I have every right to expect that my dealings are my business, particularly when dealing with an organization or individual who promises to keep our interaction private. Our government has been known to do BadThings. Your attitude assumes benevolence on Uncle Sam, when the evidence would seem to suggest that he can, at times, be a real jerk. Perhaps this administration can be trusted, (Can you keep a straight face while saying that?) but the last administration apparently lied, and the next administration may be evenworse.
I can't disagree with you more strongly. I don't see how this can be good for liberty.
I've always had a p38 on my keychain and never had a problem. One of the TSA folks looked at it once, but that's all the attention that it's ever gotten. I used to fly frequently to DFW from LAX, and have also gone through security in Fairbanks, Salt Lake, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, Portland, Anchorage and Burbank. (There may be one or two more that I've forgotten.)
But it's not all that small, either. It's the fifth largest city in the state, though areas like Wasilla have a significant population outside the city boundary. The middle school had enrollment of 295 for two grades in 2009, so there are probably about 150 students in each grade.
Both the town and the schools are a lot bigger than where I went to school, so it seems to me that that's more than large enough to get lost in.
. ..so it means effectively strip mining huge tracks of the ocean. ..
I don't think that they could recover their investment, if this is even technically possible. The extraction is done underground at the end of a drill string. The Nankai Trough is as much as 4000M deep, and the deposits that they're tapping are as much as 7000M below the sea floor. According the Wikipedia article on the Nankai Trough, there's a huge influx of sediment, which would make "strip mining" still more difficult.
The article really sucked, so I went looking for another, even though it was only slightly better.
The major improvement is in depressurizing the hydrate so that the gas will boil off. They don't have a robot at those depths, the work is done at the end of a drill string
I don't think it's age. I've not been able to remember where I set my mug since I started drinking coffee. I've been losing my glasses since before I drank coffee. They're just details that don't seem important when they happen.
I went through the Texan school system. We learned that Texas was the third largest state. ..
. ..this is bullshit. ..
Yes, it is. My story wasn't supposed to reflect all of Texas, you blithering moron. It's just a funny story. I've lived in Vermont, Texas, Washington, California, Alabama, et c. Idiots are everywhere, which you quite ably help demonstrate.
Some years ago, while I was working on the North Slope, in Alaska, I was having a conversation with a Texan fresh out of high school. He commented that the planes must fly slower up here, because the flight from Anchorage to Deadhorse was so long. When I tried to correct him, he had difficulty wrapping his head around the idea that Texas wasn't the biggest state, because, he said, "It's what I learned in school."
I know it's offtopic, but I still chuckle over that 20 years after the fact.
I'm looking for something new to read. If you've put this much work into publishing, I'm guessing that you've put similar work into crafting the stories. Care to share the name of your novels?
They plan two launches. The first, the firefly mentioned above is strictly for exploration. From one of the articles:
Then in 2016, Deep Space said it will begin launching 70-lb DragonFlies for round-trip visits that bring back samples. The DragonFly expeditions will take two to four years, depending on the target, and will return 60 to 150 lbs of asteroid materiel.
The firefly that the summary mentions is the survey craft. They intend to launch the dragonfly in 2016. Of course that extra year makes all the difference.:-)
It's frustrating (and amusing), but at least you're able to find a solution. In a similar situation with Windows, I've had to resort to a VM and a second installation to make things work.
Bullshit. My oldest went from Fedora 17 with libreoffice to windows 7 & libreoffice with nary a hiccup. He's also quite comfortable using Word and Excel. I also move back and forth between Windows and Linux and don't think I've noticed any frustrations.
It seems that every comment so far has centered on the privacy implications of the collection of MAC addresses, I'm a little more concerned with where the collection of a few more bytes of data could go. I'm a few years out of the parking industry now, but the big new technology just few years ago was the use of OCR to collect license plate numbers in real time. I recall an industry presentation hawking a handheld device that could take a picture, and do the computation with little noticeable delay. It seems to me that it's not a huge technical leap to combine these, and build a super-duper tracking system. They've already tied your license plate data to your identity, after all.
I should back up a little. My original objection was to a blanket statement about the benefits of roundabouts, and that was the general tenor of my responses. I don't think that construction costs (the real driver) or maintenance costs will be significantly different between New Zealand and Alaska will be appreciably different. The real savings, for a well-placed roundabout, is not to the operator, but to the user. The savings in a roundabout comes about through reduced fuel usage, less time lost, fewer accidents and resultant loss of property and livelihood.
Then again, maybe roads down there are cheaper because you drive on the wrong side.:-) If you do ask your city council about the relative costs, I'd love to hear the answer: rex@stuckoutside.spamreduction.net. (There's an obvious bit that ought to be removed from that.)
In general, no. Grading and drainage for a roundabout are much more extensive than a typical intersection. The areas paved with both flexible and rigid pavement are much larger in a roundabout. There's more lighting in a roundabout. Because of a current shortage in experience, design costs can be significantly higher. Right-of-way and relocation costs are generally significantly higher because of the large area involved. If your roundabout needs to accommodate large trucks, it can all get much worse.
If you were designing two intersecting roads, where there were no separate right-of-way costs, the roundabout would still be the more expensive intersection.
The way the cost of an accident is figured by engineers doing a safety study is pretty strict. Each of the types of accidents: non-injury, injury and fatality, is assigned a cost. The way the costs are generally assigned, two injury accidents will be weighted much more heavily, even if the cost of the injuries was minor. On a statistical basis, though, it is an effective technique.
p.s. You can see how they assigned costs in Table 1 on Page 4 of the report.
traffic light has ground loops to detect when cars are at the intersection. In this day and age, couldn't we do better?
Yes. I started design on new detectors for an intersection that uses a small wireless puck embedded in the road for signal detection. We also use video detection, though we have problems with detection of white cars when there is snow on the road. I'll be working on another design in about 6 months that will install radar detection along a major thoroughfare.
Inductive loops are still commonly in use because they're well understood and reliable. Every signal controller made today can connect to the loops, while some will require special interface adaptors to work with the newer techniques.
That distance, the point at which it changes to solid white, is somewhat arbitrary and varies by agency. The solid white line is only to discourage drivers from changing lanes, and is definitely not coordinated with signal timing.
Slashdot Mirror
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/why-metadata-matters
I have every right to expect that my dealings are my business, particularly when dealing with an organization or individual who promises to keep our interaction private. Our government has been known to do Bad Things. Your attitude assumes benevolence on Uncle Sam, when the evidence would seem to suggest that he can, at times, be a real jerk. Perhaps this administration can be trusted, (Can you keep a straight face while saying that?) but the last administration apparently lied, and the next administration may be even worse.
I can't disagree with you more strongly. I don't see how this can be good for liberty.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeach#United_States
He was impeached by the house, but not tried by the senate.
I've always had a p38 on my keychain and never had a problem. One of the TSA folks looked at it once, but that's all the attention that it's ever gotten. I used to fly frequently to DFW from LAX, and have also gone through security in Fairbanks, Salt Lake, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, Portland, Anchorage and Burbank. (There may be one or two more that I've forgotten.)
5x5280=26400
. . .Ketchikan isn't a huge place. . .
But it's not all that small, either. It's the fifth largest city in the state, though areas like Wasilla have a significant population outside the city boundary. The middle school had enrollment of 295 for two grades in 2009, so there are probably about 150 students in each grade.
Both the town and the schools are a lot bigger than where I went to school, so it seems to me that that's more than large enough to get lost in.
Do you mean something like this?
This is called trespassing, not occupying. It's always interested me how our politics can influence our descriptions.
. . .so it means effectively strip mining huge tracks of the ocean. . .
I don't think that they could recover their investment, if this is even technically possible. The extraction is done underground at the end of a drill string. The Nankai Trough is as much as 4000M deep, and the deposits that they're tapping are as much as 7000M below the sea floor. According the Wikipedia article on the Nankai Trough, there's a huge influx of sediment, which would make "strip mining" still more difficult.
The article really sucked, so I went looking for another, even though it was only slightly better.
The major improvement is in depressurizing the hydrate so that the gas will boil off. They don't have a robot at those depths, the work is done at the end of a drill string
Damn it, I'm overanalyzing this, aren't I?
Too much coffee?
I don't think it's age. I've not been able to remember where I set my mug since I started drinking coffee. I've been losing my glasses since before I drank coffee. They're just details that don't seem important when they happen.
I went through the Texan school system. We learned that Texas was the third largest state. . .
. . .this is bullshit. . .
Yes, it is. My story wasn't supposed to reflect all of Texas, you blithering moron. It's just a funny story. I've lived in Vermont, Texas, Washington, California, Alabama, et c. Idiots are everywhere, which you quite ably help demonstrate.
Some years ago, while I was working on the North Slope, in Alaska, I was having a conversation with a Texan fresh out of high school. He commented that the planes must fly slower up here, because the flight from Anchorage to Deadhorse was so long. When I tried to correct him, he had difficulty wrapping his head around the idea that Texas wasn't the biggest state, because, he said, "It's what I learned in school."
I know it's offtopic, but I still chuckle over that 20 years after the fact.
I'm looking for something new to read. If you've put this much work into publishing, I'm guessing that you've put similar work into crafting the stories. Care to share the name of your novels?
5773 years, and a little change.
Then in 2016, Deep Space said it will begin launching 70-lb DragonFlies for round-trip visits that bring back samples. The DragonFly expeditions will take two to four years, depending on the target, and will return 60 to 150 lbs of asteroid materiel.
The firefly that the summary mentions is the survey craft. They intend to launch the dragonfly in 2016. Of course that extra year makes all the difference. :-)
It's frustrating (and amusing), but at least you're able to find a solution. In a similar situation with Windows, I've had to resort to a VM and a second installation to make things work.
Bullshit. My oldest went from Fedora 17 with libreoffice to windows 7 & libreoffice with nary a hiccup. He's also quite comfortable using Word and Excel. I also move back and forth between Windows and Linux and don't think I've noticed any frustrations.
Your '48 died? I have one that's 17 years old and still chugging. I may give it a proper funeral if it ever does die. How do you like the HP50?
It seems that every comment so far has centered on the privacy implications of the collection of MAC addresses, I'm a little more concerned with where the collection of a few more bytes of data could go. I'm a few years out of the parking industry now, but the big new technology just few years ago was the use of OCR to collect license plate numbers in real time. I recall an industry presentation hawking a handheld device that could take a picture, and do the computation with little noticeable delay. It seems to me that it's not a huge technical leap to combine these, and build a super-duper tracking system. They've already tied your license plate data to your identity, after all.
I should back up a little. My original objection was to a blanket statement about the benefits of roundabouts, and that was the general tenor of my responses. I don't think that construction costs (the real driver) or maintenance costs will be significantly different between New Zealand and Alaska will be appreciably different. The real savings, for a well-placed roundabout, is not to the operator, but to the user. The savings in a roundabout comes about through reduced fuel usage, less time lost, fewer accidents and resultant loss of property and livelihood.
Then again, maybe roads down there are cheaper because you drive on the wrong side. :-) If you do ask your city council about the relative costs, I'd love to hear the answer: rex@stuckoutside.spamreduction.net. (There's an obvious bit that ought to be removed from that.)
In general, no. Grading and drainage for a roundabout are much more extensive than a typical intersection. The areas paved with both flexible and rigid pavement are much larger in a roundabout. There's more lighting in a roundabout. Because of a current shortage in experience, design costs can be significantly higher. Right-of-way and relocation costs are generally significantly higher because of the large area involved. If your roundabout needs to accommodate large trucks, it can all get much worse.
If you were designing two intersecting roads, where there were no separate right-of-way costs, the roundabout would still be the more expensive intersection.
The way the cost of an accident is figured by engineers doing a safety study is pretty strict. Each of the types of accidents: non-injury, injury and fatality, is assigned a cost. The way the costs are generally assigned, two injury accidents will be weighted much more heavily, even if the cost of the injuries was minor. On a statistical basis, though, it is an effective technique.
p.s. You can see how they assigned costs in Table 1 on Page 4 of the report.
traffic light has ground loops to detect when cars are at the intersection. In this day and age, couldn't we do better?
Yes. I started design on new detectors for an intersection that uses a small wireless puck embedded in the road for signal detection. We also use video detection, though we have problems with detection of white cars when there is snow on the road. I'll be working on another design in about 6 months that will install radar detection along a major thoroughfare.
Inductive loops are still commonly in use because they're well understood and reliable. Every signal controller made today can connect to the loops, while some will require special interface adaptors to work with the newer techniques.
That distance, the point at which it changes to solid white, is somewhat arbitrary and varies by agency. The solid white line is only to discourage drivers from changing lanes, and is definitely not coordinated with signal timing.