I agree completely. I do precisely the same thing. I generally assumed that most motorists are criminally incompetent idiots. I know this is incorrect, and that the vast majority of motorists are good, law-abiding citizens and competent drivers who are aware of their surroundings. But when you're sharing the road with someone driving a 5 ton metal box at 3-4x your speed, assuming they're a moron can save your life.

Not to defend idiot drivers, because there are plenty of them around, but cyclists can be difficult to see in numerous situations even under ideal weather/visibility condidtions. This is made worse when they're where they don't belong (weaving between cars, zipping into crosswalks and using them as a left-turn lane in states which allow right-on-red (NYC doesn't, much of NY does, and IL does, including Chicago except where marked), riding against traffic, moving erratically from using the sidewalk as a bike highway to cutting into traffic, often from in front of a parked truck or SUV that effectively hides there existence, etc. etc. etc.

If cyclists were required to hold a valid drivers license, obey the rules of the road, and it were enforced at least as well as it is against cars, with the same consequences (such as points on your license for running red lights, etc.), then a whole lot less cyclists would die, irrespective of whether the accident "blame" is placed on the automobile driver for not having x-ray vision and going 5 miles over the 30MPH limit, or on the cyclist for driving like an idiot.

I cycle around the city plenty, and it can get dicey, and there are drivers that need several hard whacks with a clue-bat, but they are dwarfed by the idiocy of other cyclists I observe every day...as often as not against other cyclists.

Not saying anything you have said is wrong, but the current system is SO bad that we would be much better off without ANY patents.

A part of the problem has to do with "obviousness". If two people are looking at a problem, it's unlikely that either will find a non-obvious solution. If 100 are looking at the problem, lots of "non-obvious" solutions will be found. If 1,000 people are looking, not only will lots of "non-obvious" solutions be found, but there will be lots of independent duplication. And patents pick an arbitrary winner, which is grossly unfair.

The only time that patents seem to me to be justified is where there are truly significant up-front costs. Drug tests are one example. Even there, it shouldn't be possible to retire a product from the market and also prevent anyone else from making it. And yes, I know that what I'm proposing isn't perfect either. But it would be much less bad, and might well even have a net social benefit.

You are right that those who are in the market to gamble have no reason to gripe. OTOH, I also feel they have no business in the market. Let them play the lottery, or poker.

Still, I'll agree that the market is clearly not something that a sensible investor should get into without VERY deep pockets.

FWIW, I think it should be illegal to sell a (particular) stock more than once an hour. Either that, or there should be a strongly progressive tax on each trade, with the rate of taxation depending on how long you have had the stock. 0% if you've held it 5 years, 100% if you've held it less than a microsecond, and smooth and without an inflection point in between. I tend to think it should be quadratic, but I can see value in making it linear (and then you might consider a negative tax if you hold it for longer than 5 years).

The stock market should be for investment, NOT gambling.

If it's just a choice between China having a backdoor and the NSA having a backdoor, I'd prefer China. They have less immediate power to make my life miserable, and I'm even less worth their interest.

The universe clearly has a large number of points within it where results are sensitive to initial conditions. And the results interact. This is clearly true in, say, the genetic code, to pick something below human scale, in the spin of a die, to pick something at human scale, and in the multi-body problem, to pick something larger than human scale.

They don't need to be random to be unpredictable. Note that the time scale tends to be inverse to the size scale. so we appear to be able to predict planetary orbits, but we can't project them indefinitely into the future. 100,000 years is not a problem, but a few million is. We have reason to believe that at some point the Earth's orbit will become unstable, and it will either leave the solar system or be swallowed by the sun (presuming the sun doesn't change)...but we can't tell either which, or exactly how long it will take. But it won't be within a couple of million years, unless there's an effect from outside the solar system. (If Nemesis existed, it might produce such an effect, but it appears to not exist, and it's arguably outside the solar system.)

The best way to make cycling in major cities safer would be to

1) require a drivers license to cycle on city streets
2) require cyclists to obey all traffic laws (this is already true in many jurisdictions)
3) disallow cyclists (and motorcycles) from weaving between lanes to move ahead in traffic. Require them to use lanes in the same manner as other vehicles (you don't see 2 smart cars trying to share one lane of traffic)
4) enforce #1, #2 and #3 as aggressivley with cyclists as with automobiles, with the same penalties

I have seen more pedestrians run down (or nearly run down) by cyclists running red lights, weaving in and out of slow moving traffic, transitioning from using the streets to using pedestrian crosswalks to thwart lights or make lefts from a right hand lane across traffic. I cannot count the number of times I've seen aggressive cyclists in New York and Chicago weave through cars, use the wrong side of the road (!!!), etc. and then get upset when someone nearly knocks them over because they weren't seen being where they didn't belong.

If you require a level of competence (driver's license), require all vehicles using the roads to abide by the same laws (and enforce equally, with equal consequences), you'd go a long way toward improving cycling safety.

I think you don't understand insect colonies very well. Just because one particular insect is called the Queen, doesn't mean she has any control. Generally she has less control than do the workers, even at an individual level.

Of course, you *could* be asserting this about the heads of state, but it didn't sound like it.

Others have reported that the quality of the software was such that no backdoors would be needed. I haven't examined the equipment myself, so I don't know, but don't let your paranoia lead you to make foolish decisions. The NSA having a backdoor is one thing. Every cracker who feels like it having a backdoor is something a bit worse.

I think you overestimate China's dependence on the US. Certainly China is quite willing to use us for it's benefit, but dependence means that we produce something they need, and the only such thing is dollars, of which they already have more than they can expect to use.

OTOH, China directly and through middle men probably owns over half of the US. It's hard to be sure. Certainly more than 30%. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if they "own" over half of the politicians at the federal level.

Given that trustworthy means "You can predict how they will react to any particular situation.", you may be right.

Do I think they do less spying? No. But they they don't pretend to be friends, either.

realnames aren't necessary, and can be a real hinderance. Handles, however, do seem to be necessary, so that one can evaluate their trustworthiness. And slashdot id#s are useful, as they let one easily gague how long a particular handle has been in use (in case you don't recognize it), but dates might be better.

P.S.: What's your handle? OK, your realname? Don't want to say?

He doesn't need to worry as long as fuel cells require a platinum catalyst. He's right about the "expensive" part. OTOH, his other points aren't very convincing, and I've heard reports that a lab has an iron based catalyst that splits out hydrogen. It may not be practical, but then again it may. And I'm not real thrilled by large batteries. (I'd been hoping that supercondensers would have seemed more promissing by now...but the development seems to have stagnated, so they may have run into significant problems.)

Why shouldn't they?

It's true they do have other venues, but often experts like to share their expertise and interest with others. But if you make it difficult to publish, then they'll only publish where they get significant benefits. That frequently means paywalls. If you want it to be without paywalls, then don't make them fight a bunch of ignorant assholes to publish, because they'll only try a couple of times, and then not only will they quit, but they'll tell their associates not to bother.

The specialists I heard of (in this case mathematics) say that their articles and edits are rejected without acceptable explanations, so they've stopped trying. Others have reported the same experience in different fields, but those I only know of from the internet.

That doesn't sound to me like they want to improve the system...though some have said it's a great source for Pokemon.

Whatever. I once contributed an article, but it's gone, and I'm not likely to waste time trying to restore it.

A part of the point was that secondary references aren't necessarily any more trustworthy than personal recollections.

I do agree that that's their policy, and it's also why I never trust them, and don't take part. They need some better policy.