A big advantage of Dvorak is that it forces you to touch type and not peek at the keys, on account of the physical key layout not matching the keymap. You could achieve a similar thing with qwerty by randomly moving the keycaps on a keyboard, except the "F" and "J" keys with the markers.
In the vast majority of automatic cars neutral is selected via a mechanical/hydraulic linkage that is completely independent of the engine systems. While either may fail, the chances of both happening together is rather small.
Every can I've driven than I can recall has had an accessories position, where the ignition is switched off but the steering wheel lock isn't engaged. Can you cite a model where the steering lock is engaged in the accessories position?
What model Land Rover is that? Under what conditions will it lock out of neutral? is there a certain speed over which it wont allow it, or is it RPM based? It seems strange behaviour, are you sure it isn't a fault with your particular vehicle?
There's no reason to shift into neutral for normal stopping. The torque converter is designed for it to operate in this way, and results in no mechanical wear. In contrast, shifting in and out of neutral puts wear on the bands and clutches in the transmission.
On of the uses of neutral is so you can re-start the engine while the car is still moving.
Which production cars have fully shift by wire? I can think of Prius from about 2004 onward, and at least one recent Lexus hybrid. How many more are there?
It appears that the 09 Prius is shift by wire, so it seems plausible that a software problem could at the same time leave the throttle fully open, ignore the brake switch input, ignore transmission shift position, and ignore the stop switch.
With conventional cars there was always three clearly separate systems: the engine throttle, the ignition switch, and the transmission shift. With those we could see that there could be no common point of failure that would affect more than one at a time. With some of the new cars, such as in the Prius, from the consumer point of view this is no longer the case. For all we know, those systems may now be all integrated and have the potential for one failure to affect all the means of stopping the car.
Which cars are completely shift-by-wire with no hydro-mechanical linkage for neutral? There's the 2004 onward Prius and some Lexus models (250h, any others?) I've found no suggestion of a shift by wire arrangement in any mainstream non-hybrid cars.
It's difficult to imagine a fault that would simultaneously render the ECU faulty as well as the mechanical linkage for neutral.
It currently has floating windows. It's hardy a design improvement to constrain them into some arbitrary other window. It just makes it harder to mix them with windows from other applications.
Though not left-handed, I use my left hand for the mouse. I use focus-follows-mouse and don't find any trouble selecting text. Normally it's just left-button drag to select, and middle button click to drop on the destination....
I started from a click-to-focus background, and similarly would have said "I will never, ever enable focus-follows mouse." But then after having to use focus-follows mouse for a few weeks there was no way I could back. With click to focus you just need so much more screen space to do the same jobs.
Toyota have announced that new models will have a feature that idles back the engine when brake and accelerator are pressed at once. That will probably be implemented at a low level so that it still works in most firmware crash situations.
However, they could have a lower level still that cuts power completely. However, it's too easy for someone to press brake and accelerator at once in normal use, So instead they could make a magic combination of press Brake, Accelerator and the Horn button all at once to cut the engine and reboot the controller.
The suggestion it is a software problem comes from those people who don't trust Toyota's explanation for the events. First Toyota said all these sudden accelerations must be the floormats, but then there were too many that floormat issues couldn't explain. The next best chance was to blame it in a stuck accelerator assembly itself, but even that dosen't really explain the symptoms. Why would accelerators suddenly start pushing themselves all the way to the floor without even having a history of mild friction and stickyness?
It has all the hallmarks of a developer hunting around desperately to find why a bug is occurring, and just blaming it on something partly related, hoping the problem will go away. In the meantime, the new models will come out with a watchdog type override that reboots the microcontroller when brake and accelerator are pressed at once.
Exactly- and the astrologists are still trying to work out why the characteristics of the signs are exactly opposite between children born in the USA and in Australia.
I was born in November in Minnesota and I have an IQ of ~130.
They probably weren't measuring IQ though, they may have been measuring skills such as being able to recognise that one data point doesn't confirm or deny a trend.
With all the studies saying that winter babies perform poorer in life, no wonder that educated parents choose to try to have their children in spring to summer.
Obviously Southern hemisphere data would confirm or deny that.... There's a serious point in that though, in that many of the speculated reasons for correlation could be investigated by comparing the effect in different countries, and even across the different climates within one country.
The jobs disappeared because the US could afford to move manufacturing overseas by paying for it with an ever-increasing debt and selling off assets. Once the assets are all sold off and the debt is out of control, you might have to start making something again, rather than everyone having desk jobs shuffling money around.
Mechanics do a lot more than rebuild engines and change oil. Even if electric, cars will still have all the suspension and steering components: bushes, ball-joints, wheel bearings. Sure, there may not be an alternator, but there'll be a motor running the pump on the power steering.
Then someone will have to diagnose the fault code that says which cell in the battery pack has failed. or which board to replace in a controller. That will cost the customer $1000 for a new board shipped direct from manufacture in China - because it's cheaper to source a new $50 board, rather than pay $100 to fix the existing one.
Could be fun working out how to build something to convince the GPS receiver in other cars that they're in a different speed zone, and force them to slow down.
You just need to get a jammer that will conveince the car you want to overtake that its in a 40km/h zone. It's limiter will cut in, and you can drive past easily.
You need electric or vacuum brakes on the trailer. A bit of a touch on the trailer brakes is a much more sure way of pulling it straight, and should be a prerequisite for high speed towing.
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the ability not to suck on other people's laptops is totally worth the 20 WPM decrement or whatever.
But think of how much they will suck on your dvorak laptop!
A big advantage of Dvorak is that it forces you to touch type and not peek at the keys, on account of the physical key layout not matching the keymap. You could achieve a similar thing with qwerty by randomly moving the keycaps on a keyboard, except the "F" and "J" keys with the markers.
In the vast majority of automatic cars neutral is selected via a mechanical/hydraulic linkage that is completely independent of the engine systems. While either may fail, the chances of both happening together is rather small.
Every can I've driven than I can recall has had an accessories position, where the ignition is switched off but the steering wheel lock isn't engaged. Can you cite a model where the steering lock is engaged in the accessories position?
What model Land Rover is that? Under what conditions will it lock out of neutral? is there a certain speed over which it wont allow it, or is it RPM based? It seems strange behaviour, are you sure it isn't a fault with your particular vehicle?
There's no reason to shift into neutral for normal stopping. The torque converter is designed for it to operate in this way, and results in no mechanical wear. In contrast, shifting in and out of neutral puts wear on the bands and clutches in the transmission.
On of the uses of neutral is so you can re-start the engine while the car is still moving.
Which production cars have fully shift by wire? I can think of Prius from about 2004 onward, and at least one recent Lexus hybrid. How many more are there?
It appears that the 09 Prius is shift by wire, so it seems plausible that a software problem could at the same time leave the throttle fully open, ignore the brake switch input, ignore transmission shift position, and ignore the stop switch.
With conventional cars there was always three clearly separate systems: the engine throttle, the ignition switch, and the transmission shift. With those we could see that there could be no common point of failure that would affect more than one at a time. With some of the new cars, such as in the Prius, from the consumer point of view this is no longer the case. For all we know, those systems may now be all integrated and have the potential for one failure to affect all the means of stopping the car.
Which cars are completely shift-by-wire with no hydro-mechanical linkage for neutral? There's the 2004 onward Prius and some Lexus models (250h, any others?) I've found no suggestion of a shift by wire arrangement in any mainstream non-hybrid cars.
It's difficult to imagine a fault that would simultaneously render the ECU faulty as well as the mechanical linkage for neutral.
It currently has floating windows. It's hardy a design improvement to constrain them into some arbitrary other window. It just makes it harder to mix them with windows from other applications.
Though not left-handed, I use my left hand for the mouse. I use focus-follows-mouse and don't find any trouble selecting text. Normally it's just left-button drag to select, and middle button click to drop on the destination....
I started from a click-to-focus background, and similarly would have said "I will never, ever enable focus-follows mouse." But then after having to use focus-follows mouse for a few weeks there was no way I could back. With click to focus you just need so much more screen space to do the same jobs.
Toyota have announced that new models will have a feature that idles back the engine when brake and accelerator are pressed at once. That will probably be implemented at a low level so that it still works in most firmware crash situations.
However, they could have a lower level still that cuts power completely. However, it's too easy for someone to press brake and accelerator at once in normal use, So instead they could make a magic combination of press Brake, Accelerator and the Horn button all at once to cut the engine and reboot the controller.
The suggestion it is a software problem comes from those people who don't trust Toyota's explanation for the events. First Toyota said all these sudden accelerations must be the floormats, but then there were too many that floormat issues couldn't explain. The next best chance was to blame it in a stuck accelerator assembly itself, but even that dosen't really explain the symptoms. Why would accelerators suddenly start pushing themselves all the way to the floor without even having a history of mild friction and stickyness?
It has all the hallmarks of a developer hunting around desperately to find why a bug is occurring, and just blaming it on something partly related, hoping the problem will go away. In the meantime, the new models will come out with a watchdog type override that reboots the microcontroller when brake and accelerator are pressed at once.
Exactly- and the astrologists are still trying to work out why the characteristics of the signs are exactly opposite between children born in the USA and in Australia.
I was born in November in Minnesota and I have an IQ of ~130.
They probably weren't measuring IQ though, they may have been measuring skills such as being able to recognise that one data point doesn't confirm or deny a trend.
With all the studies saying that winter babies perform poorer in life, no wonder that educated parents choose to try to have their children in spring to summer.
Obviously Southern hemisphere data would confirm or deny that.... There's a serious point in that though, in that many of the speculated reasons for correlation could be investigated by comparing the effect in different countries, and even across the different climates within one country.
I think the above poster was thinking in terms of over-voltage protection, not over-current protection.
The jobs disappeared because the US could afford to move manufacturing overseas by paying for it with an ever-increasing debt and selling off assets. Once the assets are all sold off and the debt is out of control, you might have to start making something again, rather than everyone having desk jobs shuffling money around.
Mechanics do a lot more than rebuild engines and change oil. Even if electric, cars will still have all the suspension and steering components: bushes, ball-joints, wheel bearings. Sure, there may not be an alternator, but there'll be a motor running the pump on the power steering.
Then someone will have to diagnose the fault code that says which cell in the battery pack has failed. or which board to replace in a controller. That will cost the customer $1000 for a new board shipped direct from manufacture in China - because it's cheaper to source a new $50 board, rather than pay $100 to fix the existing one.
Could be fun working out how to build something to convince the GPS receiver in other cars that they're in a different speed zone, and force them to slow down.
You just need to get a jammer that will conveince the car you want to overtake that its in a 40km/h zone. It's limiter will cut in, and you can drive past easily.
Yeah, but if you use the brakes, you'll end up behind the accident, and may have to wait hours until the road is clear...
You need electric or vacuum brakes on the trailer. A bit of a touch on the trailer brakes is a much more sure way of pulling it straight, and should be a prerequisite for high speed towing.