OBDI was superceded in 1995-96 by OBDII. I know, I have an OBDI vehicle, and pulling codes requires hooking up a test light and counting flashes - lots of fun. Take that over to Pep Boys and they roll their eyes and explain they don't have an OBDI 'scanner'.
Yes, they are available, but fairly rare. I use the light just fine.
And OBDI was more proprietary, so codes vary among manufacturers.
All of this reinforces my desire for a nice CRX, an SI or HF, probably, VTEC not essential, just bone stock with a full interior. Even my '95 presents challenges, and my wife's '98 Saab is way more trouble than it's worth sometimes.
ps- How hard could it be to whip up an OBD dongle to slip in and really mess with someone's car? An Arduino would be one way to do it, just some wiring to tuck under the dash. Just be sure to wipe your prints off of it...
Oh, and OBD codes are not the be-all end-all of diagnostics. If you get an O2 sensor code, 'too lean' for example, this can be caused by a clogged fuel filter... Yes, it can, at highway speed. Even with codes, you need to be a logical diagnostician, and some of us were born without the logic gene.
From what I've read, the most severe impact of this drifting, nonresponsive bird is that it is repeating all RF it is receiving, which will not only interfere with any other birds it goes by, but is polluting the spectrum.
So, if this is the worst effect, then just disabling it would be a real plus, and dodging it as G15 drifts out of harm's way is just a matter of waiting.
THIS would be a job for a laser. Cut off the solar panels, burn holes in it until it stops transmitting, it might not take much to kill this bird. Blowing it up just causes a debris field, though strapping or clipping a PAM onto it could let them drive it somewhere safe, like the ocean... Burning up in the atmosphere would be a good resolution right now.
Losing GCCS (or is it WAAS?) is unfortunate, and I don't know if there is a backup. Must be.:)
Monday - moderate traffic - passed 24 passed by 5. A faster day in the right lanes, 3 of 5 passers were BMWs:), one the Bentley that I'm pretty sure I've never seem moving less than 80... I'm not counting the hordes of 60mph'rs on the right of me, poor blighters.
Tuesday - lighter traffic - passed 12 passed by 8. 5 of the 8 passing me ripped by on a very light stretch, and were already in open lanes. Today, only 5 of 8 were BMWs. A pattern? Plenty of 60mph'rs safely in their right lanes, oblivious to the posted limit.
Wednesday - heavier traffic - passed 40+, passed by 12. One of the 12 passed me after tailgating me in the most congested spot, and then settled down in front of me and I ended up changing lanes to pass her 2 miles later after waiting for an opening. All but 2 passers were weaving and most gave me no chance to change lanes. Today, most of the passers were doing 80+ by my estimation, one a bit more, but I'm not sure I can gauge speed over 100 very well. We had a motorcycle officer on the HOV shoulder today that slowed traffic. He missed a solitaire.
Looking more carefully, I see in the morning that the prevailing speed in the right lanes is mostly 60 in a 65, until we get past Shea Blvd, and then it creeps up to 65, barely. Most of the fast movers seem to come onto the 101 in the Scottdale sections, around Thomas and Chapparall. And msot of the fast movers I see ripping by me are exiting within 5 miles. I go up past Hayden, so that makes sense, but the worst speeders seem to be getting off at FLW, how did I know that? In other words, it seems to be a specific office-dominated area that attracts the speeders. There are exceptions.
In the afternoon, I don't spend as much time in the left lane, as it is both slower (50-30 depending on accidents) and the traffic is generally at the same speed left to right. Even at 4pm, the afternoon commute is terrible.
I'm still going faster tha at least 85% of the rest of traffic, and I'm pushing over some others etc. And I think, since I'm on the road with thousands of other travellers, being passed by maybe a dozen drivers isn't keeping me up nights. And since not all of those even bother to wait until they are behind me (and 1/3 of those weren't even going to stay in front of me) I'm done with this.
Some people might call it a pointing stick, but the stick part is disguised.
Some people might call it "the little button some keyboards have in the middle which can tilt and control the mouse", but tilting a mouse is not common behavior, and besides, this is a mouthful. Cue tasteless jokes here.
If you had called it by its correct name, a TRACKPOINT, I would have grokked it even faster.
I used to call it the "F$&*ing eraser head", but then I got an X41 tablet, and got used to it. Other than the autocalibration, it works just fine, though I wouldn't want to try and play Bad Company with it.
My wife loathes it. Good. I get to keep my tablet.
I attended six different schools in Maine between 1959 (kindergarten) and 1969 (eight grade).
Kindergarten was wonderful, what I remember of it, mostly napes, cookies, and orange juice. The teacher, Mrs. Kitchen, was an institution, teaching >40 years and never missing a beat. Our classroom had a curved glassed-in wall that was 30 feet square, and was just a perfect (to me) kindergarten room.
From there on in, it was spotty.
I don't remember much until fourth grade, where I had a teacher that kept sending me to the counselor, because I wouldn't go out for recesses. Well, I was tired of getting tripped by this one bully who had a different trick for each of his victims. All the school knew about it, but they expected us to either take him on or learn to live with it. The counselor was particularly insightful, pointing out that I would run up against 'people like him' all my life, and should learn to deal with it. But no advice on how to deal with it. Well, I finally got pretty angry one day, mostly spurred by some other problems at home, and I gave him a bloody nose. Never got tripped again, but now I was in the counselor's office for becoming a 'violent' kid. Thanks for nothing. I didn't do that again for 4 years, until one particular nasty kid in 6th grade hit me in the face when I got the lead part in a school play, opposite his girfriend and of course beating him out. I got a black eye, he got a broken nose, and he stalked me for 2 years, threatening me with worse. I finally called him out and we made an 'appointment' for the mext day after school. I was living with my grandparents at the time, and that afternoon I came home from school, didn't wake up my grandmother who was napping, and later came home for dinner and found the whole police department there. She had died of a brain aneurysm. I missed my appointment, but I met up with him 21 years later... He was still angry. I didn't go back to that bar ever. No loss. But I see bullying is still pretty much the same now,except that where I would have feared a bloody nose or jsut a plain old beating, today kids seem to fear getting s knife in the ribs, or shot, or thrown into traffic. Kinda sad, but we will never fix that. At least we didn't have metal detectors at school back then.
Other than that, I only think one class, fifth grade, was really horrible for me, a teacher that seemed to take pleasure in finding us guilty of insignificant infractions for equally insignificant rules. Then came high school, and many more teachers - only a few incompetent. But Maine wasn't into fascism in schools back then, and now is just into liberal nanny-ism. My wife taught middle school music there, and could barely stand it. Students were pretty much as disrespectful as they could get away with, and their parents even more so.
"Holy hypocrisy, batman ! You're the guy driving like a wanker"
I'm driving like most everyone else on the road. In fact, I'm not the only one in my lane driving the same speed.
Somehow, you've gotten the impression that I'm driving slowly in the left lane, all alone, with a string of vehicles behind me. Not so. I'm driving faster than MOST other vehicles. Yes. I'm aware of the traffic around me, and well aware of those that want to pass me. Most of the time, the lanes are full, and we're stuck there. When it opens up around halfway to work, not only do I get an opening on the right, but the most impatient drivers take that opening to pass me without waiting. And half the time they pound into the traffic in front of us, which is actually going slower - yes, the prevailing speed on the Pima freeway is not 65MPH between 6:00am and 7:00am. MOre like 60, and I can't see any reason why the right-hand lanes are so slow in so many places.
Take your wanker and stuff it. Maybe I haven't explained it, but I'm not driving slow. Just slower than 2 out of 100 drivers. My speed is usually in the 90th percentile.
For giggles, I'll be counting cars I pass vs cars that pass me on different stretches next week. We'll get some numbers for ya.
"You must be doing something wrong. I keep to the right unless passing, keep my speed within 5mph of the speed limit, leave plenty of space in front of me, and don't pass at all in congested traffic. I haven't had any close calls worth mentioning."
I keep my speed within 5mph of the speed limit, leave plenty of space in front of me, and don't pass at all in congested traffic. I also haven't had any close calls worth mentioning.
"Wow... A full page post describing yourself as a complete asshole. I'm not sure if I've ever seen such a thing on/. before."
You must be new here. Wait, you're an AC. Nevermind.
"I've been to AZ a number of times, having to drive from Tucson airport to Ft. Huachuca on business."
The I-10 and I-19 are not the loop 101. I don't hang in the left lane on the I-10 unless I'm keeping up. And there is less speed differential there than on the 101. Come to Phoenix some time and get a taste of rush-hour traffic. Almost as bad as the 128, and I can drive the 128 with the best of them.
"Unlike you, most people are not assholes that feel they need to regulate the speed of other motorists."
You, like many, just don't get it. I don't much care how fast other people drive, really. I just want to be in the lane where the speed is consistent, and I don't get bothered by people looking to be one car-length ahead of whoever is in front of them. The left lane works for that. Remember, no matter what lane I'm in, someone wants to be ahead of me. It doesn't matter. No, it really doesn't.
"Remaining in the left lane on a highway actually makes the highway more dangerous by forcing people to pass you in the slower moving right lane. That is why your behavior is illegal."
From AZDOT's web pages: "Police agencies necessarily rely on reasonable and well recognized speed laws to control the unreasonable violator whose behavior is clearly out of line with the normal flow of traffic."
The question is, then is my driving the speed limit in the right-hand lane 'unreasonable'? Arizona has this to say about 'unreasonable' speed.
In Arizona, it is not illegal to stay in the left-hand lane on highways marked with three lanes or more. See item #3. The Pima 101 is three or more lanes all the length I drive it each day. Yet, there is this language: "a vehicle proceeding at less than the normal speed of traffic at the time and place and under the conditions then existing". Again, is driving the limit to be considered 'less than the normal speed'? Interesting.
Airzona 'racing' law states "2. "Racing" means the use of one or more vehicles in an attempt to outgain or outdistance another vehicle or prevent another vehicle from passing." I'm not sure about this, but by that definition MOST other drivers are guilty of this at some point every damned day. No, I'm not *trying* to prevent another vehicle from passing me. If I don't change lanes, they have other lanes to use, unless the lanes are full, in which case there is just no safe way to pass at that time. This happens when there is someone driving in the left-hand lane doing 75 in a 65 also. It is not so simple as you think.
The question is, is the speed limit the 'normal speed of traffic'? In my experience, I am in fact traveling faster than 85% of the traffic on the road. I doubt the speeders actually constitute 5% of the traffic. I'll be counting the next few days to see how many vehicles I pass vs how many pass me. I might have to try the center lane to see if it makes a diffence. Mind you, the center lane exposes me to passers on *both* sides. If I die in an accident, you are to blame, right?
And in Arizona it is in fact not illegal to pass on the right with a few exceptions.
Yeah, but the ride would be smooth. And pedestrians nonexistent. Just the occasional micrometeorite, and hell, a Caddy should be able to take a few hits before it springs a bad leak.
"Move to the left when someone enters. Not that hard."
In congested traffic, it sometimes is. Remember, we got to this point because it's not always easy to change lanes when you want to pass someome going slower than you. Same problem with merging traffic in the right lane.
"Confirmation bias, you're only going to notice those who are passing you. You never see all the people going the same speed as you, because you never pass them."
I wrote "'everyone' seemed to want to go 72". I know not everyone IS going 72. I'm not the dullest radish in the basket, despite your protests to the opposite.
"Then why do you do it? Stay in the right lane and people will zip past without swerving making it safer for everyone."
Until they come across the landsacapers. Or someone who drives like I do. We are not alone. I am not the only obstacle.
"Since you can't control the speed at which others drive, that's irrelevant. What you can do is make them drive 80 *past* traffic that's driving 65, instead of *through*."
No, I can't. I am only one.
"I agree. Aggressive speeders are jackasses. But so are you. Be honest, it's not about safety. It's about you getting your way."
Well, when you put it that way, it makes less sense than before.
My experience so far has been that I have fewer close calls in the left lane than I do in the right-hand lanes. YMMV. The HOV lane is also a regular option for the determined speeders, since they don't seem to mind breaking two laws at once, rather than just one.
I do get it - I'm as convinced I'm right as you are convinced I'm wrong.
"They have no choice to do more dangerous maneuvers if they want to be able to get past you and others like you"
That is PRECISELY my point, thank you for distilling it into a specific and purposeful rant.
So I'm at fault for obeying the law, and those who choose to drive more dangerously are to be excused and accomodated?
While it is practical to get out of the way of a reckless driver, it sure isn't 'right'. My initial post laid out my desire for a peaceful commute. I am no longer offended by other drivers who obey the law.
Your attitude speaks volumes about our society, and the general attitude of 'whatever I can get away with'. This permeates the Internet community (where it has good and bad applications), the political arena, our financial markets, and virtually every part of American society.
Let's get this clear, ok? the complaints I'm hearing are essentially that I am not accomodating the lawbreakers, and they are therefore left with the option of either endangering other drivers or submitting to the law.
My post also pointed out the genuine and beneficial impact of speed cameras on the highway here - slowing down the worst offenders, and reducing the number and severity of accidents and deaths. This is undesireable how? Your attitude seems, by logical extension, to also require that the cameras be turned off, to prevent speeders from being encoutraged to abruptly change speed, endangering themselves and others. Come on, their act of speeding is the problem, not the cameras or the 'rest of us' who are not driven (pun intended) to drive just as damned fast as we can get away with.
It this were the Autobahn, where the speed limit in the left lane is your ability, road and weather conditions, traffic, vehicle capabilities, and vehicle condition, I would Not be in the left lane. But it is not the Autobahn. You want me to pull over to get out of the way of a driver that is, in reality, driving too fast for the conditions. I am not alone in the left lane, doing the limit.
Just as an exercise, if I should move over for a driver going 70, should I also do so for a driver going 75? 85? 135? Just so you know, when the 101 Pima cameras were being tested, they clocked violators in excess of 120MPH Some of those violators, despite the stated plan to test and not summons, did get tickets. The kid driving from his rear seat was pretty funny. The woman who got flashed 30+ times in 3 weeks got special attention. Honorable mention to the guy with the gorilla suit. People are stupid.
I should probably be more concerned that someone is going to shoot me one day for being in the left lane. But so far as I can tell, you don't need to do anything wrong to get shot out here. It is not about you.
And for the speeders, it is not about me. It's about them. No matter how fast I go, someone wants to go faster. I guess I can live with having that confrontation at 65 instead of 80, since the confrontation is inevitable, and is not going to be initiated by me anyways.
Your logic is dangerous, more so than mine. And I guarantee you do not get it.
70 in states surrounding Ohio? Which ones? Some stretches of I-10 in Arizona are marked 75, and the I-17 I think has some stretches also, but most of what I saw driving cross-country in 2005 was 65. Certainly on the east coast, but you know how they are...
The slow lane on that road is where people enter and exit. More dangerous than the right lane.
For the record, I've learned that 'your preferred speed' is often just a little faster than the prevailing average... Not yours personally, but time and again, when I travelled in the left lane at 70, 'everyone' seemed to want to go 72.
I know full well the impact of hanging in the left lane at the speed limit, and having people swerve by. Trust me, I am not alone in hanging in the left lane at the limit, and the speeders will do it no matter what lane you are in. I've talked with the police officers I know quite a bit (when we aren't talking about ileegal immigrants, gangbangers, or drunks killing motorcycle officers) and they are of two minds about this - one, get out of the way and try to avoid the accidents, or two, the speeders will be swerving anyways, there is nothing you can do but drive alertly and keep your brakes and steering gear in good order. Speeders even swerve past marked patrol cars.
I'm not forcing anyone to drive a certain speed. I'm part of the pack.
And driving 80 through traffic doing 65 is not as safe as driving 65 with the traffic doing 65. 'Perfectly safely' is not the term I would use. 'competent driving' might fit. I've driven the Autobahn in the 70s, and those rules would do us a lot of good. But those aren't the rules.
I have no sympathy for speeders. And I am under no illusion that my bvehavior will change a thing. Your perspective is different, and I submit, respectfully, that it is because you have a different intention. I understand, but driving too fast for conditions is not a good thing. If the conditions are just traffic congestion, forcing yourself through heavy traffic isn't safe at any speed.
Oh, and I learned that on my commute, going 75 when I could got me there 5 minutes faster in most cases. Not worth it to me any more. I see speeders cut me off just to get off at the next exit a half-mile up the road. They got a 15 second advantage? Not even that. Be honest, it's not about time. It's about getting your way.
"Speed limits are necessary, but that doesn't mean certain locales don't artificially lower them to raise revenue."
Driver behavior being what it is, cameras, speed traps, and enhanced enforcement do that just fine. You don't need to lower limits, just enforce them, and the money rolls in.
"Most traffic engineering studies I've read suggest that speed limits should be set for the 85th percentile, but they rarely are."
When I was interested more than I am now in traffic engineering, limits were generally set by design of the roadway and expected traffic. As traffic increased, limits decreased. Then came the Oil Crisis, and now we set limits to try to save fuel. How's this working out?
"My hometown has a stretch of highway that's posted 55mph. Pretty much everybody drives 65mph on it though. If you go 55mph at rush hour you'll get tailgated and have people swerving on either side of you trying to get past. It's actually dangerous to obey the speed limit in this instance and the roadway was designed for 75mph (as all interstates were), so why is it posted 55mph?"
Wrong question. Why are people driving dangerously? ps- 'All' Interstates weren't designed for 75mph, and congested ones no longer function that way. 65MPH on urban sections of I-95 is a cruel joke. Like the stretch in Hartford, or of course the eight-lane death strip.
I drive the same 33 mile commute every day from Mesa to North Phoenix. Up to one highway, over to another, straight shot to my exit. Big woop.
I hang in the left lane doing the speed limit for several reasons; First, I'm tired of paying tickets. Second, I just want a smooth, cruise-control, stress-less commute. Third, I am not alone in this. Sadly, many people want to go just a little faster, and some want to go a LOT faster, and every once in a while someone gets terribly agitated that I'm 'only going the speed limit' in the left lane. Well, in Arizona, the law may or may not specify that you use the left-most lanes for passing or faster traffic, but NOBODY bothers to follow that. Speeders use any lane. Slower traffic, like the landscapers towing a trailer full of oleander or bouganvilla and going 59 in a 66 every day except Sunday, gladly hang in the left lane. Speeders use the HOV lane as a passing lane, all alone in their M3 or F-350. (There is no pleasure on on Earth quite like watching them pass an officer all alone in the HOV lane. This sends a tingle up my spine.) so if you think I'm oblivious to your pleas for me to GTFOOTW, you are wrong. I'm well aware of your presence on my bumper, gesturing, and generally being a dick. You are not late for anything because of me. You were late before you got in your car.
ps - In a perfect world, you would not be travelling faster than the lane to your right. You would be travelling at the same speed, save for the right-most lane where traffic enters and exits. If you're moving slower than the lane to your right, they are speeding. The concept of stepping aside and allowing illegal or dangerous behavior may be prudent in the immediate, but it is also the crux of the illegal immigration problem. This attitude is permeating our nation, and is not good. But it may be inevitable...
As an observation, I see three results of my driving behavior. One, whoever was trying to pass me generally pounds into slower traffic in a mile or so, and I'm on their bumper now. Congrats, you are now ahead of me... Two, they get off in a half mile or so. Niiice. You needed that 3 second advantage. Three, they blaze on in triumphant glory. Good for you. Oh, and the drivers that hang behind me for 12 miles... I do move over after 'the curve' to get ready to exit. Many a driver who had open road to pass me for most of the 12 miles will then acclerate and speed on. These people just want to be up against whoever is in front of them. Traffic engineers understand this. I don't.
When I first moved out here in 2005, the 101 Pima from the 202 to the 51 was a racetrack. People would drive 100+ any time of day or night. Accidents were common, and pretty spectacular. Then came the cameras in the Scottsadale section. Traffic over 100mph dried up. Today, 80+ is not too uncommon, but the accidents have lessened greatly. It could be that those speeders went elsewhere, but I doubt it. Cameras there improved safety and driving. The vans are another story. Everyone except me seems to need to slow down, as if the radar will flash you if you are going even 1 mph slower than the limit. This itself is dangerous, but tolerable. They've got one on the stretch of the 202 where construction is, where we regularly do 65 in a 55 construction zone. Jersey barriers on both sides. Feh. I speed there, it's just practical and there is NO work being done this week as the concrete cures. Well, three guys today on the other side. Even when men are working, they are safer there than the irrigation crews that have no signage and no cameras.
I hate the van cameras, but they work, and there is no excuse for speeding. Arizona is letting them go because they are not bringing in the revenue, and they can't change the program to properly serve sumnmons because the law is wrong and it is not profitable to do proper service. Sad. But the red light cameras and static speed cams stay. Good.
pps- My wife hates the cameras. They love her. She calls them 'paperaspeeides'. Ah, celebrity has its reward. Hers is traffic school.
"in fact it is exactly to enforce an arbitrary limit because it massages a sense of moral superiority"
Citation, please. Otherwise, STFU. As much as I distrust government, it does sometimes perform necessary and useful functions, and sometimes even accomplishes those. Speed limits are largely necessary, and usually appropriate. Your opinion on this is off in some corner, sulking over your last ticket. Grow up.
Just include some of the data in a game DRM key, and it will be cracked in a few hours. Problem solved.
Or announce a contest. Most anything as a prize, maybe a spacesuit glove or spare antenna? We crack encryption readily in many cases, so I suspect someone can figure out what rolled over or got zapped by a cosmic ray, and this is fixed for another 33 years or so.
-ps: is Voyager 2 running better than a 1977 Cadillac? Probably. Probably better than a 1977 Mercedes.
"What gives the ISP the right to throttle my bandwidth or charge the third party money for me to access their service."
I dunno. Read your contract, or TOS. If it's in there, your argument goes from 'they have no right' to 'that's unenforcable/illegal/etc.'
Good luck. The major ISPs have reasonably competent lawyers. Mostly, they give you a vague 'network management' excuse. This is what the FCC needs to make them come out and say - they don't want you to be able tu actually *use* the bandwidth to the full extent possible, because their network can't take it. In other words, they actually don't have the bandwidth to sell to you, if many of their customers start using it.
That will only result in the ISPs reducing their committment to you. Instead of 5GB/month, they'll drop it to 3GB. Instead of 24MB/s, they'll drop it to 10MB/s. Bandwidth is not free, and many systems are architecturally challenged. to give you what they promised, if even twice as many people used all if it, they would have to increase their capital investment tenfold. This is not good for profits.
Besides, the cable companies are not inclined to provide you the full bandwidth needed to watch Hulu, Netflix, and listen to Pandora. And the telcos are similarly not inclined to give you the low latency to use Skype. THAT is the essence of the 'Net Neutrality' debate.
It's one thing to sell you limited bandwidth. It's another thing to limit you because you're using resources that they want to provide to you instead of you going to external sources. Eventually we need to decide if an ISP can advertise they give you 'Internet service' while selectively throttling or blocking some of the Internet services as they wish. Imagine the competition if the FCC requires that they disclose their 'network management' policies in advance - so you could read the fine print and see that one reserves the right to throttle H.264 from external hosts and block torrents at will, while another may not provide low enough latency to properly provide VOIP. And to go all the way, to make them disclose that they reserve the right to give preferential treatment to their own traffic and services, so that they may offer low-latency service to *their* VOIP service, but will not guarantee it for yours. Or may throttle bandwidth in any manner of different ways if they need to ensure delivery of their own video services...
In our current climate, this would mean one of two things, I think. One, your local government would be under pressure to make ISPs with municipal monopolies provide better service, which I doubt will happen. Or, two, the FCC could require that they offer all-or-nothing service, or become more regulated in exchange for the accomodation. Somehow, I suspect the FCC wants to give the ISPs time to build up to this, and avoid hammering them. This will not work. We may need to pressure our legislators to do the right thing, whatever that is.
Trust no one. Any school official that had access can be assumed to have used that access. Ditto for staff. We know a principal did.
Sadly, I hope at least a few had a shred of integrity left and didn't participate in what must have devolved into a sad excursion into student privacy. Those few had no real choices - quit, get transferrred somewhere where access would be denied, or be quiet and know they will also get the boot when the time comes.
Maybe, just maybe, there is enough of an audit trail to exonerate any innocents. But I doubt it, and the rest of the qulity will happily pull the innocent under the bus with them. Nice.
"Um, no. He wasn't talking about that specific story, just the idea of a "news" organization so ignorantly backwards as Fox News reporting on science, is like McDonald's putting out a healthy recipes cookbook. In a word, ironic."
Yeah. And I was just pointing out that virtually identical reporting is done by several allegedly reputable and competent news organizations also. So the distinction was that when Fox did it, it was an ignorantly backwards news organization, but when, for example, CNN did it, it was at worst an honest mistake? I fail to see your point, but I believe you're making mine seem more plausible. And mine was that judging a news organization on their resistance to inaccurate or fraudulent stories is not likely to offer you a useful measure of their competence. But if you want to cling to the idea that Fox News is biased, go ahead. Frankly it IS BIASED! Just as the rest of the mainstream media is. What the bias is, that is the important question. Go ahead. Take another swing. You're bound to hit something.
"The funniest thing about defense of Fox News (or Bush or whatever) is almost always to point out a way in which, superficially, some non-conservative agency has done the same thing. "Bush lied about war? Clinton lied about sex!" or in this case, "Fox used the term 'pixie dust'? So did CNN!"
And there is the rub. You write 'non-conservative agency'. Just be honest, and leave it at that. Being 'non-conservative' is probably otherwise defined as 'liberal' in the popularly defined U.S. political spectrum, which runs from 'Left' to 'Right' It should be expressed as a circle, a continuum, where the extremes of both 'Left' and 'Right' are functionally indistiguishable. As you get further away from extremes, I believe, then you see genuine functional differences. As illustration, fascism and socialism are in many ways functionally identical, but come from different motivations and have different purposes. But both intend to insinuate government into as many areas of life as possible. Socialism seeks to make the State the primary agency of control and management, and seeks to exercise control to the betterment of its people (when it works as theoretical Socialism would teach). Fascism intends to make the State arbiter of purpose and intention, by coercion, usually to achieve a specific result. Denmark or Sweden may be the best current examples of socialism, while Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy might qualify as the best recent examples of fascist states, while Iran certainly is functionally not one bit different from either of those - it just chose an entirely non-secular purpose. It doesn't really matter the purpose, either system still functions, much as it doesn't matter if you run a red light because you were distracted singing 'Hail to the Chief' or trying to beat the red Mustang in the next lane.
It's unfortunate that we fail so often to entirely understand our own opinions. My experience has been that when I have to speak something out loud, it oftens sounds harsher than I intended. Not always, but often. Then I have to go back and reconsider why I want to say it. Even here.
ps - I was just having fun poking at a post that used the term 'pixie dust' and making 'magical iPads'. IBM used 'pixie dust' to increase storage density on hard drives, and it was just a cute term. Then someone called a medical collagen somthing-or-other 'pixie dust', and the thought of vats of iPads growing inthe basements of Apple buildings under lights made me chuckle. You had to go spoil it all and get all partisan when that was as far from the point as could be. You seem to have a real hardon for Fox News. Get used to it. All my adult life (and before) I've been assaulted with multiple outlets of left-leaning, conservative-bashing, slanted news. ONE OUTLET decides to tilt in the other direction. when the Titanic was going down, people standing upright were actually having to lean against the tilting deck. Fox could be scrupulously neutral and STILL LOOK RIGHT-LEANING COMPARED TO THE REST OF THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA. What a frikin shame. Are you thereatened? Don't be. It's not Fox you should fear. And it is not their audience either.
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"Not enough coping mechanisms to keep it fit to survive in the world we've made, but many mechanisms that go down with it."
We've made?
We made water? Oxygen? Carbon? We made the Earth, or the Sun? We 'made' amino acids? DNA?
If we you mean humans, we've 'made' precious little. We've changed systems and processes to some extent, but 'made'?
Once again, blame the humans, they've made a wreck of everything. Pathetic.
OBDI was superceded in 1995-96 by OBDII. I know, I have an OBDI vehicle, and pulling codes requires hooking up a test light and counting flashes - lots of fun. Take that over to Pep Boys and they roll their eyes and explain they don't have an OBDI 'scanner'.
Yes, they are available, but fairly rare. I use the light just fine.
And OBDI was more proprietary, so codes vary among manufacturers.
All of this reinforces my desire for a nice CRX, an SI or HF, probably, VTEC not essential, just bone stock with a full interior. Even my '95 presents challenges, and my wife's '98 Saab is way more trouble than it's worth sometimes.
ps- How hard could it be to whip up an OBD dongle to slip in and really mess with someone's car? An Arduino would be one way to do it, just some wiring to tuck under the dash. Just be sure to wipe your prints off of it...
Oh, and OBD codes are not the be-all end-all of diagnostics. If you get an O2 sensor code, 'too lean' for example, this can be caused by a clogged fuel filter... Yes, it can, at highway speed. Even with codes, you need to be a logical diagnostician, and some of us were born without the logic gene.
That's going to make warranty (and non-warranty) repairs quite interesting.
Or 'impossible', depending on the spares stock and turnaround time.
Still, for something less than the cost of a iPod Nano, pretty cool. I may need one of these. Sure hs a better keyboard than the Nano.
Allow me to be among the first to welcome our new comedic overlord.
Well played, sir!
And Jimmy, please, just suck it.
From what I've read, the most severe impact of this drifting, nonresponsive bird is that it is repeating all RF it is receiving, which will not only interfere with any other birds it goes by, but is polluting the spectrum.
So, if this is the worst effect, then just disabling it would be a real plus, and dodging it as G15 drifts out of harm's way is just a matter of waiting.
THIS would be a job for a laser. Cut off the solar panels, burn holes in it until it stops transmitting, it might not take much to kill this bird. Blowing it up just causes a debris field, though strapping or clipping a PAM onto it could let them drive it somewhere safe, like the ocean... Burning up in the atmosphere would be a good resolution right now.
Losing GCCS (or is it WAAS?) is unfortunate, and I don't know if there is a backup. Must be. :)
Yuh. Well, I made some counts the past 3 days;
Monday - moderate traffic - passed 24 passed by 5. A faster day in the right lanes, 3 of 5 passers were BMWs:), one the Bentley that I'm pretty sure I've never seem moving less than 80... I'm not counting the hordes of 60mph'rs on the right of me, poor blighters.
Tuesday - lighter traffic - passed 12 passed by 8. 5 of the 8 passing me ripped by on a very light stretch, and were already in open lanes. Today, only 5 of 8 were BMWs. A pattern? Plenty of 60mph'rs safely in their right lanes, oblivious to the posted limit.
Wednesday - heavier traffic - passed 40+, passed by 12. One of the 12 passed me after tailgating me in the most congested spot, and then settled down in front of me and I ended up changing lanes to pass her 2 miles later after waiting for an opening. All but 2 passers were weaving and most gave me no chance to change lanes. Today, most of the passers were doing 80+ by my estimation, one a bit more, but I'm not sure I can gauge speed over 100 very well. We had a motorcycle officer on the HOV shoulder today that slowed traffic. He missed a solitaire.
Looking more carefully, I see in the morning that the prevailing speed in the right lanes is mostly 60 in a 65, until we get past Shea Blvd, and then it creeps up to 65, barely. Most of the fast movers seem to come onto the 101 in the Scottdale sections, around Thomas and Chapparall. And msot of the fast movers I see ripping by me are exiting within 5 miles. I go up past Hayden, so that makes sense, but the worst speeders seem to be getting off at FLW, how did I know that? In other words, it seems to be a specific office-dominated area that attracts the speeders. There are exceptions.
In the afternoon, I don't spend as much time in the left lane, as it is both slower (50-30 depending on accidents) and the traffic is generally at the same speed left to right. Even at 4pm, the afternoon commute is terrible.
I'm still going faster tha at least 85% of the rest of traffic, and I'm pushing over some others etc. And I think, since I'm on the road with thousands of other travellers, being passed by maybe a dozen drivers isn't keeping me up nights. And since not all of those even bother to wait until they are behind me (and 1/3 of those weren't even going to stay in front of me) I'm done with this.
Some people might call it a pointing stick, but the stick part is disguised.
Some people might call it "the little button some keyboards have in the middle which can tilt and control the mouse", but tilting a mouse is not common behavior, and besides, this is a mouthful. Cue tasteless jokes here.
If you had called it by its correct name, a TRACKPOINT, I would have grokked it even faster.
I used to call it the "F$&*ing eraser head", but then I got an X41 tablet, and got used to it. Other than the autocalibration, it works just fine, though I wouldn't want to try and play Bad Company with it.
My wife loathes it. Good. I get to keep my tablet.
The correct terminology solves a few problems.
That was the 60s.
I attended six different schools in Maine between 1959 (kindergarten) and 1969 (eight grade).
Kindergarten was wonderful, what I remember of it, mostly napes, cookies, and orange juice. The teacher, Mrs. Kitchen, was an institution, teaching >40 years and never missing a beat. Our classroom had a curved glassed-in wall that was 30 feet square, and was just a perfect (to me) kindergarten room.
From there on in, it was spotty.
I don't remember much until fourth grade, where I had a teacher that kept sending me to the counselor, because I wouldn't go out for recesses. Well, I was tired of getting tripped by this one bully who had a different trick for each of his victims. All the school knew about it, but they expected us to either take him on or learn to live with it. The counselor was particularly insightful, pointing out that I would run up against 'people like him' all my life, and should learn to deal with it. But no advice on how to deal with it. Well, I finally got pretty angry one day, mostly spurred by some other problems at home, and I gave him a bloody nose. Never got tripped again, but now I was in the counselor's office for becoming a 'violent' kid. Thanks for nothing. I didn't do that again for 4 years, until one particular nasty kid in 6th grade hit me in the face when I got the lead part in a school play, opposite his girfriend and of course beating him out. I got a black eye, he got a broken nose, and he stalked me for 2 years, threatening me with worse. I finally called him out and we made an 'appointment' for the mext day after school. I was living with my grandparents at the time, and that afternoon I came home from school, didn't wake up my grandmother who was napping, and later came home for dinner and found the whole police department there. She had died of a brain aneurysm. I missed my appointment, but I met up with him 21 years later... He was still angry. I didn't go back to that bar ever. No loss. But I see bullying is still pretty much the same now,except that where I would have feared a bloody nose or jsut a plain old beating, today kids seem to fear getting s knife in the ribs, or shot, or thrown into traffic. Kinda sad, but we will never fix that. At least we didn't have metal detectors at school back then.
Other than that, I only think one class, fifth grade, was really horrible for me, a teacher that seemed to take pleasure in finding us guilty of insignificant infractions for equally insignificant rules. Then came high school, and many more teachers - only a few incompetent. But Maine wasn't into fascism in schools back then, and now is just into liberal nanny-ism. My wife taught middle school music there, and could barely stand it. Students were pretty much as disrespectful as they could get away with, and their parents even more so.
And in Texas, no less.
There may in fact be no hope for our Union.
"Holy hypocrisy, batman ! You're the guy driving like a wanker"
I'm driving like most everyone else on the road. In fact, I'm not the only one in my lane driving the same speed.
Somehow, you've gotten the impression that I'm driving slowly in the left lane, all alone, with a string of vehicles behind me. Not so. I'm driving faster than MOST other vehicles. Yes. I'm aware of the traffic around me, and well aware of those that want to pass me. Most of the time, the lanes are full, and we're stuck there. When it opens up around halfway to work, not only do I get an opening on the right, but the most impatient drivers take that opening to pass me without waiting. And half the time they pound into the traffic in front of us, which is actually going slower - yes, the prevailing speed on the Pima freeway is not 65MPH between 6:00am and 7:00am. MOre like 60, and I can't see any reason why the right-hand lanes are so slow in so many places.
Take your wanker and stuff it. Maybe I haven't explained it, but I'm not driving slow. Just slower than 2 out of 100 drivers. My speed is usually in the 90th percentile.
For giggles, I'll be counting cars I pass vs cars that pass me on different stretches next week. We'll get some numbers for ya.
"You must be doing something wrong. I keep to the right unless passing, keep my speed within 5mph of the speed limit, leave plenty of space in front of me, and don't pass at all in congested traffic. I haven't had any close calls worth mentioning."
I keep my speed within 5mph of the speed limit, leave plenty of space in front of me, and don't pass at all in congested traffic. I also haven't had any close calls worth mentioning.
Hmmm...
Most everyone that is making your point also fails to recognize these problems:
1. No matter what lane I'm in, other drivers do make unsafe lane changes to maintain excessive speed. No way around it.
2. No matter what lane I'm in, eventually someone wants to pass me.
3. Sometimes, despite my willingness to get out of their way, I can't... Congestion sucks for me too.
4. What I'm doing is not illegal.
But none of that matters.
"Wow... A full page post describing yourself as a complete asshole. I'm not sure if I've ever seen such a thing on /. before."
You must be new here. Wait, you're an AC. Nevermind.
"I've been to AZ a number of times, having to drive from Tucson airport to Ft. Huachuca on business."
The I-10 and I-19 are not the loop 101. I don't hang in the left lane on the I-10 unless I'm keeping up. And there is less speed differential there than on the 101. Come to Phoenix some time and get a taste of rush-hour traffic. Almost as bad as the 128, and I can drive the 128 with the best of them.
"Unlike you, most people are not assholes that feel they need to regulate the speed of other motorists."
You, like many, just don't get it. I don't much care how fast other people drive, really. I just want to be in the lane where the speed is consistent, and I don't get bothered by people looking to be one car-length ahead of whoever is in front of them. The left lane works for that. Remember, no matter what lane I'm in, someone wants to be ahead of me. It doesn't matter. No, it really doesn't.
"Remaining in the left lane on a highway actually makes the highway more dangerous by forcing people to pass you in the slower moving right lane. That is why your behavior is illegal."
From AZDOT's web pages: "Police agencies necessarily rely on reasonable and well recognized speed laws to control the unreasonable violator whose behavior is clearly out of line with the normal flow of traffic."
The question is, then is my driving the speed limit in the right-hand lane 'unreasonable'? Arizona has this to say about 'unreasonable' speed.
In Arizona, it is not illegal to stay in the left-hand lane on highways marked with three lanes or more. See item #3. The Pima 101 is three or more lanes all the length I drive it each day. Yet, there is this language: "a vehicle proceeding at less than the normal speed of traffic at the time and place and under the conditions then existing". Again, is driving the limit to be considered 'less than the normal speed'? Interesting.
Then the minimum speed limits law is no less vague about 'reasonable'.
Airzona 'racing' law states "2. "Racing" means the use of one or more vehicles in an attempt to outgain or outdistance another vehicle or prevent another vehicle from passing." I'm not sure about this, but by that definition MOST other drivers are guilty of this at some point every damned day. No, I'm not *trying* to prevent another vehicle from passing me. If I don't change lanes, they have other lanes to use, unless the lanes are full, in which case there is just no safe way to pass at that time. This happens when there is someone driving in the left-hand lane doing 75 in a 65 also. It is not so simple as you think.
The question is, is the speed limit the 'normal speed of traffic'? In my experience, I am in fact traveling faster than 85% of the traffic on the road. I doubt the speeders actually constitute 5% of the traffic. I'll be counting the next few days to see how many vehicles I pass vs how many pass me. I might have to try the center lane to see if it makes a diffence. Mind you, the center lane exposes me to passers on *both* sides. If I die in an accident, you are to blame, right?
And in Arizona it is in fact not illegal to pass on the right with a few exceptions.
Yeah, but the ride would be smooth. And pedestrians nonexistent. Just the occasional micrometeorite, and hell, a Caddy should be able to take a few hits before it springs a bad leak.
"Move to the left when someone enters. Not that hard."
In congested traffic, it sometimes is. Remember, we got to this point because it's not always easy to change lanes when you want to pass someome going slower than you. Same problem with merging traffic in the right lane.
"Confirmation bias, you're only going to notice those who are passing you. You never see all the people going the same speed as you, because you never pass them."
I wrote "'everyone' seemed to want to go 72". I know not everyone IS going 72. I'm not the dullest radish in the basket, despite your protests to the opposite.
"Then why do you do it? Stay in the right lane and people will zip past without swerving making it safer for everyone."
Until they come across the landsacapers. Or someone who drives like I do. We are not alone. I am not the only obstacle.
"Since you can't control the speed at which others drive, that's irrelevant. What you can do is make them drive 80 *past* traffic that's driving 65, instead of *through*."
No, I can't. I am only one.
"I agree. Aggressive speeders are jackasses. But so are you. Be honest, it's not about safety. It's about you getting your way."
Well, when you put it that way, it makes less sense than before.
My experience so far has been that I have fewer close calls in the left lane than I do in the right-hand lanes. YMMV. The HOV lane is also a regular option for the determined speeders, since they don't seem to mind breaking two laws at once, rather than just one.
I do get it - I'm as convinced I'm right as you are convinced I'm wrong.
"They have no choice to do more dangerous maneuvers if they want to be able to get past you and others like you"
That is PRECISELY my point, thank you for distilling it into a specific and purposeful rant.
So I'm at fault for obeying the law, and those who choose to drive more dangerously are to be excused and accomodated?
While it is practical to get out of the way of a reckless driver, it sure isn't 'right'. My initial post laid out my desire for a peaceful commute. I am no longer offended by other drivers who obey the law.
Your attitude speaks volumes about our society, and the general attitude of 'whatever I can get away with'. This permeates the Internet community (where it has good and bad applications), the political arena, our financial markets, and virtually every part of American society.
Let's get this clear, ok? the complaints I'm hearing are essentially that I am not accomodating the lawbreakers, and they are therefore left with the option of either endangering other drivers or submitting to the law.
My post also pointed out the genuine and beneficial impact of speed cameras on the highway here - slowing down the worst offenders, and reducing the number and severity of accidents and deaths. This is undesireable how? Your attitude seems, by logical extension, to also require that the cameras be turned off, to prevent speeders from being encoutraged to abruptly change speed, endangering themselves and others. Come on, their act of speeding is the problem, not the cameras or the 'rest of us' who are not driven (pun intended) to drive just as damned fast as we can get away with.
It this were the Autobahn, where the speed limit in the left lane is your ability, road and weather conditions, traffic, vehicle capabilities, and vehicle condition, I would Not be in the left lane. But it is not the Autobahn. You want me to pull over to get out of the way of a driver that is, in reality, driving too fast for the conditions. I am not alone in the left lane, doing the limit.
Just as an exercise, if I should move over for a driver going 70, should I also do so for a driver going 75? 85? 135? Just so you know, when the 101 Pima cameras were being tested, they clocked violators in excess of 120MPH Some of those violators, despite the stated plan to test and not summons, did get tickets. The kid driving from his rear seat was pretty funny. The woman who got flashed 30+ times in 3 weeks got special attention. Honorable mention to the guy with the gorilla suit. People are stupid.
I should probably be more concerned that someone is going to shoot me one day for being in the left lane. But so far as I can tell, you don't need to do anything wrong to get shot out here. It is not about you.
And for the speeders, it is not about me. It's about them. No matter how fast I go, someone wants to go faster. I guess I can live with having that confrontation at 65 instead of 80, since the confrontation is inevitable, and is not going to be initiated by me anyways.
Your logic is dangerous, more so than mine. And I guarantee you do not get it.
70 in states surrounding Ohio? Which ones? Some stretches of I-10 in Arizona are marked 75, and the I-17 I think has some stretches also, but most of what I saw driving cross-country in 2005 was 65. Certainly on the east coast, but you know how they are...
The slow lane on that road is where people enter and exit. More dangerous than the right lane.
For the record, I've learned that 'your preferred speed' is often just a little faster than the prevailing average... Not yours personally, but time and again, when I travelled in the left lane at 70, 'everyone' seemed to want to go 72.
I know full well the impact of hanging in the left lane at the speed limit, and having people swerve by. Trust me, I am not alone in hanging in the left lane at the limit, and the speeders will do it no matter what lane you are in. I've talked with the police officers I know quite a bit (when we aren't talking about ileegal immigrants, gangbangers, or drunks killing motorcycle officers) and they are of two minds about this - one, get out of the way and try to avoid the accidents, or two, the speeders will be swerving anyways, there is nothing you can do but drive alertly and keep your brakes and steering gear in good order. Speeders even swerve past marked patrol cars.
I'm not forcing anyone to drive a certain speed. I'm part of the pack.
And driving 80 through traffic doing 65 is not as safe as driving 65 with the traffic doing 65. 'Perfectly safely' is not the term I would use. 'competent driving' might fit. I've driven the Autobahn in the 70s, and those rules would do us a lot of good. But those aren't the rules.
I have no sympathy for speeders. And I am under no illusion that my bvehavior will change a thing. Your perspective is different, and I submit, respectfully, that it is because you have a different intention. I understand, but driving too fast for conditions is not a good thing. If the conditions are just traffic congestion, forcing yourself through heavy traffic isn't safe at any speed.
Oh, and I learned that on my commute, going 75 when I could got me there 5 minutes faster in most cases. Not worth it to me any more. I see speeders cut me off just to get off at the next exit a half-mile up the road. They got a 15 second advantage? Not even that. Be honest, it's not about time. It's about getting your way.
"Speed limits are necessary, but that doesn't mean certain locales don't artificially lower them to raise revenue."
Driver behavior being what it is, cameras, speed traps, and enhanced enforcement do that just fine. You don't need to lower limits, just enforce them, and the money rolls in.
"Most traffic engineering studies I've read suggest that speed limits should be set for the 85th percentile, but they rarely are."
When I was interested more than I am now in traffic engineering, limits were generally set by design of the roadway and expected traffic. As traffic increased, limits decreased. Then came the Oil Crisis, and now we set limits to try to save fuel. How's this working out?
"My hometown has a stretch of highway that's posted 55mph. Pretty much everybody drives 65mph on it though. If you go 55mph at rush hour you'll get tailgated and have people swerving on either side of you trying to get past. It's actually dangerous to obey the speed limit in this instance and the roadway was designed for 75mph (as all interstates were), so why is it posted 55mph?"
Wrong question. Why are people driving dangerously? ps- 'All' Interstates weren't designed for 75mph, and congested ones no longer function that way. 65MPH on urban sections of I-95 is a cruel joke. Like the stretch in Hartford, or of course the eight-lane death strip.
Oh yeah.
I drive the same 33 mile commute every day from Mesa to North Phoenix. Up to one highway, over to another, straight shot to my exit. Big woop.
I hang in the left lane doing the speed limit for several reasons; First, I'm tired of paying tickets. Second, I just want a smooth, cruise-control, stress-less commute. Third, I am not alone in this. Sadly, many people want to go just a little faster, and some want to go a LOT faster, and every once in a while someone gets terribly agitated that I'm 'only going the speed limit' in the left lane. Well, in Arizona, the law may or may not specify that you use the left-most lanes for passing or faster traffic, but NOBODY bothers to follow that. Speeders use any lane. Slower traffic, like the landscapers towing a trailer full of oleander or bouganvilla and going 59 in a 66 every day except Sunday, gladly hang in the left lane. Speeders use the HOV lane as a passing lane, all alone in their M3 or F-350. (There is no pleasure on on Earth quite like watching them pass an officer all alone in the HOV lane. This sends a tingle up my spine.) so if you think I'm oblivious to your pleas for me to GTFOOTW, you are wrong. I'm well aware of your presence on my bumper, gesturing, and generally being a dick. You are not late for anything because of me. You were late before you got in your car.
ps - In a perfect world, you would not be travelling faster than the lane to your right. You would be travelling at the same speed, save for the right-most lane where traffic enters and exits. If you're moving slower than the lane to your right, they are speeding. The concept of stepping aside and allowing illegal or dangerous behavior may be prudent in the immediate, but it is also the crux of the illegal immigration problem. This attitude is permeating our nation, and is not good. But it may be inevitable...
As an observation, I see three results of my driving behavior. One, whoever was trying to pass me generally pounds into slower traffic in a mile or so, and I'm on their bumper now. Congrats, you are now ahead of me... Two, they get off in a half mile or so. Niiice. You needed that 3 second advantage. Three, they blaze on in triumphant glory. Good for you. Oh, and the drivers that hang behind me for 12 miles... I do move over after 'the curve' to get ready to exit. Many a driver who had open road to pass me for most of the 12 miles will then acclerate and speed on. These people just want to be up against whoever is in front of them. Traffic engineers understand this. I don't.
When I first moved out here in 2005, the 101 Pima from the 202 to the 51 was a racetrack. People would drive 100+ any time of day or night. Accidents were common, and pretty spectacular. Then came the cameras in the Scottsadale section. Traffic over 100mph dried up. Today, 80+ is not too uncommon, but the accidents have lessened greatly. It could be that those speeders went elsewhere, but I doubt it. Cameras there improved safety and driving. The vans are another story. Everyone except me seems to need to slow down, as if the radar will flash you if you are going even 1 mph slower than the limit. This itself is dangerous, but tolerable. They've got one on the stretch of the 202 where construction is, where we regularly do 65 in a 55 construction zone. Jersey barriers on both sides. Feh. I speed there, it's just practical and there is NO work being done this week as the concrete cures. Well, three guys today on the other side. Even when men are working, they are safer there than the irrigation crews that have no signage and no cameras.
I hate the van cameras, but they work, and there is no excuse for speeding. Arizona is letting them go because they are not bringing in the revenue, and they can't change the program to properly serve sumnmons because the law is wrong and it is not profitable to do proper service. Sad. But the red light cameras and static speed cams stay. Good.
pps- My wife hates the cameras. They love her. She calls them 'paperaspeeides'. Ah, celebrity has its reward. Hers is traffic school.
"in fact it is exactly to enforce an arbitrary limit because it massages a sense of moral superiority"
Citation, please. Otherwise, STFU. As much as I distrust government, it does sometimes perform necessary and useful functions, and sometimes even accomplishes those. Speed limits are largely necessary, and usually appropriate. Your opinion on this is off in some corner, sulking over your last ticket. Grow up.
Just include some of the data in a game DRM key, and it will be cracked in a few hours. Problem solved.
Or announce a contest. Most anything as a prize, maybe a spacesuit glove or spare antenna? We crack encryption readily in many cases, so I suspect someone can figure out what rolled over or got zapped by a cosmic ray, and this is fixed for another 33 years or so.
-ps: is Voyager 2 running better than a 1977 Cadillac? Probably. Probably better than a 1977 Mercedes.
"What gives the ISP the right to throttle my bandwidth or charge the third party money for me to access their service."
I dunno. Read your contract, or TOS. If it's in there, your argument goes from 'they have no right' to 'that's unenforcable/illegal/etc.'
Good luck. The major ISPs have reasonably competent lawyers. Mostly, they give you a vague 'network management' excuse. This is what the FCC needs to make them come out and say - they don't want you to be able tu actually *use* the bandwidth to the full extent possible, because their network can't take it. In other words, they actually don't have the bandwidth to sell to you, if many of their customers start using it.
That will only result in the ISPs reducing their committment to you. Instead of 5GB/month, they'll drop it to 3GB. Instead of 24MB/s, they'll drop it to 10MB/s. Bandwidth is not free, and many systems are architecturally challenged. to give you what they promised, if even twice as many people used all if it, they would have to increase their capital investment tenfold. This is not good for profits.
Besides, the cable companies are not inclined to provide you the full bandwidth needed to watch Hulu, Netflix, and listen to Pandora. And the telcos are similarly not inclined to give you the low latency to use Skype. THAT is the essence of the 'Net Neutrality' debate.
It's one thing to sell you limited bandwidth. It's another thing to limit you because you're using resources that they want to provide to you instead of you going to external sources. Eventually we need to decide if an ISP can advertise they give you 'Internet service' while selectively throttling or blocking some of the Internet services as they wish. Imagine the competition if the FCC requires that they disclose their 'network management' policies in advance - so you could read the fine print and see that one reserves the right to throttle H.264 from external hosts and block torrents at will, while another may not provide low enough latency to properly provide VOIP. And to go all the way, to make them disclose that they reserve the right to give preferential treatment to their own traffic and services, so that they may offer low-latency service to *their* VOIP service, but will not guarantee it for yours. Or may throttle bandwidth in any manner of different ways if they need to ensure delivery of their own video services...
In our current climate, this would mean one of two things, I think. One, your local government would be under pressure to make ISPs with municipal monopolies provide better service, which I doubt will happen. Or, two, the FCC could require that they offer all-or-nothing service, or become more regulated in exchange for the accomodation. Somehow, I suspect the FCC wants to give the ISPs time to build up to this, and avoid hammering them. This will not work. We may need to pressure our legislators to do the right thing, whatever that is.
Trust no one. Any school official that had access can be assumed to have used that access. Ditto for staff. We know a principal did.
Sadly, I hope at least a few had a shred of integrity left and didn't participate in what must have devolved into a sad excursion into student privacy. Those few had no real choices - quit, get transferrred somewhere where access would be denied, or be quiet and know they will also get the boot when the time comes.
Maybe, just maybe, there is enough of an audit trail to exonerate any innocents. But I doubt it, and the rest of the qulity will happily pull the innocent under the bus with them. Nice.
I'm glad I don't work with schools any more.
"Um, no. He wasn't talking about that specific story, just the idea of a "news" organization so ignorantly backwards as Fox News reporting on science, is like McDonald's putting out a healthy recipes cookbook. In a word, ironic."
Yeah. And I was just pointing out that virtually identical reporting is done by several allegedly reputable and competent news organizations also. So the distinction was that when Fox did it, it was an ignorantly backwards news organization, but when, for example, CNN did it, it was at worst an honest mistake? I fail to see your point, but I believe you're making mine seem more plausible. And mine was that judging a news organization on their resistance to inaccurate or fraudulent stories is not likely to offer you a useful measure of their competence. But if you want to cling to the idea that Fox News is biased, go ahead. Frankly it IS BIASED! Just as the rest of the mainstream media is. What the bias is, that is the important question. Go ahead. Take another swing. You're bound to hit something.
"The funniest thing about defense of Fox News (or Bush or whatever) is almost always to point out a way in which, superficially, some non-conservative agency has done the same thing. "Bush lied about war? Clinton lied about sex!" or in this case, "Fox used the term 'pixie dust'? So did CNN!"
And there is the rub. You write 'non-conservative agency'. Just be honest, and leave it at that. Being 'non-conservative' is probably otherwise defined as 'liberal' in the popularly defined U.S. political spectrum, which runs from 'Left' to 'Right' It should be expressed as a circle, a continuum, where the extremes of both 'Left' and 'Right' are functionally indistiguishable. As you get further away from extremes, I believe, then you see genuine functional differences. As illustration, fascism and socialism are in many ways functionally identical, but come from different motivations and have different purposes. But both intend to insinuate government into as many areas of life as possible. Socialism seeks to make the State the primary agency of control and management, and seeks to exercise control to the betterment of its people (when it works as theoretical Socialism would teach). Fascism intends to make the State arbiter of purpose and intention, by coercion, usually to achieve a specific result. Denmark or Sweden may be the best current examples of socialism, while Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy might qualify as the best recent examples of fascist states, while Iran certainly is functionally not one bit different from either of those - it just chose an entirely non-secular purpose. It doesn't really matter the purpose, either system still functions, much as it doesn't matter if you run a red light because you were distracted singing 'Hail to the Chief' or trying to beat the red Mustang in the next lane.
It's unfortunate that we fail so often to entirely understand our own opinions. My experience has been that when I have to speak something out loud, it oftens sounds harsher than I intended. Not always, but often. Then I have to go back and reconsider why I want to say it. Even here.
ps - I was just having fun poking at a post that used the term 'pixie dust' and making 'magical iPads'. IBM used 'pixie dust' to increase storage density on hard drives, and it was just a cute term. Then someone called a medical collagen somthing-or-other 'pixie dust', and the thought of vats of iPads growing inthe basements of Apple buildings under lights made me chuckle. You had to go spoil it all and get all partisan when that was as far from the point as could be. You seem to have a real hardon for Fox News. Get used to it. All my adult life (and before) I've been assaulted with multiple outlets of left-leaning, conservative-bashing, slanted news. ONE OUTLET decides to tilt in the other direction. when the Titanic was going down, people standing upright were actually having to lean against the tilting deck. Fox could be scrupulously neutral and STILL LOOK RIGHT-LEANING COMPARED TO THE REST OF THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA. What a frikin shame. Are you thereatened? Don't be. It's not Fox you should fear. And it is not their audience either.