In most places, lights are timed to control the speed and movement of cars. The lights end up not being timed for cyclists at most speeds. In my city, I spend more time at lights while driving then while riding. Using side streets makes less of a difference on speed for cyclists than it does for cars, so I typically take much less congested routes while riding. Off-road paths also diminishes times spent near exhaust. Cars do have air filters, but they pull in air from behind the car in front of them and what gets in is slow to get out, so fumes are worse in cars than out of them.
And when cars are backed up for miles at rush hour and cannot move even when the light is green, you bet I am going to (safely) run the red lights instead of siting in line with a bunch of huge vehicles holding one person each all trying to get through the same small bottleneck.
They probably aren't allowed to ignore street signals, but they do, since they likely feel entitled to do so.
They do when it is safer to do so, which it frequently is in places with poorly designed infrastructure.
Before someone goes on about how it is not fair that cyclists expect drivers to obey the law but do not obey it themselves. . .
The laws were written to protect people from cars. Cars running red lights are dangerous. Cyclists running red lights hurt people extremely rarely, and even then it was not somebody who was riding safely, it was some brakeless hipster riding like an idiot. Drivers are apt to try what they think they can get away with because their cars protect them. Cyclists running red lights know that they are unprotected out there and do so carefully.
As a cyclist, it is much safer for me to run a light when nobody is coming then to sit in a left turn lane as cars pass inches from my right. It is safer for me to jump a light if I have to switch lanes ahead than to try to do it while being passed. Also, I do not want to sit there and breath the exhaust coming from your smelly polluting machine spewing out noxious fumes while not even going anywhere.
And cyclists have much better visibility than drivers.
It has nothing to do with feelings of entitlement.
Change when you get to work if you get too sweaty. Putting a change of clothes in a bag is not hard.
most people aren't in shape to win the Iron Man marathon
I was not in very good shape when I started biking 10 miles to work. It took me more than an hour at first, and I changed when I got there. Now I can do that distance in 45 minutes and not need to change, or in 30 and be soaked and out of breath. If you think you cannot do it, look at this guy.
Pick up keys, get in car sitting outside, notice check engine light is on, call the shop to schedule an appointment that will cost you $1273.39, drive to store, spend 40% of your time sitting at stop lights breathing in car exhaust, stop at the gas station, wait five minutes, shut off car, swipe card, read error, swipe again, pump gas, get back in car, continue driving/sitting at lights, circle parking lot 7 times trying to get a spot, walk across lot, get backed into by someone backing out, yell and swear, get bread and products for the next new diet fat (can't understand why still fat, these products all claim weight loss without exercise), walk back out to car, find dent in door from shopping cart, drive/sit at lights back home, pay car insurance bill.
Pick up keys, get bike from garage, ride to store, chat with pretty girl on bike with flowers in her basket at stop light, park at the bike racks right up front, lock, get bread, unlock, ride home.
Mass transit is better suited to the higher population densities of European cities, much of the USA is too spread out.
We can only cover three quarters of the population economically, I guess we better not bother at all.
Part of the problem is not population density but urban layout - we have designed our cities for cars and not walking, cycling, and mass transit. The sooner we try to fix it the better.
You can't bike when its 40 below zero wind chill, or on snow and ice.
Yes you can. Many people do. They make bikes, clothes, and accessories for this purpose.
(and parts of the south are too hot.)
People manage to bike in third-world and developing countries in the tropics. Take a nice easy pace and it is no more strenuous than walking, and you create for yourself a nice breeze.
Cluster at the application level and have nodes at different providers. If your volume is too high for that, you are big enough to host your own stuff.
Population density is not the problem. I lived in a small town (2000 residents) spread out over several square miles, but I could walk to the post office, grocery store, gas station, school, church, doctor, and several restaurants. I have lived in densly populated areas where I had to travel miles by road (but much less as the crow flies) to get anything except apartments and houses.
If you zone one strip commercial and and refuse to allow commercial buildings in the endless tracts of housing surrounding but separated from the strip, you force people to use cars. The commercial zoned locations need to be interspersed through the residential areas. There need to be limits on the sizes of strips and malls. Things need to be layed out in a sensible grid or hub and spokes, not a maze of cul-de-sacs and developments with no outlets.
Let's invest in fossil fuels instead of public transit, better urban planning, and pedestrian and cycling infrastructure. Our grandchildren will thank us.
If you will primarily be in urban areas, AT&T and T-Mobile will be fine.
If you want to get coverage in rural areas, Verizon might be your best bet. AT&T is getting better, but I frequent areas of rural New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia where Verizon is the only option. By "rural" I mean small towns of 1500 people and farmland, not the wilderness.
Things still break. If a car is designed to be easily and cheaply repaired, people will fix them, and they will still be running in 20 years. Poor design can mean that it costs $800 to replace the alternator instead of $200, and people are going to start junking those cars much earlier.
Is exposing kids to a program that they click on letters and numbers repeatedly really doing anything for them technology wise?
Teaching typing once they can read is a good idea. Teaching programming once they have a basic understanding of math and logic is a good idea. Plopping them in front of a computer that has an animated frog reading them a story is no more than a half step up from plopping them in front of a television that has an animated frog reading them a story.
Back to pencils and paper in the classroom, if it were up to me...
Amen! I have been visiting potential schools to which to send send my eldest child next year. They all have weekly "computer" or "technology" sessions for the kindergarteners. I ask what they actually do in there, and the answer always boils down to "using education software to practice recognizing numbers, letters, and words that could be just as well done with paper and pencils but without the development of fine motor skills that you get with pencil and paper."
There would be some news reports about alleged police brutality with no facts, images, or video, but with a few interviews of older white middle class people saying that they are glad the police are protecting society from the dirty hobo looters.
Slashdot Mirror
In most places, lights are timed to control the speed and movement of cars. The lights end up not being timed for cyclists at most speeds. In my city, I spend more time at lights while driving then while riding. Using side streets makes less of a difference on speed for cyclists than it does for cars, so I typically take much less congested routes while riding. Off-road paths also diminishes times spent near exhaust. Cars do have air filters, but they pull in air from behind the car in front of them and what gets in is slow to get out, so fumes are worse in cars than out of them.
And when cars are backed up for miles at rush hour and cannot move even when the light is green, you bet I am going to (safely) run the red lights instead of siting in line with a bunch of huge vehicles holding one person each all trying to get through the same small bottleneck.
They do when it is safer to do so, which it frequently is in places with poorly designed infrastructure.
Before someone goes on about how it is not fair that cyclists expect drivers to obey the law but do not obey it themselves. . .
The laws were written to protect people from cars. Cars running red lights are dangerous. Cyclists running red lights hurt people extremely rarely, and even then it was not somebody who was riding safely, it was some brakeless hipster riding like an idiot. Drivers are apt to try what they think they can get away with because their cars protect them. Cyclists running red lights know that they are unprotected out there and do so carefully.
As a cyclist, it is much safer for me to run a light when nobody is coming then to sit in a left turn lane as cars pass inches from my right. It is safer for me to jump a light if I have to switch lanes ahead than to try to do it while being passed. Also, I do not want to sit there and breath the exhaust coming from your smelly polluting machine spewing out noxious fumes while not even going anywhere.
And cyclists have much better visibility than drivers.
It has nothing to do with feelings of entitlement.
Change when you get to work if you get too sweaty. Putting a change of clothes in a bag is not hard.
I was not in very good shape when I started biking 10 miles to work. It took me more than an hour at first, and I changed when I got there. Now I can do that distance in 45 minutes and not need to change, or in 30 and be soaked and out of breath. If you think you cannot do it, look at this guy.
I can play this game too. . .
Pick up keys, get in car sitting outside, notice check engine light is on, call the shop to schedule an appointment that will cost you $1273.39, drive to store, spend 40% of your time sitting at stop lights breathing in car exhaust, stop at the gas station, wait five minutes, shut off car, swipe card, read error, swipe again, pump gas, get back in car, continue driving/sitting at lights, circle parking lot 7 times trying to get a spot, walk across lot, get backed into by someone backing out, yell and swear, get bread and products for the next new diet fat (can't understand why still fat, these products all claim weight loss without exercise), walk back out to car, find dent in door from shopping cart, drive/sit at lights back home, pay car insurance bill.
Pick up keys, get bike from garage, ride to store, chat with pretty girl on bike with flowers in her basket at stop light, park at the bike racks right up front, lock, get bread, unlock, ride home.
We can only cover three quarters of the population economically, I guess we better not bother at all.
Part of the problem is not population density but urban layout - we have designed our cities for cars and not walking, cycling, and mass transit. The sooner we try to fix it the better.
Yes you can. Many people do. They make bikes, clothes, and accessories for this purpose.
People manage to bike in third-world and developing countries in the tropics. Take a nice easy pace and it is no more strenuous than walking, and you create for yourself a nice breeze.
What has made you think that the US government cares at all about the size of the national debt and to whom it is owed?
Cluster at the application level and have nodes at different providers. If your volume is too high for that, you are big enough to host your own stuff.
Population density is not the problem. I lived in a small town (2000 residents) spread out over several square miles, but I could walk to the post office, grocery store, gas station, school, church, doctor, and several restaurants. I have lived in densly populated areas where I had to travel miles by road (but much less as the crow flies) to get anything except apartments and houses.
If you zone one strip commercial and and refuse to allow commercial buildings in the endless tracts of housing surrounding but separated from the strip, you force people to use cars. The commercial zoned locations need to be interspersed through the residential areas. There need to be limits on the sizes of strips and malls. Things need to be layed out in a sensible grid or hub and spokes, not a maze of cul-de-sacs and developments with no outlets.
Let's invest in fossil fuels instead of public transit, better urban planning, and pedestrian and cycling infrastructure. Our grandchildren will thank us.
You seem to be under the assumption that people can drive if they are sober.
You may be able to drive safely at 0.08, but there are a lot of people who cannot drive safely at 0.00 and are just that much worse at 0.08.
People who have had too much to drink will use the breathalizer wrong and then drive.
If you're not sure, don't drive.
Wow, that was hard.
If you will primarily be in urban areas, AT&T and T-Mobile will be fine.
If you want to get coverage in rural areas, Verizon might be your best bet. AT&T is getting better, but I frequent areas of rural New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia where Verizon is the only option. By "rural" I mean small towns of 1500 people and farmland, not the wilderness.
Things still break. If a car is designed to be easily and cheaply repaired, people will fix them, and they will still be running in 20 years. Poor design can mean that it costs $800 to replace the alternator instead of $200, and people are going to start junking those cars much earlier.
Or somebody will just run the thing in a debugger, find where the hardware dongle checks are, put in a few NOOPs, and share it with everybody.
Or just a person at an 8th grade reading level who read the US Constitution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_person
Speaking as a citizen of the Empire State, the voters are morons.
This holds for any email on any system. Use PGP.
Move all of your services off of the domain, then sell it.
Is exposing kids to a program that they click on letters and numbers repeatedly really doing anything for them technology wise?
Teaching typing once they can read is a good idea. Teaching programming once they have a basic understanding of math and logic is a good idea. Plopping them in front of a computer that has an animated frog reading them a story is no more than a half step up from plopping them in front of a television that has an animated frog reading them a story.
Amen! I have been visiting potential schools to which to send send my eldest child next year. They all have weekly "computer" or "technology" sessions for the kindergarteners. I ask what they actually do in there, and the answer always boils down to "using education software to practice recognizing numbers, letters, and words that could be just as well done with paper and pencils but without the development of fine motor skills that you get with pencil and paper."
Huge waste of time and money.
There would be some news reports about alleged police brutality with no facts, images, or video, but with a few interviews of older white middle class people saying that they are glad the police are protecting society from the dirty hobo looters.
You pick one that does not operate in the United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihad
"Jihad" does not mean blowing shit up.