alone, and others that get tons of gear - as much at the manufacturer's whims as ours)
I agree more operators are a good thing, but I'm sure you've heard the pileups during a contest. There are already a lot of us.
Waiting for conditions, testing and trying again and again without luck. Kinda boring.
Sounds like the 6M band . ..
I run an IRC server as a hobby (tech admin for our network) and I agree that it's faster, clearer, and probably cheaper than using radio. But there's still something inherently cool about grabbing an SSTV image sent by some guy in Kenya who's 100km from the nearest router...
Technician class gives you access to all the amature bands "above" (higher freq, shorter wavelength) 6 Meteres and includes the 6 meter band. This also includes the multi GHz bands where things like, say Wireless LAN, live.
While CW may have dubious value any more for "real world" work, it's still in use by a lot of Hams worldwide, and is one of the best ways to do QRP (low power) work. It takes minimal bandwidth and power to communicate with CW.
Another thing it does is put up a minimal barrier working the HF bands. While that may seem "lame" to you, it would suck royally to have the Ham bands turn into the CB bands. The 5 WPM requirement is not that hard to achieve, but it at least shows "you" have enough dedication to go through the trouble to actually learn something that didn't just come from a cram session for your test.
Why don't you READ the godamn thread before spouting bullshit insulting someone's parenting. You can disagree with someone seeing the technology as potentially useful (READ the godamn thread, that is all that was suggested) and you can decide for yourself whether or not you would use it. But:
"Hey, I might have raised a little dirtbag, so I'm going to compensate by pissing them off even MORE and making them hate me."
Sorry, son, but that's bullshit. Don't transfer your parental issues here. Now, go back and READ the godamn thread.
And for the record, I'm glad your not my kid too...
To answer your question, no, I wasn't constantly hounded by my parents while I was growing up. They'd ask where I was going, and would usually take "Over to (insert friend here)'s to play." at face value.
Yes, sometimes we didn't go where we said we were going, and yes, we got in trouble when we got caught. I had a good balance oif trust with my folks.
Please note, I'm not advocating constantly tracking kids by phones, rfid, or radio tracking collars. I'm just pointing out that this is a potentially useful tool in cases where it's needed.
(The parenting discussion could go WAY off topic. We actually agree here. Your comment on responsibility and trust is dead on the mark.)
Yes, they do have rights. As do I. And one of my rights is to know where they are. To reiterate - as a parent you are responsible for your kid.
If a parent raises their kid right, they shouldn't need to worry about them doing crap they shouldn't be doing. If the trust is there, you don't need this capability. But having it isn't a bad thing. It's a mutual trust thing.
"I'm studying with my friend like I said I was. Besides, Dad can check up on me if he needs to."
"She said she's over at her friend's, and I trust her, so I don't need to check up on her."
Cell phones are RF devices. They broadcast. They say "I am here!" and the nearest cell tower says "Cool. I'll patch you in here until you reach the next cell." The phone company could track you to within the radius of a given cell since day one. As the technology has matured they've been able to better locate individual phones. It's a side effect of providing better coverage and more efficient service.
If you're worried about people tracking you by your cell phone, turn it off - and be aware that as soon as you come on the air to make a call, "they" will have a good idea where you are.
All this new service does is make that knowledge accessible to someone who's not monitoring cell sites inside the system. The addition of GPS in the phones makes it dramatically more accurate, but it's not really a new capability.
If you're worried about the Law tracking you down by your phone, then you should probably ditch the cell and go back to pay phones. Ditch the calling card too.
As for parents, if I give my kid a phone, and I care enough about her to wonder where she is, then tracking her with the cell (especially one I'm paying for) is my parental right. Parents are responsible for their kids. Part of that responsibility is having an idea whether they're out raising hell or really are over at their friend's studying like they said they were.
Bosses? Different matter and entirely situational. Company phone, company car, company time, the boss has the right to know whether or not I'm abusing my privilege. My phone? My time? Hell no.
Sure, they can track us with our phones. Big fat hairy deal. You don't want them to track you? Then don't carry a -transmitting- radio in your pocket!
Except that an XT is considerably more powerful overall (except for grapics) than a C64. The 8088 was a good deal faster than the 6510 in the Commodore, plus the XT had (*gasp*) a hard drive and a lot more memory.
EZNOS may predate Contiki, but I'm not sure it counts as "long beaten" considering the hardware differences.
More like Slander if I understand the definitions correctly. We've all read (to death) SCO's claims and the rebutals from people who have a better grasp on the history than most of us ever will.
While I'm no laywer (nor would I want to be one) threatening lawsuits, when there is no grounds for a suit, smearing the reputations of individuals and organizations, and fraudently claiming ownership of other's works is, last I checked, Illegal.
The sad thing is this does need to be settled sooner rather than later. The longer it's allowed to drag on the longer we'll all have to put up with the ranting and screaming and assorted bullshit around this case.
The problem with FUD is that some people believe it.
Linux doesn't have a black eye here. There are so many holes in SCO's argument that any suit against Linux users would die in pre-trial. Unfortunately, there's this clown in Utah screaming very loudly, and some people may actually listen to the clown whether it's full of crap or not.
Interesting site you have there. Especially interesting since one of my former cohorts was a CMU grad and one of our interns is about to head there for his Masters.
This seems veryt similar to the system described in the original thread. What are you using to get relative directions to the hosts?
One pertinant thing I noted in the article was the following:
As part of that work, Dr. Junglas modified a Wi-Fi network that operated in the business school's two buildings so that each of its many base stations had a radius of about 15 feet.
Emphasis mine. This is an insanely dense network of AP's! At over $100 a pop for a cheap one, it seems wildly impractical to simply use stock access points with software corelation to figure out where people are - assuming such density is required.
In a commercial deployment, AP's are going to be deployed in such a way as to give good coverage without costing too damn much. ie: as few AP's as will give adequate coverage for the site.
There are other solutions, of course. Using a phased array antenna (sorry, no cool rotating dish) to get a direction and using signal strength to approximate range (random attenuation in the site will have a large affect on accuracy) or using multiple antennas in fixed locations to triangulate a source location (the more vectors you can get, the more accurate your fix will be) Using signal timing between different AP's (time difference between arriving signals) is plausible, but would add considerably to the cost (current AP's aren't equipped with ultra accurate clocks and transmission times over the network aren't accurate enough for the purpose.)
Phased arrays for direction finding use precise measurements between antenna elements to get their accuracy. They effectively use a harmonic tone to determing the shift angle between antennas, and thus the relative direction to the source. Accurately placing and orienting the AP's would be vital.
Locating wireless source points isn't exceptionally hard, and could be rather useful. But accuracy costs. Existing AP's would give limited accuracy, so this study used lots of them. More acurate location capability on an AP would cost more.
The ionic thust that "Lifters" use to fly is little different from the ion Xenon Ion propulsion system NASA flew on the Deep Space 1 spacecraft. Details are very different, but the concept is the same.
1:Create Ions 2:Accelarate them with across a voltage differential 3:Get Thrust
There are a number of bootleg radio stations in the country that operate intermittantly. Some of them actually have fairly good coverage, and operate with the skill of a professional Engineer running the boards. They are, unfortunately, quite illegal as you found out.
Unless you're actively causing issues with another commercial station, the FCC usually doesn't come down on you like a ton of bricks. They'll be happy to shut you down and stop the interference.
Of course, broadcast radio is a different animal than Webcast radio. The FCC views it differently, since you're not using a broadcast media and webcasts can't really interfere with each other the way an AM or FM broadcast could.
In a word, "Yes" since any broadcast radio station (eg: not intended for the amature "Ham" audience - who aren't allowed to play music) is considered commercial and thus falls under the appropriate government regulations. In the case of college stations playing Indie bands, the broadcast rights are often secured directly from the artists rather than going through an intermediary.
Webcasting falls into a strange gray area that I'm yet to entirely figure out. Something I probably should figure out, since I operate a webcast radio station.
Only one company will own the idea. Many rational people are failing to see the good in this.
Would you please elaborate? What good is there in a system that allows only one company (person, corporation, etc.) to do business in a certain way? I consider myself rational and yes, I fail to see the good in it. Some expansion would be appreciated.
Anti-trust laws aren't there to keep the biggest guys from competing. They are there to keep the biggest guys from becoming a monopoly and ending all competition. You say yourself they've been used successfully to keep one company from owning an industry and, with the possible exception of Microsoft who's blatantly flaunted the rulings against it, the anti-trust laws work.
The original poster commented about the "Business model being the business." If that's the case, they don't have much of a business. Imagine where we'd be if somone had patented the "business model" of selling computers. Or providing dialup service to the internet. Those are both business models, not technologies - and patenting them would have been horrible for consumers and competition.
Patents were intended to protect not ideas, but inventions. You patent "The spring loaded mouse whacker." NOT the "idea" of trapping mice.
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Interesting, and thanks for posting part of the text from the bill here. I wonder if this bill isn't being snuck through to give the likes of Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Target, etc., more ammunition in their once and future suits against folks such as fatwallet.com - particualy around this time of year. (Amungtst all the other "Corporate entitities" who'd love to see something like this)
If they can successfuly claim the publication of their price lists ("facts" in anyone's book) is somehow part of a " database (that) was generated, gathered, or maintained through a substantial expenditure of financial resources or time;" it'll just be more ammunition for them to keep simple facts "secret."
Of course, considering how much influence large corporations have over the legislature in protecting their interests at the expense of the Public Good, is a bill like this any real surprise?
This comment shouldn't have been moderated "Flamebait." It's an honest opinion of the game, and many of it's laments are shared by long time and hard core NwN players. Some of the experienced module designers would kill to have full 3D terrain, and the fact that even Water Elementals can't cross water tiles deeper than a stream is a disapointment.
The other comments are all valid. Both pro and con.
As for HotU, it looks like it will be a good expansion with new monsters, spells, classes, FX, tilesets, etc. The down side is the Epic Level characters. It's already very common (on Local Vault servers at least) to see people putting every effort into optimizing their characters to the nth degree. With Epic Characters, it will become almost laughable to try and find "reasonable" characters in the wild.
Also, any custom module builder who chooses to include the HotU content is probably (I haven't confirmed this, bit it was with SoU) condeming their players to a forced upgrade. The game engine will be upgraded automatically to handle the new spells and such, but but if you include placables or tiles, your players will need the expansion.
If it's a hardware, physical, device, I'm not sure how their licensing scheme can apply. It's a THING, not a piece of code. Worse, the "can't lend, sell, etc.," won't fly. If I have the physical object I CAN bloody well sell it if I want to. Even the idiot software EULA's usually state I can sell the software as long as I remove it from my system. In this case, if I sell the physical object, I certainly don't have it any more.
.
These clowns could learn a lot from the folks who wrote Poser. They have a "Like a book" license. You can't have it -running- on more than one system at a time, but you can use it, install it, loan it, whatever, as long as you "treat it like a book." ie. Only one person can be reading it at a time.
Now, without delving into their hardware itself, and the insanity of putting a EULA on a physical object, I'll say this even conceptually is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. It's almost as bad as SCO's "derivitave works" crap. Or the RIAA trying desperately to piss off their users.
"If you use our jig to make a jig, you can't let anyone else use that jig."
Fuck you very much. I made it. I'll do whatever I want to with the stuff I MAKE. Like, say, make more jigs . .
The Horsepower and Torque numbers tell the real story - plus the last report where they were bragging about beating gas engined sports cars, but only in a 1/8th mile drag. If you gear it to take advantage of the torque for acceleration, you will out accelerate machines with less raw power, but taller gearing. You're using the gearbox for torque amplification, and that peters out once you run out of revs.
About a dozen years ago I raced motorcycles. An obsolete one at that. If I geared down for acceleration I could keep pace with a (then) modern Suzuki GSX/R on my aged KZ650. At least until I ran out of revs and they pulled away, where I was hitting red-line at 118. If I regeared for higher speed, they'd pull away under acceleration. Racing was finding the balance and relying on the rider not the power. (Mid pack finishes in 750SS and Formula 1 - not bad for a 12 year old bike at the time)
The T-Zero is playing the Acceleration game for publicity. The numbers look nice, but I can get better range, speed, etc., from a well tuned gas burner for 1/10th the price. Hell, but 1/10th the price I can get a new Prius and be Eco_friendly and out run the T-Zero on a long straight!
Oldest still in-service piece of computer equipment in the house. Hooked up to the Video and Audio out of the VCR in the exercise room. Still has better picture than most modern TV's . . .
Literalists . . .
So, basically, it's okay to break the law when you don't get caught?
You are therefore advocating lawlessness?
You seem to be taking things rather literaly, but I'll address them anyway.
First, laws have a purpose. In most cases they are there to protect the "public good." Traffic laws are, on the whole, intended to protect public safety. Speed limits, et al, are there to regulate the flow of traffic to help maintain driver safety. While I am certainly not advocating lawlessness (which I am quite sure you know, but seem to have gone trolling anyway) I DO state that it is my belief that if an act is neither unethical or immoral, AND causes no harm to anyone, then being persecuted for it simply because it is "against the law" is a failure of the law, not the person.
If I'm safe at 95, alone, on an open stretch of road, I should be allowed to drive at that speed. The Black Box has very little understanding of "safe for conditions" and absolutely no concept of Right and Wrong.
This is precisely the idea: to download your driving data, and fine you for every infraction you did to the law. The idea is to get rid the road of careless drivers who have no regard for the law and the safety of others.
You seem to be missing the point. The data should be used to aid the investigation ( which is what I said ) but NOT to be arbitrarily downloaded at any time, randomly, then used to issue citations based on that data.
I can name far to many cases where "was against the law" != "careless driver" to count. There are FAR better ways to deal with careless drivers, such as mandatory retraining after an accident than simply fining them.
You don't understand. The idea is to get rid of the rampant lawlessness that is so prevalent on the roads nowadays. Errant drivers should simply be removed from the road, and by consistenly punishing bad behaviour, you go towards that goal.
Bad Driving != Lawlessness. The ultimate issue is driver skill, or, more correctly, the overall lack thereof. Arbitrarily having some black box issues tickets "Oops! You went 69 in a 65 zone! Here's your ticket!" defeats the purpose when you were doing that to pass the Blue Hair who was merging at 32 because she couldn't see over the dash board. Grandma was an active hazard, which I was avoiding. Why should I be punished for HER bad driving?
Don't take the simplistic approach of assuming every traffic statute is perfect and by obeying them all bad drivers will disappear and the roads will be suddenly safer.
More accidents happen in rush hour traffic, at legal speeds, than do in the dark of night on open roads.
That is a reason why California's deficit is so disastrous...
Bullshit. But we're not going into California budget politics here.
Indeed it is, but posting cops on every streetcorner would not be viewed as such. As I said before, there is no expectation of privacy when you are on a public space, especially when you are exercing your PRIVILEGE of moving about in several tons of metal, a most lethat weapon if you ask me.
Cops are people. They are observers. If they are on the streetcorner, I am obviously under observation and therefor have no expectation of privacy. Having a black box in yoru car that records everything you do and is then randomly downloaded and used against you simply reeks of Big Brother.
While I am a strong advocate of vastly improved driver education as a way to make the roads safer, I find big brother tactics loathesome.
We certainly agree it's a privilege, not a right. However I am in favor of improved driver education and making it somewhat more difficult to achieve that privlige, while you seem to advocate the status quo on education, but using big brother tactics to punish people into compliance.
I'm sorry, but until it says somewhere in writing (in the law you
Driving a vehicle on a public road is an eminently public act, and those who do it shall have no more expectations of privacy than someone picking his nose in front of Sack's Fifth Avenue on the morning rush-hour.
True, it is an eminently public act. HOWEVER, to abuse your Fifth Ave analogy, picking your nose at 0237 is a more or less private act because you have a reasonable expectation that no one will see you do it.
The collection of vehicle control evidence is a crucial step in the investigation of traffic accidents. Sheltering that information from the authorities has only one purpose, to shield delinquent drivers from retribution for their unlawful acts.
Certainly AFTER THERE HAS BEEN AN ACCIDENT. Which is what this California law is intended to protect. Your remote download proposal leads down the slippery slope of downloading your logs and fining you based on infractions that it recorded.
Yes, there are traffic laws. But the fact is nearly everyone pushes them to one extant or another. Whether it's 5 miles an hour over - or 15 over because that's how fast traffic is going. Most traffic laws are in place to guard the public safety. It's been shown in numerous studies (look them up) that it's the DIFFERENCE in speed between vehicles, not the absolute speed that matters.
There's a reason the California Highway Patrol will cruise merrily past a pack of cars travelling at 72 in a 65 zone. They are all technically speeding, but none of them are posing a hazard.
(Of course, CA doesn't use Highway Patrol fines as a major revenue stream as some other states do.)
What this law should do is prevent municipalities and insurance companies et al from abusing the data gathered with the cars onboard systems. Your suggestion reeks of Big Brother.
Regretably, unless more people stand up for their civil liberties, we'll see just the kind of invasive data collection you propose.
Shall we also say again that driving a car is a mere PRIVILEGE and far from being a right????
No argument there. But I won't go into my argument about why it should be considerably more difficult to get a license in the first place. Simple fact is that if drivers were better trained, traffic incidents would drop dramatically.
Makes sense. I don't remember seeing a spec for the transmission (if any) on the cars website.
Though this thing brings back memories from the mid 80's of the ESR (Electric Sports Racer) showing up t Laguna Seca for an SCCA event and running as an experimental with the DSR's.
Essentially it was a DSR chassis, with a fairly hefty electric and a lot of batteries. Motor was hooked to a VW 4 speed transaxle.
Interesting machine. Barely had the range to complete a single 30 minute race session, after which the car's paddock mates got the dubious pleasure of listening to an 8 Kw Honda GenSet running for the next three hours recharging the car's batteries. It was also somewhat hobbled by the sheer weight of its battery packs. Compared to the DSR's (Most of which ran motorcycle engines of one form or another) it was at a considerable disadvantage in power and weight.
Wes definately eerie hearing it go by at more then adequate speed with only a faint hum and a whoosh of air.
As a racing class it died a forgotten death. But it showed almost 20 years ago that there was more than a little interest in high performance electrics.
Who knows. With modern battery technology, it might have taken off.
I notice the races were all 1/8 mile rather than the standard 1/4 mile we're used to in drag racing. Could that be because the electric motor's torque curve tapers off at higher speed/RPM where the high strung exotics shine?
Electric motors have max torque at 0 RPM, which is great for off the line acceleration. The Porsche is producing maximum grunt much higher in the rev range, which will show further down the track.
Off the line, it's no surprise the electric could win. I'd be much more interested in it's performance at higher speeds and how it handles under extremes of cornering. Little sports cars handle well because they don't weigh anything. Battery packs are still heavy if you want any usable range.
Overall, I agree
The point is that the kids should not have had access to that game.
No. The point is the kids shouldn't have taken potshots at cars.
The whole point is:
STUPID KIDS DO STUPID SHIT
Amen!
Ultimately, I think all of us agree this is an inane lawsuit. The incident happened because the kids were stupid, and their parents failed to teach them that "shooting at innocent people is BAD."
I feel for the victims here. It sucks to lose someone to someone elses stupidity. But in our litiginous society, the lawyers will steer them towards the deepest pockets. In our courts, those same lawyers will probably manage to convince some hand picked jury of people who believe the deep pockets should pay because they have deep pockets that they SHOULD pay. It's not about taking responsibility, it's about placing blame and getting compensation.
"Well, the parents have no money, and these poor people need to be compensated for their loss!"
That's what life insurance is for.
I feel for the people who were hurt here, but engaging in stupid lawsuits burns off a lot of the good will.
Taking you at face value in "this is not a troll" I'll dispute your "distro that nobody wants" comment. As far as I understand, Mandrake is #3 in popularity behind RedHat and SuSE. It's popularity is with desktop and home users, not corpoprate users.
Having used most of the major distros at one point or another (RH, SuSE, Slack, Debian, Mandrake, Turbo, etc.) MDK is as "different" as SuSE is from RedHat. Which is to say not much at the core. They do have a very nice installer, and the purchased version has an extensive software library.
As for the business model, you're probably quite right about them not having the revenue stream to stay comfortable. However, the ads are only on their download version (which is stripped down a bit from their commercial release already), which is where, from a business sense, they're bleeding money.
Most of us download as many distros as we buy. Probably a good deal more downloads, in fact. If they can come up with a way to make a little money off those downloads without charging us, that's great. It's one more company that can stay afloat marketing and developing Linux.
Nothing wrong with that.
And, as many have pointed out, removing the ads (other than the install screen ads) will be a no brainer.
Pffft, there arn't enough radio operators for that to even happen. As I've mentioned before, Amatuer radio has been dying for years due to things like computers and the Internet especially.
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I don't know. There are more hams now that there have been in the past, and a quick browse through any of the local radio stores shows how much gear there is to buy. It's still a going concern. (Caveat on gear: They sell us what's new and happening at the time. There are some bands that are left alone, and others that get tons of gear - as much at the manufacturer's whims as ours)
I agree more operators are a good thing, but I'm sure you've heard the pileups during a contest. There are already a lot of us.
Waiting for conditions, testing and trying again and again without luck. Kinda boring.
Sounds like the 6M band . .
I run an IRC server as a hobby (tech admin for our network) and I agree that it's faster, clearer, and probably cheaper than using radio. But there's still something inherently cool about grabbing an SSTV image sent by some guy in Kenya who's 100km from the nearest router...
No flames, OM.
73's.
Wrong.
Technician class gives you access to all the amature bands "above" (higher freq, shorter wavelength) 6 Meteres and includes the 6 meter band. This also includes the multi GHz bands where things like, say Wireless LAN, live.
While CW may have dubious value any more for "real world" work, it's still in use by a lot of Hams worldwide, and is one of the best ways to do QRP (low power) work. It takes minimal bandwidth and power to communicate with CW.
Another thing it does is put up a minimal barrier working the HF bands. While that may seem "lame" to you, it would suck royally to have the Ham bands turn into the CB bands. The 5 WPM requirement is not that hard to achieve, but it at least shows "you" have enough dedication to go through the trouble to actually learn something that didn't just come from a cram session for your test.
Why don't you READ the godamn thread before spouting bullshit insulting someone's parenting. You can disagree with someone seeing the technology as potentially useful (READ the godamn thread, that is all that was suggested) and you can decide for yourself whether or not you would use it. But:
"Hey, I might have raised a little dirtbag, so I'm going to compensate by pissing them off even MORE and making them hate me."
Sorry, son, but that's bullshit. Don't transfer your parental issues here. Now, go back and READ the godamn thread.
And for the record, I'm glad your not my kid too...
To answer your question, no, I wasn't constantly hounded by my parents while I was growing up. They'd ask where I was going, and would usually take "Over to (insert friend here)'s to play." at face value.
Yes, sometimes we didn't go where we said we were going, and yes, we got in trouble when we got caught. I had a good balance oif trust with my folks.
Please note, I'm not advocating constantly tracking kids by phones, rfid, or radio tracking collars. I'm just pointing out that this is a potentially useful tool in cases where it's needed.
(The parenting discussion could go WAY off topic. We actually agree here. Your comment on responsibility and trust is dead on the mark.)
AC: The Friendly Troll?
Yes, they do have rights. As do I. And one of my rights is to know where they are. To reiterate - as a parent you are responsible for your kid.
If a parent raises their kid right, they shouldn't need to worry about them doing crap they shouldn't be doing. If the trust is there, you don't need this capability. But having it isn't a bad thing. It's a mutual trust thing.
"I'm studying with my friend like I said I was. Besides, Dad can check up on me if he needs to."
"She said she's over at her friend's, and I trust her, so I don't need to check up on her."
You don't have children, do you?
Cell phones are RF devices. They broadcast. They say "I am here!" and the nearest cell tower says "Cool. I'll patch you in here until you reach the next cell." The phone company could track you to within the radius of a given cell since day one. As the technology has matured they've been able to better locate individual phones. It's a side effect of providing better coverage and more efficient service.
If you're worried about people tracking you by your cell phone, turn it off - and be aware that as soon as you come on the air to make a call, "they" will have a good idea where you are.
All this new service does is make that knowledge accessible to someone who's not monitoring cell sites inside the system. The addition of GPS in the phones makes it dramatically more accurate, but it's not really a new capability.
If you're worried about the Law tracking you down by your phone, then you should probably ditch the cell and go back to pay phones. Ditch the calling card too.
As for parents, if I give my kid a phone, and I care enough about her to wonder where she is, then tracking her with the cell (especially one I'm paying for) is my parental right. Parents are responsible for their kids. Part of that responsibility is having an idea whether they're out raising hell or really are over at their friend's studying like they said they were.
Bosses? Different matter and entirely situational. Company phone, company car, company time, the boss has the right to know whether or not I'm abusing my privilege. My phone? My time? Hell no.
Sure, they can track us with our phones. Big fat hairy deal. You don't want them to track you? Then don't carry a -transmitting- radio in your pocket!
...you can run a server on an XT with EZNOS...
Except that an XT is considerably more powerful overall (except for grapics) than a C64. The 8088 was a good deal faster than the 6510 in the Commodore, plus the XT had (*gasp*) a hard drive and a lot more memory.
EZNOS may predate Contiki, but I'm not sure it counts as "long beaten" considering the hardware differences.
More like Slander if I understand the definitions correctly. We've all read (to death) SCO's claims and the rebutals from people who have a better grasp on the history than most of us ever will.
While I'm no laywer (nor would I want to be one) threatening lawsuits, when there is no grounds for a suit, smearing the reputations of individuals and organizations, and fraudently claiming ownership of other's works is, last I checked, Illegal.
The sad thing is this does need to be settled sooner rather than later. The longer it's allowed to drag on the longer we'll all have to put up with the ranting and screaming and assorted bullshit around this case.
The problem with FUD is that some people believe it.
Linux doesn't have a black eye here. There are so many holes in SCO's argument that any suit against Linux users would die in pre-trial. Unfortunately, there's this clown in Utah screaming very loudly, and some people may actually listen to the clown whether it's full of crap or not.
Interesting site you have there. Especially interesting since one of my former cohorts was a CMU grad and one of our interns is about to head there for his Masters.
This seems veryt similar to the system described in the original thread. What are you using to get relative directions to the hosts?
One pertinant thing I noted in the article was the following:
As part of that work, Dr. Junglas modified a Wi-Fi network that operated in the business school's two buildings so that each of its many base stations had a radius of about 15 feet.
Emphasis mine. This is an insanely dense network of AP's! At over $100 a pop for a cheap one, it seems wildly impractical to simply use stock access points with software corelation to figure out where people are - assuming such density is required.
In a commercial deployment, AP's are going to be deployed in such a way as to give good coverage without costing too damn much. ie: as few AP's as will give adequate coverage for the site.
There are other solutions, of course. Using a phased array antenna (sorry, no cool rotating dish) to get a direction and using signal strength to approximate range (random attenuation in the site will have a large affect on accuracy) or using multiple antennas in fixed locations to triangulate a source location (the more vectors you can get, the more accurate your fix will be) Using signal timing between different AP's (time difference between arriving signals) is plausible, but would add considerably to the cost (current AP's aren't equipped with ultra accurate clocks and transmission times over the network aren't accurate enough for the purpose.)
Phased arrays for direction finding use precise measurements between antenna elements to get their accuracy. They effectively use a harmonic tone to determing the shift angle between antennas, and thus the relative direction to the source. Accurately placing and orienting the AP's would be vital.
Locating wireless source points isn't exceptionally hard, and could be rather useful. But accuracy costs. Existing AP's would give limited accuracy, so this study used lots of them. More acurate location capability on an AP would cost more.
Take your pick.
The ionic thust that "Lifters" use to fly is little different from the ion Xenon Ion propulsion system NASA flew on the Deep Space 1 spacecraft. Details are very different, but the concept is the same.
.
1:Create Ions
2:Accelarate them with across a voltage differential
3:Get Thrust
And the obligatory . .
4: profit!
There are a number of bootleg radio stations in the country that operate intermittantly. Some of them actually have fairly good coverage, and operate with the skill of a professional Engineer running the boards. They are, unfortunately, quite illegal as you found out.
Unless you're actively causing issues with another commercial station, the FCC usually doesn't come down on you like a ton of bricks. They'll be happy to shut you down and stop the interference.
Of course, broadcast radio is a different animal than Webcast radio. The FCC views it differently, since you're not using a broadcast media and webcasts can't really interfere with each other the way an AM or FM broadcast could.
In a word, "Yes" since any broadcast radio station (eg: not intended for the amature "Ham" audience - who aren't allowed to play music) is considered commercial and thus falls under the appropriate government regulations. In the case of college stations playing Indie bands, the broadcast rights are often secured directly from the artists rather than going through an intermediary.
Webcasting falls into a strange gray area that I'm yet to entirely figure out. Something I probably should figure out, since I operate a webcast radio station.
Only one company will own the idea. Many rational people are failing to see the good in this.
Would you please elaborate? What good is there in a system that allows only one company (person, corporation, etc.) to do business in a certain way? I consider myself rational and yes, I fail to see the good in it. Some expansion would be appreciated.
Anti-trust laws aren't there to keep the biggest guys from competing. They are there to keep the biggest guys from becoming a monopoly and ending all competition. You say yourself they've been used successfully to keep one company from owning an industry and, with the possible exception of Microsoft who's blatantly flaunted the rulings against it, the anti-trust laws work.
The original poster commented about the "Business model being the business." If that's the case, they don't have much of a business. Imagine where we'd be if somone had patented the "business model" of selling computers. Or providing dialup service to the internet. Those are both business models, not technologies - and patenting them would have been horrible for consumers and competition.
Patents were intended to protect not ideas, but inventions. You patent "The spring loaded mouse whacker." NOT the "idea" of trapping mice.