your phone with a microprojector/camera for the keyboard and a 2nd microprojector that displays on a surface for the display. It'll take awhile, but I expect it to happen when microprojectors get better. Feel free to use this comment as "prior art" as a published idea 10 years from now when the patent surfaces:)
You must have watched the nightline special. The guy had the disease that causes your muscles to stop working. He needed to commit the assisted suicide in switzerland before his throat muscles stopped working as according to the story, he had to swallow the cocktail himself. His problem was I'm sure he would have liked to wait until his throat muscles stopped working to die, but if he did that, his suicide option would be gone. I guess his options then are starve to death or die when the chest muscles stopped breathing. Either way, it seems wrong that he could not be given an injection after his throat muscles stopped swallowing since his intentions were clear. I really don't get why others are so determined not to let those who don't want to be a vegetable or trapped in their body be allowed to die. Obviously safe guards need to be in place to make sure if you want to be a brain in a non-functioning body you can be, but why can't someone die if they want to. Sort of like a DNR, but a PMO (Put Me Out) if certain conditions are met. I watched the nightline episode and was taken aback by how my belief system about death was so in line with the man's. Scary to think my options are as limited as his.
I'm a little over 50 & have never hit the accel instead of the brake since I was in my teens. Oh, and if "old" people are such bad drivers, please explain why my insurance rates are at their lowest point ever and I now own 2 cars and the insurance for both is less than what I paid in my 20's and 30's for a single car that cost 1/2 as much as one of my current cars? If 50+ drivers were less capable, shouldn't my insurance be more than 4 times what I paid back then?
I doubt they asked, NHTSA did, and no I don't think toyota asked NHTSA either. I seriously doubt they are even helping. I even wondered when Toyota offered to rent the sw to NY to aid in the investigation, if they whipped a special version that checked if(VIN==car in ny accident) { acceleratorPosition = down; brakePosition = notDepressed }
so that the sw would report driver error. But then, there goes the tin hat alert again.
GM has done more than fiddle with HUD. My 02 vette had it and when I traded for a 09 vette I absolutely wanted it again. Seeing speed display on the windshield is very nice and now the 09 has integrated the GPS with the windshield display so that directions show up there. It is way better than looking down to see where the next turn is. Some of it is frivilous like the mode to see how many g's you just pulled were, but the speed & direction stuff is awesome. Maybe try it before you piss on it.
Dead on. Society is the real customer and it is getting the shaft. Parents think they are the customer and as the comment below me indicates, they complain loudly when their perfect child gets mistreated. Consider that these urchins are the ones that are going to be building your house, filling your prescription, flying that airplane, when we are retired. I'm expecting to be OD'ed in a house that crumbles based on what I hear. I've heard a good idea recently to incentivize the kids. No drivers license if you drop out till you are 21.
Not necessarily. Power brakes get their power from the vacuum of the engine manifold. If the engine is running WOT, the vacuum is small to non-existent, so the power brakes require even more effort than normal manual brakes. As an experiment, go to a parking lot, or someplace deserted, get going maybe 20 mph, shut off the engine, pump the brakes a couple of times to bleed the vacuum, and see how hard you have to hit the brakes to stop. Its pretty amazing. Please don;t hit anything, I disclaim any responsibility if you do...
"In the 2004 crash in Evansville, Ind., that killed 77-year-old Juanita Grossman, attorneys for her family say a Toyota technician traveled from the company's U.S. headquarters in Torrance, Calif., to examine her 2003 Camry.
Before she died, the 5-foot-2, 125-pound woman told relatives she was practically standing with both feet on the brake pedal but could not stop the car from slamming into a building. Records confirm that emergency personnel found Grossman with both feet on the brake pedal."
While not conclusive that the woman had her feet on the brakes, it sure seems probable. I don't see how her feet would end up in that position if she was not trying to break, especially since the EMS substantiated her recollection. If toyota kept the info on brake and throttle position and they made it available, we would know. Since toyota will not even divulge what info is kept and keeps the info they do divulge under wraps, we will probably never know.
And here I thought the supreme court just granted "person" status to corp's so they could lobby as much as they wanted. Darn, I always did want to see a corp get the death penalty. Would we shoot em, fry em, hang em, or gas em?
I'm not sure of all the details, but I believe many of the self employed (like mr stack) failed to pay income taxes while they were self employed. The IRS was very unhappy with this and so decided they would go after the deep pocket companies and call them employees, making the company pay. They did and these companies were pretty unhappy about it. As a result the companies stopped hiring people directly and hired via temp agencies. I am pretty sure AMD & motorola got hit in texas over this. I remember going thru alot of hoops to get a contract job with AMD in the late 90's as a result. Unfortunately, people do not like to pay taxes. If it is up to them many do not. If you work for a company, companies pay them for you (with your money). Sales tax & with-holding taxes work efficiently because the payer has no choice. This guy in a way is part of the reason it works the way it does. He was not paying income taxes in the 80's as he was one of those people who think that the fed does not have the right to collect tax. I think its a little crazy to expect the level of service the fed provides and not expect to have to pay for it. I mean really, does he think Santa Claus exists?
And yet there are reports of ES350's with the same problem (some crashed even) and yet toyota is not including them in the recall. Toyota has likely become a big american company where PR is more important than quality.
I think you are spot on with this. The CTS pedal thing is so they can blame someone else. There are a couple facts that seem to not get mentioned. There have been ES350's (nice camray really) that have had the problem. Toyota has not recalled these. First they blamed the floormats, then blamed CTS pedals, and who knows what will be next. I think they have a basic design flaw in the sw for almost everything they make and are ashamed to admit it. I mean it would not exactly be rocket science to put the following test in the throttle sw. if(brake depressed fully && WOT ) throttle = idle;
I do have one funny idea. Take the Lexus IS commercial where the cars are doing donuts with the drivers all happy and turn it into camry's where the drivers are scared sh1tless. Be a great u-tube parody.
Sorry to burst YOUR bubble but if you add in a reasonable rent for athletic facilities, UT athletics does not come even CLOSE to paying for itself. Check out USA today for actuals. UT pays like 15mil a year for all facilities. Man, I wish someboday would rent me about 500Mil worth of stuff for 15mil a year. Thats 3%/year and I'm pretty sure it includes the electric & water use for the stadiums as the 15 mil is listed as "facilities expense". A friend of mine follows this stuff pretty close and only 2 schools in the nation "make money". As a "car" analogy, imagine if all you had to pay for in your car factory was labor & materials and 3%/year for any machinery/bldgs. The 3% covers the maint, juice and water too. You'd have to be pretty bad not to turn a profit.
And note in my post I said great to intramural sports for STUDENTS. Having a bunch of students get toasted drunk every weekend at a football game is not healthy. Being a spectator is not a skill I want schools to teach. Teaching lifelong physical exercise for everyone would be a much better loss producing activity for schools. I swim, hike, play tennis and have been much more active & thinner than my engineer peers who watch football religiously.
Yes as the UTexas students recently discovered. Mack Brown gets a nice 5M/year now even though his contract wasn't up. They "gave" him a bump since he was so good. Of course he lost the BCS game. And don't even get me started on how valuable I think a coach even is. He's not the one with his butt out there getting creamed. But anyway,UT is short 30Mil now, so the students get a 4% tuition hike. Athletics has become what schools do, while academics are a sideshow. Its really pathetic. I stopped giving to my alma mater a few years ago when I found out the EE school was planning to use the money for F*chking wifi for the football stadium. WTF. I'd like to find a school to give to with a 0 dollar athletic program and give to them. I'm all for intramural for exercise, but this pre-NFL training camp crap should go. If the NFL wants a training camp, let them pay for it./* end rant & I'll bet my karma takes a hit for this one */
I'd probably say china's 1 child/family policy was a proactive policy to prevent an overpopulation problem in china. Can you imagine such a policy in the west? I'm not saying it is good or bad, just a difference. Generally I'd say democratic societies have a very hard time making difficult choices until there is no other possible option. Centralized govt on the other hand can cram a decision down the people with no fear of not being re-elected. Uprising maybe, but thats what good armies are for.
OK, I know I am not the typical slashdot cellphone user, I keep a phone for 4-7 years and have been with T-Mo since voicestream days. I have a moto razr version 2 and transfer music all the time to it from the usb connection. Do phone companies really restrict this simple capability?
to my safety deposit box. There are 2 keys to open the box. The bank inserts their key and I insert mine in order to open the box. If I lose mine, they have made it very clear that it will cost me a couple of hundred bucks for them to drill open the lock and re-key it. I think they will also drill it open under a subpoena. But I will know next time I go to open it...
If the IP was so valuable, why is it we owe china 800B instead of them oweing us for all that valuable IP? This is the line I hear all the time. That and we are a consumption based economy, WTF? It is simply justification to be fat and lazy.
In the short term, yes, having cheap goods is nice. Long term, we have lost manufacturing expertise, which china has gained. How can we fight a war without products from others now? I am not a hawk, and yet even I see the danger in this.
The global economy is an illusion. China controls its exchange rate. If they let it float, chinese products would double triple or maybe even 10X in price almost overnight. China controls imports thru numerous techniques (as do we and everyone else). They just recently clamped down on even what web sites will be visible. China is a tightly controlled economy which plans on being number 1 in 5 to 10 years. They think long term and are willing to abuse its citizens in the process. My big worry is once they get those subs they are bulding up & running, the west is screwed. They will now be able to offer the one "product" that up until now, only we could offer. Security. Imagine if you are the Arab nations with all that oil and you can either trade with the US and collect "dollars in an account" and a guarantee of protection or you can get "computers, cars, boats, appliances, furniture, pillows, blankets, screws, bolts, steel, aluminum, pipe, tools, and pretty much anything you want" AND protection from the chinese, who would you sell your oil to? For that matter, ANY raw material producing country will do biz with the chinese, not us. China has played the capitalists over the past couple of decades very well.
I think it has more to do with sun exposure.Fair people burn. I imagine there may even be some upside to fair complexions in cold weather, I am just unaware of any.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe we could trick the terrorists into killing the spammers (& telemarketers).
your phone with a microprojector/camera for the keyboard and a 2nd microprojector that displays on a surface for the display. It'll take awhile, but I expect it to happen when microprojectors get better. Feel free to use this comment as "prior art" as a published idea 10 years from now when the patent surfaces:)
You must have watched the nightline special. The guy had the disease that causes your muscles to stop working. He needed to commit the assisted suicide in switzerland before his throat muscles stopped working as according to the story, he had to swallow the cocktail himself. His problem was I'm sure he would have liked to wait until his throat muscles stopped working to die, but if he did that, his suicide option would be gone. I guess his options then are starve to death or die when the chest muscles stopped breathing. Either way, it seems wrong that he could not be given an injection after his throat muscles stopped swallowing since his intentions were clear. I really don't get why others are so determined not to let those who don't want to be a vegetable or trapped in their body be allowed to die. Obviously safe guards need to be in place to make sure if you want to be a brain in a non-functioning body you can be, but why can't someone die if they want to. Sort of like a DNR, but a PMO (Put Me Out) if certain conditions are met. I watched the nightline episode and was taken aback by how my belief system about death was so in line with the man's. Scary to think my options are as limited as his.
I'm a little over 50 & have never hit the accel instead of the brake since I was in my teens. Oh, and if "old" people are such bad drivers, please explain why my insurance rates are at their lowest point ever and I now own 2 cars and the insurance for both is less than what I paid in my 20's and 30's for a single car that cost 1/2 as much as one of my current cars? If 50+ drivers were less capable, shouldn't my insurance be more than 4 times what I paid back then?
I doubt they asked, NHTSA did, and no I don't think toyota asked NHTSA either. I seriously doubt they are even helping. I even wondered when Toyota offered to rent the sw to NY to aid in the investigation, if they whipped a special version that checked
if(VIN==car in ny accident) { acceleratorPosition = down; brakePosition = notDepressed }
so that the sw would report driver error. But then, there goes the tin hat alert again.
GM has done more than fiddle with HUD. My 02 vette had it and when I traded for a 09 vette I absolutely wanted it again. Seeing speed display on the windshield is very nice and now the 09 has integrated the GPS with the windshield display so that directions show up there. It is way better than looking down to see where the next turn is. Some of it is frivilous like the mode to see how many g's you just pulled were, but the speed & direction stuff is awesome. Maybe try it before you piss on it.
Dead on. Society is the real customer and it is getting the shaft. Parents think they are the customer and as the comment below me indicates, they complain loudly when their perfect child gets mistreated. Consider that these urchins are the ones that are going to be building your house, filling your prescription, flying that airplane, when we are retired. I'm expecting to be OD'ed in a house that crumbles based on what I hear. I've heard a good idea recently to incentivize the kids. No drivers license if you drop out till you are 21.
Not necessarily. Power brakes get their power from the vacuum of the engine manifold. If the engine is running WOT, the vacuum is small to non-existent, so the power brakes require even more effort than normal manual brakes. As an experiment, go to a parking lot, or someplace deserted, get going maybe 20 mph, shut off the engine, pump the brakes a couple of times to bleed the vacuum, and see how hard you have to hit the brakes to stop. Its pretty amazing. Please don;t hit anything, I disclaim any responsibility if you do...
The yahoo article cites
"In the 2004 crash in Evansville, Ind., that killed 77-year-old Juanita Grossman, attorneys for her family say a Toyota technician traveled from the company's U.S. headquarters in Torrance, Calif., to examine her 2003 Camry.
Before she died, the 5-foot-2, 125-pound woman told relatives she was practically standing with both feet on the brake pedal but could not stop the car from slamming into a building. Records confirm that emergency personnel found Grossman with both feet on the brake pedal."
While not conclusive that the woman had her feet on the brakes, it sure seems probable. I don't see how her feet would end up in that position if she was not trying to break, especially since the EMS substantiated her recollection. If toyota kept the info on brake and throttle position and they made it available, we would know. Since toyota will not even divulge what info is kept and keeps the info they do divulge under wraps, we will probably never know.
And here I thought the supreme court just granted "person" status to corp's so they could lobby as much as they wanted. Darn, I always did want to see a corp get the death penalty. Would we shoot em, fry em, hang em, or gas em?
I'm not sure of all the details, but I believe many of the self employed (like mr stack) failed to pay income taxes while they were self employed. The IRS was very unhappy with this and so decided they would go after the deep pocket companies and call them employees, making the company pay. They did and these companies were pretty unhappy about it. As a result the companies stopped hiring people directly and hired via temp agencies. I am pretty sure AMD & motorola got hit in texas over this. I remember going thru alot of hoops to get a contract job with AMD in the late 90's as a result. Unfortunately, people do not like to pay taxes. If it is up to them many do not. If you work for a company, companies pay them for you (with your money). Sales tax & with-holding taxes work efficiently because the payer has no choice. This guy in a way is part of the reason it works the way it does. He was not paying income taxes in the 80's as he was one of those people who think that the fed does not have the right to collect tax. I think its a little crazy to expect the level of service the fed provides and not expect to have to pay for it. I mean really, does he think Santa Claus exists?
Nah, the difference is the IS buyer loves it when the car takes off on its own. Watch the commercials where they are all doing donuts.
And yet there are reports of ES350's with the same problem (some crashed even) and yet toyota is not including them in the recall. Toyota has likely become a big american company where PR is more important than quality.
I think you are spot on with this. The CTS pedal thing is so they can blame someone else. There are a couple facts that seem to not get mentioned. There have been ES350's (nice camray really) that have had the problem. Toyota has not recalled these. First they blamed the floormats, then blamed CTS pedals, and who knows what will be next. I think they have a basic design flaw in the sw for almost everything they make and are ashamed to admit it. I mean it would not exactly be rocket science to put the following test in the throttle sw. if(brake depressed fully && WOT ) throttle = idle;
I do have one funny idea. Take the Lexus IS commercial where the cars are doing donuts with the drivers all happy and turn it into camry's where the drivers are scared sh1tless. Be a great u-tube parody.
Sorry to burst YOUR bubble but if you add in a reasonable rent for athletic facilities, UT athletics does not come even CLOSE to paying for itself. Check out USA today for actuals. UT pays like 15mil a year for all facilities. Man, I wish someboday would rent me
about 500Mil worth of stuff for 15mil a year. Thats 3%/year and I'm pretty sure it includes the electric & water use for the stadiums as the 15 mil is listed as "facilities expense". A friend of mine follows this stuff pretty close and only 2 schools in the nation "make money".
As a "car" analogy, imagine if all you had to pay for in your car factory was labor & materials and 3%/year for any machinery/bldgs. The 3% covers the maint, juice and water too. You'd have to be pretty bad not to turn a profit.
And note in my post I said great to intramural sports for STUDENTS. Having a bunch of students get toasted drunk every weekend at a football game is not healthy. Being a spectator is not a skill I want schools to teach. Teaching lifelong physical exercise for everyone would be a much better loss producing activity for schools. I swim, hike, play tennis and have been much more active & thinner than my engineer peers who watch football religiously.
Yes as the UTexas students recently discovered. Mack Brown gets a nice 5M/year now even though his contract wasn't up. They "gave" him a bump since he was so good. Of course he lost the BCS game. And don't even get me started on how valuable I think a coach even is. He's not the one with his butt out there getting creamed. But anyway,UT is short 30Mil now, so the students get a 4% tuition hike. Athletics has become what schools do, while academics are a sideshow. Its really pathetic. I stopped giving to my alma mater a few years ago when I found out the EE school was planning to use the money for F*chking wifi for the football stadium. WTF. I'd like to find a school to give to with a 0 dollar athletic program and give to them. I'm all for intramural for exercise, but this pre-NFL training camp crap should go. If the NFL wants a training camp, let them pay for it. /* end rant & I'll bet my karma takes a hit for this one */
I'd probably say china's 1 child/family policy was a proactive policy to prevent an overpopulation problem in china. Can you imagine such a policy in the west? I'm not saying it is good or bad, just a difference. Generally I'd say democratic societies have a very hard time making difficult choices until there is no other possible option. Centralized govt on the other hand can cram a decision down the people with no fear of not being re-elected. Uprising maybe, but thats what good armies are for.
OK, I know I am not the typical slashdot cellphone user, I keep a phone for 4-7 years and have been with T-Mo since voicestream days. I have a moto razr version 2 and transfer music all the time to it from the usb connection. Do phone companies really restrict this simple capability?
Agreed, they should have been kicked awhile ago for fixing their exchange rate. Nothing will happen though. The world grows afraid of china.
to my safety deposit box. There are 2 keys to open the box. The bank inserts their key and I insert mine
in order to open the box. If I lose mine, they have made it very clear that it will cost me a couple of hundred
bucks for them to drill open the lock and re-key it. I think they will also drill it open under a subpoena. But
I will know next time I go to open it...
If the IP was so valuable, why is it we owe china 800B instead of them oweing us for all that valuable IP? This is the line I hear all the time. That and we are a consumption based economy, WTF? It is simply justification to be fat and lazy.
In the short term, yes, having cheap goods is nice. Long term, we have lost manufacturing expertise, which china has gained. How can we fight a war without products from others now? I am not a hawk, and yet even I see the danger in this.
The global economy is an illusion. China controls its exchange rate. If they let it float, chinese products would double
triple or maybe even 10X in price almost overnight. China controls imports thru numerous techniques (as do we and everyone else).
They just recently clamped down on even what web sites will be visible. China is a tightly controlled economy which plans on being number 1 in 5 to 10 years. They think long term and are willing to abuse its citizens in the process. My big worry is once they get those subs they are bulding up & running, the west is screwed. They will now be able to offer the one "product" that up until now, only we could offer. Security. Imagine if you are the Arab nations with all that oil and you can either trade with the US and collect "dollars in an account" and a guarantee of protection or you can get "computers, cars, boats, appliances, furniture, pillows, blankets, screws, bolts, steel, aluminum, pipe, tools, and pretty much anything you want" AND protection from the chinese, who would you sell your oil to? For that matter, ANY raw material producing country will do biz with the chinese, not us. China has played the capitalists over the past couple of decades very well.
I think it has more to do with sun exposure.Fair people burn. I imagine there may even be some upside to fair complexions in cold weather, I am just unaware of any.
China used the idea of "for the children" to control commerce & thought, brilliant.