But AFAICT, BMW didn't have any manufacturing in the United States. Just dealers, drivers, mechanics, and the folks that manage them from an ivory tower somewhere. They are not the domestic employment juggernaut that is GM or Chrysler.
Would they be missed if they were gone? Sure. But then, so is Saab. *shrug*
(Disclaimer: I drive a BMW. It's a perhaps a bit older than relevant in this discussion, but I've had most of it apart. Almost every part is proudly stamped with the name of some European country or other, except for a random electronic module for the HVAC which was made in the US. Even the fuses and many of the bolts can be traced to their European origin.)
I'm still nursing along a Droid 1, and it's terrifically RAM-starved. The CPU is fast enough, the storage is more than adequate, video playback is fine, audio works well enough for the car or while walking, and the battery life is acceptable. (And it's paid for, and I can find parts for it for free when it breaks. Which it has, a couple of times...) But RAM? Heh. Even with tricks, it's just not enough.
And it's uncannry: I was doing much of the same stuff with X under Linux a long time ago, with a about a tenth as much RAM. I'd have a dozen or more simple programs running, a handful of browsers browsing, with music playing, and interactive widgets running along the side of the screen in Afterstep, all on a high-resolution display. I could even have animated desktops. Just like a Droid.
The only thing that was iffy was video, but then I didn't have dedicated hardware for video decoding back then (while my Droid does).
So now, it's hard work for a 32-bit CPU running at 900MHz with hundreds of megabytes of RAM to play an MP3 and launch a web browser.
So a web page today is about 10x bigger than it was in 2003. I can accept that.
But in 2003, I had a baseline 2-megabit-per-second Internet connection and could have had a 3- or 5-megabit connection for a bit more cash.
Today, 8 years later, the "normal" connection speed for my ISP is 6-megabit.
So according to my observations and their statistics, folks are expected to download 10 times the amount of stuff using just 3 times as much available bandwidth.
In other words, the web is currently more than three times slower than it was in 2003.
Hooray!
Re:Most people don't understand that it's a bad id
on
Is Overclocking Over?
·
· Score: 1
Here's what I know:
If I'm Dell, and I buy a lot of 1,000 CPUs, I take them in OEM packaging without a warranty from the manufacturer. Why? Simply because it's cheaper that way, from start to finish.
Meanwhile, Intel has a lovely little FAQ about their processor warranties that you can amuse yourself with once get done imagining things.
I just tried it. I don't have "Asteroids Galaxy Tour" or any Rush, but I told Google Voice Search to "play Magical Mystery Tour" and a moment later, Subsonic fired up and started playing it from my home server.
"Play Kinko the Clown" works. So does "play beers steers and queers." And "listen to prick" and "listen to Hips, Tits, Lips, Power."
Maybe that's not what what you meant, but meh: It works for me. Usually.
I really don't care if the argument is solid and bullet-proof: It's still a realistic scenario, especially if one considers the human (error-prone) aspect of it and the resultant derivatives.
While I created it as a fiction, I've seen similar things happen first-hand in the real world more than once.
And it's just one scenario. There are are also real-world scenarios resulting in honest end-user surprise that I simply do not care to elucidate, and am simply unwilling to generalize.
I've currently got better things to do (like pay attention to the lovely ale in front of me) than argue about a free service which may have recently become annoying for some folks whose Kung-Fu is lacking.
Tylenol (acetaminophen), when mixed with other drugs, is the work of thugs and crooks and politicians.
It's somewhat useful by itself (as long as the patient doesn't drink much alcohol), but is easily deadly when abused (and/or the liver is otherwise-compromised).
I have a wide array of pills in my medicine cabinet, for a wide array of ailments, and when I decided one day to childproof it the very first thing I did was to get rid of everything containing (or consisting of) acetaminophen.
Because, frankly, nothing else in there was anywhere near as dangerous -- even in fistful-of-pills sorts of doses.
To be clear, I'm not necessarily against doctoring up various "fun" drugs to make them less fun [or downright unpleasant] for those who want to eat them in recreational quantities, but killing their liver [and thus the user] is going just a wee bit too far.
Death sentences should only occur at the hand of a jury.
So what if Joe had Localgeek work the Kung-Fu more than five years ago, and switched ISPs less than five years ago. What then? Does that make my argument "not an issue"? Why, or why not?
dyndns has been around for a very long time in Internet years, so the above is not anything of any particular unlikelihood.
Meanwhile, it's not that it's really important. It's that it can be very surprising to the folks actually using the service. Please scroll up a few comments, read what the fuck I actually wrote, and try to understand that I'm really not biased in this conversation (having rolled my own dynamic DNS for a long, long time -- because I can): I'm just attempting to raise the point that some folks who keep track of things to the best of their own technical, cognitive, and organizational abilities will be legitimately surprised by this move.
Maybe it's a rather meek point, but it is only what it is, and my intent is no greater or lesser than exactly that.
Wow, you sure do like to froth at the mouth. *and* *stuff*
So, picture it. A long time ago, Joe installs a few cameras around the outside of his house connected to a hardware DVR, which Joe installed himself because Joe is handy enough with running cables. It works adequately, and Joe is happy with it. But Joe's Internet Kung-Fu is not very strong, so it just sits there disconnected from the world.
Joe runs into his acquaintance Localgeek, and in the course of a normal conversation, Joe mentions to Localgeek that he has this camera system. Localgeek, after learning that it's not connected to teh Interweb, mentions that Joe can view his cameras from Randomspot with a bit of Kung-Fu.
Joe likes the idea, which Joe didn't even know was possible, and asks Localgeek if he would mind stopping by to have a look at it.
Localgeek stops by and leisurely configures the port forwarding and dynamic DNS in about 20 minutes time. Joe tosses him a few bucks, and says thank you.
Years go by, everything works fine. Joe switches ISPs to a company called Newhost, and everything works fine. Localgeek has long forgotten having even worked on Joe's cameras, and Joe still enjoys viewing the system from Randomspot.
Except Newhost doesn't rotate IP addresses very often, and Joe's old router isn't bright to send updates to dyndns unless the IP address actually changes.
And then, one day, Joe finds that he can't view his cameras from Randomspot anymore. (Woops.)
Joe is bemused by this, because things always worked fine. Joe calls up Localgeek, and Localgeek immediately understands the problem and decides to change the firmware on the router to one with a better dyndns implementation that can send updates regularly.
But then both Joe and Localgeek are very surprised when they discover that the previous service isn't available anymore. Joe never received an email from dyndns warning him about the expiration because his old email address (from way back when) stopped working when he switched to Newhost.
Is Joe's surprise because:
1. He has a warped sense of entitlement and lacks sufficient public admonishment for his overwhelming greed
2. He neglected to retain Localgeek with an ongoing service contract for maintenance on his $50 router
For those who don't know, such a product is available in a convenient spray-on form. It's good for keeping pests out of your garden, good for spicing up dinner, and (I'd guess) good for keeping kids from eating things they should not be eating.
(I use a similar concoction to keep my stupid, deaf cat from eating wires.)
Unfortunately there's still lots of stuff produced for a 1080i output format, because that's what TVs use. And it's good enough for today because displays are capable of handling it in a pixel-accurate way.
And I don't think it's going to go away anytime soon. Folks working on (say) a PBS program just pick "1080i" for their project because it's just easier that way, and their source material will be squished up/down/sideways in order to fit no matter what it started out being.
At some point in the future 1080i will be looked upon with the same disdain that 480i currently is, since scaling interlaced video is always an ugly process and displays won't be stuck at 1920x1080 forever.
So it oughta be dead, but it just isn't. Bummer. I want to blame ATSC for being short-sighted, but that was decided a long, long time ago in computer years...
It's not like updating via a router is the only choice. If you are hosting something on that IP you are going to have at least one box that can run a software client to update.
Not always. Think about a remote security DVR, or a remote (mostly) brainless NAS hard disk for backups, and you'll be on the right track: The fact that there is a network connection and some gear that needs a dynamic hostname does not also mean that there is also a PC capable of running arbitrary software.
Throwing a cheap router into the mix (which PPPOE users needed to have anyway) just plain fixed that, for a lot of folks, for a long time. This (actually rather old) announcement changes things somewhat.
This is important because some people might not have seen an email from DynDNS for a decade or more, and will be very surprised when their things stop working after all this time.
I used to use afraid.org, but switched to something else when their domains inexplicably weren't resolving for a long time ago for what seemed to last a week or two.
Much more recently, I just buy my own domains for the pittance that it costs per year, pick a free DNS provider (Zone Edit still works fine, for instance), and do the dynamic DNS thing that way. If I ever find that the DNS provider is down for some reason, I can fix it myself.
DVDs can be 480i, sure -- it makes the most sense to use 480i when dealing with stuff that was originally shot with NTSC cameras, for instance.
But among the other formats possible, they can also be 480p anamorphic, which is a 4:3 picture squeezed down by the display to 16:9, which makes more sense for filmed material. Almost all of the DVDs I have are 480p anamorphic.
It's always been this way. DVD players attached to older TVs do output 480i (or else there would be no picture), but that's got little to do with the source material on the disc.
If the machine serving as an iSCSI host has sufficient RAM, it already almost works that way:
1. Client A boots up. Loads OS from solid-state disk. Subsequent clients are likely to load directly from the server's RAM cache, which just got populated automatically. 2. Client A runs a game. Loads game from disk. Subsequent clients are likely to load directly from the server's RAM cache...
So the first load is at disk (SSD) speed, and the subsequent loads are at RAM speed (although both instances are limited to Gig-E speed).
The server uses a shared copy-on-write system for each client's image, making this a super-simple, zero-cost arrangement with almost all of the advantages of a well-managed RAM disk, none of the difficulties involved in managing it, and none of the associated problems.
Meanwhile, it's not at all clear what advantage a hardware RAM disk would ever have in the real world, since such things are so easily implemented in software and are always cheaper/better/faster that way...unless the system in question is already out of RAM capacity or has some software dependency that requires a RAM disk to talk SATA.
For instance, I had a 2-megabyte ISA expansion board on my 10MHz XT back in 1991. I used half of it for a RAM disk which I kept some oft-used programs on, and half of it for cache. But this only made sense because the price was right, the system was already at its maximum capacity of 640k, and the disks I had (ST-225 and ST-419) were murderously slow. It was a night-and-day difference in performance for the stuff I was doing with that box.
But for modern consumer applications (which include gaming), systems today commonly support relatively huge amounts of relatively cheap RAM. This obviously allows for fairly large RAM disks without drama if it makes sense for some reason (and it doesn't, here).
Van drivers can install concave mirrors on their side mirrors that give them a better view. And they certainly can see out the *driver* side.
I understand how to optimize my mirrors to minimize blind spots. Most people don't, from what I can tell, but I believe I've got it figured out pretty well.
I had my smallish cargo van parked in the yard to make room in the driveway for a party. A couple of days later, I decided to move it back to the driveway.
Backing from the yard to the street, I'm craning around, watching my mirrors, going slow, and paying attention, navigating my way between the stump of the big walnut tree we cut down and the real-estate sign for the lot next door, crossing the sidewalk, looking at length for traffic... And then: bang, I found a telephone pole. It's been there forever, but it was invisible, hidden in the blind spot between the bodywork on the right side of the van and the window on the back.
So now I'm waiting for a warm day to pull the plastic bumper cover off and straighten out the steel.
But if it were a bike or a pedestrian, it would've been exactly the same. No amount of stick-on convex mirrors would have helped: If they (other people) were aligned similarly to how that pole was, they'd have been invisible too -- whether backing up slowly or going down the highway.
Seeing out the driver side isn't a whole lot better with the mirrors aimed properly, unless I open the window and hang my head outside to look around.
*new concept*, indeed.
(Also, too: This word, concave: It does not mean what you think it means. Please try to understand the meaning of the words that you use, especially if you're going to use them in a condescending fashion. Thanks!)
Retraining should only happen if you retest and fail.
And in that event, the free traffic law pamphlet from the DMV ought to be enough study material for anyone who has already been licensed and has their wits about them to retrain themselves.
Anyone should be welcome to retest after failure exactly as often as new licensees are (which varies by state) without formal retraining. If the pamphlet isn't enough help them pass the test again (and again, and again), either improve the pamphlet or let the non-driving-motherfucker pay for their own damned classes: They're the ones who forgot how to drive, not the rest of us.
The state already paid for driver's ed once, and continuing education shouldn't be the state's problem since the driver (if they've ever paid attention) should still be driving properly without it.
(And if you think this is unfair to the elderly, maybe you can solicit AARP or somesuch to help out. Maybe they can help organize some group meetings on off-days at the local bingo hall or something. I'll be elderly myself, one of these days, and I'm OK with my mindset.)
Are these like the "alcohol-related" crash statistics that include instances of completely sober people driving to/from the store to get some beer, and non-drinkers hitting other people who are on their way to get beer, and people who are involved in an accident when they've still got some beer that they bought last week in the trunk, and people hitting pedestrians who are carrying beer, and pedestrians throwing empty beers at moving cars, that are used to prop up drunk driving propaganda?
Because, frankly, anything from whatever group wants to call themselves drive-safely.net seems about as likely as the above to be truthful and honest with their statistics.
For the record: I caused a car accident in 1996. I was very tired after working a double shift and I was fiddling with the radio, looking for interesting music. Better ban that too.
Oooh, oooh! Can I play too?
I caused a car accident when I was sad because my sister had killed herself a few days prior. I lost focus for a moment, and ran right into the stopped car in front of me.
I think we should ban driving while sad. So much for funeral processions...
Are you going to just drop a lit cigarette into your lap?
It wouldn't be the first time -- why not?
My reaction to a lit cigarette in my lap, last time I had that experience, was far more graceful than the last time a horrible fucking spider crawled out of the dash vent and started taunting me.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, so they do. Looks like it employs ~7,000 heads.
I still don't know if that's $4,000,000,000.00 worth of "too big to fail," but it's at least substantial.
Thanks, AC.
But AFAICT, BMW didn't have any manufacturing in the United States. Just dealers, drivers, mechanics, and the folks that manage them from an ivory tower somewhere. They are not the domestic employment juggernaut that is GM or Chrysler.
Would they be missed if they were gone? Sure. But then, so is Saab. *shrug*
(Disclaimer: I drive a BMW. It's a perhaps a bit older than relevant in this discussion, but I've had most of it apart. Almost every part is proudly stamped with the name of some European country or other, except for a random electronic module for the HVAC which was made in the US. Even the fuses and many of the bolts can be traced to their European origin.)
This.
I'm still nursing along a Droid 1, and it's terrifically RAM-starved. The CPU is fast enough, the storage is more than adequate, video playback is fine, audio works well enough for the car or while walking, and the battery life is acceptable. (And it's paid for, and I can find parts for it for free when it breaks. Which it has, a couple of times...) But RAM? Heh. Even with tricks, it's just not enough.
And it's uncannry: I was doing much of the same stuff with X under Linux a long time ago, with a about a tenth as much RAM. I'd have a dozen or more simple programs running, a handful of browsers browsing, with music playing, and interactive widgets running along the side of the screen in Afterstep, all on a high-resolution display. I could even have animated desktops. Just like a Droid.
The only thing that was iffy was video, but then I didn't have dedicated hardware for video decoding back then (while my Droid does).
So now, it's hard work for a 32-bit CPU running at 900MHz with hundreds of megabytes of RAM to play an MP3 and launch a web browser.
So a web page today is about 10x bigger than it was in 2003. I can accept that.
But in 2003, I had a baseline 2-megabit-per-second Internet connection and could have had a 3- or 5-megabit connection for a bit more cash.
Today, 8 years later, the "normal" connection speed for my ISP is 6-megabit.
So according to my observations and their statistics, folks are expected to download 10 times the amount of stuff using just 3 times as much available bandwidth.
In other words, the web is currently more than three times slower than it was in 2003.
Hooray!
Here's what I know:
If I'm Dell, and I buy a lot of 1,000 CPUs, I take them in OEM packaging without a warranty from the manufacturer. Why? Simply because it's cheaper that way, from start to finish.
Meanwhile, Intel has a lovely little FAQ about their processor warranties that you can amuse yourself with once get done imagining things.
Hmm.
I just tried it. I don't have "Asteroids Galaxy Tour" or any Rush, but I told Google Voice Search to "play Magical Mystery Tour" and a moment later, Subsonic fired up and started playing it from my home server.
"Play Kinko the Clown" works. So does "play beers steers and queers." And "listen to prick" and "listen to Hips, Tits, Lips, Power."
Maybe that's not what what you meant, but meh: It works for me. Usually.
It's easy to confuse if I'm deliberate about it: "listen to KMFDM" returns "K M F D M" which doesn't match any of my tags. "Play Houses of the Molé" doesn't work, either. Nor does "listen to Red Birds Will Fly Out of the East and Destroy Paris in a Night," but it does give me a multiple-guess selector that includes the correct spelling and if I tap on that it begins playing a moment later.
I suspect that I could also reliably confuse Siri if I wanted to and had a few minutes to kill. *shrug*
(For what it's worth, not even Slashdot knows how to parse "Houses of the Mole' " with an acute e.)
I really don't care if the argument is solid and bullet-proof: It's still a realistic scenario, especially if one considers the human (error-prone) aspect of it and the resultant derivatives.
While I created it as a fiction, I've seen similar things happen first-hand in the real world more than once.
And it's just one scenario. There are are also real-world scenarios resulting in honest end-user surprise that I simply do not care to elucidate, and am simply unwilling to generalize.
I've currently got better things to do (like pay attention to the lovely ale in front of me) than argue about a free service which may have recently become annoying for some folks whose Kung-Fu is lacking.
This.
Tylenol (acetaminophen), when mixed with other drugs, is the work of thugs and crooks and politicians.
It's somewhat useful by itself (as long as the patient doesn't drink much alcohol), but is easily deadly when abused (and/or the liver is otherwise-compromised).
I have a wide array of pills in my medicine cabinet, for a wide array of ailments, and when I decided one day to childproof it the very first thing I did was to get rid of everything containing (or consisting of) acetaminophen.
Because, frankly, nothing else in there was anywhere near as dangerous -- even in fistful-of-pills sorts of doses.
To be clear, I'm not necessarily against doctoring up various "fun" drugs to make them less fun [or downright unpleasant] for those who want to eat them in recreational quantities, but killing their liver [and thus the user] is going just a wee bit too far.
Death sentences should only occur at the hand of a jury.
So what if Joe had Localgeek work the Kung-Fu more than five years ago, and switched ISPs less than five years ago. What then? Does that make my argument "not an issue"? Why, or why not?
dyndns has been around for a very long time in Internet years, so the above is not anything of any particular unlikelihood.
Meanwhile, it's not that it's really important. It's that it can be very surprising to the folks actually using the service. Please scroll up a few comments, read what the fuck I actually wrote, and try to understand that I'm really not biased in this conversation (having rolled my own dynamic DNS for a long, long time -- because I can): I'm just attempting to raise the point that some folks who keep track of things to the best of their own technical, cognitive, and organizational abilities will be legitimately surprised by this move.
Maybe it's a rather meek point, but it is only what it is, and my intent is no greater or lesser than exactly that.
Wow, you sure do like to froth at the mouth. *and* *stuff*
So, picture it. A long time ago, Joe installs a few cameras around the outside of his house connected to a hardware DVR, which Joe installed himself because Joe is handy enough with running cables. It works adequately, and Joe is happy with it. But Joe's Internet Kung-Fu is not very strong, so it just sits there disconnected from the world.
Joe runs into his acquaintance Localgeek, and in the course of a normal conversation, Joe mentions to Localgeek that he has this camera system. Localgeek, after learning that it's not connected to teh Interweb, mentions that Joe can view his cameras from Randomspot with a bit of Kung-Fu.
Joe likes the idea, which Joe didn't even know was possible, and asks Localgeek if he would mind stopping by to have a look at it.
Localgeek stops by and leisurely configures the port forwarding and dynamic DNS in about 20 minutes time. Joe tosses him a few bucks, and says thank you.
Years go by, everything works fine. Joe switches ISPs to a company called Newhost, and everything works fine. Localgeek has long forgotten having even worked on Joe's cameras, and Joe still enjoys viewing the system from Randomspot.
Except Newhost doesn't rotate IP addresses very often, and Joe's old router isn't bright to send updates to dyndns unless the IP address actually changes.
And then, one day, Joe finds that he can't view his cameras from Randomspot anymore. (Woops.)
Joe is bemused by this, because things always worked fine. Joe calls up Localgeek, and Localgeek immediately understands the problem and decides to change the firmware on the router to one with a better dyndns implementation that can send updates regularly.
But then both Joe and Localgeek are very surprised when they discover that the previous service isn't available anymore. Joe never received an email from dyndns warning him about the expiration because his old email address (from way back when) stopped working when he switched to Newhost.
Is Joe's surprise because:
1. He has a warped sense of entitlement and lacks sufficient public admonishment for his overwhelming greed
2. He neglected to retain Localgeek with an ongoing service contract for maintenance on his $50 router
or
3. His Kung-Fu is simply very weak.
For those who don't know, such a product is available in a convenient spray-on form. It's good for keeping pests out of your garden, good for spicing up dinner, and (I'd guess) good for keeping kids from eating things they should not be eating.
(I use a similar concoction to keep my stupid, deaf cat from eating wires.)
Unfortunately there's still lots of stuff produced for a 1080i output format, because that's what TVs use.
And it's good enough for today because displays are capable of handling it in a pixel-accurate way.
And I don't think it's going to go away anytime soon. Folks working on (say) a PBS program just pick "1080i" for their project because it's just easier that way, and their source material will be squished up/down/sideways in order to fit no matter what it started out being.
At some point in the future 1080i will be looked upon with the same disdain that 480i currently is, since scaling interlaced video is always an ugly process and displays won't be stuck at 1920x1080 forever.
So it oughta be dead, but it just isn't. Bummer. I want to blame ATSC for being short-sighted, but that was decided a long, long time ago in computer years...
Not always. Think about a remote security DVR, or a remote (mostly) brainless NAS hard disk for backups, and you'll be on the right track: The fact that there is a network connection and some gear that needs a dynamic hostname does not also mean that there is also a PC capable of running arbitrary software.
Throwing a cheap router into the mix (which PPPOE users needed to have anyway) just plain fixed that, for a lot of folks, for a long time. This (actually rather old) announcement changes things somewhat.
This is important because some people might not have seen an email from DynDNS for a decade or more, and will be very surprised when their things stop working after all this time.
I used to use afraid.org, but switched to something else when their domains inexplicably weren't resolving for a long time ago for what seemed to last a week or two.
Much more recently, I just buy my own domains for the pittance that it costs per year, pick a free DNS provider (Zone Edit still works fine, for instance), and do the dynamic DNS thing that way. If I ever find that the DNS provider is down for some reason, I can fix it myself.
DVDs can be 480i, sure -- it makes the most sense to use 480i when dealing with stuff that was originally shot with NTSC cameras, for instance.
But among the other formats possible, they can also be 480p anamorphic, which is a 4:3 picture squeezed down by the display to 16:9, which makes more sense for filmed material. Almost all of the DVDs I have are 480p anamorphic.
It's always been this way. DVD players attached to older TVs do output 480i (or else there would be no picture), but that's got little to do with the source material on the disc.
If the machine serving as an iSCSI host has sufficient RAM, it already almost works that way:
1. Client A boots up. Loads OS from solid-state disk. Subsequent clients are likely to load directly from the server's RAM cache, which just got populated automatically.
2. Client A runs a game. Loads game from disk. Subsequent clients are likely to load directly from the server's RAM cache...
So the first load is at disk (SSD) speed, and the subsequent loads are at RAM speed (although both instances are limited to Gig-E speed).
The server uses a shared copy-on-write system for each client's image, making this a super-simple, zero-cost arrangement with almost all of the advantages of a well-managed RAM disk, none of the difficulties involved in managing it, and none of the associated problems.
Meanwhile, it's not at all clear what advantage a hardware RAM disk would ever have in the real world, since such things are so easily implemented in software and are always cheaper/better/faster that way...unless the system in question is already out of RAM capacity or has some software dependency that requires a RAM disk to talk SATA.
For instance, I had a 2-megabyte ISA expansion board on my 10MHz XT back in 1991. I used half of it for a RAM disk which I kept some oft-used programs on, and half of it for cache. But this only made sense because the price was right, the system was already at its maximum capacity of 640k, and the disks I had (ST-225 and ST-419) were murderously slow. It was a night-and-day difference in performance for the stuff I was doing with that box.
But for modern consumer applications (which include gaming), systems today commonly support relatively huge amounts of relatively cheap RAM. This obviously allows for fairly large RAM disks without drama if it makes sense for some reason (and it doesn't, here).
FACT: Post as something other than AC and people might take you seriously.
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
If you want some of any of these, I'll be happy to oblige. But I don't think it would be any closer to the truth than the previous linkage.
I understand how to optimize my mirrors to minimize blind spots. Most people don't, from what I can tell, but I believe I've got it figured out pretty well.
I had my smallish cargo van parked in the yard to make room in the driveway for a party. A couple of days later, I decided to move it back to the driveway.
Backing from the yard to the street, I'm craning around, watching my mirrors, going slow, and paying attention, navigating my way between the stump of the big walnut tree we cut down and the real-estate sign for the lot next door, crossing the sidewalk, looking at length for traffic... And then: bang, I found a telephone pole. It's been there forever, but it was invisible, hidden in the blind spot between the bodywork on the right side of the van and the window on the back.
So now I'm waiting for a warm day to pull the plastic bumper cover off and straighten out the steel.
But if it were a bike or a pedestrian, it would've been exactly the same. No amount of stick-on convex mirrors would have helped: If they (other people) were aligned similarly to how that pole was, they'd have been invisible too -- whether backing up slowly or going down the highway.
Seeing out the driver side isn't a whole lot better with the mirrors aimed properly, unless I open the window and hang my head outside to look around.
*new concept*, indeed.
(Also, too: This word, concave: It does not mean what you think it means. Please try to understand the meaning of the words that you use, especially if you're going to use them in a condescending fashion. Thanks!)
Retraining should only happen if you retest and fail.
And in that event, the free traffic law pamphlet from the DMV ought to be enough study material for anyone who has already been licensed and has their wits about them to retrain themselves.
Anyone should be welcome to retest after failure exactly as often as new licensees are (which varies by state) without formal retraining. If the pamphlet isn't enough help them pass the test again (and again, and again), either improve the pamphlet or let the non-driving-motherfucker pay for their own damned classes: They're the ones who forgot how to drive, not the rest of us.
The state already paid for driver's ed once, and continuing education shouldn't be the state's problem since the driver (if they've ever paid attention) should still be driving properly without it.
(And if you think this is unfair to the elderly, maybe you can solicit AARP or somesuch to help out. Maybe they can help organize some group meetings on off-days at the local bingo hall or something. I'll be elderly myself, one of these days, and I'm OK with my mindset.)
I've never had that problem, and I make a point of using empty/abandoned lots for driving practice at least several times a year.
Perhaps you're doing it wrong.
Are these like the "alcohol-related" crash statistics that include instances of completely sober people driving to/from the store to get some beer, and non-drinkers hitting other people who are on their way to get beer, and people who are involved in an accident when they've still got some beer that they bought last week in the trunk, and people hitting pedestrians who are carrying beer, and pedestrians throwing empty beers at moving cars, that are used to prop up drunk driving propaganda?
Because, frankly, anything from whatever group wants to call themselves drive-safely.net seems about as likely as the above to be truthful and honest with their statistics.
Oooh, oooh! Can I play too?
I caused a car accident when I was sad because my sister had killed herself a few days prior. I lost focus for a moment, and ran right into the stopped car in front of me.
I think we should ban driving while sad. So much for funeral processions...
It wouldn't be the first time -- why not?
My reaction to a lit cigarette in my lap, last time I had that experience, was far more graceful than the last time a horrible fucking spider crawled out of the dash vent and started taunting me.
And an AC chimes in with an orthogonally-related retort.
Thanks, AC, but I prefer threads.