What I would make a law is putting a switch exactly the same size and shape as the ignition key on the steering wheel, that actually does cut power to the engine.
It's absurd they can sell a car without some mechanical and obvious way to cut off the engine.
Erm, the brake is not really an 'input' to the cruise control system. The brake turn cruise control off.
It's entirely possibly that there is some 'repeated input' glitch going on, but all repeated brake input would do is turn it off repeatedly. (Which, obviously, is the same as turning it off once.)
The only way what you're describing could work is if the 'resume' was somehow stuck on, and repeatedly attempting to result, which a) one bug sorta like what Woz described, except in a different control, and not really working the same way, plus b) an entirely different bug, probably mechanically, that wedged the button on.
So I don't think we should assume that Woz's 'bug' has anything to do with any hypothetical bugs anyone else experienced, or that it is even, technically speaking, a 'bug' at all...he did push the button a bunch of times, and it did accelerate.
I don't think any cruise control promises that it will accelerate consistently, that it will take six times as long to accelerate six increases as one increase. It could be argued it _should_ do that, but that doesn't make failure to do so some sort of bug, just a misdesign. In fact, that could actually be seen as a feature....if you push repeatedly, you're in some sort of hurry.
All the times my car has run out of fuel I've made it safely to the ground, so I'm not sure what you're trying to imply there. In fact, I've never operated my car off the ground.
Possibly you're confusing them with helicopters. Although those can indeed glide to the ground, just not very well.
Drivers already have a way to disable their vehicle - the ignition switch.
Forget driver's licenses...how about poster licenses, where people have to answer basic questions before making idiotic fucking comments?
The push-button cars HAVE NO IGNITION SWITCHES.
That is, in fact, the entire point of the post you're replying to. There is no way to cut the power, except for secret 'hold the start button for four seconds' method, which no one knows, and is obviously not that useful in emergencies anyway.
Of course, the solution isn't a 'emergency button'.
The solution is to put a fucking switch that rotates counterclockwise on the right side of the steering wheel that cuts power to the engine, exactly in the same place, and exactly the same way, as an ignition switch, like everyone has, as you put it, been trained to do. On a push button car, it would not have a removable key in it, and would stay 'on' basically all the time, but it would be exactly where everyone already knows it is.
To be fair, the correct response of an out of control acceleration is to cut the engine, not shift to neutral. It will stop you faster as momentum now has to fight the engine, and it won't risk any transmission problems. (Engines are designed to be cut off when running...as that is, obviously, how you're supposed to turn them off anyway. Automatic transmissions are not 'designed' to be shifted to neutral while running, although it usually won't hurt.)
Also, if your engine was out of control, you'd feel pretty stupid if it caught fire while you were stopping. Just turn the damn thing off, and leave it in gear if you want to stop quick, and put it neutral if you don't. (Like you're trying to get out of the road.)
And, yes, your power brakes will have enough power in them to use them to stop. Your power brakes have enough power in them to stop the car once, always, so unless you're stupid and let the stopped car then coast down a hill, you're fine. Of course, you can stop the car without power brakes, I'm just pointing out the 'power' won't run out until after enough 'brakage' has provided to stop the car anyway. Power brakes are a red herring here.
And don't attempt to break with the handbrake unless you really need to stop this very second. I suspect that was implied, but I thought I'd mention it anyway. The car will stop pretty quickly fighting an engine, and throwing the handbrake at even moderate speeds is a good way to go into a skid, as evidenced by every driving movie ever made...your handbrake does not have anti-lock.
In this specific case, if they decide to cut the engine, it's entirely possible that they didn't know how, because for some reason, the US government lets companies build push-start cars without obvious mechanical 'cut off the engine' buttons. You have to hold the button for four second, and have fun doing that while dodging drivers...if you happen to know that secret, that is.
But, anyway, they should have gone to 'shift to neutral' as a fallback position, so I don't understand that either. I don't understand anyone who gets 'trapped' in an accelerating car.
There's about ten seconds of danger as the car starts going crazy that I can see involving fatal accidents, and obviously people can get hit by other cars after they cut off the engine but are, for example, in the middle of the express way, trying to make it to the side on momentum...
...but I simply do not grasp getting 'trapped'. Going down a mountain where you've burn out your brakes, sure, but that's not your engine. Anywhere else, no.
I think that all cars should have, mandated by law, a physical engine switch on the right side of the steering wheel, that you rotate counter-clockwise to turn off the engine.
For non-push-start cars, this would be the actual key itself.
For push-start cars, it's just be a switch, with roughly the same amount of force needed as a key, and stays on all the time, and you can utterly ignore it. But when you need to turn the car off, you know where it fucking is.
Instead of these cars, which you apparently had to hold the button down four second to get the car to cut off.
I hope everyone a) bothered to learn that in advance, and b) had an extra four second to spare.
It's absurd they're allowed to sell cars like that.
That's nothing. Fun fact on my 92 Sunbird: If I move the gearshift to neutral while under cruise control, the engine will explode, or at least revved insanely until I panicked and turn it off, as the CC attempts to accelerate a car that cannot, in fact, be accelerated. (I have a floor gearshift, I discovered that by accident one day when I knocked myself out of gear.)
It really seems like auto engineers don't test edge cases, especially with electronic systems.
It's not helped by damn stupid cruise control systems that attempt to use four buttons for something that should take more.
At this point, cruise controls should have a on/off switch, with temporary resume position. One switch, three positions, with 'start' being temporary and sliding back to 'on' when released. Like a car ignition itself has on/off, and a 'start'.
And they should additionally have a use-current-speed/faster/slower control to set the speed, which should preferably actually be displayed somewhere. Either three buttons, or a knob for faster and slower, and push to set to current.
Any idiot could understand those two groups of controls.
Instead, they try to insane crowd that into four buttons. Is this 'resume', or 'faster'? Is this 'slower', or 'set'? Who knows, it depends on when you use it! Why would we need clear controls to manage the damn speed of the car?
Climate controls have the same problem. The only control that makes sense there is 'fan', all the rest is nonsense. Why are there three AC options with different names, why are there 'heat' options that can cool the car? Why is there a slider with eight positions on it?
Most importantly, why the fuck is it labeled 'max AC' so people use it when they get in the hot car, when in actuality it's to recirculate and they should use it all the time except when the inside of the car is hotter than the outside?
Look, there's a fucking input, output, and what you do to the air. Give me a button to select inside input (as opposed to the outside default), give me a damn slider that is shades from heat (which is really engine air) to nothing (Which is just recirculate) to cold (which flips on the compressor), and give me three output buttons for top, front, and floor, which I can push in any combination....and don't let me select the floor as the input and the output at the same time, so if I pick one pop up the other button. It's not damn rocket science, people's head's won't explode if you present the actual thing that is actually happening.
Oh, and obviously retain the 'fan speed' setting. I guess I should be lucky we actually still have that, and they haven't decided to somehow merge that into the different settings.
I swear to God, auto engineers...I would say they think we're idiots, but what they really think is that they, under no circumstances, should expose us to what is actually happening, so engineer giant systems we have to figure out to hide actually pretty simply systems that are identical among all cars and we'd easily understand if presented to us.
We should thank whatever deity we believe in that the damn steering wheel is mandated by law, because otherwise we'd have some cars with two levels on each side that we held one in each hand and had to push up and down like oars to steer...which would be connected to the exact same steering column that worked exactly the same way.
And of course, the very first word of that post is 'Indeed', where I'm agreeing with the previous post that flu shots are not needed, and that people shouldn't get them.
So clearly I meant that it shouldn't be legal to skip just some vaccines. Quite obviously there are ones I not only think it should be legal to skip, but that people should.
This is exactly the sort of shit you misinterpret, someone who says 'vaccines (meaning required ones that actually work and are functionally required by law for children already, at least if they wish to attend school, which is required by law) should not be legal to skip', even for adults, and you think that means 'everyone should have to take whatever vaccine is offered'.
You've decided that all mentions of 'vaccines' in this discussion and how important they are means all vaccines ever offered, and everyone is utterly opposed to not getting any of them, despite the fact you know for a fact that I, for example, don't think people should get swine flu or chicken pox vaccine.
This is exactly what happens when you've decided that both sides are crazy fanatics and you're the only sane person.
There are two sides to this issue: People who think vaccines are basically as safe as any medical procedure, and are overall a good idea and that 99% of the population should be vaccinated (With only, obviously, the vaccines that are useful, and skipping the people who this would make ill, but that's implied when talking about anything)...and goddamn lunatics who think they aren't safe.
There is no group of people who think that all vaccines are magical and everyone should have them all, and is unwilling to discuss specific vaccinations...or, if there is, they certainly aren't posting here, and I've never run across them. In fact, the article itself has two different discussions of whether or not specific vaccines are useful, including the one you just linked to.
I suspect you've only 'run across' people like that because you leap in swinging talking about you aren't pro-vaccine and how all pro-vaccine people are stupid, and they start defending 'vaccines', which in their head means 'vaccination in general', but you've now decided they're defending chicken pox vaccines also.
Which is bit like leaping into a discussion and asserting you aren't 'pro-roads' (because you don't want a certain bypass built near your house, but heaven forbid you mention that first), and when people point out that, without roads, we'll all starved to death in a matter or weeks, you assume they're shills of the construction industry or something.
You have the special sort of 'centrist fanaticism, where you essentially believe that most people are crazy, when you in actuality have demonstratively have near identical beliefs as most of them and have just chosen to interpret whatever they say as fanaticism one way or the other, where everyone a millimeter in either direction is crazy.
Yeah, and the same problem exists with the 'maybe it only happens when it's wet' hypothesis. Yeah, that might need less wind...OTOH, it would also need much less wind to erase the tracks.
There's not any way at all wind can move 100 pound things along the ground, but leave two little ridges down the trail where the sand was pushed away. Not to mention failing to smooth the other sand, around the rock.
No one's actually measured them moving, have they?
Of course, the theory that the trails are caused by something else is also a bit of a non-starter. If they're being caused by something else, they must actually start at a rock, or the fact all the trails end at rocks is incredibly unlikely.
But then the trails wander in random directions, so it can't be the wind or something like that.
That's very useful for planting and floods and whatnot. You can't figure out when to do stuff if you don't know when you are.
The only other option is to just count days, and that's very hard, and even harder when you haven't invented useful numbers or place values yet. Back then, they'd have numbers from one to twenty or whatever, and that was essentially it. If they were lucky they could count moons, but the moons do not divide evenly into the year so that doesn't work well.
But once they notice that shadows move back and forth, they can do what the GP said, stick up a pole and mark the summer and winter solstice with essential no work at all, and then mark 10 rocks across or something. And they could just look at it, and figure out that, despite it being cooler already, they shouldn't plant yet, it just got cooler early this year, and it's still 'five rocks' or whatever to solstice, and they're supposed to plant at four. (Or even put some sort of carved symbol at exactly the right place that means 'plant'.)
The left and the right, if you go far enough, do not believe in a form of government we would recognize as government.
And, under certain conditions, these things meet each other, especially in the 'we don't need a hierarchy, just local stuff'.
If you go to the far right and far left of those ideas, you essentially end up with anarchy. The far left thinks we'll all live in self-governing hippy communes, whereas the far right thinks we'll all live in...well, essentially the same thing, except they'll be smaller, with more trade between them.
And arguing about the origin of words is idiotic. And technically, -cracy means 'ruler', not 'government'. (Hence you can live in a plutocracy or a bureaucracy without those people actually being 'the government', as long as they 'run things'.)
And no rulers would technically be acracy or discracy. Discracy if you're thinking of it as 'the absence of rulers', acracy if you're thinking of it as 'the opposite of being ruled'.
Anocracy is a stupid half-German bastardization, and is just as silly a word as anarchy.
The idea that you can't use funds to 'release' people is idiotic.
All you have to do is issue new orders saying 'Under no circumstances should you attempt to stop these people from escaping.', and at some point their detainee's lawyers will tell someone, at which point there will be a mass escape.
Alternately, the US could simply let volunteers take a boat in and release them.
While Congress is actually a bit stronger than we like to pretend it is, and the executive branch is actually weaken...Congress cannot require that the executive branch hold prisoners, period. Only the courts can require that.
Congress couldn't even list prisoners and require the executive hold them...that's a bill of attainer.
All Congress can do is pass laws, and have prisoners convicted of them, which is, obviously, not what's happening.
If you've never seen the movie 'The Mouse that Roared', go find it.
Basically, a microscopic European country of a few thousand people, after a economic disaster, realizes that countries that the US defeats in battle are actually better off than countries that it did not fight, thanks to all the aid it gives out.
So this tiny country, armed with pikes and swords, declares war on the US and invades New York, and already have their surrender prepared.
And, because this is a movie, they accidentally win the war, of course.
Any support of people would be seen as US meddling. Under no circumstances should we say 'Yeah, this guy would be a nice leader', or supply any specific people support.
Providing internet and cell service probably would be okay, though. Pressuring Mubarak to step down would probably be okay too, as long as we aren't attempting to replace him. (Which, sadly, we are, with our very own torturer.)
We have threatened to cut off military aid if the military is used against protesters, which a) helps keep protesters from being killed,and b) keeps open the possibility of some sort of orderly transition under the military. No matter how much we dislike military coups, a military coup is nicer than one with violence against the military, and the military is amazingly professional and seems willing to make sure that democracy 'returns'. (Or, rather, shows up in fact and not just fiction.)
We cannot choose the people leading the middle east, period, and we need to stop. If we want middle east countries to like us, we have to, you know, do things they like.
Of course, the elephant in the room at this point is Israel.
That fact is, the crazy 'pro-vaccine' people do lump anyone that dares question even one vaccine into the crazy 'anti-vaccine' group. These people can frequently get vicious, as they believe that anyone who chooses not to get even one vaccine is a child abusing murderer.
Really? You've been posting on this discussion for days? Why don't you show where such people have said something like that?
Oh, that's right, you've decided to take an idiotic 'middle road' and pretend you're persecuted by both sides, despite the fact that 99% of the people are there, with a wackjob 1% staking out the anti-vaccine side and no one staking out the ground you like to imagine is standing there making you a fucking martyr b because you don't want to get a single vaccine.
Get over yourself.
In this thread, you discuss it rationally, but in other threads, you just resort to name calling if someone doesn't just support vaccines as a group.
No, I act exactly how everyone here acts....that people who oppose 'vaccines' a anti-science fools who result in dead people are crazy lunatics, whereas people who oppose a specific vaccine for well-reasoned and scientific reasons is sane and either right or wrong.
That's called 'rational'.
This is basically how everyone here thinks (Except the anti-vaccine idiots), and yet you have to hallucinate that somehow there's a group of people who say 'Everyone should get all vaccines for their kids or they're horrible evil people', just so you can be lone voice of reason.
Like I said, put up or shut up. This story was posted 2 days ago. Why don't you find some of those people calling people who are opposed to a single vaccine evil people.
Hell, Penn and Teller are wrongly opposed to swine flu vaccine, and yet when they were lumped in with anti-vaccine people posters here leaped to their defense, pointing out that being wrong about one vaccine doesn't make one anti-vaccine.
As Penn and Teller pointed out, even if vaccines cause autism, which they don't, but if they did...autism is still better than dying of measles.
Statistically, 1.5% of the population has autism, so, statistically, even if vaccines caused two-thirds of all autism, (which is just pure craziness) that's a 1% chance of autism after all vaccines. (The amount of the population non-vaccinated is statistically insignificant.)
Even if 'dying' and 'catching autism' are rated the same, that make it fifteen times better to get vaccinated, as measles has a 15% morality rate.
But, wait, the MMR is three vaccines. Mumps is not very fatal, only 1.6%, although that stil manages to have a higher mortality rate than a theoretically possible autism rate. And rubella has an incredibly high mortality rate, like 50%, in young children who get it, or in the unborn whose mother got it while pregnant. (Although the average mortality is obviously much lower, as most people are not young children and do fine.)
But, wait. Presumably those 1% of autism are caused by all vaccines. I mean, the population isn't just getting MMRs vaccines. They're getting stuff like tetanus vaccines, which has a 45% mortality rate.
So, you can either be vaccinated, and pretending these idiots are 100% correct, have a 1% chance of getting autism...or you can face a dozen different diseases which have probably, on average, a 20% mortality rate.
Now, to be fair, people might never get each of those diseases. But, statistically, if they aren't vaccinated at all, they'll probably get one of them, at which point that single disease has a much higher risk of death than a vaccine could even hypothetically cause autism. Or at least have a 10% chance of getting one them, which is still twice likely to cause death, vs. getting autism from vaccines, in under this hypothetical.
Anti-vaccine people are asserting that almost everyone who dies in a car accident becomes trapped in their car and that's why they end up dead...so they're going to hurtle down the road sitting on top of vehicles instead. Even if they were right about the first thing (Which they are not.), um, their idea of 'safety' is demonstrable much much much less safer.
If you can prove that two positive integers, when multiplied together, cannot be end up smaller than the largest starting integer, you can simply test by squaring all positive integers from 1 to 2 to see if they fit. Which is obviously a pretty quick test. 1^2!=2, and 2^2!=2.;)
So I suspect the person who posted the original problem meant 'no rational number', because it's pretty easy to prove there are no integer roots of a number...it's basically the same as proving that a number is prime. You just test all integers less than it, and tada. (Obviously, there are faster ways, but the brute force is the 'proof', although for primes you just have to test all lower primes.)
But you obviously can't test all 'rational' numbers less than it. There are infinite rational numbers between any two numbers, but a finite amount of integers.
Now, if you can prove that all numbers only have two real roots, you can just magically 'find' them both and test them and discover they're not a integer. (And one of them isn't even positive, obviously, so is doubly out.) But I don't know that's actually been proven or is accepted as an axiom.
A better example is the four-color map theorem. This basically states that you can take a map, aka, a bunch of random shapes that touch each other, and color them using four colors such that no shapes that touch each other are the same color. No one's ever figured out how to mathematically prove that.
However, they did manage to 'prove a negative' simply by testing every possible combination of shapes, which obviously had to wait until computers got invented. So now it's proven, in the sense that no such map can exist, although we still don't know 'why'.
But you can only do that when the search space is finite. (And even then you might not be able to do it.)
The search space for 'ways this might harm humans', which finite in theory, is infinite, and even unknown, in practice. No one can prove something does not harm someone.
The fact that one vaccine, by doing exactly what it's stated to do, is harmful because adults won't get boosters and thus actually get the disease when it's much worse for them...
...is utterly unrelated to the morons who assert that vaccines have random effects and that kids shouldn't get them at all, which medical science utterly disagrees with.
Objecting to one vaccine for actual logical reasons does not place you in the anti-vaccine camp.
The fact that kooks are 99% wrong doesn't mean you need to feel you've been attacked when you mention the 1% where they happen, via sheer unrelated chance, to be correct. Don't fall for that. If someone claims you are in that camp, disagree with them.
It's like 9/11 truthers. I'd actually like a investigation of the rather surreal response the Federal government had to the attacks...why the hell did the secret service leave Bush where he was for so long, utterly undefended from, oh, planes crashing through the roof, for example? Who made that stupid call? And other stuff, like who let the members of the Saudi royal family leave? (I'd just like that stated openly, I doubt it will actually tell us anything, I'd just like that blatant fact out there.)
I have actual real questions...but I'm not a goddamn Truther. The actual planes did actually crash into the actual WTC and Pentagon and whatnot, and, no one in the government knew it would happen. The fact that Truthers sometime happen to mention the same things I ask is just a stopped clock being right twice a day.
Don't think you have to extend the anti-vax crowd to include you, and then defend your aspect of it. You're not anti-vax. People who are anti-vaccine think the vaccines themselves cause some random secret harm (How they cause that harm constantly changes.)
Whereas you just think one particular vaccine is stupid, because it doing what it's supposed to do is exactly unhelpful.
Penn and Teller are the same way about the swine flu vaccine. They're actually wrong, they don't really understand how the flu affects people, but they are wrong a well-reasoned (from bad facts) non-pseudo-science way, and aren't 'anti-vaccine'. They're wrong in the 'taking the surface streets will be faster' way, not the 'automobiles are a government conspiracy and everyone can really teleport' way, which is where the anti-vaccine people are.
If the anti-vaccine people think mercury in vaccines is causing autism, which do you think will be better for bringing them over to be in favor of vaccines. Mocking their misinformation, and calling them a psuedo-science cult, or calmly pointing out that there is not mercury in vaccines with a suggestion on where they can verify it?
It is not my job to point out obvious flaws in other people's arguments.
It is the job of the goddamn media. It is the job of goddamn Oprah. It is the job of the goddamn idiots who give them air time in the first place.
Moreover, this shit has been pointed out, over and over.
GODDAMN FUCKING IMBECILES ARE WASTING SO MUCH OF SOCIETY'S TIME AND EFFORT BECAUSE THEY DO NOT DO THE SLIGHTEST BIT OF RESEARCH.
That is not 'my' job to do their fucking research. It is the job of the shitheads who give them airtime or newspaper columns.
You can prove a negative when the list of possibilities is small.
But when the question is 'causes harm to humans', there are so many possible ways to do that, with many of them nearly undetectable for years, and frankly we don't know how humans work very well anyway...
So it's essentially impossible to prove something does 'no harm'. About all that is left is statistical methods, where we say 'groups of people who have this done to them appear to have no added medical problems'.
Which is, of course, true of vaccines...statistically, there's no difference in autism with people who've had them and haven't.
What 'you can't prove a negative' actually means is that 'you can't prove an absence'. Obviously, any statement can be stated as either a positive or negative assertions.
What people mean by that is that you cannot prove that nothing in an infinitely wide, or even just very wide but measurable, search space does not have attribute X.
Which is not, strictly speaking, correct. We manage to prove the four-color map theorem by trying every map via computer, and proving that none of them took five colors, that such a map did not exist. It took computers to get to the point we could do that.
Likewise, it's easy to prove there are no even prime number between 3 and 10,000. That's proving an absence, but the search space is small enough to check enough.
However, a lot of time the space is infinite, or so close to it makes no difference. Like how a human body can be 'harmed', which is not only hindered by the amount of ways to cause harm, but the fact we don't really know what it's supposed to look like exactly at any moment in time, and the fact we cannot disassemble a person to see if they were harmed.
It is functionally impossible to prove that something did not harm someone, despite that search space being theoretically finite
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Or they're just the ones who don't know how to stop it.
What I would make a law is putting a switch exactly the same size and shape as the ignition key on the steering wheel, that actually does cut power to the engine.
It's absurd they can sell a car without some mechanical and obvious way to cut off the engine.
Erm, the brake is not really an 'input' to the cruise control system. The brake turn cruise control off.
It's entirely possibly that there is some 'repeated input' glitch going on, but all repeated brake input would do is turn it off repeatedly. (Which, obviously, is the same as turning it off once.)
The only way what you're describing could work is if the 'resume' was somehow stuck on, and repeatedly attempting to result, which a) one bug sorta like what Woz described, except in a different control, and not really working the same way, plus b) an entirely different bug, probably mechanically, that wedged the button on.
So I don't think we should assume that Woz's 'bug' has anything to do with any hypothetical bugs anyone else experienced, or that it is even, technically speaking, a 'bug' at all...he did push the button a bunch of times, and it did accelerate.
I don't think any cruise control promises that it will accelerate consistently, that it will take six times as long to accelerate six increases as one increase. It could be argued it _should_ do that, but that doesn't make failure to do so some sort of bug, just a misdesign. In fact, that could actually be seen as a feature....if you push repeatedly, you're in some sort of hurry.
All the times my car has run out of fuel I've made it safely to the ground, so I'm not sure what you're trying to imply there. In fact, I've never operated my car off the ground.
Possibly you're confusing them with helicopters. Although those can indeed glide to the ground, just not very well.
Drivers already have a way to disable their vehicle - the ignition switch.
Forget driver's licenses...how about poster licenses, where people have to answer basic questions before making idiotic fucking comments?
The push-button cars HAVE NO IGNITION SWITCHES.
That is, in fact, the entire point of the post you're replying to. There is no way to cut the power, except for secret 'hold the start button for four seconds' method, which no one knows, and is obviously not that useful in emergencies anyway.
Of course, the solution isn't a 'emergency button'.
The solution is to put a fucking switch that rotates counterclockwise on the right side of the steering wheel that cuts power to the engine, exactly in the same place, and exactly the same way, as an ignition switch, like everyone has, as you put it, been trained to do. On a push button car, it would not have a removable key in it, and would stay 'on' basically all the time, but it would be exactly where everyone already knows it is.
To be fair, the correct response of an out of control acceleration is to cut the engine, not shift to neutral. It will stop you faster as momentum now has to fight the engine, and it won't risk any transmission problems. (Engines are designed to be cut off when running...as that is, obviously, how you're supposed to turn them off anyway. Automatic transmissions are not 'designed' to be shifted to neutral while running, although it usually won't hurt.)
Also, if your engine was out of control, you'd feel pretty stupid if it caught fire while you were stopping. Just turn the damn thing off, and leave it in gear if you want to stop quick, and put it neutral if you don't. (Like you're trying to get out of the road.)
And, yes, your power brakes will have enough power in them to use them to stop. Your power brakes have enough power in them to stop the car once, always, so unless you're stupid and let the stopped car then coast down a hill, you're fine. Of course, you can stop the car without power brakes, I'm just pointing out the 'power' won't run out until after enough 'brakage' has provided to stop the car anyway. Power brakes are a red herring here.
And don't attempt to break with the handbrake unless you really need to stop this very second. I suspect that was implied, but I thought I'd mention it anyway. The car will stop pretty quickly fighting an engine, and throwing the handbrake at even moderate speeds is a good way to go into a skid, as evidenced by every driving movie ever made...your handbrake does not have anti-lock.
In this specific case, if they decide to cut the engine, it's entirely possible that they didn't know how, because for some reason, the US government lets companies build push-start cars without obvious mechanical 'cut off the engine' buttons. You have to hold the button for four second, and have fun doing that while dodging drivers...if you happen to know that secret, that is.
But, anyway, they should have gone to 'shift to neutral' as a fallback position, so I don't understand that either. I don't understand anyone who gets 'trapped' in an accelerating car.
There's about ten seconds of danger as the car starts going crazy that I can see involving fatal accidents, and obviously people can get hit by other cars after they cut off the engine but are, for example, in the middle of the express way, trying to make it to the side on momentum...
I think that all cars should have, mandated by law, a physical engine switch on the right side of the steering wheel, that you rotate counter-clockwise to turn off the engine.
For non-push-start cars, this would be the actual key itself.
For push-start cars, it's just be a switch, with roughly the same amount of force needed as a key, and stays on all the time, and you can utterly ignore it. But when you need to turn the car off, you know where it fucking is.
Instead of these cars, which you apparently had to hold the button down four second to get the car to cut off.
I hope everyone a) bothered to learn that in advance, and b) had an extra four second to spare.
It's absurd they're allowed to sell cars like that.
That's nothing. Fun fact on my 92 Sunbird: If I move the gearshift to neutral while under cruise control, the engine will explode, or at least revved insanely until I panicked and turn it off, as the CC attempts to accelerate a car that cannot, in fact, be accelerated. (I have a floor gearshift, I discovered that by accident one day when I knocked myself out of gear.)
It really seems like auto engineers don't test edge cases, especially with electronic systems.
It's not helped by damn stupid cruise control systems that attempt to use four buttons for something that should take more.
At this point, cruise controls should have a on/off switch, with temporary resume position. One switch, three positions, with 'start' being temporary and sliding back to 'on' when released. Like a car ignition itself has on/off, and a 'start'.
And they should additionally have a use-current-speed/faster/slower control to set the speed, which should preferably actually be displayed somewhere. Either three buttons, or a knob for faster and slower, and push to set to current.
Any idiot could understand those two groups of controls.
Instead, they try to insane crowd that into four buttons. Is this 'resume', or 'faster'? Is this 'slower', or 'set'? Who knows, it depends on when you use it! Why would we need clear controls to manage the damn speed of the car?
Climate controls have the same problem. The only control that makes sense there is 'fan', all the rest is nonsense. Why are there three AC options with different names, why are there 'heat' options that can cool the car? Why is there a slider with eight positions on it?
Most importantly, why the fuck is it labeled 'max AC' so people use it when they get in the hot car, when in actuality it's to recirculate and they should use it all the time except when the inside of the car is hotter than the outside?
Look, there's a fucking input, output, and what you do to the air. Give me a button to select inside input (as opposed to the outside default), give me a damn slider that is shades from heat (which is really engine air) to nothing (Which is just recirculate) to cold (which flips on the compressor), and give me three output buttons for top, front, and floor, which I can push in any combination....and don't let me select the floor as the input and the output at the same time, so if I pick one pop up the other button. It's not damn rocket science, people's head's won't explode if you present the actual thing that is actually happening.
Oh, and obviously retain the 'fan speed' setting. I guess I should be lucky we actually still have that, and they haven't decided to somehow merge that into the different settings.
I swear to God, auto engineers...I would say they think we're idiots, but what they really think is that they, under no circumstances, should expose us to what is actually happening, so engineer giant systems we have to figure out to hide actually pretty simply systems that are identical among all cars and we'd easily understand if presented to us.
We should thank whatever deity we believe in that the damn steering wheel is mandated by law, because otherwise we'd have some cars with two levels on each side that we held one in each hand and had to push up and down like oars to steer...which would be connected to the exact same steering column that worked exactly the same way.
And of course, the very first word of that post is 'Indeed', where I'm agreeing with the previous post that flu shots are not needed, and that people shouldn't get them.
So clearly I meant that it shouldn't be legal to skip just some vaccines. Quite obviously there are ones I not only think it should be legal to skip, but that people should.
This is exactly the sort of shit you misinterpret, someone who says 'vaccines (meaning required ones that actually work and are functionally required by law for children already, at least if they wish to attend school, which is required by law) should not be legal to skip', even for adults, and you think that means 'everyone should have to take whatever vaccine is offered'.
You've decided that all mentions of 'vaccines' in this discussion and how important they are means all vaccines ever offered, and everyone is utterly opposed to not getting any of them, despite the fact you know for a fact that I, for example, don't think people should get swine flu or chicken pox vaccine.
This is exactly what happens when you've decided that both sides are crazy fanatics and you're the only sane person.
There are two sides to this issue: People who think vaccines are basically as safe as any medical procedure, and are overall a good idea and that 99% of the population should be vaccinated (With only, obviously, the vaccines that are useful, and skipping the people who this would make ill, but that's implied when talking about anything)...and goddamn lunatics who think they aren't safe.
There is no group of people who think that all vaccines are magical and everyone should have them all, and is unwilling to discuss specific vaccinations...or, if there is, they certainly aren't posting here, and I've never run across them. In fact, the article itself has two different discussions of whether or not specific vaccines are useful, including the one you just linked to.
I suspect you've only 'run across' people like that because you leap in swinging talking about you aren't pro-vaccine and how all pro-vaccine people are stupid, and they start defending 'vaccines', which in their head means 'vaccination in general', but you've now decided they're defending chicken pox vaccines also.
Which is bit like leaping into a discussion and asserting you aren't 'pro-roads' (because you don't want a certain bypass built near your house, but heaven forbid you mention that first), and when people point out that, without roads, we'll all starved to death in a matter or weeks, you assume they're shills of the construction industry or something.
You have the special sort of 'centrist fanaticism, where you essentially believe that most people are crazy, when you in actuality have demonstratively have near identical beliefs as most of them and have just chosen to interpret whatever they say as fanaticism one way or the other, where everyone a millimeter in either direction is crazy.
Yeah, and the same problem exists with the 'maybe it only happens when it's wet' hypothesis. Yeah, that might need less wind...OTOH, it would also need much less wind to erase the tracks.
There's not any way at all wind can move 100 pound things along the ground, but leave two little ridges down the trail where the sand was pushed away. Not to mention failing to smooth the other sand, around the rock.
No one's actually measured them moving, have they?
Of course, the theory that the trails are caused by something else is also a bit of a non-starter. If they're being caused by something else, they must actually start at a rock, or the fact all the trails end at rocks is incredibly unlikely.
But then the trails wander in random directions, so it can't be the wind or something like that.
So they can tell when in the year they're at.
That's very useful for planting and floods and whatnot. You can't figure out when to do stuff if you don't know when you are.
The only other option is to just count days, and that's very hard, and even harder when you haven't invented useful numbers or place values yet. Back then, they'd have numbers from one to twenty or whatever, and that was essentially it. If they were lucky they could count moons, but the moons do not divide evenly into the year so that doesn't work well.
But once they notice that shadows move back and forth, they can do what the GP said, stick up a pole and mark the summer and winter solstice with essential no work at all, and then mark 10 rocks across or something. And they could just look at it, and figure out that, despite it being cooler already, they shouldn't plant yet, it just got cooler early this year, and it's still 'five rocks' or whatever to solstice, and they're supposed to plant at four. (Or even put some sort of carved symbol at exactly the right place that means 'plant'.)
The left and the right, if you go far enough, do not believe in a form of government we would recognize as government.
And, under certain conditions, these things meet each other, especially in the 'we don't need a hierarchy, just local stuff'.
If you go to the far right and far left of those ideas, you essentially end up with anarchy. The far left thinks we'll all live in self-governing hippy communes, whereas the far right thinks we'll all live in...well, essentially the same thing, except they'll be smaller, with more trade between them.
And arguing about the origin of words is idiotic. And technically, -cracy means 'ruler', not 'government'. (Hence you can live in a plutocracy or a bureaucracy without those people actually being 'the government', as long as they 'run things'.)
And no rulers would technically be acracy or discracy. Discracy if you're thinking of it as 'the absence of rulers', acracy if you're thinking of it as 'the opposite of being ruled'.
Anocracy is a stupid half-German bastardization, and is just as silly a word as anarchy.
Australia and the UK are both part of the same Commonwealth.
Under the law, Australian citizens are treated essentially as UK citizens. Assange could even vote there if he lived there for a bit.
The idea that you can't use funds to 'release' people is idiotic.
All you have to do is issue new orders saying 'Under no circumstances should you attempt to stop these people from escaping.', and at some point their detainee's lawyers will tell someone, at which point there will be a mass escape.
Alternately, the US could simply let volunteers take a boat in and release them.
While Congress is actually a bit stronger than we like to pretend it is, and the executive branch is actually weaken...Congress cannot require that the executive branch hold prisoners, period. Only the courts can require that.
Congress couldn't even list prisoners and require the executive hold them...that's a bill of attainer.
All Congress can do is pass laws, and have prisoners convicted of them, which is, obviously, not what's happening.
If you've never seen the movie 'The Mouse that Roared', go find it.
Basically, a microscopic European country of a few thousand people, after a economic disaster, realizes that countries that the US defeats in battle are actually better off than countries that it did not fight, thanks to all the aid it gives out.
So this tiny country, armed with pikes and swords, declares war on the US and invades New York, and already have their surrender prepared.
And, because this is a movie, they accidentally win the war, of course.
Any support of people would be seen as US meddling. Under no circumstances should we say 'Yeah, this guy would be a nice leader', or supply any specific people support.
Providing internet and cell service probably would be okay, though. Pressuring Mubarak to step down would probably be okay too, as long as we aren't attempting to replace him. (Which, sadly, we are, with our very own torturer.)
We have threatened to cut off military aid if the military is used against protesters, which a) helps keep protesters from being killed,and b) keeps open the possibility of some sort of orderly transition under the military. No matter how much we dislike military coups, a military coup is nicer than one with violence against the military, and the military is amazingly professional and seems willing to make sure that democracy 'returns'. (Or, rather, shows up in fact and not just fiction.)
We cannot choose the people leading the middle east, period, and we need to stop. If we want middle east countries to like us, we have to, you know, do things they like.
Of course, the elephant in the room at this point is Israel.
That fact is, the crazy 'pro-vaccine' people do lump anyone that dares question even one vaccine into the crazy 'anti-vaccine' group. These people can frequently get vicious, as they believe that anyone who chooses not to get even one vaccine is a child abusing murderer.
Really? You've been posting on this discussion for days? Why don't you show where such people have said something like that?
Oh, that's right, you've decided to take an idiotic 'middle road' and pretend you're persecuted by both sides, despite the fact that 99% of the people are there, with a wackjob 1% staking out the anti-vaccine side and no one staking out the ground you like to imagine is standing there making you a fucking martyr b because you don't want to get a single vaccine.
Get over yourself.
In this thread, you discuss it rationally, but in other threads, you just resort to name calling if someone doesn't just support vaccines as a group.
No, I act exactly how everyone here acts....that people who oppose 'vaccines' a anti-science fools who result in dead people are crazy lunatics, whereas people who oppose a specific vaccine for well-reasoned and scientific reasons is sane and either right or wrong.
That's called 'rational'.
This is basically how everyone here thinks (Except the anti-vaccine idiots), and yet you have to hallucinate that somehow there's a group of people who say 'Everyone should get all vaccines for their kids or they're horrible evil people', just so you can be lone voice of reason.
Like I said, put up or shut up. This story was posted 2 days ago. Why don't you find some of those people calling people who are opposed to a single vaccine evil people.
Hell, Penn and Teller are wrongly opposed to swine flu vaccine, and yet when they were lumped in with anti-vaccine people posters here leaped to their defense, pointing out that being wrong about one vaccine doesn't make one anti-vaccine.
Because I, like many Americans, don't go to 'the clinic' for anything, as I do not have health insurance that would cover that.
As Penn and Teller pointed out, even if vaccines cause autism, which they don't, but if they did...autism is still better than dying of measles.
Statistically, 1.5% of the population has autism, so, statistically, even if vaccines caused two-thirds of all autism, (which is just pure craziness) that's a 1% chance of autism after all vaccines. (The amount of the population non-vaccinated is statistically insignificant.)
Even if 'dying' and 'catching autism' are rated the same, that make it fifteen times better to get vaccinated, as measles has a 15% morality rate.
But, wait, the MMR is three vaccines. Mumps is not very fatal, only 1.6%, although that stil manages to have a higher mortality rate than a theoretically possible autism rate. And rubella has an incredibly high mortality rate, like 50%, in young children who get it, or in the unborn whose mother got it while pregnant. (Although the average mortality is obviously much lower, as most people are not young children and do fine.)
But, wait. Presumably those 1% of autism are caused by all vaccines. I mean, the population isn't just getting MMRs vaccines. They're getting stuff like tetanus vaccines, which has a 45% mortality rate.
So, you can either be vaccinated, and pretending these idiots are 100% correct, have a 1% chance of getting autism...or you can face a dozen different diseases which have probably, on average, a 20% mortality rate.
Now, to be fair, people might never get each of those diseases. But, statistically, if they aren't vaccinated at all, they'll probably get one of them, at which point that single disease has a much higher risk of death than a vaccine could even hypothetically cause autism. Or at least have a 10% chance of getting one them, which is still twice likely to cause death, vs. getting autism from vaccines, in under this hypothetical.
Anti-vaccine people are asserting that almost everyone who dies in a car accident becomes trapped in their car and that's why they end up dead...so they're going to hurtle down the road sitting on top of vehicles instead. Even if they were right about the first thing (Which they are not.), um, their idea of 'safety' is demonstrable much much much less safer.
Plus, forget herd immunity...vaccines are the only way to get rid of diseases so we don't have to vaccinate for them anymore.
We can't stop that while 2% of morons keeps passing diseases around between each other.
Right now, we're almost eliminated polio...except there are religious wackjobs in Nigeria who apparently don't like vaccines.
So, every few years, polio outbreaks spread from there to neighboring countries.
If you can prove that two positive integers, when multiplied together, cannot be end up smaller than the largest starting integer, you can simply test by squaring all positive integers from 1 to 2 to see if they fit. Which is obviously a pretty quick test. 1^2!=2, and 2^2!=2. ;)
So I suspect the person who posted the original problem meant 'no rational number', because it's pretty easy to prove there are no integer roots of a number...it's basically the same as proving that a number is prime. You just test all integers less than it, and tada. (Obviously, there are faster ways, but the brute force is the 'proof', although for primes you just have to test all lower primes.)
But you obviously can't test all 'rational' numbers less than it. There are infinite rational numbers between any two numbers, but a finite amount of integers.
Now, if you can prove that all numbers only have two real roots, you can just magically 'find' them both and test them and discover they're not a integer. (And one of them isn't even positive, obviously, so is doubly out.) But I don't know that's actually been proven or is accepted as an axiom.
A better example is the four-color map theorem. This basically states that you can take a map, aka, a bunch of random shapes that touch each other, and color them using four colors such that no shapes that touch each other are the same color. No one's ever figured out how to mathematically prove that.
However, they did manage to 'prove a negative' simply by testing every possible combination of shapes, which obviously had to wait until computers got invented. So now it's proven, in the sense that no such map can exist, although we still don't know 'why'.
But you can only do that when the search space is finite. (And even then you might not be able to do it.)
The search space for 'ways this might harm humans', which finite in theory, is infinite, and even unknown, in practice. No one can prove something does not harm someone.
The fact that one vaccine, by doing exactly what it's stated to do, is harmful because adults won't get boosters and thus actually get the disease when it's much worse for them...
Objecting to one vaccine for actual logical reasons does not place you in the anti-vaccine camp.
The fact that kooks are 99% wrong doesn't mean you need to feel you've been attacked when you mention the 1% where they happen, via sheer unrelated chance, to be correct. Don't fall for that. If someone claims you are in that camp, disagree with them.
It's like 9/11 truthers. I'd actually like a investigation of the rather surreal response the Federal government had to the attacks...why the hell did the secret service leave Bush where he was for so long, utterly undefended from, oh, planes crashing through the roof, for example? Who made that stupid call? And other stuff, like who let the members of the Saudi royal family leave? (I'd just like that stated openly, I doubt it will actually tell us anything, I'd just like that blatant fact out there.)
I have actual real questions...but I'm not a goddamn Truther. The actual planes did actually crash into the actual WTC and Pentagon and whatnot, and, no one in the government knew it would happen. The fact that Truthers sometime happen to mention the same things I ask is just a stopped clock being right twice a day.
Don't think you have to extend the anti-vax crowd to include you, and then defend your aspect of it. You're not anti-vax. People who are anti-vaccine think the vaccines themselves cause some random secret harm (How they cause that harm constantly changes.)
Whereas you just think one particular vaccine is stupid, because it doing what it's supposed to do is exactly unhelpful.
Penn and Teller are the same way about the swine flu vaccine. They're actually wrong, they don't really understand how the flu affects people, but they are wrong a well-reasoned (from bad facts) non-pseudo-science way, and aren't 'anti-vaccine'. They're wrong in the 'taking the surface streets will be faster' way, not the 'automobiles are a government conspiracy and everyone can really teleport' way, which is where the anti-vaccine people are.
If the anti-vaccine people think mercury in vaccines is causing autism, which do you think will be better for bringing them over to be in favor of vaccines. Mocking their misinformation, and calling them a psuedo-science cult, or calmly pointing out that there is not mercury in vaccines with a suggestion on where they can verify it?
It is not my job to point out obvious flaws in other people's arguments.
It is the job of the goddamn media. It is the job of goddamn Oprah. It is the job of the goddamn idiots who give them air time in the first place.
Moreover, this shit has been pointed out, over and over.
GODDAMN FUCKING IMBECILES ARE WASTING SO MUCH OF SOCIETY'S TIME AND EFFORT BECAUSE THEY DO NOT DO THE SLIGHTEST BIT OF RESEARCH.
That is not 'my' job to do their fucking research. It is the job of the shitheads who give them airtime or newspaper columns.
You can prove a negative when the list of possibilities is small.
But when the question is 'causes harm to humans', there are so many possible ways to do that, with many of them nearly undetectable for years, and frankly we don't know how humans work very well anyway...
So it's essentially impossible to prove something does 'no harm'. About all that is left is statistical methods, where we say 'groups of people who have this done to them appear to have no added medical problems'.
Which is, of course, true of vaccines...statistically, there's no difference in autism with people who've had them and haven't.
What 'you can't prove a negative' actually means is that 'you can't prove an absence'. Obviously, any statement can be stated as either a positive or negative assertions.
What people mean by that is that you cannot prove that nothing in an infinitely wide, or even just very wide but measurable, search space does not have attribute X.
Which is not, strictly speaking, correct. We manage to prove the four-color map theorem by trying every map via computer, and proving that none of them took five colors, that such a map did not exist. It took computers to get to the point we could do that.
Likewise, it's easy to prove there are no even prime number between 3 and 10,000. That's proving an absence, but the search space is small enough to check enough.
However, a lot of time the space is infinite, or so close to it makes no difference. Like how a human body can be 'harmed', which is not only hindered by the amount of ways to cause harm, but the fact we don't really know what it's supposed to look like exactly at any moment in time, and the fact we cannot disassemble a person to see if they were harmed.
It is functionally impossible to prove that something did not harm someone, despite that search space being theoretically finite