you can easily hold onto the terminals of a car battery (12 volts, can deliver several hundred amps easily) with no ill effects.
I challenge you to videotape yourself demonstrating your theory. You can have your next-of-kin digitize and post the tape if need be.
I've stuck my (sweaty) hand across the terminals of a car battery by accident and I felt exactly... nothing. No pain, no muscle twitching, nothing. 12 V simply doesn't push enough current to hurt you, unless maybe the battery leads are attached to needles stuck under your skin. Cars are 12V precisely because 12V is considered to be a safe voltage, although with the proliferation of electrical accessories in cars, several manufacturers are thinking of going to 36V systems.
Leaving aside your kneejerk criticism of the FBI and the judicial system, you are making a foolish statement that because there isn't a silver bullet that will provide %100 deterrence with a single technique, that nothing at all should be attempted.
I was never saying that preventing terrorism should not be attempted. I was saying that we should use methods that are a minimal invasion of people's privacy, but that are also effective. Photographing senders of packages seems to me to be high up there on the "invasion of privacy" scale, and low on the "effectiveness" scale.
And, yes, some terrorists will slip through the cracks of the system. Some people will die because of it. I hate to put it so bluntly, but these deaths and injuries might be the price that we have to pay for having a relatively open society. Not to minimize the scale of the WTC attack, but remember that ~3,000 people died in the WTC attacks. About 45,000 people die in traffic accidents in the US every year, and an attack on the scale of the WTC doesn't happen every year,
In your example, the potential terrorist would have to make personal contact with another human being that could potentially identify him. Said homless person could also just pocket his $20 and dump the package in the trash.
Not if the terrorist happens to be standing outside the glass doors of the post office, out of focal range, smoking a cigarette and talking to his friend all the while. Not if he paid the homeless guy $5 up front and promised $15 more afterwards.
The terrorist might even kill the homeless guy afterwards - a homeless person is unlikely to be missed for a while.
Catch the criminals from fradulent ebay sellers to anthrax package hoaxers.
Nah, it'll only catch the stupid criminals. The smart ones will give a gullible teenager or a homeless guy $20 and a case of beer to go into the post office and send the package for them.
Someone sends an exploding package by airmail. The package explodes in a plane, killing all 123 passengers aboard. The sender's photo goes up on "WANTED" posters and websites all over the country. Six months later, the FBI arrests Mr. James Smith, occupation - homeless, for sending the package. There's a trial. Smith is convicted, sentenced to death, and electrocuted 5 years later.
On the day of Smith's execution, the person who gave Smith $20 and a bottle of Thunderbird to send the package laughs a slow, evil laugh and heaves a sigh of relief.
The end. And everyone lived happily ever after &c. The solution to this problem is improved scanning of cargo to be loaded onto planes, not a wholesale violation of civil liberties. Either that or accept that having a free and open society has its dangers and consider those dangers as the price of a better quality of life.
Teens have a lot of problems with understanding what a car can and cannot do. They've probably never slammed on the brakes to see how slowly their car stops. They've certainly never been on a skidpad.
Soon after getting my license, I took the family car out to a deserted parking lot on a Sunday morning and played around. I jammed on the brakes to see what it would take to lock them up (it didn't have ABS) and turned quickly until the car skidded so I could see its limits. Not exactly a skidpad, but it gave me a good "seat of the pants" feeling as to what the car could or couldn't do. Sadly, the car (15-year old BMW 528e) ended up being totalled by my mom soon after I learned to drive - a drunk guy decided that it was a good idea to drive perpendicular to the traffic flow on the NJ Turnpike.
For 75 in a 55, I'd probably just ground them for a week.
75 in a 55 might be completely acceptable if traffic is flowing at that speed and conditions are dry with good visibility. My parents taught me to drive with the flow of traffic on the highway whenever possible and safe - being the slowest one on the highway opens you up to more risks, like the risk of being rear-ended.
On the other hand, 75 on a 2-lane road surrounded with woods full of moose at night might just be a bad idea...
The biggest loophole in the system is not the counterfeiting of driver's licenses. Remember that someone, namely underpaid state motor vehicle registry employees need to make the legitimate driver's licenses. I'm sure that finding a few corrupt (or blackmailable) employees wouldn't be excessively difficult. For that matter, if the licenses are made "on the spot" like in NJ, breaking into a motor vehicle office and stealing some driver's license templates might not be too difficult. I suspect that the holograms and UV printing are the same for every license - the digital watermark and other things might be printable with a high-quality laser printer.
For commuting to work, I have a 2004 Pontiac GTO and take twisty back roads. Believe me, I don't mind the drive at all!
Nice car, and it's a shame that for some reason, they're not selling too well in this country. I've tried the "having a fun vehicle" thing - I've had, at different times, several motorcycles, a Fiat convertible, and a SAAB 900 turbo - _having_ to drive for lengthy periods of time still sucks no matter what how nice the car is. Cars are best for road trips and weekend drives for fun. Commuting is best done on foot, by bicycle, or by transit. Just my opinion, of course.
I did the city thing for a while but eventually the noise just drove me nuts.
There are plenty of small towns and town-like suburbs (like, say, Morristown, NJ) that you can live in if you're willing to settle for 1/4 acre and 3 bedrooms instead of an acre and 5 bedrooms. They're not necessarily noisy or annoying to live in. For that matter, cities aren't that bad either, if you know where to get your house. A few years ago, a friend paid $200,000 for a house in the Southeast part of DC around 15 blocks from the Capitol. Quiet, relatively safe street, convenient to everywhere (within two blocks of a metro), full driveway, and a modest backyard (about 30' x 35'). The best part about the whole deal is that the house has gone up 2x in value since then - a 100% return on investment in 3 years isn't bad;)
Biggest reason: we have room to grow , so a lot of the roads are new and poorly built (Why build it to last? we'll have to dig it up again in 8-10 years!)
Depends on what state you're in and how much funding is available for infrastructure. Here in NJ, I-287 is a comparatively new road, but it was built to last (i.e. the surface is made out of large interlocking concrete blocks in places rather than asphalt - makes for a slightly worse ride - ka-thud ka-thud - but the stuff lasts just about forever, and when it's worn out, you can patch the potholes with concrete and put a thin layer of asphalt on top as they're doing with the western part of US-1 in PA now). Local roads in NJ are generally in worse shape, because there's simply so damn many of them.
The average American McMansion has around 2500 sq feet and practically an acre of land.
And said McMansion is usually located way out in the middle of nowhere on former farmland. It takes 10 or 20 min. of driving just to get to the nearest decent grocery store, and 1/2 hour to an hour each way to work. For the same price, I'd take a 2 bedroom apartment in a city or a smaller house in a medium-sized university town where there are interesting things to do within walking distance and the locale is designed for humans, not cars.
Space can help us build space lasers and missiles and and what not. We can try to control things by threatening to lob rocks. Space-faring is cowboy mentality. That's our romance.
Well, in the short run, electronics and information technology *will* become increasingly important. A century from now, when oil supplies begin to dwindle and if nuclear fission power is still deemed unacceptably risky, then who knows... We might want to have things like solar power stations in geosync beaming microwave energy down to the Earth. Not to mention that things like being able to deflect asteroids headed towards our planet might come in handy some day. Plus, there are planets and stars out there that we know nothing about and might want to learn about. In the long run, being able to leave this little, comfortable gravity well of ours will be much more useful to our species than having the latest cell phone with stereoscopic oil lenses, a trimensional laser image projector, and the ability to call up the latest tentacle pr0n from anywhere in the planet.
There is zero integration between Christianity and Technology.
There is zero integration between any radically conservative political or religious philosophy and the advancement of technology.
Why bring down your server at all? Just have it send out fake bounce notifications to all authors of incoming messages (except for maybe those on a white list) for a few days, but have the mail go through as normal. You could even include a little blurb in the bounce messages stating that they are fake - spammers are very unlikely to read the actual contents of those messages since spamming is usually handled automatically.
With the exception of a few places in the Southwestern desert, most Americans can't legally drive faster than 80mph anyways. Most Americans look towards other features than top speed.
Most any car these days will have a top speed of 110-120 mph. Some will be speed limited to ~95 mph due to the crappy tires that the manufacturer installs as stock. Disabling said limit is usually not terribly difficult, nor is it meant to be, since the reason for the limit is to protect the manufacturer against lawsuits. (Guy crashes his de-limited car - "See! We told him so but he went and disabled it anyway! We can't be responsible for aftermarket mods!")
As far as speeds > 80 mph, the key word there is "legally." On Rt. 95 between NYC and DC, traffic moves right along at 80-90 mph, and I've had my car up to 90 and have still been passed by numerous people.
Try to get stability control or all-wheel-drive on a Japanese sedan in the US.
OTOH, the Japanese do make some really nifty cars without the above gadgets. Look at the Toyota MR-Spyder and Mazda Miata[*] for starters. Handling to rival a Porsche for about 1/2 the price.
-b.
[*]- Yes, I do know that the original design was American, but no American company had the balls to produce a small sports convertible in the mid to late 80s. The Pontiac Fiero was the closest to that type of car, and the first examples were misdesigned abominations that overheated and occasionally caught fire. By the time Pontiac worked the quirks out of the design, sales were down and GM killed the model.
Any teacher worth keeping can make a lot more doing just about anything else. I'm for extensive reform of the US K-12 educational system - including a nationalized curriculum and a professionalized teacher's corp (along the French model, in which teaching is part of a heirarchical civil service),
Horrible idea!
The best teachers that I've had, at least in high school, were in their 20s up to maybe age 40. The older teachers seemed like they were bored and "going through the motions." I have to admit that if I were a teacher, I might grow weary of teaching the same subject matter to kids 20 or 30 years in a row.
Instead, I'd recommend giving the brightest college graduates a strong incentive to teach for a few years, namely a decent salary (say $40k/year) and complete forgiveness of all federal student loans. Not everyone should be admitted into this type of program - entry should be by interview and competitive examination. Kind of like Teach for America, except more so.
and the end to local school boards (populated by political failures with no background in education whatsoever.)
Nah. Make it a requirement that at least 2/3 of sitting school board members be parents of children in their town's school system. That would make sure that the majority of school board members would have a strong incentive to do the right thing.
Let's not nationalise the school system and replace several thousand smaller bureaucracies which are at least moderately accountable to their constituents with one large inflexible bureaucracy that will ultimately be accountable to nobody.
I wish that we in the US got some of the nifty bikes that you see in Japan - namely 250cc 4-stroke 4-cylinder bikes that make 30-40 hp and are pretty light. They'd make good rides in NYC - bigger wheels than scooters, classier and more comfortable than small dirtbikes, and decent gas mileage unlike some of the 1000cc+ behemoths sold in the US nowadays. (Yes, yes, I know - Harleys are status symbols in Japan and Europe, supposedly...)
I was an exchange student in Japan in 1994. I stayed with a host family who had a house on the outskirts of Toyama, which is an industrial city with a population of ~300,000 people (about 1/2 the population of Washington DC proper). Rotary phones were still *very* common there - I think that the phone switches were still mechanical and relay-based - and you had to make international calls through the long-distance operator. The toilet in my host family's home was basically a "Turkish toilet" - a hole in the ground with a porcelain basin around it with no water supply for flushing since the stuff went straight down. From other students' stories, my host family wasn't unique.
Maybe I was just spoiled by growing up in New Jersey, which is one of the more technically advanced areas of the US, but the part of Japan which I was in didn't seem all that advanced.
Terrorism has also created a switch in what consumers deem to be necessary equipment as they drive. It is the ability to communicate, not to be entertained, that seems to matter most to Americans, some industry officials have concluded.
Bah. I actually *like* to be without communication when I'm driving. Gahdferbid someone can't reach me *right now.*
What if my car breaks down? I have tools and a simple enough car where I can jerry-rig many things if needed. Plus I have those two appendages on the bottom of me. They're called "feet."
Just about the time these technologies are officially outlawed, auto auto-pilot will become widely available.
They're already mostly illegal. Watching TV while driving will get you done for reckless driving in NJ if you get caught. Plus, if, I, on my bike see anyone doing that, I will teach them some sense:)
I believe in Japan they have an option (or a kit) that allows your side mirrors to fold up.
Many imports in the US have that as well. My Volvo does, as did my old Saab and my parents' VW Jetta. Just push back on the mirrors of your car - they might actually be foldable. (Or did you mean *motorized* folding?)
This is also a safety feature - if you're a pedestrian, it's better to get hit by something that folds than something that doesn't yield.
Thank goodness for old fashioned American litigiousness! From the article:
But the system cannot respond to changing conditions, like the vehicle in front suddenly backing into the space the Prius is about to enter. Nor can the system respond to unexpected road obstacles -- a soccer ball rolling into the gutter or a child running in the way.
In the system, the driver has control of the throttle and brake. The electronics just turn the steering wheel. If the driver sees an obstacle, he can stop the car the same way as if he were parking it "by hand." That being said, I've never really had a problem parking a car, even in places like NYC and Boston. Then again, I always buy cars with fairly nimble turning radii - maybe people who enjoy large SUVs and front-wheel-driven barges will like this (yes, I know, it's offered on the Prius in Japan:).
If I want to read the newspaper, play with my computer, or read a book, I either drive with someone else, or take the bus or train. Speaking as a frequent motorcyclist, having people watching TV on the highway while driving and being more distracted would be terrible. I'm sure some people will be "smart" enough to bypass the > 3 mph turn-off feature, too.
Perhaps I should've been more explicit. Many higher-end cars (bimmers, Porsches, etc) call their A/C "climate control" instead, and expect you to have it on all the time. I don't know all of the plumbing behind it, but my car's climate control has auto and manual modes (or as the display says, "manuell").
Oh, ok. Who knows, maybe your car's maker did a good job and included a humidity sensor to turn off the A/C compressor when it isn't needed.
I know that in a some American cars with climate control (Mercury Sable, for one) the A/C compressor runs whenever the outside temperature is above freezing, regardless of whether it's needed to cool the interior or dehumidify the air. A thoroughly retarded design, but, hey, I didn't design it not do I own one.
Slashdot Mirror
I challenge you to videotape yourself demonstrating your theory. You can have your next-of-kin digitize and post the tape if need be.
I've stuck my (sweaty) hand across the terminals of a car battery by accident and I felt exactly ... nothing. No pain, no muscle twitching, nothing. 12 V simply doesn't push enough current to hurt you, unless maybe the battery leads are attached to needles stuck under your skin. Cars are 12V precisely because 12V is considered to be a safe voltage, although with the proliferation of electrical accessories in cars, several manufacturers are thinking of going to 36V systems.
-b.
How would this help? The anthrax letters were likely under 16 oz, so they could have been sent from any street mailbox.
-b.
I was never saying that preventing terrorism should not be attempted. I was saying that we should use methods that are a minimal invasion of people's privacy, but that are also effective. Photographing senders of packages seems to me to be high up there on the "invasion of privacy" scale, and low on the "effectiveness" scale.
And, yes, some terrorists will slip through the cracks of the system. Some people will die because of it. I hate to put it so bluntly, but these deaths and injuries might be the price that we have to pay for having a relatively open society. Not to minimize the scale of the WTC attack, but remember that ~3,000 people died in the WTC attacks. About 45,000 people die in traffic accidents in the US every year, and an attack on the scale of the WTC doesn't happen every year,
In your example, the potential terrorist would have to make personal contact with another human being that could potentially identify him. Said homless person could also just pocket his $20 and dump the package in the trash.
Not if the terrorist happens to be standing outside the glass doors of the post office, out of focal range, smoking a cigarette and talking to his friend all the while. Not if he paid the homeless guy $5 up front and promised $15 more afterwards.
The terrorist might even kill the homeless guy afterwards - a homeless person is unlikely to be missed for a while.
-b.
Nah, it'll only catch the stupid criminals. The smart ones will give a gullible teenager or a homeless guy $20 and a case of beer to go into the post office and send the package for them.
-b.
On the day of Smith's execution, the person who gave Smith $20 and a bottle of Thunderbird to send the package laughs a slow, evil laugh and heaves a sigh of relief.
The end. And everyone lived happily ever after &c. The solution to this problem is improved scanning of cargo to be loaded onto planes, not a wholesale violation of civil liberties. Either that or accept that having a free and open society has its dangers and consider those dangers as the price of a better quality of life.
-b.
Soon after getting my license, I took the family car out to a deserted parking lot on a Sunday morning and played around. I jammed on the brakes to see what it would take to lock them up (it didn't have ABS) and turned quickly until the car skidded so I could see its limits. Not exactly a skidpad, but it gave me a good "seat of the pants" feeling as to what the car could or couldn't do. Sadly, the car (15-year old BMW 528e) ended up being totalled by my mom soon after I learned to drive - a drunk guy decided that it was a good idea to drive perpendicular to the traffic flow on the NJ Turnpike.
-b.
75 in a 55 might be completely acceptable if traffic is flowing at that speed and conditions are dry with good visibility. My parents taught me to drive with the flow of traffic on the highway whenever possible and safe - being the slowest one on the highway opens you up to more risks, like the risk of being rear-ended.
On the other hand, 75 on a 2-lane road surrounded with woods full of moose at night might just be a bad idea...
-b.
-b.
Nice car, and it's a shame that for some reason, they're not selling too well in this country. I've tried the "having a fun vehicle" thing - I've had, at different times, several motorcycles, a Fiat convertible, and a SAAB 900 turbo - _having_ to drive for lengthy periods of time still sucks no matter what how nice the car is. Cars are best for road trips and weekend drives for fun. Commuting is best done on foot, by bicycle, or by transit. Just my opinion, of course.
-b.
There are plenty of small towns and town-like suburbs (like, say, Morristown, NJ) that you can live in if you're willing to settle for 1/4 acre and 3 bedrooms instead of an acre and 5 bedrooms. They're not necessarily noisy or annoying to live in. For that matter, cities aren't that bad either, if you know where to get your house. A few years ago, a friend paid $200,000 for a house in the Southeast part of DC around 15 blocks from the Capitol. Quiet, relatively safe street, convenient to everywhere (within two blocks of a metro), full driveway, and a modest backyard (about 30' x 35'). The best part about the whole deal is that the house has gone up 2x in value since then - a 100% return on investment in 3 years isn't bad
-b.
-b.
And said McMansion is usually located way out in the middle of nowhere on former farmland. It takes 10 or 20 min. of driving just to get to the nearest decent grocery store, and 1/2 hour to an hour each way to work. For the same price, I'd take a 2 bedroom apartment in a city or a smaller house in a medium-sized university town where there are interesting things to do within walking distance and the locale is designed for humans, not cars.
-b.
Well, in the short run, electronics and information technology *will* become increasingly important. A century from now, when oil supplies begin to dwindle and if nuclear fission power is still deemed unacceptably risky, then who knows... We might want to have things like solar power stations in geosync beaming microwave energy down to the Earth. Not to mention that things like being able to deflect asteroids headed towards our planet might come in handy some day. Plus, there are planets and stars out there that we know nothing about and might want to learn about. In the long run, being able to leave this little, comfortable gravity well of ours will be much more useful to our species than having the latest cell phone with stereoscopic oil lenses, a trimensional laser image projector, and the ability to call up the latest tentacle pr0n from anywhere in the planet.
There is zero integration between Christianity and Technology. There is zero integration between any radically conservative political or religious philosophy and the advancement of technology.
-b.
-b.
Most any car these days will have a top speed of 110-120 mph. Some will be speed limited to ~95 mph due to the crappy tires that the manufacturer installs as stock. Disabling said limit is usually not terribly difficult, nor is it meant to be, since the reason for the limit is to protect the manufacturer against lawsuits. (Guy crashes his de-limited car - "See! We told him so but he went and disabled it anyway! We can't be responsible for aftermarket mods!")
As far as speeds > 80 mph, the key word there is "legally." On Rt. 95 between NYC and DC, traffic moves right along at 80-90 mph, and I've had my car up to 90 and have still been passed by numerous people.
-b.
OTOH, the Japanese do make some really nifty cars without the above gadgets. Look at the Toyota MR-Spyder and Mazda Miata[*] for starters. Handling to rival a Porsche for about 1/2 the price.
-b.
[*]- Yes, I do know that the original design was American, but no American company had the balls to produce a small sports convertible in the mid to late 80s. The Pontiac Fiero was the closest to that type of car, and the first examples were misdesigned abominations that overheated and occasionally caught fire. By the time Pontiac worked the quirks out of the design, sales were down and GM killed the model.
Horrible idea!
The best teachers that I've had, at least in high school, were in their 20s up to maybe age 40. The older teachers seemed like they were bored and "going through the motions." I have to admit that if I were a teacher, I might grow weary of teaching the same subject matter to kids 20 or 30 years in a row.
Instead, I'd recommend giving the brightest college graduates a strong incentive to teach for a few years, namely a decent salary (say $40k/year) and complete forgiveness of all federal student loans. Not everyone should be admitted into this type of program - entry should be by interview and competitive examination. Kind of like Teach for America, except more so.
and the end to local school boards (populated by political failures with no background in education whatsoever.)
Nah. Make it a requirement that at least 2/3 of sitting school board members be parents of children in their town's school system. That would make sure that the majority of school board members would have a strong incentive to do the right thing.
Let's not nationalise the school system and replace several thousand smaller bureaucracies which are at least moderately accountable to their constituents with one large inflexible bureaucracy that will ultimately be accountable to nobody.
-b.
-b.
Maybe I was just spoiled by growing up in New Jersey, which is one of the more technically advanced areas of the US, but the part of Japan which I was in didn't seem all that advanced.
-b.
Bah. I actually *like* to be without communication when I'm driving. Gahdferbid someone can't reach me *right now.*
What if my car breaks down? I have tools and a simple enough car where I can jerry-rig many things if needed. Plus I have those two appendages on the bottom of me. They're called "feet."
-b.
They're already mostly illegal. Watching TV while driving will get you done for reckless driving in NJ if you get caught. Plus, if, I, on my bike see anyone doing that, I will teach them some sense
-b.
Many imports in the US have that as well. My Volvo does, as did my old Saab and my parents' VW Jetta. Just push back on the mirrors of your car - they might actually be foldable. (Or did you mean *motorized* folding?)
This is also a safety feature - if you're a pedestrian, it's better to get hit by something that folds than something that doesn't yield.
-b.
But the system cannot respond to changing conditions, like the vehicle in front suddenly backing into the space the Prius is about to enter. Nor can the system respond to unexpected road obstacles -- a soccer ball rolling into the gutter or a child running in the way. :).
In the system, the driver has control of the throttle and brake. The electronics just turn the steering wheel. If the driver sees an obstacle, he can stop the car the same way as if he were parking it "by hand." That being said, I've never really had a problem parking a car, even in places like NYC and Boston. Then again, I always buy cars with fairly nimble turning radii - maybe people who enjoy large SUVs and front-wheel-driven barges will like this (yes, I know, it's offered on the Prius in Japan
-b.
-b.
Oh, ok. Who knows, maybe your car's maker did a good job and included a humidity sensor to turn off the A/C compressor when it isn't needed.
I know that in a some American cars with climate control (Mercury Sable, for one) the A/C compressor runs whenever the outside temperature is above freezing, regardless of whether it's needed to cool the interior or dehumidify the air. A thoroughly retarded design, but, hey, I didn't design it not do I own one.
-b.