I was under the impression that the VRC was part of the other organization on the page.
No, it's the same organization just a different division. But it's ok; we all make mistakes from time to time.
However, you never addressed my other concern, where the IIHS influences policy.. policy which directly contradicts civil engineering findings and safety suggestions. Such as my example of yellow light time vs. red light cameras.
No, I did not because it wasn't germane to the discussion at hand. The IIHS and NHTSA perform crash test research and report on safety concerns and that's the end of that. If you want to discuss the politics of either organization or the current insurance situation in North America I'm afraid we'll have to wait until that topic comes to head. Since we're already off-topic for this article I didn't feel the need to spiral the conversation even further so.
No, no they don't. The IIHS does not perform crash tests or anything like that. If you clicked the link "About the IIHS" you'd see that they do policy... not crash testing.
"The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) is a nonprofit research and communications organization funded by auto insurers. For over 30 years the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has been a leader in finding out what works and doesn't work to prevent motor vehicle crashes in the first place and reduce injuries in the crashes that still occur. The Institute's research focuses on countermeasures aimed at all three factors in motor vehicle crashes (human, vehicular, and environmental) and on interventions that can occur before, during, and after crashes to reduce losses. In 1992 the Vehicle Research Center (VRC) was opened. This center, which includes a state-of-the-art crash test facility, is the focus of most of the Institute's vehicle-related research. The Institute's affiliate organization, the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI), gathers, processes, and publishes data on the ways in which insurance losses vary among different kinds of vehicles."
If you follow the link to the Vehicle Research Centre you'll find the following (Emphasis mine);
Crashing cars to test them for safety is the main work conducted at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's Vehicle Research Center (VRC). The violence of the crash tests give them an undeniable wow! factor, but the more serious side of this work is its contribution to the Institute's mission of preventing harm from crashes by improving driver behavior and roadway design as well as vehicle crashworthiness. It's important to improve all three, so the Institute's research program is balanced.
Seriously, I don't understand how there could possibly be any confusion in this matter.
Sorry chap, but I'm in the automotive industry and the crash test results from the IIHS, along with the NHTSA are widely researched and understood. But by all means if you'd like to continue your tirade against an organization that raises the bar for vehicular safety and injury prevention, please do so in private so you won't spread more misinformation amongst the public.
I'd take you seriously, except for the fact that the brand I work for currently has Top Safety Pick awards for every vehicle in its product lineup. There's atleast one other major manufacturer in the same situation. Sorry, but as safety standards advance so must manufacturers.
And this has exactly what to do with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety?
I'm not sure I follow. The IIHS perform vehicular crash tests and determine the likelihood of serious injury based on a specified test criteria for each model. I'm not sure how it doesn't have to do with the IIHS...?
Can't blame unions for wanting a decent cut of the profits.
At the local Oshawa, Ontario plant the union railed against rotating shift layoffs and downtime. See, the Impala, Monte Carlo and Silverado (locally built) were piling up in the storage yards and in dealership inventories so General Motors decided to reduce production until the supply evened out with demand. This did not go over well with Mr. Hargrove and his ilk so they held the plant hostage until they relented and continued production. Now they have literally thousands of unsold units sitting on every available flat patch of real estate in Oshawa that the dealerships are refusing to accept and the workers wonder why they're being lanced.
My Japanese car was not "built" in America. It was assemblied here. There's quite a bit of difference.
Not really. Most all manufacturers use some variety of "Just In Time" assembly nowadays and parts stream in from all over the world (in many cases it's wherever they can get the cost per part down to the lowest value when shipping is factored).
The big bone of contention is manufacturing/assembly jobs which is what happens in so many plants in Ontario, Illinois, Alabama, Indiana,... with Japanese company run factories. While the Big Three are continuing to move jobs to the third world, the Japanese continue to bring jobs to North America.
Ouch... I was with you until you mentioned the IIHS. They don't research to make things safer; they research to skew things so that they can justify raising your premiums, and keep things "just dangerous enough."
I'd take you seriously, except for the fact that the brand I work for currently has Top Safety Pick awards for every vehicle in its product lineup. There's atleast one other major manufacturer in the same situation. Sorry, but as safety standards advance so must manufacturers.
Every few years automotive safety standards increase as technology advances permit. If you build your car to exceed today's ratings you'll still score well on the next round. If you build your car to scrape by the tests, spending the minimum amount possible on safety you're going to do poorly in the next round. See, most manufacturers rely on the fact that if they have a subset of media buzzword features in their car (ABS, crumple zones, airbags front, side and curtain, disc brakes,... ) that their car can successfully be marketed as a safe car. The problem with that is all systems are not created equally and often the most important safety features are the expensive passive variety that don't get glamorized.
BTW; the IIHS is only a small contributing factor to your insurance premiums. Have you ever noticed how far the range is when you get a car quoted out at several companies? Insurance companies use aggregate statistical data of accident damage, personal injury, property damage claims, offence numbers and several other factors to determine their individual ratings for each individual car. If a car's desirability hence its theft numbers suddenly spike, well, you're going to see an increase in ratings. If a car becomes popular with street racers its collision and comprehensive ratings will rise dramatically.
n.b. Don't think I'm apologizing for the industry in the slightest. No matter what their methods they print money. It's unfortunate that we have no real regulation or fair competition in a market for a product we're all required by law to have. Is cooperative monopoly a real term? It sure as hell feels like it.
same goes for two new cars, but at least the old cars would survive.
you guys can debate this all you want, but you cant convince me that tinfoil will protect me better then a real steel body.
Y'know why most automakers with any sense went away from body on frame vehicle designs? Because they had a habit of separating from one-another and causing irreparable damage otherwise known as death. Or, if you're lucky, you just got wheeled away as a cripple due to the impact forces re-aligning your spinal column for you.
BTW; I'm really not impressed when a person sticks their head in the sand, ignoring decades of safety research with arms vigilantly crossed. But it's ok; if you know more than the IIHS, NHTSA and the entire automotive industry, that's fine; we'll believe you.
You can buy American made, small, fuel efficient cars if you want to from the Big Three; a Focus gets like 40mpg. The financial situation is more due to ruinous union demands like the Jobs Bank.
Sure. You can also watch them put so many of their eggs in the large, bulbous, hideously inefficient models. Ford with its F-series trucks which are so continuously, heavily advertised. The Explorer, the Expedition (and Expedition Max which replaced the undesirable Excursion. Hmm.. If the people stop buying one gigantic gas guzzling beast, what to do? Oh yes; make another one!).
Then there's GM. Silverados and Sierras are advertised like the second coming. They're our national truck don'cha know. Impalas, naturally, still going strong. Oh, but wait, they've taken some of their most obnoxious vehicles and made them HYBRIDS! That'll work. I suppose it's like the fat person in line at McD's ordering a double Big Mac combo with up-sized fries and a Diet Coke to wash it down. Thankfully their compact has now made it off the top of of Consumer Reports' "Do Not Buy" list. But they still have a variety of small Korean made Daewoo.. er, Chevy/Pontiac products to cross-compete with one-another. It's always nice when a corporation takes foreign product and throws it into our market in direct competition with itself huh?
Now we can't forget the venerable Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge/'Will Someone Just Buy Me And Be Happy Already?' corporation. Let's devote 90% of our ad dollars to the All New More Powerful Bigger Nastier RAM!! YES! THAT'S WHAT PEOPLE WANT! A VERY LARGE PICKUP TRUCK! Look! Big tough people drive them! If you don't, clearly you're not a man or you have very small genitalia. Yes, they have a compact too. But you see, it can't just be a compact, it has to be a compact that LOOKS LIKE an SUV. The Mitsubishi Caliber! Er, wait... Dodge. That's right.:) So they took a vehicle from a company that's not exactly known for its fuel economy, put a fugly body on it and called it a hit. {gag}
Wait. I thought we were talking about (North) American made products here. Why don't we talk about Canada's number 1 selling vehicle? It's proudly made right here in Canada by Canadians. The Honda Civic. Now, if you want another domestic vehicle that competes with the Civic in fuel economy why don't you cross-shop with the venerable Toyota Corolla?
Oh yeah, Pearl Harbor and all that crap. Sorry, I forgot. Fuck the Japs. Buy Mexic... Korea... South Afri... Er.. Just buy from the Big Three and shut the hell up, right?
So they're in financial difficulty. They have problems with unions (Toyota and Honda do not, incidentally. Sorry guys.), they keep pushing production over seas. Rather than spend more on a quality product they're still opting to spend more on warranty support for cheap cars made in third world countries. I'm glad you mentioned the Focus; rushed to market with 34 recalls in its first production year. Thirty Damned Four known defects with the product design, build quality and workmanship. Never to fear; they did twice as good with the '01 models; only 17 recalls that year. Dodge/Chrysler/Plymouth/"For Sale To Good Home - Cheap!" don't worry, I'm not discriminating against you and your venerable Neon! ("You didn't want to bog down your engine with any pesky safety features did you Mr. and Mrs. Customer? Oh that? That's a... Feature!")
In short my friend, the general public are sick and tired of hearing about their national automakers opting to put all their focus behind vehicles that aren't selling and using the general populace as their test facility. Seriously; did they just skip the whole quality control phase of their design and build process or what? Since when is a showroom floor an acceptable QA facility?!?
Moreover, we're sick of hearing about how they need blank cheques written to cover the damage they've done to themselves by gross mismanagement and egregious lack of insight into market trends.
But hey, if you want to prop them up because you love the old guard, be my guest, but my Japanese car gets me by just fine, thankyouverymuch.
i don't want my car to fragment on impact. I want my car to protect me, no matter what Detroit says about crumple zones, i will never drive a car that is designed to fail.
Oh. So rather than having the crash energy absorbed by predictable crumple zones you'd rather have it focus straight into the passenger compartment and into your body and brain. Well, I suppose it's one example of Darwinism.
At least they should be required by law to use sarcastic air quotes when they say "Unlimited." I don't buy their attempts to redefine "Unlimited", either. That's pretty much my definition of "Consumer fraud".
{SIGH!} There really should be a FAQ about this.
Show me an ad that says Internet access is unlimited (or "Unlimited" even) from the past few years from any company currently offering capped service.
ObCarAnalogy; It's like complaining about automotive safety. Are auto manufacturers still offering models without seatbelts? Sheesh! It's like they don't care about our children!
What the hell are you complaining about? Up here in Canada,
You should clarify; up here in Quebec, Canada... etc.
Here in Ontario I can get cable with either 60GB or 250GB/month cap limits, ADSL with same, or ADSL from a third party provider without a transfer cap but with "prime time" transfer limit caps if you're using a bandwidth intensive protocol (such as torrent or LimeWire et al.)
true but having a key would be a clean, easy, covert break in. It would be easy to get a picture of the key if you think about it, and knowing where it goes. The only thing is how easy and cost effective this technology would be. I still think it's kinda cool, but scary.
Think about it and it's actually pretty simple. Let's say you have a burglar who wants to rob a particular house (or group of same). They're probably going to case the neighbourhood beforehand anyways and many of them will use a camera to get specific shots as memory aids. 200 feet away from a front door provides many areas of cover and a telephoto lens could provide the optical accuracy.
Throw in the fact that many (most?) insurance companies won't pay out in the case of a break-in without signs of forceful entry and it is a pretty scary situation.
What if (and this is a big but) - what if people learned how to be responsible around unsafe objects, and if they weren't smart or careful and injured themselves, they were allowed to perish?
I'm afraid most philosophers these days consider utopian societies impossible to realize.
I'm afraid most people these days consider philosophers impossible to take seriously.:)
Death to the bleeding hearts, etc. etc. It may not be utopia, but it'd be a damn shake better than what we've got going today.
I don't like Daylight Saving Time, or as I call it "Pretend it's an hour later than it is," and will be glad when the clock in my car doesn't make me do addition to remember what time it is (I refuse to adjust it for this nonsense.) This silly dance we do every year twice.
Perhaps you'd be less angry if you'd just adjust your car's clock twice/year rather than doing addition several dozen (hundred?) times per summer?
That's true, and in Belgium lots of people have said they wanted to cancel DST, summer time.
I actually rather have more light at the end of the day then in the beginning. Winters are so depressing.
So what you're saying is that you'd like the clock moved to DST all year round?
(DST was designed to give people an extra hour of light at the end of the day, but you seem to be implying you'd like to rid the world of just that?)
If every business adopted a very simple "go to work when you have to and leave when you have to" policy, we wouldn't care what the damn clock said, and would need neither time zones nor daylight saving time.
Yeah. The problems with that are far greater than those which they solve.
Firstly, you get people who decide they don't need to go to work nearly half as often as their co-workers and you wind up with people passing the buck.
Secondly, what happens when a customer expects you to be there at 9:30 but nobody feels like coming in until 11?
There's something to be said for allowing times where people can expect someone to be sitting at their desk and for the moment, 9-5 are those times in our modern society.
Unlikely. I'd be able to fight for limited times, and hide a lot better than that, so my role would be a scavenger, most likely.
So unless you want hobos killing you for money because they're starving, and disabled people having no options other than resort to violence, how about you consider your ideal world a bit?
That's ok. Usually such "scavengers" used to die off at a very early age. I'd live comfortably into my golden years, but perhaps I could use you to perform menial labour tasks around my estate some time.
See, the idea that everybody deserves a "fair shot" at the same work is ludicrous. You do not deserve the same standard of life that I do. I've worked hard and been responsible with my money for my entire working life. I moved out of my house when I was very young and worked my way through high school and college. 12-16 hour work days aren't at all unusual for me. So in what twisted, perverted world does a self-professed cripple deserve the same standards of living? Why should a portion of my hard earned wages go to support you while you sit at home and entertain yourself?
In nature (of which we are a part; don't kid yourself) the slow, the weak, the sick members of the herd straggled behind. The herd as a whole suffered for it. Those were the animals that were devoured by the predators and the herd as a whole was stronger for it.
Society would be much stronger as a whole if we'd stop bending over backwards to support the lowest common denominator members of society.
If there really were no safety nets such as as welfare, unemployment, free health care, etc, you bet the government would be far more aggressive in banning anything "non-safe." The masses would be screaming for it.
What if (and this is a big but) - what if people learned how to be responsible around unsafe objects, and if they weren't smart or careful and injured themselves, they were allowed to perish?
It'd be either kill or die in my case, because my parents are poor and I am not able to work because of my health problems. Only two things I'd be able to do would be to whore myself or kill and rob people.
So yeah, something to be said. Total anarchy.
Sorry, but in your situation you'd likely be in the "die" category. Survival of the fittest has been the way of the world for the past few millenia.
You should be irritated -- I certainly would be! However, the people you should be irritated at are the ones taxing you to pay for welfare, not the gamblers. Place the blame where it's due.
There's something to be said for a world without safety nets. Damn right you'll walk much more upright if you know it's do or die. Maybe, just maybe people would learn some personal responsibility. Perhaps (this is a wild wild notion here) people would learn to live within their means and save for a rainy...
Oh hell, who am I kidding, this is North America in the 21st century. The land of plasma TVs and SUVs. {sigh}
I lived in Canada and Silicon Valley - it amazed me how apartment-owners built multi-floor apartment blocks, yet had all the washing and drying machines down in the basement. While it avoids flood damage (pipes leak, seals break, pumps burn out)
True, but modern building construction has largely overcome these factors with what I've heard termed "sealed envelope" design. eg; if my condo sprung a leak, it would have to flood my entire unit to a depth greater than 1" before my neighbors were adversely affected. I'm not sure, but I think there's even a floor drain below my dryer.
it only helped to increase crime because renters would tend to forget to lock their apartment doors when carrying a full basket of laundry.
Tell me about it. Not only crimes of opportunity, but the pain in the butt when you forget to bring your keys and your S.O./roommate lock the door on you when they go out somewhere!:)
With the large apartment blocks, the washer/dryers would be coin operated. Everyone kept a glass jar of quarters for every washday ($1 for washing whites or non-whites, 75c for drying).
{Will not make racially insensitive joke...:P }
There was a 24-hour supermarket on the block, but on a Sunday night, they would refuse to exchange dollars for quarters as every cash till had exchanged them all.
When I worked as a courier, the funniest call I ever went on started with my boss asking over the radio who had "about 10-15 bucks in quarters and loonies". I said that I did (and was happy for the chance to rid myself of same). He instructed me to go to an address and give the lady $10 in a mix of quarters and loonies and in exchange she would give me $15. $10 for the coins, $5 for the delivery fee.
You just can't make this stuff up.:)
Some friends of mine live in a building that uses more modern machines. There's a card machine in the laundry room that accepts cash (in coin and bill form), credit and debit cards and loads a pre-paid laundry card. From there you just swipe the card and start your load.
My current apartment block has a combined dryer/washer in every apartment. But with the chipboard floors it often sounds like your upstairs neighbor is running a speedboat motor repair shop.
Two words my friend; concrete box. I'm convinced that I could have an orgy in my laundry room while both machines were running and nobody would know. If The Incredible Hulk in DTS 7.1 surround sound on my system didn't wake the neighbours a washer/dryer certainly won't make a dent.
The problem is that many locations with large laundry facilities (rented apartments built in the 60's, or private laundries) have opening hours that usually close at 9pm or 10pm - so the machines are in continuous use until this time and then they suddenly switch off.
Large multi-story condo tower blocks and rental apartments just magnified this effect - you could have a good percentage of over a 500 all doing their laundry each day until this time.
Ugh. When I went shopping for my condo one of the absolute requirements was to have in-suite laundry facilities. At first I was apprehensive about how well a "stackable" pair would, erm, stack-up against the full-sized side-by-side "extra capacity" models I was moving away from I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised. For the record, BTW, I tend to use my laundry pair late in the evening after the peak usage from my dinner cooking is long since been and gone.
Slashdot Mirror
You seem to say that like it's a good thing.
Yeah, it's never a good thing to support the global industry leading platform.
I was under the impression that the VRC was part of the other organization on the page.
No, it's the same organization just a different division. But it's ok; we all make mistakes from time to time.
However, you never addressed my other concern, where the IIHS influences policy.. policy which directly contradicts civil engineering findings and safety suggestions. Such as my example of yellow light time vs. red light cameras.
No, I did not because it wasn't germane to the discussion at hand. The IIHS and NHTSA perform crash test research and report on safety concerns and that's the end of that. If you want to discuss the politics of either organization or the current insurance situation in North America I'm afraid we'll have to wait until that topic comes to head. Since we're already off-topic for this article I didn't feel the need to spiral the conversation even further so.
No, no they don't. The IIHS does not perform crash tests or anything like that. If you clicked the link "About the IIHS" you'd see that they do policy... not crash testing.
You mean this link that says (Emphasis mine);
If you follow the link to the Vehicle Research Centre you'll find the following (Emphasis mine);
Seriously, I don't understand how there could possibly be any confusion in this matter.
Sorry chap, but I'm in the automotive industry and the crash test results from the IIHS, along with the NHTSA are widely researched and understood. But by all means if you'd like to continue your tirade against an organization that raises the bar for vehicular safety and injury prevention, please do so in private so you won't spread more misinformation amongst the public.
I'd take you seriously, except for the fact that the brand I work for currently has Top Safety Pick awards for every vehicle in its product lineup. There's atleast one other major manufacturer in the same situation. Sorry, but as safety standards advance so must manufacturers.
And this has exactly what to do with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety?
I'm not sure I follow. The IIHS perform vehicular crash tests and determine the likelihood of serious injury based on a specified test criteria for each model. I'm not sure how it doesn't have to do with the IIHS...?
Can't blame unions for wanting a decent cut of the profits.
At the local Oshawa, Ontario plant the union railed against rotating shift layoffs and downtime. See, the Impala, Monte Carlo and Silverado (locally built) were piling up in the storage yards and in dealership inventories so General Motors decided to reduce production until the supply evened out with demand. This did not go over well with Mr. Hargrove and his ilk so they held the plant hostage until they relented and continued production. Now they have literally thousands of unsold units sitting on every available flat patch of real estate in Oshawa that the dealerships are refusing to accept and the workers wonder why they're being lanced.
My Japanese car was not "built" in America. It was assemblied here. There's quite a bit of difference.
Not really. Most all manufacturers use some variety of "Just In Time" assembly nowadays and parts stream in from all over the world (in many cases it's wherever they can get the cost per part down to the lowest value when shipping is factored).
The big bone of contention is manufacturing/assembly jobs which is what happens in so many plants in Ontario, Illinois, Alabama, Indiana, ... with Japanese company run factories. While the Big Three are continuing to move jobs to the third world, the Japanese continue to bring jobs to North America.
Ouch... I was with you until you mentioned the IIHS. They don't research to make things safer; they research to skew things so that they can justify raising your premiums, and keep things "just dangerous enough."
I'd take you seriously, except for the fact that the brand I work for currently has Top Safety Pick awards for every vehicle in its product lineup. There's atleast one other major manufacturer in the same situation. Sorry, but as safety standards advance so must manufacturers.
Every few years automotive safety standards increase as technology advances permit. If you build your car to exceed today's ratings you'll still score well on the next round. If you build your car to scrape by the tests, spending the minimum amount possible on safety you're going to do poorly in the next round. See, most manufacturers rely on the fact that if they have a subset of media buzzword features in their car (ABS, crumple zones, airbags front, side and curtain, disc brakes, ... ) that their car can successfully be marketed as a safe car. The problem with that is all systems are not created equally and often the most important safety features are the expensive passive variety that don't get glamorized.
BTW; the IIHS is only a small contributing factor to your insurance premiums. Have you ever noticed how far the range is when you get a car quoted out at several companies? Insurance companies use aggregate statistical data of accident damage, personal injury, property damage claims, offence numbers and several other factors to determine their individual ratings for each individual car. If a car's desirability hence its theft numbers suddenly spike, well, you're going to see an increase in ratings. If a car becomes popular with street racers its collision and comprehensive ratings will rise dramatically.
n.b. Don't think I'm apologizing for the industry in the slightest. No matter what their methods they print money. It's unfortunate that we have no real regulation or fair competition in a market for a product we're all required by law to have. Is cooperative monopoly a real term? It sure as hell feels like it.
same goes for two new cars, but at least the old cars would survive. you guys can debate this all you want, but you cant convince me that tinfoil will protect me better then a real steel body.
Y'know why most automakers with any sense went away from body on frame vehicle designs? Because they had a habit of separating from one-another and causing irreparable damage otherwise known as death. Or, if you're lucky, you just got wheeled away as a cripple due to the impact forces re-aligning your spinal column for you.
BTW; I'm really not impressed when a person sticks their head in the sand, ignoring decades of safety research with arms vigilantly crossed. But it's ok; if you know more than the IIHS, NHTSA and the entire automotive industry, that's fine; we'll believe you.
You can buy American made, small, fuel efficient cars if you want to from the Big Three; a Focus gets like 40mpg. The financial situation is more due to ruinous union demands like the Jobs Bank.
Sure. You can also watch them put so many of their eggs in the large, bulbous, hideously inefficient models. Ford with its F-series trucks which are so continuously, heavily advertised. The Explorer, the Expedition (and Expedition Max which replaced the undesirable Excursion. Hmm.. If the people stop buying one gigantic gas guzzling beast, what to do? Oh yes; make another one!).
Then there's GM. Silverados and Sierras are advertised like the second coming. They're our national truck don'cha know. Impalas, naturally, still going strong. Oh, but wait, they've taken some of their most obnoxious vehicles and made them HYBRIDS! That'll work. I suppose it's like the fat person in line at McD's ordering a double Big Mac combo with up-sized fries and a Diet Coke to wash it down. Thankfully their compact has now made it off the top of of Consumer Reports' "Do Not Buy" list. But they still have a variety of small Korean made Daewoo.. er, Chevy/Pontiac products to cross-compete with one-another. It's always nice when a corporation takes foreign product and throws it into our market in direct competition with itself huh?
Now we can't forget the venerable Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge/'Will Someone Just Buy Me And Be Happy Already?' corporation. Let's devote 90% of our ad dollars to the All New More Powerful Bigger Nastier RAM!! YES! THAT'S WHAT PEOPLE WANT! A VERY LARGE PICKUP TRUCK! Look! Big tough people drive them! If you don't, clearly you're not a man or you have very small genitalia. Yes, they have a compact too. But you see, it can't just be a compact, it has to be a compact that LOOKS LIKE an SUV. The Mitsubishi Caliber! Er, wait... Dodge. That's right. :) So they took a vehicle from a company that's not exactly known for its fuel economy, put a fugly body on it and called it a hit. {gag}
Wait. I thought we were talking about (North) American made products here. Why don't we talk about Canada's number 1 selling vehicle? It's proudly made right here in Canada by Canadians. The Honda Civic. Now, if you want another domestic vehicle that competes with the Civic in fuel economy why don't you cross-shop with the venerable Toyota Corolla?
Oh yeah, Pearl Harbor and all that crap. Sorry, I forgot. Fuck the Japs. Buy Mexic... Korea... South Afri... Er.. Just buy from the Big Three and shut the hell up, right?
So they're in financial difficulty. They have problems with unions (Toyota and Honda do not, incidentally. Sorry guys.), they keep pushing production over seas. Rather than spend more on a quality product they're still opting to spend more on warranty support for cheap cars made in third world countries. I'm glad you mentioned the Focus; rushed to market with 34 recalls in its first production year. Thirty Damned Four known defects with the product design, build quality and workmanship. Never to fear; they did twice as good with the '01 models; only 17 recalls that year. Dodge/Chrysler/Plymouth/"For Sale To Good Home - Cheap!" don't worry, I'm not discriminating against you and your venerable Neon! ("You didn't want to bog down your engine with any pesky safety features did you Mr. and Mrs. Customer? Oh that? That's a ... Feature!")
In short my friend, the general public are sick and tired of hearing about their national automakers opting to put all their focus behind vehicles that aren't selling and using the general populace as their test facility. Seriously; did they just skip the whole quality control phase of their design and build process or what? Since when is a showroom floor an acceptable QA facility?!?
Moreover, we're sick of hearing about how they need blank cheques written to cover the damage they've done to themselves by gross mismanagement and egregious lack of insight into market trends.
But hey, if you want to prop them up because you love the old guard, be my guest, but my Japanese car gets me by just fine, thankyouverymuch.
cause Detroit will continue to build the lowest common denominator because it makes them money.
What was that term I heard recently to describe the Big Three's present financial situation ...
Oh yes! Hemorrhaging money! That was it!
i don't want my car to fragment on impact. I want my car to protect me, no matter what Detroit says about crumple zones, i will never drive a car that is designed to fail.
Oh. So rather than having the crash energy absorbed by predictable crumple zones you'd rather have it focus straight into the passenger compartment and into your body and brain. Well, I suppose it's one example of Darwinism.
The African-American population has traditionally voted 85%-90% with the Democrats.
You can start being more racially sensitive by not calling black people "African-American".
At least they should be required by law to use sarcastic air quotes when they say "Unlimited." I don't buy their attempts to redefine "Unlimited", either. That's pretty much my definition of "Consumer fraud".
{SIGH!} There really should be a FAQ about this.
Show me an ad that says Internet access is unlimited (or "Unlimited" even) from the past few years from any company currently offering capped service.
ObCarAnalogy; It's like complaining about automotive safety. Are auto manufacturers still offering models without seatbelts? Sheesh! It's like they don't care about our children!
</sarcasm>
What the hell are you complaining about? Up here in Canada,
You should clarify; up here in Quebec, Canada ... etc.
Here in Ontario I can get cable with either 60GB or 250GB/month cap limits, ADSL with same, or ADSL from a third party provider without a transfer cap but with "prime time" transfer limit caps if you're using a bandwidth intensive protocol (such as torrent or LimeWire et al.)
true but having a key would be a clean, easy, covert break in. It would be easy to get a picture of the key if you think about it, and knowing where it goes. The only thing is how easy and cost effective this technology would be. I still think it's kinda cool, but scary.
Think about it and it's actually pretty simple. Let's say you have a burglar who wants to rob a particular house (or group of same). They're probably going to case the neighbourhood beforehand anyways and many of them will use a camera to get specific shots as memory aids. 200 feet away from a front door provides many areas of cover and a telephoto lens could provide the optical accuracy.
Throw in the fact that many (most?) insurance companies won't pay out in the case of a break-in without signs of forceful entry and it is a pretty scary situation.
What if (and this is a big but) - what if people learned how to be responsible around unsafe objects, and if they weren't smart or careful and injured themselves, they were allowed to perish?
I'm afraid most philosophers these days consider utopian societies impossible to realize.
I'm afraid most people these days consider philosophers impossible to take seriously. :)
Death to the bleeding hearts, etc. etc. It may not be utopia, but it'd be a damn shake better than what we've got going today.
I don't like Daylight Saving Time, or as I call it "Pretend it's an hour later than it is," and will be glad when the clock in my car doesn't make me do addition to remember what time it is (I refuse to adjust it for this nonsense.) This silly dance we do every year twice.
Perhaps you'd be less angry if you'd just adjust your car's clock twice/year rather than doing addition several dozen (hundred?) times per summer?
That's true, and in Belgium lots of people have said they wanted to cancel DST, summer time. I actually rather have more light at the end of the day then in the beginning. Winters are so depressing.
So what you're saying is that you'd like the clock moved to DST all year round?
(DST was designed to give people an extra hour of light at the end of the day, but you seem to be implying you'd like to rid the world of just that?)
If every business adopted a very simple "go to work when you have to and leave when you have to" policy, we wouldn't care what the damn clock said, and would need neither time zones nor daylight saving time.
Yeah. The problems with that are far greater than those which they solve.
Firstly, you get people who decide they don't need to go to work nearly half as often as their co-workers and you wind up with people passing the buck.
Secondly, what happens when a customer expects you to be there at 9:30 but nobody feels like coming in until 11?
There's something to be said for allowing times where people can expect someone to be sitting at their desk and for the moment, 9-5 are those times in our modern society.
Unlikely. I'd be able to fight for limited times, and hide a lot better than that, so my role would be a scavenger, most likely.
So unless you want hobos killing you for money because they're starving, and disabled people having no options other than resort to violence, how about you consider your ideal world a bit?
That's ok. Usually such "scavengers" used to die off at a very early age. I'd live comfortably into my golden years, but perhaps I could use you to perform menial labour tasks around my estate some time.
See, the idea that everybody deserves a "fair shot" at the same work is ludicrous. You do not deserve the same standard of life that I do. I've worked hard and been responsible with my money for my entire working life. I moved out of my house when I was very young and worked my way through high school and college. 12-16 hour work days aren't at all unusual for me. So in what twisted, perverted world does a self-professed cripple deserve the same standards of living? Why should a portion of my hard earned wages go to support you while you sit at home and entertain yourself?
In nature (of which we are a part; don't kid yourself) the slow, the weak, the sick members of the herd straggled behind. The herd as a whole suffered for it. Those were the animals that were devoured by the predators and the herd as a whole was stronger for it.
Society would be much stronger as a whole if we'd stop bending over backwards to support the lowest common denominator members of society.
If there really were no safety nets such as as welfare, unemployment, free health care, etc, you bet the government would be far more aggressive in banning anything "non-safe." The masses would be screaming for it.
What if (and this is a big but) - what if people learned how to be responsible around unsafe objects, and if they weren't smart or careful and injured themselves, they were allowed to perish?
I miss lawn darts.
It'd be either kill or die in my case, because my parents are poor and I am not able to work because of my health problems. Only two things I'd be able to do would be to whore myself or kill and rob people.
So yeah, something to be said. Total anarchy.
Sorry, but in your situation you'd likely be in the "die" category. Survival of the fittest has been the way of the world for the past few millenia.
You should be irritated -- I certainly would be! However, the people you should be irritated at are the ones taxing you to pay for welfare, not the gamblers. Place the blame where it's due.
There's something to be said for a world without safety nets. Damn right you'll walk much more upright if you know it's do or die. Maybe, just maybe people would learn some personal responsibility. Perhaps (this is a wild wild notion here) people would learn to live within their means and save for a rainy ...
Oh hell, who am I kidding, this is North America in the 21st century. The land of plasma TVs and SUVs. {sigh}
I lived in Canada and Silicon Valley - it amazed me how apartment-owners built multi-floor apartment blocks, yet had all the washing and drying machines down in the basement. While it avoids flood damage (pipes leak, seals break, pumps burn out)
True, but modern building construction has largely overcome these factors with what I've heard termed "sealed envelope" design. eg; if my condo sprung a leak, it would have to flood my entire unit to a depth greater than 1" before my neighbors were adversely affected. I'm not sure, but I think there's even a floor drain below my dryer.
it only helped to increase crime because renters would tend to forget to lock their apartment doors when carrying a full basket of laundry.
Tell me about it. Not only crimes of opportunity, but the pain in the butt when you forget to bring your keys and your S.O./roommate lock the door on you when they go out somewhere! :)
With the large apartment blocks, the washer/dryers would be coin operated. Everyone kept a glass jar of quarters for every washday ($1 for washing whites or non-whites, 75c for drying).
{Will not make racially insensitive joke... :P }
There was a 24-hour supermarket on the block, but on a Sunday night, they would refuse to exchange dollars for quarters as every cash till had exchanged them all.
When I worked as a courier, the funniest call I ever went on started with my boss asking over the radio who had "about 10-15 bucks in quarters and loonies". I said that I did (and was happy for the chance to rid myself of same). He instructed me to go to an address and give the lady $10 in a mix of quarters and loonies and in exchange she would give me $15. $10 for the coins, $5 for the delivery fee.
You just can't make this stuff up. :)
Some friends of mine live in a building that uses more modern machines. There's a card machine in the laundry room that accepts cash (in coin and bill form), credit and debit cards and loads a pre-paid laundry card. From there you just swipe the card and start your load.
My current apartment block has a combined dryer/washer in every apartment. But with the chipboard floors it often sounds like your upstairs neighbor is running a speedboat motor repair shop.
Two words my friend; concrete box. I'm convinced that I could have an orgy in my laundry room while both machines were running and nobody would know. If The Incredible Hulk in DTS 7.1 surround sound on my system didn't wake the neighbours a washer/dryer certainly won't make a dent.
The problem is that many locations with large laundry facilities (rented apartments built in the 60's, or private laundries) have opening hours that usually close at 9pm or 10pm - so the machines are in continuous use until this time and then they suddenly switch off.
Large multi-story condo tower blocks and rental apartments just magnified this effect - you could have a good percentage of over a 500 all doing their laundry each day until this time.
Ugh. When I went shopping for my condo one of the absolute requirements was to have in-suite laundry facilities. At first I was apprehensive about how well a "stackable" pair would, erm, stack-up against the full-sized side-by-side "extra capacity" models I was moving away from I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised. For the record, BTW, I tend to use my laundry pair late in the evening after the peak usage from my dinner cooking is long since been and gone.