So, in short, they waged a spin-war on the opposition. Regardless of title, they're politicians, and they happen to be on the side of "Global warming is a real problem."
It's a big, important question, with dramatic implications in the long, medium and short term. Deniers have a lot more to gain in the short term than believers, and based on that alone, I find the believers more believable.
Any question that involves Trillions of dollars will generate a political circus around it, with clowns on all sides.
It's a pretty weird coincidence that more and stronger tornadoes have happened many times between the last Ice Age and now.
We're getting better at noticing them because the people inhabiting the affected areas: 1. live to tell the tale, 2. can videotape the event and broadcast it to the globe, and 3. have built a bunch of crap that is destroyed by the storm which they will now spend a lot of effort re-building, instead of just shrugging, killing another of the abundant buffalo and making a new tent like they were planning to do next season anyway.
In a liability context, they don't know for sure that their actions will reduce damage, and even if they do reduce net damage, they may also redistribute the reduced damage. $5B in tornado damage is an act of God. When they go and mess with it, even if they reduce total damage to $1B (which, there's no telling if their actions will actually reduce, or possibly increase total damage, but assuming the best) - that $1B in damage can now, in some context be arguably "their fault" - it wouldn't have happened if they hadn't interfered.
If you're an insurance industry, are you just going to accept that $1B is better than what might have happened, or are you going to argue that the $1B is now the military's responsibility and not yours?
There's a difference: insurable loss is much less than actual damage, insurable loss is tracked by analysts, stock traders, and all kinds of "greed is good" people who are interested in millisecond resolution predictions of future relative valuations of publicly traded securities. So, yeah, they can estimate insurable losses pretty quickly and accurately, and five minutes later they might as well share that information with the news outlets as a good faith trade for some of the up to the second information they get back.
On the other hand, nobody but Billy Bob cares about the actual damage to his deer hunting stand, which, when you multiply the $35 he'll have to spend on materials to repair it, by the literally thousands of similar blinds taken out by this storm front, you're approaching the net income of some of the impacted counties.
But, most of the deer stands were not insured, and so of little interest to the equity markets./snark
Of course, if we need to be pedantic, then I could say the first commercial launch vehicle ferrying any meaningful satellite to space (non nano hobby projects, like Sputnik for example.)
$270M is just step 1 of the incentive funding, and it's already 4.5% of $6B.
There needs to be a gradual transition from the present NASA to any self-sufficient privatized programs. Already in the Houston area, NASA contractors wear badges marked "HO", and remark "it means I work for whoever pays me." Programs shift from being run by Lockheed to Jacobs Sverdrup, and all that changes is that the top level Houston people now meet with different executives - all the worker bees keep their same desks, parking spaces, and usually insurance coverage and 401k plans too. It sounds farsical, but what it means is that the real technical work isn't disrupted, and you don't lose expertise by jerking people all over the world to chase their employment - these people have lives and families and they're not all going to move to Richard Branson's private island to continue their work.
Sure, the program needs fresh blood, but relearning 50 years of experience from scratch will cost more than $6B - it will cost time and lives that don't need to be wasted.
The private sector plan just cost NASA $270M in incentives, and will likely cost much more via similar funding, tax breaks, etc. before the first private satellite is launched for profit.
We had a class size amendment passed and approved for 7 years, but the year that the real budget crunch hit from it, all of a sudden the district is just too poor and we're cancelling all school choice (except those families with political connections, of course) as a result of our budget problems. Oh, and by the way, the schoolboard is suing the state to overturn this terrible idea, which was passed by the voters 7 years ago and never questioned until the very day the district had to start hiring additional staff to meet the requirements of the amendment.
If they were so incompetent they didn't see the need for additional hiring coming, they should be thrown off the board. I think it's worse than incompetence, I think they are so arrogant they think their electorate doesn't see through their showboating.
I suppose we elect the government we deserve, but when the schoolboard is elected by a populace most of whom are over fifty and don't give a damn what happens to the world when they are gone - maybe it's time to think about restructuring.
Yes, anybody could make something that demonstrates the concept for about the effort of a senior design project. Then you start getting into the what-if cases - sun-flarespot reflections, people who change lanes, people who brake while the measurement is being made, rain, cloud rolling over between frames, and a dozen things that won't become obvious until the prototype algorithm fails in real-life.
They are all solve-able, the mask derivation you mention is much harder to do than to say, especially if the camera can't be placed in a bird's eye view and the mask changes over time - even in bird's eye view, real-time processing of possible rotations is computationally intense - I think that a practical (with today's desktop level hardware) solution wouldn't even use a mask of the vehicle - more likely build up an image of the background and then identify "not background" and track the blobs of "not background" as they move frame to frame.
Back in the real world where judges watch CSI Miami and know for a fact that the "science" presented there is pure fantasy, when you come at them with some similar sounding wizardry, some of them are going to be skeptical. And people who invest in companies that manufacture and sell this kind of equipment mostly fit a similar (old and skeptical) demographic, so, older technology has a huge advantage when rolling out in this arena.
Toll booth plate readers have it a little easier, it's more of an opt-in convenience than legal proof of violation argument.
Netflix + Hulu, occasional TED and similar, scratches the itch.
WD-TV Live, and an eeeBox PC connected via HDMI to a big screen. Used to have a PS3, but don't miss it much since it YLOD'ed on me, and the other devices have its media functions covered.
I noticed red light cameras being removed from an intersection on my regular commute, just a year after they were installed. I guess to put them somewhere else. Maybe they're hoping the shell-game will spread to have effects on non-camera'ed intersections too... or maybe there was a horrific crash when a little car jammed the brakes for the camera in-front of a cement mixer (cement plant is 1/2 mile down the road.)
Speed is always a factor, even when below the posted limits. If nobody was travelling at speed, there would not have been a collision.
Of course, oxygen causes ageing and eventual death, same for eating, sex is even worse - you can't win, we all die in the end, and God help us if that stops being true.
You do this kind of trivial signal processing for a living?
Even if you've got it all worked out and at least as reliable as radar, radar has decades of acceptance in the courts. Automated photo magic has yet to be proven.
In this neck of the woods, that would be called a conflict of interest. If I were caught in such a situation in my professional work, it would be grounds for dismissal without recourse.
Your work is obviously not generating funding for the local municipality. The judges are supposed to care about principles, but how do you make sure that they do? Around here they're elected, which is virtually a lottery system because the vast majority of the voting public knows nothing about any of them. I suppose there are worse methods than lottery (like political appointment), but it's still not confidence inspiring.
I don't know if he's really smart, stubborn and righteous, yes, but a smart man would have had a more enjoyable and profitable time saying "do you want fries with that?" 400 times instead of mounting a court battle.
How is ticketing a random sample of drivers with fines that are in excess of two hundred dollars (after taxes, that is nearly an entire work week at minimum wage) fair enforcement?
It's the random stick approach to discipline - it starts in elementary school, if the Principal sees you doing something wrong, you get crucified as an example. Never mind that every other pupil in the school has been doing the same thing all week long and you just started, you were caught, you are now the example, and hopefully that encourages some of the other violators to behave better in the future.
It's nothing approaching fair, just, or reasonable. It's just a lesson in the randomness of life - like you're a fish in the sea, lots of fish get to feed in the surface plankton, only a few get plucked out by pelicans... Humans pretend to be better than animals, but a lot of the time they are not very convincing.
In Florida, there's a huge jump in the fine when you go from 14 to 15mph over the limit. Last ticket I received was for - bingo, exactly 15mph over the limit (I might have been doing 12ish over). When I went to pay it, the guy infront of me had a ticket from the same officer at the same location on the same day for, guess what? 15mph over - and he was grumbling to the clerk about not going that fast, but paying the extra money just to be done with it, as was I.
I wish that "traffic officers" were more distanced from the people who intervene in life threatening situations, investigate rape and murder, and generally do good things for the world that require integrity and trust. The way that many traffic officers (mostly the ones you receive tickets from) abuse the system gives all cops a bad name.
Once, just once, I knew a gas pump that told me I was getting 57mpg, I could fill an empty 9 gallon tank with just 5 gallons. I made sure to return to that exact pump every time, for about 3 weeks until the owner noticed what was happening.
I don't think the system was making that kind of systematic error, though if it were, the only incentive its operators have to fix it is to fend off embarrassment in court, and I doubt that a little embarrassment bothers them much.
More likely this was just a glitchy reading - like the time a cop clocked us doing 57mph on a neighborhood street, 50 feet from a 90 degree turn (taken sedately, at less than 20mph), in a car that did 0-60 in about 12 seconds. He showed us the number on the radar gun. He also looked the type to hassle long haired hippies in sports cars at any opportunity - so even if he knew it was bogus, he was tickled pink that it had that big red 57 flashing on its LEDs. Radar guns automatic speed measurements will clock parked cars at 30mph, if they catch a reflection of the cooling fan spinning, and many other things can screw them up too. The human in the loop is supposed to filter these bogus readings out.
Unfortunately, the government is making the recipient of the ticket the human in the loop here.
Image recognition works much better on prime time TV shows than it does in real life.
In real life, radar/lidar give you a single number that can be judged pass/fail - they've got decades of precedent established, and even though they are deeply flawed, they are accepted by the courts.
I'm working on video tracking, our company is producing very impressive products, impressive to our customers at least, far better than what they have been using up until now. What you are describing would be more error-prone than radar/lidar if it were 100% automated today (at least it would if you want the hardware to consist of one cheap camera and a conventional PC, running in real-time.) These things work much better with a little human guidance (as does radar/lidar), arbitrary object tracking isn't as successful as license plate readers, at least not yet.
Does that bike look like it's going 2x the speed of the cars? It doesn't to me. Interesting to note, though, that the tops of his tyres are travelling 2x as fast as the vehicle itself. As I remember the story, he just left his ex-wife with his son on the back, I'd bet he was upset, I'd bet he _has_ taken his bike up to 122mph on many occasions, and I'd bet when they showed him the video with the little number on it, he just assumed that he had gunned it, maybe he had even gunned it somewhere else on that ride. Anyway, he pleaded guilty, spent time in jail and probably had lots of other major repercussions based on "video evidence" that doesn't really seem to back up the number generated by the lidar computer.
I don't know how that all turned out, I do remember the video going viral and lots of people commenting that he looks more like he's going 61mph than 122.
2.9M/yr = $7945 per day, or 53 tickets per day at $150 per ticket.
Seems excessive, unless it's mostly out of towners who get the tickets, then it's all good for the community, right?
A town of 2600 probably can't support more than one or two traffic officers - be darned near impossible for a fella to write out 26 tickets on a 6 hour shift, every single day. These newfangled robot cops are a godsend.
First- this kind of information needs to be public and accessible. Second, it needs to be made available to map routing apps which can ask you if you want to be routed around speed traps, and/or warn you clearly when entering an unusually zealous jurisdiction.
I don't know if the towns would regret the loss of through traffic and outside money spent at their stores, but there's no reason you should have to be stung by a ticket to learn that the place is milking the tourists with fines.
and the judge let him get away with it because the judge accepts junk science in his courtroom.
If I were the judge, I'd let him get away with it because the company is putting junk science on their photographs trying to bluff the defendant with the appearance that they have been timed to the millisecond. Did the photos arrive with a notice that the timestamps are inaccurate?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, are you sure it's epigenetics and not hydrogen peroxide?
So, in short, they waged a spin-war on the opposition. Regardless of title, they're politicians, and they happen to be on the side of "Global warming is a real problem."
It's a big, important question, with dramatic implications in the long, medium and short term. Deniers have a lot more to gain in the short term than believers, and based on that alone, I find the believers more believable.
Any question that involves Trillions of dollars will generate a political circus around it, with clowns on all sides.
It's a pretty weird coincidence that more and stronger tornadoes have happened many times between the last Ice Age and now.
We're getting better at noticing them because the people inhabiting the affected areas: 1. live to tell the tale, 2. can videotape the event and broadcast it to the globe, and 3. have built a bunch of crap that is destroyed by the storm which they will now spend a lot of effort re-building, instead of just shrugging, killing another of the abundant buffalo and making a new tent like they were planning to do next season anyway.
In a liability context, they don't know for sure that their actions will reduce damage, and even if they do reduce net damage, they may also redistribute the reduced damage. $5B in tornado damage is an act of God. When they go and mess with it, even if they reduce total damage to $1B (which, there's no telling if their actions will actually reduce, or possibly increase total damage, but assuming the best) - that $1B in damage can now, in some context be arguably "their fault" - it wouldn't have happened if they hadn't interfered.
If you're an insurance industry, are you just going to accept that $1B is better than what might have happened, or are you going to argue that the $1B is now the military's responsibility and not yours?
There's a difference: insurable loss is much less than actual damage, insurable loss is tracked by analysts, stock traders, and all kinds of "greed is good" people who are interested in millisecond resolution predictions of future relative valuations of publicly traded securities. So, yeah, they can estimate insurable losses pretty quickly and accurately, and five minutes later they might as well share that information with the news outlets as a good faith trade for some of the up to the second information they get back.
On the other hand, nobody but Billy Bob cares about the actual damage to his deer hunting stand, which, when you multiply the $35 he'll have to spend on materials to repair it, by the literally thousands of similar blinds taken out by this storm front, you're approaching the net income of some of the impacted counties.
But, most of the deer stands were not insured, and so of little interest to the equity markets./snark
Of course, if we need to be pedantic, then I could say the first commercial launch vehicle ferrying any meaningful satellite to space (non nano hobby projects, like Sputnik for example.)
$270M is just step 1 of the incentive funding, and it's already 4.5% of $6B.
There needs to be a gradual transition from the present NASA to any self-sufficient privatized programs. Already in the Houston area, NASA contractors wear badges marked "HO", and remark "it means I work for whoever pays me." Programs shift from being run by Lockheed to Jacobs Sverdrup, and all that changes is that the top level Houston people now meet with different executives - all the worker bees keep their same desks, parking spaces, and usually insurance coverage and 401k plans too. It sounds farsical, but what it means is that the real technical work isn't disrupted, and you don't lose expertise by jerking people all over the world to chase their employment - these people have lives and families and they're not all going to move to Richard Branson's private island to continue their work.
Sure, the program needs fresh blood, but relearning 50 years of experience from scratch will cost more than $6B - it will cost time and lives that don't need to be wasted.
The private sector plan just cost NASA $270M in incentives, and will likely cost much more via similar funding, tax breaks, etc. before the first private satellite is launched for profit.
We had a class size amendment passed and approved for 7 years, but the year that the real budget crunch hit from it, all of a sudden the district is just too poor and we're cancelling all school choice (except those families with political connections, of course) as a result of our budget problems. Oh, and by the way, the schoolboard is suing the state to overturn this terrible idea, which was passed by the voters 7 years ago and never questioned until the very day the district had to start hiring additional staff to meet the requirements of the amendment.
If they were so incompetent they didn't see the need for additional hiring coming, they should be thrown off the board. I think it's worse than incompetence, I think they are so arrogant they think their electorate doesn't see through their showboating.
I suppose we elect the government we deserve, but when the schoolboard is elected by a populace most of whom are over fifty and don't give a damn what happens to the world when they are gone - maybe it's time to think about restructuring.
Yeah, and things are so much better in the region since then?
Yes, anybody could make something that demonstrates the concept for about the effort of a senior design project. Then you start getting into the what-if cases - sun-flarespot reflections, people who change lanes, people who brake while the measurement is being made, rain, cloud rolling over between frames, and a dozen things that won't become obvious until the prototype algorithm fails in real-life.
They are all solve-able, the mask derivation you mention is much harder to do than to say, especially if the camera can't be placed in a bird's eye view and the mask changes over time - even in bird's eye view, real-time processing of possible rotations is computationally intense - I think that a practical (with today's desktop level hardware) solution wouldn't even use a mask of the vehicle - more likely build up an image of the background and then identify "not background" and track the blobs of "not background" as they move frame to frame.
Back in the real world where judges watch CSI Miami and know for a fact that the "science" presented there is pure fantasy, when you come at them with some similar sounding wizardry, some of them are going to be skeptical. And people who invest in companies that manufacture and sell this kind of equipment mostly fit a similar (old and skeptical) demographic, so, older technology has a huge advantage when rolling out in this arena.
Toll booth plate readers have it a little easier, it's more of an opt-in convenience than legal proof of violation argument.
Netflix + Hulu, occasional TED and similar, scratches the itch.
WD-TV Live, and an eeeBox PC connected via HDMI to a big screen. Used to have a PS3, but don't miss it much since it YLOD'ed on me, and the other devices have its media functions covered.
I noticed red light cameras being removed from an intersection on my regular commute, just a year after they were installed. I guess to put them somewhere else. Maybe they're hoping the shell-game will spread to have effects on non-camera'ed intersections too... or maybe there was a horrific crash when a little car jammed the brakes for the camera in-front of a cement mixer (cement plant is 1/2 mile down the road.)
Speed is always a factor, even when below the posted limits. If nobody was travelling at speed, there would not have been a collision.
Of course, oxygen causes ageing and eventual death, same for eating, sex is even worse - you can't win, we all die in the end, and God help us if that stops being true.
You do this kind of trivial signal processing for a living?
Even if you've got it all worked out and at least as reliable as radar, radar has decades of acceptance in the courts. Automated photo magic has yet to be proven.
I believe it was Hitler who remarked "how convenient it is when everyone breaks the law."
In this neck of the woods, that would be called a conflict of interest. If I were caught in such a situation in my professional work, it would be grounds for dismissal without recourse.
Your work is obviously not generating funding for the local municipality. The judges are supposed to care about principles, but how do you make sure that they do? Around here they're elected, which is virtually a lottery system because the vast majority of the voting public knows nothing about any of them. I suppose there are worse methods than lottery (like political appointment), but it's still not confidence inspiring.
Zero investment, zero maintenance cost, steady revenue stream, reduction in traffic police staffing requirements, what's not to like?
You think anybody in government cares more about abstract principles than cold hard cash?
I don't know if he's really smart, stubborn and righteous, yes, but a smart man would have had a more enjoyable and profitable time saying "do you want fries with that?" 400 times instead of mounting a court battle.
How is ticketing a random sample of drivers with fines that are in excess of two hundred dollars (after taxes, that is nearly an entire work week at minimum wage) fair enforcement?
It's the random stick approach to discipline - it starts in elementary school, if the Principal sees you doing something wrong, you get crucified as an example. Never mind that every other pupil in the school has been doing the same thing all week long and you just started, you were caught, you are now the example, and hopefully that encourages some of the other violators to behave better in the future.
It's nothing approaching fair, just, or reasonable. It's just a lesson in the randomness of life - like you're a fish in the sea, lots of fish get to feed in the surface plankton, only a few get plucked out by pelicans... Humans pretend to be better than animals, but a lot of the time they are not very convincing.
In Florida, there's a huge jump in the fine when you go from 14 to 15mph over the limit. Last ticket I received was for - bingo, exactly 15mph over the limit (I might have been doing 12ish over). When I went to pay it, the guy infront of me had a ticket from the same officer at the same location on the same day for, guess what? 15mph over - and he was grumbling to the clerk about not going that fast, but paying the extra money just to be done with it, as was I.
I wish that "traffic officers" were more distanced from the people who intervene in life threatening situations, investigate rape and murder, and generally do good things for the world that require integrity and trust. The way that many traffic officers (mostly the ones you receive tickets from) abuse the system gives all cops a bad name.
Once, just once, I knew a gas pump that told me I was getting 57mpg, I could fill an empty 9 gallon tank with just 5 gallons. I made sure to return to that exact pump every time, for about 3 weeks until the owner noticed what was happening.
I don't think the system was making that kind of systematic error, though if it were, the only incentive its operators have to fix it is to fend off embarrassment in court, and I doubt that a little embarrassment bothers them much.
More likely this was just a glitchy reading - like the time a cop clocked us doing 57mph on a neighborhood street, 50 feet from a 90 degree turn (taken sedately, at less than 20mph), in a car that did 0-60 in about 12 seconds. He showed us the number on the radar gun. He also looked the type to hassle long haired hippies in sports cars at any opportunity - so even if he knew it was bogus, he was tickled pink that it had that big red 57 flashing on its LEDs. Radar guns automatic speed measurements will clock parked cars at 30mph, if they catch a reflection of the cooling fan spinning, and many other things can screw them up too. The human in the loop is supposed to filter these bogus readings out.
Unfortunately, the government is making the recipient of the ticket the human in the loop here.
Image recognition works much better on prime time TV shows than it does in real life.
In real life, radar/lidar give you a single number that can be judged pass/fail - they've got decades of precedent established, and even though they are deeply flawed, they are accepted by the courts.
I'm working on video tracking, our company is producing very impressive products, impressive to our customers at least, far better than what they have been using up until now. What you are describing would be more error-prone than radar/lidar if it were 100% automated today (at least it would if you want the hardware to consist of one cheap camera and a conventional PC, running in real-time.) These things work much better with a little human guidance (as does radar/lidar), arbitrary object tracking isn't as successful as license plate readers, at least not yet.
Anybody remember this video?
Does that bike look like it's going 2x the speed of the cars? It doesn't to me. Interesting to note, though, that the tops of his tyres are travelling 2x as fast as the vehicle itself. As I remember the story, he just left his ex-wife with his son on the back, I'd bet he was upset, I'd bet he _has_ taken his bike up to 122mph on many occasions, and I'd bet when they showed him the video with the little number on it, he just assumed that he had gunned it, maybe he had even gunned it somewhere else on that ride. Anyway, he pleaded guilty, spent time in jail and probably had lots of other major repercussions based on "video evidence" that doesn't really seem to back up the number generated by the lidar computer.
I don't know how that all turned out, I do remember the video going viral and lots of people commenting that he looks more like he's going 61mph than 122.
2.9M/yr = $7945 per day, or 53 tickets per day at $150 per ticket.
Seems excessive, unless it's mostly out of towners who get the tickets, then it's all good for the community, right?
A town of 2600 probably can't support more than one or two traffic officers - be darned near impossible for a fella to write out 26 tickets on a 6 hour shift, every single day. These newfangled robot cops are a godsend.
First- this kind of information needs to be public and accessible. Second, it needs to be made available to map routing apps which can ask you if you want to be routed around speed traps, and/or warn you clearly when entering an unusually zealous jurisdiction.
I don't know if the towns would regret the loss of through traffic and outside money spent at their stores, but there's no reason you should have to be stung by a ticket to learn that the place is milking the tourists with fines.
and the judge let him get away with it because the judge accepts junk science in his courtroom.
If I were the judge, I'd let him get away with it because the company is putting junk science on their photographs trying to bluff the defendant with the appearance that they have been timed to the millisecond. Did the photos arrive with a notice that the timestamps are inaccurate?