Exactly.

I buy that post-9/11, a review of the balance we have struck between freedom and security was warranted.

However, the freedom side of that is vital. Yes, if we don't look after security, anyone will be able to come in and take any freedoms we theoretically have. But without freedom, all that security has exactly no point whatsoever.

Reviewing the balance is fine. But it must be an open, public debate with equal weight given to both sides. Working from an assumption, made before the review, that security must improve, is ridiculous and dangerous.

At least as applies to simply using the protected work.

I wouldn't be shocked if it reaches the Supreme Court and they uphold the ruling in the most narrow manner possible, leaving fair use copying uncovered while permitting simple use and viewing.

That doesn't necessarily mean the Court says fair use shouldn't be covered, just that it was not explicitly part of the original case so it does not get answered in their ruling.

The problem is, this doesn't just cover the light,it apparently also can make a signal appear to be something it is not.

This is a severe problem. If they were simply obscured, you are right, fairly easy to deal with. But if they appear to not be obscured, but the snow causes misinterpretation as apparently has happened, bad things will happen that are not the fault of the drivers, but the idiots who installed these systems without the manufacturers option for a heating element.

I've also seen it done very well.

My History professor, the power points are brief talking points. It's the stuff a good professor would have on index cards in the days before power point. Well, what most would have as the title for the index card. They help keep the lectures and peoples notes organized, but do not come close to substituting for either. If you expect to pass by copying and studying the power points, you'll fail hard.

The lesson is presented in the lecture. If he needs to present any substantial information visually, he'll go to the whiteboard, though he does often put useful charts up on the power point, and has used his image choices as starting points for class discussion. His lessons are better with the power points, but there was one time in his Western Civ class where he left his flash drive at home. He went on and presented the lecture pretty much as he would any other day, we just didn't have convenient headers for different sections of our notes that day.

I'm really impressed with how he handles Power Point. It is a tool that definitely improves his ability to teach the class, but he uses other tools as well in a well integrated way. And he can function pretty well without it should he need to. The tool is strictly subordinate to the goal. This makes it both more useful and less necesary.

Most others though, they try to cram all the material in the power point and read it nearly verbatim. I have trouble seeing the point in even attending class, just download the power points and read them myself.

WoW has that feature, but F1-F5 don't cut it when you have a mess of 10 or 25 people in the raid.

Properly balancing the 5 man groups that make up the raid can mitigate this, but it won't always help.

It's actually got a point.

The main issue appears to be Everquest and the other MMOs they make. These games do not feature reasonable accomodation for visually impaired users. There is only so far you can accomodate visually impaired people in a visual medium, but it's good to go as far as you can without damaging the experience for those with normal vision.

The lawsuit refers to World of Warcraft and some other games to show that such accomodation is in fact possible in an online video game context at a reasonable cost.

I'm not sure the ADA actually applies to online games, but if they can convince the court that it does, they seem to have a solid argument for trial.

I'd love to be able to make flat decisions on cars like that.

Unfortunately, I'm fairly harshly limited on costs. The most expensive car I've owned is my current Sunbird which I paid $800 for, and it was a stretch to afford that much. But, as might be expected, this being the most I've paid, has also gotten me the most mechanically reliable of any of them.

I've pretty much got to go with whatever is cheap. But since getting the Sunbird and driving it in New England weather, I'm going to go out of my way to find something affordable that has ABS. ABS is no replacement for being a decent driver, but it can certainly help when other people start being dumb in the snow.

In switch statements, it's interesting how enlightening putting this in the default case can be:

cout "This should never be seen\n";

And by all apparent logic, it shouldn't. Should be impossible to get the right value into the right variable.

Of course, there is always some silly error, or "this will work ok" shortcut, or maybe "screw it, I'll fix it later I'm on a deadline", and those messages get seen.

I do find defaults like this to be very useful though, if I don't need the default for something else it can be a very fast way to find subtle but serious bugs in the code. I'll use the default for something else if the problem warrants, but "impossible" values get assigned often enough that I find this to be a good "default default".

My car was fairly difficult. I was able to get home without a problem, but it was one of the more difficult driving situations I've been in.

Then again, I really can't rule out a more complicated failure than just power steering. It was close to 20 years old, over 200k miles, and the previous owners had not taken very good care of it at all. I sometimes marveled that it could move under its own power.

I got it home and my brother did something with it and steering was good again, but the car did not last much longer before an oil pump failure killed the engine.

At least I only paid $275US for the thing.

If your engine is going full out and you are in gear, your brakes will be stressed far harder than they are meant to ever be stressed.

Now, under normal circumstances your engine will not be going full out when you are braking, but we are not discussing normal circumstances here.

This event you describe really has nothing to do with car computers such as those that are alleged to be the cause of these runaway cars.

All it takes is a fault in the fuel system allowing fuel vapors to reach a faulty electrical line. Then the car draws power across that line, a spark is generated, and the vapors ignite. There are also some situations where car batteries can emit hydrogen gas which can then be ignited by a spark.

My 93 Sunbird is probably just as vulnerable to such a random fire event as that Escalade was. It's not something to really worry about... the chances of this sort of fuel system fault happening at the same time as this sort of electrical fault are extremely small, and even then you need fairly precise vapor concentrations for it to actually result in fire. But it is entirely the result of simple failures in systems that all cars have had... well pretty much since cars existed.

Responsive when it is designed and implemented correctly.

Mechanical and hydraulic systems are much better understood. While drive by wire certainly has potential advantages, and if done well reliability and durability can be included, it is a more complicated and less mature technology. It is certainly possible for a drive by wire system to be flat out superior to mechanical and hydraulic systems, but if you want a safe bet that it will all work as designed, regardless of manufacturer, go with the traditional systems.

Clicking through a couple links on the article gets you to a video on what to do.

Put the car into neutral first. Then apply the brakes and come to a stop as you would for any other serious problem with your car. Do not turn off the engine until you have come to a complete stop, or else you lose all your power assists and that is kind of bad. I've had power steering suddenly fail on me. It is not easy to drive a car in that condition, and trying to drive it in an emergency situation? Yeah, not something I'd recommend if you can help it.

Even automatics can do this. The video did note that neutral isn't used often, so people might not be familiar enough with their transmission controls to quickly find it, so check the control, find where it is and how to shift to it quickly.

Turning off the engine should basically be a last resort to be used only if the transmission won't go to neutral. You're probably out a few grand if your car is fucked this badly.

What exactly were they testing?

Were they testing implementation of the design and build quality issues, or were they reviewing the design itself?

Passing the former by no means guarantees you'll pass the latter.

That said, are there any reports of this happening in vehicles that for whatever reason lack floor mats?