I'm not going to discuss specifics but suffice to say I'm quite well-off and have worked hard for it and earned it through my own interests and my own ingenuity, and it has nothing to do with computers at all other than the fact that I use them to assist with business management.
The thing is, you can do the things you're not interested in. Forcing you to take that many classes means you are GUARANTEED to be exposed to things that you wouldn't ordinarily do. As far as my own selection goes, Chemistry and Biology would have been the two that held much less interest for me than the rest(hence I skipped them) but did hold more interest than English class which I to this day do not use. The most useful English class I ever took was a business communications class in College that lasted 6 months, and I elected to take it as an optional because I knew that the traditional English system had failed to prepare me for what I actually needed.
I graduated my last year with a 50 in English, a 98 in physics, a 94 in math, a 91 in Enterprise and the rest of my courses that I was forced to take to make up credits to graduate were somewhere between 55 and 75 somewhere. A C grade btw for me (since these grade scales change from place to place I've learned) was 65-75 average. 95+ was A+ 85-95 A 75-85 a B.... etc
Honestly people ARE entitled to have more control over their lives. I have never had problems working with others, or getting things done, but people deserve more control over the direction their lives take. You're entering Grade 10 at 13+ years of age normally. At 13-4 years ago this was the time kids went off on apprenticeships or basically just out and out started working, because they were ready for the responsibility and they were ready to begin making some larger life choices for themselves. All I'm saying is we need to give them some of that back. The old system is fucked, but the new one is going too far in the opposite direction.
I had other issues going on at home at the time that severely contributed to my lack of wanting to go to school, or do much of anything, but for years prior to that, school had been my escape. At some point during high school it just became another place that I had to go. I'll always regret the road not travelled because I think I could have gone into research or engineering somewhere and been quite successful at it. I got accepted to university into the engineering faculty and just didn't go after I was informed it worked nearly the same as high school for mandatory bullshit. Then I went to a trade college and found a wonderful place where things made sense. I didn't finish my degree there due to other factors outside of school but I have nothing but good things to say about it.
What you suffered is the 90% case for air bags going off. You have to be in awkward or otherwise in mid motion with the air bag going off in order to generate most of the other injuries.
What causes the problem with seat belts is it will throw your head forward at additional speed, your head will then rebound off the air bag that much harder. Its generally the impact with the additional acceleration causing tears in the neck or the rebound doing the same that causes the injuries.
That Volvo has better safety belt systems than 90% of the vehicle systems sold in North America in that case. There is only a mechanical locking mechanism on the majority of the cars sold here.
I didn't miss the panic-braking. It is specifically discussed. When someone panic-brakes they are panic'd . They nearly invariably death-grip the steering wheel rendering all mobility gained from the ABS moot.
My friend is someone that used the mobility, but he learned to drive on ABS, he is the type of person that could easily have been braking properly himself.
I didn't say solely, I said in large part. Air bags and some semblance of an incorporated roll cage are certainly responsible for a much larger chunk of that than seat belts. Unfortunately the government only goes as far as the correlation and doesn't look into the causation most of the time.
Rollovers crushing the driver as a % of fatal accidents are fairly common(around 30% of fatalities I think? Have to look it up again), but these aren't even the accidents I'm talking about. The severe neck injuries and paralysis caused by the seat belts from plain old head on, and rear end collisions is more significant than the death, but when these things are regulated, any crash you survive, not necessarily one you can walk away from(even after a recovery period), is a win for them.
Side-impact of a VW bug into another VW bug can cause the same results as the semi into a VW bug as far as side-impact accidents go. Side-impacts are relatively rare(10% or less in most places, but I imagine this might increase in cities). The semi vs VW bug accident is actually much more likely to end up in a situation where whatever you have in the car or strapped around you short of a serious off-road full protection roll cage isn't going to make a difference. The roll cage only has a half a chance of making one.
However side-impacts are less safe now than they were years ago. The design of center consoles etc for creature comforts means your hips generally get crushed against it. Some cars don't have this problem but a lot do. The old vinyl-seat straight across with only a shifter in the way was better as far as side-impact goes. You take the blunt force, but you don't take the crushing as often, and the crushing is what will almost invariably kill someone. The blunt force is survivable.
Overall, yes, but as it stands right now they are actually making it harder to disable because it comes stock on everything. If its stock, there is no need to separate the system at all for easy disabling/removal.
Insurance companies here do not give out discounts for ABS equipped vehicles. They did for awhile, then they got new stats in and found out that ABS causes more accidents(and thereby $) than it saves. Now this is probably specific to area and I'm sure there are areas where ABS would perform better. If you have deep snow on any sort of regular basis for 2-3 months out of the year however it loses everything it gained.
What you call a Roll Cage isn't one at all as they come from the factory, its chassis enhancements designed to compensate for the lack of a roll cage. I'm not sure where exactly you are, but a roll cage is a series of welded together tubular steel bars, generally around 2" in diameter with 1/4" thick steel making up the tube.
What they do to cars at the factory is give them a lick and a promise and send them on their way. Its fine if you roll once, at low-ish speeds, if not you're going to be wishing you'd added the extra few hundred pounds of steel that makes up a roll cage.
As an example of said substructures effectiveness: Take apart ANY 4x4 capable truck chassis made in the last 10 years. Its roll cages galore. The purpose of a roll cage is for the ROLL CAGE to survive impact from any side and protect the occupant by keeping him/her suspended in the middle via a harness system. The human body is incredibly resilient as long as it doesn't suffer any major lacerations or direct blunt force trauma so they are incredibly effective.
They're expensive to install as stock on a vehicle however so 95% of vehicles sold don't have one incorporated.
Also, we actually have stricter safety laws here, and anything but a low speed flip or a slide across a grassy field the additional roll protection does nothing, it fails with the first impact of any of the 6(particularly the 4 making up the exterior corners of the top of the cab space) supports against a rock because its entire structure is so dependant on the rest of the structure being intact. Which for the purposes of the safety test lab does just fine.
It's better than what there was 20 years ago(aka nearly nothing, your figure of pre-1970 is way off unless things were forced to be a lot different for euro travelers. They started the engineering process back then, they didn't actually get anything much out of it until they started getting away from all these box-shaped cars), and makes seat belts a bit more viable. The problem is they made the seat belt laws more than 20 years ago, and there are still situations where its safer to not be wearing one.
The trouble with the post-1970's up to about 96-98 cars was that there was some semblance of a roll cage but in many cases it would just make things worse as it was harder to remove after it inevitably pancaked right down to the doors during a roll.
There is an additional benefit that a roll cage will stiffen a chassis for better handling, but a straight bar across the back of the front seats accomplishes this task much more effectively and efficiently, so it would never be the primary reason for installing a roll cage.
Additionally you can purchase after-market roll cages with thick mandrel-bent tubing for most vehicles these days. While crazy-pete could screw something up, these folks make a business out of it, word would get around pretty fast if they made a shoddy product.
I've been in rollovers in vehicles with roll cages, and from the remains of vehicles without roll cages I've seen in rollover accidents along the highway I'm glad I've never been in one of those.
Worst thing that happened in a rollover so far is I fractured my right arm against the shifter.
Anything that has any sort of significant down side, including seat belts, should be optional.
According to studies done by the RCMP in Canada before they made seat belts mandatory everywhere seat belts were only responsible for prevention of death in 30% of the accidents in which they were a factor.(I.E. the car getting crushed is the car getting crushed, seat belt didn't really matter there) In nearly all cases they caused injuries and in 5% of cases direct death could be attributed to the seat belt being worn.
Seat belts are awesome when there are roll cages installed in the vehicle.... how many Corollas and Honda civics do you see out there with roll cages installed? Additionally the best seat belt in those cases is a proper 4-point harness. Not the "quick clip" seat belt invented by a company that thought it would make it easier to market. It did, it also made the thing almost as useless as a lap belt.
The incidence of neck-related injuries has risen nearly 900% since seat belts were made mandatory. Deaths per reported accident has only dropped about 20% and most of that can be attributed to better crash design in the car chassis and stricter safety regulations that have been introduced that have nothing to do with a seat belt. Given the down side is significant, seat belts should be optional.
Air bags should not be optional, the amount of damage they cause(broken thumbs, occasional cracked ribs, the odd broken nose or arm) is vastly outweighed by the damage they prevent. Some people say the air bag and seat belt work in sync, they do not. Modern air bags deploy so fast its already halfway inflated by the time the locking mechanism in your seat belt kicks in. All the seat belt does is give your head time to snap forward and nail the airbag while its near the end of its inflation and travelling at some ridiculous speeds that are the peak of its inflation speed. Hello whiplash and neck problems for the rest of your life as a best case, hello lifetime paralysis or death as worst cases. The seat belt didn't save you, the air bag did.
The same goes for ABS as for seat belts. The idea is your stopping distance is shorter. In many coniditions it isn't, but that isn't stopping idiots from lobbying to get it made mandatory here. Ice, deep snow, hydroplaning, all of these conditions fuck ABS sensors to hell. There are two theories(And these are straight theories, they can only be MARGINALLY proven in a lab, but the guy that invented the shit apparently had a marketing genius on staff) about ABS.
One: It will allow more control of steering while allowing maximum braking. This is patently wrong. Someone who has the sense to steer out of a situation will have the sense to be able to ease off the brakes a little when they feel the car starting to fish on them, and easing back on the brakes rather than having a motor kick in that disengages them almost completely is much much preferred. Those that don't have the sense are going to death grip the steering wheel and the ABS is just going to get them to whatever they are about to hit even faster.
Two: It'll make you stop faster. With modern brakes on dry pavement even at highway speeds? ABS isn't even worth talking about. Stopping distance increased by 20%+ over a driver with a 30 minute lesson on proper braking. You now occupy the air space of the vehicle in front of you. The speeds at which ABS becomes necessary exist only on the German Autobahn and roads like it. At those speeds your reaction time is so slow(in relation to how much time it takes for your vehicle to suffer enough jarring braking to lose stability) for easing off the brakes that its better to have a sensor do it for you.
That being said, most people are stupid, and ABS is a good idea. Should it be a default option on vehicles? Yes. Should I still be able to purchase a vehicle without it? Very much YES.
Snow and ice? My truck was horrendous. Then I pulled the ABS relay and figured out how to disable the traction control. Now it handles like it should, like a d
Actually that was the reason I took drama as one of my mandatory additional arts courses instead of a 3rd year of french. French was half and half guys/girls. In drama class I got to directly act with the girls etc... and get put into some lovely situations. My first two real girlfriends came out of Drama class.
I was at the time fluent enough to carry on a conversation for the most part. I'm not anymore. If you don't use it you lose it, as they say.
I have no idea where you are, but physics here is definitely physics. They teach you foundation information and get you more comfortable with thinking about physical objects, motion, energy transmission etc in equation form. The first year of it that I took was on par with the physics I took in College as a non-physics major. The math was no where near, but courses were available that taught octal, hex, courses that gave you actual credits in university if you were so inclined to do them in high school(The only university credits I have are from AP History and AP Math which I think counted as their 101 equivalents).
P.S. Don't procreate. We already have too many narrow minded fools that can't see past the end of their own nose.
Just because the schools where you are suck, doesn't mean it can't still work even as such.
Beyond that the courses I would have missed out on taught me nothing I need.
I don't care that tommy is bored, tommy needs to be forced to go to school, but tommy should have more control over the direction of his education as he enters young-adult hood.
High school isn't "early education". This father has the same perspective on high school that I have had ever since I did it. By the time you hit the end grade 9, you're DONE with generalized education. You've had time to do your book reports on the all-mighty shakespeare(heaven forbid we should teach our kids about anything current that might actually get them interested, some kids will like this for the history aspect, but thats what a damned history class is for, and they have that) and you have more or less developed into whatever type of person you are going to be.
High school should be about trying out new things and entirely about figuring out and eventually working towards what you want to do with the rest of your life. Having these programs available is a must, having them be mandatory is one of the worst possible things that any society has ever done to their following generation.
When I and most of my class mates were in grade 9 we still enjoyed school for the most part(there are always exceptions) but once I hit high school I became extremely disheartened. This was the place I wanted to start trying out things to see what I might like to do, and I had a direction in mind already, as did everyone I went to school with, barring a very small minority. Thanks to mandatory credits however I ended up missing a lot of the things I wanted to try, and doing another 10 reports on various dead peoples poems, books, and plays.
Those highly specialized STEM schools are intended for the extremely gifted and taught by the extremely gifted. Most of those people develop many personality quirks over the years as a result of being so focused on one particular thing, but its not what I(or, I believe, this guy) are talking about changing every school into.
Admittedly in my case it probably would have largely resulted in a high STEM focus but it would have been taught by high school teachers, not people who have been paid exorbitant amounts of money to stop researching or teaching at a university in order to teach your kids.
In my paricular case my high school years probably would have looked something like this:
1st Year: Math Chem Physics Biology Woodworking Mechanics Computers and maybe intro to plumbing or some such... then I'd have narrowed it down from there, or tried something else in the second year.
There is a huge opportunity cost to me in the fact that I was forced to take french(I'm in canada... where the only place french would matter is if I was trying to get a job in retail or customer service in quebec), english, and a Drama class in high school. Turns out I'm really good at French and Drama but I had and have zero interest in either one. These aren't short courses either. We're now talking about 15+ hours per week of teacher time completely wasted. Chemistry and Biology may have been a waste as well(those were the things I couldn't do due to time restraints, as well as some of the more advanced math courses that I was interested in but couldn't see myself benefiting from in anything but an academic realm) but they were something I had an inclination towards and I still regret not doing.
Also, anyone should know the sheer amount of mental energy totally wasted forcing yourself to do something you have absolutely no interest in doing. Its like slogging uphill through knee-deep molasses. Its even worse than house work. You do it because it needs to be done. You may have zero interest in(and potentially hate) doing it, but at least you have an interest in the end result.
In my case in the second year of high school when I was forced to endure over 20 hours of classes every week that I had no interest in I lost all will to go to school or do anything with it at all. I went from an A+ overall average to a C because I just did things that interested me outside of school. I was short on time so I sacrificed at-home sleep for sleeping at my desk in school. I even perfected sleeping with my eyes open for a couple of teachers that hated what I w
Its seriously getting to the point in the UK and France with Riots amongst portions of the Muslim/Islam community that they were kind enough to let into their countries where some "Get the fuck out or get dead" politics may be needed soon.
Its not like Mexicans immigrating into the US, other than the fact that Spanish is slowly becoming a major language down there, the Mexicans really do nothing at all to change the country. They generally assimilate well, even though the country they go into is drastically different from the country they are leaving. The same can't be said for large portions of the Arabic community.
Chinese moving into Canada is another example of a large amount of people from a very different cultural background moving into a country, but generally behaving themselves properly.
I try really really hard not to be racist against these muslim/islamic peoples but christ... they cause shit everywhere they go.
I even have a muslim friend, one of the few around here who has assimlated well(he doesn't ever really want to go back to the country he's from, and HIS family is even fairly well off), and he's told me to basically give up. He's stated that what you see in the news in all reality isn't that far from the truth other than in some of the minor details and that there is a very good reason he doesn't want to go back.
Here you have a populace that moved into the country attempting to hold the rest of the country hostage until everyone toes their line? Fuck that shit. There are very few situations in which I'm in favor of using force to end protests, but this is one of them.
Those protesting should be made aware that their actions are illegal(even if they have to quickly WRITE a new, very specific, law for it) and given 48 hours to shut down the protest. All those found in violation after the 48 hours should be detained and deported. Natural-born citizens should be heavily fined.
From friends I have in the U.K., their government would probably be surprised at how popular a move that would be. In particular amongst the Muslims who have moved in and love living in the U.K. and hate the others that are making it more difficult for them.
It isn't, however if we're going to protect all speech no matter what we have to start protecting some of the consequences of that speech and adding in "Just Cause" clauses to existing laws surrounding physical violence short of permanent severe disability(I.E. loss of use of a limb, loss of sight, hearing, significant loss of cognitive capabilities) and death.
The situations for Just Cause should be clearly defined as several things but I think a loose mock up would be good as follows: "statements made with the intention to provoke a physical response", "Threats of bodily injury that may be of immediate concern", "Statements made to be intentionally inflammatory" and a few other things.
What I've listed there wouldn't allow for the parents to drive over to the guys house and punch them out, but it would allow for them knocking a few of his teeth out if he said it to their faces.
There are a lot of cowardly assholes out there that have been empowered by free speech laws plus laws against assault and need their asses kicked. This guy sounds like one of them. If he's insensitive enough to post something like that on facebook he's probably said something of a similar severity in real life at some point, and the person he said it to should have the opportunity to break his nose.
Excluding them is necessary because the entirety of the U.S. is suffering this problem, and several of the states are quite natural resource wealthy. Its a political problem and a brainwashing problem.
You need universal health care and a revamped education system to begin competing again for "best country in the world" title. Most of your early politicians would be rolling over in their graves if they knew how far behind the country has fallen.
You don't have to give up ANY freedoms. You just need a bit of a tax hike, to stop letting the biggest corps off with their tax responsibilities and to shut down the god damn health insurance industry. Sure you have better quality of care than most other places, but not by a lot, and you spend a shitload more because the majority of the population that can't afford good health insurance problems develop serious health concerns due to a lack of at least semi-regular visits to the doctor that could curtail these problems early on.
I don't agree with the troll, and points 1 and 3 are correct, but #2 is both misleading and most of it barely qualifies as science.
Social sciences are by their very nature extremely inaccurate and extremely prone to study biases.
Hard science is still majority published by men. There isn't a real reason for this beyond cultural, and actual real gender differences. Women generally end up having more interest outside of STEM and most women, at least in most first world countries, finding the Sciences rather boring.
Women tend to be much more social creatures that like to be involved in many things at once, while men tend to be more single-minded, which lends itself to modern science extremely well as extreme specialization is often a requirement to get anything significant done. People do tend to gravitate towards things that are an easy fit for them sooo...
Of course there are exceptions to every rule and your Nobel prize list is ample evidence of that. However I think we can expect the real sciences(excluding perhaps medical science) to be male-dominated for the foreseeable future.
Its unfortunate how many people there are even on a tech site like this with their own agenda and own lifestyle to push down others throats.
Of course, since its Slashdot it tends to be more the Organic food-eating, sacrifice everything for green types who've just been fed wrong information by people marketing these "green" technologies and now are doubling down on their ill-conceived lifestyle changes. At least its not as bad as the idiot right-wingers on a lot of other sites.
I like how you've been modded down except everything you've said is, at a very basic level, correct.
When we're talking about organic foods being better for you, you're talking about very minuscule amounts. Nutrition doesn't even factor into the argument, or shouldn't unless you're already a brain-dead raving vegan and are just piling more stuff on to support your personal lifestyle choice.
The real reason to choose Organic foods is to avoid the harmful pesticides. The only trouble with that is the "Organic" food industry has been commercialized as well so good luck verifying the chems used or not used.
Unless you grow it yourself you could be shit out of luck.
Its things like this that we've confirmed as accurate as much as we can that makes me think the universe isn't expanding at all, we're just able to see more of it all the time. The current size of the universe closely correlates with the speed of light and the time it would have taken that light to reach us... coincidence?
Space itself is supposedly able to expand faster than the speed of light, however I'd like someone to point me to the evidence that this is happening at all.
This is actually something I'm also in favor of. Dedicated bike lanes and potentially parts of a glutted city cut off from regular vehicles. Some cut off roadways on outskirts could be partially converted to parking lots to also help alleviate parking issues that are often very troublesome in these areas. Make it all one-way bikes and delivery trucks only.
Most of what I am saying is in relation to places where there is no sidewalk, no road shoulder to speak of, and only two lanes with no bike lane. Which is why I guess I'm getting so much flak because most of the slashdot crowd live in cities, and of course people that live in cities almost universally can't even imagine what life is like outside one, or even in a fairly small city.
Some of these areas in congested cities could and probably should be converted to foot and cycle traffic only.
Its the idiots in the middle of 80km/hr streaming traffic I want off the roads, and the idiots on highly trafficked narrow roads slowing down traffic for no reason other than they feel more entitled than everyone else to get where they are going simply because they're on a damn bike.
The bikes shouldn't be ON the road in the first place.
I don't even know when or how Bikes became a religion but people are defending their right to bicycle in areas designed for motorized traffic and -nothing- else (because when they did the town planning in a lot of these towns, rural areas, etc, 30-40 years ago they couldn't imagine any idiots would be bicycling ON THE DAMN ROAD)
There are "Bicycle advocacy groups" defending a right no one ever had in the first damn place. Towns are perfectly within their rights to ban bicycles on certain streets, or even in the entirety of the town. There are many towns with a LARGE contingency who want the practice of bicycling on vehicle-trafficked streets wherein no bicycle lanes exist banned entirely. Unfortunately there are a very loud vocal minority that seem bent on stopping this.
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Off roading. I've never even been in an accident on-road.
I'm not going to discuss specifics but suffice to say I'm quite well-off and have worked hard for it and earned it through my own interests and my own ingenuity, and it has nothing to do with computers at all other than the fact that I use them to assist with business management.
The thing is, you can do the things you're not interested in. Forcing you to take that many classes means you are GUARANTEED to be exposed to things that you wouldn't ordinarily do. As far as my own selection goes, Chemistry and Biology would have been the two that held much less interest for me than the rest(hence I skipped them) but did hold more interest than English class which I to this day do not use. The most useful English class I ever took was a business communications class in College that lasted 6 months, and I elected to take it as an optional because I knew that the traditional English system had failed to prepare me for what I actually needed.
I graduated my last year with a 50 in English, a 98 in physics, a 94 in math, a 91 in Enterprise and the rest of my courses that I was forced to take to make up credits to graduate were somewhere between 55 and 75 somewhere. A C grade btw for me (since these grade scales change from place to place I've learned) was 65-75 average. 95+ was A+ 85-95 A 75-85 a B.... etc
Honestly people ARE entitled to have more control over their lives. I have never had problems working with others, or getting things done, but people deserve more control over the direction their lives take. You're entering Grade 10 at 13+ years of age normally. At 13-4 years ago this was the time kids went off on apprenticeships or basically just out and out started working, because they were ready for the responsibility and they were ready to begin making some larger life choices for themselves. All I'm saying is we need to give them some of that back. The old system is fucked, but the new one is going too far in the opposite direction.
I had other issues going on at home at the time that severely contributed to my lack of wanting to go to school, or do much of anything, but for years prior to that, school had been my escape. At some point during high school it just became another place that I had to go. I'll always regret the road not travelled because I think I could have gone into research or engineering somewhere and been quite successful at it. I got accepted to university into the engineering faculty and just didn't go after I was informed it worked nearly the same as high school for mandatory bullshit. Then I went to a trade college and found a wonderful place where things made sense. I didn't finish my degree there due to other factors outside of school but I have nothing but good things to say about it.
What you suffered is the 90% case for air bags going off. You have to be in awkward or otherwise in mid motion with the air bag going off in order to generate most of the other injuries.
What causes the problem with seat belts is it will throw your head forward at additional speed, your head will then rebound off the air bag that much harder. Its generally the impact with the additional acceleration causing tears in the neck or the rebound doing the same that causes the injuries.
That Volvo has better safety belt systems than 90% of the vehicle systems sold in North America in that case. There is only a mechanical locking mechanism on the majority of the cars sold here.
I didn't miss the panic-braking. It is specifically discussed. When someone panic-brakes they are panic'd . They nearly invariably death-grip the steering wheel rendering all mobility gained from the ABS moot.
My friend is someone that used the mobility, but he learned to drive on ABS, he is the type of person that could easily have been braking properly himself.
I didn't say solely, I said in large part. Air bags and some semblance of an incorporated roll cage are certainly responsible for a much larger chunk of that than seat belts. Unfortunately the government only goes as far as the correlation and doesn't look into the causation most of the time.
Rollovers crushing the driver as a % of fatal accidents are fairly common(around 30% of fatalities I think? Have to look it up again), but these aren't even the accidents I'm talking about. The severe neck injuries and paralysis caused by the seat belts from plain old head on, and rear end collisions is more significant than the death, but when these things are regulated, any crash you survive, not necessarily one you can walk away from(even after a recovery period), is a win for them.
Side-impact of a VW bug into another VW bug can cause the same results as the semi into a VW bug as far as side-impact accidents go. Side-impacts are relatively rare(10% or less in most places, but I imagine this might increase in cities). The semi vs VW bug accident is actually much more likely to end up in a situation where whatever you have in the car or strapped around you short of a serious off-road full protection roll cage isn't going to make a difference. The roll cage only has a half a chance of making one.
However side-impacts are less safe now than they were years ago. The design of center consoles etc for creature comforts means your hips generally get crushed against it. Some cars don't have this problem but a lot do. The old vinyl-seat straight across with only a shifter in the way was better as far as side-impact goes. You take the blunt force, but you don't take the crushing as often, and the crushing is what will almost invariably kill someone. The blunt force is survivable.
Overall, yes, but as it stands right now they are actually making it harder to disable because it comes stock on everything. If its stock, there is no need to separate the system at all for easy disabling/removal.
Insurance companies here do not give out discounts for ABS equipped vehicles. They did for awhile, then they got new stats in and found out that ABS causes more accidents(and thereby $) than it saves. Now this is probably specific to area and I'm sure there are areas where ABS would perform better. If you have deep snow on any sort of regular basis for 2-3 months out of the year however it loses everything it gained.
What you call a Roll Cage isn't one at all as they come from the factory, its chassis enhancements designed to compensate for the lack of a roll cage. I'm not sure where exactly you are, but a roll cage is a series of welded together tubular steel bars, generally around 2" in diameter with 1/4" thick steel making up the tube.
What they do to cars at the factory is give them a lick and a promise and send them on their way. Its fine if you roll once, at low-ish speeds, if not you're going to be wishing you'd added the extra few hundred pounds of steel that makes up a roll cage.
As an example of said substructures effectiveness: Take apart ANY 4x4 capable truck chassis made in the last 10 years. Its roll cages galore. The purpose of a roll cage is for the ROLL CAGE to survive impact from any side and protect the occupant by keeping him/her suspended in the middle via a harness system. The human body is incredibly resilient as long as it doesn't suffer any major lacerations or direct blunt force trauma so they are incredibly effective.
They're expensive to install as stock on a vehicle however so 95% of vehicles sold don't have one incorporated.
Also, we actually have stricter safety laws here, and anything but a low speed flip or a slide across a grassy field the additional roll protection does nothing, it fails with the first impact of any of the 6(particularly the 4 making up the exterior corners of the top of the cab space) supports against a rock because its entire structure is so dependant on the rest of the structure being intact. Which for the purposes of the safety test lab does just fine.
It's better than what there was 20 years ago(aka nearly nothing, your figure of pre-1970 is way off unless things were forced to be a lot different for euro travelers. They started the engineering process back then, they didn't actually get anything much out of it until they started getting away from all these box-shaped cars), and makes seat belts a bit more viable. The problem is they made the seat belt laws more than 20 years ago, and there are still situations where its safer to not be wearing one.
The trouble with the post-1970's up to about 96-98 cars was that there was some semblance of a roll cage but in many cases it would just make things worse as it was harder to remove after it inevitably pancaked right down to the doors during a roll.
There is an additional benefit that a roll cage will stiffen a chassis for better handling, but a straight bar across the back of the front seats accomplishes this task much more effectively and efficiently, so it would never be the primary reason for installing a roll cage.
Additionally you can purchase after-market roll cages with thick mandrel-bent tubing for most vehicles these days. While crazy-pete could screw something up, these folks make a business out of it, word would get around pretty fast if they made a shoddy product.
I've been in rollovers in vehicles with roll cages, and from the remains of vehicles without roll cages I've seen in rollover accidents along the highway I'm glad I've never been in one of those.
Worst thing that happened in a rollover so far is I fractured my right arm against the shifter.
Anything that has any sort of significant down side, including seat belts, should be optional.
According to studies done by the RCMP in Canada before they made seat belts mandatory everywhere seat belts were only responsible for prevention of death in 30% of the accidents in which they were a factor.(I.E. the car getting crushed is the car getting crushed, seat belt didn't really matter there) In nearly all cases they caused injuries and in 5% of cases direct death could be attributed to the seat belt being worn.
Seat belts are awesome when there are roll cages installed in the vehicle.... how many Corollas and Honda civics do you see out there with roll cages installed? Additionally the best seat belt in those cases is a proper 4-point harness. Not the "quick clip" seat belt invented by a company that thought it would make it easier to market. It did, it also made the thing almost as useless as a lap belt.
The incidence of neck-related injuries has risen nearly 900% since seat belts were made mandatory. Deaths per reported accident has only dropped about 20% and most of that can be attributed to better crash design in the car chassis and stricter safety regulations that have been introduced that have nothing to do with a seat belt. Given the down side is significant, seat belts should be optional.
Air bags should not be optional, the amount of damage they cause(broken thumbs, occasional cracked ribs, the odd broken nose or arm) is vastly outweighed by the damage they prevent. Some people say the air bag and seat belt work in sync, they do not. Modern air bags deploy so fast its already halfway inflated by the time the locking mechanism in your seat belt kicks in. All the seat belt does is give your head time to snap forward and nail the airbag while its near the end of its inflation and travelling at some ridiculous speeds that are the peak of its inflation speed. Hello whiplash and neck problems for the rest of your life as a best case, hello lifetime paralysis or death as worst cases. The seat belt didn't save you, the air bag did.
The same goes for ABS as for seat belts. The idea is your stopping distance is shorter. In many coniditions it isn't, but that isn't stopping idiots from lobbying to get it made mandatory here. Ice, deep snow, hydroplaning, all of these conditions fuck ABS sensors to hell. There are two theories(And these are straight theories, they can only be MARGINALLY proven in a lab, but the guy that invented the shit apparently had a marketing genius on staff) about ABS.
One: It will allow more control of steering while allowing maximum braking. This is patently wrong. Someone who has the sense to steer out of a situation will have the sense to be able to ease off the brakes a little when they feel the car starting to fish on them, and easing back on the brakes rather than having a motor kick in that disengages them almost completely is much much preferred. Those that don't have the sense are going to death grip the steering wheel and the ABS is just going to get them to whatever they are about to hit even faster.
Two: It'll make you stop faster. With modern brakes on dry pavement even at highway speeds? ABS isn't even worth talking about. Stopping distance increased by 20%+ over a driver with a 30 minute lesson on proper braking. You now occupy the air space of the vehicle in front of you. The speeds at which ABS becomes necessary exist only on the German Autobahn and roads like it. At those speeds your reaction time is so slow(in relation to how much time it takes for your vehicle to suffer enough jarring braking to lose stability) for easing off the brakes that its better to have a sensor do it for you.
That being said, most people are stupid, and ABS is a good idea. Should it be a default option on vehicles? Yes. Should I still be able to purchase a vehicle without it? Very much YES.
Snow and ice? My truck was horrendous. Then I pulled the ABS relay and figured out how to disable the traction control. Now it handles like it should, like a d
Actually that was the reason I took drama as one of my mandatory additional arts courses instead of a 3rd year of french. French was half and half guys/girls. In drama class I got to directly act with the girls etc... and get put into some lovely situations. My first two real girlfriends came out of Drama class.
I was at the time fluent enough to carry on a conversation for the most part. I'm not anymore. If you don't use it you lose it, as they say.
I have no idea where you are, but physics here is definitely physics. They teach you foundation information and get you more comfortable with thinking about physical objects, motion, energy transmission etc in equation form. The first year of it that I took was on par with the physics I took in College as a non-physics major. The math was no where near, but courses were available that taught octal, hex, courses that gave you actual credits in university if you were so inclined to do them in high school(The only university credits I have are from AP History and AP Math which I think counted as their 101 equivalents).
P.S. Don't procreate. We already have too many narrow minded fools that can't see past the end of their own nose.
Just because the schools where you are suck, doesn't mean it can't still work even as such.
Beyond that the courses I would have missed out on taught me nothing I need.
I don't care that tommy is bored, tommy needs to be forced to go to school, but tommy should have more control over the direction of his education as he enters young-adult hood.
High school isn't "early education". This father has the same perspective on high school that I have had ever since I did it. By the time you hit the end grade 9, you're DONE with generalized education. You've had time to do your book reports on the all-mighty shakespeare(heaven forbid we should teach our kids about anything current that might actually get them interested, some kids will like this for the history aspect, but thats what a damned history class is for, and they have that) and you have more or less developed into whatever type of person you are going to be.
High school should be about trying out new things and entirely about figuring out and eventually working towards what you want to do with the rest of your life. Having these programs available is a must, having them be mandatory is one of the worst possible things that any society has ever done to their following generation.
When I and most of my class mates were in grade 9 we still enjoyed school for the most part(there are always exceptions) but once I hit high school I became extremely disheartened. This was the place I wanted to start trying out things to see what I might like to do, and I had a direction in mind already, as did everyone I went to school with, barring a very small minority. Thanks to mandatory credits however I ended up missing a lot of the things I wanted to try, and doing another 10 reports on various dead peoples poems, books, and plays.
Those highly specialized STEM schools are intended for the extremely gifted and taught by the extremely gifted. Most of those people develop many personality quirks over the years as a result of being so focused on one particular thing, but its not what I(or, I believe, this guy) are talking about changing every school into.
Admittedly in my case it probably would have largely resulted in a high STEM focus but it would have been taught by high school teachers, not people who have been paid exorbitant amounts of money to stop researching or teaching at a university in order to teach your kids.
In my paricular case my high school years probably would have looked something like this:
1st Year:
Math
Chem
Physics
Biology
Woodworking
Mechanics
Computers
and maybe intro to plumbing or some such... then I'd have narrowed it down from there, or tried something else in the second year.
There is a huge opportunity cost to me in the fact that I was forced to take french(I'm in canada... where the only place french would matter is if I was trying to get a job in retail or customer service in quebec), english, and a Drama class in high school. Turns out I'm really good at French and Drama but I had and have zero interest in either one. These aren't short courses either. We're now talking about 15+ hours per week of teacher time completely wasted. Chemistry and Biology may have been a waste as well(those were the things I couldn't do due to time restraints, as well as some of the more advanced math courses that I was interested in but couldn't see myself benefiting from in anything but an academic realm) but they were something I had an inclination towards and I still regret not doing.
Also, anyone should know the sheer amount of mental energy totally wasted forcing yourself to do something you have absolutely no interest in doing. Its like slogging uphill through knee-deep molasses. Its even worse than house work. You do it because it needs to be done. You may have zero interest in(and potentially hate) doing it, but at least you have an interest in the end result.
In my case in the second year of high school when I was forced to endure over 20 hours of classes every week that I had no interest in I lost all will to go to school or do anything with it at all. I went from an A+ overall average to a C because I just did things that interested me outside of school. I was short on time so I sacrificed at-home sleep for sleeping at my desk in school. I even perfected sleeping with my eyes open for a couple of teachers that hated what I w
Its seriously getting to the point in the UK and France with Riots amongst portions of the Muslim/Islam community that they were kind enough to let into their countries where some "Get the fuck out or get dead" politics may be needed soon.
Its not like Mexicans immigrating into the US, other than the fact that Spanish is slowly becoming a major language down there, the Mexicans really do nothing at all to change the country. They generally assimilate well, even though the country they go into is drastically different from the country they are leaving. The same can't be said for large portions of the Arabic community.
Chinese moving into Canada is another example of a large amount of people from a very different cultural background moving into a country, but generally behaving themselves properly.
I try really really hard not to be racist against these muslim/islamic peoples but christ... they cause shit everywhere they go.
I even have a muslim friend, one of the few around here who has assimlated well(he doesn't ever really want to go back to the country he's from, and HIS family is even fairly well off), and he's told me to basically give up. He's stated that what you see in the news in all reality isn't that far from the truth other than in some of the minor details and that there is a very good reason he doesn't want to go back.
Here you have a populace that moved into the country attempting to hold the rest of the country hostage until everyone toes their line? Fuck that shit. There are very few situations in which I'm in favor of using force to end protests, but this is one of them.
Those protesting should be made aware that their actions are illegal(even if they have to quickly WRITE a new, very specific, law for it) and given 48 hours to shut down the protest. All those found in violation after the 48 hours should be detained and deported. Natural-born citizens should be heavily fined.
From friends I have in the U.K., their government would probably be surprised at how popular a move that would be. In particular amongst the Muslims who have moved in and love living in the U.K. and hate the others that are making it more difficult for them.
It isn't, however if we're going to protect all speech no matter what we have to start protecting some of the consequences of that speech and adding in "Just Cause" clauses to existing laws surrounding physical violence short of permanent severe disability(I.E. loss of use of a limb, loss of sight, hearing, significant loss of cognitive capabilities) and death.
The situations for Just Cause should be clearly defined as several things but I think a loose mock up would be good as follows: "statements made with the intention to provoke a physical response", "Threats of bodily injury that may be of immediate concern", "Statements made to be intentionally inflammatory" and a few other things.
What I've listed there wouldn't allow for the parents to drive over to the guys house and punch them out, but it would allow for them knocking a few of his teeth out if he said it to their faces.
There are a lot of cowardly assholes out there that have been empowered by free speech laws plus laws against assault and need their asses kicked. This guy sounds like one of them. If he's insensitive enough to post something like that on facebook he's probably said something of a similar severity in real life at some point, and the person he said it to should have the opportunity to break his nose.
Excluding them is necessary because the entirety of the U.S. is suffering this problem, and several of the states are quite natural resource wealthy. Its a political problem and a brainwashing problem.
You need universal health care and a revamped education system to begin competing again for "best country in the world" title. Most of your early politicians would be rolling over in their graves if they knew how far behind the country has fallen.
You don't have to give up ANY freedoms. You just need a bit of a tax hike, to stop letting the biggest corps off with their tax responsibilities and to shut down the god damn health insurance industry. Sure you have better quality of care than most other places, but not by a lot, and you spend a shitload more because the majority of the population that can't afford good health insurance problems develop serious health concerns due to a lack of at least semi-regular visits to the doctor that could curtail these problems early on.
I don't agree with the troll, and points 1 and 3 are correct, but #2 is both misleading and most of it barely qualifies as science.
Social sciences are by their very nature extremely inaccurate and extremely prone to study biases.
Hard science is still majority published by men. There isn't a real reason for this beyond cultural, and actual real gender differences. Women generally end up having more interest outside of STEM and most women, at least in most first world countries, finding the Sciences rather boring.
Women tend to be much more social creatures that like to be involved in many things at once, while men tend to be more single-minded, which lends itself to modern science extremely well as extreme specialization is often a requirement to get anything significant done. People do tend to gravitate towards things that are an easy fit for them sooo...
Of course there are exceptions to every rule and your Nobel prize list is ample evidence of that. However I think we can expect the real sciences(excluding perhaps medical science) to be male-dominated for the foreseeable future.
It really should on a tech site like Slashdot.
Its unfortunate how many people there are even on a tech site like this with their own agenda and own lifestyle to push down others throats.
Of course, since its Slashdot it tends to be more the Organic food-eating, sacrifice everything for green types who've just been fed wrong information by people marketing these "green" technologies and now are doubling down on their ill-conceived lifestyle changes. At least its not as bad as the idiot right-wingers on a lot of other sites.
I like how you've been modded down except everything you've said is, at a very basic level, correct.
When we're talking about organic foods being better for you, you're talking about very minuscule amounts. Nutrition doesn't even factor into the argument, or shouldn't unless you're already a brain-dead raving vegan and are just piling more stuff on to support your personal lifestyle choice.
The real reason to choose Organic foods is to avoid the harmful pesticides. The only trouble with that is the "Organic" food industry has been commercialized as well so good luck verifying the chems used or not used.
Unless you grow it yourself you could be shit out of luck.
Its things like this that we've confirmed as accurate as much as we can that makes me think the universe isn't expanding at all, we're just able to see more of it all the time. The current size of the universe closely correlates with the speed of light and the time it would have taken that light to reach us... coincidence?
Space itself is supposedly able to expand faster than the speed of light, however I'd like someone to point me to the evidence that this is happening at all.
Sigh, reading fail.
He scammed 4.5 million, so he'll retire to the Cayman Islands with the 1-2 million they couldn't account for or take back from him.
As long as he wasn't a total moron at least.
He scammed 45 million dollars. He's going to retire to the Cayman Islands somewhere with the 5-6 million they couldn't account for.
You're one of the assholes Jeremy Clarkson believes that the answer to is Police Marksmen.
I'm currently in agreement.
This is actually something I'm also in favor of. Dedicated bike lanes and potentially parts of a glutted city cut off from regular vehicles. Some cut off roadways on outskirts could be partially converted to parking lots to also help alleviate parking issues that are often very troublesome in these areas. Make it all one-way bikes and delivery trucks only.
Most of what I am saying is in relation to places where there is no sidewalk, no road shoulder to speak of, and only two lanes with no bike lane. Which is why I guess I'm getting so much flak because most of the slashdot crowd live in cities, and of course people that live in cities almost universally can't even imagine what life is like outside one, or even in a fairly small city.
Some of these areas in congested cities could and probably should be converted to foot and cycle traffic only.
Its the idiots in the middle of 80km/hr streaming traffic I want off the roads, and the idiots on highly trafficked narrow roads slowing down traffic for no reason other than they feel more entitled than everyone else to get where they are going simply because they're on a damn bike.
The bikes shouldn't be ON the road in the first place.
I don't even know when or how Bikes became a religion but people are defending their right to bicycle in areas designed for motorized traffic and -nothing- else (because when they did the town planning in a lot of these towns, rural areas, etc, 30-40 years ago they couldn't imagine any idiots would be bicycling ON THE DAMN ROAD)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/18/black-hawk-colorado-bans-cyclists
There are "Bicycle advocacy groups" defending a right no one ever had in the first damn place. Towns are perfectly within their rights to ban bicycles on certain streets, or even in the entirety of the town. There are many towns with a LARGE contingency who want the practice of bicycling on vehicle-trafficked streets wherein no bicycle lanes exist banned entirely. Unfortunately there are a very loud vocal minority that seem bent on stopping this.