The key is 'device's processor is asleep'. Any time it wakes up, it probes with its real mac. So if your in line at the store, phone is in your pocket, and twitter gets an update (over cellular data), that still wakes your phone up, and it probes with its real mac.
Or, since your in line at the store and bored, you pull out your phone and check the time, and respond to an sms... its awake and it probes wifi with its real mac.
It turns out its a lot less useful at protecting your privacy than you think.
How do probes with random macs break it? If a known network it wants to connect to is present it can use its real address.
But for probing -- for determining what available in-range SSIDs are present; so that location services can use the SSID list to assist positioning, and so that it can decide whether it wants to present its real address in a follow up / probe / connection request... that seems like something simple that shouldn't break anything.
And beyond that other than filtering by mac (which is idiotic) even the real mac should be randomizable between sessions with the same network SSID. (And should work with vlans, bridges etc)
People with a deep knowledge of 802 protocols are looking at this and it isn't simple or easy.
probing without connecting should be simple and easy. I concede that maintaining any sort of connectivity needs some thought.
I disagree. Although i do think my phone should change its mac address regularly so that the tracking is at most session based. They know -a phone- was in line for 30 minutes. They don't know the phone is my phone. And when they see a phone a for 30 minutes next week they won't know its the -same phone-.
Also, just a heads up to those excited about Apple's ios mac randomization -- its proving to be not remotely as good as they led us to believe it would be. (It only sends out a random mac when a) not connected to a network, b) AND asleep.
Any time anything wakes up the phone it probes with its real mac. (So for example, if your on cellular data, and twitter or email or something gets a message to your phone, it wakes up and probes wifi with its real mac...) rendering the feature all but useless. Apparently the fake probes also include your recent SSID list too making them even more useless.
Red light violation ticket costs are way out of proportion with the potential damage done. For example: I go through about 40 traffic lights as part of my daily commute. If I sneak through only one of them every day, then I could potentially owe about $40,000 in fines each year.
And if I go out at 2am drive to the nearest deserted red light and just drive backwards and forward through it, I can rack that up in a single evening. I'm not sure what your point is? That you can deliberately hang yourself on the law if you are an idiot? Ok... I'll give you that.
In 10+ years of red light cameras here, I've never gotten a ticket from one, ever, and I drive through at least 3 to 4 protected intersections a day. And I don't count myself as a qualified driver ed instructor or anything else. I go days even weeks at a time without seeing the camera flash at any one; so its not like the general public has a difficulty with the concept.
I'm certain the safety aspect of a few extra cars going through the end of a red doesn't constitute enough of a safety issue to warrant fines at that level.
It does if you want them to stop doing it. Because a normal person isn't going to get 40,000 in fines, they are going to get 1 or 2 and then "figure it out" and stop getting them. But if the fine is $5 they won't care unless they ARE getting them daily.
Anyone with $40,000 in annual red light camera fines shouldn't be on the road, because if nothing else, it means they are incapable of "figuring it out".
If a rule is being ignored, then it's probably a bad rule.
Like stopping for red lights? Is that a bad rule?
Also, I assure you that a few extra cars getting through a red light doesn't promote gridlock at the next one
Traffic jams can arise nearly spontaneously via something like 'butterfly' effects. A few cars sneaking through the red (and in turn delaying the traffic moving crosswise as a result) can disrupt traffic in both directions leading to congestion "waves" that lead to jams where it would otherwise not occur. It doesn't take much at all to disrupt traffic and create waves.
There's a demo on youtube where they asked drivers to simply drive on an even circular track at 30km/h maintaining the same distance from the car in front, and within a short time there was a conjestion wave causing cars to have to stop completely when it hit them.
Its amazing how little it takes to disrupt stable traffic flow.
The state of traffic engineering is pretty dismal.
No argument. But saying that, traffic is much more complicated than regular fluid dynamics, and good mathematical models are hard to come by. And then to top it off you've got various political meddling overriding otherwise good design.
Your opinion that red light cameras would help with traffic flow is just a gut feeling, not data
Within a couple months of red light cameras being added the situation where 1 to 10 cars would stream through the red light during each cycle during rush hour had ceased.
That much is a fact not an opinion. Sure, whether or not it improved traffic flow is question for debate. Presuming the traffic light timing is engineered properly its a reasonable speculation, but I'd be happy to see a study funded.
I strongly suspect that adding a red light camera to an intersection would not allow more people to go through per hour.
I don't think you realize how much congestion can be alleviated by regulating flow properly. Getting more cars through one intersection only to have them completely gridlock a little further in is a net negative.
I'd further suspect that enforcing the signals reduces aggressive driving and road rage -- because people get irate when they have a green light and a stream of traffic running the red light prevents them from starting, and only reinforces the urge to run the red light yourself when presented with the situation.
Even if it helped, a traffic circle would help more
Maybe. I like roundabouts, and traffic circles. I supported having one put on my street during the public consultation period when they were reassessing the intersection. But they don't work everywhere. Roundabouts aren't easy to navigate for large trucks so they don't make sense on truck routes, highways, etc. And and proper multi-lane traffic circles need space -- are you proposing we knock down downtown skyscrapers to put one in at every intersection? How exactly is that a simple cost effective solution without conflict of interest?
so why bother with a solution that costs good people money
That's just it. Red light cameras don't cost good people money. Good responsible people don't habitually run red lights*, so its a non-issue. The cameras, with the threat of a fine, were effective at altering good peoples behavior at intersections, which was the goal. I've never gotten a red light camera ticket; my wife has never gotten one. We both drive through camera protected intersections every single day, we aren't even conscious of them.
Policing should not be automated.
I generally agree. But I'm not outraged by red light cameras.
Alhtough I do think any enforcement revenue collected by automated systems should simply be paid back to the residents as a dividend against their property taxes. It shouldn't go to the police. It shouldn't go to general revenue. It shouldn't create entities dependent on the money.
* Speed enforcement is completely different because the conflicting objectives of driving with the flow of traffic combined with speed limit changes, terrain changes, vague signage, plus the imprecise nature of vehicle speed measurement means that yes, the majority of good responsible conscientious drivers DO habitually exceed the limit, at least sometimes, by a little.
Running a light that is obviously red is very dangerous, so it is rarely done on purpose.
Running a late red on purpose is very dangerous and nobody does it on purpose. And people who do it by accident aren't going to be any more deterred by a red light camera, because if they'd realized they it was a red light they would have stopped, with or without a camera.
However, in some cities I've been in, during rush hour, at busy intersections I've observed a pattern where the light is green and cars flow through the intersection, the light turns yellow, and cars continue to flow, the light turns red and cars keep flowing through. Its not particularly "dangerous" because traffic is heavy enough that the opposing lanes are all stopped and backed up themselves, and they won't start while the intersection still has an uninterrupted stream of cars flowing through it, even though they might have a green light.
Another related pattern is left turns on regular green lights, where by law (at least where I live), a car can 'establish' itself in the intersection during a green (or yellow), and then when oncoming traffic clears, it completes its left turn. It might enter on a green, and have to wait until yellow, or even red before completing the turn. And this is legal.
But again, I often see cases where multiple cars complete the turn, even cars not 'established' in the intersection, but several cars queued up, the last several are entering the intersection on a red, and again this is only mildly dangerous as opposing traffic has been stopped, and is waiting for the intersection to clear, and again the cars running the red are part of an uninterrupted stream.
I've seen it in some cases, where more than half the opposing traffics green light is blocked by a constant stream of red-light runners. Each one 'secure' that as long as they are in the stream, opposing traffic isn't going to start.
Red light cameras effectively curb this undesirable behaviour.
This is supported by a large amount of data that show that accident rates either stayed flat or increased in almost every case
Provided they don't mess with the timings, there may be a rash of relatively miner rear ender as drivers adjust to the idea that they can't run red lights anymore. And this isn't necessarily a 'bad thing'. A bit of mild short term pain for long term gain, and a reason why looking at the accident rate doesn't tell the whole story.
Here's the real question - why do people continue to push red light cameras for safety when there is real data that shows that red light cameras have no net positive effect on safety?
Red light cameras as revenue generation is asinine. And red light cameras for 'safety' is dubious at best.
But they can improve traffic flow by enforcing the timings as displayed by the lights. (per the scenarios above). And indeed they are an appropriate solution here.
And I generally support responsibly installed red light cameras. (Ie those installed without tampering with yellow duration).
The average responsible driver will never run afoul of them.
I despise speed cameras though. (And not because I get speeding tickets, but because they are misused in ways that are just disgusting... I was recently in Melbourne, and the tolerance there is crazy low. They automatically ticket people for doing 62 in a 60. And they'll do things like set up traps just in front of the 100km/h sign -- and ticket people transitioning from 50/60km/h to 100km/h as they approach the sign (since its not technically 100km/h until after the sign...)
That's not about safety. That's not about traffic flow. That's just revenue generation.
"Actually, as many review comparisons have noted over the years, Apple's products are priced only a very little bit higher than what other PC manufacturers offer given the exact same hardware"
This is true. But give a PC buyer a choice between a PC that comes with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, thunderbolt, wireless 802.11ac, and 4 usb 3 ports at one price and another PC with the SAME CPU and RAM and harddrive but comes with wifi keyboard and mouse, no thunderbolt, wireless-n, and 2usb3 ports + 2usb2 ports that costs $300+ less and nearly all them will have no reason to justify the expense of the premium model.
That is the issue with Macs. They sell you stuff you don't need, don't care about, and can't use. Wireless-ac being forced down our throats for example... what home user cares about it? What is it going to talk to at 1.3GPs? Or bluetooth peripherals? wifi gear is half the price, tends to do better on battery -- hell logitech makes solar wifi keyboards now. Or thunderbolt?Why exactly is every imac user paying for two of them? I've yet to meet a single home user with a single thunderbolt peripheral.
Save one -- bunches of pissed of macbook pro owners who need a thunderbolt to ethernet dongle because apple didn't deign to give a pro laptop a built in network port.
I think what annoys people are lame reboots like Robocop
Crappy movies are crappy.
I liked the Dredd remake far more than the Stallone original. And I enjoy both Total Recall movies. I'm not of the opinion that once a book or franchise has been done, that it necessarily must never be done again. (Sure I'd be upset if that's ALL they did, but its not...so I'm not.)
Hell, I'm anxiously waiting for enough time to pass for them to considering doing another Minority Report adaptation because the one we have now utterly ruined it.
or the fact that they made three shit Spiderman movies and then decided to make another three that were only marginally better due to contractual obligations.
True. On the other hand nobody made me watch them all, and I only bothered with the first 2 of the six, and of those only thought the first was worth watching, and only then because of Molino and Dafoe.:)
" Lego movies are proof of the death of creativity."
Given that half the message of the movie was to encourage people to be creative I don't think your complaint holds a lot of water.
" Them little plastic bricks are expensive."
On the upside they seem to last pretty much forever, and buying assorted bulk on craigslist and ebay works well when you just want to add some 'mass' to your lego pile.:)
Lego movie -- creative and fun movie, based on lego, of course, but I didn't see that on your list of complaints.
Guardians of the Galaxy -- comic book inspired (although I'd never read nor heard of it before)
Edge of Tomorrow -- unless it was a Japanese remake this seemed pretty original. Sure it had elements of Groundhog day but to call it a reboot of groundhog day would be stretching it.;)
Wreck-It-Ralph -- original, featured 2ndary characters from a variety of existing games
Hobbit II - based on the Hobbit and LotR appendixes + sequel
Hunger Games 2 - book adaptation / sequel? (or just adaptation of book 2?)
Looper - original work?
Django - original?
Star Trek Into Darkness - reboot/remake and sequel all in one
Despicable Me 2 - original sequel
Frozen - original (and ok, by now its probably clear I have kids)
Hugo - original?
Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy - apparently a book adaptation
Seriously -- while I don't dispute that there are a lot of reboots and sequels and such out there, there's lots of good original work and/or novel adaptations that aren't sequels and reboots. Overall I'd say this has been a great decade...
However, what the original poster DIDN'T say is gain in 2x+ performance over last year's iPad Air and the drop in pricing for comparable versions.
The original poster (me) didn't say that because it wasn't in the summary. That its twice as fast as the previous ipad air actually WOULD have been reasonably interesting. 12x as fast as the original ipad is meaningless marketing propaganda fluff.
Oooo... an ipad 12x faster than the "original ipad"... gee... what kind of bullshit marketing is that? Maybe Intel should do that, the recent i7 4770K wasn't impressively faster than the 3770K... maybe they should have compared it to the original Pentium D or something.
Oooo... an imac with a retina display... only reason its even theoretically interesting is that thanks to there being no way to buy a half decent desktop mac without buying that ridiculous tube is to get stuck with their lousy all-in-one form factor.
I'm not especially anti-apple, but this isn't really news. Oh, look, Dell announced an new 13" XPS laptop, and $20 off on Inspirons under $500... we should put that on the front page too.
There would be a LOT less of this if you simply enacted no-fault divorce.
A lot less of this sure, but I'm not sure that would be more equitable.
Now someone can betray your trust, maybe even give you an STD they picked up screwing around, get pregnant, become addicted to drugs or some combination of all that... and then when you leave them they take half your stuff, plus alimony, child support too (perhaps not even for your child)?
Is that equitable?
Oh and they've decided they want your dog too... the one they don't give a shit about but you love, and are just demanding it to be spiteful...
Yeah, divorce courts going to be ugly, even with no-fault as the reason.
So is cheating at school, or plagiarism, or fishing without a license, or bullying, or vandalism, or gossiping about the neighbors. That doesn't mean we need or should celebrate apps to facilitate any of those.
Many argue that monogamy isn't a natural state for humans.
Nobody forcing people to get married and take vows of monogamous fidelity.
For many people, the mistake was in the decision to get married in the first place
Agreed. And the solution is to terminate the marriage not lie to and betray your partner.
When I see TV ads for websites which are pretty blatant about the fact that you're there to have an affair, it's pretty evident there's a market for it.
There being a market for it doesn't make it right, or moral, or even acceptable. If you want multiple partners, fine, but find partners who are ok with that arrangement. Don't find partners who aren't ok with that arrangement and then do it anyway behind their backs. Its really that simple.
Looney Tunes, Bugs, Elmer Road Runner etc...THOSE were cartoons.
And flinstones and jetsons... but while the looney toons violence is timeless... the flintstones humor hasn't aged well.
And Rocket Robin Hood and Hercules were from the same era and were shit.
Point is not everything pre-1970 was good, even if it was the golden age.
But yeah, the 70s and 80s had some hits... smurfs, transformers, tom and jerry etc... but sure the end of the 80s was pretty bad... Smoggies remains fixed in my mind as the pinnacle of PC schlock.
But it rebounded, those died off, as even kids wouldn't watch them. And lots of 90s cartoons are solid... from Tiny Toons and Animaniacs to Talespin, Darkwing Duck, The Tick, Dexters Lab....
And there's lots of good shows on today. Gravity Falls, Adventure Time, Phineas and Ferb to name a few...
Political correctness destroyed the Saturday morning cartoon
In a word no. What destroyed the "Saturday Morning Cartoon" is quite simply that the majority of people who want to watch cartoons have cable or satellite with 24 hour cartoon networks. It wasn't the internet or political correctness or streaming.
When I was a kid, saturday morning was about the only block of cartoons I could watch we lived around them in a sense. My kids? Have cartoon network, and ytv... they aren't going to even think to switch it to NBC or something for a 4 hour block once a week...
The internet and streaming, sure just more nails in the coffin, but it was already dead.
And Political correctness? Sure it set cartoons back in the late 80s, but its been 20 years since; and there are cartoons out now that are better than ever.
Voice recognition that runs locally will not be nearly as good as the cloud version.
I'm ok with that. There's really only a small subset of commands I want to be processed locally -- to send some canned responses when driving etc, call a contact or dial a number.
Not only is knowledge of the second foundation given to the first as a nudge, but later on the first is set up to eliminate a decoy second foundation as another nudge, while protecting the real second foundation.
In this instance, the more Google succeeds, the better the products are.
Hardly. I like Android. But I'm not such a big fan of Google.
The play store being installed is fine, and I'd actively like maps installed.
I readily accept that the phone should come with email and a browser but I prefer other browsers to chrome and actively despise the gmail app. So I'd like to be able to easily remove both once I've got something else in place.
I also have no use for hangouts, or google+, play newstand, and I'm not even sure what the other 10+ bloatware apps I've failed to think of entirely would be.
Plus I prefer the samsung calendar app to the google one. So the "bloatware" isn't all bloatware. And if google forces google apps including specifying their placement then that kills oems ability to innovate and differentiate.
For example, I don't want to say "ok google" for voice. The phrase itself irritates me -- but above that I don't want to talk to google. I want to talk to my phone, and I don't want my voice requests to be sent to google as a matter of course. So I'm in the market for alternative voice option that run locally, don't need to talk to google, and won't talk to google unless i specifically ask it to find something in google maps or to do a google search.
So no, the more google succeeds the more like an iphone the products are. If I wanted an iphone, I'd have bought one.
You guys make it sound like making millions in the stock market is dead simple. All your posts are missing is a link to an ebook that tell you all the secrets.
Its not dead simple at all I know this, and there aren't really any real secrets either. The point stands that if someone beats the market by a lot its probably more luck than brains.
Its like blackjack or poker. The people who 'win' are generally good players, understand the game, are disciplined, etc. I'm sure this guy is all of these things. But winning big? Its just luck. Every trade is a calculated risk -- and probability theory dictates that if you have a bunch of traders all doing this, some will break even, some will lose it all, and some will win big... even if they all play EXACTLY as well as each other. Its just math.
In fact, day trading as a profession is a fanscinating selection bias -- as some of them lose they stop trading so the ones that are still doing it are the ones who haven't lost yet so any survey of the field at any time is mostly people who are "doing ok or better". (Because anyone doing poorly has had to dropped out.)
Of course some are better at it than others, and the ones who aren't good at it are more likely to lose and be forced to drop. So the ones still doing it are at least 'good at it'. And as I said, I don't doubt that this person is good at it. But spectacular success is as much luck as anything.
To put it another way...
Lets say I put an opportunity in front of you and you correctly determine the risk as being 1% chance to quadruple your money, 20% chance of doubling your money, 20% chance to triple it, 49% chance of breaking just above even, 9% chance of losing 50%, 1% chance of losing it all.
Clearly this is a very good bet. 90% of the outcomes are positive, and overall its very net positive. It would be smart to take this bet. So if I present this to a few hundred traders... what happens?
A couple quadruple their money. Are they any smarter or more insightful than the few who lost it all? Why? They all correctly gauged the risk and made the best decision.
I've found that people fundamentally do NOT understand "risk". Whether its the stock market, gambling, their own health care, or IT related risks.
This guy is good at analyzing risk and making smart bets, and he's had good winning streak, but being right about the risk and making the best decisions based on it, doesn't mean the risk isn't there. That he didn't lose is just luck.
Poker is the same way. You can be smart, play well, know all the odds, make all the right calls, and still lose badly.
Even best advisors from open hedge and mutual funds average around 25%.
Hell no they don't. Lots of studies have shown that the top hedge funds don't even consistently beat index funds. And after the management expenses the investor usually ends up behind. Look it up.
Detecting things in it is hard, unless they've giving off light or radiation that you can detect more easily
If they aren't thrusting towards you they aren't much threat.No way they'll ever hit you as long as you are continually changing course.
Once they turn on thrusters to home in they'll be easy to spot and could quite conceivably be taken down with lasers at that point (no atmosphere to cope with either). I'm doubtful they'd get anywhere near 10 to 20 seconds of you without thrust. You'd probably still have minutes or hours to shoot them down.
Yeah, I mountain-bike, and a drone following would be pretty amazing. Helmet mounted cams generally produce poor video -- lots of vibration, and it doesn't really capture what you are doing at all, air, drops, gap jumps, the incline... none of it is really discernible.
Plus you can't see yourself or your bike.
Best a normal person can hope for right now is to have a friend following reasonably closely filming you with their helmet cam. But its still full of vibration, and still isn't terribly compelling video.
I mean, maybe its like interviewing lottery winners and asking them what their secret is. Maybe the secret is simply "I played", and "somebody has to win".
I'm not saying the guy isn't smart or disciplined or has the right mindset to be a trader, but that doesn't mean he's really an "exceptionally" genius at it.
Literally millions of day traders out there doing technical analysis and picking stocks. Its a bit like monkeys and typewriters in a way. Does the monkey that produces something legible really have any truly special talent?
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If you've got a recent iPhone, it's already randomizing the MAC used for background scans:
Sort of.
http://www.imore.com/closer-lo...
The key is 'device's processor is asleep'. Any time it wakes up, it probes with its real mac. So if your in line at the store, phone is in your pocket, and twitter gets an update (over cellular data), that still wakes your phone up, and it probes with its real mac.
Or, since your in line at the store and bored, you pull out your phone and check the time, and respond to an sms... its awake and it probes wifi with its real mac.
It turns out its a lot less useful at protecting your privacy than you think.
How do probes with random macs break it? If a known network it wants to connect to is present it can use its real address.
But for probing -- for determining what available in-range SSIDs are present; so that location services can use the SSID list to assist positioning, and so that it can decide whether it wants to present its real address in a follow up / probe / connection request... that seems like something simple that shouldn't break anything.
And beyond that other than filtering by mac (which is idiotic) even the real mac should be randomizable between sessions with the same network SSID. (And should work with vlans, bridges etc)
People with a deep knowledge of 802 protocols are looking at this and it isn't simple or easy.
probing without connecting should be simple and easy.
I concede that maintaining any sort of connectivity needs some thought.
I disagree. Although i do think my phone should change its mac address regularly so that the tracking is at most session based. They know -a phone- was in line for 30 minutes. They don't know the phone is my phone. And when they see a phone a for 30 minutes next week they won't know its the -same phone-.
Also, just a heads up to those excited about Apple's ios mac randomization -- its proving to be not remotely as good as they led us to believe it would be. (It only sends out a random mac when a) not connected to a network, b) AND asleep.
Any time anything wakes up the phone it probes with its real mac. (So for example, if your on cellular data, and twitter or email or something gets a message to your phone, it wakes up and probes wifi with its real mac...) rendering the feature all but useless. Apparently the fake probes also include your recent SSID list too making them even more useless.
http://www.imore.com/closer-lo...
So... not worse than ios7 ... but not exactly useful either.
And on that note, does anyone recommend a good automatic mac randomizer for android?
Red light violation ticket costs are way out of proportion with the potential damage done. For example: I go through about 40 traffic lights as part of my daily commute. If I sneak through only one of them every day, then I could potentially owe about $40,000 in fines each year.
And if I go out at 2am drive to the nearest deserted red light and just drive backwards and forward through it, I can rack that up in a single evening. I'm not sure what your point is? That you can deliberately hang yourself on the law if you are an idiot? Ok... I'll give you that.
In 10+ years of red light cameras here, I've never gotten a ticket from one, ever, and I drive through at least 3 to 4 protected intersections a day. And I don't count myself as a qualified driver ed instructor or anything else. I go days even weeks at a time without seeing the camera flash at any one; so its not like the general public has a difficulty with the concept.
I'm certain the safety aspect of a few extra cars going through the end of a red doesn't constitute enough of a safety issue to warrant fines at that level.
It does if you want them to stop doing it. Because a normal person isn't going to get 40,000 in fines, they are going to get 1 or 2 and then "figure it out" and stop getting them. But if the fine is $5 they won't care unless they ARE getting them daily.
Anyone with $40,000 in annual red light camera fines shouldn't be on the road, because if nothing else, it means they are incapable of "figuring it out".
If a rule is being ignored, then it's probably a bad rule.
Like stopping for red lights? Is that a bad rule?
Also, I assure you that a few extra cars getting through a red light doesn't promote gridlock at the next one
Traffic jams can arise nearly spontaneously via something like 'butterfly' effects. A few cars sneaking through the red (and in turn delaying the traffic moving crosswise as a result) can disrupt traffic in both directions leading to congestion "waves" that lead to jams where it would otherwise not occur. It doesn't take much at all to disrupt traffic and create waves.
There's a demo on youtube where they asked drivers to simply drive on an even circular track at 30km/h maintaining the same distance from the car in front, and within a short time there was a conjestion wave causing cars to have to stop completely when it hit them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Its amazing how little it takes to disrupt stable traffic flow.
The state of traffic engineering is pretty dismal.
No argument. But saying that, traffic is much more complicated than regular fluid dynamics, and good mathematical models are hard to come by. And then to top it off you've got various political meddling overriding otherwise good design.
Your opinion that red light cameras would help with traffic flow is just a gut feeling, not data
Within a couple months of red light cameras being added the situation where 1 to 10 cars would stream through the red light during each cycle during rush hour had ceased.
That much is a fact not an opinion. Sure, whether or not it improved traffic flow is question for debate. Presuming the traffic light timing is engineered properly its a reasonable speculation, but I'd be happy to see a study funded.
I strongly suspect that adding a red light camera to an intersection would not allow more people to go through per hour.
I don't think you realize how much congestion can be alleviated by regulating flow properly. Getting more cars through one intersection only to have them completely gridlock a little further in is a net negative.
I'd further suspect that enforcing the signals reduces aggressive driving and road rage -- because people get irate when they have a green light and a stream of traffic running the red light prevents them from starting, and only reinforces the urge to run the red light yourself when presented with the situation.
Even if it helped, a traffic circle would help more
Maybe. I like roundabouts, and traffic circles. I supported having one put on my street during the public consultation period when they were reassessing the intersection. But they don't work everywhere. Roundabouts aren't easy to navigate for large trucks so they don't make sense on truck routes, highways, etc. And and proper multi-lane traffic circles need space -- are you proposing we knock down downtown skyscrapers to put one in at every intersection? How exactly is that a simple cost effective solution without conflict of interest?
so why bother with a solution that costs good people money
That's just it. Red light cameras don't cost good people money. Good responsible people don't habitually run red lights*, so its a non-issue. The cameras, with the threat of a fine, were effective at altering good peoples behavior at intersections, which was the goal. I've never gotten a red light camera ticket; my wife has never gotten one. We both drive through camera protected intersections every single day, we aren't even conscious of them.
Policing should not be automated.
I generally agree. But I'm not outraged by red light cameras.
Alhtough I do think any enforcement revenue collected by automated systems should simply be paid back to the residents as a dividend against their property taxes. It shouldn't go to the police. It shouldn't go to general revenue. It shouldn't create entities dependent on the money.
* Speed enforcement is completely different because the conflicting objectives of driving with the flow of traffic combined with speed limit changes, terrain changes, vague signage, plus the imprecise nature of vehicle speed measurement means that yes, the majority of good responsible conscientious drivers DO habitually exceed the limit, at least sometimes, by a little.
Running a light that is obviously red is very dangerous, so it is rarely done on purpose.
Running a late red on purpose is very dangerous and nobody does it on purpose. And people who do it by accident aren't going to be any more deterred by a red light camera, because if they'd realized they it was a red light they would have stopped, with or without a camera.
However, in some cities I've been in, during rush hour, at busy intersections I've observed a pattern where the light is green and cars flow through the intersection, the light turns yellow, and cars continue to flow, the light turns red and cars keep flowing through. Its not particularly "dangerous" because traffic is heavy enough that the opposing lanes are all stopped and backed up themselves, and they won't start while the intersection still has an uninterrupted stream of cars flowing through it, even though they might have a green light.
Another related pattern is left turns on regular green lights, where by law (at least where I live), a car can 'establish' itself in the intersection during a green (or yellow), and then when oncoming traffic clears, it completes its left turn. It might enter on a green, and have to wait until yellow, or even red before completing the turn. And this is legal.
But again, I often see cases where multiple cars complete the turn, even cars not 'established' in the intersection, but several cars queued up, the last several are entering the intersection on a red, and again this is only mildly dangerous as opposing traffic has been stopped, and is waiting for the intersection to clear, and again the cars running the red are part of an uninterrupted stream.
I've seen it in some cases, where more than half the opposing traffics green light is blocked by a constant stream of red-light runners. Each one 'secure' that as long as they are in the stream, opposing traffic isn't going to start.
Red light cameras effectively curb this undesirable behaviour.
This is supported by a large amount of data that show that accident rates either stayed flat or increased in almost every case
Provided they don't mess with the timings, there may be a rash of relatively miner rear ender as drivers adjust to the idea that they can't run red lights anymore. And this isn't necessarily a 'bad thing'. A bit of mild short term pain for long term gain, and a reason why looking at the accident rate doesn't tell the whole story.
Here's the real question - why do people continue to push red light cameras for safety when there is real data that shows that red light cameras have no net positive effect on safety?
Red light cameras as revenue generation is asinine. And red light cameras for 'safety' is dubious at best.
But they can improve traffic flow by enforcing the timings as displayed by the lights. (per the scenarios above). And indeed they are an appropriate solution here.
And I generally support responsibly installed red light cameras. (Ie those installed without tampering with yellow duration).
The average responsible driver will never run afoul of them.
I despise speed cameras though. (And not because I get speeding tickets, but because they are misused in ways that are just disgusting... I was recently in Melbourne, and the tolerance there is crazy low. They automatically ticket people for doing 62 in a 60. And they'll do things like set up traps just in front of the 100km/h sign -- and ticket people transitioning from 50/60km/h to 100km/h as they approach the sign (since its not technically 100km/h until after the sign...)
That's not about safety. That's not about traffic flow. That's just revenue generation.
"Actually, as many review comparisons have noted over the years, Apple's products are priced only a very little bit higher than what other PC manufacturers offer given the exact same hardware"
This is true. But give a PC buyer a choice between a PC that comes with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, thunderbolt, wireless 802.11ac, and 4 usb 3 ports at one price and another PC with the SAME CPU and RAM and harddrive but comes with wifi keyboard and mouse, no thunderbolt, wireless-n, and 2usb3 ports + 2usb2 ports that costs $300+ less and nearly all them will have no reason to justify the expense of the premium model.
That is the issue with Macs. They sell you stuff you don't need, don't care about, and can't use. Wireless-ac being forced down our throats for example... what home user cares about it? What is it going to talk to at 1.3GPs? Or bluetooth peripherals? wifi gear is half the price, tends to do better on battery -- hell logitech makes solar wifi keyboards now. Or thunderbolt?Why exactly is every imac user paying for two of them? I've yet to meet a single home user with a single thunderbolt peripheral.
Save one -- bunches of pissed of macbook pro owners who need a thunderbolt to ethernet dongle because apple didn't deign to give a pro laptop a built in network port.
It's already been pointed out to you that in the presentation they also compared with the last iPad. So the information you're whining about was there
Indeed. It turns out I'm only complaining about the slashdot summary, and reporting of the event, not the event itself.
I guess I'm not surprised. :)
I think what annoys people are lame reboots like Robocop
Crappy movies are crappy.
I liked the Dredd remake far more than the Stallone original. And I enjoy both Total Recall movies. I'm not of the opinion that once a book or franchise has been done, that it necessarily must never be done again. (Sure I'd be upset if that's ALL they did, but its not...so I'm not.)
Hell, I'm anxiously waiting for enough time to pass for them to considering doing another Minority Report adaptation because the one we have now utterly ruined it.
or the fact that they made three shit Spiderman movies and then decided to make another three that were only marginally better due to contractual obligations.
True. On the other hand nobody made me watch them all, and I only bothered with the first 2 of the six, and of those only thought the first was worth watching, and only then because of Molino and Dafoe .:)
" Lego movies are proof of the death of creativity."
Given that half the message of the movie was to encourage people to be creative I don't think your complaint holds a lot of water.
" Them little plastic bricks are expensive."
On the upside they seem to last pretty much forever, and buying assorted bulk on craigslist and ebay works well when you just want to add some 'mass' to your lego pile. :)
Lets see the last several movies I went to:
Lego movie -- creative and fun movie, based on lego, of course, but I didn't see that on your list of complaints.
Guardians of the Galaxy -- comic book inspired (although I'd never read nor heard of it before)
Edge of Tomorrow -- unless it was a Japanese remake this seemed pretty original. Sure it had elements of Groundhog day but to call it a reboot of groundhog day would be stretching it. ;)
Wreck-It-Ralph -- original, featured 2ndary characters from a variety of existing games
Hobbit II - based on the Hobbit and LotR appendixes + sequel
Hunger Games 2 - book adaptation / sequel? (or just adaptation of book 2?)
Looper - original work?
Django - original?
Star Trek Into Darkness - reboot/remake and sequel all in one
Despicable Me 2 - original sequel
Frozen - original (and ok, by now its probably clear I have kids)
Hugo - original?
Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy - apparently a book adaptation
Seriously -- while I don't dispute that there are a lot of reboots and sequels and such out there, there's lots of good original work and/or novel adaptations that aren't sequels and reboots. Overall I'd say this has been a great decade...
However, what the original poster DIDN'T say is gain in 2x+ performance over last year's iPad Air and the drop in pricing for comparable versions.
The original poster (me) didn't say that because it wasn't in the summary. That its twice as fast as the previous ipad air actually WOULD have been reasonably interesting. 12x as fast as the original ipad is meaningless marketing propaganda fluff.
The point is that its 12x faster than an ipad 1. That's several generations ago, and pretty much obsolete.
When a new Porsche 911 comes out, the interesting question for buyers is how it compares to last years 911, not the original one from 1963.
A big bunch of nothing exciting.
Oooo... an ipad 12x faster than the "original ipad" ... gee... what kind of bullshit marketing is that? Maybe Intel should do that, the recent i7 4770K wasn't impressively faster than the 3770K... maybe they should have compared it to the original Pentium D or something.
Oooo... an imac with a retina display... only reason its even theoretically interesting is that thanks to there being no way to buy a half decent desktop mac without buying that ridiculous tube is to get stuck with their lousy all-in-one form factor.
I'm not especially anti-apple, but this isn't really news. Oh, look, Dell announced an new 13" XPS laptop, and $20 off on Inspirons under $500 ... we should put that on the front page too.
There would be a LOT less of this if you simply enacted no-fault divorce.
A lot less of this sure, but I'm not sure that would be more equitable.
Now someone can betray your trust, maybe even give you an STD they picked up screwing around, get pregnant, become addicted to drugs or some combination of all that... and then when you leave them they take half your stuff, plus alimony, child support too (perhaps not even for your child)?
Is that equitable?
Oh and they've decided they want your dog too... the one they don't give a shit about but you love, and are just demanding it to be spiteful...
Yeah, divorce courts going to be ugly, even with no-fault as the reason.
It's going to happen regardless.
So is cheating at school, or plagiarism, or fishing without a license, or bullying, or vandalism, or gossiping about the neighbors. That doesn't mean we need or should celebrate apps to facilitate any of those.
Many argue that monogamy isn't a natural state for humans.
Nobody forcing people to get married and take vows of monogamous fidelity.
For many people, the mistake was in the decision to get married in the first place
Agreed. And the solution is to terminate the marriage not lie to and betray your partner.
When I see TV ads for websites which are pretty blatant about the fact that you're there to have an affair, it's pretty evident there's a market for it.
There being a market for it doesn't make it right, or moral, or even acceptable. If you want multiple partners, fine, but find partners who are ok with that arrangement. Don't find partners who aren't ok with that arrangement and then do it anyway behind their backs. Its really that simple.
Looney Tunes, Bugs, Elmer Road Runner etc...THOSE were cartoons.
And flinstones and jetsons... but while the looney toons violence is timeless... the flintstones humor hasn't aged well.
And Rocket Robin Hood and Hercules were from the same era and were shit.
Point is not everything pre-1970 was good, even if it was the golden age.
But yeah, the 70s and 80s had some hits ... smurfs, transformers, tom and jerry etc... but sure the end of the 80s was pretty bad... Smoggies remains fixed in my mind as the pinnacle of PC schlock.
But it rebounded, those died off, as even kids wouldn't watch them. And lots of 90s cartoons are solid ... from Tiny Toons and Animaniacs to Talespin, Darkwing Duck, The Tick, Dexters Lab....
And there's lots of good shows on today. Gravity Falls, Adventure Time, Phineas and Ferb to name a few...
Political correctness destroyed the Saturday morning cartoon
In a word no. What destroyed the "Saturday Morning Cartoon" is quite simply that the majority of people who want to watch cartoons have cable or satellite with 24 hour cartoon networks. It wasn't the internet or political correctness or streaming.
When I was a kid, saturday morning was about the only block of cartoons I could watch we lived around them in a sense. My kids? Have cartoon network, and ytv... they aren't going to even think to switch it to NBC or something for a 4 hour block once a week...
The internet and streaming, sure just more nails in the coffin, but it was already dead.
And Political correctness? Sure it set cartoons back in the late 80s, but its been 20 years since; and there are cartoons out now that are better than ever.
Voice recognition that runs locally will not be nearly as good as the cloud version.
I'm ok with that. There's really only a small subset of commands I want to be processed locally -- to send some canned responses when driving etc, call a contact or dial a number.
very Asimov too, as it turns out.
Not only is knowledge of the second foundation given to the first as a nudge, but later on the first is set up to eliminate a decoy second foundation as another nudge, while protecting the real second foundation.
In this instance, the more Google succeeds, the better the products are.
Hardly. I like Android. But I'm not such a big fan of Google.
The play store being installed is fine, and I'd actively like maps installed.
I readily accept that the phone should come with email and a browser but I prefer other browsers to chrome and actively despise the gmail app. So I'd like to be able to easily remove both once I've got something else in place.
I also have no use for hangouts, or google+, play newstand, and I'm not even sure what the other 10+ bloatware apps I've failed to think of entirely would be.
Plus I prefer the samsung calendar app to the google one. So the "bloatware" isn't all bloatware. And if google forces google apps including specifying their placement then that kills oems ability to innovate and differentiate.
For example, I don't want to say "ok google" for voice. The phrase itself irritates me -- but above that I don't want to talk to google. I want to talk to my phone, and I don't want my voice requests to be sent to google as a matter of course. So I'm in the market for alternative voice option that run locally, don't need to talk to google, and won't talk to google unless i specifically ask it to find something in google maps or to do a google search.
So no, the more google succeeds the more like an iphone the products are. If I wanted an iphone, I'd have bought one.
You guys make it sound like making millions in the stock market is dead simple. All your posts are missing is a link to an ebook that tell you all the secrets.
Its not dead simple at all I know this, and there aren't really any real secrets either. The point stands that if someone beats the market by a lot its probably more luck than brains.
Its like blackjack or poker. The people who 'win' are generally good players, understand the game, are disciplined, etc. I'm sure this guy is all of these things. But winning big? Its just luck. Every trade is a calculated risk -- and probability theory dictates that if you have a bunch of traders all doing this, some will break even, some will lose it all, and some will win big... even if they all play EXACTLY as well as each other. Its just math.
In fact, day trading as a profession is a fanscinating selection bias -- as some of them lose they stop trading so the ones that are still doing it are the ones who haven't lost yet so any survey of the field at any time is mostly people who are "doing ok or better". (Because anyone doing poorly has had to dropped out.)
Of course some are better at it than others, and the ones who aren't good at it are more likely to lose and be forced to drop. So the ones still doing it are at least 'good at it'. And as I said, I don't doubt that this person is good at it. But spectacular success is as much luck as anything.
To put it another way...
Lets say I put an opportunity in front of you and you correctly determine the risk as being 1% chance to quadruple your money, 20% chance of doubling your money, 20% chance to triple it, 49% chance of breaking just above even, 9% chance of losing 50%, 1% chance of losing it all.
Clearly this is a very good bet. 90% of the outcomes are positive, and overall its very net positive. It would be smart to take this bet. So if I present this to a few hundred traders... what happens?
A couple quadruple their money. Are they any smarter or more insightful than the few who lost it all? Why? They all correctly gauged the risk and made the best decision.
I've found that people fundamentally do NOT understand "risk". Whether its the stock market, gambling, their own health care, or IT related risks.
This guy is good at analyzing risk and making smart bets, and he's had good winning streak, but being right about the risk and making the best decisions based on it, doesn't mean the risk isn't there. That he didn't lose is just luck.
Poker is the same way. You can be smart, play well, know all the odds, make all the right calls, and still lose badly.
Even best advisors from open hedge and mutual funds average around 25%.
Hell no they don't. Lots of studies have shown that the top hedge funds don't even consistently beat index funds. And after the management expenses the investor usually ends up behind. Look it up.
Detecting things in it is hard, unless they've giving off light or radiation that you can detect more easily
If they aren't thrusting towards you they aren't much threat.No way they'll ever hit you as long as you are continually changing course.
Once they turn on thrusters to home in they'll be easy to spot and could quite conceivably be taken down with lasers at that point (no atmosphere to cope with either). I'm doubtful they'd get anywhere near 10 to 20 seconds of you without thrust. You'd probably still have minutes or hours to shoot them down.
Yeah, I mountain-bike, and a drone following would be pretty amazing. Helmet mounted cams generally produce poor video -- lots of vibration, and it doesn't really capture what you are doing at all, air, drops, gap jumps, the incline ... none of it is really discernible.
Plus you can't see yourself or your bike.
Best a normal person can hope for right now is to have a friend following reasonably closely filming you with their helmet cam. But its still full of vibration, and still isn't terribly compelling video.
A drone camera might be a lot better.
Nevermind the selection bias.
I mean, maybe its like interviewing lottery winners and asking them what their secret is. Maybe the secret is simply "I played", and "somebody has to win".
I'm not saying the guy isn't smart or disciplined or has the right mindset to be a trader, but that doesn't mean he's really an "exceptionally" genius at it.
Literally millions of day traders out there doing technical analysis and picking stocks. Its a bit like monkeys and typewriters in a way. Does the monkey that produces something legible really have any truly special talent?
Audio and Video are regulated separately in most places, with more restrictions on audio than video.