Well, if you already have a bunch of automated radar along a stretch of highway... Why not just use them to set the speed limit to the observed average speed (up/down to some limit, anyway). It would tend to creep upward toward the limit when traffic was flowing freely, and down as it got more crowded.
And then change the law to be more reasonable, such as 85 on the interstate (which is actually designed to handle 120 per the original Congressional act). Setting speeds artificially low at 65 or 55, when everyone is driving 80, and the road engineers recommend 80, makes no sense.
The problem with raising the speed limit higher than 70 or so is that a lot of cars can't handle that speed. Maybe when they were new, but I see a lot of mobile trash heaps (or just obviously unmaintained cars) that I wouldn't want to be anywhere in the vicinity of travelling that fast. Things are probably a bit better now with new cars required to have tire pressure monitors, but even then, I know a lot of people that totally ignore the warning light. So, doing the responsible thing (slowing down) would just bring us right back to where the people with well-maintained cars are doing the 85mph limit, while others are doing 65-70.
You'd need reserved lanes with a higher limit that require more frequent inspections that certify a car safe at those speeds.
.. he said no fiber optic lines since the installers/mechanics tend to zip tie or otherwise fasten the stuff too tight and snap the cables.
Wait... so basically he's saying that they can't use fiber because the techs building and repairing the aircraft are incompetent? That certainly makes me feel better... How is "x fastener should only be y tight" any different from "the bolt holding this important piece of engine together should be torqued to y ft-lb?"
IMO, "deterrence" is mostly moot these days. Is there anyone that really thinks any of the political leaders of the nuclear powers have enough spine to retaliate in kind?
If Iran managed to build some nukes and pop a couple inside of the US, who here actually thinks that the current administration would have the cojones to turn Tehran into a glass crater?
Now, I don't really think killing all those civilians to retaliate against the actions of a government is a good idea (better to send in a few special ops teams to capture or "remove" the political and military leadership or something), but it seems silly to keep saying that's what we'll do, even though there's practically no chance of it happening.
I wouldn't expect her to understand the tech, necessarily, but someone who grew up with computers should for darn sure understand that you have more than one copy of anything you want to have around indefinitely.
In this case, it's on the story submitter for apparently never teaching his daughter about backups.
Amtrak runs on commercial rails. They've always been a second class citizen. But I agree you can't run passenger rail on freight tracks and expect either high speed or prompt routing.
But you needn't worry about it, because this is never going to happen. Someone should point out to Mr. Obama that he already spent all the money. We couldn't possibly afford this now.
And the best part is that if it DOES work, it will take passengers from the airlines, and we'll have to spend MORE money propping them up again.
IMO, the best bet for passenger rail (that will actually be used) in the US is as a sort of "HOV lane on rails." Find heavily trafficked stretches of interstate (like the Dallas-Waco-Austin stretch of I-35), and build rails on the right-of-way in between the lanes. The trains would be short electric ones (powered cars, like commuter trains) that would essentially just fit about 10-20 cars front to back. You drive in one end, and out the other.
Every 50 miles or so the trains stop, and you either drive straight through to an empty train to continue, or exit back to the interstate. This way, the trains just have to go back and forth along their section, and all of the "routing" is done by the drivers of the cars. Plus, people would actually use it because they can use their own cars for the "last mile" on both ends. In fact, it would probably be mobbed the second it opened. (heck... for an extra fee, charge your electric car while you're at it!)
Even better, you can build it and bring it on-line in small sections, so it becomes useful much faster.
Fund it like they do with toll roads, where a private company will put up the initial funds and run it. No $50B wastage required.
Collision insurance would be a bitch, too. Since it's all carbon fiber... A: where the hell would you take it to get it fixed, assuming, B: it can be fixed. I suspect it would cost so much that the insurance company would consider it totalled after even a relatively minor crash, meaning that you'll probably make up the gas savings in insurance.
Indeed. Consider this. The economic losses to banks alone from the Financial crisis are estimated at 4 trillion. Total property crime in 2009 adds up to 15 billion
It would take over 200,000 people working 24/7 from birth till their 90th birthday at $25/hr to replace that $4T figure.
They've essentially stolen the lives (assuming time==money) of hundreds of thousands of people. Can we just try them for mass murder and execute the people responsible?:P
You might not need an identifier at all. Since traffic is working in two dimensions, a receiver at each corner should be able to figure out where other cars are transmitting from. I don't care that "Car A" is braking hard, I care that "a car" is braking hard somewhere in front of the guy in front of me that I can't see yet.
This means you don't need GPS or anything - each car just triangulates the positions of the other transmitters.
The problem I see is that if/when this system becomes widespread, but not 100% coverage (never going to show up on your classic Mustang, etc.), people depending on it too much are likely to cause just as many accidents as they initially prevented.
Ha... I'd LOVE for some drone operator to take pictures of me having sex in a private area of my own property. I might have to endure some minor razzing, but after the lawsuit, I'd never have to work again!
Actually Texas has some of the worst gun ownership laws. Many are unconstitutional according to both the US Constitution and the state's constitution. Only recently have they been expanded to allow allow for proper legal protection for gun owners.
Regardless of what you may think, Texas is absolutely NOT, "one of the [states with the] freest gun ownership laws in the Union". There are many, many states which are in front of Texas in this regard.
Yeah, odd that the GP picked two of only six states that don't allow open carry... Arizona & Virginia would probably be better examples.
That said, now that we have additional civil protections in place, Texas is probably one of the better places to be should you actually have to USE your weapon to stop a threat. The grand juries here seem to be very hesitant to indict even if there's only a thin shred of justification. Then if you're not criminally charged, you can't be sued civilly, either (theoretically).
Given the summer heat, I REALLY wish we could open carry here (we're working on it), although how that would go down in my soccer mom-infested suburb has yet to be seen.
I don't think anything would interfere with engine or other instrumentation, as most of that is hard-wired. The problems lie in potential interference with nav radios (primarily VOR and ILS).
As much as I hate to bring Mythbusters into any serious discussion, they brought several electronic devices, aircraft instruments, and a ramp test box (which simulates the aforementioned navigation aids) into a faraday cage to see what they could see.
As I remember, nothing had any effect, except for an attempted cell phone call on a specific frequency that significantly deflected either the VOR or ILS (don't remember which now). Since ILS is what the pilots use to find the runway when they can't see, that would concern me.
Given that the cabin crew can't tell what a given device might be doing, "all off during takeoff/landing, and no cell phones in the air" seems like a totally reasonable policy.
This might have been the case back when you had to have a wire for the phone, another wire for the second line, another wire for cable from company A, another wire for cable from company B, another wire for data, etc.
Now, you can have ONE fiber line to the house, and multiplex everything on that one line.
These days it would make more sense for developers to put that in when the development is built, and have the lines owned and maintained by a neighborhood association-like entity. The municipality would then own the lines from the neighborhoods to a central location(s) where service providers could connect. In other words from the CO to the house should be treated like a generic utility pipe, and any service provider can connect to the other end. That would be LESS digging, not more.
And that's part of the point. Why would you want your radiology machines on any sort of main network, regardless of whether they can or can't be updated? There's no reason for them to be widely available and the technology to firewall it off is not expensive when compared to the cost of, say, a collection of medical imaging systems that will sit behind it.
Well, since you ask...
I manage firewalls for several hospital chains. One of the main reasons that their radiology stuff is connected to their main network is that those images are all stored digitally, and need to be available all over the place (Dr.s' offices, etc., that may or may not be at the physical location of the hospital. Also, most hospitals these days don't have a radiologist sitting around in the ER all night/weekend, any more. They contract with a remote one, so they also have to be able to send those images elsewhere (over a VPN to the imaging service, for example). Often those systems are at least firewalled in a DMZ, but I have yet to see them on a completely separate network (although some clients are making noises in that direction).
Or, as with just about any government regulation, the policy would be enacted and give hospitals X number of months or years to comply with the standards set forth in that policy, or face a loss of Medicare/Medicaid funding.
Here's what will not happen: 12:01 a.m., January 1, 2012: Regulation goes into effect. 12:02 am, January 1, 2012: All non-compliant hospitals cease to receive funding from Medicare and Medicaid, and the feds move in to shut down these illegal dens of medical "care" for their noncompliance.
They'll probably have several years to bring themselves into compliance, with a requirement that they document their risk mitigation policies until they are compliant, and if at the end of that time they can't show compliance, then they will risk losing their Medic[are|aid] funding.
Exactly. What will really happen is this: 12:01 a.m., January 1, 2012: Regulation goes into effect, with deadline of 2015-01-01. 2012-01-01, IT: "We need to get started on this" 2012-01-01, Exec: "We don't have the money yet" 2013-01-01, IT: "We need to get started on this" 2013-01-01, Exec: "We don't have the money yet" 2014-01-01, IT: "We need to get started on this!" 2014-01-01, Exec: "We don't have the money yet" 2014-11-01, Exec: "We need this in two months or we're fscked!! We'll need you to work 168 hour weeks!"
The root cause of the problem is that, most port authorities and countries prohibit a merchant marine ship from having arms on board. So cargo ship with machine guns would not be permitted to dock on most harbors and ports in the world. That is the reason for these ships from being armed. These guys are coming up with stupid weapons like water cannons, beamed sound waves, and now lasers, because they would not be called "arms" by the ports.
Exactly... I've always been baffled why a locker with 10 or so AKs or ARs is such a terrible threat to a nation...
...or use an acronym that most folks here will misunderstand, like using BT when referring to Britich Telecom when most of us think of BitTorrent when we see BT.
Yeah, I hate it when those cases of AC come up, and the poster doesn't bother to explain their version of it.
Outsourcing IT functions to a firm that is contracted to actually perform the maintenance that was being deferred on the in-house systems (whether hardware, infrastructure software, application software, etc.) obviously can address problems related to deferred maintenance, not because of the outsourcing itself, or because the vendor to whom the operations are outsourced happens to use "cloud" technology to power its offerings, but because the maintenance is actually happening.
This still doesn't really work. I work for an IT services company that does just this. Companies that don't want to run their own email servers, firewalls, or whatever will turn them over to us to run. However, it's very rare that they will pay as part of the contract for us to actually keep hardware and software up-to-date. That's usually something that we have to go back to them and say, "we need to get this upgraded," to which they answer, "It's too expensive!"
Fortunately most of the contracts have something in them about at least keeping up to a version currently supported by the vendor, but that still usually means they can get far enough out of date to have to do lots of gymnastics when it finally does get upgraded.
i seem to remember the US keeps track of swift "for terrorism" reasons who is to say i won't get flagged if i use swift to help wikileaks?...
if the goal is oppression by fear, then it's working.
This was my thought, too. They'll just classify it as a "terrorist organization," so it doesn't matter how you send money to them, you'll still be arrestable.
Contrast that with the number of IPv6/64 prefixes (a bit more than 18 quintillion) which would provide enough M&Ms to fill all of the great lakes.
Actually, with IPv6, you're only three orders of magnitude short of being able to give each water molecule in the great lakes it's own IPv6 address. (10^38 vs 10^41). IPv4 is 32 orders of magnitude short. The amount of water addressable by IPv4 would be invisibly small.
I am failing to see how you can use the Corvette in your argument. For it's price there isn't another vehicle that can compare.
This in no way is meant to contest your overall point, which I happen to agree with.
Lotus Elise (if you can fit inside) & Porche Boxster are both about the same price new (50s) as a base model 'vette. They don't have the raw horsepower (Elise gets close in the hp/lb category, though), but they have no problem keeping up, unless you're going straight the whole time.
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Well, if you already have a bunch of automated radar along a stretch of highway... Why not just use them to set the speed limit to the observed average speed (up/down to some limit, anyway). It would tend to creep upward toward the limit when traffic was flowing freely, and down as it got more crowded.
And then change the law to be more reasonable, such as 85 on the interstate (which is actually designed to handle 120 per the original Congressional act). Setting speeds artificially low at 65 or 55, when everyone is driving 80, and the road engineers recommend 80, makes no sense.
The problem with raising the speed limit higher than 70 or so is that a lot of cars can't handle that speed. Maybe when they were new, but I see a lot of mobile trash heaps (or just obviously unmaintained cars) that I wouldn't want to be anywhere in the vicinity of travelling that fast. Things are probably a bit better now with new cars required to have tire pressure monitors, but even then, I know a lot of people that totally ignore the warning light. So, doing the responsible thing (slowing down) would just bring us right back to where the people with well-maintained cars are doing the 85mph limit, while others are doing 65-70.
You'd need reserved lanes with a higher limit that require more frequent inspections that certify a car safe at those speeds.
.. he said no fiber optic lines since the installers/mechanics tend to zip tie or otherwise fasten the stuff too tight and snap the cables.
Wait... so basically he's saying that they can't use fiber because the techs building and repairing the aircraft are incompetent? That certainly makes me feel better... How is "x fastener should only be y tight" any different from "the bolt holding this important piece of engine together should be torqued to y ft-lb?"
IMO, "deterrence" is mostly moot these days. Is there anyone that really thinks any of the political leaders of the nuclear powers have enough spine to retaliate in kind?
If Iran managed to build some nukes and pop a couple inside of the US, who here actually thinks that the current administration would have the cojones to turn Tehran into a glass crater?
Now, I don't really think killing all those civilians to retaliate against the actions of a government is a good idea (better to send in a few special ops teams to capture or "remove" the political and military leadership or something), but it seems silly to keep saying that's what we'll do, even though there's practically no chance of it happening.
Yep... I can hear the lawyers slavering already
I wouldn't expect her to understand the tech, necessarily, but someone who grew up with computers should for darn sure understand that you have more than one copy of anything you want to have around indefinitely.
In this case, it's on the story submitter for apparently never teaching his daughter about backups.
Amtrak runs on commercial rails. They've always been a second class citizen.
But I agree you can't run passenger rail on freight tracks and expect either high speed or prompt routing.
But you needn't worry about it, because this is never going to happen.
Someone should point out to Mr. Obama that he already spent all the money. We couldn't possibly afford this now.
And the best part is that if it DOES work, it will take passengers from the airlines, and we'll have to spend MORE money propping them up again.
IMO, the best bet for passenger rail (that will actually be used) in the US is as a sort of "HOV lane on rails." Find heavily trafficked stretches of interstate (like the Dallas-Waco-Austin stretch of I-35), and build rails on the right-of-way in between the lanes. The trains would be short electric ones (powered cars, like commuter trains) that would essentially just fit about 10-20 cars front to back. You drive in one end, and out the other.
Every 50 miles or so the trains stop, and you either drive straight through to an empty train to continue, or exit back to the interstate. This way, the trains just have to go back and forth along their section, and all of the "routing" is done by the drivers of the cars. Plus, people would actually use it because they can use their own cars for the "last mile" on both ends. In fact, it would probably be mobbed the second it opened. (heck... for an extra fee, charge your electric car while you're at it!)
Even better, you can build it and bring it on-line in small sections, so it becomes useful much faster.
Fund it like they do with toll roads, where a private company will put up the initial funds and run it. No $50B wastage required.
Thankfully many of the bomb makers for such groups don't think through the failure modes very thoroughly.
Those Terrorism Safety courses are kinda boring. Too much theory and not enough hands-on (or should I say, "hands-off").
Suicide bomber isntructor: "Now pay attention! I'm only going to show you this once."
Collision insurance would be a bitch, too. Since it's all carbon fiber... A: where the hell would you take it to get it fixed, assuming, B: it can be fixed. I suspect it would cost so much that the insurance company would consider it totalled after even a relatively minor crash, meaning that you'll probably make up the gas savings in insurance.
Indeed. Consider this. The economic losses to banks alone from the Financial crisis are estimated at 4 trillion. Total property crime in 2009 adds up to 15 billion
It would take over 200,000 people working 24/7 from birth till their 90th birthday at $25/hr to replace that $4T figure.
They've essentially stolen the lives (assuming time==money) of hundreds of thousands of people. Can we just try them for mass murder and execute the people responsible? :P
You might not need an identifier at all. Since traffic is working in two dimensions, a receiver at each corner should be able to figure out where other cars are transmitting from. I don't care that "Car A" is braking hard, I care that "a car" is braking hard somewhere in front of the guy in front of me that I can't see yet.
This means you don't need GPS or anything - each car just triangulates the positions of the other transmitters.
The problem I see is that if/when this system becomes widespread, but not 100% coverage (never going to show up on your classic Mustang, etc.), people depending on it too much are likely to cause just as many accidents as they initially prevented.
Ha... I'd LOVE for some drone operator to take pictures of me having sex in a private area of my own property. I might have to endure some minor razzing, but after the lawsuit, I'd never have to work again!
Actually Texas has some of the worst gun ownership laws. Many are unconstitutional according to both the US Constitution and the state's constitution. Only recently have they been expanded to allow allow for proper legal protection for gun owners.
Regardless of what you may think, Texas is absolutely NOT, "one of the [states with the] freest gun ownership laws in the Union". There are many, many states which are in front of Texas in this regard.
Yeah, odd that the GP picked two of only six states that don't allow open carry... Arizona & Virginia would probably be better examples.
That said, now that we have additional civil protections in place, Texas is probably one of the better places to be should you actually have to USE your weapon to stop a threat. The grand juries here seem to be very hesitant to indict even if there's only a thin shred of justification. Then if you're not criminally charged, you can't be sued civilly, either (theoretically).
Given the summer heat, I REALLY wish we could open carry here (we're working on it), although how that would go down in my soccer mom-infested suburb has yet to be seen.
... a great job and a big gaming studio.
Isn't this an oxymoron, or something?
Your car is touching the ground. Shielding is easy when you have a solid ground. How, exactly, do you get an effective ground when you're in the air?
That's actually what causes the plane to crash when you use your cell phone. It's just trying to ground itself.
I don't think anything would interfere with engine or other instrumentation, as most of that is hard-wired. The problems lie in potential interference with nav radios (primarily VOR and ILS).
As much as I hate to bring Mythbusters into any serious discussion, they brought several electronic devices, aircraft instruments, and a ramp test box (which simulates the aforementioned navigation aids) into a faraday cage to see what they could see.
As I remember, nothing had any effect, except for an attempted cell phone call on a specific frequency that significantly deflected either the VOR or ILS (don't remember which now). Since ILS is what the pilots use to find the runway when they can't see, that would concern me.
Given that the cabin crew can't tell what a given device might be doing, "all off during takeoff/landing, and no cell phones in the air" seems like a totally reasonable policy.
This might have been the case back when you had to have a wire for the phone, another wire for the second line, another wire for cable from company A, another wire for cable from company B, another wire for data, etc.
Now, you can have ONE fiber line to the house, and multiplex everything on that one line.
These days it would make more sense for developers to put that in when the development is built, and have the lines owned and maintained by a neighborhood association-like entity. The municipality would then own the lines from the neighborhoods to a central location(s) where service providers could connect. In other words from the CO to the house should be treated like a generic utility pipe, and any service provider can connect to the other end. That would be LESS digging, not more.
And that's part of the point. Why would you want your radiology machines on any sort of main network, regardless of whether they can or can't be updated? There's no reason for them to be widely available and the technology to firewall it off is not expensive when compared to the cost of, say, a collection of medical imaging systems that will sit behind it.
Well, since you ask...
I manage firewalls for several hospital chains. One of the main reasons that their radiology stuff is connected to their main network is that those images are all stored digitally, and need to be available all over the place (Dr.s' offices, etc., that may or may not be at the physical location of the hospital. Also, most hospitals these days don't have a radiologist sitting around in the ER all night/weekend, any more. They contract with a remote one, so they also have to be able to send those images elsewhere (over a VPN to the imaging service, for example). Often those systems are at least firewalled in a DMZ, but I have yet to see them on a completely separate network (although some clients are making noises in that direction).
Or, as with just about any government regulation, the policy would be enacted and give hospitals X number of months or years to comply with the standards set forth in that policy, or face a loss of Medicare/Medicaid funding.
Here's what will not happen:
12:01 a.m., January 1, 2012: Regulation goes into effect.
12:02 am, January 1, 2012: All non-compliant hospitals cease to receive funding from Medicare and Medicaid, and the feds move in to shut down these illegal dens of medical "care" for their noncompliance.
They'll probably have several years to bring themselves into compliance, with a requirement that they document their risk mitigation policies until they are compliant, and if at the end of that time they can't show compliance, then they will risk losing their Medic[are|aid] funding.
Exactly. What will really happen is this:
12:01 a.m., January 1, 2012: Regulation goes into effect, with deadline of 2015-01-01.
2012-01-01, IT: "We need to get started on this"
2012-01-01, Exec: "We don't have the money yet"
2013-01-01, IT: "We need to get started on this"
2013-01-01, Exec: "We don't have the money yet"
2014-01-01, IT: "We need to get started on this!"
2014-01-01, Exec: "We don't have the money yet"
2014-11-01, Exec: "We need this in two months or we're fscked!! We'll need you to work 168 hour weeks!"
The root cause of the problem is that, most port authorities and countries prohibit a merchant marine ship from having arms on board. So cargo ship with machine guns would not be permitted to dock on most harbors and ports in the world. That is the reason for these ships from being armed. These guys are coming up with stupid weapons like water cannons, beamed sound waves, and now lasers, because they would not be called "arms" by the ports.
Exactly... I've always been baffled why a locker with 10 or so AKs or ARs is such a terrible threat to a nation...
...or use an acronym that most folks here will misunderstand, like using BT when referring to Britich Telecom when most of us think of BitTorrent when we see BT.
Yeah, I hate it when those cases of AC come up, and the poster doesn't bother to explain their version of it.
Outsourcing IT functions to a firm that is contracted to actually perform the maintenance that was being deferred on the in-house systems (whether hardware, infrastructure software, application software, etc.) obviously can address problems related to deferred maintenance, not because of the outsourcing itself, or because the vendor to whom the operations are outsourced happens to use "cloud" technology to power its offerings, but because the maintenance is actually happening.
This still doesn't really work. I work for an IT services company that does just this. Companies that don't want to run their own email servers, firewalls, or whatever will turn them over to us to run. However, it's very rare that they will pay as part of the contract for us to actually keep hardware and software up-to-date. That's usually something that we have to go back to them and say, "we need to get this upgraded," to which they answer, "It's too expensive!"
Fortunately most of the contracts have something in them about at least keeping up to a version currently supported by the vendor, but that still usually means they can get far enough out of date to have to do lots of gymnastics when it finally does get upgraded.
i seem to remember the US keeps track of swift "for terrorism" reasons
who is to say i won't get flagged if i use swift to help wikileaks?...
if the goal is oppression by fear, then it's working.
This was my thought, too. They'll just classify it as a "terrorist organization," so it doesn't matter how you send money to them, you'll still be arrestable.
Contrast that with the number of IPv6 /64 prefixes (a bit more than 18 quintillion) which
would provide enough M&Ms to fill all of the great lakes.
Actually, with IPv6, you're only three orders of magnitude short of being able to give each water molecule in the great lakes it's own IPv6 address. (10^38 vs 10^41). IPv4 is 32 orders of magnitude short. The amount of water addressable by IPv4 would be invisibly small.
I am failing to see how you can use the Corvette in your argument. For it's price there isn't another vehicle that can compare.
This in no way is meant to contest your overall point, which I happen to agree with.
Lotus Elise (if you can fit inside) & Porche Boxster are both about the same price new (50s) as a base model 'vette. They don't have the raw horsepower (Elise gets close in the hp/lb category, though), but they have no problem keeping up, unless you're going straight the whole time.