Part of the problem is the US light change sequence that gives you no indication at all of when the light will change to green.
I much prefer the UK sequence that goes: Green, Amber, Red, Red + Amber, Green. The additional red+amber still counts as a red in that you are not permitted to start moving, but it gives you an extra second or so to notice that the light is about to go green so you can be ready when it does. It won't prevent completely distracted drivers from missing a light change but it definitely seems to reduce the number of times a traffic queue will just sit there on green.
Other countries go further and have countdown timers for the drivers so you know exactly how long you have before the light changes from red to green which is even more helpful, albeit dispiriting when the countdown starts at several hundred seconds
Well said.
I would add the caveat that "actually passing someone" means doing so in a reasonably short time. If you are unwilling or unable to do more than inch past the car in front at a glacial pace you should suck it up and wait for a break in traffic in the passing lane before attempting to do so.
This goes treble for lorries/semis on long uphill sections with only 2 lanes each way!
I can certainly appreciate the argument for basing it on the number of kids in a given year (with possible adjustments if someone leaves/arrives part-way through the year), but I'm still not sure I understand why it makes sense to dock funding when a child skips a day. Is this intended to be an anti-truancy measure?
One thing that is not accounted for in this information is that it assumes perfect attendance. For every day that a student is not on campus in class, the school loses money. A parent who pulls their kid from school to make a long weekend or to make Thanksgiving a week long vacation instead of the 4-5 day weekend that most schools take is taking money out of the hands of the school.
The school's funding depends on the number of kids attending on a given day? Wha?
That seems like a pretty daft system to me. Surely a school has to plan (and hence pay for) its resource allocations based on the number of kids who could be in a class. It's not like if little Johnny has the sniffles they can temporarily give his seat to another kid for a couple of days - what would his replacement do for the rest of the year?
What justification is given for doing it this way?
Some of the plates complained about require a fair stretch of the imagination to be considered offensive. How many people would really interpret "6Q-2Q" as "Fuck You"?
I'm very amused that some of the complainers feel the need to include painstaking definitions of words such as "fellate". It shows a wonderful lack of confidence in the DMV employees.
The 'magical' obstacles include slow drivers suddenly pulling out close in front of a faster moving vehicle without indicating or apparently checking their mirrors, and collisions or misjudgements ahead that result in the car in front braking hard. Less typically, it has also included a deer stepping out from behind a bridge pillar in the central reservation into the inner two lanes then freezing and a truck shedding its load of tyres - no magic required for an unexpected stationary blockage of the road.
Two seconds is the following distance at which you are most likely to be killed. That it makes you feel better doesn't make it any more safe. The importance of this statistic depends entirely on the relative probabilities of being killed by being hit from behind and that of being injured / suffering car damage. Trading a small increase in a small probability of being killed for a larger decrease in the much larger probability of being injured seems entirely reasonable.
I'm sure a 3 second gap would be even safer (reduction in both probabilities), but there are limits to what gap you can maintain without it being taken as an invitation to cut in. 1.5-2 second gaps are a compromise that so far have allowed me to escape several collisions that would have been inevitable if I or the person behind had been tailgating.
I appreciate the logic behind your argument, but I don't think it takes the whole picture into account. If you have similar statistics to show that on balance all forms of loss are reduced by following closer then by all means prove me wrong, but until then I'll put more stock in my personal experience.
(Of course, if I'm killed in a car accident I reserve the right to change my mind:)
I have often encountered the use of hazard lights as a thank you in England as well, and it is a nice alternative to waving as it's easier to see at night and safer to do while turning/manoeuvring.
I've not seen it used in the US so far, but I guess the lack of colour differentiation between blinker/hazard lights and brake lights on the back of many American cars makes it more ambiguous.
OTH compared to the scale of damage done to the world by neo-cons and their wars of aggression it's infinitesimal in its impact. Kicking your dog in the nuts would also be infinitesimal in impact compared to the damage inflicted by any war, but it is just as unjustified as trashing local businesses because you disagree with the behaviour of your government.
Think about that. Someone is following at 1 inch behind you. You slam on the brakes. What's the impact speed difference? They hit you with a difference of less than 1 mph. That's not going to even leave a mark on the bumper. Sure, they will then essentially be pushing you toward whatever you were braking for, but they aren't going to damage you at all. ... until you hit the obstacle in front at which point your car gets crushed between the two
The two second gap gives the driver behind a chance to react to your brake lights (and even the situation you are braking for) and also slow down. Being tailgated guarantees that suddenly having to brake will lead to a collision of some sort, and being shunted from behind will break your traction with the road reducing your control AND ability to slow down which makes it more likely you will hit what you were trying to avoid, only this time with the car behind pushing you.
Having a greater gap also gives you some time to notice that the car behind is not braking and modify your actions, either reducing your braking rate if there is still space to give them more time to notice or making an emergency lane change to get out of the way. When this happened to me I was very glad to have time to slow down enough to swerve onto the shoulder safely and avoid any contact with either car rather than immediately get hit from behind.
Q: Why do Skodas have heated rear windows?
A: To warm your hands as you push them.
Not sure what the modern butt of all the unreliable car jokes should be now that Skoda is owned by VW and seems to be building decent cars. Possibly the Renault Megane due to its wonderful electrical system - more than one friend noticed that if their cellphone rang while on the centre console it caused all the dashboard lights to go crazy.
Indeed. What exactly is the point of a short-term printout that you can't make notes on?
I'm genuinely struggling to think of a use for it unless you have a really strong objection to reading things on a monitor, in which case an e-ink display seems a more practical solution.
No need for facy new technology to achieve that - just try the Picadilly line in rush hour on a hot day and you too can experience the joys of 100
different scents combining.
It's a pretty safe bet that Mr Fossett's estate was much larger than any remaining debts, unless he's been financing all these adventures with a shoebox full of credit cards and just claiming to be rich.
or catching the computer when it is sleeping That conjures up the wonderful image of a 'Genius' trying to sneak up on a MacBook on tiptoe to avoid waking it.
That said, I've never investigated playing Serious Sam in split screen mode - how do the controls work? Is it possible to play with 2 mouse/keyboard setups or do you have to use joypads for the additional players?
Serious Sam is also to be recommended for being one of the few FPSs I've encountered that has a co-op mode. Whack up the number of monsters and jump in for a few hours of mayhem.
It sticks to the same basic formula of blasting waves of monsters throughout the game but it's still very good fun, and it works much better than deathmatch when there is a big disparity in skill between the players. Pwning your partner 40-0 with your mad railgun skills may be hilarious to you, but it's probably not a recipe for marital harmony or repeated playing of that game.
Does anyone have any other co-op FPS recommendations for the PC (or a console if it's good enough to be worth getting one for)?
Guess what? It's already too late. We are ALL born with genes that guarantee our bodies and minds will give out, just like every human who ever lived.
By attempting your plan to breed out genes predisposing someone to a certain group of diseases you run straight into the next set of natural weaknesses, at best gaining a minor increase in life expectancy that can easily be negated by smoking, drinking, eating red meat or simply a driver looking the wrong way at an intersection (and any number of other activities that people engage in on a daily basis - would you ban these too?)
What if a particular race was less genetically disposed to the diseases you list - does this mean every other ethnic group is unfit to procreate? It's entirely possible you have genes that would predispose your children to certain diseases - would you stand behind your idea and keep it in your pants for the good of future generations?
This is all before addressing the moral repugnance of forcing your eugenic standards on the rest of the population. If you want to choose your partner based on the results of genetic screening, have at it - I hope you and your master race of offspring are very happy. However, who are you to choose whether I or anyone else are permitted to procreate based on ANY criterion, let alone something as nebulous as having a gene that may increase the chance of possibly contracting a particular disease one day, assuming that all the research is infallible?
Unless this is just an interface for the rough and ready position estimation that is already in use for google maps on the iPhone. It's great for a good guess, but outclassed by GPS for precision/reliability.
One company I visited have a compromise where visitors who have camera-phones are allowed to bring them in as long as they have been security-sealed in a semi-opaque plastic bag that is supposed to obstruct the taking of photos.
I have no idea whether it is effective at achieving this, but trying to hold a conversation over an bad international line with your phone wrapped in a crinkling plastic bag borders on the farcical. Every time you move in the slightest the bag noise drowns out the conversation, and even if you can remain absolutely still the thick layer of plastic cuts the volume both ways to a mumble.
That only works if they are found to be throttling infringing traffic more than non-infringing traffic. It doesn't prejudice their neutral status to heavily throttle (for example) all traffic using the bittorrent protocol as they can reasonably claim that the decision was made purely based on bandwidth criteria. Inspecting the packets to determine the protocol doesn't require making a judgement about the legality of the contents.
Having to deal with less hassle from the copyright enforcers is of course a nice benefit for the ISP if they throttle protocols with high incidences of infringement but they're equally penalising those customers who use them to do nothing but download legitimate content.
Slashdot Mirror
Part of the problem is the US light change sequence that gives you no indication at all of when the light will change to green.
I much prefer the UK sequence that goes: Green, Amber, Red, Red + Amber, Green. The additional red+amber still counts as a red in that you are not permitted to start moving, but it gives you an extra second or so to notice that the light is about to go green so you can be ready when it does. It won't prevent completely distracted drivers from missing a light change but it definitely seems to reduce the number of times a traffic queue will just sit there on green.
Other countries go further and have countdown timers for the drivers so you know exactly how long you have before the light changes from red to green which is even more helpful, albeit dispiriting when the countdown starts at several hundred seconds
Well said. I would add the caveat that "actually passing someone" means doing so in a reasonably short time. If you are unwilling or unable to do more than inch past the car in front at a glacial pace you should suck it up and wait for a break in traffic in the passing lane before attempting to do so. This goes treble for lorries/semis on long uphill sections with only 2 lanes each way!
I can certainly appreciate the argument for basing it on the number of kids in a given year (with possible adjustments if someone leaves/arrives part-way through the year), but I'm still not sure I understand why it makes sense to dock funding when a child skips a day. Is this intended to be an anti-truancy measure?
One thing that is not accounted for in this information is that it assumes perfect attendance. For every day that a student is not on campus in class, the school loses money. A parent who pulls their kid from school to make a long weekend or to make Thanksgiving a week long vacation instead of the 4-5 day weekend that most schools take is taking money out of the hands of the school.
The school's funding depends on the number of kids attending on a given day? Wha?
That seems like a pretty daft system to me. Surely a school has to plan (and hence pay for) its resource allocations based on the number of kids who could be in a class. It's not like if little Johnny has the sniffles they can temporarily give his seat to another kid for a couple of days - what would his replacement do for the rest of the year?
What justification is given for doing it this way?
Some of the plates complained about require a fair stretch of the imagination to be considered offensive. How many people would really interpret "6Q-2Q" as "Fuck You"?
I'm very amused that some of the complainers feel the need to include painstaking definitions of words such as "fellate". It shows a wonderful lack of confidence in the DMV employees.
I'm sure a 3 second gap would be even safer (reduction in both probabilities), but there are limits to what gap you can maintain without it being taken as an invitation to cut in. 1.5-2 second gaps are a compromise that so far have allowed me to escape several collisions that would have been inevitable if I or the person behind had been tailgating.
I appreciate the logic behind your argument, but I don't think it takes the whole picture into account. If you have similar statistics to show that on balance all forms of loss are reduced by following closer then by all means prove me wrong, but until then I'll put more stock in my personal experience.
(Of course, if I'm killed in a car accident I reserve the right to change my mind
I have often encountered the use of hazard lights as a thank you in England as well, and it is a nice alternative to waving as it's easier to see at night and safer to do while turning/manoeuvring.
I've not seen it used in the US so far, but I guess the lack of colour differentiation between blinker/hazard lights and brake lights on the back of many American cars makes it more ambiguous.
The two second gap gives the driver behind a chance to react to your brake lights (and even the situation you are braking for) and also slow down. Being tailgated guarantees that suddenly having to brake will lead to a collision of some sort, and being shunted from behind will break your traction with the road reducing your control AND ability to slow down which makes it more likely you will hit what you were trying to avoid, only this time with the car behind pushing you.
Having a greater gap also gives you some time to notice that the car behind is not braking and modify your actions, either reducing your braking rate if there is still space to give them more time to notice or making an emergency lane change to get out of the way. When this happened to me I was very glad to have time to slow down enough to swerve onto the shoulder safely and avoid any contact with either car rather than immediately get hit from behind.
As the old joke goes:
Q: Why do Skodas have heated rear windows?
A: To warm your hands as you push them.
Not sure what the modern butt of all the unreliable car jokes should be now that Skoda is owned by VW and seems to be building decent cars. Possibly the Renault Megane due to its wonderful electrical system - more than one friend noticed that if their cellphone rang while on the centre console it caused all the dashboard lights to go crazy.
Indeed. What exactly is the point of a short-term printout that you can't make notes on?
I'm genuinely struggling to think of a use for it unless you have a really strong objection to reading things on a monitor, in which case an e-ink display seems a more practical solution.
In A3 sheet size? That's some Camberwell carrot you're planning on rolling.
No need for facy new technology to achieve that - just try the Picadilly line in rush hour on a hot day and you too can experience the joys of 100 different scents combining.
It's a pretty safe bet that Mr Fossett's estate was much larger than any remaining debts, unless he's been financing all these adventures with a shoebox full of credit cards and just claiming to be rich.
Even with such resources, I am interested to know how the GP proposes one should shift one's local loop termination to a remote location.
Although as the failover is stateful you still won't get any until you take out the trash.
That said, I've never investigated playing Serious Sam in split screen mode - how do the controls work? Is it possible to play with 2 mouse/keyboard setups or do you have to use joypads for the additional players?
Serious Sam is also to be recommended for being one of the few FPSs I've encountered that has a co-op mode. Whack up the number of monsters and jump in for a few hours of mayhem.
It sticks to the same basic formula of blasting waves of monsters throughout the game but it's still very good fun, and it works much better than deathmatch when there is a big disparity in skill between the players. Pwning your partner 40-0 with your mad railgun skills may be hilarious to you, but it's probably not a recipe for marital harmony or repeated playing of that game.
Does anyone have any other co-op FPS recommendations for the PC (or a console if it's good enough to be worth getting one for)?
Guess what? It's already too late. We are ALL born with genes that guarantee our bodies and minds will give out, just like every human who ever lived.
By attempting your plan to breed out genes predisposing someone to a certain group of diseases you run straight into the next set of natural weaknesses, at best gaining a minor increase in life expectancy that can easily be negated by smoking, drinking, eating red meat or simply a driver looking the wrong way at an intersection (and any number of other activities that people engage in on a daily basis - would you ban these too?)
What if a particular race was less genetically disposed to the diseases you list - does this mean every other ethnic group is unfit to procreate? It's entirely possible you have genes that would predispose your children to certain diseases - would you stand behind your idea and keep it in your pants for the good of future generations?
This is all before addressing the moral repugnance of forcing your eugenic standards on the rest of the population. If you want to choose your partner based on the results of genetic screening, have at it - I hope you and your master race of offspring are very happy. However, who are you to choose whether I or anyone else are permitted to procreate based on ANY criterion, let alone something as nebulous as having a gene that may increase the chance of possibly contracting a particular disease one day, assuming that all the research is infallible?
Unless this is just an interface for the rough and ready position estimation that is already in use for google maps on the iPhone. It's great for a good guess, but outclassed by GPS for precision/reliability.
One company I visited have a compromise where visitors who have camera-phones are allowed to bring them in as long as they have been security-sealed in a semi-opaque plastic bag that is supposed to obstruct the taking of photos.
I have no idea whether it is effective at achieving this, but trying to hold a conversation over an bad international line with your phone wrapped in a crinkling plastic bag borders on the farcical. Every time you move in the slightest the bag noise drowns out the conversation, and even if you can remain absolutely still the thick layer of plastic cuts the volume both ways to a mumble.
The reason behind this is explained here http://slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml#cm1800.
That only works if they are found to be throttling infringing traffic more than non-infringing traffic. It doesn't prejudice their neutral status to heavily throttle (for example) all traffic using the bittorrent protocol as they can reasonably claim that the decision was made purely based on bandwidth criteria. Inspecting the packets to determine the protocol doesn't require making a judgement about the legality of the contents.
Having to deal with less hassle from the copyright enforcers is of course a nice benefit for the ISP if they throttle protocols with high incidences of infringement but they're equally penalising those customers who use them to do nothing but download legitimate content.