Posts by Charles 9 16605 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
"Furthermore, those who drive fast, have a goal in mind: to get from point A to point B. I don't believe that a driver who drives fast with a goal in mind will jeopardize the attainment of his/her goal by getting into an accident."
I believe the opposite. Someone fixated on a goal that doesn't directly involve driving (getting to the hairdresser, etc.) get so fixated on them that they get reckless. Two common motives behind speed-related accidents are tardiness (they're late for something) and racing (where speed is more important than life to the drivers). Speeding to maintain steady flow is one thing (the herd or stampede principle as I call it), speeding for speed's sake is another. There's a reason "speed kills" predates the drug wars.
There are two reasons police are switching from RADAR to LIDAR. One is as you say it's a lot easier to target because the LIDAR beam has a very narrow focus; no heterodyne effects and less chance of pinging the wrong car by mistake. The other reason is that it only needs a very short time to establish a speed fix. Smart cops pick a good spot, aim and shoot so quickly that there's no time to react to them. This makes LIDAR detectors useless (where they're legal) because they can't give you enough warning. The beam's too narrow to detect them being used on other cars, and by the time your car's being pinged, they've already got you dead to rights.
"How about not letting people borrow your car who break the law, or at least asking them to respect your property? Your car, your responsibility."
But you don't know that ahead of time, so it can't be your fault for something you can't anticipate. Especially if it was borrowed without your permission (aka STOLEN).
Not the ADA in this case. The Air Carrier Access Act (1986) requires airlines to accommodate for emotional support animals (NOT covered under the ADA because they don't provide physical services). Thing is, you need a letter from a therapist stating the need for the animals AND you need to let the airline know ahead of time.
Problem is, yhere's an actual federal law in the books concerning them, due to people going into true panics without their comfort pets. Serves as an out for airlines otherwise faced with a dilemma.
Thing is, it doesn't apply here because the law let's airlines set a few basic criteria which in this case weren't met.
"What I do not understand is why would items in the public domain "need" encrypting? Sure, information like heading to the store or personal information or bank transfers needs encrypting. Not everything on planet earth should need encryption."
Yes it does, because every little crumb can be used to facilitate identity theft, and ANYONE's identity can be useful to a thief who simply seeks a cover. And yes, they existed before the Internet as mailbox raiders.
"If we keep trying to travel down this line of thinking, then government will have no choice but to force backdoors and this will in turn weaken encryption."
Or simply promote encryption which cannot be done for all the tea in china. Barring that, promote quantum encryption which is physically impossible to break.
"You can do it already. The issue is you need a key your recipients will trust - encryption without authentication is of little use."
Why trust someone else to hold the key. Make your own key pair and just publish the public keys.
Now, OK, having multiple devices is an issue, but so is making a key backup. So a method of copying and transferring keys (subject to your authorization) will be needed as well, using USB sticks, bluetooth, or some other means (permanent storage would be encrypted in storage, transfers can be secured with something like DHKE).
That's me. If I'm in familiar territory, I'm frequently barefoot. Most times if I'm outdoors, a simple pair of flip-flops are all I need. Right now, though, it's ice-cold winter, so I concede to laceless shoes when I make any trip of significance. Plus, because of dress codes ("no shirt, no shoes, no service"), I'm forced to at least have footwear most shops and locations I have to go, and I MUST wear proper shoes at work.
PS. I'd be scared of hyperactive immune systems as they're the most frequent source of allergies.
I wonder if you'd change your tune if you were ever forced to walk on very rough, sharp, or uncertain ground. The feel of sharp stones (on a ground full of them so no way to step around them), broken debris, or deep mud start to make you wish for something to cover your feet. Oh, and the ever-present threat of tetanus, which can hit you from a cut from a hidden object.
And this from another frequent barefooter. But this barefooter has encountered all of the aforesaid, including buried rusty nails that embedded in the soles of my shoes.
""the out of control State of California""
I beg your pardon, but before modern automobile emissions regulations kicked in nationwide, California happened to be the trendsetter because Los Angeles County's geography made pollution a particular concern. Remember "California Emissions"?
"keep in mind that linux help, online, is not only free [as a general rule], it's usually accompanied by people who are willing to hand-hold you through the process if you're a n00b."
Now YOU keep in mind. The Linux community's definition of a noob and the general public's definition of a noob can differ significantly, and this has an effect on the target market.
The Linux community generally expects you to be able to type things and know the difference between a taskbar and a scrollbar.
Meanwhile, in the real world, you have people who hold their mice upside-down--or think it's an accelerator pedal--and still expect to get things done. These are the kinds of people Microsoft have to cater. And no, it's not considered the norm yet to type and print a letter on a tablet.
Think it over.
Oh? Adobe seems to be doing just fine using the same strategy. And it makes business sense to stop the one-and-dones and go to the repeat business of Software as a Service. And they still control enough market share to dictate terms (because for every one user able to jump to an alternative there are probably nine who can't due to legacy stuff they can't change over or DIE orders from on high).
Few problems. First, shaming can have the same effect as things like three strikes: drive criminals to desperation and rampage. Second, people savvy enough to shelter money probably also know hoe to play politics. Third, what do we do with the innocent people dependent on them: the wives and children?
A similar system is used in many local jail systems in the US (including my hometown). For minor offenses (we're talking maybe a week or two at most), an option is there to serve the time in stages to allow the offender to continue working, especially if a breadwinner. If the offender is unemployed, the option doesn't need to be presented.
Trouble is, fentanyl is one of the strongest opioids, and I believe the strongest one can perscribe to a human. To appreciate its potency, say on a potency scale where the common morphine and hydrocodone are 1, heroin runs from 2-5. Fentanyl is 50-100, and let's not get started on carfentanyl (which scales at 10,000), which is ONLY legal to use on large animals like bears (No joke. You can die from respiratory arrest simply from touching a drop of the stuff).
IOW, if your situation requires a continuous regimen of fentanyl, one must live a live worse than hell.
That said, fentanyl is also a common target of drug thieves and illegal chemists due precisely to that potency. Potent opioids are both easier to transport and heavily in demand, and not just in North America (China has the problem, too).
"And yet a multi $Bn global computerized telephone system still requires me to dial a '1' to tell it I'm calling the next city where the first 3 digits are different. It even plays me a recorded message telling me I have to dial a '1'"
Because there still needs to be a way for the telephone system to know when to take it or to pass it upstream. That's why the "1", and that's why the confusion when a local exchange like New York City is forced into 10-digit local dialing on account of excessive subscribers. They won't let you dial a 1 because doing that triggers the exchange passing, which in turn triggers long-distance rates (which depending on your phone plan are by-the-minute).
We've been trying to expand the phone system bit by bit, but we're running out of room. If you want to simplify the phone system, you're going to need a top-down restructuring of the whole works, and that's bad for people who have enough trouble maintaining their phone memories and contacts. I wouldn't mind at least some reworking to better establish telephone identities and deal with the growing problem of scam callers with fake IDs.
PS. The reason cell phone companies don't require this is because their exchanges are 10-digit by default and are basically always at least one level above local exchanges, so they're always going down into local exchanges when calling landlines.
"So far no passing do-gooder has decided to dial for an emergency takeout"
But someone might still dial for the Coast Guard anyway on the assumption the victim is not in the right frame of mind and is therefore calling out, "Pizza!" when he really means to call for "Help!" meaning it's not just an emergency, it's a life-and-death emergency if his mind is that far gone.
Frankly, there mere presence of a man struggling in the water, voice or not, is going to be enough to trigger a 911 call unless it's made quite clear to all present ahead of time that a drill is taking place. It's like working in a store and a man stumbles in all cut up and bleeding. Barring advance notice, the first thought here is to call 911. And of course, someone will just stage a REAL emergency at the same time as the drill in order to spread chaos.
There's a series of sirens in the Middle Neck of Virginia, around the Surry nuclear power station. They have to test those once a month. Thing is, the test siren (a couple long blares) has a totally different pattern from an actual energency siren (which has short blares).
"Is this a tragedy? Probably not. We can make things a lot simpler, and thus work more productive and more reliable. We can put more functions into hardware, eg. via ASICs. And maybe we could even educate software whizzards to become more humble and to concentrate more on user needs rather than on the latest software fashions and their own ego."
And if they clash with the needs of up top and/or hard-and-fast deadlines?
As for improving memory access, also don't forget the Speed of Electricity, which is another hard-and-fast limit, and because of the need to make things human-accessible for repair and upgrade purposes, there will come a certain minimum latency for memory.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
