Dude, it's nothing like your house analogy at all. This is something that was in their possession and that they were told they must use. Even in most companies all that would happen is a formal disciplinary note and a reformat of the machine. They took nothing and they destroyed nothing.
Honestly, the school administration is being completely unreasonable. They didn't damage the hardware, so worst case is a reinstall of the software. If they were so worried about these kids doing something with the silly laptops, then why in the world did they have them bring the machines home? A whole lot worse could happen than messing around with the OS.
As for spying on admins, well, then the admins are incompetent. What were they doing, running "ps" and seeing what processes were running? The charges are outrageous, and I really do hope the administration gets sacked over it.
You're being outright ridiculous with your position. This is another example of so many of a public school being draconian and, well, plain idiotic. Zero tolerance is stupid, and kicking kids out of school for playing around with computers is stupid. If they could get to anything sensitive with lab machines or student laptops, the admins did not do their jobs.
And while you might be thinking up some ridiculous response to try to justify yourself, I suppose I should point out how I *know* you're wrong. Not only do I work in computers doing admin, but I work for a municipal government and deal directly with school system MIS functions. This sort of thing is my job, and I have the same sort of situations there. I would have a subordinate fired that tried to do what this school system did, and that's the end of it. I consider it misconduct unbecoming of an employee in such a station.
The most likely outcome of *this* situation is quite a few people refusing to let their children touch school computers. And probably a pile of lawsuits, and a huge amount of wasted money. All because some twit that is scared of everything that they don't understand decided to file felony charges against some teenagers for messing with their personal laptops.
You want to play analogy? Is it justifiable to expel and press criminal felony charges against some kid because they wrote in a textbook? Or do you make them buy a new textbook to replace the one that they damaged? This is quite close to writing in a textbook in pencil. Anything they did could be easily and quickly repaired.
There are a lot of reasons. One of the ways that you get a fuel economy boost in gal-electric is because you turn off the engine a lot of the time. You don't do that with diesel; it is bad.
Diesel is not easy to start. If the engine is cold, you need to heat the block to make it work. It uses a different ignition method.
Diesel engines are very inefficient when they are first started. It requires a lot of fuel to turn one on. This sort of eliminates the design of a hybrid from working.
If you fix both those things, then the diesel-electric is a great thing.
Of course, the Insight is a quite small two door coupe. Its base price is over $19,000, or $21,000 for the CVT model. You only get over 60mpg if you get the manual transmission. It uses NiMH for batteries, so you'll have to replace them more often than lead-acid, and at much higher prices. I'm sure that doesn't cost much for its 120 1.2v cells. So that pushes the cost of ownership up an awful lot, just in the first five years.
It also has those annoying 14" wheels, only seats two people, and still manages to weigh well over 1800lbs.
The Toyota Prius manages to out do the Insight in every way. More power, same fuel economy, better appearance, seats 5, same price, better comforts. It also has most of the same problems (replacement battery costs, etc).
You must be driving to environmental rallies or something, too. Either that, or you're just lying. People just don't care what car you drive, and they don't notice unless you're doing something to stand out. Did you paint it a phosphorescent yellow with pink polka dots?
I know of two people that own hybrid cars, and no people planning on getting one. I never see these vehicles on the road (and trust me, I would notice an Insight, same as I notice Elements and Azteks).
Rather than playing the uninformed enviro-whacko type, why don't you do some research. That "enviro-friendly" car that you're touting the benefits of isn't very friendly at all. It a large amount of very toxic chemicals to make the batteries, it still needs fossil fuels to work, and it isn't the best thing on the market.
You're just spouting the typical "I'm helping the environment by doing something that doesn't matter or inconvenience me" type environmental fool attitude. Why don't you push for electric generation by nuclear in your area? Or wind farms? I bet if one was planning to go up in your area, you'd be fighting it with some ridiculous completely bullshit excuse that amounted to "Not In My BackYard".
Most people don't share your opinion. This is because, though you try to play it as fact, you're wrong about them. "People" do not want underpowered small and annoying hybrid cars. They want a car that works, and they want to be able to fuel it in a few minutes and not have to worry about anything. They want to be able to accelerate and go a good speed, and they want to be able to put a lot of stuff in them. Many of these people that you so insist want hybrid cars actually *want* a big-assed, inefficient SUV.
Hybrid cars are *not* popular. They have a strong, yet small, niche market. The majority are not interested in actually buying one. They are not common, nor are they likely to be in the short term.
To quote _you_: "In this case, your feelings/opinions are not based on fact. And what you believe is 'rational' and 'irrational' is completely subjective. Your views have already been clearly defined. It does not mean anyone else shares your feelings/opinions nor does it make them any more vaild."
You certainly can go on pushing for people to get hybrid cars, but if you want to make up "facts" then sit down and shut up.
18 brick sized batteries is about a tenth of a Prius trunk, actually. Don't forget the wiring harness, enclosure, and room for the batteries to having cooling circulation, though. Worst case, I'd say your 1.125cu ft goes to 2cu ft and you end up with only 8cu ft left in the trunk.
Considering the Prius is about a third the weight of the average SUV, I think you mean closer to 50 bricks. Also, you might be better off embedding them in the windows instead.
That would help you not have to plug in the car or fuel up the car. You could probably go for quite a while, so long as your car took big rests between uses and never was driving very far.
As far as costs, in addition to the heavy pollutants required to manufacture the solar array, you will be paying thousands to outfit your car with high density cells.
I found 9W output 4cm x 5cm cells for 250$, or 30W at 24"x37" for same price. Also, 110W, but that was over 600$, and I'm not sure of the dimensions. You're going to need very high density cells to get sufficient power to charge the car, so you're spending a hell of a lot on them.
We could have a solar car right now. The reason that you don't hear about it is because they're junk; they're proof of concept things. There are so many problems with doing it that it's kind of silly.
There is insufficient solar power to power the car.
You will need batteries to overcome this. You will also want to charge these batteries, either by letting your car sit in the sun all day, or by plugging it in.
If you don't do that, you will need an engine to provide the power the solar/batteries do not. Then you aren't a solar car, you're a gas-electric car with solar charging cells.
Solar cells are very expensive, and fairly fragile.
Solar cells cause incredible pollution to produce.
That makes it even worse. As they have demonstrated, they do not write secure code. If they rewrite large parts of the system for Longhorn, it will just mean that they duplicate all the old bugs and add a lot of new ones. There will be a crazy patch-fest for the first year the OS is out, and nobody will be able to touch the platform because of it.
As it is, everything they've announced about Longhorn has made people cringe. OK, they're updating the GUI... who cares? They're adding yet *another* set of new APIs, making the platform further complicated to develop for. They're adding absolutely silly amounts of DRM, which their customers just don't want. And they're rewriting parts of the system that are finally stable and tested.
Alienware is both higher end hardware, and a complete ripoff on price. You can replicate their product, in some cases right down to the chassis, for about half the price they charge.
The Apple box will very likely have some proprietary components, which may or may not be better than other stuff out there.
Apple is just a company. The will still use the cheapest part that works, and they will still plan in product obsolescence so that they continue having a market. They are in it for profit, not for some silly movement.
Compared to most of the PC vendors, they're better with hardware quality control, and they've become better with software quality. They also charge more than the equivalent classed PC.
Part of the reason that Apple does so well is that by far most people *really* don't need the latest and greatest. This means Apple can ship older parts that cost a whole lot less for them to get ahold of. Then they charge a tidy markup and make nice profit. Their high-end more cutting edge stuff is still extremely over-priced compared to their competitors.
Apple would like for a computer to be an appliance. You buy the Mac computer and run the Mac apps, or you buy the Dell computer and run the Dell apps. It that regard, they win; their machine are much more aesthetically pleasing. However, they don't run the same apps, and that both helps and hinders.
Really, comparing a luxury car to computer hardware is silly. Many luxury cars have a variety of annoying problems that you have to deal with. They do a good job of taking care of it, but when you have so many toys you have to expect things to break more often.
At least nobody is comparing them to sports cars. Those break often and are quite expensive to fix.
Washington DC has one of the highest murder rates in the US. It also is quite high for robbery, larceny, and auto theft. Public transit is terrible there, and road/traffic planning is equally bad. DC is a place that I would go to only if I had to.
It also doesn't lack homelessness or drug abuse. Those are just better hidden by forcing those people elsewhere, out of travelled areas, or by arresting them and putting them in jail.
I don't believe you in the slightest about Congressmen sending their children to public schools. I would be surprised if any of them attend anything but private school or home tutoring.
The Federal is responsible for the most expensive social programs in the world, which are also among the least effective.
I really do hope that you are being tongue-in-cheek with your post. It looks like you are, but I'm not sure of it.
If you don't live there it is more difficult. The basic idea remains the same, but they are less inclined to listen to you. Send letters, get editorials printed, push for a petition, etc.
The problem comes from having a pool of x dollars potential revenue across government, with.5x going to Federal,.35x to State, and.15x to local. Since most of the infrastructure is maintained by the local level, they end up with the highest capital requirements. Under the current situation, they depend on State and Federal levels to give back money so that they can afford to operate.
If the Federal has a small share of the pool, they would have to spend it more effectively. This means stripping out programs that aren't necessary and programs that don't belong on the Federal level. The military would still be funded, as it is one of the basic functions the Federal serves.
Perhaps you just don't realize that we didn't have an income tax until almost WWI (1913). We still had a large military and a navy, and we had sufficient resources and funding to fight in WWI. They had to amend the Constitution to allow an income tax to be levied. It was passed right along with the amendment having Senators elected by the People instead of appointed by the States.
Welfare isn't the biggest problem, either. It shouldn't be done at the Federal level, regardless. Right now, the biggest social program problem is Social Security, which is a doomed from the start social program. If you really want to see how the Dems "balanced" the budget, take a look at where all the money really came from and where it went. It was a half-truth when the Clinton administration said they did it. It has a lot to do with Social Security monies.
I'm not saying that the Republicans are doing anything better. If anything, I'd say both parties basically suck right now. Neither one has the People's best interests at heart, and neither is doing anything but more harm.
Are you implying that the Federal needed huge expansion and social programs to help with civil rights? They ratified a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing equal rights. It was already illegal to murder someone, regardless of race. Nobody lost any freedoms in the process, but many were ensured to have more freedom.
Of course, but the more aerodynamic you make your car, the less wind is hitting the car. The reduction in surface area will drop the amount of force opposing your forward motion, and lessen the impact on your fuel efficiency at higher speeds. Don't forget the other variable in that equation!;-) F=qA [q=impact pressure(.5qv^2)]
You can also improve other things, such as using the wind that does hit you to help get better road adhesion, deal a bit with the pressure differences around your car that pull it in various directions, etc.
Completely correct about the "fluid clutch" torque converter kind.
The automatic manual is still heavier and less efficient than straight manual, though. It's just not anywhere near as heavy as the modern automatic is. Tou operate the clutch with your leg and the gearing with your wrist. This is certainly taking less fuel to do than having a machine do it for you. Just not a tremendous amount less.
Also, the human driver can predict future events and use the transmission more effectively. The computer cannot do that.
The car is nearly as efficient at 30mph and 3000rpm as 60mph and 3000rpm. Modern cars are not boxes of wind catching gas mileage doom.
Contributing factors are still factors. If the camera was not there, they wouldn't have hit their brakes. They should've been keeping proper distance and operating in a way to maintain control of the vehicle. However, the *cause* of them losing control was a reaction to the camera.
I have definitely noted the same. The presence of a cruiser heavily alters the safety of driving with other traffic. It dramatically lowers it, and then lowers it again after the cruiser is out of sight and everybody floors it.
From my manual and personal observation, I get peak efficiency around 3000rpm. This is also 80mph in 5th gear. Also noted, though ancedotal, that the most efficient point really was at that, regardless of speed and air resistance. The car has a fuel efficiency display, which is what I'm basing that on. Not that surprising for a car designed for use in Germany.
I don't drive fast for fuel efficiency, though. I agree with you on that.
Driving in MA is definitely an experience. I get going pretty good on the highways, too, and I'm regularly tailgated and passed.
I've heard of such a law too, but I've never seen it. Then again, MA thinks that you should stop for cops standing on the side of the highway pointing at cars. I think those guys are mentally unstable and there is no way I'm letting them near me.
Actually, it may not be the best for fuel consumption. It also allows the drive to pay less attention to the road.
Cruise control is going to let the computer decide what the throttle position will be. That's all it does. The reason that manual transmission vehicles get better fuel economy than automatics is largely because people are better at this than mechanisms. (It's also because autos are heavier and the transmission mechanism syphons more power away than in a manual.)
Many automatics will not downshift just because you set your shifter to a lower gear. They will wait until your engine is in the programmed RPM parameters for that gear before they will shift.
Overdrive just is the mechanism to downshift when you hit the accelerator, even if the transmission doesn't have to. A trivial task for those of us with a manual transmission, but impossible to force an automatic to do manually.
Also, the part that does the speed matching for your clutch, friction plate, and gearing is called a synchromesh. That's why you don't have to dump your clutch every time you shift, and why you don't have to wait for exactly the right RPM in order to shift.
If your transmission is getting hot, you're shifting too much. This happens on automatics too, and why there is a button to disable overdrive. In traffic it can cause a lot of excess heat buildup and a transmission failure.
Or maybe if there isn't enough traffic to warrant an officer, then there isn't enough traffic to worry about how fast someone is going. It's a revenue souce and absolutely nothing more. Get rid of the cameras and you get rid of the problem of the admissability of the photos.
Law enforcement is not something for private companies to do. I *know* that if I received a violation notice from a private company for doing something on public property that I would fight it in every way that I could. As far as I'm concerned, no law that allows such a a law to be respected, and mostly likely that law is illegal.
It really is kind of sad to see people accepting this sort of thing as a reasonable measure.
That isn't such a good way. Rather, replace red lights/stop signs in stupid places with yellow lights and yields. The red light/stop sign is there because, in theory, either traffic warrants it through necessity or there is an obstacle to you being able to see oncoming traffic. In either case, being legally allowed to treat it as a yield is defeating the original intent of such things, and making driving a lot more dangerous.
Well, that's likely backlash from having over 50% of your income taken by the government. That's what it adds up to when you total all the taxes, registrations, license fees, regulatory fees, etc. Since that is already unacceptably high, demanding more money is outright ludicrous.
You fix is "make the Federal huge huge huge", when the fix really is "slash the Federal, reduce overall costs", now the States and local government can get more revenue without the Federal taking it all. The Federal screwed up education, proved that social programs don't work (at least not at the Federal level), made the tax situation horrible, and a lot more.
It's very cute that you think it's proper to take money from the military to give it to social services and police. That will not only not work, but they don't have much to do with each other. They're handled on different levels of government, as they should be, and as they are supposed to be according to the Constitution.
Social services *should* be done on a more reasonable level of government, so that you aren't forced, against your will, to pay for them. Like the way it was done *before* FDR, when we weren't running trillions of dollars in Federal debt.
Also, the Federal don't do police. They have agencies of dubious value that are kind of similar to police, but aren't. Police are mostly a local government thing. If the Federal didn't take nearly all the money and then use it to control local government, this wouldn't be a problem. Additionally, police don't like doing speed traps; it sucks as a job. Of course, they don't set the speed limits - the municipality or State does - so they don't get to decide to set reasonable speeds. That fancy assed radar/laser gun isn't on the "desired new toy" list for most of them, either. They often prefer the older one because when your radar detector goes off, *you slow down*.
Education is local government, too. Once the Federal got involved it went to hell. Did you ever notice how the majority of school funding comes straight from local revenue into local government? That's because the Federal doesn't do it.
Emergency services are local/state government, with the exception of Federal agencies like FEMA. Most of the cost is not Federal, however. There is also some at the State level.
Science should properly be done outside the government. However, this is the first thing you mention that might be justifiable as something to be more heavily funded. I would prefer for science to be done in schools, by private individuals, and by private companies, but that just isn't happening anymore.
The lesson is keep your government local. Concentration of power is bad, and history agrees with me (as does the Constitution). Perhaps you noticed that as Federal power increased, personal freedom decreased? Cut most of the Federal and some of the States and you end up with a lot more services, a lot more freedom, and a lot more control over your government. Then you have adequate police and fire protection, well funded schools and libraries, and good condition roads.
People *are* willing to put in to the system. They just aren't willing to put into *your* system, and don't really like having their money confiscated to have things forced down their throats.
In my experience if the company is small enough that it's possible to know everyone working there, then it's a good choice to consider for employment. Otherwise, you're probably considered an interchangable part.
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Dude, it's nothing like your house analogy at all. This is something that was in their possession and that they were told they must use. Even in most companies all that would happen is a formal disciplinary note and a reformat of the machine. They took nothing and they destroyed nothing.
Honestly, the school administration is being completely unreasonable. They didn't damage the hardware, so worst case is a reinstall of the software. If they were so worried about these kids doing something with the silly laptops, then why in the world did they have them bring the machines home? A whole lot worse could happen than messing around with the OS.
As for spying on admins, well, then the admins are incompetent. What were they doing, running "ps" and seeing what processes were running? The charges are outrageous, and I really do hope the administration gets sacked over it.
You're being outright ridiculous with your position. This is another example of so many of a public school being draconian and, well, plain idiotic. Zero tolerance is stupid, and kicking kids out of school for playing around with computers is stupid. If they could get to anything sensitive with lab machines or student laptops, the admins did not do their jobs.
And while you might be thinking up some ridiculous response to try to justify yourself, I suppose I should point out how I *know* you're wrong. Not only do I work in computers doing admin, but I work for a municipal government and deal directly with school system MIS functions. This sort of thing is my job, and I have the same sort of situations there. I would have a subordinate fired that tried to do what this school system did, and that's the end of it. I consider it misconduct unbecoming of an employee in such a station.
The most likely outcome of *this* situation is quite a few people refusing to let their children touch school computers. And probably a pile of lawsuits, and a huge amount of wasted money. All because some twit that is scared of everything that they don't understand decided to file felony charges against some teenagers for messing with their personal laptops.
You want to play analogy? Is it justifiable to expel and press criminal felony charges against some kid because they wrote in a textbook? Or do you make them buy a new textbook to replace the one that they damaged? This is quite close to writing in a textbook in pencil. Anything they did could be easily and quickly repaired.
They certainly can be, and they're not that hard to get ahold of. They just produce less power, so you need to devote more surface area to them.
There are a lot of reasons. One of the ways that you get a fuel economy boost in gal-electric is because you turn off the engine a lot of the time. You don't do that with diesel; it is bad.
Diesel is not easy to start. If the engine is cold, you need to heat the block to make it work. It uses a different ignition method.
Diesel engines are very inefficient when they are first started. It requires a lot of fuel to turn one on. This sort of eliminates the design of a hybrid from working.
If you fix both those things, then the diesel-electric is a great thing.
Of course, the Insight is a quite small two door coupe. Its base price is over $19,000, or $21,000 for the CVT model. You only get over 60mpg if you get the manual transmission. It uses NiMH for batteries, so you'll have to replace them more often than lead-acid, and at much higher prices. I'm sure that doesn't cost much for its 120 1.2v cells. So that pushes the cost of ownership up an awful lot, just in the first five years.
It also has those annoying 14" wheels, only seats two people, and still manages to weigh well over 1800lbs.
The Toyota Prius manages to out do the Insight in every way. More power, same fuel economy, better appearance, seats 5, same price, better comforts. It also has most of the same problems (replacement battery costs, etc).
You must be driving to environmental rallies or something, too. Either that, or you're just lying. People just don't care what car you drive, and they don't notice unless you're doing something to stand out. Did you paint it a phosphorescent yellow with pink polka dots?
I know of two people that own hybrid cars, and no people planning on getting one. I never see these vehicles on the road (and trust me, I would notice an Insight, same as I notice Elements and Azteks).
Rather than playing the uninformed enviro-whacko type, why don't you do some research. That "enviro-friendly" car that you're touting the benefits of isn't very friendly at all. It a large amount of very toxic chemicals to make the batteries, it still needs fossil fuels to work, and it isn't the best thing on the market.
You're just spouting the typical "I'm helping the environment by doing something that doesn't matter or inconvenience me" type environmental fool attitude. Why don't you push for electric generation by nuclear in your area? Or wind farms? I bet if one was planning to go up in your area, you'd be fighting it with some ridiculous completely bullshit excuse that amounted to "Not In My BackYard".
Most people don't share your opinion. This is because, though you try to play it as fact, you're wrong about them. "People" do not want underpowered small and annoying hybrid cars. They want a car that works, and they want to be able to fuel it in a few minutes and not have to worry about anything. They want to be able to accelerate and go a good speed, and they want to be able to put a lot of stuff in them. Many of these people that you so insist want hybrid cars actually *want* a big-assed, inefficient SUV.
Hybrid cars are *not* popular. They have a strong, yet small, niche market. The majority are not interested in actually buying one. They are not common, nor are they likely to be in the short term.
To quote _you_: "In this case, your feelings/opinions are not based on fact. And what you believe is 'rational' and 'irrational' is completely subjective. Your views have already been clearly defined. It does not mean anyone else shares your feelings/opinions nor does it make them any more vaild."
You certainly can go on pushing for people to get hybrid cars, but if you want to make up "facts" then sit down and shut up.
18 brick sized batteries is about a tenth of a Prius trunk, actually. Don't forget the wiring harness, enclosure, and room for the batteries to having cooling circulation, though. Worst case, I'd say your 1.125cu ft goes to 2cu ft and you end up with only 8cu ft left in the trunk.
Considering the Prius is about a third the weight of the average SUV, I think you mean closer to 50 bricks. Also, you might be better off embedding them in the windows instead.
That would help you not have to plug in the car or fuel up the car. You could probably go for quite a while, so long as your car took big rests between uses and never was driving very far.
As far as costs, in addition to the heavy pollutants required to manufacture the solar array, you will be paying thousands to outfit your car with high density cells.
I found 9W output 4cm x 5cm cells for 250$, or 30W at 24"x37" for same price. Also, 110W, but that was over 600$, and I'm not sure of the dimensions. You're going to need very high density cells to get sufficient power to charge the car, so you're spending a hell of a lot on them.
We could have a solar car right now. The reason that you don't hear about it is because they're junk; they're proof of concept things. There are so many problems with doing it that it's kind of silly.
There is insufficient solar power to power the car.
You will need batteries to overcome this. You will also want to charge these batteries, either by letting your car sit in the sun all day, or by plugging it in.
If you don't do that, you will need an engine to provide the power the solar/batteries do not. Then you aren't a solar car, you're a gas-electric car with solar charging cells.
Solar cells are very expensive, and fairly fragile.
Solar cells cause incredible pollution to produce.
That makes it even worse. As they have demonstrated, they do not write secure code. If they rewrite large parts of the system for Longhorn, it will just mean that they duplicate all the old bugs and add a lot of new ones. There will be a crazy patch-fest for the first year the OS is out, and nobody will be able to touch the platform because of it.
As it is, everything they've announced about Longhorn has made people cringe. OK, they're updating the GUI... who cares? They're adding yet *another* set of new APIs, making the platform further complicated to develop for. They're adding absolutely silly amounts of DRM, which their customers just don't want. And they're rewriting parts of the system that are finally stable and tested.
Alienware is both higher end hardware, and a complete ripoff on price. You can replicate their product, in some cases right down to the chassis, for about half the price they charge.
The Apple box will very likely have some proprietary components, which may or may not be better than other stuff out there.
Apple is just a company. The will still use the cheapest part that works, and they will still plan in product obsolescence so that they continue having a market. They are in it for profit, not for some silly movement.
Compared to most of the PC vendors, they're better with hardware quality control, and they've become better with software quality. They also charge more than the equivalent classed PC.
Part of the reason that Apple does so well is that by far most people *really* don't need the latest and greatest. This means Apple can ship older parts that cost a whole lot less for them to get ahold of. Then they charge a tidy markup and make nice profit. Their high-end more cutting edge stuff is still extremely over-priced compared to their competitors.
Apple would like for a computer to be an appliance. You buy the Mac computer and run the Mac apps, or you buy the Dell computer and run the Dell apps. It that regard, they win; their machine are much more aesthetically pleasing. However, they don't run the same apps, and that both helps and hinders.
Really, comparing a luxury car to computer hardware is silly. Many luxury cars have a variety of annoying problems that you have to deal with. They do a good job of taking care of it, but when you have so many toys you have to expect things to break more often.
At least nobody is comparing them to sports cars. Those break often and are quite expensive to fix.
Washington DC has one of the highest murder rates in the US. It also is quite high for robbery, larceny, and auto theft. Public transit is terrible there, and road/traffic planning is equally bad. DC is a place that I would go to only if I had to.
It also doesn't lack homelessness or drug abuse. Those are just better hidden by forcing those people elsewhere, out of travelled areas, or by arresting them and putting them in jail.
I don't believe you in the slightest about Congressmen sending their children to public schools. I would be surprised if any of them attend anything but private school or home tutoring.
The Federal is responsible for the most expensive social programs in the world, which are also among the least effective.
I really do hope that you are being tongue-in-cheek with your post. It looks like you are, but I'm not sure of it.
If you don't live there it is more difficult. The basic idea remains the same, but they are less inclined to listen to you. Send letters, get editorials printed, push for a petition, etc.
The problem comes from having a pool of x dollars potential revenue across government, with .5x going to Federal, .35x to State, and .15x to local. Since most of the infrastructure is maintained by the local level, they end up with the highest capital requirements. Under the current situation, they depend on State and Federal levels to give back money so that they can afford to operate.
If the Federal has a small share of the pool, they would have to spend it more effectively. This means stripping out programs that aren't necessary and programs that don't belong on the Federal level. The military would still be funded, as it is one of the basic functions the Federal serves.
Perhaps you just don't realize that we didn't have an income tax until almost WWI (1913). We still had a large military and a navy, and we had sufficient resources and funding to fight in WWI. They had to amend the Constitution to allow an income tax to be levied. It was passed right along with the amendment having Senators elected by the People instead of appointed by the States.
Welfare isn't the biggest problem, either. It shouldn't be done at the Federal level, regardless. Right now, the biggest social program problem is Social Security, which is a doomed from the start social program. If you really want to see how the Dems "balanced" the budget, take a look at where all the money really came from and where it went. It was a half-truth when the Clinton administration said they did it. It has a lot to do with Social Security monies.
I'm not saying that the Republicans are doing anything better. If anything, I'd say both parties basically suck right now. Neither one has the People's best interests at heart, and neither is doing anything but more harm.
Are you implying that the Federal needed huge expansion and social programs to help with civil rights? They ratified a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing equal rights. It was already illegal to murder someone, regardless of race. Nobody lost any freedoms in the process, but many were ensured to have more freedom.
Of course, but the more aerodynamic you make your car, the less wind is hitting the car. The reduction in surface area will drop the amount of force opposing your forward motion, and lessen the impact on your fuel efficiency at higher speeds. Don't forget the other variable in that equation! ;-) F=qA [q=impact pressure(.5qv^2)]
You can also improve other things, such as using the wind that does hit you to help get better road adhesion, deal a bit with the pressure differences around your car that pull it in various directions, etc.
Completely correct about the "fluid clutch" torque converter kind.
The automatic manual is still heavier and less efficient than straight manual, though. It's just not anywhere near as heavy as the modern automatic is. Tou operate the clutch with your leg and the gearing with your wrist. This is certainly taking less fuel to do than having a machine do it for you. Just not a tremendous amount less.
Also, the human driver can predict future events and use the transmission more effectively. The computer cannot do that.
The car is nearly as efficient at 30mph and 3000rpm as 60mph and 3000rpm. Modern cars are not boxes of wind catching gas mileage doom.
Contributing factors are still factors. If the camera was not there, they wouldn't have hit their brakes. They should've been keeping proper distance and operating in a way to maintain control of the vehicle. However, the *cause* of them losing control was a reaction to the camera.
I have definitely noted the same. The presence of a cruiser heavily alters the safety of driving with other traffic. It dramatically lowers it, and then lowers it again after the cruiser is out of sight and everybody floors it.
From my manual and personal observation, I get peak efficiency around 3000rpm. This is also 80mph in 5th gear. Also noted, though ancedotal, that the most efficient point really was at that, regardless of speed and air resistance. The car has a fuel efficiency display, which is what I'm basing that on. Not that surprising for a car designed for use in Germany.
I don't drive fast for fuel efficiency, though. I agree with you on that.
Driving in MA is definitely an experience. I get going pretty good on the highways, too, and I'm regularly tailgated and passed.
I've heard of such a law too, but I've never seen it. Then again, MA thinks that you should stop for cops standing on the side of the highway pointing at cars. I think those guys are mentally unstable and there is no way I'm letting them near me.
Actually, it may not be the best for fuel consumption. It also allows the drive to pay less attention to the road.
Cruise control is going to let the computer decide what the throttle position will be. That's all it does. The reason that manual transmission vehicles get better fuel economy than automatics is largely because people are better at this than mechanisms. (It's also because autos are heavier and the transmission mechanism syphons more power away than in a manual.)
Also, not all cars have cruise control.
Many automatics will not downshift just because you set your shifter to a lower gear. They will wait until your engine is in the programmed RPM parameters for that gear before they will shift.
Overdrive just is the mechanism to downshift when you hit the accelerator, even if the transmission doesn't have to. A trivial task for those of us with a manual transmission, but impossible to force an automatic to do manually.
Also, the part that does the speed matching for your clutch, friction plate, and gearing is called a synchromesh. That's why you don't have to dump your clutch every time you shift, and why you don't have to wait for exactly the right RPM in order to shift.
If your transmission is getting hot, you're shifting too much. This happens on automatics too, and why there is a button to disable overdrive. In traffic it can cause a lot of excess heat buildup and a transmission failure.
Or maybe if there isn't enough traffic to warrant an officer, then there isn't enough traffic to worry about how fast someone is going. It's a revenue souce and absolutely nothing more. Get rid of the cameras and you get rid of the problem of the admissability of the photos.
Law enforcement is not something for private companies to do. I *know* that if I received a violation notice from a private company for doing something on public property that I would fight it in every way that I could. As far as I'm concerned, no law that allows such a a law to be respected, and mostly likely that law is illegal.
It really is kind of sad to see people accepting this sort of thing as a reasonable measure.
That isn't such a good way. Rather, replace red lights/stop signs in stupid places with yellow lights and yields. The red light/stop sign is there because, in theory, either traffic warrants it through necessity or there is an obstacle to you being able to see oncoming traffic. In either case, being legally allowed to treat it as a yield is defeating the original intent of such things, and making driving a lot more dangerous.
Well, that's likely backlash from having over 50% of your income taken by the government. That's what it adds up to when you total all the taxes, registrations, license fees, regulatory fees, etc. Since that is already unacceptably high, demanding more money is outright ludicrous.
You fix is "make the Federal huge huge huge", when the fix really is "slash the Federal, reduce overall costs", now the States and local government can get more revenue without the Federal taking it all. The Federal screwed up education, proved that social programs don't work (at least not at the Federal level), made the tax situation horrible, and a lot more.
It's very cute that you think it's proper to take money from the military to give it to social services and police. That will not only not work, but they don't have much to do with each other. They're handled on different levels of government, as they should be, and as they are supposed to be according to the Constitution.
Social services *should* be done on a more reasonable level of government, so that you aren't forced, against your will, to pay for them. Like the way it was done *before* FDR, when we weren't running trillions of dollars in Federal debt.
Also, the Federal don't do police. They have agencies of dubious value that are kind of similar to police, but aren't. Police are mostly a local government thing. If the Federal didn't take nearly all the money and then use it to control local government, this wouldn't be a problem. Additionally, police don't like doing speed traps; it sucks as a job. Of course, they don't set the speed limits - the municipality or State does - so they don't get to decide to set reasonable speeds. That fancy assed radar/laser gun isn't on the "desired new toy" list for most of them, either. They often prefer the older one because when your radar detector goes off, *you slow down*.
Education is local government, too. Once the Federal got involved it went to hell. Did you ever notice how the majority of school funding comes straight from local revenue into local government? That's because the Federal doesn't do it.
Emergency services are local/state government, with the exception of Federal agencies like FEMA. Most of the cost is not Federal, however. There is also some at the State level.
Science should properly be done outside the government. However, this is the first thing you mention that might be justifiable as something to be more heavily funded. I would prefer for science to be done in schools, by private individuals, and by private companies, but that just isn't happening anymore.
The lesson is keep your government local. Concentration of power is bad, and history agrees with me (as does the Constitution). Perhaps you noticed that as Federal power increased, personal freedom decreased? Cut most of the Federal and some of the States and you end up with a lot more services, a lot more freedom, and a lot more control over your government. Then you have adequate police and fire protection, well funded schools and libraries, and good condition roads.
People *are* willing to put in to the system. They just aren't willing to put into *your* system, and don't really like having their money confiscated to have things forced down their throats.
In my experience if the company is small enough that it's possible to know everyone working there, then it's a good choice to consider for employment. Otherwise, you're probably considered an interchangable part.