Travis In Austin

Hmmmm. Won't speculate on the reason(s) for what sounds to be disdainful of and hostile to my comments. Nor will I reply in kind. Perhaps you will come to a different understanding as your lives unfold. And perhaps not . . . . I throughly disdain people who try and link the greatness of our country with religion. Even more so when they try to do it on this forum where it isn't allowed. I have no use for people that think God made this Country great. Great men and women made this Country great, they all had gifts granted by their Creator, but that is true everywhere in the world. We don't have royal families here, or state sanctioned religion for a reason. It leads to ruin and the founding fathers were keenly aware of that, especially Jefferson and Adams. It never ceases to amaze me when people discover what a Unitarian beleives or what Deism is based upon, and they are say "wow, that's not what I was taught about the main author of the Declaration." Or when they come up with the Constitution was divinely inspired. When you press them on it for a source they say well look how great we are, and how long we have lasted. No diary of Madison, no letters, no notes about accepting or rejecting the New Jersey plan only after hours of meditation and prayer, because it just isn't there. There are two things that could easily change my mind. One is a long lost manuscript or diary of one of the founding fathers that makes all of the scholarship and research on this subject clearly wrong, or that their voluminous original writings are revealed to be forgeries. The other is that God Almighty, for some reason, chooses me to to be the vehicle to receive that revelation and reveal it to the world. Until then I will continue to believe that we got a great Constitution by great men coming up with great ideas who were willing to compromise, even if it meant continuing with that peculiar institution. That peculiar institution is the logical counter to the argument that we are a great Country only because of God's help: they argue that is proof of free will and NO intervention, He would never help a Country with that institution ingrained in its constitution and law. It is just one of those things that we will never know, that's why they call it faith. There certainly isn't any historical basis for it, at least not yet.

I prefer the Stars and Stripes

I prefer the Stars and Stripes

Small point perhaps, today, with the selective "justice" which is/is not enforced, but, is it not also against the law to represent the American flag on articles of clothing, and other items . . . ? No, I'd be surprised if it is against the law, given that during the senior Bush's administration the Supreme Court ruled that burning the American flag is protected under the Constitution. A friend of mine commented "That's America at its best." I believe that justice Scalia was one of the justices who protected the right to burn the flag. dwilawyer? Here is link to decision. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/491/397 From the majority opinion: In holding in Barnette that the Constitution did not leave this course open to the government, Justice Jackson described one of our society's defining principles in words deserving of their frequent repetition: If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. Id. at 642. In Spence, we held that the same interest asserted by Texas here was insufficient to support a criminal conviction under a flag-misuse statute for the taping of a peace sign to an American flag. Given the protected character of [spence's] expression and in light of the fact that no interest the State may have in preserving the physical integrity of a privately owned flag was significantly impaired on these facts, we held, "the conviction must be invalidated." 418 U.S. at 415. See also Goguen, 415 U.S. at 588 (WHITE, J., concurring in judgment) (to convict person who had sewn a flag onto the seat of his pants for "contemptuous" treatment of the flag would be "[t]o convict not to protect the physical integrity or to protect against acts interfering with the proper use of the flag, but to punish for communicating ideas unacceptable to the controlling majority in the legislature").

So what are you saying about shared values? Why all the veiled stuff about shared community and values? So what is moral to a Deist? I think the term the Federalist used was "virtue". Essentially what it was, was self interest. A system to protect self interest while also preventing factions. Our country has a value system beyond self interest that is shared and accepted, it is based on the premise that it matters not what your race, religion, or gender is, only that you believe in the rule of law and the Constitution. That is the "shared value" that Americans have shared since 1788.

So I guessing yor are one of those that believe that the crew that came up with the Constitution did so by praying for guidance and inspiration? Or that Thomas Jefferson sat in a room and prayed to God and the words just flowed forth? History? Last time I checked there weren't any accounts of GW parting the Potomac in order to surprise the enemy. Godly people? They were either Diests or Unatarians who firmly believed that religion has no place in government, along with being adamant that there be no religious test to hold office. They were smart, very smart, they said keep religion, and thus God, the hell out of government.

Small point perhaps, today, with the selective "justice" which is/is not enforced, but, is it not also against the law to represent the American flag on articles of clothing, and other items . . . ? No, I'd be surprised if it is against the law, given that during the senior Bush's administration the Supreme Court ruled that burning the American flag is protected under the Constitution. A friend of mine commented "That's America at its best." I believe that justice Scalia was one of the justices who protected the right to burn the flag. dwilawyer? I'm pretty sure it was Reagan era, it was a Texas case. It didn't tread any new ground, speech includes expression. There was another case where a guy made a pair of pants out of a US flag. Every once in awhile you will see a state or municipality catch flack over buying and using flags that are made in China.

Fully agreed. I have a copy. But it isn't what the PUBLIC is working with. Tesla is at L3...the guy should have been fully engaged watching what was happening. He was operating an L3 car in L4 mode. His death will help it get to L4 and serve as a warning to those who get too complacent too fast. Tesla has all the L4 elements in place, EXCEPT field proven software. That will come swiftly. Given the irrationality of much of the public about this technology I still have fears this death will set it back more than it should. Operated properly the Tesla in autopilot has all the basics of the car that will reduce accidents 90%. My "guess" would be that with human intervention like he should have been ready to provide the car is likely already at least 70% safer than any human operated vehicle. Dave Tesla say they are an L2. Ford CEO says autopilot is L3. I think the consensus is the guy was using an L2 car as an L4. However, the consensus is also that the software won't come swiftly because of the variables. It would cone swiftly if there was a willingness to provide highway infrastructure which there isn't. So instead you have to program things like a metalic happy birthday ballon, a pothole filled with water, and a million other things. Volvo says that an L3 is more dangerous than an L1 or L2 and they claim their Beta car will be L4. Here is the article with the Volvo engineer quoted, which came out a week or two before the fatal Tesla crash. http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/27/11518826/volvo-tesla-autopilot-autonomous-self-driving-car

I always loved this https://youtu.be/MKvnQYFhGCc

Nope. The Apollo computers were the most advanced general purpose computers in the known universe and saved the day from the one you described above which was trying to land them on a boulder. Dave I don't think they were that fast, less than 1mhz, 4 or 8 bit. The core memory was made by women with nimble fingers for Raytheon who was contracted to build the MIT design.They were not the most advanced computers of the day, and they were very limited purpose (navigation) they were lightweight. NASA used the IBM 360 for general purpose comouter and Saturn system, that wasn't even the most advanced of the day, not by a longshot. The story about the nav computer saving the day is more legend than fact, it went the way it was supposed to go with Neil to determine a precise landing spot when they got to a certain altitude, that's why the LEM had windows, because it was expected that Neil would have to land it with Buzz's help. The hype was all about an error code and whether to abort or not. A Raytheon engineer said it was ok and Neil continued the decent and selection of landing spot, exactly as planned. NASA didn't get state of the art Supercomputer until the 1980s when they bought a CRAY 2. That was used for design and simulations at AMES I think. EDIT: The program was on read only rope memory that was woven by the women. The read wrote was core memory. It was in fact 16 bit and just above 1mhz. However, the architecture was extremely robust.

Pants american flag

Here is the accepted standard everyone is working with. automated_driving.pdf

That is one of the big issues pending, who will train and certify, the automaker or the state government.

The definition(s) are universally accepted nationwide, and worldwide, among engineers, automakers, lawmakers and pretty much all stake holders. Pick your number between 0 and 6. If 2 is "autonomous" you are there. If it is 3 or above, you are going to have to wait. The "common" definition of autonomous is a 5 or above. Here is one obstical discussed by the guy from Berkeley that hasn't been mentio ed yet: You have to improve on a system and vehicle safety standard that is already pretty good relatively speaking. "Consider the issue of safety, given the number of cars on the road, said Steven Shladover, a research engineer at the University of California, Berkeley. "[self-driving car] technology can't be less good than today's traffic safety, and in the United States, there are 3.3 million vehicle-hours per fatal accident and 64,400 vehicle-hours per injury," he explained. Developing fully autonomous vehicles that can achieve similar traffic-safety levels is "not a hard problem," he said, "that's a superhard problem."

There is an article in this month's Scientific American, written by THE guy in this field, he founded PATH at Cal Berkeley and has been working on autonomous vehicle technology since 1986. The article discusses the five levels of AV as set forth by SAE. He says level 2 is currently available commercially. He discusses how the media blows things out of proportion and call thing autonomous when they are not even close. Level 4 and 5 he says are driverless, and are probably "decades away" on a commercial basis. Apparently pedestrians and rain are a major problem. Thought it was a great article, trying to find a link.

Man... could you imagine sipping a nice hot cup of coffee on a brisk morning looking at the scenery... Were is that Steve? MKP :-) Thank you for the PM, I hope you got my response.

Seems like Clarion and Blaupunkt were all the rage then. It still wouldn't have mattered in that car, it was frigging loud, could not have a conversation in the car at regular speeds,

Where is that

An incredible bassist. He was a friend of a friend, makes it even more bitter. https://www.google.com/amp/www.sfgate.com/music/amp/Rob-Wasserman-bassist-who-played-with-Bob-Weir-8333315.php?client=ms-android-sprint-us#

Blue mountain is just the best ever in my opinion, and the best cup I ever had of that was sunrise in Port Antonio. Hard to find in Austin, they get it once in awhile at Starbucks for Clover Press.

I find that quote amusing. I used to have a link, but have lost it, with an interview of the engineer who worked with Ray Charles when they took a lot of his old masters and transferred them to digital. He was very happy with the quality and sound of the transfers.BUT, Bruce Swedien, who did a lot of the Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson tracking and mixing, used to record the drums on analog tape decks and the transfer to digital for the mixing. He said it retained the analog sound (nice and fat), but gave them better mixing tools. Sort of like taking a good movie and putting it on video, it still looks like film when you are done/ This may be the same thing with Ray C., as they were transfers from analog. Bruce It is very common, to this day, to record the drums on tape for an otherwise all digital production. They say it captures the "transients" better than digital.

I thought the book was better.

They will back it up, always have, always will.

I sit down and they bring me my bottle, I notice it is dwindling. The hunt will begin anew for another one, but in the meantime there is only one thing to do, drink double double.

Good to see you Mark