Well, it's supposed to be cheaper on gas since the engine is pulling you forward instead of pushing.
Never heard that one, although I think the extra friction of the drive shaft is a very slight inefficiency. FWD cars also weigh slightly less too, due to the absence of a drive shaft and separate differential housing.
I've been in a few North American cars which, despite being FWD, have a big hump going through the middle for no good reason, the same as if there was a drive shaft to the rear wheels
Were those models available in 4WD or AWD? They might have just used the same floor pan for both. Still a bit sloppy, but marketing probably figures if you have the hump anyway, you're more likely to pay the extra for AWD.
Why? FWD has better traction because more weight is over the drive wheels, and it's more stable (when rear drive wheels slip the car fishtails). As for tire width, I never noticed that. The cut of the tread is another matter. We usually have only moderate snow here in the NYC area (though a few feet once in a while) so with modern all-weather tires I don't bother with snow tires. If you do get real snow tires though, they work great (used to use them before all-weather tires were as good as they are today).
It also depends how much snow you get I suppose.
How much snow do you get? I presume you're in the UK. I don't think of it as very snowy, but I'm hardly sure.
ice can really suck when it's on an incline
It all depends - it's very easy to get going downhill.
About the only problem I know of with FWD in slippery conditions is that the weight gets transferred to the rear when going uphill. If you can't make it the regular way though, you can always drive backwards (seriously - I live on a hill and it works great).
I will believe that there is an even remotely usable self-driving car in existence when I see ONE independent evaluation of these cars being taken through a real world driving scenario
I agree, as (despite your previous paragraph) do many of the people here (e.g. hunter44's comment above). I don't actually expect independent evaluations of this stuff, as the details are very proprietary, but it would be interesting to have claims beyond Google's "300,000 miles without an accident". That means little unless weather and traffic conditions, etc., are specified.
my choice would be a commuter route along the south coast of England...
Bah, our traffic, weather, drivers and roads are way worse than yours. That's a generic statement. A person from anywhere except southern England is expected to say that. Odd point of pride, isn't it?
lets see what it can detect in the Northeast after 2 days of snow, salt and de-icer puts a 'film' of gunk covering 90% of the vehicle
Northeast. What about Michigan? At least this is being developed by people who don't live in sunny California. Seriously, that may have an effect. I keep asking how Google cars do in a rainstorm, but they don't seem to understand the concept.
OTOH, if the ability of a car to handle various types of weather reflects where the designers live, then why were most American cars for many years so bad in the snow? Seriously, never figured that out. US cars were amongst the last to adopt FWD (although IIRC Mercedes & BMW were even later - what, it doesn't snow in Germany?). The only thing I can think of was that it was the triumph of the marketing department, which thought that cars should compensate for various sexual inadequacies. Left to themselves, the engineers would probably have come up with something that handled even the unlikeliest weather - like snow in Michigan.
Your complaints about Obamacare are valid. Welcome to the only healthcare system in the world that relies primarily on for-profit insurance companies. You want to return to the status quo ante Obamacare? Well, that left tens of millions without health insurance. It would also leave you without health insurance if you had any serious medical problems. So how to address all these concerns? I've got it - copy Canada's system. Nah, too simple, too well proven, we've got to think of some brilliant approach instead.
Democrats want is to fail to prove that private enterprise can't handle healthcare and we need the government to do it.
I know of almost no one who wants the government to handle healthcare - they want the government to handle health insurance. Big difference. Doctors practices, hospitals, etc. continue to operate as separate entities. See, for example, Canada, Australia, Japan, France, Germany, Switzerland, etc. As for the wonders of Obamacare - the only system in the developed world that relies primarily on for-profit insurance companies - get back to me when it has cut costs by 1/3. That would bring us inline with the next most expensive healthcare systems.
The biggest political success for Republicans in the last 30 years was convincing the middle and lower middle class to be afraid of the poor. They should instead be very very afraid of the rich.
That reminds me of how the late-19th/early-20th century populist party was smeared. For the (*gasp* fact based) debunking of that smear, see here.
You think a court would give "the go ahead" to a private firm to send out fines?
I have no objection to any firm wishing to send me fines. Trying to collect a fine from me is another matter.
Moreover, most Slashdot readers are Americans. Most of them (including me) are unfamiliar with the German legal system, and may be forgiven for thinking of it as analogous to the American legal system. A story which said that an American court authorized to MPAA to directly levy and execute punishment that included capital punishment might be met with some skepticism. Anything less would be accepted as nothing new.
In all fairness they've cleaned up their act pretty well. Still, it's ironic that Americans have reason to envy how fair and reasonable the German justice system is.
Maybe next time we should go to war with ourselves. Oops, tried that about 150 years ago and... eliminated slavery! That settles it - going to war with ourselves is definitely a way to improve justice in this country.
supreme... found... this fact was obvious to even a layman and finally the judges stated that if these lawyers ever wasted the courts time with a case like this again there would be severe consequences.
Damn. Could we import some of those German judges?
P.S. Anyone else appreciate the irony of importing German judges to improve the American system of "justice"?
the DMCA like laws are lobbied by the USA content industries and therefore you clearly can't choose America
Switzerland is a sovereign country that has spent the last 700 years telling everyone from the Holy Roman Empire to the Nazis to go to hell. Now you think they're intimidated by American lobbyists?
I love this one. China is a more open, and hence more admirable, country because it admits how oppressive it is. Yay for openness! All the other (East?) Asian countries do the same thing, but are just so much better at it that they manage to conceal all evidence. No, honest, I know it's true even though they keep it a secret. BTW, if it's a secret, how do you know about it?
They just didn't see anything wrong with doing it.
Irrelevant. If I commit criminal fraud, then it doesn't matter if I think it is wrong. That's no different from any other crime. It also has nothing to do with mens rea, which is about whether you knew or suspected that something was illegal, not about whether you agree with the law.
Everybody makes fun of their neighbors. As a New Yorker I'm required to make fun of New Jersey. Americans make fun of Canadians. Germans make fun of Austrians. People on the other side of the planet? Who cares.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it's supposed to be cheaper on gas since the engine is pulling you forward instead of pushing.
Never heard that one, although I think the extra friction of the drive shaft is a very slight inefficiency. FWD cars also weigh slightly less too, due to the absence of a drive shaft and separate differential housing.
I've been in a few North American cars which, despite being FWD, have a big hump going through the middle for no good reason, the same as if there was a drive shaft to the rear wheels
Were those models available in 4WD or AWD? They might have just used the same floor pan for both. Still a bit sloppy, but marketing probably figures if you have the hump anyway, you're more likely to pay the extra for AWD.
I love RWD in the snow.
Why? FWD has better traction because more weight is over the drive wheels, and it's more stable (when rear drive wheels slip the car fishtails). As for tire width, I never noticed that. The cut of the tread is another matter. We usually have only moderate snow here in the NYC area (though a few feet once in a while) so with modern all-weather tires I don't bother with snow tires. If you do get real snow tires though, they work great (used to use them before all-weather tires were as good as they are today).
It also depends how much snow you get I suppose.
How much snow do you get? I presume you're in the UK. I don't think of it as very snowy, but I'm hardly sure.
ice can really suck when it's on an incline
It all depends - it's very easy to get going downhill.
About the only problem I know of with FWD in slippery conditions is that the weight gets transferred to the rear when going uphill. If you can't make it the regular way though, you can always drive backwards (seriously - I live on a hill and it works great).
Sorry, I'm not familiar with the customs in all of our former colonies.
You won't hear that in NYC.
your car will be able to shut down some of its sensors and instead partially rely on data being sent from the cars in front and behind
Oh, that'll be reliable. Adventures in propagation of sensor and processing problems from car to car. Cute science project though.
It will be interesting to see how the end of Moore's law will affect this and similar projects.
Maybe programmers will learn the nearly lost art of writing efficient code.
I will believe that there is an even remotely usable self-driving car in existence when I see ONE independent evaluation of these cars being taken through a real world driving scenario
I agree, as (despite your previous paragraph) do many of the people here (e.g. hunter44's comment above). I don't actually expect independent evaluations of this stuff, as the details are very proprietary, but it would be interesting to have claims beyond Google's "300,000 miles without an accident". That means little unless weather and traffic conditions, etc., are specified.
my choice would be a commuter route along the south coast of England ...
Bah, our traffic, weather, drivers and roads are way worse than yours. That's a generic statement. A person from anywhere except southern England is expected to say that. Odd point of pride, isn't it?
lets see what it can detect in the Northeast after 2 days of snow, salt and de-icer puts a 'film' of gunk covering 90% of the vehicle
Northeast. What about Michigan? At least this is being developed by people who don't live in sunny California. Seriously, that may have an effect. I keep asking how Google cars do in a rainstorm, but they don't seem to understand the concept.
OTOH, if the ability of a car to handle various types of weather reflects where the designers live, then why were most American cars for many years so bad in the snow? Seriously, never figured that out. US cars were amongst the last to adopt FWD (although IIRC Mercedes & BMW were even later - what, it doesn't snow in Germany?). The only thing I can think of was that it was the triumph of the marketing department, which thought that cars should compensate for various sexual inadequacies. Left to themselves, the engineers would probably have come up with something that handled even the unlikeliest weather - like snow in Michigan.
Shhh .. all the AC righties here are enjoying their ideological rants. Why spoil the party with silly things like facts?
What, you never heard of corruption?
Your complaints about Obamacare are valid. Welcome to the only healthcare system in the world that relies primarily on for-profit insurance companies. You want to return to the status quo ante Obamacare? Well, that left tens of millions without health insurance. It would also leave you without health insurance if you had any serious medical problems. So how to address all these concerns? I've got it - copy Canada's system. Nah, too simple, too well proven, we've got to think of some brilliant approach instead.
Democrats want is to fail to prove that private enterprise can't handle healthcare and we need the government to do it.
I know of almost no one who wants the government to handle healthcare - they want the government to handle health insurance. Big difference. Doctors practices, hospitals, etc. continue to operate as separate entities. See, for example, Canada, Australia, Japan, France, Germany, Switzerland, etc. As for the wonders of Obamacare - the only system in the developed world that relies primarily on for-profit insurance companies - get back to me when it has cut costs by 1/3. That would bring us inline with the next most expensive healthcare systems.
The biggest political success for Republicans in the last 30 years was convincing the middle and lower middle class to be afraid of the poor. They should instead be very very afraid of the rich.
That reminds me of how the late-19th/early-20th century populist party was smeared. For the (*gasp* fact based) debunking of that smear, see here.
Why oh why does your logic have to make sense?
The idea that it has to make sense is your assumption, not mine. OTOH, where doesn't it make sense? Can you provide a counterexample?
Argumentativeness despite ignorance, and irrational belief in one's national superiority, are other misfeatures of German culture
You mean there's a culture those aren't misfeatures of?
You think a court would give "the go ahead" to a private firm to send out fines?
I have no objection to any firm wishing to send me fines. Trying to collect a fine from me is another matter.
Moreover, most Slashdot readers are Americans. Most of them (including me) are unfamiliar with the German legal system, and may be forgiven for thinking of it as analogous to the American legal system. A story which said that an American court authorized to MPAA to directly levy and execute punishment that included capital punishment might be met with some skepticism. Anything less would be accepted as nothing new.
In all fairness they've cleaned up their act pretty well. Still, it's ironic that Americans have reason to envy how fair and reasonable the German justice system is.
Maybe next time we should go to war with ourselves. Oops, tried that about 150 years ago and ... eliminated slavery! That settles it - going to war with ourselves is definitely a way to improve justice in this country.
supreme ... found ... this fact was obvious to even a layman and finally the judges stated that if these lawyers ever wasted the courts time with a case like this again there would be severe consequences.
Damn. Could we import some of those German judges?
P.S. Anyone else appreciate the irony of importing German judges to improve the American system of "justice"?
the DMCA like laws are lobbied by the USA content industries and therefore you clearly can't choose America
Switzerland is a sovereign country that has spent the last 700 years telling everyone from the Holy Roman Empire to the Nazis to go to hell. Now you think they're intimidated by American lobbyists?
I love this one. China is a more open, and hence more admirable, country because it admits how oppressive it is. Yay for openness! All the other (East?) Asian countries do the same thing, but are just so much better at it that they manage to conceal all evidence. No, honest, I know it's true even though they keep it a secret. BTW, if it's a secret, how do you know about it?
On Slashdot, literalism knows no bounds.
They just didn't see anything wrong with doing it.
Irrelevant. If I commit criminal fraud, then it doesn't matter if I think it is wrong. That's no different from any other crime. It also has nothing to do with mens rea, which is about whether you knew or suspected that something was illegal, not about whether you agree with the law.
The most common reason that have appeared in leaked communication between the US and Sweden have been threat of economic sanctions.
How could the US impose economic sanctions against Sweden without it affecting the EU?
You mean there are prisons just for geeks?
Everybody makes fun of their neighbors. As a New Yorker I'm required to make fun of New Jersey. Americans make fun of Canadians. Germans make fun of Austrians. People on the other side of the planet? Who cares.